and falsified it. For that generation passed
away, fifty generations since have passed away, and yet there has
been no literal second advent of Jesus in person to judge the dead
and the living, and to destroy the world. The event proves that we
must either give the words of Jesus a metaphorical interpretation
or hold that he was in error.

But, secondly, such an error would be incompatible with soundness
of mind. For any man, even for him called by an apostle "the man
Christ Jesus," to believe that after his death he should reappear,
swooping down from heaven, convoyed by squadrons of angels, to
collect all men from their graves, and replace the old creation
with a new one, would imply a profound disturbance of reason, a
monomaniacal fanaticism if not an actual insanity. It is such a
pure piece of theatrics that no one deeply in unison with that
spirit of truth which expresses the mind of God through the order
of nature and providence could possibly believe it. Such a nature
was preeminently that of Jesus. All his most characteristic
utterances, such as: "blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God;" "who loves much shall be forgiven much;" reveal
unsurpassed saneness and truth of perception. It is by much the
most probable supposition, that Jesus employed in the deepest and
purest moral sense alone those Messianic images and catastrophic
prophecies which were indeed originally used as moral metaphors,
but had been afterwards degraded into material dogmas.

Still further, the literal belief commonly attributed to Jesus, in
his own physical reappearance and reign, is not only incompatible
with his supreme soundness of mind, it is also irreconcilable with
his other explicit teachings. "My kingdom is not of this world."
"Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." He warns his
disciples against the many false Christs who will appear, and says
that "the kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation." "Say
not, lo here! or lo there! for the kingdom of heaven is within
you." "I am the truth, the way, and the life." "He that rejecteth
me, I judge him not; the word that I have spoken, that shall judge
him." "Whoever doeth the will of my Father in heaven, the same is
my brother." In view of these and kindred utterances of the
profoundest insight, irreconcilable with any gross mythological
beliefs, we must hold to the purely spiritual character of the
doctrine of Jesus concerning his personal offices, and thin