o hear that in India or any country large enough there should be
a separate Pantheon of many thousand deities, _plus_ some other Pantheon
of divinities corresponding to their own. For Syria--but still more in
one section of Syrian Palestine--this would surprise him _quoad_ the
degree, not _quoad_ the principle. The Jew had a separate or peculiar
God, why not? No nation could exist without Gods: the very separate
existence of a people, trivial as it might be in power and wealth,
argued a tutelary God, but, of course, proportioned to the destinies at
least (and in part to the present size) of the country. Thus far no
difficulties at all. But the morality! Aye, but that would never be
accounted a part of religion. As well confound a science with religion.
Aye, but the [Greek: aporrheta]. These would be viewed as the rites of
Adonis, or of Ceres; you could not warn him from his preconception that
these concerned only Jews. Where, therefore, lodged the offence? Why
here, as personalities--for such merely were all religions--the God must
be measured by his nation. So some Romans proposed to introduce Christ
into the Roman Pantheon. But what first exploded as a civil offence was
the demand of supremacy and the inconceivable principle set up of
incompatibility. This was mere folly.

A much more solemn, significant and prophetic meaning than the common
one may be secured to the famous passage in St. Matthew--'And thou shalt
call His name _Jesus_.' This injunction wears the most impressive
character belonging to heavenly adjuration, when it is thus confided to
the care and custody of a special angel, and in the very hour of
inauguration, and amongst the very birth-throes of Christianity. For in
two separate modes the attention is secretly pointed and solicited to
the grand serpentine artifice, which met and confronted the almost
insurmountable difficulty besetting Christianity on its very threshold:
First, by the record of the early _therapeutic_ miracles, since in that
way only, viz., by a science of healing, which the philosopher equally
with the populace recognised as resting upon inspiration from God, could
the magistrate and civil authority have been steadily propitiated;
secondly, by the very verbal suggestion couched in the name _Jesus_, or
_Healer_. At the most critical of moments an angel reveals himself, for
the purpose of saying '_Thou shalt call His name Jesus_'--and why Jesus?
Because, says the angel, 'He shall heal