as deduced from the foregoing citations? A thing of creeds? No. Of outward worship? No. Is it the Atonement, either Jewish or Christian? No: there is no hint of these in those conversations of Jesus, nor of anything vicarious for the hope of mortals. It is plain Morality— VIRTUE, and nothing else: this is the "saving ordinance" of the original Gospel, according to these two unimpeachable witnesses, by whose accepted testimony that is found to be rooted and grounded in Reason. The young man who would have secured a treasure in Heaven on easier terms than to part with a portion of his "great possessions" for the comfort of others in want, went away sorrowful, because he did not quite love his neighbor as himself; yet with the understanding that there is no contingency about salvation except that of choice, and that Character is essential to Happiness here and hereafter.

How different the lesson prepared for the nurselings of the Church: Believe and profess religion. Believe in positive Evil, in the Fall of Man, the Wrath of God, the Devil, and Hell. Believe in Moses and the Prophets, according to the doctrine of

Divine Inspiration, and in the malevolent Jehovah of the Hebrews, whose bloody sacrifices typified the miraculous "Lamb of God which taketh away the Sin of the World." Believe in the Godhead of the

one.

Catholic Church, the correlative Father, Son and Holy Ghost; that the second was begotten by the third as well as the first, and that the three are only Believe that Jesus is God and the Son of God; that he died to save mankind, and that the Jews, in the act of crucifying him, were the chosen priests of Human Redemption. Believe these dogmas: you cannot know them, yet it is impious to question their sacred authority. Renounce Reason; profess a miraculous conversion, but confess your continued sinfulness in the same breath; throw away all hope of Heaven through moral culture, and look back to the murder of your Savior for your salvation from everlasting fire. Be unusually religious on Sunday; take truth only from the canonical Scriptures; love Christians, hate and avoid all unbelievers, pray for the far-off heathen, and hope hereafter to sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and a few other saints, in the kingdom of a partial Deity, from which

the most of mankind are thrust out with "weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth."

So much the Church has had to do with Jesus. She has done all that lips and knees can do

To glorify his name· - has made that thing

Her God, and called the world to worship it.
But the truths he taught she has little known,
And little cared to know. To live or teach
His Gospel, has been none of her concern.
His character she does not even ape;
His righteousness she does not wish her own,
Save as a bridge over the lake of Hell.

She makes a god of Jesus less than Man :
For, having crucified his humanhood,

She sends his rare example back to Heaven,

And turns from worshiping to eat the offered Lamb!

6

PART SECOND.

WHAT JESUS HAD TO DO WITH CHRISTIANITY.

"Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?"-MATTHEW VII. 16.

HAVING partially exposed the unreal and pretended affection of the Church for Jesus, it is proposed, in this second division of our integral study, to consider in what sense he stands related to her doings, and to what extent these have accorded with his teachings. Yet, I profess my own conviction, in the outset, that this relation is nothing ative on his part; that Jesus was no supernatural Christ, and that Christianity, instead of representing his Gospel, is an invention of men who followed other influences than a just appreciation of what he inculcated and exemplified in his life.

Christianity, by which I mean the whole sectarian medley of ecclesiastical faith and worship, is based on the ancient and vulgar sentiment of divine alienation; being in itself nothing but a grand expedient for recovering the favor of God, through the principle of atonement. The only possible explication of this human predicament is the oriental tale of Adam and Eve, which the ignorant attribute to the inspired pen of Moses, but which the wellinformed know to be but a mere waif of Persian mythology. The Church has adopted the anonymous assumption, together with the spurious rationale of the thing, with no better reason than having found them in a parcel of parchments by sacerdotal authority, labeled "Sacred." She holds for a religious truth, and in part predicates salvation on the belief, that, almost simultaneously with "the fall of man," the Theic Trinity sat in deliberate council on the event and its issue, whence resulted the Christian "Plan of Redemption." The Father was angry with his human offspring for the sin and folly whereby Paradise had been broken up, and averred his irrevocable purpose to execute the sentence of eternal death