trample on them and wreak vengeance on
them. He would say, "Unhappy ones, fear not; you have misunderstood
me; I will not injure you; if there be any favor which I can
bestow on you, freely take it." And is it not an incredible
blasphemy to deny to the deified Christ a magnanimity equal to
that which any good man would exhibit?

It is with pain and regret that the writer has penned the
foregoing sentences, which, he supposes, some persons will read
with the feeling that they are inexcusable misrepresentations,
others, with a shocked and resentful horror, relieving itself in
the cry, Infidelity! Blasphemy! The reply of the writer is simply
that, while reluctant to wound the sensibility of any, he feels
bound in conscience to make this exposition, because he believes
it to be a true statement; and loyalty to truth is the first duty
of every man. Truth is the will of God, obedience to which alone
is sound morality, reverential love of which alone is pure piety.
Frightful as is the picture drawn above of Christ in the judgment,
it is impossible to deny, without utter stultification, that every
lineament of it is logically implied in the formula. "There is no
salvation for the man who unbelievingly rejects, no damnation for
the man who believingly accepts, the official Christ and his
blood." And what teacher will have the presumption to deny that
just this has been, and still is, the central dogma in the faith
of ecclesiastical Christendom? The legitimate result of this view,
unflinchingly carried out, and applied to the precise point we now
have in hand, is seen in that horrible portrayal of the Last
Judgment wherewith Michael Angelo has covered the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel, in Rome. The great anatomical artist consistently
depicts Christ as an almighty athlete, towering with vindictive
wrath, flinging thunderbolts on the writhing and helpless
wilderness of his victims. The popular conception of Christ in the
judgment has been borrowed from the type of a king, who, hurling
off the incognito in which he has been outraged, breaks out in his
proper insignia, to sentence and trample his scorners. The true
conception is to be fashioned after the type given in his own
example during his life. So far as Christ is the representative of
God, there must be no vanity or egotism in him. Every such quality
ascribed to the Godhead is anthropomorphizing sophistry. However
much more God may be, he is the General Mind of the Univers