a man whose generous assistance he had formerly solicited, and to whom he owed the preservation of his own country." And when the question of the death of the king was at last, after a full month of debate, brought to a vote-there were 721 voices uttered from the tribune. Of these 387 were for death, and 334 for exile. So that, whatever the "courage, the goodness, the justice, the sublimity of devotion to principle, the peril of life," involved in Mr. Paine's vote, he had 333 sharers of his heroism and his glory.

A Fair Test, with Some Plain Philosophy.

But to come now to the purpose in hand and consider his arraignment of Christianity. Is it possible to apply this test-principle of the text, so that we may know to a certainty what the relative claims of the two systems asking our acceptance are? For they have both been long enough before the world to produce ample results, and results whose quality is ascertainable beyond doubt.

Let us take first, then, the character of the founder of Christianity, and test that, and then the character of the teachers of infidelity, and test them. We shall be sure to be on the right track in such inquiry. For while it does not greatly matter what the character of a man may be who gives us a new theory of electricity, or light, or anything his discovery being of equal value whether he be honest or dishonest, temperate or intemperate, moral or immoral-it does matter what the personal character of a teacher of a new scheme of morals is. He comes claiming our acceptance of certain doctrines which, He says, are vital to our welfare. He declares that only as we accept His dogmas can we lead lives of highest happiness and usefulness. That everything, in short, that can be called good, is bound up in His teachings. Naturally.

therefore, and of right, we look to Him for an illustration of what He teaches. If He wants us to be truthful, honest, moral, He must be. The moment we fail to find in the teacher the exemplification of the thing taught, that moment the power of his teaching is broken. I am speaking, of course, of one who has a system which he claims to be superior to others, and which he insists that men must receive or suffer great loss. It is only folly for a known deceiver to try to enforce truthfulness, for a known thief to teach honesty, or a libertine virtue. We say, instinctively and scornfully, to such-" Physician, heal thyself."

We have hence the best of rights to test this great teacher of Christianity, and to test Him rigidly. We have the right to put His life to proof everywhere, and see whether it shows a quality accordant with His speech. For He claims for His teaching not only supreme authority, but the authority of truth that does not rest content till it has taken possession of a man in the very roots of his being, penetrated him through and through, and made him so entirely a lover of truth that he will tolerate no fellowship with anything else. More than this, His standards of morals deal not so much with words and deeds, as with their underlying motives. With Him covetousness is not so much looking upon the things of others with the eyes of the body as with the eyes of the soul. To lust after a woman is as truly adultery, as the open violation of the seventh commandment. It is murder as truly to have the thought daubed in blood as the hands.

Furthermore, they who accept this teacher's doctrine must stand ready to surrender everything on the call of their master; to leave home and its treasures; to take oppositions, persecutions, sufferings, death even, and to do this without

murmuring. And only they who stand ready to do this, who covet to have their wills merged in their teacher's, who carry in their souls the ideal of a perfection as high as God, and who consciously and absorbingly desire and seek the good of men; only these can be counted true disciples.

Jesus Christ and the Testimony-Paine's Confession.

Here now is opportunity indeed for tests. And this founder of the new scheme, which He insists on having men receive, must demonstrate in Himself the spirit of His own doctrines, must illustrate unequivocally their fruits, or be rejected. What now are the facts? Why, clearly this, that He stands there on the track of history the exact embodiment of every truth He uttered. The keenest and most relentless criticism has had His life as in the focus of its blazing examination for centuries, has searched that life back and forth through every phase of it, from His child. hood to the last agony on the cross, and yet is compelled to confess that nowhere is there a day or an hour, a deed or a word, or a thought, that does not exactly mirror the teachings of His lips.

More than that, He stands there the one only character of all the ages absolutely without a spot or blemish, and this, as I have said, not as the verdict of partial admirers, but of those who would, many of them, be only too glad to prove IIim a hypocrite or a cheat.

Theodore Parker, and he is no enthusiastic devotee of Christianity, is compelled to say of Him that, "He unites in Himself the sublimest precepts and divinest practices; that He rises free from all the prejudices of His age, nation or sect, pours out a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as heaven, true as God

Mr. Chubb, a noted English infidel, admits in his "True Gospel," "that we have in Christ an example of one who was just, honest, upright, sincere, who did no wrong, no injury to any man, and in whose mouth was no guile."

Rousseau says: "What sweetness, what purity in His manner! what sublimity in His maxims! what profoundness in His discourses! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live and so die without weakness and without ostentation! If the life and death of Socrates were those of a Sage, the life and death of Jesus Christ were those of a God."

And Thomas Paine himself is at pains to testify in his Age of Reason, that "nothing that is here said "-in his holding up of Christianity to ridicule, "can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and an amiable man. The morality that He preached and practiced was of the most benevolent kind."

What the Testimony Demonstrates and its Significance.

Such confessions as these from the lips of infidels are most amazing. They demonstrate that Jesus Christ made good His astounding pretensions, that He was literally without sin, and had the best of rights to call Himself the light of the world. But the significance of these confessions goes further than this. For this stainless, perfect character is an absolute impossibility, if the claims of infidelity are true. Where shall we look for the exemplification of a system of morals but to its founder?

We look to Brigham Young as the prophet and head of Mormonism, and we find exactly what we should expect from the teachings of that faith; a polygamist and a despiser of all doctrines outside of the book of Mormon,

We look to Mohammed, and find him exactly what we should expect from the Koran, a man who believes in sensuality and in bloodshed to secure his ends.

So in the gods of the Romans and Greeks, and Hindoos and Egyptians, we find exactly such gods as we should look for from the religions to which they belong-gods stamped with deceit, cruelty, blood-thirstiness, lust.

So it should be here, if Christianity is what Mr. Ingersoll declares it to be, unloving, tyrannous, bloody, delighting in nothing so much as deceits and woes, then Jesus Christ should be of a piece with it. Nay, in Him all these foul things should be headed up. The stream can not rise higher nor be purer than its source. If lying, and rapine, and lust, and violence are the law or the practice, then infallibly sure are we that some Henry VIII, or Philip II, or Cæsar, or Borgia, or Nero, either makes the laws or wields the scepter. If Christianity is a bundle of lies, a code of cruelty, then he that originated it stands proved either the prince of impostors or the worst of fiends. Whereas, upon the testimony of infidels themselves, He is the one in whose speech and life there is more of purity, goodness, heaven, than in any other character the world has ever seen. He is, in short, the one combined God-man of all history!

Mr. John Stuart Mill, who is an avowed atheist, and of course denies the divine character and authority of Christianity, declares that it is of no use to say that Christ as exhibited in the Gospels, is "not historical." And he asks, "Who among His disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee; still less the early Christian writers." And Mr. Lecky, who agrees with Mr.