formalisms; brotherly kindness into caste and currency, and principle into policy. Judaism, large mingling with the currents of history, had become divided into two branchesPalestine and that called the "dispersion." Such sectarists were they in their own Asian country, bordering Africa and Europe, that, pressing around one temple and one altar, the Rabbins cursed all Israelites who proved so recreant to the law of Moses, as to teach their children Greek.

The Sadducees were a sort of Epicureans; materialistic in tendency, denying the immortality of the soul and the existence of angels. The Pharisees were Separatists, cling ing to the letter of the law, and the traditional injunctions of Jehovah. The Essenians were the Shakers of that period. Jesus was in full sympathy with them.

War, commerce, the Assyrian captivity and nomadic tendencies, had scattered many of the Israelites throughout the world. These spoke the Greek tongue. This language, derived largely from the Sanscrit, had become, what Latin was at a much later period, the court language and medium of communication among all the more enlightened nations. In those prominent eastern cities, especially Alexandria and Antioch, flourishing capitals of Egypt and Syria, these scattered Jews formed numerous societies, placing at the head some rich, influential families. Their Palestinean brothers called them Hellenists They were not considered soundly Orthodox, even though they had succeeded in getting the Jewish Bible translated into Greek, under the Ptolemies.

At this initial point in the religious cycle of that era, we get a correct clue to those moral forces constituting the peculiarities of John-the disciple that "Jesus loved." Zebedee, his father, a wealthy Israelite, was a profound thinker of the school of Hillel, and exceedingly liberal in doctrinal tendencies. John, a natural genius, rich in the gift of a warm, sensitive love-nature, endowed with a fine delicate organization, highly mediumstic, a thoroughtrained scholar for that age of the world, and wonderfully gifted with a capacity for acquiring a knowledge of the

languages, was just adapted for the constant companionship of Jesus. Literally, John was a Hellenistic Jew, thoroughly initiated into the civilization, literature, and philosophy of the Greeks. This accounts for the continually cropping out of Pythagoric doctrines in his gospel. John, our patron saint, is, in many respects, the ideal man of the New Testa ment. Holy and heavenly was the perpetual friendship existing between Jesus, John, and his brother James. Superior scholarship, coupled with a sweet-tender heart-fellowship, entitled John to the privilege of ever accompanying Jesus as lingual interpreter and counselor, which enabled him more fully to comprehend the scope and moral grandeur of Jesus mediatorial work; for, medium-like," he came not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent him."

Dying a martyred death, Jesus committed to the care of John, his sainted Mother. Love and tenderness grow from the same stem. Budding on earth they unfold and bloom forever in the heavens. Enwrapt and emblazoned in the glory of fraternal affection, Jesus and the disciple he "loved," now together, traverse the celestial heavens, doing the will of the Eternal, by teaching in supernal spheres, and inspiring God's dear humanity.

We

Though the Church-Fathers may have manipulated the primative manuscripts-gospels and epistles-one giving to the Nazarene a certain attitude; another some peculiar expression of form or forehead; and others still, crowning him with plumes originally worn by Chrishna, Confucius, Plato, and Hillel-our belief in Jesus remains unshaken. believe in him, not as the Infinite God, not as a supernatural being, not as a miracle-begotten specialty to patch up an inefficient "plan of salvation" and ward off divine wrath; but as a man—a mortal brother of the immortal gods and goddesses, who temperamentally helped fashion him, that, inspired by them and a "legion of angels,” he might aid in uplifting and molding the future ages. He called himself the "Son of man." The Apostle termed him "our elder brother." He ate, drank, slept, hungered, thirsted, and, weary from

journeyings, rested by Samaria's well. He was tempted; endured pain; impetuously cursed a fig-tree; "learned obedience by the things he suffered;" was "made perfect" by draining bitter life-cups of experience, and finally, with soul aglow to the logic of love and intuition, and prayerwords of forgiveness dropping from fevered lips like gems from a crown, he died a martyr!

The German Zschokke says: "If Jesus were to come to-day among Christians, they would nail him to the cross, as did the Jews."

Appearing, as of old, in some of our commercial cities, he would not "go on 'Change at 12 o'clock;" would not visit an 8 o'clock prayer-meeting to make an oration to the Lord; would not swing a censer in a Catholic Cathedral, muttering Latin ;. would not swell in the Episcopal robes of Ritualism; would not conjure up a creedal interpretation, to a Universalist confession of faith; but, with a toleration wide as human wants, he would say as of old-" By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one for another." Then, going about blessing children, seeking vagrants, eating with sinners to reform them, healing the sick and teaching by the wayside, till weary, he would retire for rest to some Shaker community, Essenian-like, where love was pure, free and fraternal. Sincerely do we believe in this Jesus of the gospels-the man that was-the Christspirit, that is.

No star continually courses the same orbit. No man bathes in the same stream twice. The Bryant of Thanatopsis is not the Bryant of to-day. Longfellow's "Psalm of Life" reveals less strength and culture than his "New England Tragedies." Individualities do not vary; but their expressions do. The Jesus who scourged the "moneychangers," compared errorists to "swine"-to" thieves and robbers" and threatened his conservative fellow-countrymen with the "damnation of hell," is not the gentle Jesus. who breathed the beatitudes; who said to the woman, neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more," and prayed

upon Calvary, "Father, forgive them." When uttering these tender sentiments, feeling a quickening of the divine nature, and literally "born again,"-born into the celestial degree of the Christ-life-coming into close magnetic fellowship and oneness with his "My Father" or Spirit guide, truthfully he said, "I and my Father are one"-that is, I and my controlling spirit intelligence are one in desire, purpose and the great work of human elevation. Referring to the Infinite Presence, he exclaimed: "God (Theos, not Pater) is a Spirit, and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth."

Harmonial, prayerful, divinely overshadowed, he grasped and appropriated the good, the pure, and the true, found in the older systems, and lived them in his daily life. Though walking with man, he talked with angels. He had bread to eat, that the Jewish external world" knew not of." He went forth, especially towards the close of his mission, a practical impersonation of the principles he taught— UNIVERSAL LOVE-UNIVERSAL PURITY-UNIVERSAL CHARITY. These being the three pillars in his soul-temple, his kingdom was not of this world. His heavens and hells were conditions higher or lower; his salvation self-growth. Caring little for outward purity, nothing for the cowardly "what will the people say," and desiring only to establish the inner reign of truth, love and self-denial, he left no writings, no creed, no code, no rule of life, no church organizations, no plan for State constitutions, no clerical investitures, no baptismal ceremonies, nor fossil forms of worship. His trust in God was absolutely sublime. His hopefulness of man was unbounded. His love for women was angelic; and purity, the only guarantee for seeing God.

Jesus, then, stands in relation to the past the best embodiment of Spiritualism, the richest Judean outgrowth of the spiritual idea, and looking lovingly down from the Summer Land, sweetly says, "Come up hither." By the exercise of sympathy and aspiration, by effort and consecration to the truth, by daily holy living, he came into the highest heavenly

relations. Quickened, intensified from the celestial heavens, his original pre-existent home, (for before the mortal Abraham was, he had a "glory with the Father,") his inmost yielded an elemental flow of pure spiritual life. The finest textured type, the most harmonial brain organism perhaps of this planet, in that era, he virtually lived in two worldsthe Christ of tenderness and love, experiencing sweetest union with God. A thorough intuitionist by nature, he was a practical SPIRITUALIST in word and deed. He worshiped in spirit and in truth. His kingdom was a spiritual kingdom, with the center in humanity's great throbbing heart, and Love the king. His church was a spiritual church, built up in the souls of men and extensive as the races. His second coming was spiritual—coming, as a spirit, in spirit and power. That "second coming" in the "clouds of heaven," with holy angels and ministering spirits freighted with exalted truths and the enunciation of eternal principles, is in process now. Multitudes of the more mediumistic feel this divine down-flowing influx as the breath of an eternal spring.

Beautiful is this faith, this belief, in Jesus, the ascended Son of Nazereth. All those who thus believe-that is, come into harmonial relations with the Christ-principle, living the same time spiritual life that he lived-may do similar, and, perhaps, "greater works than these." True, he did not give all the "tests," all the signs, nor do all the works that Jewish skeptics, plodding in cold externalisms, expected. He did not transform "stones to bread," by command; did not "save himself by coming down from the cross." He could not thus save himself; for he could transcend no established law of Nature. At certain times, owing to "conditions," unbelief, lack of harmony or passivity, he could do comparatively nothing. Hence in Matthew (xiii: 58) we read, "Jesus did not many mighty works there, because of their unbelief." And the Evangelist Mark says distinctly, "And he could there do no MIGHTY work, * *

and he marveled because of their unbelief." Before departing, however, for that many-mansioned house in the