was very reasonable in the Unitarian apologists for the Gospels in the last century, that it may not have seemed very unreasonable to Paley, I quite understand. But can those who adhere to the words of our Creeds, can those who take the declaration of Christ's Sonship in a strict sense, can those who think that all human sonship is the image of His, accept that hypothesis? These are thoughts which I would suggest to persons who are eager to uphold the popular notion of miracles. Before they charge any who dissent from it as heretics, they should consider carefully whether they are orthodox. At all events, they should ask themselves whether they are adhering to the letter of the statements in the Evangelists, or are departing from it; whether there is anywhere to be found in them a hint of that exaltation of power at the expense of law which is becoming characteristic of our divinity.

I admit, then, the full force of the objection which the advocates of the Renan Gospel allege against us who profess to be the champions of the old Gospel. But I think that we have incurred this charge by departing from that old Gospel, and by practically accepting the premises upon which the new Gospel rests. We start from the idea of a natural Jesus: we attribute to Him certain supernatural exercises of power. All such exercises are by the very assumption irregular, anomalous. The old Gospel starts from the

supernatural ground, assumes a supernatural Being to be the Author of the universe, to have created it according to laws which are the expression of His mind. The tendency has been apparent in human creatures at all times to make themselves the measures of the universe, to deduce laws from appearances, to mould the lawgiver after their conceptions. The revelation of a Creator is the counteraction of this tendency, the discovery of Him who preserves the harmonies of the universe, the witness that its discords cannot be perpetual. There is no such revelation,' says the new Gospel; 'everything begins from pheno'mena, or from man, the observer of phenomena.' Then, if the past history of the world is true, there will be a succession of enchanters like the Jesus of Renan. The more any man is a reformer-the more impatient he is of the abuses he sees around him, of the evils which are besetting his fellow-creatures-the more he will practise these falsehoods; he has no other chance. He must cheat if he is to save his fellow-creatures from being cheated. He must lie, if he has the least care that truth should prevail.

II. The second notion to which I shall allude is this. The New Testament is the proclamation of a 'certain religion. It is the true religion, the religion 'which all ought to believe. The Gospels contain the simpler part of this religion. The doctrines or 'mysteries are set forth in the Epistles.' This state

ment would strike a number of readers as too obvious to be disputed. Whatever may be the evidence which supports the authority either of Gospels or Epistles, this account of them-that they announce or embody a religion-would be equally accepted by all parties of Christians, and by those who reject Christianity.

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'But then,' say these last, though you are all 'agreed that these books contain a religion, and that 'it is the true religion, the only religion, the religion 'which all men ought to receive, you are not the least agreed what it is. Greeks, Romanists, Protestants, ' are at war upon that question. Protestants are split 'into a multitude of sects, each of which declares that 'its own is the Christian religion. When you are 'brought face to face with Hindoos or Buddhists, they 'ask you which of your different religions you wish them to accept; and you can make no answer, or 'only the most stammering answer. When you are 'brought face to face with Mahometans, they can 'boast that their religion grew up six centuries after 'yours; that it conquered a number of the countries 'which once were yours; that it does not yield at all to the force of your arguments.'

These facts are indisputable. If there are any special pleas to be urged against them, I have no such pleas. They seem to me just as important as any facts of nature. I cannot believe in God without regarding them as His facts. I cannot shut my eyes to them

without trying to hide from myself some lessons, profound, tremendous lessons, which He is teaching us.

But are the Gospels the announcement of a religion? Is that what they profess to be? Is that the conception which would be formed of them by any one who simply read them as they are written? Does the word 'religion,' or anything which answers to that word, even occur in them? Do they not profess to be the account of One who was born King of the Jews, who did certain acts proving in the judgment of the Evangelists, that that title was really His, whose claims were rejected by the Jewish priests and rulers? Do not the Evangelists say that Jesus preached the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven to all classes and conditions of men-that He claimed all as His subjects? Do they not say that this was the main cause of his rejection; that His greatest opponents were those who professed a strict and exclusive religion, and who drew sharp lines between themselves and the rest of their countrymen? Is not the connection between the Gospels and the other parts of the New Testament this, that the Apostles proclaimed the son of David to have risen from the dead, and ascended on high, that He might be the King of all men? Did not their battle with their countrymen turn upon the question, whether there was a Son of Man who might be announced by that name to Jews and Greeks, to Barbarians and Scythians, to bonds

men and freemen, whether there was One in whom God had reconciled the world to Himself, One in whom all things in Heaven and earth shall be at last gathered up?

If we adhere to this language, we must cast aside the other however plausible it sounds. We must treat it as an invention of men, as their substitute for the message of God. Those who hold the Bible not only to contain, but to be, the word of God, are especially bound to take this course. And if we do take it, the Gospels will themselves explain to us why the attempt to make men embrace a religion must have been, and must for ever be, futile. Men by their religion, seek to establish some meeting-place or reconciliation between them and God. The Gospel is the news that God is reconciled to man in His Son, that in Him there is a meeting-point between God and man. A religion must always be affected by the local habits, by the individual temperaments, of those who profess it. A Gospel is the unveiling or discovery to men of a common Head. At the message of a Son of Man in whom Jews and Greeks were one, a Church consisting of men with different languages, opposing habits, contracted educations, hostile religions, started into life. At the message of a Son of Man who had taken the nature of men, Goths rose out of their brutal condition, Latins rose out of a civilization which was worse than barbarism. Then there grew out of the