success? We find the answer in chap. iv. 1: 'And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration.' Let modern Socialists take the lesson to heart that even among men and women as disinterested as primitive Christians, communism was a miserable failure.

The hasty and imprudent adoption of an Essene custom resulted in a startling tragedy. Ananias and Sapphira his wife sold some property, and kept back a portion of the price. Perhaps Ananias was a shrewd practical man, distrustful of socialism, and desirous of holding something in reserve for possible contingencies. Or Sapphira may have hinted that, if anything should happen to her husband before the Advent of Jesus in the clouds, she would not like the position of a pauper scrambling among the other widows for her daily rations. Whatever may have been the motives of the doomed couple, if they had been arraigned before Jesus, he would have assuredly condoned so trivial an offence; but under the new régime of the Holy Ghost, this unhappy husband and wife were condemned to instant execution.

Ananias enters the assembly. The president, who had, quite recently, denied his Lord and Master, and received free pardon for the offence, is now transformed into a pitiless judge, sternly interrogating this halfhearted communist- Why hath Satan filled thy heart?' Could Ananias solve this psychological mystery? Had he not, just now, been filled with the Holy Ghost; how, therefore, could Satan have gained possession? And

could he feel quite certain of his own identity, whilst passing thus abruptly from human to divine, from divine to diabolical? No time is granted for inquiry; he falls down dead, and is forthwith hurried to his grave, without even the knowledge of his nearest kinsmen.

If there had been in that assembly one true disciple of their tender and loving Master, would he not have sought out the unhappy Sapphira to gradually disclose the appalling tragedy? Did these divinely inspired men thank God, as the Pharisee condemned by Jesus, that they were not sinners like this man Ananias, whilst they waited for the condemnation and execution of Sapphira? Or were the feelings of humanity stifled in their breasts by personal fear that the horrors of Jehovistic despotism had again been restored in Israel?

Whatever may have been the motives of the assembly, Sapphira is permitted to enter the presence of her inflexible judge without one word of warning. No time is granted for confession, repentance, or absolution. She is entrapped into a lie, condemned, executed, and carried forth for burial beside her husband!

There were no coroner's inquests in those days; but, if a full and searching inquiry had been made into these mysterious deaths by some Roman official, how could Peter have explained the startling tragedy? Jesus of Nazareth had preached a gospel of repentance and forgiveness of sins, but he had died, risen again, vanished in the clouds, and sent to mankind an invisible Being, invested with the awful power of striking men and women dead who even unconsciously offend him. Would such an explanation have satisfied a Roman

magistrate; or would not the terrible suspicion of secret poisoning have aroused so general a feeling of indignation against the new sect, as to have imperilled the existence of Christianity?

'And great fear came upon the whole Church, and upon all that heard these things.' In fact, a reign of terror was established among the new converts; and the wonder grows how men who had ever listened to the teaching of Jesus became reconciled to the intervention of the Paraclete. But has not the time arrived for modern piety to vindicate the consistency of Trinitarian Providence, by recognising in the story of Ananias and Sapphira an extravagant legend, indiscreetly authenticated in an uncritical age by the too credulous compiler of the Acts of the Apostles ?

The logical result of the Day of Pentecost was uniformity, and consequent infallibility, of belief; for how could minds filled with the Holy Spirit have any room for error? The compiler of the Acts accordingly affirms that all believers were of one heart and one soul'; when, therefore, dissensions had arisen among the faithful, Christianity had practically surrendered the theory of divine inspiration.

Centuries later the Church recognised that the existence of ecclesiastical Christianity was contingent on suppression of the theological controversies which raged on every side, and, forthwith, proceeded to stamp out, by decree of Pope and Council, the pretensions of human reason to question the necessarily infallible conclusions of divine inspiration; and thus, the superstition born on the Day of Pentecost forms the basis of Roman pretensions to infallibility. But when Protestantism

evolved divergent sects preaching conflicting gospels, the inference thenceforth became inevitable that either inspiration is a mere illusion, or, as in Judaism, there is a Chosen Race, so also in Christianity there is a favoured sect, whose members are the true heirs of Pentecost. If, however, we accept the broader view that conflicting Protestants are all divinely enlightened, is there not greater consistency in the Pope who claims to be infallible because he is inspired, than in the Protestant who claims to be inspired, and yet is not infallible?

Roman and Anglican theologians concur in believing that the miracle of Pentecost is periodically renewed by Episcopal manipulation. The author of the Acts admits the obligation of proof by recording the gift of tongues; but we moderns are asked to believe that the young deacon or priest, in whom we find no vestige of the transformation, goes forth from the presence of his Bishop a divinely inspired minister of the gospel.

As the Messianic superstition had, in due time, produced a Messiah, so also illusory expectation of the Paraclete, unsatisfied by the Pentecostal fiction, eventually evoked personal candidates for the divine office. If the eternal Logos was incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, why should not the Paraclete also appear in the form of man? So Montanus, Manes, and Mahomed have each, at different epochs, claimed to be the mysterious visitant said to have been promised by the Hebrew Messiah; and thus a Christian superstition has become the source of kindred illusions, culminating in the Moslem fanaticism which rivals Christianity in spiritual dominion over the races of mankind.

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Peter, having explained the marvels of Pentecost through the prophecies of Joel, proves the Resurrection by the Psalms of David! That monarch had sung-neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption '—therefore, as the body of Jesus could not be decomposed, he must inevitably have risen from the dead! According to Paul five hundred witnesses could have attested the miracle; but Peter relies not on an attested, but on a constructive Resurrection. He, however, quotes the sixteenth psalm from the Septuagint, which erroneously translates the Hebrew plural 'Holy One,' instead of saints; the Resurrection was therefore inevitable because the author of the Acts did not understand Hebrew!

When we, however, subsequently find Paul proving at Antioch that Jesus had risen from the dead, by the same fallacious argument adopted by Peter at Jerusalem, we necessarily infer that the Acts of the Apostles is as much a work of fiction as The Abbot' 6 The Abbot' or 'Kenilworth,' but infinitely inferior

to the productions of Scott, in judicious adaptation of imaginative eloquence to the lips of traditional or historical personages.

This view receives further confirmation through the speech of Stephen, one of the seven appointed to superintend the communistic commissariat, but who at once attained apostolic pre-eminence by brilliant disputation with Hellenistic Jews, whom he overwhelmed by his enthusiastic eloquence. We are ignorant of the subjects of debate, nor can we trace in the teaching of Jesus any materials or encouragement for theological controversy. His gospel was a simple question of faith in the Son of Man, unattainable through polemical dis