ing the forty days (more or
less) during which, as the New Testament narrates, he flitted about
like a hedge-row ghost. He should have made his resurrection as clear as
daylight, and he left it as dark as night.

To ask what became of the body of Jesus if he did not rise, is an idle
question. There is not the slightest _contemporary_ evidence that his
body was an object of concern. On the other hand, however, the story of
the Ascension looks like a convenient refuge. To talk of a risen Christ
was to invite the question "Where is he?" The story of the Ascension
enabled the talkers to answer "He is gone up." It relieved them from the
awkward necessity of producing him.

Space does not allow of my discussing this subject more extensively. I
could swell this Easter egg into gigantic proportions, but I must leave
it as it is It goes to you with my compliments, and a hope that it will
do you good. If it leads any of you to "take a thought and mend," if it
induces one of you to review the faith of his childhood, if it stirs a
rational impulse in a single Christian mind, I shall be amply rewarded
for my trouble.--Christian fellow citizens, Adieu!--I remain, Yours for
Reason and Humanity.

DUELLING. *

* July 22, 1888.

One result of the recent duel between M. Floquet and the melodramatic
General Boulanger is that Bishop Freppel has moved in the Chamber of
Deputies for the legal abolition of private combats. That a bishop
should do this is remarkable. If Bishop Freppel possessed any sense of
humor, he would leave the task to laymen. His Church did not establish
duelling; on the contrary, she censured it; but it was countenanced by
her principles, and her protest was unavailing. The judicial combat was
an appeal to God, like the ordeal by fire or water, or the purgation by
oath. The Church patronised those forms of superstition which brought
men to her altars, and ministered to her profit and power, and she
opposed those superstitions which were inimical to her interest. When
legal proofs failed and suits were undecided; when persons were accused
of crimes, of which they could neither be proved guilty nor held
guiltless; or when they lay under gross suspicion of wrong, the Church
proffered the ordeal. She invited the litigants, or the suspected
parties, to handle hot iron, plunge their arms into boiling liquid, or
be thrown into water deep enough to drown them; and if they underwent
such treatment without injury,