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yea, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you, will think that he doeth God service."-John, xvi. 2.

Sometimes one would have said that his reason was disturbed. He suffered great mental anguish and agitation.-John xii. 27. The great vision of the kingdom of God, which he fancied he was to establish, glistening before his eyes, bewildered him. bewildered him. His disciples at times, thought him mad;-Mark, iii. 21, and following. His enemies declared him to be possessed:-Mark, iii. 22; John, vii. 20; viii. 48. His excessively impassioned temperament carried him incessantly beyond all rational bounds. At this later period he disregarded all human systems; and his work not addressing itself to the reason, that which he most imperiously required was an unquestioning faith-faith in that which time and history have demonstrated to have been visionary;-Matthew, viii. 10; ix. 2, 22, 28, 29; xvii. 19; John, vi. 29, &c. His previous gentleness seemed to have abandoned him; he was sometimes harsh and capricious;-Matthew, xvii. 16; Mark, iii. 15, 18; Luke, viii. 45; ix. 41. His disciples. at times, did not understand him, and experienced in his presence a feeling akin to fear.-Mark, iv. 40; v. 15; ix. 31; x. 32. Sometimes his displeasure at the slightest opposition led him to commit acts as inexplicable and absurd as cursing a fig tree because it did not bear fruit out of season;-Mark, xi. 12, 14, 20.

His struggle for the ideal against the real, became insupportable. Contact with the world pained and revolted him. Obstacles irritated him. His ideas concerning himself, as the Son of God, became disturbed, inconsistent, and exaggerated. The fatal law which condemns all impracticable ideas to decay, so soon as an attempt is made to put them into operation, applied to his. But even during the early

part of the public ministry of Jesus, and while his mode and manner of portraying the doctrines enjoined on man by natural religion, was in many respects unsurpassed, there was in his teachings a want of consistency, an absence of that harmony which is conspicuous in all things which are unmistakably of God. For while Jesusthe God-Man, as the Church has it-failed to act perfectly his part as a man, he still more signally failed to duly represent God, who, according to Bible record. says, "I am the Lord, I change not;" and of whom Balaam says, God is not a man, that he should lie." The Scriptures do not bear out this claim to unchangeableness and infallibility in relation to Jesus. Several phases of character, or functions were assumed at different times by Jesus, during the few years of his public ministry. Each of these offices or missions was totally inconsistent with the others, as we shall show.

Jesus claimed in the first place, that his mission was to lead or point all men by his teaching, to everlasting happiness beyond the grave; in the second place, he claimed to be the Messiah appointed by God to rule mankind upon this earth, whereon all men were to live forever; thirdly, he claimed to be destined to rule everlastingly, in person and in the flesh, over the whole human race, all of whom were to be righteous and happy, upon a new earth, to be substituted for the present one, which was to be destroyed by fire. Now Jesus' first claim, that his teaching pointed to everlasting happiness beyond the grave, is inconsistent with his second claim, which involved that no man, after the kingdom of God was established under him, was to die or pass the grave. His third assumption, which involved the destruction of our present earth, and a continued existence on this side of the grave,

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is alike inconsistent with his first assumptions, inasmuch. as teaching the way to happiness beyond the grave to a people, who were never to pass the grave, would be out of place; and also, inasmuch as he could not possibly rule as the Messiah contemplated on this earth, since the earth was doomed to destruction. Now it is plain that any one of these positions being accepted as true, stamps the others as false. God cannot be false to Himself; he cannot be one manner of Being to-day and another tomorrow. As regards their fitness to the ordinary duties and relations of life and society, it may be noticed further that many of the doctrines of Jesus are irrational and altogether impracticable.

God, according to Moses and the Church, tells us on the authority of Paul's Epistle to Timothy, that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God," and that, consequently, we must have faith in Moses' announcements. God, we say, put man into Paradise "to dress and keep' the garden of Eden; and this, be it observed, before man had been doomed to labor in the sweat of his brow. But Jesus, after this so-called curse had been affixed upon humanity, inculcated a manner of living entirely at variance with its existence. Men were to take no thoughtnot undue thought, but no thought whatever--as to their means of subsistence. If smitten on one cheek, they were to turn the other cheek to the smiter. If robbed of their coats, they were to give up their cloaks also. Never gaining or acquiring, they were to give and lend without stint. They were not to pay even funeral rites to the dead, in the urgency of their haste to follow after Jesus. They were, for the same end, to give up their natural affections toward father, mother, wife, and child, implanted in man from the first, and shared in part by the

very beasts of the field. As to occupations, livelihood, trade, industry, art, science, learning, the embellishments of life, and the duties of man as a citizen-all these matters are entirely ignored, or are dismissed contemptuously as not worth thought or care.

How full of misery the world would have become, if these injunctions had been obeyed, how starving and utterly forlorn, it is needless to point out. But, without dwelling upon the visionary tendencies of Jesus' code in general, it cannot be inappropriate to remark how slightly in these respects it has bound his followers. The name of Jesus is forever in their mouths; but they have wandered, it must be owned, very far from his teachings. If he varied thrice in his own promulgated views as to his mission and purposes, they by way of a fourth variation have saddled him with the dogma of spiritual salvation through sacrifice of himself. If he preached poverty and selfabnegation, their church has sought power and accumulated wealth, while they as individuals have entered with full ardor and much success upon the multifarious pursuits of man.

Having thus shown, as we conceive, that Jesus-whom the Church adores as perfect God and perfect Man-was neither a worthy representative of God's majestic attributes, nor a fitting type of man under the various relations of life and under the nature which God has stamped upon him, we ask what the conclusion must be. Who shall say that God's representation of Himself throughout the entire universe, and his impress upon broad humanity, are not the true ones under which to live and die?

It is probable that the reported raising of Lazarus from death contributed sensibly to hasten the death of Jesus, as

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is shown in the latter part of the 11th chapter of John's Gospel. The disciples related the fact, with details as to its performance, prepared in expectation of controversy.

The other miracles of Jesus were transitory acts, spontaneously accepted by faith, and exaggerated by popular fame, and were not often referred to after they had once taken place. This raising of Lazarus was an event held to be publicly notorious, and by which it was hoped to silence the Pharisees. The enemies of Jesus were much irritated at all this fame; and, therefore, a council of the chief priests was assembled, and in that council the question was clearly put: "Can Jesus and Judaism exist together?" To raise the question was to resolve it; the high priest could easily pronounce his cruel axiom: "It is expedient that one man should die for the people." The priests saw, in the excitement created by Jesus, the probable overturning of the Temple, the source of their riches and honors.-John, xi. 48. In a general sense, Jesus, if he had succeeded in all he proposed, would have really effected the ruin of the Jewish nation. Hence the men of order, persuaded that it was essential for humanity that the existing belief should not be disturbed, felt themselves bound to prevent the new spirit from extending itself. But never was seen a more striking example of how much such a course of procedure defeats its own object. Left free, Jesus would have exhausted himself in a desperate struggle with the impossible. The unintelligent hate of his enemies, resulting in his persecution and death, contributed to, or was in reality an incident without which he never would have obtained the notoriety that has pertained in relation to him. The death of Jesus being resolved upon,-Matt., xxvi. 15: Mark, xvi. 1, 2: Luke, xxii, 1, 2,-to escape from arrest, he withdrew to an