From every man who professes respect for Christ's character, and for the morality which he and his apostles taught, we demand a straightforward answer to the questions: "When he declared himself the Son of God, the Judge of the living and the dead, did he tell the truth, or did he lie?
When he promised to attest his divine commission by rising from the dead on the third day, had he any such power, or did he only mean to play a juggling imposture?
Is Jesus the Christ the Son of the Living God, or a deceiver ?" There is no middle ground.

He that is not with him is against him.
The case is just the same with regard to the witnesses of his miracles, death, and resurrection.

They either give a true relation of these things, or they have manufactured a series of falsehoods.

How can we believe anything from persons so habituated to lying as the narrators of the mighty works of Jesus must be, if those mighty works never were performed?
How can we accept their code of morals if we refuse to believe them when they speak of matters of fact?
Is it possible to respect men as moral teachers, whom we have convicted of forging stories of miracles that never occurred, and confederating together to impose a lying superstition on the world?
For this is plainly the very point and center of the question about the truth of the Bible, and I am anxious you should see it clearly.

A fair statement of this question is half the argument.