It is,
intellectually considered, the opposite pole to both the Methodist
chapel and the Roman Basilica. The poet enters, fearful of losing the
society of "any that call themselves his friends." He describes the
assembled company, and the entrance of "the hawk-nosed, high-cheek-boned
professor," of part of whose Christmas Eve's discourse he proceeds to
give the substance. The professor takes it for granted that "plainly no
such life was liveable," and goes on to inquire what explanation of the
phenomena of the life of Christ it were best to adopt. Not that it
mattered much, "so the idea be left the same." Taking the popular story,
for convenience sake, and separating all extraneous matter from it, he
found that Christ was simply a good man, with an honest, true heart;
whose disciples thought him divine; and whose doctrine, though quite
mistaken by those who received and published it, "had yet a meaning
quite as respectable." Here the poet takes advantage of a pause to leave
him; reflecting that though the air may be poisoned by the sects, yet
here "the critic leaves no air to poison." His meditations and arguments
following, are among the most valuable passages in the book.
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