The divine prophet's main charge against these priests and law expounders was, that, instead of leading their flocks as faithful shepherds on the road to the pastures of eternal life, they had dragged them down, as blind misleaders of the blind, into the ditch of superstition and the darkness of purblind mysticism; whereby it came to pass that these people were unable to perceive the vital truths of divine revelation, and, like sheep lost in the barren and trackless wilderness of theology, they were left an easy prey to every ravenous monster of superstition that crept into the flock.

So well had these Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees fulfilled their self-appointed task, and by human tradition made the natural laws of the Eternal at enmity with their creeds, that one choice sect were avowed unbelievers, and denied the doctrines of the resurrection and eternal life; and another sect, if possible still more select than these, had, by much display of public excitation of piety, well advertized almsgiving, fasting, and nauseous cant, proclaimed the peculiar sanctity of their particular and exclusively elect or saintly persons. But whatever little doctrinal differences might reasonably be looked for in a state church, bound together by the articles and rubric of Mosaic ritual, one thing at all events they were all agreed to join in, and that was, to cling with unshaken tenacity to their vested interests in place and pension, waiting patiently for their Messiah's coming for further promotion and proportionate pay.

The Messiah comes, but in place of smiling approval of these hungry clergy, he exhausts every form of indignant remonstrance, and every expression of unmitigated scorn, abhorrence, and contempt, for their false teaching, their miserable perversion of truth to accommodate some peculiar tenet of their sects, their insolent bigotry, pride, hypocrisy, and their blindly selfish concentration of active duty in untiring adherence to self-interest, practically making deities of their appetites, and thus manifesting their utter ignorance of the very first axioms of self-sacrifice and duty to others in vital faith.

And how consistently the belly-worship of these time

PERSECUTION OF JESUS OF NAZARETH.

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serving clergy was carried out! Were they invited to any social gathering-it was to the highest seats of honour, to the uppermost rooms at entertainments that they elbowed their way, to attract all possible admiration from staring, gaping, social inferiors, who must swallow their humbler fare in lower places, if they can get there; if not, they may admire, at respectful distances, while munching their crusts outside.

The theologically untrained people heard this messenger from the Eternal gladly, we are told. But the doctors and proctors of the sacred shasters were roused into hostile action, fearing dangerous innovation, with subversion of their authority, and deprivation of prerogatives and perquisites. So they sought continually to entangle him in his discourse, and accuse him of heretical teaching, infidelity, impiety, and downright blasphemy. Seeing, or claiming to have seen, absolute truth, they were blinded and saw notclaiming to hear, and possess infallible oracles, they were deaf and heard not; yet they say repeatedly, with marvellous confidence, "We be not born of fornication, (like the non"elect,) we have one Father, who is God."

But they repudiated, with horror, the same claim put forward by this poor Jesus of Nazareth to be a Son of God, and that, because he spoke positively and authoritatively, not theologically and metaphorically. He claimed his title. naturally de jure et de facto, and this was blasphemy to their minds. He knocked the traditional scaffolding of their church from under these clergy's feet, by shewing that the Jews were not necessarily sons of the Eternal Father because descendants of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He told them plainly that their forefathers, the descendants of these sons of God, had perished; they had indeed eaten manna, or angels' food, in the wilderness, but notwithstanding this privilege, they were dead, and as God is the Father of the living, and not of the dead, therefore their dead forefathers could not have been children of God, and thus their title deeds to immortality were defective, and their claim to eternal life was vitiated in consequence!

How these priests, scribes, and doctors of theology, lashed their pious emotions into frenzy! How they gnashed their sacred teeth! They had hoisted up the Mosaic ritual as a ladder to reach high heaven, and after all, this grand sacerdotal system, they were told, was but a compromise, was but a school for weaning infantile minds from mother's pap! And this fellow, this ignoramus, this vulgar journeyman carpenter, this shaver of wood and planer into chips, this reckless demagogue, has bearded theologians hoary with age, and nearly blind, and paralyzed, with hard reading of shasters, talmuds, and halachas. He dares to contradict the priests' infallible conclusions, to ask in turn most perplexing questions, which for dear life they cannot logically answer; and more, he exposes their ignorance, derides their impudence, denounces their pride, their intolerance, their hollow and hypocritical pretences. But they cannot, if they would, ignore his presence, for his authority to preach and prophesy is supported by superhuman power, and his wonderful deeds, his quiet zeal, his energy, his restless and remorseless onslaughts upon sacerdotal impotence are too well and too widely circulated throughout the land to be rashly sneered at, or recklessly ridden down. These men hear of the dead being raised, and in dire alarm, Pharisee, Sadducee, priest, and scribe, both high and low, assemble in council, patch up their leaky schismatic boat, hoist a new sail, and so combine for a time to exterminate the foe who threatens to raise a whirlwind that will cause their church to founder bodily.

"What do we?" gasp they in terror and amazement. "This fellow will gain the public over to his secularism, our "entire sacerdotalism is endangered, we shall lose our priestly "prerogatives and privileges, the Romans will eventually "succeed in setting the democratic and secular element in our "nation over our sacred crowns. Our theocracy, and with it our aristocracy, will be swamped; the temporal and spiritual power, once effectually severed, can never be rejoined, and our reign is for ever at an end."

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One of the most eloquent of rhetoricians and essayists, Dr. Channing, says of sacerdotal tyranny:

DR. CHANNING ON ECCLESIASTICAL DESPOTISM. 5

"No power is so rapidly accumulated or so dreadfully "abused, as ecclesiastical power.

"All usurpation on men's understandings begets in him "who exercises it, a dread and resistance of the truth which "threatens its subversion, hence ministers of religion have "so often fallen behind the age, and been the chief foes of "the master spirits who have improved the world, they "have felt their power totter at the tread of an independent "thinker; by a kind of instinct, they have fought against "the light before which the shades of superstition were "vanishing, and have received their punishment in the "darkness and degradation of their own minds.

"The same enslaving power may grow up under Protes"tant as under Romanist institutions. The Protestant "minister, whilst disclaiming Papal pretensions, is able, if so "minded, to build up a spiritual despotism.

The

"Ecclesiastical power has been exerted most conspicuously "and perniciously by two classes of men, the priest or "minister of religion, and the civil ruler, making men slaves "and machines, shackling their faculties, and degrading "them into tools of others' wills and passions. "influence of political and religious institutions has been "to make a man abject in mind, fearful, servile, and a "mechanical repeater of opinions which he dares not try, " and a contributor of sweat, toil, and blood to governments "which never dreamed of the general weal as their only "legitimate end."

And pertinent to the present duty of endeavouring to rescue the significance of Jesus' life and actions from the distortions and pervertions of the sacerdotal class, who have usurped the christian name to supplement their schemes, I quote Dr. Channing again, where he says—

"The true conspiracy before which tyranny is to fall, is "that of virtuous, elevated minds, consecrating themselves "to the work of awakening in men's minds a consciousness "of the rights, powers, and purposes of human nature, opposing to force the heroism of intellect, conscience, and "the spirit of self-sacrifice.

"The great enemies to society are not found in its poorer "ranks; the mass may indeed be used as tools, but the "stirring and guiding powers of insurrection are found "above."

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And so it was in the days when the Jewish race was under the Roman yoke, and Pontius Pilate was, by their commission, the governor of Judæa; a priestly party and their supporters conspired to destroy the man who threatened to overturn their entire sacerdotal church. But the history of this persecution is too well known to require any comA high priest administers an oath to the victim he was predetermined to condemn as a perjurer, and then with pious horror rends his sacred clothes. He hands this son of the carpenter over to his my rmidons, to be mangled on the Subornation of perjury has failed, but what of that? "Has not the vulgar fellow in our sacred presence uttered shocking blasphemy? Away with him from off the earth!" So indeed says this priest, but the civil magistrate must be made the executioner, for your saintly clergy never take human life; no, indeed, but they can excommunicate, accuse, and condemn to death in the hearing of the mob; so public opinion, in the name of morality and justice, seizes this clerically damned one; and of old time it was the same as now, rebellion with fiery-faced, red-handed insurrection rears its hydra-head, and barricades spring up, whereat the civil rulers pause they hesitate, listen, remonstrate, threaten, get alarmed, vacillate, and yield. So the man denounced as an heretic and infidel by the priests, is slaughtered according to law, and society is saved.

Thus peace is preserved, thus law and order is supported, thus heresy is suppressed, thus institutions and establishments hoary with age are conserved, and religious convictions protected from dangerous innovations, thus balances of power civil and religious are upheld, and thus the interests of truth are actively and zealously served by its legally appointed servants!

Truth! Everything progressing but what is called Religion; all else journeying on, but knowledge of life eternal, all else