" they
taught that the world would soon end, for Jesus would come back and
"judge the world," raising the dead,--and then all who had believed in
him would be "saved," but the rest would be "lost forever;" a new world
would take the place of the old, and the Christians would have a good
time in that Kingdom of Heaven. This new "spiritual world" would contain
some extraordinary things; thus, "every grape-vine would have ten
thousand trunks, every trunk ten thousand branches, every branch ten
thousand twigs, every twig ten thousand clusters, every cluster ten
thousand grapes, and every grape would yield twenty-five kilderkins of
wine."

But everywhere they recommended a life of sobriety and self-denial,
of industry and of kind deeds,--a life of religion. Everywhere the
Christians were distinguished for their charity and general moral
excellence. But the Jews hated them, and drove them away; the Heathens
hated them, and put many to death with dreadful tortures; all the
magistrates were hostile. But when the common people saw a man or a
woman come out and die rather than be false to a religious emotion or
idea, there were always some who said, "That is a strange thing,--a man
dying for his God. There must be something in that religion! Let us
also become Christians." So the new doctrine spread wide; not the simple
religion of Jesus,--piety and morality; but what his followers called
Christianity,--a mixture of good and evil. In two or three hundred years
it had gone round the civilized world. Other forms of religion fell to
pieces, one by one. Judaism went down with the Hebrew people, Heathenism
went down, and Christianity took heir place. The son of Joseph and Mary,
born in a stable, and killed by the Jews, was worshipped as the ONLY GOD
all round the civilized world. The new form of religion spread very
much as SPIRITUALISM has done in our time, only in the midst of worse
persecution than the Mormons have suffered. At this day there are some
two hundred and sixty millions of people who worship Jesus of Nazareth;
most of them think he was God, the only God. But a small number of men
believe that he was no God, no miraculous person, but a good man with a
genius for religion. All the Christians think he was full of all manner
of loving kindness and tender mercy. So all over the world to-day,
among the two hundred and sixty millions of Christians, there is great
rejoicing on account of his birth, which it is erroneously suppo