Sentence:  Our endeavor to capture even a faint sense of how strenuous was the fight is muffled by our indifference to the very issue which in the Boston of 1848 <WSD>seemed</WSD> to be the central hope of its Christian survival , that of the literal , factual historicity of the miracles as reported in the Four Gospels . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  give a certain impression or have a certain outward aspect