th lowered close before him,
and his words deepened in their hearts the devotion which animated all
their after-lives. That parting scene, preserved elsewhere in
delineations brief and impressive, was now expanded by the brooding,
creative thought of some one in closest sympathy with the occasion and
with the vital impulse it had given. Literal and historical fidelity the
description may lack, but it is in close accord with the realities of
experience. The tender assurances, the prophecies beyond hope, which the
Master is here supposed to speak, had indeed been fulfilled. The loss of
his earthly presence had been more than made good to those in whose lives
he had been felt as a saving power. The Comforter had truly come. The
mutual love of the disciples, and their loyalty to the Master as they
understood him, had planted a new social force in the world, and was
working slowly to transform the world. Thoughts which had been the
possession of philosophers in the schools were become working forces in
the lives of common men and women and children. That deliverance from
the fear of death which thinkers had vainly sought had been won even by
the poor and lowly. All this and more was set forth as in a psalm or
prophecy, in the parting words ascribed to Christ.

"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world
giveth give I unto you." "Ye shall see me again, and your hearts shall
rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you."

The predominant notes of the New Testament are tenderness and ardor, but
inwrought with these is a vein of terror and sometimes of fierce wrath.
It is like the denunciation in the Old Testament, to which the vision of
a future world has added a more lurid hue. "Asia's rancor" has not
disappeared, even in the presence of "Bethlehem's heart." Among the
words attributed to Jesus are the threat of that perdition where the worm
dieth not and the fire is not quenched. To him is ascribed (whether
truly or not) the story of Dives in hell, and father Abraham in whose
bosom Lazarus is reposing denies even his prayer for a drop of water to
cool his tongue. Here is the germ of all the horrors of the mediaeval
imagination. The germs bore an early fruitage in that book which bears
the name of "Revelation." It mirrors the passions which spring up amid
the heats of faction and of persecution. Fell hatred fills its pages for
the persecutor and for the heretic. The few gleams of Para