opinion upon another, nor has any church a
guarantee for obliging its members to subscribe to a fixed creed. All
deductions from the positive statements of the Scriptures are mere human
opinions, and should only receive the credit due to them as such. What
are confessions but human opinions?

CHRIST. Strauss was wrong in taking his cold view of Jesus. There was a
real historical personage whom we properly call Jesus. Nothing is
gained, but everything lost by resolving all the statements of the
gospels into myths. It is through Christ that salvation is attained, for
Christianity is the reconciliation of God and man as revealed to us in
the consciousness and life of Christ. He is the end of the law, the
second Adam, the fulfilment of prophecy, the head of a renovated
humanity. In him we find the revelation of a new religious principle in
man, a real unity with God, a filial adoption, freedom from natural
corruption, the pardon of sin, and victory over the world. Jesus became
the one man who bore in himself the fullness of the godhead.

Important concessions to Christianity seem to be made; nevertheless
subtle Pantheism underlies their statements. But one of their opinions
subverts everything they grant to orthodoxy. Christ was not, according
to their view, the Messiah in the sense foretold by the prophets and
preached by the apostles. We must judge him apart from all poetry,
speculation, and human judgment. The Christ of the present church is the
creation of theologians, not the character portrayed by the evangelists.
Unfortunately for our correct view of him, Paul speculated entirely too
much upon his nature and work. The resurrection of Christ never took
place, because there was no necessity for it. It was a good thing for
the apostles to believe that such an event took place, for it encouraged
them. Christ never showed himself to any one after his death, and the
belief that he did appear arose purely from the excited nerves,
imaginative temperament, and strong desire of his followers to see him.
His spirit did not die with his body, but entered upon another stage of
existence.

Jesus did not work miracles, for he had not the power. He was eminently
a moral man, the very personification of the truly religious character.
Religion became flesh in him, and he was the exemplification of love.
The salvation we find through him is by virtue of his example and
inculcation of moral truths. The spirit of Christ still exists,