and a well-doer

a man of eminent Virtue, and so a His Gospel

minister of Righteousness among men.

was not only the news, but the explication of Immortality and Heaven - the Science of Human Salvation. By metonymy therefore he was the Savior of the World but every one, to be saved, must be as much a Christ as he.

To conclude this chapter then: If Jesus was not surnamed Christ till after his sojourn among men ; if he did not himself profess to be the Messiah either of the Jewish or subsequent ecclesiastical faith; if, forsooth, his life and teachings were a double refutation of both those creeds, then the Church's Christ was never Jesus, but a fabulous wight whose reputation is an enormous exaggeration of his character.

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CHAPTER II.

CHRISTISM NOT THE GOSPEL OF JESUS.

"Take heed that no man deceive you for many shall come in my name, saying I am Christ, and shall deceive many."— MATTHEW XXIV. 4-5.

JESUS has been commonly understood to say that many impostors would appear after his day, calling themselves the Christ. This construction of the clause "legontes, ego eimi ho Christos," and that of "hoti ego eimi," as in Mark and Luke, is quite inconsistent with one of the terms of the prediction; for, unless I have argued wholly in vain hitherto, how might one pretend to be the Christ in the name of Jesus? There never has been, and never can be, a fulfilment of the prophecy so interpreted. But, if we construe the saying so as to make ego stand for Jesus, no prediction ever uttered has been more completely, precisely and largely fulfilled than this:-"Many

will come in my name, saying that I am Christ; and will deceive many." Now, the promulgators of Christism have been many; they have all come in the name of Jesus, calling him the Christ; and in this they have deceived both themselves and all their proselytes.

Yet the fulfilment is more obvious in terms less creditable to the Church. Who but the most doting ecclesiastics will deny that the bulk of the clergy have been mere pretenders to Divine authority through Jesus? Of the long succession of popes, prelates and priests, who have followed the nominal lead of St. Peter, in arrogating vicarious prerogatives of the Most High, and all in the name of Jesus, what protestant does not know that the majority have been wily deceivers, to whom multitudes have bent the knee, as to the Lord's Anointed, with money in their hands, saying, "Take this, and give us the grace of God."

This trick of Priestcraft will be more thoroughly exposed in another place; but that Jesus had nothing to do with it, is what I purpose to show in this chapter. To this end it is needful to consider the

components of Christianity: the Bible, the Church, and Christism; the first containing the news of our strange Salvation, the next its human means, and the last its alleged Divine agency.

SECTION I.

Jesus had nothing to do with making the Bible, nor did he authorize the use which Christians have made of it.

Jesus was no Biblist. That he wrote none of the canonical scriptures, is universally admitted. It has been extensively believed, however, that the whole New Testament was written according to his suggestion, if not command; and, in general terms, that while he accepted the writings of Moses and the prophets as being in accordance with his own teachings, he more especially elected those of his apostles to represent the Gospel. But this notion is founded in fiction or fancy, rather than fact.

hypothesis of Divine Inspiration,

It rests on the

the assumption

that the whole Bible was written by the Holy Ghost, of whom all the prophets and evangelists were the mere amanuenses, and on the superstructive conjecture that the same Spirit of Inspiration was in alliance with Jesus to the end of writing out his oral communications to men. One may guess that Jesus had this very work in mind when he told his disciples, not long before they were deprived of his bodily presence, that after his departure the Holy Ghost would bring to their remembrance all that he had spoken. But this guessing is not quite justified by further inquiry; for it is nowhere stated in the Scriptures that the Holy Ghost had engaged to record the sayings and doings of Jesus, nor do the evangelists profess to have been aware of their own alleged agency as mediums. If, indeed, the Galilean Reformer himself, while on Earth, had been cognizant of the later facts touching the publication of his life and doctrine, as well as the significant accounts to which these writings have been ecclesiastically turned, it cannot be that he would have been altogether heedless of what so intimately concerned both his reputation and mission. It is likely that such matters of