principles within its comprehensive range, and is as catholic as human nature. What is the necessary inference? It is this: that from whatever source its teaching has been derived, it is impossible that it can have been developed by any natural process of evolution out of that hot-bed of narrow-minded bigotry which unbelievers affirm to have constituted the moral and spiritual atmosphere which was breathed by Jesus and His early followers. To attribute such a result to the genius of Jesus is to allow that it cannot be accounted for by the action of any of the known forces energizing in man.

Second Contrast. The freedom of Christianity from all attempts at political legislation.

A very remarkable contrast between the teaching of Christianity and that of philosophy is presented to us in that the former is entirely free from all attempts to deal with either political or social questions. The universal practice of the great philosophers of the ancient world was precisely the reverse. With them moral questions invariably assumed a political aspect; Ethics were in fact a branch of politics. The reason of this is obvious. Their only hope for the regeneration of man was based on the creation of sound political and social institutions, by means of which men might be trained to virtue. Hence they thought it necessary to sketch an ideal republic, which never became an actual one. The Jew on the contrary, who knew nothing of philosophy, was filled with the profoundest reverence for the Scriptures of the Old Testament. Not only did these propound a system of political legislation as of divine authority, but the teaching of the prophets is addressed to Israel, not in an individual, but in a corporate or political capacity. Surely if the teaching of Christianity had been the mere natural outcome of either Jewish or Gentile thought, this striking feature would not have been entirely wanting.

But what is still more remarkable, the great Teacher professed to be the founder of a kingdom; yet His abstinence from political and social questions is total: the kingdom

which He set up was different in character from everything which had existed in the past, being exclusively based on conviction and persuasion. Yet it has existed in full vigour for eighteen centuries; and during this long interval of time not a single attempt to erect another on the same principles has proved successful. Jesus Christ alone at one single bound has passed from the political, the formal, and the ritual, to the individual, the spiritual and the moral. The one single sentence of His teaching which bears a political aspect, "Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's," has for ever emancipated the conscience from the control of the State, assigning to each their respective limits, and establishing for ever the liberty of the individual.*

I need not draw your attention to the fact that the presence of a body of political and social legislation in the Koran constitutes the rock on which Mahomedanism is being hopelessly shipwrecked before our eyes, and utterly unfits it for being the religion of humanity. Is it possible, I ask, that any one who was born and educated under the influences by which Jesus was surrounded could have rigidly excluded all political and social questions from his

* It has often been objected that St. Paul has taught the doctrine of non-resistance to Governments, however tyrannical they may be. (Rom. xiii. 1-9.) This objection has arisen from a disregard of the important principle that the precepts in the Epistles, in the special form in which they are there enunciated, are not portions of a moral code, binding for all time, but were called forth by the special circumstances of those to whom they were addressed. The Jewish element in the Church was always turbulent, and by such persons the doctrine of the Kingdom of God easily admitted of being perverted into a treasonable principle against pagan Governments, and thus compromising the Church as a political institution. Hence it became necessary that the Apostle should carefully guard against this danger, which was so far real that the Roman Government, only a short time previously, had made it the pretext for expelling all Jews, and doubtless the Christians among them, from the city. Hence in the peculiar circumstances of the Roman Church these precepts of the Apostle against

teaching? With the experience of the past before him, would any amount of foresight have enabled him to guess that if he had prescribed a body of political legislation, the consequences would have been fatal to his religion, and would have caused the ruin of that kingdom which it was his purpose to establish? Mr. Mill considers the moral teaching of Christianity defective because it dwells so little on public duties and public virtues.* Such an opinion is not to be wondered at, when we consider that the whole school of thought to which he belongs place their hopes of man's future regeneration on improving his condition politically and socially, rather than by acting on his conscience and his heart. This most remarkable abstinence from entering on questions of this description I claim to be a striking proof that the Founder of Christianity possessed an insight which must have raised Him above all the trammels imposed on Him by His birth and His surroundings, in that while He has kept clear of all political and social questions, He has been able to enforce all the duties which they demand in the all-comprehensive principle of self-sacrifice rendered to Himself. If He had pursued the course which many eminent moderns would have suggested to Him, and commenced his work of regenerating mankind, not by appealing to the conscience of the individual, but by political turbulence are peculiarly appropriate. In them he lays down that civil government is a divine ordinance, and consequently civil obedience a duty which must be conscientiously rendered by the Christian. He then decides the question which the Jews were constantly raising as to the lawfulness of paying taxes to heathen Governments, and affirms that it is a Christian duty to do so on the grouud that the end of all government is the protection of the individual, and that this was the divine purpose in its institution. It is quite true that the Apostle has given no precept as to what is the duty of Christians when Governments fail in the discharge of this their proper function. If he had done so, he must have converted his epistle into a political treatise, and incurred the danger which under the existing circumstances of the Church he wished to avoid. (See also p. 156, note.)

Essay on Liberty.

addressing Himself to the external, the social, and the political, Christianity would never have survived the century that gave it birth.*

It will perhaps be urged that the far-seeing genius of Jesus enabled Him thus to penetrate into the realities of the distant future. But genius can only act in conformity with the laws of our intellectual and moral being. If therefore Jesus was a genius after the model of other great men, and nothing more, all this profound insight must have been generated in the solitary musings of a Jew, whose moral and spiritual surroundings were the atmosphere of narrow

The mode in which Christianity deals with the great social question of Slavery is a remarkable instance of the profound wisdom which dwelt in the authors of the New Testament. Many modern writers would have had Our Lord and His Apostles denounce it as an unhallowed institution. What would have been the consequences if they had done so? It would have brought down the whole weight of the Roman Government on the Church as a political society whose object was to subvert the existing order of things, and thus have caused its speedy extinction. If, on the other hand, an anti-slavery propaganda had been instituted, and any amount of success had attended its efforts, which in the then condition of society was in the highest degree improbable, the result would have been a war of classes; and we know as a matter of fact that the previous revolts of the slaves had been attended with one result only, the production of a frightful amount of human misery, and the more firmly riveting their chains. The course taken by Christianity in dealing with this great evil has been very different from that which modern theorizers would have suggested, but it has been an effectual one. Instead of a number of precepts directly aimed at Slavery, it has laid down certain great principles of duty obligatory towards all men, with the practice of which the existence of Slavery is impossible. These have gradually leavened the whole atmosphere of thought, and after a long and severe struggle, Slavery has become extinct in every nation which professes Christianity. In this manner it has far more effectually crushed the evil than if it had openly declared war against it as a social institution. Other social evils will share the same fate in proportion as its great principles gradually leaven the entire lump of humanity. Nothing can afford a stronger proof that Christianity has not been the invention of a number of credulous fanatics than the wisdom it has shown in dealing with these and kindred questions.

exclusiveness, and who perished at the early age of thirtyfour. We may call this genius, if we please, but it must be one which manifests the presence of the superhuman.

Third Contrast. The teaching of Christianity has founded the religion of humanity.

I adduce from the Fourth Gospel another instance of the profound insight which must have dwelt in the Author of Christianity, or whoever put into His mouth the saying by which He has enthroned religion in the centre of man's moral and spiritual being. The utterance to which I allude, is the great utterance made to the woman of Samaria, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. . But the hour cometh and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth." (John iv. 21, 24.)

Mr. Mill has expressed the opinion that the utterances which the author of this Gospel has put into the mouth of Jesus (and he makes no exception in favour of the one before us), are "poor stuff." It was only in conformity with the principles of his philosophy, and of the atmosphere of thought in which he was nurtured from his earliest years, that he should have been incapable of appreciating their insight and their depth. M. Renan, however, affirms that in this utterance Jesus has for ever laid deep the foundations of the religion of humanity. Can there be any doubt, with respect to this great saying, that an overwhelming majority of deep thinkers will confirm his verdict? No such profound utterance had up to this time passed the lips of man.

What then are the facts before us? Jesus, or the author of this Gospel, who has put the saying into His mouth, must have been possessed of an insight so profound as to have broken through all the conditions of his environment, and in three short sentences laid deep for all ages the everlasting foundations of the temple of humanity. The repudiation of