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deemed that whatever might be good in any should be sought out and saved, the bad thrown away.* Were they wrong? or did they see-albeit in a glass, darkly—the true faith, the glories of the coming kingdom, and, according to their gift and light, work earnestly for the final end? Who will tell us of this?

Then, too, we have names described as virulent opposers-names coming from the side of thought-who were bitter enemies of the new religion, persecuted it with their wit and learning, and sought to destroy it. Celsus, Lucian, Porphyry, etc., are mentioned as of this class. What did these men attack? Was it religion—the inner worship of man, the soul's true homage -or was it the excrescences and perversions, the narrowness, cant, and idolatry they saw baptized in the Christian name? Some of them certainly were men of high cultivation, apparently also of genuine character. What shall we say of them in this relation?

Porphyry wrote, we read, fifteen books, or discourses, against the Christians. They were burned by Christian hands, under imperial edict: not a copy of them remains. Lucas Holstein, a Catholic writer of the seventeenth century, after perusing the extracts given by the Fathers, tells us that the effort of Porphyry is to overthrow the authority of the sacred Scriptures," the foundation upon which the Christian religion rests." He attempted to prove, he says, from their internal character, that those records were of human origin— that Jesus was not the first and sole Savior among mankind—that the prophetic books (as, for instance, the book of Daniel) were historic rather than prophetic, that book coming from an author much later than Danie!—that the Apostles, from their own showing, as instanced in the altercation of Paul and Peter, were not altogether men of model possession and character, etc. Who, according to the present indications, hit nearest the white, this Syrian philosopher, or the refuting Christian fathers?

It will need patient and careful reading, more catholic than any the church has given, to understand these branded enemies aright. They must be studied in the light of the universal standard. Never before can they be fitly known and characterized. They may not prove to be the men we would fain have hoped; but they certainly are entitled to more broad and equitable trial than they thus far have had. We must not be withheld by any incantation from study and impartial judgment. It would be interesting to see a careful juxtaposition and comparison of the best things of Platonism with the best things of the New Testament and the Christian fathers. Probably enough

* "They [the Platonic philosophers] approved and adopted many doctrines and institutions of the Christians, and, following the example of Ammonius, their master, attempted to amalgamate the old religion and the new."

"The principle which the whole sect kept in sight-that truth was to be pursued without restraint, and to be gleaned out of all systems."

"He [Ammonius Saccas] held this new and singular principle: that the fables of the vulgar pagans and their priests, and so, too, the interpretations of the disciples of Christ, ought to be separated from their respective religions."-Mosheim, Ecclesiast. Hist.

it may be found that Platonism, with its culture and rare elevation of life, was one of the most remarkable phenomena and permanent facts of those times.

It doth not appear what the final results shall be. We have hardly begun to apprehend the ripe renderings of knowledge; doubtless we shall stand corrected in many of our impressions and judgments that we deemed most advanced and well considered. Probably the just judgment of Jesus has not been made up by either side in the debate, but it will be affirmed in the light of a broader and better wisdom. He will be dislodged permanently from the throne of exclusive worship he has so long held in the mind of his followers; but he may be found more, much more than his critics describe, of grander proportions and sublimer call. Standing may hap unequalled, it will be seen that the chasm that divides him from other great saints is less wide than has been supposed, and that no man is master, that his value also is symbolic. Many a dull-looking and neglected stone along this roadway of time shall be found a gem of the first water, while much that goes for precious jewels, paraded and glittering everywhere, will be seen but painted glass.

There must be mediation. Here is this wealth of philosophy, with its record of noble culture in the old sages, and here this simple wisdom and love of Jesus, with its record of saintly divine heroism: they must be wedded and blended together, forming one exalted, harmonious religion. We need all the scattered rays gathered into one pencil of light—the golden grains collected from all the sands.

Welcome the historian of the coming time! We wait with eager eyes his appearance. He must be marvellously endowed, of such compass, breadth, and impartiality, withal of nicest discernment and appreciation, fine delicacy of touch, tremulously sensitive to the slightest presence of truth and merit in any, able and courageous, sternly faithful to tell the full fact without the shadow of swerving. How he will change, destroy and recreate everywhere, bringing in new light and order! How he will shear away our prejudices and prepossessions, and teach us to find nothing unclean that God hath cleansed ! The pages of ecclesiastical history will no longer be the chaos we now see them, but threads of relation will run through all, and light, like polarity, arrange every thing in place.

We need have no fear. We may be bereaved, but we shall not be made desolate Our idols will be broken, our cherished prepossessions taken away, but the Spirit, Truth, shall remain. The personal Christ may ascend, but the impersonal One, the Consoler, will come in. We need fear no eclipse of faith, no extinction of the lode-stars for the soul. All the results of criticism and large investigation will but free the spirit from its hampers and limitations, that it may soar aloft to God-purge its vision, that it may see more clearly the divine majesty. After the utmost solution and illumination of science the mystery of the infinite still overarches all, the sublime law of duty commands, and the symbolism of nature remains solemn and grand, beyond what thought can reach or tongue can tell. C. D. B. MILLS.

JES

CHRIST'S POLITICAL RECORD.

ESUS of Nazareth, the so-called Savior of the world, about whom so much has been written by others, left us nothing which was written by himself. We have no account of his ever having indulged in writing except on one occasion, and then he did it but as a sham, for no other purpose than than to appear unconcious of his immediate surroundings, and not with pen and ink, but with his finger, and upon the ground. What we have received concerning him is not therefore his account of himself, but consists in great part of the "declaration of those things which were most surely believed among "the many," whom Luke speaks of, as "having taken in hand" the setting of them forth in order, "even as they" were "delivered unto them by those who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word." And they were not written by these until many years after the utterance of the words, which they assume to quote, and the happening of the occurrences which are attempted to be described by them. The judicial record of his trial and execution probably then furnished the only exception to this absence of all documentary evidence concerning him. From the social position of those to whom we are indebted for our narratives of him, they can hardly have been other than illiterate and superstitious men, and therefore the more likely to be influenced by prejudices, which a better education would have perhaps removed. Many of them were humble fishermen, a class through whose tales of our day "fish stories" have become proverbial for their exaggeration. But accepting their statements as having been intended to be truthful, if we are seeking the truth instead of a support for some preconceived conceptions of it, we cannot but include in our examination the circumstances under which they were made by them. Such is the method which is deemed needful by us for all other writings, and there is no sufficient reason for exempting these from its application.

And in applying this method we shall at once perceive, that the circumstances of his public trial and execution as being an insurrectionist must necessarily have been subjects of official record, and would therefore be less liable to variations in any subsequent presentation of them than would be the unwritten events, the long preceding knowledge of which had only been preserved in the fleeting memories of their relaters and the hearers of them, and we may therefore with much propriety theorise upon these as being among the most reliable of all the presentations concerning him. And we cannot here escape the fact, that the only charge upon which he was convicted and executed was entirely disconnected with any spiritual or religious questions, but was that of instituting what was intended to be a rebellion againt the government of the Romans,-the proclaiming of himself the king of the Jews. This charge was brought by the chief priests and their associates, and was urged by them probably as a means of ridding themselves of the obnoxious

Jesus, he having offended them to the extent of being deemed worthy of death by his allusions to themselves and their Holy Temple. They had long sought occasion for laying violent hands upon him, but through the circumstance of their nation's being subject to the Roman government they were restricted from inflicting capital punishment upon any, and they were powerless to accomplish their purpose until they had devised and attained a charge against him which involved a capital offence under the Roman law. It was the general policy of the Romans to interfere as little as might be with the local institutions of the nations conquered by them, only requiring the prompt payment of the tribute exacted, and retaining to themselves the enforcing of such laws as would secure their continued supremacy. Under such an arrangement the Jews were in the enjoyment of their own peculiar institutions with a limited authority to maintain them, and by virtue of this, Jesus was first bound and taken before Annas, the former high priest, and afterward before Caiphas, his son-in-law, the then high priest, he who had before given counsel to the Jews, that it was expedient that one man should die for the people, not as modern Christians are claiming with reference to the death of Jesus, as an atonement unto God, but unto the Roman Law, to conciliate their rulers, who had become suspicious and distrustful from their frequently attempted insurrections, to prevent as some of them said, the Romans from coming and taking 66 away both their place and nation."

And with such feelings toward him when at the palace of the high priest, where "were assembled all the chief priests and the elders and the scribes, the chief priests and elders and all the council sought false witness against Jesus to put him to death, but found none."

'They were at that time in communication with the traitor Judas, and knew the political complications of Jesus, as these were afterward developed before Pilate, but they were evidently seeking for some declarations of his, so at variance with the prejudices of their people as to reconcile them with their intended sacrifice of him, something which would justify them with such in surrendering him upon such a change to Pilate. After repeatedly questioning. him they drew from him an answer which they termed blasphemy, "and they all condemned him to be guilty of death." They were however powerless to enforce their own judgment, and he was bound and taken before Pilate the Roman governor as a malefactor, and then Pilate said unto them: "Take ye him and judge him according to your law." But under the counsel of Caiphas they were seeking his death, and their thus dealing with him would not have accomplished their purpose. The Jews therefore said unto Pilate : It is not lawful for us to put any man to death." With the full knowledge of the plans of Jesus as developed to them by the treachery of Judas, Pilate proceeded with them to an examination of the accused, asking him, "Art thou the king of the Jews?" An assent to this was hopelessly given by Jesus, answering, "Thou sayest it ;" and he afterward made no further response to the many things of which the chief priests proceeded to accuse him. He

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knew that he was in the power of his enemies, and that he was so circumstanced as to be without any availing defence, and he offered none The trusted Judas, one of those of whom Jesus had declared that to them it was given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, (and with the Jews their kingdom was believed to be God's kingdom), he who had carried their bag had betrayed him, not merely by his treacherous kiss, but the deeper treachery of his revealed secrets. Jesus commenced his public ministrations by preaching deliverance to the captives, and liberty to them that are bruised. His noble spirit ever sympathised with the oppressed, and he would have been less than man if his ardent nature, ever alive to the distresses of others, had not rebelled against the Roman exactions upon his beloved people. And he must have early been regarded by his associates as being their intended deliverer. When the Pharisees were offended in him they "took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk," sending men to approach him as friends who enquired, "what thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Ceasar or not?" He so evaded their enquiry that "they marvelled, and left him, and went their way." During the three years of his public life he was earnestly laboring for something which required secrecy with reference to the public, though he told the twelve whom he sent abroad to secure converts, that to them it was given to know these mysteries, but to others it was not given. And how did these twelve understand him. Did they while laboring with him regard him as being any other than an outward savior, intending to restore to the Jews the kingdom which had been enjoyed by them, and which their prophets had promised to them for ever? They did this so entirely that they even differed among themselves as to the places they should occupy in this restored kingdom. And the last words which it is claimed they ever addressed to Jesus were, "Lord, will thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" And on his last visit to Jerusalem, when " many spread their garments in the way, and others cut down branches off the trees, and strewed them in the way, and they that went before, and they that followed, cried saying Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest." Or, Hosanna; Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord, when "the Pharisees said among themselves, Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing," behold the world is gone after him, "when certain Greeks that came up to worship at the feast came to Philip saying, sir, we would see Jesus, and Philip cometh and telleth Andrew, and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus, and Jesus answered saying: "The hour is come that the son of man should be glorified," can any doubt that Jesus believed they had reached the time when his patriotic wishes were about to be realised? They had before designed to "take him by force, and make him a king," and to avoid this premature movement he departed into a mountain alone. But he now yielded to their wishes. He did so when he said unto them" that this that is written must be accomplished in me. And he was reckoned among the transgressors for the things concerning me have an

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