The strength of this new wine he himself exemplifies and proves in his own career. His acts and teaching correspond. He lives a life of spiritual energy, whose motive principle is love to God and man.

It remains to be seen whether this genius was superhuman; whether this life-such as we find evidence that he actually lived-is impossible to any merely human being, however highly endowed; or, whether the genius and the life are both conceivably possible to a richly endowed, a highly gifted, son of man.

If no defects of life or teaching are apparent, we must still ask whether we know every detail of the teaching and every incident of the life lived, as distinct from the life recorded (the biography), and must refuse to pronounce a character superhumanly spotless on merely negative evidence.

On the other hand, if we see aught that appears to us to be erroneous in the teaching, or defective in the character of the teacher, it remains to ask-have we the true record? And we have a right to reject incongruities and inconsistencies, (as improbable, not as impossible,) to reject anything, in fact, unworthy of the general character and acknowledged genius of Jesus; and that because of the insufficient evidencebecause of our ignorance of the biographer, and of his means of knowledge of his subject.

Thus, for example, the idea of everlasting punishment for the wicked is clearly expressed,* according

* If "eternal" means "everlasting," which, however, is more than doubtful.

to the Authorized and Revised Versions, in the first Gospel (see twenty-fifth chapter). If any hold, as we do, that it is impossible for a righteous ruler of the universe to condemn one of his creatures to such punishment as "eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels," he should in no case receive it as a truth revealed from heaven. For, if Jesus was infallible, there is no proof that he uttered these words. Letting alone the possibility that the author wrongly attributed them to Jesus, or wrongly translated them from Aramaic to Greek (and these remarks also apply to Matt. xxvi. 46), there is that other possibility of their having been interpolated. But, on the other hand, could it be proved that they actually were uttered by Jesus, then the notion of his infallibility falls with them; and, indeed, if they were deliberately uttered with the meaning popularly attached to the words, his reputation for wisdom, for clear moral discernment, must suffer also.

But, say some, if you reject the "eternal fire," you have no security for "eternal life;" they must, as revealed by Jesus, stand or fall together. Let them fall, then. It is time that the utter selfishness of those, if indeed there are any such, who would, literally and deliberately, retain the one for themselves, at the cost (to multitudes of their fellows) of the other, should be held up to contempt and abhorrence. If the "broad road," travelled by many, issues in such destruction, and only the "few "* reach eternal life, a *Matt. vii. 14.

neutral terminus would be better for humanity. Under those conditions immortality would be, for man as a whole, as Theodore Parker insisted, a curse and no blessing. What a fearful strain have the hearts and consciences of many Christian persons been subjected to, in order to retain their allegiance to God and Christianity, because of the unutterably abhorrent doctrine of eternal torments! And how thankful such persons ought to be to the critics who have conclusively shown that whether Jesus uttered these words or not, the external evidence that he possessed supernatural attributes is a quantity too small to be appreciable by ordinary vision. And here one may be permitted to remark that if any man who has seriously reflected on what is implied in "eternal torment," and has obtained a realizing sense thereof, can still believe that "the wicked" deserve such punishment, his ignorance of human nature must be very great, or his sense of justice very little indeed.

To return from this digression. We found the evidence for "miracle" supplied by the Gospels of Matthew and Mark,-such evidence, that is, as arises from testimony of witnesses, to be practically none at all. We may now see that, in support of the doctrine that Jesus is the Christ predicted by Hebrew prophets, it is less than nothing, since the history disproves the predictions; i.e. proves them to have failed. To justify these remarks, we need only first refer to Matt. xvi. 28: "Verily I say unto you, There are some of them standing here, which will not taste of

death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom" (taking these words in conjunction, however, with the whole of Matthew preceding, and leading up to this point), and then go on to the twentyfourth chapter, especially noticing the twenty-ninth, thirtieth, and thirty-fourth verses.

Everything points to the conclusion that Jesus did, in substance, utter these predictions. That we cannot rely literally on them is admitted, and is confirmed by a reference to Mark and Luke. There we do not find such an expression as “immediately after the tribulation of those days," see Mark xiii. 24, where we have "in those days, after that tribulation ;" and in Luke xxi. 24, instead of the coming of the Son of man immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem, we find that after this event, and the slaughter and captivity of the inhabitants, “Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." But all the Synoptics agree that the glorious coming of the Son of man "in his kingdom" should take place before the passing away of the generation which saw the death of Jesus.*

It is enough to say that no apologist has been able to suggest any probable interpretation of the twenty-fourth of Matthew, other than the literal and plain sense of the words-a sense apparent to the meanest capacity, and confirmed by the whole tenour of the first Gospels. We must, then, abide by the literal sense, and in this sense it is unquestionable that the

*Matt. xxiv. 34; Mark xiii. 30; Luke xxi. 32.

predictions of the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, relating to the events succeeding the destruction of Jerusalem, have failed.

"That the apostles and their disciples were expecting the second coming of Christ in their own time, though they were guided by a wisdom higher than their own from fixing the day or year, can hardly be said to admit of question."

This was indeed the natural result of the language in which our Lord himself had blended the two things together-wars and rumours of wars in Judæa, the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, and the coming of the Son of man sitting on the clouds of heaven."*

Perhaps we have the most striking picture of this expectation in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, fourth chapter, and from the fourteenth verse: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

* Professor (now Dean) Plumptre in "Christ and Christendom," Boyle Lectures, 1866, pp. 300, 301.