spectfully
refuse, even if that refusal should wreck morality and insure our own
damnation several times over. We are quite content to leave that to the
decision of the future. The course of the past has impressed us with the
firm conviction that no good ever comes of falsehood, and we feel
warranted in refusing even to experiment in that direction.

In the course of the present discussion it has been asserted that the
"Sermon on the Mount" and the "Lord's Prayer" furnish a summary and
condensed view of the essentials of the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth,
set forth by himself. Now this supposed _Summa_ of Nazarene theology
distinctly affirms the existence of a spiritual world, of a Heaven, and
of a Hell of fire; it teaches the Fatherhood of God and the malignity of
the Devil; it declares the superintending providence of the former and
our need of deliverance from the machinations of the latter; it affirms
the fact of demoniac possession and the power of casting out devils by
the faithful. And, from these premises, the conclusion is drawn, that
those Agnostics who deny that there is any evidence of such a character
as to justify certainty, respecting the existence and the nature of the
spiritual world, contradict the express declarations of Jesus. I have
replied to this argumentation by showing that there is strong reason to
doubt the historical accuracy of the attribution to Jesus of either the
"Sermon on the Mount" or the "Lord's Prayer "; and, therefore, that the
conclusion in question is not warranted, at any rate, on the grounds set
forth.

But, whether the Gospels contain trustworthy statements about this and
other alleged historical facts or not, it is quite certain that from
them, taken together with the other books of the New Testament, we may
collect a pretty complete exposition of that theory of the spiritual
world which was held by both Nazarenes and Christians; and which was
undoubtedly supposed by them to be fully sanctioned by Jesus, though it
is just as clear that they did not imagine it contained any revelation
by him of something heretofore unknown. If the pneumatological doctrine
which pervades the whole New Testament is nowhere systematically stated,
it is everywhere assumed. The writers of the Gospels and of the Acts
take it for granted, as a matter of common knowledge; and it is easy to
gather from these sources a series of propositions, which only need
arrangement to form a complete system.

In