read in a new light. Its science and history must be regarded as merely
human; nay, its very morality savors of the barbarism of the Jews.
Only its best ethical teaching, and its upward aspirations, are to be
regarded as the workings or God in the Jewish mind. Nor is this all.
There is a revolt against the supernaturalism of the New Testament.
Christians like Dr. Abbott explain away the Resurrection as no physical
fact, but a spiritual conception. The creed of Christendom is gradually
melting away like a northern iceberg floating into southern seas.
Pinnacle after pinnacle of glittering dogma, loosens, falls, and sinks
for ever. Only the central block remains intact, and we are assured it
will never change. The storms of controversy will never rend it; the
rays of the sun of science will never make an impression on its marble
firmness. But Freethinkers smile at this cheap boast. They know the
thaw will continue until the last fragment has melted into the infinite
ocean.

The central, indissoluble part of Christianity is Jesus Christ. He will
never fade, we are told. He is not for an age, but for all time. When
all the dogmas of the Churches have perished, the divine figure of
Christ will survive, and flourish in immortal beauty. All the world will
yet worship him. "Christ" will be the universal passport in the depths
of China, in the wilds of Africa, on the Tartar steppes, and among the
haunted ruins of old Asia, as well as in the present Christendom of
Europe and America.

This prophecy is very pretty, but it lacks precision. The prophets
forget to tell us whether the divine figure of Christ is to be human
or supernatural; the grandest of men or the smallest of gods. If he
be indeed a god, they are playing strange tricks with his works and
sayings; while, if he be indeed a mere man, they forget to explain how
it is likely that the human race will ever look back to a single dead
Jew as the moral microcosm, the consummate spiritual flower of humanity,
the beacon of ideal life to every generation of voyagers on the sea of
time.

Logic, however, must not be expected of Christians, at least in an age
of dissolving views like the present. They will go on quoting Kenan's
prize-essay panegyric on Christ, without any reference to the rest
of his Vie de Jesus_. They will persist in quoting Mill's farfetched
eulogy, without referring to other passages in the essay _On Liberty.
But this is not all, nor even the worst. The sent