credulity ascribed this and that to him-that (for instance) he did not really speak the parable about the sheep and goats, representing himself as the Supreme Judge who awards heaven or hell to every human soul. But it remains, that this parable distinctly shows the nature of the dignity which Jesus was supposed to claim in calling himself Son of Man; and, even if we arbitrarily pare away from his discourses this and other details in deference to Unitarian surmise, we still cannot get rid of what pervades the whole narrative, that Jesus from the beginning adopted a tone of superhuman authority and obtrusion of his own personal greatness, with the title "Son of Man," allusive both to Daniel and to the book of Enoch. According to Daniel, one like unto a Son of Man will come in the clouds of heaven to receive eternal dominion over all nations. It is impossible to doubt, that, in the mind of those to whom Jesus spoke, the character of Messiah implied an overshadowing supremacy, a high leadership over Israel, and hereby over the Gentiles, who were to come and sit at Israel's feet a religious and, as it were, princely pre-eminence, which only one mortal could receive, who by it was raised immeasurably above all others. If he did not intend to claim this, it was obviously his first duty to disclaim it, and to warn all against false, dangerous, or foolish conceptions of Messiah; to protest that Messiah was only a teacher, not a prince, not a divine lawgiver, not a supreme judge sitting on the throne of God and disposing of men's eternal destinies. Nay, why claim the title Messiah at all, if it could only suggest falsehood? Since he sedulously fostered the belief that he was Messiah, without attempting to define the term, or guide the public mind, he could only be understood, and must have wished to be understood, to present himself as Messiah in the popular, notorious sense. If he was really this, honour him as such. If his claim was delusive, he cannot be held guiltless.

Every high post has its own besetting sin, which must be conquered by him who is to earn any admiration. A finance minister, who pilfers the treasury, can never be honoured as a hero, whatever the merits of his public measures. A statesman or prince, entrusted with the supreme executive power, ruins his claims to veneration if he use that power violently to overthrow the laws. Such as is the crime of a statesman who usurps a despotism, such is the guilt of a religious teacher who usurps lordship over the taught and aggrandizes himself. It is a bottomless gulf of demerit, swallowing up all possible merit, and making silence

concerning him our kindest course, if only his panegyrists allow us to be silent. A teacher who exalts himself into our Lord and Saviour and Judge, leaves to his hearers no reasonable choice between two extremes of conduct. Whoso is not with him is against him. For we must either submit frankly to his claims, and acknowledge ourselves little children-abhor the idea of criticizing him or his precepts, and in short become morally annihilated in his presence-or, on the opposite, we cannot help seeing him to have fallen into something worse than ignominy.

I digress to remark, that a teacher supposed by us to be the infallible arbiter of our eternity would detain our minds for ever in a puerile state if he taught dogmatically, not to say imperiously. If he aimed to elicit our own powers of judgment, and not to crush us into submissive imbecility, the method which Socrates carried to an extreme appears alone suited to the object; namely, to refrain from expressing his own decisions, but lay before the hearers the material of thought half-prepared, and claim of them to combine it into some conclusion themselves. In fact, this is fundamentally the mode in which the Supremely Wise, who inhabits this infinite world, trains our minds and souls. His greatness does not oppress our faculties, because it is ever silent from without. Displaying before us abundantly the materials of judgment, he elicits our powers; never commanding us to become little children, but always inviting our minds to grow up into manhood. But, if there were also an opposite side of teaching healthful to us-if it were well to start from dogmas guaranteed to us from heaven, which it is impiety to canvas-then the matter of first necessity would be, that the uttered decrees to which we are to submit should be free from all enigma, all extravagance of hyperbole, all parable, dark allusion, and hard metaphor, all apparent self-contrariety; and, moreover, that we should have no uncertainty what were the teacher's precise words, no mere mutilated reports and inconsistent duplicates, but a reliable genuine copy of every utterance on which there is to be no criticism. To sum up, I will say: Nothing can be less suited to minister the Spirit and train the powers of the human soul, than to be subject to a superhuman dictation of truth; and nothing could be more unlike a divine law of the letter, (supposing for a moment such a law to be possible,) than the incoherent, hyperbolic, enigmatic, inconsistent fragments of discourses given to us unauthoritatively as teachings of Jesus.

But I return to my main subject. I have shewn what con

clusions seem inevitable, so soon as we cease to believe that Jesus is the celestial Prince Messiah of the book of Enoch, popularly expected in his day. To lay stress on his possession of this or that gentle and beautiful virtue is quite away from the purpose. Let it be allowed that Luke has rightly added this and that soft touch to the picture in Matthew and Mark. Let it be granted that the progressive as well as the traditional side of the Jerusalem church came direct from Jesus himself. Even so, whether any of the actual virtues of European Christians have been kindled from fires which really burnt in Jesus, it appears to me impossible to know. The heart of Paul gushed with the tenderest and warmest love, and he believed Christ to be its source. But the Christ whom he loved to glorify was not the Christ of our books, which did not yet exist; nor a Christ reported to him by the Apostles, to whom he studiously refused to listen; but the Christ whom he made out in the Messianic Psalms, in parts of Isaiah, in the apocryphal book called Wisdom, and perhaps also in the book of Enoch. With such sources of meditation and information open, the personal and bodily existence of Jesus was thought superfluous by a number of Christians considerable enough to earn denunciations in the epistles of John. A great and good man, Theodore Parker, tells me that it would take a Jesus to invent a Jesus. I reply, that, though to invent a Jesus was undoubtedly difficult, to colour a Jesus was very easy. The colouring drawn from a suffering Messiah was superimposed on Jesus by the perpetual meditations of the churches, which, after he had disappeared, sought the Scriptures diligently, NOT to discover whether Jesus was Messiah, which was already an axiom, BUT to discover what, and what sort of a person, Messiah was. According as the inquirers studied more in one or in another book, the conception of Messiah came out different; and here we have an obvious explanation of the varieties of portrait in different gospels. The first disciples, who thus by prophetical studies supplemented the dry outlines which alone could be communicated by the actual hearers of Jesus, would naturally affix to him many traits not strictly human, nor laudable except on the theory of his superhuman character.

To my personal knowledge, this is the systematic practice of Pauline Christians in the present day. They read of Jesus in the Psalms, in the Prophets, in the "types" of Leviticus, in the Song of Solomon, in the Proverbs, anywhere, in short,-with more zeal and pleasure than in the three gospels. A free instinct guides them to feed on less stubborn material.

Nevertheless, in a church exalted by moral enthusiasm and selfsacrifice, in which the highest spirits were truly devoted to practical holiness, it is to be expected that whatever is most beautiful and tender, pure and good, in the traits of character which in Isaiah or elsewhere were believed to belong to Messiah, would be eagerly appropriated to Jesus, as they evidently were by Paul. Some of these would be likely to tinge often-repeated narratives; so that, although none could invent the outline portrait of Jesus, no difficulty appears in the way of a theory, that the moral sentiment of the church has cast a soft halo over a character perhaps rather stern and ambitious, than discriminating, wise, or tender.

We cannot recover lost history. Into the narratives and discourses of Jesus so much of legendary error has crept that we may write or wrangle about him for ever: Paul is a palpable and positive certainty. In what single moral or religious quality Jesus was superior to Paul, I find myself unable to say. Is it really a duty incumbent on each of us to decide such questions? Why must the task of awarding the palm of spiritual greatness among men be foisted into religion?

It is a fact on the surface of history, that Paul, more than any one else, overthrew ceremonialism. Hereby he founded a religion more expansive than that of Isaiah, and, in his fond belief, expansive as the human race, as the children of God. He was not the first Jew to propound the nullity of ceremonies. If time allowed, that topic might admit instructive amplification. The controversy against ceremonies was inevitable, and, with or without him, must have been fought out. What he effected, let us thankfully record; but God does not allow us to owe our souls to any one man, as though he were a fountain of life. It is an evil thing to call ourselves a man's followers, to express devotion to him, and blazon forth his name. Every teacher is largely the product of his age: whatever light and truth he imparts, the glory of it is due to the Father of Light alone, from whom cometh down every good and perfect gift. Any glory for it would be inexpressibly painful to a true-hearted prophet: I mean, for instance, to one true-hearted as Paul. He had no wish to be called Master, Master. He could not bear to hear any one say, "I am of Paul." "Who then is Paul, and who Apollos, but ministers by whom ye have believed?" What! when a man believes himself to be the channel by which it has pleased the Unseen Lord to pour out some portion of hidden truth for the

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feeding of hungry souls, can such a one bear to be praised and thanked for his ministrations? Nay, in proportion as he knows himself to speak God's truth by the impulse of God's spirit, in the same proportion he feels his own personality to be annihilated, and he breathes out an intense desire that God in him may be glorified, but the man be forgotten. I say then, let not us thwart and counteract such yearnings of the simple-hearted instructor. Hear Paul himself further on this matter. "Let no man glory in men; for all things are yours: whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come-all are yours." He means that the collective children of God are the end, for whom God has provided teachers as tools and instruments. But this is not all. In proportion as the teachers are elevated, the taught become unable to judge of their relative rank in honour. Paul therefore forbad the attempt, and deprecated praise. "With me," he continues, "it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment; yea, I judge not my own self, but he that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come; who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of hearts; and then shall every man have (his own) praise of God." What else did he mean to say but: Think not to distribute awards among those to whom you look up. To graduate the claims of equals and inferiors is generally more than a sufficient task. Leave God to pass his awards on those who are spiritually above you; who possibly, like Paul, may receive your praise as painful, and be wholly unconcerned at your blame.-The glorifying of religious teachers has hitherto never borne any fruit but canonizations and deifications, "voluntary humility and worshipping of messengers," vain competitions and rival sects; stagnation in the letter, quenching of the Spirit.