rs are to be
treated. Tribalism seems slightly to cling to his conception of the
just gathered in Abraham's bosom. Of his apologue of Dives and
Lazarus, the last part appears to show that the world beyond the grave
was to him a realm of the imagination.

The Sermon on the Mount would appear, by the strong impress of
character it bears, to have special claims to authenticity. So may the
Parables habitually employed as instruments of teaching and wearing
apparently the stamp of a single imagination.

That with Jesus of Nazareth there came into the world, and by his
example and teaching was introduced and propagated a moral ideal which,
embodied in Christendom, and surviving through all these centuries the
action of hostile forces the most powerful, not only from without, but
from within, has uplifted, purified, and blessed humanity is a
historical fact. With the civilization of Christendom no other
civilization can compare. But we have been accustomed to believe that
there was a miraculous revelation of the Deity. A revelation of the
Deity, though not miraculous, Christianity may be believed to have been.

Revelation, direct and assured, of the nature, will, designs, or
relation to us of the Deity through the Bible or in any other way we
cannot be truly said to have. All that we apparently can be said to
have, besides the religious instinct in ourselves, is the evidence of
beneficent design in the universe; balanced, we must sadly admit, by
much that with our present imperfect knowledge appears to us at
variance with beneficence; by plagues, earthquakes, famines, torturing
diseases, infant deaths; by the sufferings of animals preyed on by
other animals or breeding beyond the means of subsistence; by
inevitable accidents of all kinds; by the Tower of Siloam everywhere
falling on the just as well as on the sinner. There may be a key,
there may be a plan, disciplinary or of some other kind, and in the end
the mystery may be solved. At present there seems to be no key other
than that which may be suggested by the connection of effort with
virtue and the progress of a collective humanity.

At the same time, we may apparently dismiss belief in a great personal
power of evil and in his realm of everlasting torture. The independent
origin of such a power of evil is unthinkable; so is the struggle
between the two powers and its end. There is no absolutely distinct
line between good and evil. The shades of character