The notion of Catholicity, with the majority of Christians outside it, and the most ancient Churches rejecting it, is simply absurd, as to witness. It is grossly the character, as to Apostolicity. Rome was not founded by an Apostle, though that be not really the force of the word.
The notion that events happening on earth, quite late in historical times, before a public exercised in all matters so as to be tending towards no faith in anything, and going on for three years or more with a public government trial at the end, related in its result by heathen historians of the empire—connecting itself by public facts, from that day on, with the state of that empire—a fact believed by hostile Jews or adverse heathen—should be a myth, is simply ridiculous. But it does prove this, that the eternal, moral, spiritual principles involved in the life and death of Jesus are so immense that they eclipse, so to speak, to a thinking, I do not say converted person, the historical facts, and what does this show? I look upon it as a divine mercy, and proof of goodness, that Christianity is a religion of persons and facts. It is more real, more simple, more divine, deeper yet more accessible. God become a Man! I have not ideas in man's mind about Him, but Himself. It is not what love is in my mind, but God who is Love. So even atonement—not a questionable reconciliation in abstract possibilities, not expiation wrought by love. Yet the principles, in relationship with God in these facts, are so deep and immense that they absorb, specially when He is not really known, the facts in which they are verified.