author is always at his best. His work
differs. The second epistle to the Thessalonians is not level with the
epistle to the Romans. The third epistle of John, if it be of John, is
surely not as highly inspired as the first epistle of John. Inspiration is
plainly a matter of degrees.

The recognition of this common-sense principle, theoretically, would
remand the darker doctrines of Christianity to such authority as the lower
order of Biblical writings possess. The terrifying and torturing teachings
of the New Testament are from obscure authors, or from the masters in
their lower moods. The representations of a wrathful God, of an avenging
Christ, of a hell of horrors, are found in such epistles as Second
Thessalonians, whose authorship is uncertain; as Jude or Second Peter,
about whose authorship and date we have only the probability that no
apostle wrote them, and that they were written after the first, fresh
inspiration had passed from the church. Rabbinical speculations and Greek
superstitions show themselves at work in the Christian Church.[32] The
unquestioned letters of Paul are sunny and sweet. In them we see the
father of Christian Restorationism. If he knows anything of a dark side to
the resurrection, as he shows elsewhere that he does, he leaves it in its
own shadows; and in the height of this great argument of Corinthians
brings to the front only the resurrection to life and joy. "Knowing the
fear of the Lord we--persuade men."

The first epistle of John is true to its favorite symbol of the light.
There are no clouds in it. The God revealed in the greatest writings of
the greatest authors of the New Testament is Love. The Christ they picture
is _Christus Consolator_. The full breath of inspiration opens only the
upper register of notes. The voices of the soul are buoyant, joyous,
hopeful.

If you are willing to follow the most inspired writers, in their most
inspired moods, up into the heights whither the divine afflatus bore them,
you will mount above the cloud-level, and leave to those who lag after
feebler guides on the lower ranges of truth, the chill mists that eat into
the soul, while you rejoice in the light.

VI.

_It is a wrong use of the Bible to manufacture cut of it any one uniform,
system, of theology, as the fixed and final form of thought in which
religion is to live._

Let me define these contrasting terms, so commonly confounded. Religion
is man's perception of the Power i