k that
all the speeches, if any such there be, which cannot be fairly
explained in accordance with this view, have been refracted in
their transmission through incompetent reporters, or even perhaps
fictitiously ascribed to him from the faith of a later age. There
is a grateful satisfaction in thus discharging, as we feel we are
fairly entitled to do, from the authority of Jesus a burden too
great even for his peerless name any longer to support. For, say
what its advocates may, this gigantic melo drama of the second
advent, this world wide mixture and display of martial and
forensic elements before an audience of all mankind and amidst a
convulsed and closing universe, is inherently incredible by any
mind not grossly ignorant and undisciplined or drilled to the most
slavish servility of traditional thought. Every one really
educated in science and philosophy, and familiar with the
physiological conditions and literary history of mythology in the
other nations of the world, will plainly perceive the intrinsic
fancifulness and falsity of the belief, at the same time that he
easily accounts for its rise and prevalence.

The same picture of the siege of Jerusalem by a league of
idolatrous armies, and of the mighty coming of the Messiah, found
in the New Testament, is drawn in the third book of the Sibylline
Oracles, which was composed by a Jew two hundred years before one
word of Matthew or Luke was written. Jesus took up this current
and fitting imagery wherein to express the conflict of his
religion with the world, and to predict its ultimate triumph. He
identifies himself with the truths he has brought, with the
regenerating energies he has inaugurated to combat and overcome
the wickedness and despotism of the nations of men. Every advent
of his universal principles to a wider conflict or a higher seat
of authority, is a true coming of the Son of Man. The vices and
crimes of men, the selfishness and tyranny of governments,
accumulate impediments in the way of the free working of the will
of God in human society. Therefore from period to period
convulsive crises occur, shocks of progressive truth and liberty
against the obstacles gathered in their way. Thus, not only the
destruction of Jerusalem, but the destruction of Rome, the French
Revolution, and all the terrible social crises in the advancing
affairs of the world, write on the earth and the sky, in huge
characters of blood, smoke and fire, the true meaning of th