LIFE AND TEACHINGS 
 OF JESUS 
 
 G.H.WALSER 
 
JUL 15 1909 *] 
 
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THE LIFE AND 
 TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
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 THE LIFE%^ 
 
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 AND TEACHINGS 
 
 OF JESUS 
 
 BY G. H. WALSER 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH &' COMPANY 
 
 1909 
 
Copyright, 1909 
 Sherman, French &« Company 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE. 
 
 I. Ancient Learning .... 1 
 
 II. Before the Time of Jesus . . 44) 
 
 III. The Conditions when Jesus Came 118 
 
 IV. Who was Jesus? 150 
 
 V. Jesus' Early Life 192 
 
 VI. Preaching and Healing . . . 220 
 
 VII. The Mission of Jesus .... 268 
 
 VIII. Jesus saw Their Thoughts . . 332 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 The New Testament .... 359 
 
 The Early Gods 418 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Why should I attempt to write the life of the 
 Master? Other pens more deft than mine have 
 left their tracings of him, from the shrine of the 
 manger around which angels sang " Glory to 
 God on High," through his trials, tribulations, 
 sorrows, and triumphs, culminating on the Cross 
 and glorified in his ascension as he looked from 
 the throne of love upon those who maligned his 
 mission and persecuted and crucified his body for 
 no cause save that of his unbounded goodness. 
 
 Pens endowed with the flame of inspiration 
 have done him justice. The Gospels are in the 
 home of every one, in which the physical life of 
 Jesus is graphically given, and it would be pre- 
 sumptuous in me to attempt to improve on the 
 least of them. The Gospels contain a plain, sim- 
 ple narration of facts that can neither be bettered 
 in the manner of expression, sublime simplicity of 
 style, or order of presentation. Each important 
 occurrence in the Kfe of the Master has been 
 given to the world time and time again, and every 
 phase of his life brought out and explained so 
 that the erudite may be edified, the student in- 
 structed, the sorrowing consoled, the devotee 
 strengthened, and the stupid enlightened. 
 
 So it would seem an act of superciliousness in 
 anyone to attempt to do more. But it seems to 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 me that the hfe of Jesus has been considered more 
 from a physical, active, man-Hving standpoint 
 than from that philosophical and spiritual trend 
 of events which gave birth to the necessity of the 
 coming of the Master, and life and character to 
 his outward conduct. 
 
 There were two lives of the Master, — one the 
 physical hfe, the other the spiritual life. The 
 philosophy of his spiritual life came up with the 
 growth of human thought and aspiration from 
 the cradle of the race to his advent, from which 
 the starved soul of humanity received new im- 
 petus, which is gathering power, beauty, grace 
 and heavenly virtues as time rolls along, never 
 failing, never swerving, never disappointing, but 
 growing and growing into the fullness of a God- 
 comprehending and God-loving people, the cul- 
 mination of which will only be when all men are 
 cemented into one brotherhood, where the cry of 
 one is the concern of all, when fraternal sincerity 
 shall be engraved on the lintel of every man's 
 door, and Friendship, Love and Truth imprinted 
 on every heart. This phase of the spiritual life 
 of the Master will mostly claim my attention in 
 this treatise. This phase of his life has never 
 been fully given from my standpoint of mental 
 and spiritual philosophy. 
 
 I write from the standpoint of a converted In- 
 fidel. I have patiently investigated without bias 
 all sides of mental and spiritual philosophies. All 
 I desire to know is the truth, whose foot-prints 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 I will follow wherever it leadeth ; for what Is truth 
 for one is truth for all, whether that be divine 
 truth or secular. 
 
 The esoteric life of the Master can only be 
 fully appreciated through the aid of the imagina- 
 tion, guided and stimulated by all the facts and 
 events of the world at his time, reverting also to 
 the past and penetrating into the future. The 
 philosophy of the life of Jesus is cosmopolitan ; 
 every chord of human nature may find a harmo- 
 nizing tone in the spiritual philosophy of Jesus. 
 The full benefits to be derived from the life of the 
 Master must be taken from his surroundings, the 
 necessity of his coming, and the light that he 
 brought with him to the world, — all aided by the 
 imagination. For imagination is the spirit that 
 comprehends the philosophy of human conduct 
 and purposes. It concerns itself not with the act 
 in itself, but with the philosophy of the act. It 
 is to the act as the aroma is to the rose, flavor to 
 the peach, life to the being, as thought is to the 
 expression of the mind. Imagination furnishes 
 the spiritual record of the physical event. Cold 
 history only gives physical conduct; imagination 
 gives the flavor, pathos, exultation, triumph, sor- 
 row, heart-ache, anguish, remorse, or whatever the 
 mental sensations the act or event inspires. There 
 is an outside and inside to every thing, every 
 motive and act of man. The act is of what his- 
 tory or narration treats, which is the frame-work 
 of the transaction. The motive underlying the 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 act or transaction, or its effects on others and the 
 outside world, is the philosophy of the trans- 
 action. 
 
 It is our province, in treating of the life of the 
 Master, to give the spirit of the main events sur- 
 rounding his ministry, that my readers may see 
 the science of his mission, the motives of his ene- 
 mies in their persecutions of him, his triumphs in 
 the exposure of wrongs on the one side, and his 
 glories in the demonstration of life after death 
 and the fact that " it is not all of life to live, nor 
 all of death to die," on the other. " It is the 
 Spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth noth- 
 ing; the words that I speak unto you, they are 
 spirit, and they are life." John vi, 63. 
 
 If we can get the spirit of the life of the Mas- 
 ter, we will gain golden emotions coined in the 
 mint of everlasting truth; but to obtain those 
 blessings we must read between the lines, and read 
 with spirit and understanding. We must train 
 our imaginations to the comprehension of Jesus 
 as he was, a sincere, blameless man, undergoing all 
 the hardships and vicissitudes of an unappre- 
 ciated life that the eyes of an obdurate people 
 might be opened to their own good here and here- 
 after, with all their certainties of joys or dregs 
 of woe according to the merits of this life. 
 
 G. H. W. 
 
THE LIFE AND 
 TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
I 
 
 ANCIENT LEARNING 
 
 I have wandered in the desert of disbelief, 
 waded the river of doubt, and in the sands of 
 desolation* I have looked for hope and found 
 none; my heart ached and my soul sickened, for 
 its measure was not satisfied. I felt that there 
 was something more, there must be something 
 more, or nature is a fraud and life the gall of 
 a bitter cheat. 
 
 I looked out and saw struggling humanity 
 vying within itself for prestige. Each man, it 
 would seem, was striving with the rest of the 
 world for place. The strong were overpowering 
 the weak; force seemed to rule; the masses were 
 in a ferver of discontent. And in that struggle 
 I saw some fall by the wayside, some perish at the 
 hands of violence, some sicken and die with but 
 one destiny before them all, — and that was the 
 destiny of death. One group passes off the stage 
 and another takes its place; one man steps out 
 and another steps in with like inclinations, strug- 
 gles, and disappointments. 
 
 My soul cried out, " Is there nothing better 
 for man.? Is it his destiny to oppress and be op- 
 pressed; to wrong and be wronged; to walk in 
 the shades and shadows of strife ; to be mocked at 
 
2 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 by deceptive smiles ? " Raising my eyes, for I 
 was in the downcast of meditation, I saw in the 
 distance, over the apex of a neighboring hill-top, 
 the skirts of fading night giving place to a 
 roseate morning as it sent its golden ribbons up 
 the bending sky. I kept my eye fastened on the 
 coming light, and directly the sun itself sent a 
 smile of beauty into the dark valley below. As 
 the light penetrated the darkness surrounding the 
 people, they seemed to brighten up ; frowns on 
 their faces gave way to smiles ; harmony took 
 the place of discord ; and I saw strong men kneel 
 at the feet of a little child and humble themselves 
 in its presence. 
 
 The spell left me, and I felt as if I had just 
 awakened from a sweet enchantment — a 
 dream — something that was not real, that is, as 
 yet realized; yet it contained a kind of spiritual 
 significance that meant to me a great deal. I 
 went to my home for meditation. I wanted to 
 know the real, but did not know where to find it. 
 Feeling the impress of my mother's early ad- 
 monitions, I sought the advice of the clergy ; but 
 they gave me such a doleful picture of the fall of 
 man and the horrors of the hereafter that my 
 nature revolted, and I fell into the conditions of 
 doubt. That led me out into the field of my own 
 reason and I lapsed into atheism ; but I was not 
 satisfied. I feared it was true, yet I hoped for a 
 better ending than that of " eternal sleep without 
 dreams." 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 3 
 
 I felt that there was a truth somewhere and 
 that someone could impart it to me. I feared to 
 call on the philosophers of old, for they had 
 been called pagans, heathens and worshipers of 
 myths, which poisoned my mind against them. I 
 then went to the Bible to learn of it, and after 
 reading I felt more befogged than ever. I did 
 not understand it. I thought it to be a mixture 
 of imaginations ; a compendium of the laws of 
 ancient times for a peculiar people, with scraps 
 of history interblended with their notions of re- 
 ligion, which did not comport with my ideas of 
 what religion is, or at least should be. 
 
 My conception was that true religion is the 
 moral development of the human soul. It is not 
 measured by any particular cult, form of words, 
 trained actions, or belief; but it is the soothing 
 elevation of man's higher nature that best fits 
 him for the needs of a proper life according to 
 his environment. Thus in India it may be the 
 enjoyment of good religion to pay adoration to 
 Buddah; in China, to the great prophet Con- 
 fucius ; in Hindostan, to Brahma. The Persians 
 may go to the fountain of truth as expounded by 
 Zoroaster ; the Arabs of the desert may be guided 
 by Mahomet; while at the feet of Jesus the mil- 
 lions may see the light and be benefited thereby. 
 If the heart is right, the religion is good for 
 those who profess it. Moreover, it strengthens 
 the mind and enriches the life where reason is the 
 highest oracle of man, as professed by the Free- 
 
4 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 thinkers. The Atheist sees God in the boundless 
 universe, and believes that the culmination of 
 man's duty to man consists in doing right because 
 it is right, and that right living brings its own 
 reward, that " the throne of Honor can only be 
 reached by first going through the temple of 
 Virtue." Religion thrives best in the heart of 
 sincerity, by whatever name you may call it. 
 
 Jesus founded no church, built no temple, wrote 
 no creed ; nor did he establish a worship. But he 
 did, by example, sooth the sorrowing heart, healed 
 the sick, and inculcated the great principles of 
 the brotherhood of man and the Fatherhood of 
 God. He inducted the heart into the bosom of 
 love, where righteousness is king and mercy the 
 queen of the empire of the soul. True religion 
 feels not the pangs of jealousy. It allays fanat- 
 icism and stays the hand that would injure an- 
 other. It is fraternal goodness in the garden of 
 love. 
 
 As a Freethinker, I was led out into the field of 
 Materialism, Atheism, Agnosticism, and, finally. 
 Spiritualism, and I am ever thankful for my 
 schooling along those lines, for my mind has been 
 broadened, my conceptions brightened, and my 
 nature brought more in harmony with my duty 
 toward my fellow men. In my investigations I 
 have learned to adore the memories of the great 
 thinkers, students and advocates of different 
 schools of thought, and I have found in all of 
 them an honesty of purpose that has won my. ad- 
 miration. 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 5 
 
 All men and peoples want to be right and are 
 sincere with themselves on the great questions of 
 life, death, and the hereafter. There is no rea- 
 son why men should deceive themselves on these 
 subjects. All must reap the realities of their 
 lives, whether they know the truth and believe 
 truthfully or not. All individuals came into the 
 world generally alike, but individually different, 
 for no two people are exactly alike; and all must 
 go out generally alike, but individually different, 
 for man is measured according to his life. I find 
 that men differ more in the phraseology and ex- 
 pression of their ideas than they do in the facts 
 themselves. The aims of all men of thought and 
 ability are the same; but some wish to arrive at 
 the goal of their ambition by going one road, 
 while others just as sincere of purpose choose 
 another road. One class is just as honest as the 
 other. 
 
 In studying the Bible we must take into con- 
 sideration the time it was written ; the state of the 
 minds of the people ; their religion, culture, gov- 
 ernment; the necessities for the production of 
 each book, and the objects sought to be obtained. 
 The Bible was not written to conserve one pur- 
 pose alone ; but it was written at different times, 
 by different men, for different purposes. 
 
 The material forming the basis of the com- 
 mencement of the Bible narratives covers events 
 that were two thousand five hundred and fifty 
 years in transpiring. Moses began writing the 
 
6 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 Pentateuch In the year 1451 B. C, and the books 
 were eleven hundred and fifty-four years in being 
 produced. The book of Malachi was written 
 397 years B. C. We need not wonder if we find 
 some inharmony through the work ; for each 
 book was to conserve a certain purpose, according 
 to the needs of the people at the time. The same 
 rule prevails at this day ; what is a good law for 
 one age may be a bad law for another, for the 
 conditions of human society are constantly chang- 
 ing, and as the needs of the people change, the 
 law must change accordingly. 
 
 In writing the life of the Master we must call 
 to our aid the work of society building from the 
 early ages of the Chaldeans, Babylonians, Egypt- 
 ians, and the Israelites, up to the present time, 
 for the philosophy of the New Testament began 
 in those early ages, and has not yet been con- 
 cluded, and never will be concluded until society 
 achieves perfection. In presenting the life of 
 Jesus I shall take into consideration every fact, 
 historical, scientific, and otherwise that has a 
 bearing on the subject. I shall endeavor to be 
 faithful, and will be guided by the dictates of 
 truth in all things. In gathering material for 
 the production of this life of Jesus, I have found 
 it profitable to look into the philosophy, beliefs, 
 and teachings of different classes of people, sects, 
 and denominations of the world, and I have not 
 found my efforts barren of good results ; and I 
 am thankful that I did, for in my investigations 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 7 
 
 among the skeptics of the ages, and of philoso- 
 phers of different cults and schools, I have gained 
 a clearer conception of God and the spiritual 
 mission of Jesus than I could have obtained by 
 studying but one side of the subjects of investiga- 
 tion. One who cannot read both sides of a ques- 
 tion is not fit to judge of either side. 
 
 In my search among the Grecian philosophers 
 I came across the maxims of Thales, the Milesian, 
 who lived about six hundred years before the birth 
 of Christ; these maxims to me seem to be pure 
 reason on the being of God. " God," he said, 
 " is the most ancient of all beings ; he is the author 
 of the universe, which is full of wonders. He 
 is the Mind which brought chaos out of confu- 
 sion into order; he is without beginning and 
 without ending, and nothing is hid from him; 
 nothing can resist the force of fate, but this 
 fate is nothing but the immutable reason and 
 eternal power of Providence." Reasoning on the 
 philosophy of that maxim we must conclude that 
 God is absolute mind. He is intelligence and 
 absolute wisdom ; hence he knows every thing, 
 past, present and future. 
 
 PYTHAGORAS 
 
 Pythagoras, chief of the Italic school, be- 
 came my ideal master, and I devoured his writ- 
 ings, or what there is left of them, with a zest 
 that filled me, for a while, with his learning and 
 methods. In training his pupils he impressed 
 
8 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 upon them the importance of silent meditation 
 and great purity of morals. No one, he taught, 
 could obtain knowledge of divine things unless 
 the heart was purged of all passions and impuri- 
 ties. Of God he says, " God is neither the ob- 
 ject of sense nor subject of passion, but invisi- 
 ble and supremely intelligent. In his body he 
 is like the light, and in his soul he resembles 
 truth. He is the universal spirit that pervades 
 and difFuseth itself over all nature. All beings 
 receive their life from him. There is but one 
 only God, who is not as some are apt to imagine, 
 seated above the world, beyond the orb of the 
 universe; but being all within himself, he seeth 
 all beings that inhabit his immensity. He is the 
 sole principle, the light of heaven, the Father 
 of all. He produces everything, he orders and 
 disposes everything. He is the reason, the life, 
 and the motion of all things." 
 
 Subordinate to God were intelligent beings, 
 manifesting themselves to man in various ways ; 
 among those beings were gods, heroes, and souls. 
 He considered the first class as a part of the 
 sovereign Mind; next were heroes, or ministers, 
 whose office it was to instruct human souls and 
 raise them up to the position of Divine essence. 
 Pythagoras maintained that unity was the prin- 
 ciple of all things, and that from this unity emi- 
 nated all things. He agreed with Thales that 
 the soul is a self-moving principle, and main- 
 tained that when it quits the body it is united 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 9 
 
 to the soul of the world; that it is not a god, 
 but the work of an eternal god, and that it is 
 immortal on account of its principle. 
 
 Regarding the composition of man, Pythag- 
 oras taught that it was composed of three 
 parts : a mortal, gross body, a substance he called 
 " the subtile vehicle of the soul," and pure spirit. 
 He held that the pure spirit and the subtile 
 vehicle were born together and were inseparable, 
 and returned after death " to the star from 
 whence they descended," — a slight difference in 
 wording from St. Paul, but the same ideas. In 
 speaking of the resurrection Paul says, " But 
 some men will say, How are the dead raised up? 
 And with what body do they come? Thou fool, 
 that which thou sowest is not the body which 
 shall be, but bare grain. So also is the resur- 
 rection of the dead; it is sown in corruption, it 
 is raised in incorruption ; it is sown in dishonor, 
 it is raised in glory ; it is sown in weakness, it 
 is raised in power ; it is sown a natural bodj', it 
 is raised a spiritual body. Now this I say, 
 brethren, because flesh and blood cannot enter 
 the kingdom of God." 
 
 SOCRATES 
 
 Socrates also believed and taught that there 
 was but one eternal principle, with inferior gods 
 which he called demons, or middle spirits be- 
 tween the Infinite and the spirit of man. He 
 claimed that he conversed daily with those de- 
 
10 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 mons, that they advised him and always warned 
 him of danger. This was considered heresy 
 among the Greeks, for which he was tried and 
 found guilty and ordered to drink the deadly 
 hemlock, but was offered his liberty and a com- 
 mutation of the sentence if he would retract his 
 doctrines, which he refused to do. Truth was 
 more dear to him than life. 
 
 Xenophon has left us an abridgment of the 
 theolog}^ of that philosopher. Socrates had a 
 friend, Aristodemus, who doubted the existence 
 of God and questioned Socrates on the point. 
 Socrates called the attention of his friend to the 
 beauties and grandeur of nature ; to the different 
 forms of mineral, vegetable, and animal life, as 
 well as to the designs of art and the wisdom of 
 man in producing his handiwork for the use and 
 gratification of the finer senses of the race ; and 
 finall}^ to his own physical, mental, and spiritual 
 make up. 
 
 " Do you believe," said he to Aristodemus, 
 ** can you believe that you are the only intelli- 
 gent being.? You know that you possess but a 
 little particle of that matter which composes the 
 world, a small portion of water that moistens it, 
 a spark of that flame which animates it. Is un- 
 derstanding peculiar to you alone? Have you 
 so engrossed and confined it to yourself that it 
 is to be found no where else.? Does blind chance 
 work everything, and is there no such thing as 
 wisdom besides what you have.? " 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 11 
 
 Aristodemus replied that he did not see that 
 wise architect of the world. 
 
 Socrates, answering, said, " Neither do you 
 see the soul that governs your own body and 
 regulates all its motions. You might as well 
 conclude that you do nothing yourself with de- 
 sign and reason as maintain that everything in 
 the universe is done by blind chance." 
 
 Aristodemus, being unable to answer the ar- 
 guments of Socrates, acknowledged a Supreme 
 Being, but doubted special providence, not being 
 able to comprehend how the Deity can see every- 
 thing at once. 
 
 Socrates replied : " If the spirit that resides 
 in your body moves and disposes it at its 
 pleasure, why should not that sovereign wisdom 
 which presides over the universe be able likewise 
 to regulate and order everything as it pleases? 
 If your eye can see objects at the distance of sev- 
 eral furlongs, why should not the eye of God be 
 able to see everything at once? If your soul 
 can think at the same time upon what is at 
 Athens, in Egypt, and Sicily, why should not 
 the Divine mind be able to take care of every- 
 thing, being everywhere present at his work .'' " 
 Socrates, observing that the infidelity of hici 
 friend arose from his heart rather than in his 
 mind as an honest searcher after trath, concludecl 
 in these words : " O Aristodemus, apply your- 
 self sincerely to worship God ; he will enlighten 
 you, and all your doubts will soon be removed." 
 
12 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 That old philosopher comprehended the way 
 to find out the truths of God long before the 
 Master said, " Seek and ye shall find ; knock and 
 it shall be opened unto you." What a field for 
 contemplation in the foregoing lessons ! The 
 first proposition, that the wisdom displayed in the 
 composition and make up of the universe and 
 the hannony revealed therein, could not come by 
 blind chance, demonstrates that since God sees 
 everything. He is everywhere at His work ; in 
 other words, God is omnipresent ; as the spirit 
 of man is in possession of the body and controls 
 that body at will: so the spirit of God is in 
 everything, as a part of Himself. Who would 
 venture to say that He could not manifest His 
 power in everything, know and see everything, 
 being present in all things.'' 
 
 Democritus, elaborating on the same philos- 
 ophy, maintained, in his atomic theory, that 
 '■ force, intelligence, and wisdom reside in everj' 
 atom of the universe and are manifest in every- 
 thing." Taking up that idea, I was induced 
 some years ago to publish a book " Orthopaedia," 
 in which I elaborated on the subject of " Atomic 
 Intelligence," to which I call the reader's at- 
 tention for more information on the subject 
 than I can give in this connection. 
 
 ARISTOTLE 
 
 Among the great thinkers of the world there 
 was none, even Thales himself, that eclipsed 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 13 
 
 Aristotle in range, variety, and depth of 
 thought. He Hved close to the intelligence of 
 the gods, and perceived fundamental truths con- 
 cerning the occult forces of nature that in some 
 instances have withstood the assaults of time, 
 prejudice, ignorance, and the subtile enemy of 
 progress, superstition. On the being and om- 
 nipotence of God he was most clear and convinc- 
 ing. " God," he maintained, " is the eternal and 
 living Being, the most noble of all beings, a 
 substance entirely distinct from matter, without 
 extension, without division, without parts and 
 without succession ; who understands everything 
 by one single act, and, continuing himself im- 
 movable, gives motion to all things, and enjoys 
 within himself perfect happiness, as knowing and 
 contemplating himself with infinite pleasure." 
 " God is the Supreme Intelligence, which acts 
 with order, proportion, and design, and is the 
 source of all that is good, excellent, and just. 
 That Supreme Mind is by its nature prior to all 
 things ; he has a sovereign dominion over all." 
 And again he says : " The first principle is neither 
 fire, nor earth, nor water, nor anything that is the 
 object of sense; but Spiritual Substance is the 
 cause of the universe, and the source of all 
 the order and all the beauties, as well as all the 
 motions and all the forms we admire so much 
 in it." While Aristotle believed in the eternity 
 of matter, he also believed in the eternity of 
 spirit, which " permeated, controlled, and classi- 
 
14 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 fied matter into the different entities of the uni- 
 verse." 
 
 What a cogent and self-evident conception of 
 God ! He is presented as the Supreme Intelh- 
 gence and Supreme Mind, not as merely possess- 
 ing Supreme Intelligence and Supreme Mind ; 
 that is, God is mind and intelligence, as well as 
 spirit, which are infinite in duration, prior to all 
 things, and comprehend all things. There can 
 be but one Infinite which controls all entities in 
 the universe. Is there a later philosopher who 
 has delved deeper or soared higher.? In fact, we 
 must go to the ancients for a description of 
 God's nature. The Bible does not attempt to 
 demonstrate the reality of God; His being is 
 treated as an evident fact, without the least effort 
 to prove that God is God. 
 
 The ancient Persians erected neither temples, 
 statues, nor altars for the worship of their God. 
 Heroditus, in speaking of them, says : " They 
 think it ridiculous to fancy, like the Greeks, that 
 the gods have any human shape or derive their 
 original from man ; they choose the highest 
 mountain for the place of their sacrifices ; they 
 use neither libations nor music, nor hallowed 
 bread; but when anyone wishes to sacrifice, he 
 leads the victim into a clean place and wearing a 
 wreath of myrtle about his tire, invokes the god 
 to whom he intends to offer it. The priest is 
 not allowed to pray for his own private good, 
 but for that of the nation in general, each par- 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 15 
 
 ticular member finding his benefit in the good of 
 the whole." While the Persians believed in one 
 supreme God, they worshiped fire, the sun and 
 stars, as merely visible images of the one Su- 
 preme God whom they believed to be the sover- 
 eign Lord of nature. 
 
 The religion of Zoroaster defines its concep- 
 tion of God as " the first of all incorruptible be- 
 ings, eternal and unbegotten. He is not com- 
 pounded of parts. There is nothing equal to Him 
 or like Him. He is the author of all good and is 
 entirely disinterested ; the most excellent of all ex- 
 cellent beings, and the wisest of all Intelligent 
 Nature; the father of equity, the parent of 
 good laws, self-instructed, self-sufficient, and the 
 first former of nature." 
 
 The Orphean religion defines God as " the one 
 unknown being above and prior to all beings, 
 the author of all beings, even of the ether. This 
 exalted being is life, light, and wisdom, which 
 three names express only the one power, which 
 draws all beings, visible and invisible, out of 
 nothing." 
 
 According to the Platonic philosophy, there is 
 one Supreme Being, one universal power and 
 mind not dethroned or injured by whatever name 
 may be applied to him. By Jove, Plato meant 
 the Guardian and Governor of the universe, the 
 Understand'mg and the Mind. " The Master 
 and the Architect of this great machine," you 
 are not in the wrong if you call him Fate, for he 
 
16 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 is the cause of causes, and everything depends on 
 him. Should jou call him Providence, you would 
 fall into no mistake, for it is by his wisdom this 
 world is governed. Should you call him Nature, 
 you will not offend, for it is from him that all 
 beings derive their origin, it is by him that they 
 live and breathe. 
 
 David, in a burst of eloquence, soared away 
 on the wings of sublimity, and seasoned the phi- 
 losophy of the pagans in sacred song. 
 
 O Lord thou hast searched me and known me, 
 
 Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising. 
 
 Thou understandeth my thoughts afar off. 
 
 Thou compassest my path and my lying down. 
 
 And art acquainted with all my ways. 
 
 For there is not a word in my tongue 
 
 But, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. 
 
 Thou hast beset me behind and before 
 
 And laid thine hand upon me. 
 
 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; 
 
 It is high, I cannot attain unto it. 
 
 Whither shall I go from thy spirit? 
 
 Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? 
 
 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. 
 
 If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. 
 
 If I take the wings of the morning, 
 
 And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea. 
 
 Even there shall thy hand lead me, 
 
 And thy right hand shall hold me. 
 
 If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me. 
 
 Even the night shall be light about me. 
 
 Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee. 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 17 
 
 But the night shineth as the day. 
 
 The darkness and the light are both alike to thee. 
 
 For thou hast possessed my reins, 
 
 Thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. 
 
 EPICURUS 
 
 Epicurus, a Greek philosopher, was born in 
 the year 342 B. C. and died in the year 270, at 
 the age of 72. When eighteen years old he 
 went to Athens and became a student of Pam- 
 philius. After an absence of five years he re- 
 turned to his home in Calophon. At the age 
 of 30 he came again to Athens and opened a 
 school, which soon became popular, and on the 
 strength of his new philosophy he established a 
 community which was a model of its kind and 
 which left on the thinking world the imprints of 
 a great mind. Epicurus flirted the idea of pro- 
 curing happiness through the emotions of re- 
 ligion, or worship of the gods, contending as a 
 cardinal factor of his philosophy that true and 
 lasting happiness could only be obtained through 
 the exercise of reason. No other school of an- 
 cient times ever obtained such cohesive powers as 
 this one; its advocates seemed wedded to its 
 principles, and soon spread its philosophy all 
 through Greece and Rome as well. Though the 
 organization has disappeared as such, yet its 
 philosophy finds lodgment in the minds of many 
 cultured people even up to this day ; notwith- 
 standing the prevailing attempt to associate the 
 
18 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 name of Epicurianism with that of lascivious- 
 ness, gluttony, and loose physical pleasures. 
 There was nothing more foreign to the tenets of 
 Epicurus than bad morals. As a man, Epicurus 
 was a type of the purest moral rectitude. He 
 taught moderation in eating, and exemplary de- 
 meanor in all other associations of life. 
 
 He taught that according to the physical de- 
 velopment of man, happiness was his highest and 
 greatest aim, which in its purest and most last- 
 ing effects could only be obtained through the 
 practice of temperance, chastity, and a healthy 
 intellectual development. To attain to the state 
 of bliss it was necessary to keep all the passions 
 of the mind in a state of equilibrium. This same 
 doctrine was taught by the Stoics ; yet they 
 waged a relentless social war on the Epicurians, 
 and perhaps it was they who instigated the libel 
 of training the appetites and passions to insub- 
 ordinate indulgences. It was the practice then, 
 as it is now among the low and vulgar of mind, 
 to abuse those whom they cannot answer. 
 
 Epicurus was a voluminous writer; it is said 
 that he wrote over three hundred volumes, though 
 few of his books are extant. What we have 
 learned of him is chiefly from the writings of 
 Cicero, Pliny, and Lucretius. Reason was the 
 guiding oracle of his life, and bliss the daughter 
 only of supreme repose, shorn of all anxious care 
 and perplexities. He impressed on his school 
 the golden opportunities of the present: the past 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 19 
 
 should give us no concern, for it was gone never 
 to return ; the future was ahead, never to bless us 
 with its smiling kiss. 
 
 Reason should be the adviser of every sensuous 
 feeling ; through reason the sensations should be 
 so directed that the best results might ensue. 
 Virtue should be cultivated ,for its benefits 
 by the dictates of reason through charity, peace- 
 fulness of mind, temperance, patience, and self- 
 command. All laws are restraints of natural 
 rights and individual actions imposed through 
 the necessities of society. The highest motive 
 of man to do right is induced from self-interest. 
 In the abstract that is true ; in morals it is wrong. 
 Repose of mind can only be attained through 
 the observance of the laws of nature and the 
 divinity. 
 
 As an expounder of the atomic theory, Epi- 
 curus advanced the idea that matter is composed 
 of atoms which are indivisible and unchangeable; 
 although having gravity and filling space, they 
 are infinite in number, shape, and volume. He 
 regarded the universe both as infinite and as a 
 unit which is unchangeable, for the aggregate of 
 matter remains always the same. The universe 
 cannot be the result of divine action ; if it was, 
 evil could not exist. All things were formed 
 from the atom drifting through space and find- 
 ing proper lodgment in the building up of en- 
 tities and things without a purpose or design. 
 The atoms of fire are pushed upward and form 
 
20 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 the celestial bodies ; the more dense atoms settle 
 into atmosphere; while the heavier are precipi- 
 tated into water and earth. Everything is sim- 
 ply the result of accident: the idea of a divine 
 Creator is but the invention of the human mind. 
 
 His play on metaphysics cumbers up the sub- 
 stances making up the human soul, which he 
 places at four ; one is warmth, one air, one breath, 
 and one an unknown substance. The three first 
 are distributed through the whole of the body: 
 the fourth has its seat in the pectorial cavity, 
 and this he denominates the soul of the soul. 
 The soul is not immortal, but dies with the body. 
 Death should not be reckoned an evil, because on 
 its visitation all consciousness is annihilated, and 
 eternal repose, without troubles or dreams, is the 
 common lot of man ! 
 
 The only real standard of truth is knowledge 
 instructed through the action of the senses. The 
 gods are living beings possessing human shape, 
 but of colossal proportions. They are immortal 
 and live in eternal bliss, in the sublime enjoyment 
 of wisdom and virtue, without concern for the 
 affairs of man. Their home is in the spaces be- 
 tween the celestial bodies.' 
 
 DEMOCRITUS 
 
 In looking back over the list of great thinkers 
 during the philosophic age of Greece and Rome, 
 none strikes us with more force than that of 
 Democritus. His wonderful range of thought 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 21 
 
 embraced an astonishing number of subjects on 
 which he wrote treatises, but unfortunately for 
 the world, the most of them are only known from 
 the list of titles that survived the hands of the 
 spoiler. He wrote treatises on physics, geome- 
 try, arithmetic, astronomy, optics, geography, 
 zoology, botany, medicine, music, grammar, his- 
 tory, poetry and ethics, besides his great crown- 
 ing thesis on his Atomic Theory and its appli- 
 cation to cosmology and physics, which work is 
 also in the hidden womb of time, and we can ar- 
 rive at what he had to say on these subjects only 
 from references gleaned from other writers and 
 critics. Dionysius places the name of Democri- 
 tus first, in classifying the great minds of a few 
 centuries before Christ, in which lived and wrote 
 the flowing genius of that philosophical age, 
 which yet adorns the human intellect, and in- 
 structs the thought of investigating minds. 
 
 To his atomic theory only will space be given 
 here. He advanced the idea that the atom was 
 the basis of all things ; that the atom and its 
 derivatives comprehend the whole of nature and 
 compose every element in the compound of the 
 universe; that in the deific idea of the existence 
 of gods, demons, and souls, they were but the 
 creatures of thought excited through the mani- 
 festations of nature and woven into individual- 
 izations by imaginative poets and dreamers, 
 though he did not deny that divinations, dreams, 
 prophesies, and warnings of approaching events 
 
22 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 were ofttimes impressed on the mind, principly 
 during sleep. 
 
 In his atomic theory he classified all the de- 
 grees of human intelligence, sensations, and 
 thought as atomic materialities, produced from 
 atomic impressions from without. The thought 
 impressions that are manifest in the mind are de- 
 termined by mental effluvia of atomic structure; 
 they form images in the mind, the seat of which 
 is the brain, and those images find expression 
 in thoughts communicated from person to person 
 through the power of speech. God was nothing 
 in his system ; there was naught but atomic ma- 
 teriality. Death destroyed the structure of all 
 things, and at that climax dissolution took place, 
 the atoms being resolved back to their original 
 properties and activities. 
 
 ANAXAGORAS 
 
 Anaxagoras was an Ionian, who was bom 
 600 B. C. and died 428 B. C. He rejected 
 wealth and honors that he might devote his life 
 to meditation and philosophy. During his early 
 studies, in order to have more advantages than 
 he could in his native town, he went to Athens, 
 where he lived in close intimacy with Pericles. 
 It was very fortunate that he did so, because for 
 his new and scientific ideas he aroused the ire of 
 some of the priests of Greece, which led to his 
 arrest on a charge of impiety. He was con- 
 demned to die, for the accusation of straying 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 23 
 
 from the dogmas of the priesthood in those days 
 was equivalent to condemnation and death; but 
 he was saved this extreme penalty through the 
 influence of Pericles, and received a sentence of 
 banishment instead. He retired to Lampsacus, 
 where he soon afterwards died in abject pov- 
 erty. 
 
 Anaxagoras was supposed to be the first among 
 the Greeks who conceived the idea of God as a 
 Divine Mind acting upon matter with conscious 
 intelligence and design. He denied the preva- 
 lent idea that the sun was a deity, but claimed 
 that it was an inanimate, fiery mass and, there- 
 fore, not a proper object of worship. He as- 
 serted that the miraculous appearances were 
 nothing more than the manifestations of nature 
 and could be explained by natural laws. He 
 made many discoveries in both mathematics and 
 astronomy. He suggested that the moon emitted 
 her light by reflection from the rays of the sun, 
 and he rightly explained solar and lunar eclipses. 
 
 These assertions brought him into great 
 danger. The people whom he would enlighten 
 would not allow him to stand between them and 
 their conception that the sun was a god to which 
 they should pay adoration. 
 
 On one occasion, an Athenian priest having 
 predicted disasters to the state from the appear- 
 ance of a ram with a single horn, he opened the 
 head of the animal and showed the peculiar struc- 
 ture which prevented the growth of the other 
 
24 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 horn. He exposed the myths of Homer and ex- 
 plained the names of the gods by allegory. 
 
 For those teachings he was condemned to die. 
 When informed of the sentence he said that was 
 nothing new, that nature had passed that penalty 
 on him before he was born. When he was asked 
 what should be done with his remains after the 
 execution, he replied : " It makes no difference 
 to me; the road on the other side of the grave 
 is just as long from one place as from another." 
 
 What a curse dogmatism, in religion has been 
 to the world! All the sciences have come up 
 through religious opposition. I do not wish to 
 be understood as applying these innuendoes to 
 the true elevation of religious devotion, for true 
 religion is clear of such charges. The charges 
 rest against man-made dogmas, which have been 
 enemies to all kinds of progress from time im- 
 memorial. 
 
 THE STOIC PHILOSOPHY 
 
 The Stoic philosophy was builded on the es- 
 thetic beauty of mind-culture. It regarded the 
 highest culture of man to be the proper devel- 
 opment of his reason, through which true happi- 
 ness alone can be obtained. On that theory it 
 sought to construct society. It wove around the 
 soul of humanity the purest imagination, and 
 with it soared away to the region of elevated 
 thought and associated the imagery of man with 
 Divine conceptions clothed in flesh. It sought 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 25 
 
 to deal with the nature of man as he should be 
 rather than as he was, and upon that plane it 
 builded its philosophy and science of life. 
 
 The Epicureans considered man as a sensuous 
 being, and treated him as a flesh-bom creature 
 endowed with a mind, but moved by emotions, 
 passions, energy, self-interest, and human will 
 subject to misrule and wrong actions impelled 
 by his nature. Viewing him thus, it sought to 
 better his conditions through the culture of his 
 faculties associated with his senses. In other 
 words, the one philosophy dealt with man in an 
 esthetic manner; the other in a sensuous manner. 
 
 The Stoic and Christian philosophies of life 
 are so nearly alike that, metaphorically speaking, 
 we might call them brother and sister in aim and 
 thought. Saint Jerome, in his enthusiastic 
 admiration of their likeness, exclaimed, " Stoici 
 nostra dogmati in plerisque cam;orat." Seneca, 
 the great Stoic moralist, was called en pene 
 noster. Montesquieu said, " If I could for one 
 moment forget that I was a Christian, I would 
 not hesitate to account the extinction of the 
 Stoic cult among the misfortunes of mankind." 
 While Stoicism advocates a high culture, per- 
 haps too esthetic for common application, yet 
 we must keep in mind the old adage, " When you 
 let fly the arrow, aim at the moon; you will not 
 hit the moon, but it will fly higher than if your 
 aim was on a level." The moral is, keep in mind 
 the highest culture. Did we not daily strive to 
 
26 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 keep in mind a higher manhood, the race would 
 relapse into barbarism and we would be contend- 
 ing with wild beasts for the mastery of caves to 
 dwell in. 
 
 The name Stoic was derived from the school 
 of Zeno, founded by him in Athens, from his 
 practice of giving his instructions in an open 
 porch or colonnade ; hence " stoic " means porch. 
 Zeno, the founder of this school, was born at 
 Citim, in the isle of Cyprus, about the year 362 
 B. C, and died about 264 B. C. He started in 
 life as a merchant, in partnership with his father, 
 but having suffered great losses from the de- 
 struction of a cargo of goods by sliipwreck, he 
 quit his business as a merchant, and going to 
 Athens opened up his school, and remained at its 
 head for fifty-eight years, dying at the advanced 
 age of 98. He enjoyed the respect and esteem 
 of the citizens of Athens for his austerity of life 
 and boldness of language. Through his watch- 
 ful care over the morals of the youths and his 
 instruction to them in the principles of wisdom 
 and virtue, giving his own life as an example, 
 he deserved so well of the republic that at his 
 death he was awarded a crown of gold. 
 
 According to the theory of Zeno, before there 
 was a heaven or earth there was a universal sub- 
 stance or pneuma: this comprehended everything, 
 even the elements of God. By an action of the 
 pneuma a refining process took place, and out of 
 the essence of being emerged a deific force named 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 27 
 
 God, which embraced, assimilated, and compre- 
 hended everything. To the question, " What is 
 God," the answer came back, " What is God 
 not? " The original state of God, pneuma, and 
 the world were indentical. 
 
 Pneuma is the vital spirit of everything. It 
 is pure reason. It is eternal, the embodiment of 
 the all of the universe ; while the soul, being in- 
 dividualized in man, is mortal if corrupted by sin 
 in this stage of existence. If the man lived a 
 pure and upright life here, at death he goes to 
 the regions of Elesia, and is finally blended into 
 the pneuma of the universe, in which he is swal- 
 lowed up and becomes as God in wisdom and bliss. 
 
 It was the teaching of the Stoics that from the 
 soul arises all our sensations, mind-forces, will- 
 power, reason, and judgment ; that the physical 
 body moves as the soul thinks or reasons ; that 
 the soul fills the entire body of man, guiding and 
 pressing him on, moulding and giving him char- 
 acter as a rational being. Like unto man, the 
 soul of God penetrates the earth and controls it. 
 The soul of the universe is a mode of the activity 
 of God and is of His being. 
 
 Pleasure and the motives that move man to 
 their enjoyment are founded, according to the 
 Stoic teachings, in self-preservation. Epicurus 
 taught that the motive law of pleasure is the in- 
 structive activities of the physical senses. Accord- 
 ing to Zeno, the activities of pleasure lead to de- 
 cay and death, as the bloom of the flower por- 
 
28 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 tends withering and decay. Zeno endeavored to 
 impress on his students the importance of living 
 according to nature. The perfection of any- 
 thing is called its virtue; the virtue of man is 
 the perfection of his soul. 
 
 Zeno, in his ideal republic, advanced the theory 
 that exclusive family government should not ex- 
 ist. There should be neither law, courts, schools, 
 temples, money, nor individual holdings, but all 
 should be merged into one common good. There 
 should be no difference between a Greek or a bar- 
 barian, bond or free, male or female, but all 
 should be recognized as equal and share equal 
 benefits and bear equally the burdens. There 
 should be neither rich nor poor among the mem- 
 bers of society. There ought to be but one law, 
 and that law should be the law of God which 
 he had evolved from himself. 
 
 ANAXIMANDER 
 
 Passing from the high ideals of God and 
 esthetic morality, we come to another class of 
 thinkers whose conclusions and philosophies are 
 entirely different from those just considered. 
 We first meet an old Grecian, Anaximander, who 
 was bom in 611 B. C. He believed that the 
 universe was at first an unlimited mass of matter, 
 of extremely small particles, eternal in duration, 
 subject neither to old age nor to decay. From 
 this mass of matter a series of beings were con- 
 tinually issuing, which were supplied and fed 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 29 
 
 with fresh incoming matter. This vast mass 
 seemed to possess energy and intelHgence. It em- 
 braced everything and directed the movements of 
 all things. Out of this limitless mass sprang a 
 central mass, this earth of ours, which was cylin- 
 drical in shape and poised equidistant from sur- 
 rounding orbs of fire which had originally clung 
 to the earth-mass like bark round a tree until they 
 parted into several wheel-shaped and fire-filled 
 bubbles of air. Man and animals sprang into 
 existence from this central earth-mass ; first came 
 animals, and from certain species of animals 
 sprang man, or perhaps from the water. This 
 endless mass was the prime cause of motion and 
 separate existence and individual forms. In due 
 time all individual forms and existences would 
 die, and the earth itself would disappear and go 
 back into its former condition in the mass of mat- 
 ter whence it came. Death and decay were 
 caused from some sin, the penalty of which was 
 a return to the immensity of matter out of which 
 all things had emerged. He held that matter 
 created every entity in existence, or, in other 
 words, that matter was God, outside of which 
 there was nothing. 
 
 CARNEADES 
 
 Cameades, a Greek, left his impression on hu- 
 manity through ideas gathered from physical ob- 
 servations of natural objects, which still impress 
 uncultured minds in spiritual philosophy to a 
 
30 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 considerable extent, but his teachings gave rise 
 to no school or society. Many ask, like Car- 
 neades, if God is all-powerful, good, and wise, 
 why he permits so much misery, strife, contention, 
 crime, and sin to exist. Carneades was bom 
 about the year 213 B. C. and died about 129 
 B. C. 
 
 He was the most powerful of the ancient skep- 
 tics. He seemed not to believe in the truth of 
 anything, " Experience," he averred, " clearly 
 shows that there are no true impressions ; that 
 every impression on the human organism, whether 
 mental, physical, or moral, was subject to con- 
 ditions and uncertainties. He saw no motive in 
 nature : everything was chance, produced by force 
 without motive. There is no criterion of truth, 
 no certainty in anything that could be relied 
 upon as stable. Everything is in a state of 
 change: what is to-day is not to-morrow. 
 
 In pointing to the evils that befall man, he 
 asserted that they were in evidence against the 
 existence of a divine, superintending Providence ; 
 that the world is but the product of natural 
 forces and that there is no proof to the con- 
 trary ; that matter and its forces produce every- 
 thing ; that the idea of God is but a figment of 
 the mind ; that things are a sequence of natural 
 forces, because they have to be as a necessity of 
 natural combinations of matter. Virtue is a 
 natural attribute of nature, since, being relative, 
 it cannot be an attribute of God ; for what is 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 31 
 
 virtuous in one place and among some people is 
 considered an evil in another place and among 
 other people. There is no such thing as abso- 
 lute intelligence embodied in a divine Being; 
 what there is in nature is produced through the 
 force of conditions. 
 
 LUCRETIUS 
 
 Among great atheistic advocates of ancient 
 times, Lucretius, a Roman philosopher and poet, 
 stands at the head. He was a great thinker and 
 was possessed of such wonderful powers of 
 language and description that if one is not con- 
 vinced by his logic he is charmed by his man- 
 ner. Lucretius was born about the year 95 B. C. 
 and died by his own hand at the age of 44. He 
 was the greatest of the didactic poets, and left 
 to the world, as an inheritance of sublime 
 thought clothed in the purest diction, six books 
 of a poem entitled "The Nature Of Things." 
 While the subjects treated in this poem are dry 
 to the general reader, his linguistic ability has 
 lent his writings a charm that is both fascinating 
 and instructive. Although we may not believe 
 in his philosophy, we cannot but be interested in 
 his presentation of the state of philosophy and 
 scientific learning of those times, for no other 
 writer has more fully explained the metaphysics, 
 cosmology and science of that day. 
 
 Lucretius was a profound thinker, and was 
 most sincere in his belief. He succeeded at least 
 
S2 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 in convincing himself of the truth of his phil- 
 osophy and, in fact, many of his ideas have ad- 
 hered to the minds of men even to this day, es- 
 pecially the dregs of his central idea of God, life, 
 death, and the future state. The basic prin- 
 ciples of the atomic theory advocated by Epi- 
 curus, and later by Democritus, were embraced 
 by Lucretius. Matter is the all-creative force of 
 the universe, in contradistinction to the Stoic 
 philosophy, which places all power, intelligence, 
 wisdom, and dominion over nature in a Universal 
 Spiritual Mind. Lucretius, through the medium 
 of a high order of poetry, taught the doctrine 
 that there are but two infinities, — one that of 
 atoms, and the other that of a void. He taught 
 that matter had, in its potentiality, every nec- 
 essary element of combining itself into all the 
 different entities, powers, and forces with which 
 the universe is pregnant. 
 
 Matter, he advocated, is composed of atoms 
 infinite in number, shapes and densities. By 
 their nature they are always in motion, and 
 through their restless, mobile powers they have 
 fitted themselves into the building of all the dif- 
 ferent things of earth and heaven. His novel 
 theory may be summarized in this way: those 
 infinitesimal atoms fill the entire void of nature, 
 and are eternally in the struggle for places in 
 the building up of entities, substances and forces ; 
 by their different shapes and densities they are 
 enabled to build everything that is in existence; 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 33 
 
 in their atomic struggle for place, if an atom 
 gets into a wrong place it is crowded out and on 
 until it finds its proper place ; every atom must 
 fit where it properly belongs, on the same prin- 
 ciple that the architect of a building or structure 
 has a stone for each particular place in the edi- 
 fice, and if a wrong stone is brought it is pushed 
 aside and the proper one found to fill the void. 
 Thus, by an eternal struggle of things, through 
 the force of their own natures, they produced 
 all things from necessity and not from an intelli- 
 gent adaptation or guidance of a supreme power. 
 
 Lucretius argued against the proposition of 
 the meddling of the gods in the concerns of the 
 world, for the reason, he maintained, that the 
 gods were like unto men, but much larger; that 
 they inhabited the interstellar spaces between the 
 orbs of heaven ; that their happiness consisted in 
 absolute rest and inactivity, and, therefore, they 
 would not have their halcyon joys disturbed by 
 engaging in the perplexities of world-making; 
 and again, there are so many defects in nature 
 that the gods in their wisdom would have rem- 
 edied them and turned the world off without any 
 incongruities. Had the gods been the architects 
 of the world, there would not have been any such 
 a thing as evil; everything would have been so 
 constructed that absolute harmony would be the 
 dominant factor of nature. 
 
 " I am ready to affirm," he says, " led by many 
 other circumstances, to maintain that the nature 
 
84 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 of the world has by no means been made for 
 us by divine power. If you would keep in mind 
 and observe nature to be free and clear of her 
 haughty lords, you would comprehend her doing 
 all things without the intermeddling of the gods ; 
 for I appeal to the holy breast of the gods, who 
 in tranquil peace pass their time and unruffled 
 existence: Who can control the sum of nature? 
 Who can hold in his hands the strong reins of 
 the immeasurable deep? Who can make at once 
 all the different heavens roll, and warm with 
 ethereal fires all the fruitful earth, or be present 
 in all places at all times, to bring darkness with 
 clouds and shake with noise heaven's serene ex- 
 panse, hurl bolts of lightning, and often throw 
 down his own temples, spend his rage in practic- 
 ing bolts, which often pass the guilty and strike 
 dead the innocent and unoffending? Did the 
 gods rule, sickness, sorrow, heart-aches, and dis- 
 ease would have been supplanted by health, joy, 
 and happiness." 
 
 From nothing, he declared, nothing could be 
 produced, and when a thing was once produced 
 the elements out of which if was constructed 
 could not be destroyed. Nature is self-repro- 
 ducing; when a thing dies, something else takes 
 its place. Nothing can be produced except on 
 the death of some other thing; thus life and 
 death are eternally taking from and supplying 
 each other from their own forces, and not from 
 any outside powers or intelligences. He asserted 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 35 
 
 that it was fallacious to assert that God is the 
 sum of all, or can be in all places and conditions 
 at the same time. 
 
 The writings of Lucretius are especially inter- 
 esting in showing the state of mental culture 
 at his day. It reveals a very strong mentality 
 among the philosophers endowed with original 
 thought, for they had no guidance but that of 
 reason, and they could but reason from physical 
 causes to problematic effects, while we have the 
 wisdom of the entire past to draw from. There 
 had been a glimmering of thought sent out that 
 the earth was inhabited on both sides, that it was 
 swimming in the atmosphere, and that the sun, 
 moon, and stars went around the earth producing 
 night on one side and day on the other at the 
 same time. This theory Lucretius condemned in 
 the strongest terms. 
 
 " The sun and moon," he said, " are no larger 
 than they seem to our sight ; they are controlled 
 in their circuit around our world by a current 
 of air. The shifting of the air causes the shift- 
 ing and changing of the courses and motions of 
 the planets. The air pushes the sun and moon 
 around and under the earth. The idea is pre- 
 posterous that people live on the under side of 
 the earth ; they would be standing on their heads, 
 and of course topple over. There is no outside 
 or inside to the universe: all is the center there- 
 of. IMatter pressing on matter has the effect of 
 holding all things in their places." 
 
36 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 Lucretius maintains most strongly that the 
 mind of man and the soul are mortal and die with 
 the body. " I would say," he says, " that the 
 mind, which we often call our understanding, in 
 which dwell the directing and governing princi- 
 ples of life, is no less a part of the man than 
 his hand and foot, and is a part of the whole 
 living creature. I assert that the mind and the 
 soul are kept together in close union and are 
 made up of the same nature, but that directing 
 principle which we call mind is in the head, so 
 to speak, and reigns paramount in the whole 
 body. It has a fixed seat in the middle of the 
 breast ; here throbs fear and apprehension, sooth- 
 ing joys, and the emotions of the soul. When 
 the mind is excited by some vehement apprehen- 
 sion, we see the whole soul feel in unison through 
 all the limbs ; sweats and paleness spread over the 
 whole body, the tongue falters, the voice dies 
 away, a mist covers the eyes, the ears tingle, and 
 the limbs sink under one ; in short, we often see 
 men drop down through terror of mind. This 
 same principle teaches us that the nature of mind 
 and soul are bodily. Now mark me, that you 
 may know that the mind and souls of living crea- 
 tures have birth and are mortal." 
 
 Lucretius believed that both mind and soul are 
 substances, of fine qualities. " When I choose to 
 speak of the soul," he says, " showing it to be 
 mortal, believe that I speak of the mind as 
 well, inasmuch as both make up one thing and 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 37 
 
 are one united substance." Lucretius regarded 
 death, soothed with an unwaking sleep, as far 
 preferable to a continued life after death. He 
 brings us the ancient conception of punishment 
 after death, with its horrors which eternal sleep 
 alone could escape. Tityus laid in Acheron with 
 birds eating the vitals, never exhausted, never 
 ceasing, always replenishing the torn flesh sev- 
 ered by beak and claw ; Tantalus forever rolling 
 up the hill the pressing rock, forever falling, 
 forever falling back upon him again ; Sisyphus 
 yearning for power, to strive and to fail etern- 
 ally ; hunger, gnawing hunger, cramping the 
 vitals, with sweet, rich viands always in reach, 
 but never to be obtained, — these were pictures 
 of the horrors of the dead that made his philos- 
 ophy of death far preferable to a continued ex- 
 istence. 
 
 Under certain circumstances Lucretius advo- 
 cated suicide, and the force of his thoughts on 
 this subject was doubtless the cause of his death. 
 At the early age of forty-four years, he severed 
 the thread of life by taking a love philtre, as 
 it is said, which dethroned his reason and put 
 out his light. " If the nature of things could 
 have the power of speech," he said, " your ears 
 would be regaled with the wisdom of expediency. 
 What hast thou, O mortal, so much at heart that 
 thou goeth such lengths in sickly sorrow.-^ Why 
 bemoan and bewail death.'* Why not, then, take 
 thy departure like a guest filled with life and with 
 
38 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 resignation? Thou fool, enter upon untold rest. 
 Why seek to make additions to what is wasted per- 
 versely in its turn and lost utterly without avail? 
 Why not rather make an end of life and travail ? " 
 He did it ; he reaped the fruits of his philosophy 
 and of his disappointment on uncovering his eyes 
 and viewing eternity hovering over a suicide, a 
 self-murderer gasping in his own guilt, with no 
 one to forgive. 
 
 JUSTIN MARTYR 
 
 We now turn to the Christian fathers, among 
 the first of whom was Justin Martyr. The birth 
 of Justin Martyr is variously estimated at A. D. 
 89, 103, 114, and 118. In his youth he studied 
 the Greek philosophy. He was a great lover 
 of truth. He followed the dictates of his bet- 
 ter judgment wherever it might lead him, re- 
 gardless of results. That love of truth led 
 him into many beliefs. First he was a Stoic, 
 then a peripatetic, and, finally, a Platonist. 
 While meditating by the seaside on the Platonic 
 doctrine of ideas, an old man of meek and vener- 
 able aspect impressed on his mind that although 
 Plato was the most illustrious of all the heathen 
 philosophers, he was ignorant of many things, 
 and recommended to him the beauties of the 
 Hebrew Prophets. This attracted his attention 
 to the philosophy of the Master, and the result 
 was he became a Christian. After that he 
 refused to sacrifice to the heathen gods. This 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 39 
 
 so enraged Marcus Aurelius that he caused his 
 arrest and trial for heresy. He was convicted, 
 as a matter of course, and executed on the very 
 day of his conviction. 
 
 Justin Martyr was one of the first exponents 
 of the " New Religion," but it is quite difficult 
 to determine, at this late day, what Gospels he 
 used in his comments. It is quite evident that 
 he did not use any of the Synoptic Gospels, for 
 he does not refer to them either in his two 
 " Apologies," or his " Dialogue with Trypho" ; 
 but he very frequently referred to the " Memoirs 
 of the Gospels." It is evident that at that time 
 there were writings relating to the life of Jesus 
 other than what we have now. Another signifi- 
 cant fact is that his quotations in many instances 
 diff'ered from the Synoptic Gospels. 
 
 Justin Martyr, living in the atmosphere of 
 the early Gospels and believing in them, gave ut- 
 terance to sayings which, with those of other 
 great thinkers of the time, have ripened and are 
 still ripening into spiritual enlightenment for the 
 race. He was among the first who tried to 
 reconcile philosophy and Christianity. He be- 
 lieved in a future life and confidently expected to 
 share a blessed immortality. 
 
 ORIGEN 
 
 The most learned of the Christian fathers was 
 Origen, who was bom about the year A. D. 185 
 and died A. D. 254. He laid down the rules 
 
40 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 of the science of the church. There Is a philos- 
 ophy attending everything; everything that ex- 
 ists is governed by laws peculiar to its manifes- 
 tation. A thing, thought, or action cannot be, 
 unless it manifests itself according to its nature. 
 So there is a science of the church, or a church- 
 science which harmonizes, or attempts to har- 
 monize, man with the being and essence of God. 
 Origen labored to make manifest this har- 
 mony. He was the founder of Christian the- 
 ology. He did not attempt the strained idea 
 that the Christian religion was entirely new in 
 its conceptions ; he was wise enough to compre- 
 hend the fact that while there are new presenta- 
 tions of truths, the truths based on principles are 
 eternal factors of nature, and are taught over 
 and over again by different philosophers, differ- 
 ent nations, and different ages. What one age 
 forgets another revives. Origen believed in 
 sacred oracles, that is, in the guidance and com- 
 mands of God to man, under certain conditions. 
 With that truth he maintained that the sacred 
 oracles of the Christian's God embraced all the 
 ideals of antiquity. In his exegesis of the scrip- 
 tures he compared the teachings of the Christians 
 with that of Plato, Aristotle, Numenius, and cor- 
 roborated all the Christian dogmas by them. 
 
 EUSEBIUS C^SARA 
 
 Eusebius Csesara was the most voluminous 
 writer among the Christian fathers ; it is said he 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 41 
 
 wrote no less than six thousand books. If the 
 number approximates the truth, the size of the 
 volumes must have been exceedingly small; how- 
 ever it may be, he is accredited as a standard 
 authority among all Christian nations. He was 
 bom about the year 270 A. D. He held the 
 confidence of Saint Augustine, and had the dis- 
 tinguished honor of a seat on the right hand of 
 the emperor during the sitting of the council 
 of Nice. It was he who drew up the Nicene 
 creed, which was accepted, with some additions, 
 by that council. He was a warm friend of 
 Arius, and did what he could, though in vain, to 
 harmonize the opinions of the Arian sect of 
 Christians with that of the Alexandrians. 
 
 Eusebius maintained that the law of Moses had 
 only a local character and was not intended for a 
 universal religion, and gave examples in proof of 
 his opinion, reciting the 34th chapter of Exodus 
 and especially the 23rd verse : " Thrice in the 
 year shall all your men children appear before 
 the Lord God, the God of Israel." He agreed 
 with the old pagan philosophers as to the being 
 of God, who, he says, " is the primal substance, 
 exalted in his supreme essence above all plurality. 
 He is a Being absolutely." 
 
 JEROME 
 
 Jerome is, next to Origen, the most learned 
 student of the Bible among the Latin ecclesi- 
 astical writers. He was the only one of the 
 
42 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 Christian scholars, previous to modem times, able 
 to read the Bible in the original Hebrew. He is 
 supposed to have been born A. D. 337 and died 
 about 420. He was a native of Bornia Stridon 
 Dalmatia. He led the life of a hermit in a 
 Syrian desert. In studying the Bible he em- 
 ployed symbolisms, allegories, and mysticisms. 
 He held that there are secret meanings to divine 
 things in the Bible that can only be understood 
 by those learned in them, and that they are not 
 intended for the masses or unlearned, — in other 
 words, that the Bible is but a ritual interwoven 
 with historical incidents, in which the deepest 
 science of life and knowledge of God are found. 
 Philo, the great Jewish historian, maintains the 
 same opinion. 
 
 CLEMENT 
 
 Clement was one of the Christian fathers, a 
 contemporary worker with Paul. He was not 
 only a great writer but a great thinker as well. 
 He regarded Christianity as a philosophy start- 
 ing back in the pagan ages of the world, and 
 gradually growing up to the final culmination of 
 truth manifested in the life and teaching of 
 Jesus. It was the laudable aim of the ancient 
 philosophers to attain to a higher, holier, and 
 more perfect life, which was also the aim of 
 Christianity, with this difference: the Greek 
 philosophers had onl^^ glimpses of truth, only a 
 conception of Divine perfection, while absolute 
 
ANCIENT LEARNING 43 
 
 and perfect spiritual truth was revealed in 
 Christ. 
 
 Clement taught that the care of God was not 
 confined to the Hebrews alone, but that all the 
 stages of man's development, from the earliest 
 up, led to the full revelation of God's will. The 
 worship of the heavenly bodies, he maintained, 
 was necessary to raise the minds of men to the 
 sublime contemplation and adoration of the Cre- 
 ator. He held the Hebrew Scriptures in high 
 esteem. Plato's best thoughts, he said, were 
 taken from the Hebrew prophets. He taught 
 that Jesus was logos and absolute reason. 
 
 Clement believed in a personal God, apart from 
 the universe, and that the reason of God cul- 
 minated in the personal son, Jesus. His theory 
 of salvation was that it began with faith, passed 
 from faith into love, and ended in full and com- 
 plete knowledge. He believed in the eternal ex- 
 istence of Christ, that He instructed men before 
 He came into the world as a physical being, and 
 that heathenism was used as an instrument to lead 
 men into a higher conception of the Divine. 
 
 It is supposed that Clement is the same man 
 whom Paul mentions in the fourth chapter of his 
 Epistles to the Philippians : " And I entreat 
 thee also, true yoke-fellow, help these women 
 which labored with me in the gospel, with 
 Clement also, and with other my fellow laborers, 
 whose names are in the book of life." 
 
II 
 
 BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 
 
 There is a growing tendency among the people 
 of this age to relegate the Bible to the rubbish- 
 basket of literature, and to esteem it only a relic 
 of ignorant ages and unworthy of the credence 
 heretofore given it. Where it was once held and 
 reverenced as a sacred volume containing the 
 word and will of God, it is now criticized by the 
 skeptic and unhallowed by a large body of the 
 people. Ministers give tacit coloring to these 
 views through their inability to reconcile its con- 
 tents with the known truths of to-day, and if this 
 tendency is not averted reverence for the Bible 
 among the people will be lost. 
 
 I have been a student of the Bible for many 
 years, as well as a student of theolog}', a free- 
 thought investigator, a skeptic, an atheist, a dis- 
 believer, but living always with the one prayer 
 in my soul, " Give me Light and give me Knowl- 
 edge." With that prayer in my heart, with 
 honesty of purpose in my soul, my mind has been 
 opened to this one thought, and as I once asked 
 the thinking world to take the Bible from the 
 family altar, keep it from the schools, deny it a 
 place in polite literature, hurl it back as a libel 
 
 44< 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 45 
 
 on the intelligence of God, now my admonition is : 
 Seek to understand the Bible, — and when you 
 do you will cherish and love it. 
 
 The great hindrance to a general acceptance 
 of the Bible is owing to two facts: Christian 
 people claim too much for it, and the skeptics too 
 little. Neither understands it, nor presents it to 
 the minds of the people in its true light. It was 
 written for an entirely different purpose from 
 that which has been explained to the people since 
 the days of the Apostles. 
 
 The people of the world are only half edu- 
 cated. They are only half born, and have only 
 half lived for two thousand years. They have 
 lived and been educated only in the physical, 
 never dreaming that underneath the physical sci- 
 ences of this world lies a deeper and grander 
 science, of which they are as ignorant as were 
 the masses of humanity of physical science dur- 
 ing the thousand years of midnight darkness 
 commencing with Constantine. 
 
 There is a psychic science as well as a physical 
 science of life. The Bible does not pretend to 
 treat of physical sciences, but it does treat of the 
 psychic science of life, and when we understand 
 its spiritual teaching we will learn to appreciate 
 and love it. The advocates of the Bible have 
 endeavored for two thousand years to enforce a 
 belief in their interpretation of it which stulti- 
 fied the dictates of common sense ; hence, infidelity 
 has been rife among the people for all that time. 
 
46 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 which nothing, even imprisonment, fagot, and 
 flame, could suppress. 
 
 Jesus was the expression of the Divine Will, 
 and in tracing that Will we go back to the cradle 
 of our civilization and learning among the Chal- 
 deans. The word Chaldea was first applied as 
 a title to learned men congregated in and about 
 Ninevah. They studiously applied themselves to 
 the development of the truths of nature among 
 the people, the science of civil government and 
 society. They were great astronomers, astrolo- 
 gists, and mathematicians. They calculated the 
 length of the sidereal year and reckoned it to 
 embrace three hundred and sixty-five days and 
 six hours, while the true time, as now under- 
 stood, is only nine minutes and ten seconds longer 
 than the Chaldean time. 
 
 They mapped out the twelve constellations of 
 the stars known as the signs of the Zodiac, and 
 named them according to their apparent or sup- 
 posed influence on the lives of men, on their 
 physical and intellectual endowments, and on 
 vegetation and climatic conditions. Thus the 
 cluster of stars through which the sun seemed to 
 pass in spring was called Aries, or the Ram. 
 Leo, the Lion, was considered symbolical of 
 the strong rays of the midsummer sun ; Scorpio, 
 the Scorpion, of the unhealthy autumn, and 
 so on. 
 
 The investigation of the influences of these 
 signs gave rise to the science of Astrolog}^, the 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 47 
 
 true import of which is lost to us, and hence we 
 call it pseudo-science, or false conceptions of the 
 ancients concerning the influence of the stars on 
 our earth, which might, after all, be of greater 
 concern than we at present imagine. They had 
 a true conception of the solar and lunar eclipses. 
 Callisthenes, a Grecian scholar, who accompanied 
 Alexander in one of his expeditions into the val- 
 ley of the Euphrates, sent from Babylon a series 
 of astronomical tables found at Babylon that date 
 back two thousand and thirty-four years before 
 the birth of Christ and over four hundred years 
 before the birth of Abraham. From those ta- 
 bles and their cuneiform records it is ascertained 
 that they have the regular eclipses of the moon 
 accurately placed at 18 years and 11 days, 223 
 lunar months, at the expiration of which time the 
 moon again enters upon its former path in the 
 heavens, in consequence of which the same 
 eclipses are repeated. They computed the 
 synodic and periodic months so accurately that 
 modern astronomers find a variance of only five 
 seconds of time. They divided the Zodiac into 
 twelve signs and each of these signs into thirty 
 degrees. They also divided the years into 
 twelve months, each month into thirty days, days 
 into hours, and hours into minutes. 
 
 So far as history informs us, the Chaldeans 
 established the first monarchial form of govern- 
 ment. They left behind them the decimal and 
 duodecimal systems of notation. They also 
 
48 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 understood the sciences of architecture and hy- 
 draulics to a degree that made the valley of the 
 Euphrates bloom as a rose. Learning became 
 so general among the people that in time the 
 whole nation was called Chaldean. 
 
 The Chaldean religion was a mixture of Spir- 
 itualism (for they believed in a future life of 
 spirit existence and the communication of spirits 
 with mankind), Polytheism, and Sabianism. 
 They deified their great men after death and 
 worshipped them as gods, of which there were 
 many. They believed that their gods presided 
 over the elements of nature. 
 
 Berosus, a priest of the temple of Belus, 
 wrote a history of Chaldea 276 years before 
 Christ, and in that history he gave a description 
 of the flood, which in all probability he obtained 
 from the cuneiform writings of that people. In 
 his description he says, " The god Bel appeared 
 to Xisuthrus in a dream and warned him that on 
 the fifteenth day of the month Daesius mankind 
 would be destroyed by a deluge. He bade him 
 bury in Sippara, the city of the sun, the extant 
 writings, first and last, and build a ship and enter 
 therein with his family and his close friends and 
 furnish it with meat and drink, and place on 
 board winged fowl and four-footed beasts of the 
 earth, and when all was ready, set sail. Xisuth- 
 rus asked whither he was to sail, and was told, 
 ' To the gods, with a prayer that it might fare 
 well with mankind.' 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 49 
 
 " Then Xisuthrus was not disobedient to the 
 vision, but built a ship fifteen stadia (3125 feet) 
 in length and six stadia (1250 feet) in breadth, 
 and collected all that had been commanded him, 
 and put his wife and children and close friends 
 on board. The flood came, and as soon as it 
 ceased Xisuthinis let loose some birds which, find- 
 ing neither food nor a place where thej could 
 rest, came back to the ark. After some days he 
 again sent out the birds, which again returned to 
 the ark, but with feet covered with mud. Sent 
 out the third time, the birds returned no more, 
 and Xisuthrus knew that land had reappeared ; so 
 he removed some of the covering of the ark and 
 looked, and behold, the vessel had grounded on 
 a mountain. Then Xisthurus went forth with 
 his wife and his daughter and his pilot, and fell 
 down and worshipped the earth and built an altar 
 and offered sacrifice to the gods, after which he 
 disappeared from sight, together with those who 
 had accompanied him. 
 
 " They who had remained in the ark and not 
 gone forth with Xisuthrus now left it and 
 searched for him and shouted out his name, but 
 Xisuthrus was not seen any more, only his voice 
 answered them out of the air, saying, ' Worship 
 the gods, for because I worshipped them am I 
 gone to dwell with the gods, and they who were 
 with me have shared the same honor,' And he 
 bade them return to Bab3''lon and recover the 
 writings buried at Sippara and make them known 
 
50 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 among men, and he told him that the land in 
 which they then were was Armenia. So they, 
 when they had heard all, sacrificed to the gods 
 and went their way on foot to Babylon, and hav- 
 ing reached it, recovered the buried writings 
 from Sippara and built many cities and temples 
 and restored Babylon. Some portion of the ark 
 still remains in Armenia, in the Gordaen (Kur- 
 dish) mountains; and persons scrape off the 
 bitumen from it to bring away and this day use 
 as a remedy to avert misfortunes." 
 
 George Smith, in the year 1875, obtained some 
 clay tablets from ruins in Assyria which, when 
 joined to other fragments in the British Museum 
 at London, gave the Assyrian history of the 
 world from the creation down to some time after 
 the fall of man. In the history of the flood 
 there are many striking resemblances to the Chal- 
 dean account as given by Berosus. Let it be 
 remembered that the burnt clay books, or cunei- 
 form records burned in wedge-shaped bricks, of 
 Chaldea antedate all other known records or 
 writings, except that perhaps they may be coeval 
 with the rolls of papyrus found in Egyptian 
 tombs and the inscriptions on Egyptian monu- 
 ments. All of those writings were prior to the 
 Mosaic account of the creation and the fall of 
 man. According to the Biblical account, 
 tongues were confounded at the tower of Babel 
 in the year 2244 B. C, and Moses came on the 
 stage of action 1531 B. C, over seven hundred 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 51 
 
 jears after the confusion of the tongues. Let 
 it also be remembered that Babylon came up as 
 a city long after Ninevah, the capital of the 
 Chaldean government, had grown into beauty 
 and greatness. The different narratives of the 
 flood as recounted by nations of the low-lands 
 are so similar that it is evident that some of them 
 were borrowed from older traditions. 
 
 The Assyrian account of the flood is here 
 given. 
 
 El, or II, is the root of the well-known Biblical 
 Elohim, the God. Bab-Il, Babylon, was the 
 gate of God. El became angered at the wicked- 
 ness of the world and he sent a great flood and 
 destroyed the whole human race, save Sisit, who 
 was thus commanded : *' When the flood comes 
 which I shall send, thou shalt enter the ship, and 
 into the midst of it thou shalt bring thy com, 
 thy goods, thy gods, thy gold and silver, thy 
 slaves, male and female, the sons of thy army, 
 the wild and tame animals, and all that thou 
 hearest thou shalt do." 
 
 And Sisit gathered together all his possessions 
 of silver and gold, all that he had of the seeds 
 of life, and caused all his slaves, male and female, 
 to go into the ship. The wild and tame beasts of 
 the field also he caused to enter, and all the sons 
 of the army ; and Shamas, the sun-god, made a 
 flood and said, " I will cause rain to fall heavily 
 from heaven; go into the ship and shut the 
 door." 
 
52 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 Overcome with fear, Sisit entered the ship, and 
 on the morning of the day fixed by Shamas the 
 storm began to blow from the ends of heaven, 
 and Vul thundered into the midst of heaven, and 
 Nebe came forth, and over the mountains and 
 plains came the gods, and Nurgal the Destroyer 
 overthrew, and Nin came forth and dashed down ; 
 the gods made ruin ; in their brightness they 
 swept over the earth. The storm went over the 
 nations, the flood of Vul reached up to heaven ; 
 brother did not see brother; the lightsome earth 
 became a desert, and the flood destroyed all liv- 
 ing things from the face of the earth. Even the 
 gods were afraid of the storm and sought refuge 
 in the heaven of Ana, like hounds drawing in 
 their tails. 
 
 The gods seated themselves on the thrones, and 
 Ishtar, the great goddess, spake : " The world 
 has turned to sin, and therefore I have proclaimed 
 destruction. I have begotten men and now they 
 fill the sea like children of fishes." And the 
 gods upon their seats wept with her. 
 
 On the seventh day the storm abated, which 
 had destroyed like an earthquake, and the sea 
 began to dry. Sisit perceived the movement of 
 the sea. Like reeds floated the corpses of the 
 evil-doers and all who had turned to sin. Then 
 Sisit opened the window and the light fell upon 
 his face, and the ship was stayed upon mount 
 Nizir and could not pass over it. Then on the 
 seventh day Sisit sent forth a dove, but she 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 53 
 
 found no place to rest and she returned. Then 
 he sent a swallow, which also returned, and again 
 a raven, which saw the corpses in the water and 
 ate them and returned no more. 
 
 Then Sisit released the beasts to the four 
 winds of heaven and poured a libation and built 
 an altar on the top of the mountain and cut seven 
 herbs, and the sweet savor of the sacrifice caused 
 the gods to assemble, and Sisit prayed that Bel 
 might not come to the altar. For Bel had made 
 the storm and sunk the people in the deep and 
 wished in his anger to destroy the ship and allow 
 no man to escape. 
 
 Nin opened his mouth and spoke to the war- 
 rior Bel: "Who would be left?" And Hea 
 spoke to him : " Captain of the gods, instead 
 of the storm let lions and leopards increase and 
 diminish mankind; let famine and pestilence deso- 
 late the land and destroy mankind." When the 
 sentence of the gods was passed, Bel came into 
 the midst of the ship and took Sisit by the hand 
 and conducted him forth, and caused his wife 
 to be brought to his side; and he purified the 
 earth and made a covenant ; and Sisit and his 
 wife and his people were carried away like gods, 
 and Sisit dwelt in a distant land at the mouth of 
 the rivers. 
 
 The account of the deluge as given by Moses 
 is a record of the same story as given by Berosus 
 and as found inscribed on the Assyrian tablets. 
 The story of the tower of Babel, as given by 
 
54 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 Berosus, is very much like that given by Moses. 
 The Chaldean tradition is this : " The earth was 
 still of one language when the primitive men, who 
 were proud of their strength and stature and 
 despised the gods as their inferiors, erected a 
 tower of vast height, in order that they might 
 mount to heaven. And the tower was now near 
 to heaven, when the gods caused the wind to 
 blow and overturn the structure upon the men, 
 and made them speak with divers tongues, where- 
 upon the city was called Babylon." 
 
 Some of the gods were the same also. For 
 instance. El, or II, their chief god, is the root of 
 Elohim, one of the Biblical gods. El was the 
 god of heaven, the prince of the gods, and had 
 the protective care of the Babylonian temple. 
 Nimrod was deified after his death and was named 
 Bel-Nimrod. The gods of the Chaldeans were 
 classified; so were the gods of the Hebrews, for 
 when Melchizedek went out to meet Abraham on 
 his return from the defeat of the five kings, he 
 was known as " priest of the most high God." 
 
 El, or II, or Ra, was the most high God of the 
 Chaldean pantheon, after which the gods were 
 divided into groups or triads. Below these 
 triads were many inferior gods, who were under 
 the supervision of their superiors. Among the 
 gods was a group of five representing the five 
 planets then known, — Nin or Ninip (Saturn), 
 Merodach (Jupiter), Nergal (Mars), Ishtar 
 (Venus), Nebo (Murcury). After the principal 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 55 
 
 deities were numerous divinities of the second 
 and third orders. 
 
 It is not necessary to enumerate the different 
 gods and divinities of the Chaldeans. It is our 
 purpose only to show the connection of the tra- 
 ditions, beliefs, and religion of that people with 
 that of the Hebrews, and if the analogy proves 
 that the Jewish religion is to some extent a 
 derivative religion, it makes it neither any bet- 
 ter nor any worse. The time is past when we 
 can strangle facts for a purpose. We can now 
 afford to tell the truth even in religion, and the 
 truth, properly presented, raises the mission, life, 
 and character of Jesus the Christ to a more Di- 
 vine and exalted sphere than he has heretofore 
 occupied, and the millions who now scoff at the 
 name will be brought to the adoration of this 
 man as the expression of a Divine Will. We 
 must not ignore the fact that we are creatures of 
 a superior intelligence and subordinate to a 
 power that wills and rules, and to which man suc- 
 cumbs. That man or that community of men, 
 even of nations, which violates the laws of God, 
 or, if yqu so please to call them, the laws of 
 nature, for the name makes no difference, will 
 be punished to the extent of the violation ; and 
 that man or community will suffer and that 
 nation go into decadence, as illustrated by in- 
 numerable examples. 
 
 Do not misunderstand these assertions. Do 
 not infer therefrom that God punishes you, or the 
 
56 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 community, or the nation. God punishes no one, 
 but, on the contrary, the laws of God are self- 
 assertive, and if man violates one of His laws the 
 law itself inflicts the punishment, and not God. 
 Thus, thrust your hand into the fire ; by so doing 
 you violate a law of God, and you are burned. 
 Expose yourself to the inclement weather, and 
 the result is pain, punishment, and oftentimes 
 sickness and death. God does not cause the in- 
 fliction, but you have violated one of the laws 
 of your being and inflictions follow. The same 
 rule applies to the moral, intellectual, and spir- 
 itual nature of man. Abuse your brain by dis- 
 sipation, neglect of culture, or in any other way, 
 and you will be shut out from that intellectual 
 exhilaration that enriches the soul. Debauch 
 your moral nature, and you walk the earth with 
 the evidences of your degradation so plainly 
 written that the dullest observer can read your 
 character. Violate the laws of your spiritual 
 nature, and your life is a corrupted soul in this 
 sphere of existence, and in the next a pitiable 
 shadow wandering in the gloom of its own shroud 
 of darkness. All of these inflictions are of your 
 own choosing ; you have violated law, and the 
 law punishes. 
 
 Now the laws of man are diff^erent from the 
 laws of God. You may violate every law on 
 the statute books and they lie quiescent under 
 your revelry until the officers of justice find you 
 out and bring punishment on you according to 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 57 
 
 the terms of the statute. If you are not 
 found out, you can go on for a lifetime with 
 no statutory punishment inflicted ; but you can 
 neither hide nor evade an infraction of a law 
 of nature, for the law is its own avenger and 
 rewarder of man's conduct. Therefore elimin- 
 ate from your mind, in studying the genius and 
 life of Jesus, that God in His anger punishes any 
 man or set of men, any community or nation. 
 Yet they are all punished according to their 
 deeds. 
 
 The belief that God punishes and rewards in 
 this sphere of life has grown out of the change 
 in the meaning of words and terms. The word 
 god is now quite different in meaning from that 
 of ancient times. Now the name of God is ap- 
 plied to the ruler of the universe, the all-wise 
 Creator. In ancient times the word god meant 
 certain apotheosized spirits of dead men ; thus, 
 Nimrod was after his death apotheosized into the 
 rank of a god. 
 
 The ceremony of apotheosis was very imposing 
 and was as follows: The body of the person 
 about to be made a god was first cremated and the 
 ashes preserved in a vase. At the entrance of 
 the palace or temple, upon a magnificent carpet, 
 a wax figure of the body was extended on an 
 ivory couch spread with a cloth of gold. The 
 high officials, clad in black, sat on the left side 
 of the couch, and on the right, noble women 
 dressed as mourners in plain white garments. 
 
58 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 After seven days' watching he was pronounced 
 dead. Then the noble youths of the equestrian 
 order took up the couch and bore it to the forum ; 
 it was there placed between two amphitheaters, 
 and on either side a chorus of noble men and 
 women chanted In mournful strains hymns In 
 praise of the deceased. The couch was then car- 
 ried through the city to the Campus Martins, in 
 the midst of which was constructed a square pile 
 filled with combustibles, and adorned on the out- 
 side with hangings interwoven with gold and with 
 various Images and pictures. The couch was 
 placed In the center of the pile and around It was 
 collected every kind of incense and fragrant herb, 
 fruits, a juice for all nations and peoples. After 
 this a procession of horsemen and chariots passed 
 around the pile, with drivers dressed to represent 
 the greatest generals and Illustrious ancestors of 
 the deceased. The head man of state then ap^ 
 proached the catafalque with a torch in hand and 
 set It on fire ; if the deceased was a man, an eagle 
 was let loose from the top story ; If a Avoman, a 
 peacock was let go and, rising in mid-air with the 
 flames, bore to the skies the soul of the dead one. 
 The deceased was then given the name of divus 
 and also the name of some divinity. 
 
 ABRAHAM 
 
 Let us now turn to those who sowed the seed 
 which ripened in the fruit of the Cross. First 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 59 
 
 and most prominent of these was Abram, whose 
 name was afterwards changed to Abraham. 
 
 Abraham was a Chaldean of the city of Ur. 
 He was a great man, with a towering intellect and 
 grand personal endowments, well educated, and 
 fitted for the task of starting a new religious cult. 
 He must have been a man of pleasing address and 
 immense personal influence, or he could not have 
 accomplished what he did in the planting of his 
 colony in the land of Canaan and in making it 
 the seat of a great religion. 
 
 According to Josephus, Abraham was of the 
 tenth generation from Noah. He was a great- 
 great grandson of Heber, from whom the Hebrews 
 derived their name, although often called Jews be- 
 cause they inhabited Judea. Berosus, the Greek 
 historian, in speaking of Abraham, says : " In 
 the tenth generation after the flood there was 
 among the Chaldeans a man religious and great, 
 and skilled in the celestial science," in other words, 
 an astronomer and astrologer. 
 
 Concerning his character, Josephus says : *' He 
 was a person of great sagacity both for under- 
 standing all things and persuading his hearers, 
 and not mistaken in his opinions, for which reason 
 he began to have higher notions of virtue than 
 others and determined to renew and to change the 
 opinions all men happened then to have concern- 
 ing God; for he was the first that ventured to 
 publish this notion, that there was but one God, 
 the Creator of the universe ; and as to other gods, 
 
60 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 if thej contributed anything to the happiness of 
 men, each of them afforded it only according to 
 his appointment, not by his own power." 
 
 This opinion of his was derived from the ir- 
 regular phenomena that were visible both at land 
 and sea, as well as from those that happened in 
 connection with the sun and moon and all the 
 heavenly bodies. " If," said he, " those bodies 
 had power of their own, they would certainly take 
 care of their own regular motions ; but since they 
 do not preserve such regularity, they make it 
 plain that so far as they co-operate to our ad- 
 vantage they do it not of their own abilities but 
 as subservient to Him that commands them, to 
 whom we ought justly to offer our honor and 
 thanksgiving." 
 
 This new religious opinion fired up the Chal- 
 deans and other people of Mesopotamia against 
 him, and they became so tumultuous that he re- 
 solved to leave the country and take his followers 
 with him to a new land to which he had been di- 
 rected by his guardian spirit, which he called God. 
 
 The experience of Abraham is the experience 
 of all refonncrs. Ignorance and Superstition 
 rise against them, as they did against Jesus, 
 who suffered and bled on the cross for simply 
 telling the people that there was a life beyond 
 this, and that they could onlj' enjoy the full 
 fruition of that life by living an exemplary one 
 here. His followers were numerous, reaching the 
 proportions of an army. 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 61 
 
 Nicholas of Damascus, in the fourth book of 
 his history, saj^s, according to Josephus, " Abram 
 reigned at Damascus, being a foreigner who came 
 with an army out of the land above Babylon, called 
 the land of Chaldea. But after a long time 
 he got him up and removed from that country 
 also with his people and went into the land then 
 called the land of Canaan, but now the land of 
 Judea. Now the name of Abram is even still 
 famous in the country of Damascus, and there is 
 shown a village named from him, The Habitation 
 of Abram." 
 
 Abraham, appreciating the fact that all people 
 are naturally religious, that they look to a source 
 beyond themselves for spiritual consolation, and 
 knowing that the Chaldeans, Babylonians, and the 
 nations about him had different conceptions of 
 God and the unseen forces, felt that the time was 
 propitious for starting a new religion and unify- 
 ing the thoughts of the people on that subject, 
 desiring thereby to form a permanent organiza- 
 tion, one that would stand the test of ages. Be- 
 ing well versed in Chaldean and Babylonian phi- 
 losophy, he concluded to make further researches 
 into the beliefs of man and bethought himself to 
 go to Egypt and consult with the priests and men 
 of culture of that nation. 
 
 Josephus says : " Now after this, when a 
 famine had invaded the land of Canaan and 
 Abram had discovered that the Egyptians were in 
 a flourishing condition, he was disposed to go 
 
62 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 down to them, both to partake of the plenty they 
 enjoyed and to become an auditor of their priests, 
 and to know what they said concerning the gods, 
 designing either to follow them, if they had better 
 notions than he, or to convert them into a better 
 way, if his own notions proved the truest." 
 
 The Bible says, " And there was famine in the 
 land, and Abram went down into Egypt to so- 
 journ there, for the famine was grievous in the 
 land." Josephus, confirming the Bible narrative, 
 goes on to say : " Now seeing that he was to 
 take Sarah with him and was afraid of the Egypt- 
 ians with regard to the woman, lest the king 
 should kill him because of his wife's great beauty, 
 he contrived this device: he pretended to be her 
 brother and directed her in a dissembling way to 
 pretend the same, for he said it would be for their 
 benefit. Now as soon as he came into Egypt, it 
 happened to Abram as he supposed it would, for 
 the fame of his wife's beauty was greatly talked 
 of, for which reason Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, 
 would not be satisfied with what was reported of 
 her, but would needs see her himself, and was pre- 
 paring to enjoy her; but God put a stop to his 
 unjust inclinations by sending upon him a dis- 
 temper and a sedition against his government. 
 And when he enquired of the priests how he might 
 be freed from these calamities, they told him that 
 this, his miserable condition, was derived from the 
 wrath of God on account of his inclinations to 
 abuse the stranger's wife. He then out of fear 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 63 
 
 asked Sarah who she was and who it was she 
 brought with her? And when he had found out 
 the truth, he excused himself to Abram that, sup- 
 posing the woman to be his sister and not his wife, 
 he set his affections on her as having an affinity 
 with him by marrying her, but not as incited by 
 lust to abuse her. He also made him a large 
 present in money and gave him leave to enter into 
 conversation with the most learned among the 
 Egyptians; from which conversation his virtue 
 and his reputation became more conspicuous than 
 they had been before. 
 
 " The Egyptians were formerly addicted to dif- 
 ferent customs and despised one another's sacred 
 and accustomed rites and were very angry with 
 one another on that account. Abram conferred 
 with each of them, and confuting the reasoning 
 they made use of, every one for his own practices, 
 he demonstrated that such reasonings were vain 
 and void of truth ; whereupon he was admitted by 
 them in those conferences as a very wise man, and 
 one of great sagacit}'^, when he discoursed on any 
 subject he undertook, in not only understanding 
 it but in pursuading other men also to assent to 
 him. He communicated to them arithmetic, and 
 delivered to them the science of astronomy ; for 
 before Abram came into Egypt they were unac- 
 quainted with those parts of learning, for that 
 science came from the Chaldeans into Egypt, and 
 from thence to the Greeks also." 
 
 How long Abram remained in Egj'pt we cannot 
 
64 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 tell as we are not informed by, either the Bible 
 account or by Josephus on that point ; but it must 
 have been several years, from the fact that the 
 learning he imparted to the Egyptians could not 
 have been given short of that time. Four hundred 
 and sixty-five years afterwards, Moses, an Egyp- 
 tian by birth, and well informed in Egyptian 
 learning, took what he thought was good of the 
 religion of the Egyptians and engrafted it on the 
 Chaldean doctrines formerly impressed on the 
 Hebrews by the founder of their religion, Abra- 
 ham. 
 
 We know that this is true from the fact that 
 within the last half century, our knowledge of 
 those ancient peoples has been greatly enlarged 
 by researches in the ruins of the nations once so 
 richly endowed with knowledge of the arts and 
 sciences, but whose energies have been quieted, 
 whose monuments despoiled by the ruthless hand 
 of Time, and whose records, written on wedge- 
 shaped brick, have slept beneath the frowns of 
 eternal sands for over three thousand years. For 
 much of the light thrown on those hidden treas- 
 ures of ancient thought, learning, and actions we 
 are indebted to the English historians., George 
 Rawlinson and Philip Smith, and the renowned 
 German Orientalists, Niebuhr and Buncker. 
 
 The Assyrian clay tablets brought to London 
 by George Smith give a history of the world from 
 the beginning, including an account of the crea- 
 tion, the fall of man, the flood, the tower of Babel 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 65 
 
 and confusion of tongues, which are so similar to 
 the accounts given in the Bible of those supposed 
 events, that it is not heresy to imagine that the 
 original narratives were burnt in the brick cunei- 
 form writings when those monuments of man's 
 superstition were made, and that they were made 
 so far back that the knowledge of man is lost in 
 the bewilderments of Time. 
 
 We press these facts on the minds of our read- 
 ers that they may better understand the philoso- 
 phy of events which induced the Magi, or wise 
 men, as they are called in the Bible, to follow the 
 light, called a star, to where the young Babe lay 
 in the lowly manger. To better understand the 
 true teachings of Jesus, we wish to call the mind 
 of our readers to the fact that the Egyptians be- 
 lieved in a future life, in spirit communion and in 
 the very highest type of morality. The same 
 might be said of the Chaldeans though their rec- 
 ords on this subject are not so convincing in ex- 
 pression as those of later religions, it was neces- 
 sary for them to personify their gods to make the 
 idea comprehensible to the uncultured masses. 
 
 The same difficulty stands in the way of an en- 
 lightened conception of God in this generation, to 
 some extent. The trouble is, the masses want ob- 
 ject lessons; they cannot comprehend principles 
 without falling in grace. They can only enthuse 
 over a fervent imagination fed on mental pictures 
 addressed to their senses. They cannot compre- 
 hend love as a quality of nature, nor that the mind 
 
66 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OP JESUS 
 
 drinks from the fountain of universal wisdom. 
 They must see them in the picture of some person 
 to feel the effects of strong emotions. This tend- 
 ency of the human mind to grasp at personal ob- 
 jects to keep the fire of their religious zeal to the 
 proper standard made it necessary for the found- 
 ers of this great religion to write it out with a 
 double meaning, — one for the masses and one 
 for the initiated. 
 
 Abram believed in one individual local god to 
 whom he looked for advice, guidance and succor. 
 It was Abraham's god that directed him to aban- 
 don the city of Ur and go into the land of Aaran. 
 " And the Lord said unto Abram, ' Get thee out 
 of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from 
 thy father's house unto a land that I will show 
 thee ; and I will make of thee a great nation, and 
 I will bless thee, and make thy name great ; and 
 thou shalt be a blessing.' And I will bless them 
 that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee, 
 * and in thee shall all families of the earth be 
 blessed.' " 
 
 It was here that the foundation of the Jewish 
 theocracy was laid. Abraham, during his entire 
 life after he left Chaldea, was under the direct 
 guidance of his controlling god. He believed 
 and taught that God administered unto man in 
 this life and in this world. " I will bless them 
 that bless thee and curse him that curseth thee," 
 said the Lord unto Abram. This idea of spirit- 
 intervention in the affairs of man was indoctri- 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 6T 
 
 nated into the minds of Isaac and Jacob and 
 finally fastened on the Jewish people the great- 
 est theocracy the world has ever known. In this 
 Abraham departed from the religion of the 
 Egyptians who believed in a future bliss and 
 in punishment after death, but not in a Divine 
 punishment in this life. 
 
 While Abraham put his faith in one god, his 
 especial favorite and guardian, he was a poly- 
 thelst in belief; in fact, the Jews afterwards, fol- 
 lowing the belief of other nations about them, 
 taught the plurality of gods. 
 
 In giving his directions to his servants about 
 selecting a wife for his son Isaac, he said, " I will 
 make thee swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, 
 and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take 
 a wife unto my son of the daughters of the 
 Canaanites, among whom I dwell." " The Lord 
 God of heaven, which took me from my father's 
 house, and from the land of my kindred, and 
 which spake unto me, and that swear unto me say- 
 ing: Unto thy seed will I give this land, he shall 
 send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a 
 wife unto my son from thence." And the serv- 
 ant said, " O Lord God of my master Abraham, I 
 pray thee, send me good speed this day, and show 
 kindness unto my master Abraham." 
 
 After Abraham had gone out with his servants 
 and allies, and defeated with great slaughter 
 Chedorlaomer and the kings that were with him, 
 and rescued Lot and his family and retaken the 
 
68 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 spoils, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at 
 the valley of Siddim, which is the king's dale. 
 Melchizedek, king of Salem, went also and took 
 with him bread and wine and refreshed the army 
 of Melchizedek, was " the priest of the most 
 high god," and he blessed Abraham and said, 
 " Blessed be Abraham of the Most High God, 
 possessor of heaven and earth. And blessed be 
 the most high God which hath delivered thine 
 enemies into thy hand." And Abraham gave 
 tithes unto Melchizedek, thus acknowledging him 
 as his superior. 
 
 After he had been blessed by Melchizedek, wliich 
 blessing was nothing more than conferring upon 
 him full powers of seerage and more fully in- 
 doctrinating him into the occult secrets and learn- 
 ing of the Magi, Abram had familiar and almost 
 constant intercourse with the spirit world. After 
 this, the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a 
 vision saying, " Fear not, Abram ; I am thy 
 shield and thy exceeding great reward." " I am 
 the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the 
 Chaldees, to give this land to inherit it." In that 
 conversation the spirit instructed Abram to " take 
 an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of 
 three years old, and a ram of three years old, and 
 a turtle-dove, and a pigeon," for an offering. 
 Abram " laid each piece one against the other," 
 and " when it was dark, a smoking furnace and a 
 burning lamp passed between those pieces." 
 That day the Lord made a covenant with Abram 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 69 
 
 " to thy seed have I given this land from the river 
 of Egypt to the great river Euphrates." 
 
 In analyzing this offering of meat to the spirit 
 and the covenant between Abram and his God, we 
 must consider it in the light of the relations be- 
 tween them. It is a well known fact among all 
 occultists, schooled in the science of spiritology, 
 that earth-bound spirits have all the appetites, 
 passions, and tendencies that controlled them while 
 in earth life. That was a great meat-eating age, 
 and while spirits not materialized cannot masticate 
 food, yet they indulge in the aroma arising from 
 such foods and drinks as they indulged in while in 
 the earth life. Hence a man dying a drunkard 
 seeks out susceptible agents, or sensitives, and 
 throws an influence of drink on them ; when a 
 sensitive is indulging his appetite in drink or 
 food, his controlling spirit indulges in the aroma, 
 or spirit influence of the viand or drink. 
 
 The Jews and all the ancients off'ered up living 
 sacrifices to their tutelary gods. In extreme cases 
 even human sacrifices were off'ered up. The most 
 striking case of this kind is that of Jephthah's 
 daughter. 
 
 The spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah 
 and Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and 
 said, " If thou shalt without fail deliver the chil- 
 dren of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be, 
 that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my 
 house to meet me, when I return in peace from 
 the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's 
 
70 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 and I will offer it up as a burnt offering." 
 Jephthah's arms prevailed and when he returned 
 home his daughter, his only child, came with tim- 
 brels and with dances to meet him. This sorrowed 
 the heart of Jephthah, but his vow to his Lord 
 was more sacred to him than the life of his 
 daughter. After she had gone to the mountains 
 for two months to bewail her virginity, she re- 
 turned and Jephthah fulfilled his vow and his 
 daughter was sacrificed on the altar. Judges xi. 
 
 These sacrifices were under the Aaronic priest- 
 hood, a priesthood that concerned itself with the 
 secular affairs of men in this life and in tliis world. 
 To banish this heathenish practice, Jesus offered 
 himself up as a final sacrifice for all men in order 
 that the abominations of the Old Testament might 
 be dispensed with and the new dispensation take 
 its place. 
 
 Abraham introduced the law of circumcision 
 among the Hebrews. It was established as a re- 
 ligious ceremony that every male child should be 
 circumcised at the age of eight days, under pen- 
 alty of death. While it was observed as a re- 
 ligious ordinance, its real use was a hygienic meas- 
 ure which has kept the blood of that people pure 
 through the ages. 
 
 A most wonderful spiritual manifestation oc- 
 curred to Abraham as he sat in his tent door, in 
 the plains of Mamre, in the heat of the day. The 
 Lord spoke to him and when he lifted up his eyes, 
 three men as he took them to be at that time, stood 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 71 
 
 by him. He caused them to be refreshed and he 
 comforted them with a fine meal consisting of 
 bread, a well cooked calf-steak, butter, and milk. 
 For his kindness the Lord informed him that 
 Sarah, his wife, should bear him a son. 
 
 The point that I wish to impress is, that spirits 
 on the other side of life did at that day commune 
 with Abraham and were so firmly materialized that 
 they actually ate, drank, and conversed with Abra- 
 ham. They informed him of the coming destruc- 
 tion of Sodom and Gomorrah ; they also went to 
 the city, stayed all night with Lot, and directed 
 him how to save himself and family from the pend- 
 ing fate of the place. 
 
 THE ZODIAC 
 
 The Christian religion is not an imaginative 
 sophism for the building of theories to catch and 
 hold the unsophisticated but a real structure, the 
 foundation of which was laid in the manifesta- 
 tions of nature reflected through these physical 
 sciences that reach back beyond the life of history, 
 the most pronounced being the science of astron- 
 omy. 
 
 The Christian religion in its purity is the voice 
 of nature modelled in part upon the signs of the 
 zodiac ; only differing in this : the Jewish religion 
 was founded on the physical planes of life repre- 
 sented by the movements of the heavenly bodies 
 as first brought to the attention of men through 
 the Magi, a learned body of scholars of Ninevah ; 
 
72 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 while the Christian religion reflects the spiritual 
 side evolved from the same philosophy. The 
 foundation of the principles of the philosophy of 
 the spiritual side of the Christian religion was 
 brought from the city of Ur of Chaldea by Abra- 
 ham and through him sent down the channels of 
 the Jewish religion. They culminated in the 
 vision of John on the isle of Patmos, when the 
 holy city of the new Jerusalem, with her twelve 
 foundations, twelve gates, and twelve precious 
 stones, descended out of heaven from God. 
 
 Students of astronomy ask the question, " Why 
 is it that the twelve signs of the zodiac are repre- 
 sented by the figures of animals when there are no 
 such figures found in star-clusters ? " The an- 
 swer is this: the changing positions of the earth 
 in its revolution around the sun, as it passes be- 
 tween different clusters of stars and the sun causes 
 it to receive different impressions ; those impres- 
 sions stimulate certain natures prominent in dif- 
 ferent animals, and perceptible in different peo- 
 ple. This fact was the foundation of the science 
 of astrology which in its nature is too refined and 
 esoteric for general uses or for defined laws. 
 
 Nature is a great big play-ground filled with 
 beauties and wonders that lead us right into the 
 bosom of God if we study his Bible with adora- 
 tion. This Bible is written in the language of 
 every nation and every people. And no man can 
 revise, alter, or modify it in its least particle. It 
 is unsealed. Its truths are imprinted in the rocks 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 73 
 
 of ages, impressed on each sand of the sea-shore, 
 engraved in vegetation, glorified in the rose, in 
 the lily, and in each floweret that nods in the 
 breeze. It has open pages on the canvas of the 
 sky. The stars invite the erudition of man. The 
 moaning breezes sing of it, the raging storms are 
 paragraphs of its everlasting print. All of na- 
 ture is its binding and God its embodiment. Read 
 it for it binds the ties of love ; it cements the heart 
 in the sweet communion of friendship ; it opens 
 the soul to the induction of truth and teaches man 
 how to save himself through himself. Then the 
 true and tender admonitions of Jesus will be fully 
 realized and the city of God that John saw will 
 be appreciated. The two Bibles belong together; 
 by the reading of the one the other is interpreted. 
 
 Nature is constructed and controlled on the 
 principles of mathematics, which science is the 
 structural basis of every ph3^sical thing, whether 
 it be a sphere, evanescent gas, the mammal, or the 
 ephemeral insect of an hour. If our knowledge 
 were sufficient we could demonstrate every factor 
 of nature by mathematics. 
 
 Coming back to the zodiac, let us view it as a 
 great factor in our solar universe, and from that 
 bring to our minds its influence in forming the re- 
 ligious thought of men. While we speak of re- 
 ligious thought, let us not forget man's peculiar- 
 ities. 
 
 In the remote ages of ignorance, the shades of 
 which are still hovering over the intellect of the 
 
74 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 masses to a regrettable extent, men could best be 
 controlled through their religious convictions. 
 Those in authority commanded and the people 
 obeyed because they presumed that the decree 
 came from a supercontrolling power, to disobey 
 which was a crime, to deny which was death. 
 
 To call the same power the immutable laws of 
 nature, which should be obeyed in order that man 
 should obtain the greatest benefits of life, would 
 have fallen as a dead letter and the savage na- 
 tures of men would hold dominion over the mind. 
 To control that wild and uncultured nature, the 
 sagacious leaders saw the necessity of clothing the 
 truths of nature in the garb of holiness. While 
 the moulders of public opinion knew the scientific 
 application of the rules of nature to the better- 
 ment of the race, they had this difficulty to con- 
 tend with: Nature was too mild to impress men 
 with the importance of obeying its laws. To con- 
 trol men it was necessary to impress on their 
 minds the existence of something in the character 
 of a supernatural agency and power,which knowl- 
 edge worked upon their emotions, evoking the 
 tremors of fear on the one hand and stimulating 
 the emotions of rewards and love on the other. 
 
 There are twelve constellations of stars in the 
 heavens, which the earth passes as it revolves 
 around the sun. As the earth passes between 
 those different clusters and the sun, the earth and 
 the animal, vegetable, and climatic fruitage there- 
 of are differently affected at different seasons of 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 75 
 
 the year. Simply to call those early minds of 
 men to these natural facts was to make but little 
 impression on them ; therefore the powers and di- 
 visions of the star clusters were made to represent, 
 in the thoughts of the people, something closer to 
 home than the starry depths. So the master 
 minds associated the number twelve with the re- 
 ligious ceremonies of the Jewish people. This 
 practice commenced with Jacob calling up his 
 twelve sons, who we have every reason to believe 
 were but symbolisms to demonstrate a religious 
 tenet. Then came the twelve tribes of Israel, the 
 twelve stones in the breast-plate of Aaron, and 
 the twelve men selected by Joshua, each with a 
 stone, who caused the water of the Jordan to 
 assuage in order that the children of Israel might 
 pass into the promised land. There were twelve 
 gates to the holy city, and following the scientific 
 order, Jesus selected twelve apostles ; there were 
 twelve manner of fruit on the tree of Paradise 
 the leaves of which were for the healing of the 
 nations ; there were twelve stones to the twelve 
 gates of the holy city. To the casual reader the 
 number twelve presents no significance, but to the 
 religio-scientific, the number is of the utmost im- 
 portance. 
 
 We will divest the mysteries of the zodiac of 
 scientific nomenclature and simplify our language 
 so that it may be of use to the general reader. 
 Let us consider the sun as the center of our uni- 
 verse and the earth as revolving around it once 
 
76 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 each year. Beyond the path of the earth the 
 fixed stars are located. The earth in its revolu- 
 tion around the sun is continually passing a direct 
 line reaching from the sun outward to some of 
 those stars. The stars of our universe visible 
 from the northern hemisphere are divided into 
 twelve constellations or groups. For a simple il- 
 lustration of those constellations, we will take the 
 sun as the center and from it draw twelve imagi- 
 nary lines outward into space. Between those 
 lines are twelve spaces, in each of which are 
 clusters of stars, called signs of the zodiac. The 
 earth in its revolution actually passes between 
 those groups of stars and the sun. 
 
 The ancient Chaldeans ascertained the location 
 of those star-groups and that each of them threw 
 an influence on the earth, and on the people and 
 products of the earth as the earth passed between 
 them and the sun. By a long and patient ob- 
 servation it was ascertained that the earth, in 
 passing the respective groups was affected in dif- 
 ferent ways and all of animal and vegetable na- 
 ture was accordingly influenced. They marked 
 the influences of the different groups on mankind 
 and on animal nature, and they associated the 
 effects of each group with the nature of the ani- 
 mal that the passing of the groups by the earth 
 aroused ; then they drew a map representing the 
 different animals thus imagined. 
 
 The names of the twelve signs of the zodiac 
 with their beasts, are as follows : 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 77 
 
 Aries — Ram. 
 Taurus — Bull. 
 Gemini — Twins. 
 Cancer — Crab. 
 Leo — Lion. 
 Virgo — Virgin. 
 Libra — Balances. 
 Scorpio — Scorpion. 
 Sagittarius — Archer. 
 Capricornus — Goat. 
 Aquarius — Water-bearer. 
 Pisces — Fishes. 
 
 Jacob, in blessing his sons, associated the 
 meaning of their names with certain influences of 
 the zodiac on mankind. All the natures of man 
 are presumed to be associated with zodiacal in- 
 fluences, thrown upon the child at birth. When 
 Jacob called his sons before him, his great mind 
 associated the name of each with a scientific prob- 
 lem of nature and we would be better off did we 
 understand them in the light in which they were 
 held and understood by that great man. 
 
 Reuben was the first born of Jacob, the head 
 of his family of children, and consequently the 
 first to be called up to receive the blessing of his 
 father. Reuben represents the first sign of the 
 zodiac. 
 
 The signs however are not the same in position 
 now that they were in the days of Jacob, because 
 of the retrocession of the equinoxes (about 50 
 
78 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 1-10 yearly, or at the rate of 72 years to a de- 
 gree, displacing an entire sign in about 2152 
 years, and making an entire revolution in about 
 25,868 years), and the result is, that since the 
 days of Jacob the constellations have moved west- 
 ward almost two signs ; we have passed through 
 Aries and are almost ready to enter the sign of 
 Gemini. (According to our calculations the earth 
 enters the sign of Aries on the 21st of March and 
 remains in that sign until the 19th of April. 
 This sign is represented by the ram, one meaning 
 of which is " head." The use of the head is to 
 think, to reason. " Thou art my first bom," said 
 Jacob when blessing his children, " my might and 
 the beginning of my strength, the excellency of 
 dignity and the excellency of power." Those 
 qualities belong to the head, but because of an in- 
 decent act of Reuben, Jacob concluded with a 
 curse, " Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel." 
 Although Reuben was endowed with great brain 
 power, he did not excel, for his tribe, with that of 
 the Gadltes and the half tribe of Manasseh were 
 carried off by Pul and Tiglath-Pileser, which Is 
 the last historical Information we have of them. 
 Jacob associated Simeon and Levi, who were 
 twins, together. That brings up the double con- 
 stellations of the Bull and Twins. Astronomically 
 the earth enters the sign of Taurus, or Bull, on 
 the 19th of April and It takes unto the 20th of 
 May to pass through it. The legend of the 
 Bull is " stiff necked, firm, obstinate, bull headed." 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 79 
 
 The third sign of the zodiac is Gemini, Twins. 
 In Grecian mythology, they are called Castor and 
 Pollux. They were warlike in their natures, 
 treacherous in their friendships and cruel in their 
 behavior. Simeon and Levi were of the same 
 type. Jacob in his charge to his sons said to 
 and of them, " Simeon and Levi are brethren, 
 instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. 
 Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce ; and their 
 wrath, for it was cruel ; I will divide them in Jacob 
 and scatter them in Israel." 
 
 Let us compare the curse of Simeon and Levi 
 with the characters attributed to Castor and Pol- 
 lux, or Gemini, the constellation of the twins. 
 They were twin brothers, sons of Jupiter and the 
 wife of Tyndarus, king of Sparta. They were 
 invited to the nuptials of Phoeba and Talaria, the 
 daughters of Leucippius. Their behavior after 
 this invitation was cruel; they became enamored 
 of the two women whose nuptials they were to 
 celebrate and resolved to carry them away and 
 marry them. A battle ensued and Castor killed 
 Lynceus, and was himself killed by Idas. Pollux 
 revenged the death of his brother by killing Idas. 
 Pollux desiring to be with his brother who was 
 immortal, Jupiter pemiitted Castor to share his 
 immortality with his brother, and consequently, as 
 long as one was pennitted to be on earth the other 
 was detained in the infernal regions, and they al- 
 ternately lived and died every day, or according 
 to some, every six months. Jupiter rewarded the 
 
80 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 brothers by making them a constellation in heaven 
 under the name of Gemini. The earth enters this 
 sign on the 20th of May and leaves it June 21st. 
 
 Zebulun: constellation Cancer, the Crab. 
 Jacob in his order of blessing his children did not 
 follow the order of birth, but in this instance 
 placed Zebulun before he did Judah ; the reason 
 probably was that in the second trinity of the 
 seasons, June, July and August, the lion is the 
 center of the trinity, because it is the stronger. 
 
 The earth enters this sign June 21st and it 
 takes until July 22nd to pass through it. This 
 sign represents the breast of the individual, the 
 lacteals, the maternal functions. It rules the 
 department of home, domesticity, safety. 
 
 Says Jacob, " Zebulun shall dwell at the haven 
 of the sea ; and he shall be for a haven of ships ; 
 and his border shall be unto Zidon." The crab 
 was associated by Jacob with water, the sea. Ac- 
 cording to Grecian fable, the crab was trans- 
 ported to heaven at the request of Juno, after it 
 had been slain by Hercules during his battle with 
 the serpent Python ; but the evident purpose of 
 the name is to represent the apparent motion of 
 the sun in June, which is said to resemble the 
 movement of the crab in its backward motions. 
 
 Judah: constellation Leo, the Lion. 
 
 The earth enters the sign of Leo July 22nd 
 and leaves it August 22nd. In man this repre- 
 sents the heart forces: the love sentiment and 
 emotions. It forces the blood through the whole 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 81 
 
 person ; it gives it strength. In the signs of the 
 zodiac it represents the heat of July and August, 
 when the sun has attained its greatest power ; it 
 is symbolized in our almanacs by the figure of an 
 enraged lion. Says Jacob, " Judah, thou art he 
 whom thy brethren shall praise ; for thy hand 
 shall be on the necks of thine enemies ; thy father's 
 children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a 
 lion's whelp ; from the prey, my son, thou art 
 gone up ; he stooped down, he couched as a lion, 
 and as an old lion ; who shall rouse him up ? The 
 scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a law- 
 giver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; 
 and unto him shall the gathering of the people 
 be." The tribe of Judah was a warlike tribe, 
 aggressive and strong. From this tribe de- 
 scended the Master. 
 
 Issachar: constellation Virgo, the virgin, — 
 the Virgin Mother, Eve, Isis. The earth enters 
 this sign on the 22nd of August and leaves it Sept- 
 ember 23rd. On the zodiacal diagram it is rep- 
 resented by a female holding a bunch of ripened 
 fruit in her hand, the apples of Paradise, symbol- 
 izing the productive powers of nature. With this 
 idea in his mind, Jacob said, " Issachar is a strong 
 ass couching down between two burdens ; and he 
 saw that rest was good, and the land that it was 
 pleasant ; and bowed his shoulder to bear, and be- 
 came a servant unto tribute." There is too much 
 similarity between the productive fruits of that 
 season of the year, and the burdens of the body 
 
82 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 and the bowing down of the strong ass between 
 two burdens, as presented by Jacob, to be a mere 
 accident without a concurrence of meaning. 
 
 Dan : constellation Libra, Balances. The earth 
 enters this sign September 23rd and leaves it Oc- 
 tober 23rd. It represents the reproductive func- 
 tions of the human system; in morals, the high 
 functions of justice with her scales weighing and 
 balancing the relations of man unto man. " Ren- 
 der unto Csesar that which is Caesar's." The 
 scales are emblematic of the position of the sun 
 at this time of the year. When the sun arrives 
 at this part of the ecliptic the days and nights are 
 equal as if weighed in a balance: hence when the 
 sun enters Libra about September 21st it is called 
 the autumnal equinox. On the 25th of September 
 was bom John the Baptist and on the 25th of 
 March, says Higgins, " Jesus came to the ex- 
 altation of his glory." This is called the vernal 
 equinox. John preceded and prepared the way ; 
 Jesus came after him in his increasing glory. In 
 speaking of the event John says, " He must in- 
 crease but I must decrease," John iii. 30. Jacob 
 in speaking of Dan says, " Dan shall judge his 
 people as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall 
 be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that 
 biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider shall fall 
 backward. I have waited for thy salvation, O 
 Lord." 
 
 Gad: constellation Scorpio, the Scorpion. 
 The earth enters this sign October 23rd and leaves 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 83 
 
 it November 23rd. It is supposed to control the 
 sex functions. In astrology Scorpio is fabled to 
 have killed the great hunter Orion and for that he 
 was placed among the constellations ; for this 
 reason also it is said that " when Scorpio rises 
 Orion sets." Following the thought Jacob said, 
 '' A troop shall overcome him ; but he shall over- 
 come at the last." 
 
 Asher: constellation Sagittarius, Archer. The 
 earth enters this sign about November 22nd and 
 leaves it about December 21st. This sign relates 
 to the thighs of the man, to the muscular organ- 
 ism, the motor nerves, activity of both body and 
 mind. In mythology it represents the fabled 
 Crotus, a son of Eumene, the nurse of the Muses. 
 He devoted his life to the labors of the chase and 
 after death Jupiter placed him among the constel- 
 lations under the name of Sagittarius. Jacob in 
 his blessings said of him, " His bread shall be fat 
 and he shall produce royal dainties." 
 
 Naphtali: constellation Capricorn, the Goat. 
 The earth enters this sign about December 23rd 
 and leaves it about January 20th. This is the 
 head of the winter trinity, the longest night in the 
 year, called the winter solstice. It is the time for 
 thoughtful meditation. In mythology it is 
 fabled to have been Pan, who in the war of the 
 giants was taken to heaven in the form of a goat. 
 Some claim that this sign represents the goat of 
 Amalthaea, which fed Jupiter with her milk. To 
 reward her kindness she was taken to heaven and 
 
84 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 made a constellation. Jacob said, " Naphtali is a 
 hind let loose, he giveth goodly words." 
 
 Joseph: constellation Aquarius, the Water- 
 bearer. The earth enters this constellation Jan- 
 uary 20th and leaves it February 19th. Those 
 bom under this sign are strong, active, nervous, 
 sagacious, usually good business men appreciat- 
 ing the worth of honor. The women are usually 
 good housewives and useful members in domestic 
 circles. In mythology the person symbolized was 
 supposed to be Ganymede, the son of Tross, and 
 a beautiful youth of Phrygia. When out hunt- 
 ing one day he was taken up to heaven by Jupiter 
 where he became the cup-bearer of the gods in the 
 place of Hebe. This sign is represented by the 
 water-bearer as during this period there is usually 
 a great abundance of rain. Jacob was very pro- 
 fuse in blessing his favorite son, Joseph. 
 " Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful 
 bough by a well ; whose branches run over the 
 wall." Mark the association of the fruitful 
 bough by the well of water, and the constellation 
 whose sign is " water-bearer." Was the allusion 
 of Jacob a mere accidental coincidence with the 
 meaning of the constellation or did he have a 
 mind on the zodiacal sign? 
 
 Benjamin, the twelfth son of Jacob, and the 
 constellation Pisces, Fish, the twelfth sign of the 
 zodiac. The earth enters this sign on the 19th 
 of February and leaves it March 21st. The in- 
 fluence of this sign on those bom during its reign 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 85 
 
 is to give them clever understanding of the affairs 
 of Hfe. They are active of person because the 
 sign applies to the feet. They have a love of ac- 
 quiring scientific knowledge, are good students of 
 history, travels, and adventure. The sign is rep- 
 resented, by two fishes tied together by their tails. 
 The fishes were fabled by the Greeks to be those 
 into which Venus and Cupid were changed to es- 
 cape from the giant Typhon. 
 
 " Benjamin shall raven as a wolf." This 
 prophesy was most literally fulfilled. In the war 
 with the children of Israel all the Benjamite 
 women had been taken prisoners, or destroyed, so 
 that those of the tribe of Benjamin who had saved 
 themselves by flight, found themselves without 
 women. They became very much concerned 
 about the future of the tribe for the want of 
 wives ; so they were instructed by the Lord to go 
 and lie in wait in the vineyards and when the 
 daughters of Shiloh come out to dance to seize 
 them, — ^" every man his wife of the daughters of 
 Shiloh and go to the land of Benjamin." Judges 
 xxi. Jacob blesses his youngest son in very short 
 and terse terms. " Benjamin shall raven as a 
 wolf; in the morning he shall devour his prey, 
 and at night he shall divide the spoil." 
 
 If the blessings of Jacob upon his twelve sons 
 were all the evidence we have to prove that the 
 Bible was founded on nature as expressed, we 
 might still be doubtful of the strength of our 
 argument. But in discussing these questions, let 
 
86 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 us bear in mind that the Bible is a double book 
 in which commonplace expressions are made with 
 scientific meanings. One reading is for the un- 
 trained, the other for those initiated into its mys- 
 teries. While no man can fathom all of these 
 mysteries, yet it does not take a scholarly intellect 
 to trace the evidences of them from the beginning 
 of Genesis to the end of Revelations. 
 
 While studying these Biblical problems let us 
 keep in mind that the signs of the zodiac are rep- 
 resented by beasts and that the burden of the vis- 
 ions of John on the Isle of Patmos was the asso- 
 ciation of those beasts with the new Jerusalem 
 that he saw come down from God. If the reader 
 will keep these figurative associations well in mind, 
 the verdict will necessarily be that our religion 
 was born on the banks of the Euphrates and fig- 
 uratively written in the zodiacal signs which are 
 eternal in the heavens. 
 
 Following the twelve sons of Jacob, we see them 
 expanded into twelve tribes, all united, but yet 
 distinctive branches of the same people. We will 
 pass by minor data and go with Moses and the 
 children of Israel into the desert, where two years 
 and two months after their departure from Egypt 
 on their way to the Holy Land, the Lord com- 
 manded that this struggling people should be 
 numbered and stationed in camps according to his 
 directions. 
 
 A description of this wonderful camp and the 
 numbering of the children of Israel is found in 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 87 
 
 the first and second chapters of the book of Num- 
 bers. " And the Lord spake unto Moses and 
 Aaron saying, Every man of the children of 
 Israel shall pitch by his own standard with the 
 ensign of his father's house." Godfrey Higgins 
 in the Anacalypsis says that the signs of the 
 zodiac, with the exceptions of Scorpio which was 
 exchanged by Dan for the eagle, were carried by 
 the different tribes of the Israelites on their 
 standards ; and Taurus, Leo, Aquarius, and 
 Scorpio or the Eagle, the four signs of Reuben, 
 Judah, Ephraim and Dan, were placed at the four 
 comers, the four cardinal points of their encamp- 
 ment, evidently in allusion to the cardinal points 
 of the sphere, the equinoxes and solstices, when 
 the equinox was in Taurus. These coincidents 
 prove that the Israelitic system of religion had its 
 origin before the bull ceased to be an equinoctial 
 sign, and it proves also, that the religion of 
 ]\Ioses was originally the same in its secret mys- 
 teries as that of the heathen. 
 
 The camp was in the form of a square. On the 
 east side, toward the rising of the sun, the camp 
 of Judah was pitched and on one side of Judah 
 was the tribe of Issachar, on the other was the 
 tribe of Zebulun. This fomned the eastern 
 trinity of the camp, corresponding with the three 
 spring months, March, April, and May. This 
 combination of three tribes of Israel formed the 
 camp of Judah and on his standard was the beast 
 sign Leo, the lion. 
 
88 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 On the south side was the standard of the camp 
 of Reuben. On one side of this camp was the 
 tribe of Simeon and on the other was the tribe of 
 Gad, and the standard of the camp of Reuben was 
 Taurus, the bull. 
 
 On the west side was the standard of the camp 
 of Ephraim. On one side of Ephraim was the 
 tribe of Manasseh and on the other side was the 
 tribe of Benjamin. This formed the camp of 
 Ephraim, the standard of which was Aquarius, 
 the Water-bearer. 
 
 On the north side of the camp was the standard 
 of the camp of Dan, Libra, the scales. On one 
 side of the tribe of Dan was the tribe of Asher 
 and on the other side was that of Naphtali. 
 
 This encampment was placed in a hollow square 
 on the inside of which was the tabernacle of the 
 congregation, guarded and taken care of by the 
 tribe of Levi, which was stationed round about it. 
 
 THE BEASTS THAT EZEKIEL SAW 
 
 Let us now consider the prophesy of Ezekiel 
 made on the river Chebar, while he was a captive 
 with the children of Israel in the land of the Chal- 
 deans, and mark the similarity with the vision of 
 Daniel and Avith that of John on the island of 
 Patmos ; and then let us ask ourselves if the same 
 inspiration did not actuate all three of these great 
 prophets and if the basis of all of them was not 
 the beasts of the zodiac ? 
 
 Says Ezekiel, " It came to pass as I was among 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 89 
 
 the captives by the river Chebar, that the heavens 
 were opened, and I saw visions of God. The 
 word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel, 
 the priest, in the land of the Chaldeans. And I 
 looked, and behold a whirlwind came out of the 
 north, a great cloud ; also out of the midst thereof 
 came the likeness of four living creatures, and 
 this was their appearance ; they had the likeness 
 of a man, and every one had four faces, and every 
 one had four wings. And their feet were straight 
 feet ; and the soles of their feet were like the sole 
 of a calf's foot ; and they sparkled like color of 
 burnished brass. And they had the hands of 
 a man under their wings on their four sides ; then 
 they had four their faces and their wings. Their 
 wings were joined one to another; they turned 
 not when they went ; they went every one straight 
 forward. As for the likeness of their faces, they 
 four had the face of a man, and the face of a 
 lion, on the right side ; and they four had the face 
 of an ox on the left side ; they four also had the 
 face of an eagle. Ezekiel i. 3-10. 
 
 John says of his vision, " After this I looked, 
 and behold a door was open in heaven ; and behold 
 a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the 
 throne. And before the throne there was a sea 
 of glass like unto crystal; and in the midst the 
 throne, and round about the throne, were four 
 beasts full of eyes before and behind. And the 
 first beast was like a lion, and the second beast 
 like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a 
 
90 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle." 
 Rev. iv. 1-7. 
 
 The beast on the standard of Judah was the 
 lion, that on the standard of Reuben was the bull, 
 which looked like a calf to John. On the stan- 
 dard of Ephraim was the Water-bearer, a man, 
 and on the standard of Dan was Libra. (Per- 
 haps as Dan changed the Scorpion to the stan- 
 dard of the Eagle, that standard ought to be 
 placed instead of the Scales in the sign.) How- 
 ever, with that one exception all three of the 
 beasts are the same as the beasts of the zodiac 
 and as those of Ezekiel. Again, the city that 
 John saw came out of the heaven of God. It 
 was four' square " and had a wall great and high, 
 and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve 
 angels, and names written thereon, which are the 
 names of the twelve tribes of the children of 
 Israel." The gates you will observe were in the 
 same order in the camp described in Numbers 1 
 and 2. On the east three gates, on the south 
 three gates, on the west three gates, and on the 
 north three gates. 
 
 To show further that the vision of John related 
 to the earher prophesies and beliefs of the ancient 
 Jews let us compare again John and Ezekiel. 
 Ezekiel was in the land of Chaldea and was 
 prophesying from there about seven hundred 
 years before the visions of John on the isle of 
 Patmos. Ezekiel says, "And when I looked, be- 
 hold, a hand was sent unto me, and lo, a roll of 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 91 
 
 a book was therein; and he spread it before me; 
 and it was written within, and without ; and there 
 was written therein lamentations, and mourning, 
 and woe. Moreover he said unto me. Son of man, 
 eat that thou findest; eat this roll, and go speak 
 to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, 
 and he caused me to eat that roll. And he said 
 unto me, Son of man, cause thy belly to eat, and 
 fill thy bowels with this roll that I give thee. 
 Then did I eat it ; and it was in my mouth as 
 honey for sweetness. And he said unto me. Son 
 of man, go, get thee unto the house of Israel, 
 and speak of my words unto them. Ezek. ii. 9, 
 10 ; iii. 1-5. 
 
 We understand of course, that the prophet was 
 instructed to study the law, and when he became 
 learned to go to the children of Israel and 
 prophesy unto them. Now let us turn to John. 
 
 " And the voice which I heard from heaven 
 spake unto me again, and said. Go and take the 
 little book which is open in the hand of the angel 
 which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. 
 And I went unto the angel and said unto him, Give 
 me the little book. And he said unto me. Take it, 
 and eat it up ; and it shall make thy belly bitter, 
 but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey. And 
 I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and 
 ate it up ; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey ; 
 and as soon as I had eaten it my belly was bitter. 
 And he said unto me. Thou must prophesy again 
 before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, 
 and kings. Rev. x. 8-11. 
 
92 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 SACRED NUMBERS 
 
 " The frequent occurrence of certain numbers 
 in the sacred Hterature of the Hebrews," says 
 William Smith in his Dictionary of the Bible, 
 " is obvious to the most superficial reader, and it 
 is almost equally obvious that these numbers are 
 associated with certain ideas." 
 
 It is a great pity that man has lost the earliest 
 meaning of those numerical symbols, for they 
 all have a significance, and among the learned of 
 the ancients they represented principles of nature 
 so closely associated with the nature of man, that 
 they became interwoven with their religious teach- 
 ings. The symbolical meanings were known only 
 by those educated in the science of spiritology ; 
 hence their meanings are never explained from 
 latter-day pulpits. 
 
 Prominent among those symbolic signs are the 
 numbers 1, 2, 3, 7, 12, 40, 70, 144, 144,000. 
 All refer back to the principles of the mathematics 
 of nature, which if properly understood would 
 unravel the mysteries of life. The only cause 
 of unhappiness among men is the disorder of the 
 spiritual man. Our bodies may become dis- 
 ordered and give us pain, but that does not nec- 
 essarily bring unhappiness. 
 
 ONE 
 
 The number one and its multiples comprehend 
 all of numerical nature. Correspondingly there 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 93 
 
 is ONE GOD, the comprehension of all nature. 
 One is divided up into fractions, but yet the one 
 is always an integral. The essence, power, 
 beauty, and gradeur of God are manifest in every 
 individual thing in nature and all partake of him, 
 yet GOD IS ONE. The intelligent mind can elab- 
 orate for itself the principles only hinted at here. 
 
 TWO 
 
 Two is the first association of numbers. Every- 
 thing that has being is of a dual nature. There 
 are two opposing forces in everything, a positive 
 and a negative. It is by the power of those 
 forces that the heavenly bodies are held in their 
 proper places as they revolve in space around their 
 central magnets. These opposing forces of 
 diverse natures are so nicely adjusted that no two 
 atoms really ever touch each other, but around 
 each is a minute atmospheric wall. This dual 
 nature is represented in the male and female 
 natures of all animal life. Animal perpetuation 
 could not be continued were it not for the male 
 and female elements in nature. The Master 
 started out his disciples in pairs, for " in union 
 there is strength." 
 
 THREE 
 
 The number three is a symbolic sign found in 
 the doctrine of the Trinity which has always been 
 a knotty question among theologians. It was 
 the question that divided the Arian and the Alex- 
 andrian sect of Christians in an early day and 
 
94 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 which induced Constantine to convene the council 
 of Nice in the year 324. 
 
 The plain wording of the Bible does not teach 
 the doctrine as presented by theologians. The 
 only passages that can be called to its support are 
 these : " Go ye therefore and teach all nations ; 
 baptising them in the name of the Father, and of 
 the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." " The grace of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, and 
 the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you 
 all. Amen." That passage in I. John v. 7, 
 which reads, *' For there are three that bear record 
 in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy 
 Ghost, and these three are one," is conceded to 
 be spurious and is omitted in the Revised Version 
 of the New Testament. 
 
 These spurious passages in the Bible mar the 
 effect of the whole, yet we cannot dispense with 
 it because of those frauds any more than we can 
 dispense with the use of gold as a medium of 
 exchange because there are counterfeit coins in 
 circulation. We must distinguish the true from 
 the false in the Bible on the same principle that 
 we do in other things, exercising our best judg- 
 ment. In the above quotation, the Father, the 
 Son, and the Holy Ghost were not presented as 
 three persons in one, but as the proper wording 
 of ceremonies which were recommended, and 
 nothing more. 
 
 Scientifically, they are three principles of 
 nature in one, the Infinite Mind that corapre- 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 95 
 
 hends everything and forms everything by gen- 
 eral rules or laws of nature, the physical sub- 
 stance of all things, and the spirit of all things. 
 Those are the three component elements in every 
 man, and in every living thing, as well as in God. 
 It is a fact which all must admit that man is a 
 trinity within and of himself. If we rightly 
 understand the Trinity, we can readily compre- 
 hend the divine nature of the Master. Matter is 
 an eternal factor of nature. It never had a be- 
 ginning and can never have an ending. There 
 is in nature a universal spirit and a universal 
 mind, or intelligence. Mind is the great combin- 
 ing power of nature. The universal mind, or 
 the mind of God, compounded the universe, made 
 the world. The Master was a child of prophesy ; 
 he came for a purpose, and was first originated 
 by the Divine Will. Mary was chosen as his 
 mother and the spirit of Intelligence permeated 
 her being, subdued her mind to spiritual thoughts, 
 and conquered the flesh by the power of the 
 spirit. She conceived in that state of mind and 
 brought forth a child of exceptional beauty, 
 grace, intelligence, and spiritual endowments. 
 He was an especial child of God, that is, he was 
 cultured by Divine thought for an especial pur- 
 pose. He came; the purpose was fulfilled. 
 
 A knowledge of the Trinity is of great im- 
 portance to man. Rightly understood the race 
 will evolve to a higher, grander, and better con- 
 dition. 
 
96 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 Let us analyze the three persons in one as ap- 
 plied to man. All men have a physical nature. 
 Our first duty is to properly care for the physical 
 man, which is the house in which the real, the 
 spiritual man, lives. The spiritual man cannot 
 live with comfort in a diseased, defonued, or de- 
 bauched house. It is, then, our duty to study 
 to improve the nature of physical man. 
 
 In the culture of the physical we should not 
 neglect the spiritual man, for that lives forever 
 and goes into the next world when it leaves this, 
 either to reap the rewards of a well spent life, or 
 the reverse, according to the seed it has sown. 
 
 To be a person of purpose or worth, the intel- 
 lect must be cultivated; there is no deformity so 
 great as that of the mind, for mind marks the 
 measure of man. This does not mean that one 
 should master the sciences in the books, but it 
 does mean that one should learn how to think and 
 to think well on all subjects within the life of the 
 individual. If you are a farmer, be an intelligent 
 farmer; if you are a mechanic, understand your 
 trade ; if you are a housewife, preside with dignity 
 and grace over your family ; in short, whatever be 
 your calling, be the master of that calling, but 
 imbue it with spiritual thought. 
 
 The object of most people of this age is to 
 accumulate all the physical comforts of life to 
 the neglect of other needs. This is a great mis- 
 take ; while the comforts of the physical are nec- 
 essary, it is yet far better to be stinted in worldly 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 97 
 
 goods than to have the spirit starved and the 
 intellect dwarfed, for you cannot take your 
 earthly possessions with you, and you do go with 
 your spiritual wealth and mental endowments. 
 If they have been neglected it may take thousands 
 of years in which to right the wrongs of a few 
 years of earth life. You live for yourself. We 
 make our own spiritual conditions, no one else 
 can do it for us, therefore we should study well 
 the trinity of man and care for the whole person. 
 
 In the very beginning of the Bible narratives 
 concerning man the doctrine of the Trinity is 
 laid down, but it is done in an allegorical manner 
 that has caused it to be overlooked; so for thou- 
 sands of years the account of the creation of man 
 has been a stumbling block to the skeptic and 
 unexplainable to the theologian. Yet the truth 
 of man's creation, or rather combination, as given 
 in Genesis is absolutely true and scientific. 
 
 " And the Lord God formed man of the dust 
 of the ground." Mark the language; the Lord 
 God formed man of the dust of the ground ; he 
 did not create man, but formed him. Scientific- 
 ally speaking that was true. Physical man is 
 composed of seventeen elements of the earth. He 
 is a chemical compound so far as his physical 
 is concerned, and that compound comes from 
 the earth. It makes up the physical man which 
 God formed. But that formation did not make 
 the whole man ; there were other elements wanting. 
 He was a lifeless lump of clay or dust, and would 
 
98 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 have always remained so had not something else 
 occurred. One thing lacking was life. God 
 breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. So 
 far we have the physical body endowed with life ; 
 but he was not yet a man, he had only two ele- 
 ments of a man. When the breath of life was 
 breathed into his nostrils " man became a living 
 soul." First the physical man, then the life prin- 
 ciple, and then the everlasting soul. This Bible 
 narrative is terse and beautiful. The writers of 
 the Bible simply stated facts, often hiding their 
 real meaning, which was left to those schooled in 
 figurative speech to interpret. 
 
 FOUR 
 
 This number finds expression in " the four 
 
 comers of the earth" ; " four winds," Dan. vii. 2 ; 
 
 " four beasts with wings " and " four faces," 
 
 Ezek. i. 5 ; " four rivers of Paradise," Gen. ii. 10 ; 
 
 " four beasts," Rev. iv. 6 ; " foursquare," Ezek. 
 
 xl. 47. 
 
 SEVEN 
 
 Seven is also a sacred number, a building num- 
 ber, and when understood we may see its sacred 
 application. 
 
 In nature there are certain clusters of num- 
 bers in the building process; for instance, there 
 are seven days in the week, seven stars in the 
 Pleiades, seven sounds or tones in an octave of 
 music, seven ages of man, seven senses, — five 
 physical senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting. 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 99 
 
 and feeling, and two spiritual senses, Intuition 
 and Psychomancy, — and seven colors to the 
 rainbow. 
 
 Those prismatic colors are of great import- 
 ance ; they are violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, 
 orange and red. Below the red is black, above 
 the violet is white. Now man emits from his 
 aura the degree or color in which he lives and 
 which controls his nature. For instance, green 
 is the medial color ; that is the medium station of 
 man. When he sinks below this medial line he is 
 on the downward road to ruin, when he rises above 
 it he is in the order of progression. When he 
 sinks below the red and enters into the realm 
 of black he is lost in this world and in the next. 
 He is beyond redemption. When he evolves to 
 the station of white he becomes perfect, but he 
 can only reach that state in the after life. All 
 of this will be fully explained as we continue with 
 our work. 
 
 In the degrees of the Magi, the Order of Mel- 
 chizedek, there are associations of the numbers 
 three, five, seven, ten, and twelve. Among the 
 Jews seven is the number of perfection; they let 
 their lands rest every seventh year. There were 
 seven churches, seven vials of wrath, seven 
 heavens, and many more instances in which the 
 number is used in the building of both the Jewish 
 and Christian religions. 
 
 Clark in his Commentaries says, " The number 
 seven, which was a sacred number among the 
 
100 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 Hebrews, was conveyed by them down to the 
 Greeks by means of the Egyptian philosophy, 
 from which they borrowed most of their mys- 
 teries ; and it is most likely that the opinion which 
 the Greeks had was that there was some mystical 
 idea attached to it. It is evident from its being 
 made the number of perfection among the He- 
 brews. Philo and Josephus say that the Essenes, 
 an ancient sect of the Jews, held it sacred, be- 
 cause it results from the sides of a square added 
 to those of a triangle. But what meaning does 
 that convey? A triangle, or triad, according to 
 the Pythagoreans, who borrowed their system 
 from the Egyptians, who borrowed from the 
 Jews, was the emblem of wisdom, as consisting of 
 beginning (Monad), middle (Duad), and end 
 (Triad). So wisdom consists of three parts, ex- 
 pression of the past, attention to the present, and 
 judgment of the future. 
 
 " It is also the most penetrating of all forms, 
 being the shape of a wedge, and indestructibility 
 is essential to it, as a triangle can never be de- 
 stroyed. From these three properties it was the 
 emblem of spirit. The square, solid, and tetrad, 
 by the same system were interchangeable signs. 
 Now a square is the representation of a solid, or 
 matter, and the number seven contains within 
 itself the properties of both the triangle and 
 solid and the square or tetrad ; that is the emblem 
 of body and spirit and comprehends both the 
 intellectual and natural world, which embraces 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 101 
 
 the idea of God, the chief of spirits or essences, 
 and all nature." 
 
 The number 7, as denoting either plurality 
 or completeness, is found in a considerable number 
 of Biblical passages. " If Cain shall be avenged 
 seven fold, truly Lamech seventy and seven fold." 
 Gen. iv. 24. " Then will I also walk contrary 
 unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for 
 jiour sins." Lev. xxvi. 24. " The words of the 
 Lord are pure words ; as silver tried in a furnace 
 of earth, purified seven times." Psalms xii. 6. 
 " The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before 
 thine enemies ; thou shalt go out one way against 
 them, and flee seven days before them ; and shall 
 be removed from all the kingdoms of the earth." 
 Deut. xxviii. 25. 
 
 TEN 
 
 Ten is the perfect number, nine integers and 
 one cipher. It is the rounding out of all smaller 
 numbers and the opening up of all numerical 
 mathematics. 
 
 Ten is a preferential number, — 10 command- 
 ments, the law of tithes, 70 as compounded of 
 ten seven times seventy fold. " Jesus said unto 
 him, I say not unto thee. Until seven times ; but 
 until seventy times seven." Gen. iv. 24. " The 
 weight whereof was a hundred and thirty shekels, 
 one silver bowl of seventy shekels." Num. vii. 
 13-19. " And the Lord said unto Moses, Gather 
 unto me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom 
 
102 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 thou knowest to be the elders of the people, and 
 officers over them ; and bring them unto the tab- 
 ernacle of the congregation, that thej may stand 
 there with thee." Num. xi. 16. 
 
 And in this connection Christ sent forth his 
 seventy disciples. In making one of the transla- 
 tions of the Bible it is said that seventy elders 
 were placed in separate rooms, and were kept 
 there seventy days, each making a copj' of the 
 Bible; and when they came out they all agreed. 
 " These nations shall serve the king of Babylon 
 seventy years." Jer. xxv. 11. 
 
 TWELVE 
 
 That the Bible was originally founded on sci- 
 entific principles, brought from the Chaldeans by 
 Abraham and transmitted through liis successors 
 to the time of Jesus, is proved by the number 
 twelve, which runs through the Bible from Gene- 
 sis to Revelations. The application of the secret 
 meaning of the number twelve was founded on 
 the sciences of astronomy and mineralogy. 
 
 There are twelve signs of the Zodiac, discovered 
 by the Chaldeans long before the birth of Abra- 
 ham. To those signs of the Zodiac the Chal- 
 deans attached the science of astrology which was 
 more fully noticed under the head of " The 
 Zodiac." The characters of the twelve sons of 
 Jacob, as given by him in his blessing of them, 
 related to the influence the twelve signs of the 
 Zodiac manifested on people born under them. 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 103 
 
 There were twelve stones in the breast-plate of 
 Aaron which had their secret meanings. There 
 were twelve tribes of Israel, twelve apostles, 
 twelve manner of fruits on the trees whose leaves 
 were for the healing of the nations, twelve stones 
 that the priests carried on their shoulders to 
 cause the waters of the Jordan to lessen that the 
 children of Israel might pass over the river in 
 safety, twelve stars, twelve gates to the Holy 
 City, and twelve stones for the foundations. 
 
 The Holy City that John saw coming down 
 from heaven was typical of the order that had 
 been the binding tie of fellowship from time im- 
 memorial among the Israelites. 
 
 The twelve gates of the city represented the 
 twelve degrees of the order, we have the right 
 to suppose, of Melchizedek. The stones of the 
 foundations represented the principles taught in 
 each degree ; those twelve stones represented 
 twelve virtues corresponding to the twelve months 
 of the year. 
 
 January, the first month of the year, corre- 
 sponds with the first degree of the order; the 
 stone is the Jasper, the meaning of which is 
 Friendship, Fidelity. That is a beautiful 
 motto. Friendship is the basis of all our social 
 relations, while Fidelity is a virtue of inestimable 
 worth. 
 
 February is represented by the Sapphire which 
 signifies Light, — light of knowledge, light of 
 understanding, Jesus, the light of the world. 
 
104. LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 March is represented by the Chalcedony. The 
 Chalcedony signifies Intelligence. Those enter- 
 ing this degree must exercise their minds, must 
 know how to think, for no person can achieve 
 much in this world who does not use his intellect 
 and act with an intelligent understanding. 
 
 April is represented by the Emerald, which 
 means Wisdom. We must cultivate the gift of 
 wisdom if we wish to achieve success in this life. 
 " For God giveth to a man that Is good in his 
 sight, wisdom, and knowledge and joy; but to 
 the sinner he giveth travail to gather and to heap 
 up." Eccl, ii. 26. " Wisdom is better than 
 rubies." Prov. viii. 11. 
 
 May is represented by the Sardonyx, which 
 means Knowledge. " The wise layeth up knowl- 
 edge ; but the mouth of the fool is near destruc- 
 tion." Prov. X. 14. " So are the paths of all 
 that forget God ; and the hypocrite's hope shall 
 perish; whose hope shall be cut off, and whose 
 trust shall be a spider's web." Job viii. 13, 14. 
 " When a wicked man dieth, his expectation shall 
 perish ; and the hope of unjust men perisheth." 
 Prov. xi. 7. 
 
 June is represented by the Sardius, the mean- 
 ing- of which is Faith. It is the head of that 
 beautiful Trinity of Faith, Hope, and Charity. 
 Have faith in God, faith in yourself, and faith in 
 the mission of life. " Faith is the substance of 
 things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." 
 Heb. xi. 1. 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 105 
 
 July is represented by the Chrysolite, signify- 
 ing Hope. Without hope a man would be as a 
 ship in mid-ocean without a rudder. " For we 
 are saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not 
 hope." Rom. viii. 24. " The hope of the 
 righteous shall be gladness, but the expectation of 
 the wicked shall perish." Prov. x. 28. " When 
 a wicked man dieth his expectation shall perish, 
 and the hope of unjust men perisheth." Prov. 
 xi. 7. 
 
 August is represented by the Beryl, whose 
 meaning is Charity. " With malice toward none 
 but with charity for all we will finish the work 
 we have begun." Lincoln. " And now abideth 
 faith, hope, and charit}^, but the greatest of 
 these is charity." I. Cor. xiii. 13. " Add to 
 your faith virtue ; and to virtue knowledge, and 
 to knowledge temperance, and to temperance 
 patience, and to patience godliness, and to godli- 
 ness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness 
 charity." II. Peter i. 5-7. 
 
 September is represented by the Topaz, which 
 signifies Purity. " The pure in heart shall see 
 God." " He that hath clean hands and a pure 
 heart, who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, 
 nor sworn deceitfully ; he shall receive the bless- 
 ing from the Lord and righteousness from the 
 God of his salvation." Psalms xxiv. 4. " Fi- 
 nally brethren, whatsoever things are true, what- 
 soever things that are honest, whatsoever things 
 are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever 
 
106 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
 report, if there be any virtue and if there be any 
 praise, think on these things." Phil. iv. 8. " To 
 the pure all things are pure." Titus i. 15. 
 " Pure religion and undefiled before God and the 
 Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows 
 in their affliction, and keep thyself unspotted from 
 the world." James i. 27. 
 
 October is represented by the Chrysoprase, the 
 meaning of which is Health. This is a very im- 
 portant degree and subject to think upon. 
 There is nothing of greater concern than health. 
 The tenn applies not onl}^ to the physical man, 
 but to the mental man and to the spiritual man, — 
 it comprehends the whole man. No one can be 
 absolutely happy or useful who has not a healthy 
 body. A sickly body impairs the whole man 
 to some extent. As there are diseases of the 
 body there are also diseases of the spirit which are 
 far more to be dreaded than mere physical sick- 
 ness. When a man passes to the next stage of ex- 
 istence all his bodily ailments are left behind, but 
 he takes his spiritual ailments with him, for the 
 spirit is the man. The ailments of the spirit are 
 such things as crime, debauchery, drunkenness, 
 and all kinds of defilement. All such are spiritual 
 diseases and in some instances they are so great 
 and dark that they sink the soul into outer dark- 
 ness and finally into annihilation. "O Lord heal 
 my soul." Psalms xli. 4. " Why should ye be 
 stricken any more ? Ye will revolt more and more. 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 107 
 
 The whole head is sick and the whole heart is 
 faint." 
 
 November is represented by the Jacinth, which 
 stands for Culture or Training. " Train up a 
 child in the way he should go and when he is old he 
 will not depart from it." Prov. xxii. 6. Were 
 it not for our culture and training the race would 
 relapse into the condition of savagery. Our tend- 
 ency is backward to our early conditions and it 
 is only constant culture and training that keeps 
 the race in the path of progress. Every child 
 comes into the world in absolute ignorance and if 
 there were no one to train him, the race would 
 gradually return to cave-dwelling and vie with 
 the beasts for mastery. 
 
 December is represented by the Amethyst, 
 which signifies Perfection. When one reaches 
 the twelfth degree he is presumed to be perfect. 
 That of course is impossible, for there is none 
 perfect save God, who is perfection in all things. 
 That condition is not expected of any man, but 
 there are conditions in human conduct that we 
 call perfection. For instance, a student is said to 
 be perfect in his studies who reaches 100. We 
 can be exemplary in our conduct, our thoughts 
 and in the sphere in which we live ; then we are 
 in human perfection. " Mark the perfect man, 
 and behold the upright, for the end of that man 
 is peace." Ps. xxxvii. 37. " There is no fear 
 in love ; but perfect love casteth out fear, because 
 fear hath torment; he that feareth is not made 
 
108 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 perfect in love." I. John iv. 18. " And above 
 all things put on charity which is the bond of per- 
 fection." Col. iii. 14. 
 
 Before the invention of figures by the Arabs 
 in the tenth century letters of the alphabet were 
 used for numbers. In that system each letter 
 had its numerical value, the true estimate of 
 which is now, in a measure, lost to us. The 
 Greeks, in the time of Homer or soon thereafter, 
 are thought by some to have assigned to their 
 letters a numerical value corresponding to their 
 order in the alphabet, and it may be presumed 
 that the same system was followed by the Jews 
 and ancient Christians. According to that sys- 
 tem, men were classed in numerical values accord- 
 ing to their moral standing or religious value to 
 the church. 
 
 The heathen gods were classed as beasts and 
 they had their numerical values as well as men. 
 John says in Revelations (xiii. 18) : " Here is 
 wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count 
 the number of the beast ; for it is the number of a 
 man, and his number is six hundred, three score 
 and ten." What that number represents no one 
 knows, but some suppose it had reference to the 
 Latin nation, and that the designation of beasts 
 by John referred to different nations ; but the 
 better judgment is that it was a spiritual appella- 
 tion valuing men according to their faith in the 
 religion of Jesus, in contradistinction to the 
 heathen worship of beasts, the heavenly bodies, 
 and sentient gods. 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 109 
 
 Pythagoras placed numbers on a more scien- 
 tific basis; he maintained that nature was builded 
 on numbers, in fact, " the being of God could be 
 proved by mathematics." Chemistry, the science 
 of all sciences, proves that every combination in 
 nature is founded on atomic numbers ; that the 
 different things we see and appreciate about us 
 are all builded on numbers. For instance, all 
 woody fibers of plants, trees, and grasses are com- 
 posed of three gases — oxygen, hydrogen, and 
 carbon, with a slight tracing of nitrogen. Take 
 these elements and arrange the atoms differently 
 and we have compounds of a different nature. 
 As an example, take the same elements in the pro- 
 portion of twelve parts of carbon, eleven parts 
 of nitrogen, and eleven parts of oxygen, and we 
 have cane sugar. Take twelve parts of carbon, 
 fourteen parts each of hydrogen and oxygen, and 
 we have grape sugar. Take six parts of carbon, 
 seven of hydrogen, and six of oxygen, and 
 manna sugar is the result. 
 
 THE MAGI 
 
 In turning backward to the dawn of our pres- 
 ent civilization, when the religions of the world 
 that have stood the tests of time were in process 
 of formation, we look with much favor upon 
 the cult known as the Magi, or Wise Men of the 
 East. It was they who sowed the seeds of Divine 
 wisdom along the Euphrates, the valley of the 
 
110 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 Tigris, the Persian gulf, and perhaps Egypt, 
 whence it spread into other countries. 
 
 From the time of the degeneracy of man and 
 the introduction of sin into the world, through 
 prophesies then made, a Redeemer, to come at 
 some time, was looked for. These prophesies 
 were not confined to Biblical prophets alone, but 
 the Magi had them as well ; in evidence of that 
 fact we need but call attention to the conduct of 
 the wise men who were guided by a star from 
 " the East " to Jerusalem at the time of the birth 
 of the Savior. According to the best authorities, 
 those men came from about the Persian gulf, or 
 the valley of the Euphrates. It was a long 
 journey from there to Bethlehem, and they must 
 have started on their journey some time before 
 the actual birth of the child Jesus. However, it 
 is evident that they were informed of the ap- 
 proaching event in advance from the fact that 
 they came laden with rich presents of gold, frank- 
 incense, and myrrh for the new-born king of the 
 Jews. 
 
 In the Hebrew text of the Old Testament the 
 word Magi occurs but twice, and then only inci- 
 dentally, Jer. xxxix. 3 and 13. In those in- 
 stances it is under the name of " Rab-mag," 
 which, being interpreted, is " Magi." 
 
 These Magi were skilled scientists, so far as the 
 sciences were developed at that time. • They 
 understood astronomy, and astrology so far as it 
 was useful. They were psychics, and communed 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 111 
 
 with the gods and received information from the 
 Source of spiritual knowledge, as did the proph- 
 ets of the Bible and later the Apostles. They 
 held the esteem of the heads of the government 
 of the Achaian kings. Even Cyrus the Great 
 always had one of the Magian priests with him. 
 
 William Smith, in his Dictionary of the Bible, 
 says : " Historically the Magi are conspicuous 
 chiefly as a Persian religious cast. Herodotus 
 connects them with another people by reckoning 
 them among the sixth tribe of the Medes, (1,101). 
 They appear in his history of Astyages as inter- 
 preters of dreams, (1,120). But as they appear 
 in Jeremiah among the retinue of the Chaldean 
 king, we must suppose Nebuchadnezzar's con- 
 quests led him to gather around him the wise men 
 and religious teachers of the nations which he 
 subdued, and that thus the sacred tribe of the 
 Medes rose under his rule to favor and power. 
 The Magi took their places among ' the astrol- 
 ogers and star-gazers and monthly prognosti- 
 cators.' It is with such men that we have to 
 think of Daniel and his fellow exiles as asso- 
 ciated." 
 
 It is evident that Daniel and the Magi possessed 
 the same occult powers and belonged to the same 
 class of spiritual scientists, for Daniel was made 
 chief of the Order. When Belshazzar was in a 
 drunken revelry, with his princes, their wives, and 
 his wives and concubines, there came forth the 
 fingers of a man's hand and wrote over against 
 
112 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 the candlesticks upon the plaster of the wall of 
 the king's palace, and the king saw the part of 
 the hand that wrote. He cried aloud for the 
 Chaldean soothsayers and astrologers to interpret 
 the writing, but could find none. But he was 
 told " not to let thy countenance be changed, 
 there is a man in the kingdom in whom is the 
 spirit of the holy gods ; and in the days of thy 
 father light and understanding and wisdom, like 
 the wisdom of the gods, was found in him, whom 
 the king, Nebuchadnezzar, thy father, the king, 
 I say, thy father, made master of the magicians, 
 astrologers, Chaldeans and soothsayers." Dan. 
 V. 5, 11. 
 
 The above passage explains in part the mean- 
 ing of the Holy Ghost as used in the New Testa- 
 ment. In Daniel it was called the spirit of the 
 holy gods. Josephus says : " When Belshazzar 
 heard this, he called for Daniel, and had dis- 
 course with him what he had learned concerning 
 him and his wisdom and how a Divine spirit was 
 with him, and that he alone was capable of find- 
 ing out what others would never have thought 
 of." Daniel was endowed with the power of the 
 holy spirit while he was a prisoner under the 
 Babylonian king, for he was but a child when he 
 was captured and taken to Babylon a prisoner. 
 The office under Belshazzar that Daniel accepted 
 was identical with that of Rab-mag, chief of the 
 Magi. 
 
 The Magi stood in the same relation to the 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 113 
 
 Zoroastrian religion that the Apostles did to the 
 Christian religion and their religions are alike in 
 all important essentials, except in the former 
 Zoroaster was the worshipful head, while in the 
 Christian religion Jesus Christ is the Master and 
 high priest, according to the order of Melchize- 
 dek. 
 
 The Zoroastrians believed in one Supreme 
 Ruler of the universe, the creator of all things ; 
 the Christian religion teaches the same. The 
 Zoroastrian religion taught the fact of a future 
 existence; the Christian religion does the same. 
 The Zoroastrians believed in a resurrection ; so do 
 the Christians. They believed in the existence of 
 right and wrong, spiritual light and darkness ; 
 so do the Christians. The basic principles of 
 morality are the same in both cults, only the 
 Zoroastrian religion is greatly simplified and 
 contained in three sentences, the terseness and sim- 
 plicity of which are unsurpassed; they compre- 
 hend the totality of man's duties, which are, 
 " have right thoughts, right words, right acts," 
 
 We must not imagine for a moment that the 
 great Christian S3'^stem of religion was the sudden 
 outburst of religious thought crystallized for the 
 occasion. Verily, the Christian religion is the 
 fruitage of the purposes of God indicated to man 
 and kept before his mind among various peoples 
 and in different ages from the time the Divine 
 information was imparted to the discomfited sub- 
 jects of sin that " the seed of the woman should 
 
114 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 bruise the serpent's head," until the confirmation 
 witnessed in the bleeding body of our Lord and 
 Master was made transcendentally beautiful in 
 the most sublime prayer that ever arose from the 
 lips of god or man, " Father, forgive them. 
 They know not what they do." 
 
 Following the sublime devotion of Daniel, not- 
 withstanding the wickedness of the chosen people 
 and their many estrangements from the paths of 
 duty, there remained sufficient devout men to 
 keep the truth alive, even among the Jews, or, 
 more particularly, that Jewish sect known as the 
 Essenes, whom even the wicked Herod held in 
 high esteem, excusing them from taking an oath 
 which he imposed on the rest of his subjects, of 
 fidelity and good-will toward him and his man- 
 agement of public affairs. The practices and 
 belief of the Essenes were along the line of those 
 of the apostles, and no doubt were the connecting 
 links between the doctrines of Melchizedek and 
 that of our Master. " They are eminent in 
 fidelity," says Josephus, " and are the ministers 
 of peace; whatsoever they say, also, is firmer 
 than an oath; but swearing is avoided by them 
 and they esteem it worse than perjury ; for they 
 say. He that cannot be believed without swearing 
 by God is already condemned. They also take 
 great pains in studying the writings of the 
 ancients and choose out of them what is of the 
 most advantage for their soul and body." 
 
 The resemblances between the doctrines of the 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 115 
 
 Essenes and the teachings of the New Testament 
 are very striking, especially in the usage of 
 swearing. Jesus in his instructions on the sub- 
 ject says, " But I say unto you. Swear not at all, 
 neither by heaven, for it is God's throne ; nor by 
 the earth, for it is his foot-stool ; nor by the city 
 of Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King ; 
 neither shall thou swear by thy head because 
 thou canst not make one hair white or black." 
 Matt. V. 34-36. "But above all things, my 
 brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither 
 by earth, neither by any other oath ; but let your 
 yea be yea and your nay nay, lest you fall into 
 condemnation." James v. 12. 
 
 THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 The Paradise of Pleasure, as the Garden of 
 Eden is called by the Orientals, was, in fact, more 
 than a myth, and of a more substantial character 
 than Biblical students are wont to give it. While 
 some of the language descriptive of that favored 
 tract of country is a play upon words and of a 
 fictitious character, yet there was a real basis on 
 which the fabrication was builded. 
 
 Follow the course of the Tigris and the 
 Euphrates from the Persian gulf up to their 
 head-waters in the Armenian mountains, the 
 source also of the Araxes and Phasis, the Phasis 
 wending its way to the Uxine sea while the Araxes 
 flows to the Caspian sea. The country consists 
 of the uplands and mountainous districts of Ar- 
 
116 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 menia and the pleasant valley in which the 
 Euphrates and Tigris meet and through which 
 they gently flow to join their refreshing waters 
 to those of the Persian gulf. 
 
 It was there, before the sin of corruption crept 
 in and despoiled the people, that the blessings of 
 heaven smiled upon the world and all the joys 
 of life were showered upon the inhabitants. 
 Water was drawn from the valley by a system of 
 irrigation that enabled the land to yield abund- 
 antly to the skill of the husbandmen. The cli- 
 mate was salubrious, the country healthy, the 
 people moral and intelligent, and possessed of 
 everything needful for all the comforts of life. 
 What more did they need to make them happy.'' 
 Did they not really possess the Paradise of Pleas- 
 ure.? and were they not a blest and favored peo- 
 ple.? And they would have remained so, perhaps, 
 through the ages, had not they partaken of 
 the forbidden fruit of sin by neglecting the civic 
 pursuits of life and strayed from the paths of 
 virtue and right living. They gave themselves 
 over to the red hand of war, stimulated by avarice 
 and fed on the blood and ruin of surrounding 
 nations. But these nations in time turned upon 
 their victorious neighbors and drove them away 
 from their homes, razed their cities and temples, 
 leaving nothing to witness their former greatness. 
 In place of the once thrifty and happy people of 
 the valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris, wild 
 and savage people possess the wastes. In conse- 
 
BEFORE THE TIME OF JESUS 117 
 
 quence of the destruction of the drainage system 
 of the country, poisonous miasmas rise and the 
 country is uninhabitable save by the barbarians 
 who run wild in its waste places. Thus most liter- 
 ally is fulfilled the prophesy: And Bab3'lon, the 
 glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' ex- 
 cellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom 
 and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, 
 neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to 
 generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent 
 there ; neither shall the shepherds make their fold 
 there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie 
 there; and their houses shall be full of doleful 
 creatures ; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs 
 shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the 
 islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and 
 dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time 
 is near to come, and her days shall not be pro- 
 longed. Isaiah xiii. 19-22. 
 
 From this Garden of Eden, this Paradise of 
 Pleasure, the inhabitants were driven by the fiat 
 of Infinite justice, literally fulfilling the allegory 
 of the fall of man and the loss of Eden. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS 
 CAME 
 
 There are three great factors in human nature 
 that influence society. One is man's physical 
 energy, which always leads him forward in the 
 great battles of life, such as business, commerce, 
 trade, the building of cities, and all kinds of 
 physical and mental activities. This physical 
 nature of man leads, when rightly directed, to all 
 that is useful and ennobling to society. It also 
 has its evil side, but evil is nothing more than the 
 prostitution of good, which, when extended to ex- 
 tremes, leads on to war, carnage, murder, crime, 
 debauchery, and the ills of human depravity in 
 all its forms. 
 
 These conditions were threatening the Jews 
 when the Master came. They believed in and 
 cultivated a kind of theocracy, deriving its vir- 
 tues, as they supposed, direct from God, as inter- 
 preted by their priests and prophets. Fraternity 
 had no place among them ; they oppressed the 
 weak and dependent ; encouraged strife, seditions, 
 and conspiracies. They were a jealous, arrogant, 
 superstitions, revengeful people. 
 
 The same grasping and aggressive nature, so 
 prominent among the Jews, is characteristic in 
 118 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 119 
 
 some degree of other nations and peoples. Hu- 
 man nature varies somewhat at times, as circum- 
 stances and environment change ; but humanity is 
 generally about the same the world over. Our ani- 
 mal natures are always at war with our spiritual, 
 and if we do not maintain a continual eflPort for 
 our betterment as a race, we will soon lose the 
 glory of a high civilization. The demands of the 
 physical man are sufficient to keep his physical 
 nature active and aggressive ; but the spiritual 
 man is more passive, and needs a constant and 
 persistent effect to keep him from lapsing into a 
 state of barbarism. That was almost the condi- 
 tion of the Jews when Jesus came among them as 
 their Savior. 
 
 At that time man's worst enemy was man ; 
 Might was the arbiter of Right. Smarting un- 
 der the Roman yoke, the Jews had become 
 restless, discontented, and arrogant. As an inde- 
 pendent nation they had ceased to exist. All po- 
 litical and religious rights had been taken from 
 them. In their religion they adhered to the old 
 Jewish rites ; but religion did not influence their 
 society to its betterment. All the abominations 
 of the flesh and deviltries of the mind were in 
 practice among them, with no better results 
 among the Romans. They, too, were lustful, 
 cruel, and grasping, encouraging the spirit of 
 war as a pastime and conquest as a virtue. They 
 sought greatness through the force of arms. 
 
 To modify these conditions and to lead men to 
 
120 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 a higher plane and to nobler ideals was the mis- 
 sion of Jesus. Another factor greatly influenc- 
 ing society is the art of controlling men and the 
 organization of society through the strength and 
 cultivation of the mind, to which the physical ac- 
 tivities of our natures ought to be subordinated. 
 In this factor of man's development the Greeks 
 held the first rank. While they were not a race 
 submissive to the demands of others, they were 
 primarily an intellectual people, having attained 
 the highest perfection of culture in many fields 
 of learning, as philosophy, poetry, oratory, 
 sculpture, painting, architecture, and mathe- 
 matics. 
 
 The leading minds among the Greeks hoped 
 to found a theory of government and establish 
 society on a higher plain by the cultivation of the 
 intellect and by subordinating the individual to 
 the rules of good government through philoso- 
 phy, and by that means secure the highest degree 
 of happiness and stability to the people ; but in 
 that they failed, for intellect alone is not suffi- 
 cient to round out a perfect life, either in the in- 
 dividual, family, societ}^ or government : there is 
 something else needed beside intellect, v/ithout 
 which there can be no permanent happiness, 
 contentment, or lasting success. An object les- 
 son is to be observed in comparing the present 
 condition of Greece with Its former greatness. 
 The Grecian philosophy, as such, is the pride 
 and admiration of all men, but as a political 
 factor It was a failure. 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 121 
 
 Where now is Greece, that Greece of ancient lore? 
 
 The same sun lights its mild and mellow skies; 
 The same waters gird its firm and rocky shore; 
 
 The same mountains, their lofty heads arise. 
 
 Yet present Greece is smiling Greece no more; 
 
 She seems now but the pall of humbled pride; 
 The cause of which our sympathies deplore; 
 
 And mourn the course through which her greatness 
 died. 
 
 The classic tongue may name Demosthenes, 
 And cite the forum of his glory won; 
 
 Or may recount the deeds of Pericles; 
 But cannot boast of such another son. 
 
 Th' face of proud Athens, whose learning and skill, 
 Has won from the world its fondest esteem; 
 
 But the breath of Decay encumbered her will 
 And her greatness fled away like a dream. 
 
 Where now is Greece and the pride of her isles. 
 Where Pindar sang and Sappho lov'd and wrote? 
 
 Her learning now but through memory smiles; 
 Which students con and stately scholars quote. 
 
 Minerva and the Pantheon combine 
 
 To render Phidias ever after known. 
 Less only in the sculptor's art divine, 
 
 Compare they to the matchless Laocoon. 
 
 Thy stylus stands unrivaled, Apelles; 
 
 Thy brush gave Alexander form and grace. 
 
122 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 While he was moulding nations to his please. 
 On canvas flattered you, his sturdy face. 
 
 The learn'd to Euclid yet must go to school. 
 By theorums get the solid of a hole — 
 
 Pythagoras found a Deity by rule; 
 
 And through numbers proved that man has a soul. 
 
 When knights of arms seek prowess in the field. 
 And wish their names enrolled in verse or song, 
 
 With glave untarnish'd at the talest wield. 
 And shout Miltiades and Marathon. 
 
 There iEschylus took his majestic flights; 
 
 And sightless Homer, by his songs sublime. 
 Made rules to guide the lesser lights, 
 
 That flood a willing world with vapid rhyme. 
 
 Design of architect and workmen's skill. 
 On Elgin stone and architraves of gold; 
 
 The Acropolis claims our wonder still. 
 And makes us bow to master eons old. 
 
 Greece spoke through her grandeur, and lived in her 
 men; 
 
 Gilded the pride of the world by her fame ; 
 But now she is weak as strong she was then — 
 
 She lives to-day in the shades of her name. 
 
 The stern hand of Time has crumbled her walls, 
 The night of her past has shadowed her domes; 
 
 The spires of her fanes her glory appalls, 
 
 And Greece has disgraced the name that she owns. 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 123 
 
 No champering steed sniffs the battle afar; 
 
 No panoplied youth feels the pride of his race; 
 The monk in his stole glooms the face of her star. 
 
 And Greece wears the shroud of Greece in dis- 
 grace. 
 
 In the field of the intellect the Greeks led all 
 other nations, and we cannot say they have been 
 surpassed since. Although we excel them in the 
 arts of industry and in the development of the 
 sciences for the welfare of the race, and are now 
 enjoying a higher culture than has before blessed 
 humanity, yet with all of our greatness we go to 
 school to the ancients in many things. We are 
 a practical people, subordinating our lives and 
 our political destinies to the dictates of reason, 
 softened by a fraternal love and spiritual aspira- 
 tion that blend the two worlds into one. 
 
 The third factor that permeates the nature of 
 man is the possession of those uplifting qualities 
 so fully exemplified in the life of Jesus. It is the 
 culture of his soul, the expansion of his intellect, 
 the development of his moral nature. Jesus in- 
 culcated the feeling of the tenderest love and the 
 warmest sympathy for those in distress. The cry 
 of the poor, the want of the widow, the helpless- 
 ness of the orphan, and the grief of the broken- 
 hearted were concerns of great importance, which 
 he urged both by precept and practice. He fed 
 the spirit of charity on the honey of kindness, 
 and cast the saving looks of compassion on the 
 steps of the wayward. He went down to the 
 
124 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 dregs of this world and opened a way through 
 the gloom of death to a life eternal. He ever 
 emphasized the double principle of the Golden 
 Rule : " Do not unto others that which you would 
 not have others do unto you," to which he added 
 as an affirmative duty enjoined upon all, "Do 
 unto others that which you would have others do 
 unto you." 
 
 By the cultivation of the spirit of the teach- 
 ings of Jesus, men's energies will be rightly and 
 properly directed to the benefit of each individual 
 and of society. To disregard his teachings is to 
 resolve ourselves back into the condition of the 
 Jews, smarting under the curse of God when 
 Jesus came to save them ; but they would not, and 
 to-day they are reaping their harvest of sorrows. 
 
 THE JEWS 
 
 In the time of Jesus, the Jews were divided up 
 into several sects, chief among which were the 
 Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. The most pop- 
 ular was the Pharisees ; they, according to Jose- 
 phus, appointed for the people a great many 
 observances that came down from their fathers, 
 not written in the law of Moses, and for which 
 reason the Sadducees reject them and adhere to 
 the written word alone. No traditions not found 
 in the written law are to be observed ; hence great 
 disputes. 
 
 The Sadducees were able to pursuade none 
 but the rich, the populace not being obsequious 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 125 
 
 to them ; but the Pharisees had the multitude on 
 their side. The Pharisees lived meanly and de- 
 spised delicacies in diet. They folloAved the dic- 
 tates of reason and deemed that all things were 
 done by fate. While men might act as they see 
 fit, whether virtuously or viciously, yet God had 
 so arranged all things that his will predominated. 
 They also believed the soul to be immortal, and 
 that under the earth there were rewards and pun- 
 ishments according to the deeds of this life. 
 
 The Sadducees acknowledged only the written 
 law and objected to the obligatory character of 
 all traditions. They denied the existence of spir- 
 its and angels in general, and held that the soul 
 died with the body, with neither rewards nor pun- 
 ishments after death. They also denied special 
 providence and made all human actions solely 
 dependent on the will of men. 
 
 The Essenes, according to Philo, were a society 
 of piously disposed men who in solitude, on the 
 western shores of the Dead Sea, sought a retreat 
 from the corruptions and conflicts of the world. 
 They lived an austere life, held their property in 
 common, wore a white robe, prayed and meditated 
 continually, made frequent ablutions, and for the 
 most part renounced marriage. They sacri- 
 ficed no animals. They condemned logic, meta- 
 physics, and even the physical sciences, as useless. 
 They gave attention to ethics, recognized no au- 
 thority but their own sacred books, and taught 
 the equality of men. They have often been com- 
 
126 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 pared with the old Hebrew School of Prophets, 
 the Greek Pythagoreans, the Stoics, Christian 
 monks and modern Quakers. De Quincey has 
 sought to identify them with the early Christians, 
 who, surrounded by dangers, assumed the name 
 and mode of life of the Essenes as a disguise, 
 alike impenetrable to Jewish or Roman enemies 
 and to timid and treacherous brethren. 
 
 Dark, indeed, was society under those condi- 
 tions, still more deeply and severely disturbed by 
 the political conditions of the countr}^ The 
 Jews, to whom Jesus was sent, were embittered 
 against one another on account of religious dif- 
 ferences, and against the whole world because of 
 their subjugation by the Roman power. At no 
 worse time, and under no more discouraging con- 
 ditions, could Jesus have come as a pacifier, peace- 
 maker, and spiritual leader. There seemed to be 
 no defined, pacific policy among the people. Dis- 
 sensions, contentions, jealousies reigned supreme, 
 with no hope of a better condition. 
 
 Then Jesus came to lead them into a better life 
 and a better condition, but his offers were refused 
 and his blood shed on the cross. 
 
 JOHN THE BAPTIST 
 
 The life of Jesus cannot be written without a 
 sketch of the life and mission of John the Bap- 
 tist, for he was the avenue through which the 
 old dispensation passed into the new, the bridge 
 between the Old and the New Testament. John 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 127 
 
 the Baptist was the son of Zacharias, who was a 
 priest of the course of Abia of the eighth suc- 
 cession. The course of Abia was a special branch 
 of the Aaronic priesthood inaugurated, it is sup- 
 posed, by David and set over a particular course 
 of service of the Temple. 
 
 When the priesthood was first established among 
 the Hebrews by Moses, it was made an inheritable 
 office 6,nd confined to the tribe of Levi. The 
 office was a very important and responsible one. 
 The high priest presided over the Temple, admin- 
 istered at sacrifices, and exercised authority in 
 all ceremonial and religious affairs of the Israel- 
 ites. At first they were men of probity, judg- 
 ment, and character ; but toward the last the posi- 
 tion became disgraced and lost favor with the 
 people from the fact that many of the priests were 
 ignorant, brutal in nature, and unfitted for their 
 high calling. 
 
 But in the person of Zacharias God raised up a 
 pure-minded, God-fearing and capable servant. 
 His wife was Elizabeth, one of the daughters of 
 Aaron, thus bringing to their son the full heritage 
 of the office of priest from Aaron down. Eliza- 
 beth was a righteous woman, meek, lowly, fear- 
 ing God, and walking blameless in all the com- 
 mandments and ordinances of the Lord, as did 
 her husband, Zacharias. They were both well 
 stricken in years and had no child. In the first 
 chapter of Luke we find that Zacharias went 
 alone into the temple, while the multitude remained 
 
128 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 in prayer on the outside. At that solemn hour 
 the angel Gabriel came and conversed freely with 
 Zacharias, instructing him what he should do, 
 and inf onning him that his wife should bear him 
 a son, whose name should be called John. The 
 same angel afterwards appeared unto Mary, the 
 mother of Jesus, foretelling to her the coming 
 of that event in her life which was later to change 
 so marvelously the subsequent history of the 
 world. 
 
 Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Elizabeth, the 
 mother of John, were cousins, but Elizabeth was 
 much the older. Nothing is heard of John from 
 his birth until he commenced to preach in the 
 wilderness, at the age of thirty ; his age at that 
 time is put at thirty because under the law no 
 one was allowed to preach until he was thirty 
 years old, for he had to undergo the ceremony of 
 annointment, which could only be administered at 
 that age. John and Jesus were both learned in 
 the Law of IsrFtcl. They were cousins and of 
 about the same age, John being somewhat older, 
 and began their ministrations at about the same 
 time. 
 
 Where did they become learned and developed? 
 The books are silent on those points, but it is 
 evident that they went to school somewhere, or else 
 they must have had the gifts of God to know 
 without studying. In the development and prep- 
 aration for spiritual work, it is necessary to 
 be disengaged from all worldly complications. 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 129 
 
 Quiet, rest, and sweet communion with- nature 
 are essential. All those who have made an im- 
 pression on the world as great reformers through 
 spiritual unfoldment have gone to the seclusion 
 of hill countries and mountain recesses, and there 
 communed with tlie spirit of nature. When I 
 say the spirit of nature, I would not restrict the 
 term, for the spirit of nature in its broadest ap- 
 plication permeates everything, and vitalizes ev- 
 erything with intelligence. 
 
 John and Jesus may have learned the science 
 of spiritual manifestation among the wise men of 
 the East who saw the star, or it may have been a 
 natural development; but we have reason to be- 
 lieve that it was self -cultivated, judging from 
 the processes of development of other great re- 
 formers. Buddha was a mountain recluse for 
 seven years before he came before the world as an 
 oracle of God, during which time he lived on the 
 coarsest of diet and spoke to no man. 
 
 Mohammed secluded himself from society for 
 five years, living as a recluse in the Himalaya moun- 
 tains. We have no reason to believe that John 
 took the same course of spiritual development, 
 for it is recorded : " Now in the fiftieth year of the 
 reign of Tiberius Caesar, the word of God came 
 to John, the son of Zacharias in the wilderness, 
 and he came into all the country about Jordan, 
 preaching the baptism of repentance for the re- 
 mission of sins." Luke iii. 1-3. That was an out- 
 pouring of the spirit of God upon him as he 
 
130 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 walked and talked with his God in the solitude of 
 the primeval forests of Judea. 
 
 Jesus went through the same process. When 
 he was baptized of John the heavens were opened 
 and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape 
 like a dove upon him, and a voice came from 
 heaven, which said, " Thou art my beloved son, 
 in whom I am well pleased." Jesus being full of 
 the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was 
 led by the spirit into the wilderness, and after he 
 was there tempted by the Devil and fasted for 
 forty days, he returned with the power of the 
 spirit into Galilee and commenced his ministry. 
 
 John was called the Baptist from the fact that 
 he baptized the people with water. John's bap- 
 tism was to take the place of the old Jewish rites 
 of circumcision. Circumcision was a physical 
 act by which the body was consecrated to the 
 service of the Lord, with a figurative covenant 
 on the part of God that he would care for the 
 individual, as would also the nation at large, 
 John's baptism was a spiritual baptism, in which 
 the spirit was consecrated to God through a water 
 baptism, as the body had been through circum- 
 cision. 
 
 John did not claim that his was a perfect bap- 
 tism, only a bodily rite indicating cleanliness 
 before God ; for he says, " I indeed baptize you 
 with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the 
 latches of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. 
 He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 131 
 
 with fire." " For by one spirit," say . Paul, " are 
 we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews 
 or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free ; and 
 have been all made to drink into one Spirit." 
 I. Cor. xii. 13. " There is neither Jew nor 
 Greek, there is neither bond nor free ; there is 
 neither male nor female, for ye are all one in 
 Jesus Christ." Gal. in. 28. " For there is no 
 difference between the Jew and the Greek, for the 
 same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon 
 him ; for whosoever call upon the name of the 
 Lord shall be saved." Rom. x. 12, 13. 
 
 The baptism of John was not the baptism of 
 Jesus; John's was of water, as a token of the 
 cleansing of the body ; that of Jesus was of the 
 Holy Ghost and with fire for the cleansing of the 
 soul. Fire was typical of purification, while the 
 Holy Ghost was that spiritual gift that initiated 
 the subject into the mysteries of the unseen world. 
 No one can be baptized with the Holy Ghost un- 
 less he is pure in mind, in body, and spirit. There 
 are some through whom the spirit can manifest 
 itself who have not been baptized by the Holy 
 Ghost, — those who sell their gifts to whosoever 
 will buy ; but they are of the order of black magic, 
 and their works are the works of the devil. As 
 an example, turn to the eighth chapter of Acts. 
 While Philip was preaching Christ unto the peo- 
 ple of Samaria, they believed and were baptized 
 by water; but there was a certain man called 
 Simon, who had been practicing sorcery and be- 
 
132 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 witching the people through his powers. Behold- 
 ing the great powers of Philip, he was baptized of 
 him and continued with Philip for some time, 
 *' Beholding the miracles and signs which were 
 done." 
 
 Peter and John then came to Samaria. Up to 
 this time the Holy Ghost had not fallen on any 
 of them that were baptized of Philip in the name 
 of Jesus Christ. Note that the baptism in the 
 name of Jesus Christ alone was not sufficient to 
 endow the supplicant with the gifts of the Holy 
 Ghost; there was something more needed, — the 
 power of the Holy Ghost. When Peter and 
 John went to Samaria, they imparted the power 
 of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, 
 with the enchantments incident to a pure heart, 
 full faith, and dedication of the life to the service 
 of the Lord. 
 
 " And when Simon saw that through the lay- 
 ing on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost 
 was given, he offered them money." But Peter 
 indignantly refused it, saying, " Thy money per- 
 ish with thee, because thou hast thought that the 
 gift of God may be purchased with money. Thou 
 hast neither part nor lot in this matter; for thy 
 heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent 
 therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, 
 if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be 
 forgiven thee." 
 
 John came in the fulfillment of the prophesy, 
 " The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 133 
 
 prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight 
 in the desert a highway for our God." Isa. xl. 3. 
 
 Note the difference between the doctrines of 
 John and those of Jesus. John's were moral 
 and referred to the duties of this world, while 
 those of Jesus were also of the highest type of 
 morality and personal duty, but went further: 
 they pointed also to a future life. " And the 
 people asked John, What shall we do then.? He 
 answered and said unto them. He that hath two 
 coats, let him impart to him that hath none, and 
 he that hath meat let him do likewise. Then 
 came also publicans to be baptized, and said 
 unto him, Master, what shall we do? John an- 
 swering said. Exact no more than is appointed 
 you. To the inquiring soldier he said, Do vio- 
 lence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and 
 be content with your wages." 
 
 John imparted the highest Jewish morality to 
 the people, commanding that which was right and 
 condemning that which was wrong. He neither 
 cajoled the great nor slighted the poor, and for 
 this his young life paid the penalty. 
 
 Herod was tetrarch of Galilee and his brother 
 Philip tetrarch of Ituraea. Philip died, leaving a 
 widow whom Herod then married. This act being 
 wrong, John had the courage to reprove Herod 
 of that and other wrongs of his, which greatly 
 enraged the governor, who would have killed him 
 on the spot but for the great esteem in which 
 John was held by the people, who looked upon 
 
134< LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 him as a great pi-ophet; but with his own hands 
 he arrested John and put him in prison. The 
 consummation of his spleen came shortly after- 
 wards when, on the occasion of the birthday of 
 Herod, the daughter of Herodias, his wife, danced 
 before the tetrarch and assembled guests so charm- 
 ingly that Herod, in a fit of ecstacy, swore to 
 the maiden to give her, in token of his apprecia- 
 tion of her performance, anything that she might 
 ask of him. Being advised by the mother so to 
 do, whose hatred of John for not approving of 
 her iniquities was unrelenting, she demanded that 
 Herod give her the head of John in a charger. 
 This bloody request was complied with, and thus 
 perished a most beautiful life, the forerunner of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, who took up the work 
 where John left off. 
 
 JOSEPH 
 
 Joseph, the father of Jesus, was an old man, 
 a poor carpenter struggling for existence by the 
 practice of his trade. He was of the tribe of Ju- 
 dah and a direct descendant from David. Nothing 
 is known as to when or where he was born ; nor is 
 it shown when he died, but it is supposed that it 
 was before the crucifixion of Jesus. 
 
 Before his betrothal to Mary he lived in Beth- 
 lehem, but afterwards he went to Nazaretli, where 
 he probably lived during the remainder of his 
 life. Joseph was the father of several children 
 by his first wife, before he was married to Mary. 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 135 
 
 Joachim, the father of Mary, was a direct de- 
 scendant from David, as was Anna, the mother of 
 Mary. 
 
 The betrothal of Mary to Joseph is rather 
 amusing as presented by the Apocryphal New 
 Testament, as follows : " When Mary had arrived 
 at the years of puberty, the priests who had her in 
 keeping in the temple met in council and said, 
 ' Behold, Mary is twelve years of age ; what shall 
 we do with her, for fear lest the holy place of the 
 Lord our God be defiled ? ' Then replied the 
 priests to Zacharias, the high priest, ' Do you 
 stand at the altar of the Lord, and enter into 
 the holy place and make petitions concerning her, 
 and whatsoever the Lord shall manifest unto you, 
 that do.' Then the high priest entered into the 
 Holy of Holies, and taking away with him the 
 breastplate of judgment, made prayers concern- 
 ing her. And behold, the angel of the Lord came 
 unto him and said, ' Zacharias, go forth and call 
 together all the widowers among the people and 
 let everyone of them bring his rod, and he by 
 whom the Lord shall shew a sign shall be the 
 husband of Mary.' " Protevangelium, viii. — XI 
 Apocryphal New Testament. 
 
 The proclamation went forth, and on a cer- 
 tain day all the widowers came to the temple as 
 directed. They brought their rods. The high 
 priest took them and went into the temple to pray. 
 After he had finished praying he distributed the 
 rods among those from whom he had received them. 
 
136 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 The last one was given to Joseph, They were 
 ordered to present their rods ; at first there was 
 no manifestation. The high priest then went 
 back into the temple and inquired of God the 
 cause of the failure, and he was informed that all 
 had not presented their rods ; one had been held 
 back. The high priest returned and repeated his 
 order to present the rods ; that time Joseph 
 presented his and a dove proceeded out of his 
 rod and flew on the head of Joseph. And the 
 high priest said, " Joseph, thou art the person 
 chosen to take the virgin of the Lord and keep 
 her for him." Joseph took her to his own house 
 and said, " Behold, I have taken thee from the 
 temple of the Lord and now I will leave thee 
 in my house and go to mind my trade of build- 
 ing. The Lord be with thee." Protevangelium, 
 Chap, viii, Apocrj^phal New Testament. 
 
 Women in those days had no choice of hus- 
 bands ; the father or guardian bestowed the hand 
 of the maiden on whom he pleased. In this 
 manner a man betroths his wife, that is, contracts 
 to make her his wife at some future day. It was 
 customary among the Jews after the betrothal 
 to leave the wife with her parents for a consider- 
 able length of time, that the man might go home 
 and put his house in order for the reception of 
 his wife. This was an imperative law among 
 the Jews. "And what man is there that hath 
 betrothed a wife and hath not taken her, let him 
 go and return unto his own house, lest he die in 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 13T 
 
 battle and another man take her." Deut. xx. 7. 
 
 In conformity with this law, it is recorded in 
 the book of Mary, chap. vi. 6, 7 : "Accordingly, 
 the usual ceremony of betrothal being over, he 
 returned to his own city of Bethlehem, to set his 
 house in order and make the needful provisions 
 for the marriage ; but the Virgin of the Lord, 
 Mar}^, with seven other virgins of the same age, 
 who had been weaned at the same time and who 
 had been appointed to attend her by the priest, 
 returned to her parents' house in Galilee.'* 
 
 Joseph, on returning from his home and work, 
 according to the legend, found Mary in a delicate 
 condition, which disconcei-ted him very much ; 
 he did not know what to do about it. He thought 
 first to put her away secretly, that scandal might 
 not fall upon him and Israel. 
 
 While he was meditating on these things, be- 
 hold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him 
 in a dream, and said, " Joseph, son of David, 
 fear not. Be not willing to entertain any sus- 
 picion of the Virgin's being guilty of fornication, 
 or to think anything amiss of her, neither be afraid 
 to take her to wife, for that which is begotten in 
 her and distresses your mind is not the work of 
 man, but the Holy Ghost ; for she of all women 
 is the only virgin who shall bring forth the Son 
 of God. And you shall call his name Jesus, 
 that is Savior, for he will save his people from 
 their sins." Mary, viii. 8-1^. 
 
 Upon that assurance Joseph married her. The 
 
138 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 onl}' book of the canonical New Testament that 
 mentions the betrothal of Joseph to Mary and the 
 peculiar dilemma is Matthew, where the record 
 is very short and very much in the language of 
 the book of Mary ; in fact, the authorship of the 
 book of Mary is attributed to Matthew. 
 
 Because of the ignorance of those ages, in order 
 to impress upon the minds of the people the fact 
 of a Divine interposition in the affairs of men, 
 extraordinary' stories had to be invented and ex- 
 travagant language used, as if God did every- 
 thing in order in the affairs of nature, but used 
 very extraordinary methods in the concerns of 
 religion, whereas the manifestations of God in the 
 affairs of men are the most simple and plain 
 manifestations of nature, 
 
 NAZARETH 
 
 Nazareth, the childhood home of Jesus, lies 
 nestled in the hills of lower Galilee, about sixty- 
 five miles due north from Jerusalem. Of all the 
 places in the Holy Land, or perhaps in the world, 
 there could be no more fitting place for the resi- 
 dence of two such holy personages as Jesus and 
 I\Iary his mother. The inhabitants were made up 
 of mixed peoples ; among them were Greeks, Rom- 
 ans, Gentiles, and different sects of the Jews, 
 the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes. Their lives 
 were cinide and simple ; for that reason the Nazar- 
 enes were a people despised by the Judeans. 
 
 Nazareth was tucked away in a small vale of 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 139 
 
 the mountains, on a low cone not more than seven 
 hundred yards long by three hundred yards wide, 
 with towering hills surrounding it that almost 
 shut out the sky. Singular as it may appear, 
 Nazareth, during its long life, which dates back 
 beyond the memory of history, has never, so far 
 as we know, been disturbed by internal strife or 
 torn by the ravages of war, except during the 
 crusades, and thus it seems to speak in silent 
 tongue the admonitions of " peace, peace," the 
 injunction of the Master to his followers. But 
 in sight of the town lies the plain of Asdraelon, 
 which, strewn with the bones of slain victims, 
 stretches from the Jordan on the east thirty' miles 
 westward to the Mediterranean, thence on to the 
 hills of Samaria, and over which, for four thou- 
 sand years, have swept the armies of victor}- and 
 defeat. 
 
 The simplicity of this lowly place is striking 
 to a marked degree; it is unpretentious and sim- 
 ple; its buildings are made of the rough stones 
 of the country, without care for style. The 
 furniture of the houses is of the most simple 
 kind. A rug on a dirt floor, a chest, and in 
 some houses stools for chairs made up the furnish- 
 ings. Nazareth was not laid off with streets and 
 squares, as in towns of our day. The houses are 
 arranged in irregular positions, with narrow paths 
 leading to them. 
 
 West of the town rises a hill five hundred feet 
 high. To the southwest may be seen the dark 
 
140 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 ridge of Mt. Carmel, which appears to be a foot- 
 way to the sky, for over its gray summit the blue 
 canopy of heaven seems to hang ; while be^^ond, 
 the sparkling waters of the IMediterranean seem 
 spread out as a bed for the sinking sun. On the 
 east rises bold Gilboa ; and a little to the west may 
 be seen the summit of Little Hermon, where Saul, 
 forsaken by his God, fell upon his sword to escape 
 capture in that memorable battle foretold to him 
 by the spirit of Samuel through the instrumen- 
 tality of the witch of Endor. A few miles south 
 and east of Nazareth towers the round top of 
 Mt. Tabor, as a lone sentinel in the great valley 
 of Estraelon, which for better evidence we will 
 designate the Mount of Transfiguration, where 
 Peter, James, John and Jesus received a holy 
 visitation from the spirits of Moses and Elias, 
 and Jesus was transfigured before them. 
 
 In this sequestered vale of Nazareth, shut out 
 from the contentions of the world, Mary, the 
 mother of Jesus, was bom and reared. There 
 is something about the life and appearance of 
 Mary that pen cannot describe. The maidens of 
 the town of Nazareth are recognized to this day 
 as possessing that Semitic type of graceful beauty 
 which elicits the admiration of all visitors. The 
 same beauty of womanly perfection rested upon 
 that place when Mary, the richest flower of the 
 coming fruitage of God, smiled among them. 
 The sweet charms of maiden beauty rested upon 
 her well-formed features, and through her dreamy, 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 141 
 
 eyes was revealed a soul of transcendent purity. 
 With grace of movement she was not strikingly 
 unlike her maiden companions, but was the central 
 attraction among them. 
 
 It was the duty and pleasure of Mary, with her 
 companions, to go with her pitcher to the north 
 part of the town each evening to get water from 
 the Virgin Spring, as it has since been called in 
 memory of Mary. The spring was the common 
 resort at that time, but now the trough from which 
 she filled her pitcher has succumbed to the rav- 
 ages of time, and the stream itself is now but a 
 muddy waste. 
 
 Through all the events of the ages, from the 
 time when Belshazzar saw the handwriting on the 
 wall in his drunken revelry up to the advent of 
 our Savior, the directing hand of Omniscience 
 threw around this town of Nazareth that quiet, 
 simple, unobtrusive atmosphere the essence of 
 v/hich Jesus imbibed and reflected to the world all 
 through his life and teachings. In looking over 
 the events and circumstances that made it neces- 
 sary for a Christ to appear, filled with the 
 knowledge that would lead man out of the tram- 
 mels of darkness into the effulgent rays of spirit- 
 ual light, there seems to be that coherence of 
 conditions, events, and surroundings through all 
 the ages, from the time of Abraham to the raising 
 of the cross on Calvary, which renders it abso- 
 lutely impossible that the story of Nazareth is 
 a fabrication conjured up for the occasion. Bom 
 
in LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 in poverty, reared in indigence, surrounded by 
 simplicity, Jesus made his advent into the world. 
 It is among the meek and lowly that the great and 
 pure thoughts are bom to which our souls turn 
 for their elevation and enrichment. 
 
 THE VIRGIN MARY 
 
 In the contemplation of the life of the Master, 
 our minds involuntarily go back to the source 
 of his physical existence, his mother, the Virgin 
 Mary. For the first six hundred years of our 
 era she was worshipped as a divine personage by 
 the Gnostics, a kind of compromising sect em- 
 bracing modified opinions of Plato, Pythagoras, 
 Aristotle, Heraclitus and Empedocles and blend- 
 ing them in the theology of the early Christians. 
 They maintained that our Lord had two natures, 
 the human and the divine, that the human was 
 of him until his baptism, when he became divine 
 by the voice of God. This view was condemned 
 by the council of Ephesus in the year 431. At 
 that council Mary was decreed the " Mother of 
 God." The object was not to honor the mother, 
 but to maintain the true doctrine with reference 
 to the divinity of her son, Jesus. Nevertheless, 
 it did magnify the mother and now the worship 
 of the mother is growing apace with that of the 
 son. 
 
 Mary, like Joseph, was of the tribe of Judah, 
 and of the lineage of David. The Biblical allu- 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 143 
 
 sion is the authority for calling Mary of the 
 lineage of David. " The Lord hath sworn in 
 truth unto David ; he will not turn from it ; of 
 the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne." 
 Ps. cxxxil. 11. Were we left alone to the New 
 Testament, the history of Mary would be scant 
 indeed, for she is mentioned but four times in the 
 Bible after the commencement of Jesus's ministry. 
 Once at the marriage feast at Cana of Galilee, 
 John xi. ; her attempt to speak to Jesus when he 
 was assembled with his disciples. Matt. xii. 6, 
 46; Mark iii. 21, 31; Luke viii. 19; at the 
 crucifixion, John xix. 26 ; at a gathering of the 
 disciples at Jerusalem, Acts i. 14. 
 
 Were it not for the Apocryphal New Testa- 
 ment, we should know nothing of the birth, pa- 
 rentage, or early life of the mother of our Lord. 
 From it we get the following information: Mary 
 sprang from the royal race and family of David ; 
 she was born in the city of Nazareth, and was 
 educated at Jerusalem, 'n the temple of the Lord. 
 Her father's name was Joachim and her mother's 
 Anna. The family of her father was of the city 
 of Nazareth ; the family of her mother was of 
 Bethlehem. Their lives were plain and right 
 in the sight of the Lord, pious and faultless be- 
 fore men ; for they divided all their substance 
 into three parts, one of which they devoted to 
 the temple and officers of the temple, another 
 they distributed among strangers and persons in 
 poor circumstances, and the third they reserved 
 
144 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 for themselves and the use of their own family. 
 Mary i. 1-4. 
 
 As was the custom among the Jews, they had a 
 yearly feast at the temple, but the offerings of 
 none were considered acceptable before the Lord 
 unless they were married and had issue. Joachim 
 and Anna were unfortunate in this respect ; they 
 had lived together about twenty years, chastely, 
 without any children. When the high priest saw 
 Joachim coming with the rest of his neighbors, 
 bringing his offering, he accosted Joachim and 
 asked why he, who had no children, should pre- 
 sume to appear among those who had. This so 
 discomfited Joachim that, instead of going to his 
 home, he isolated himself from his neighbors and 
 dwelt with the shepherds in the field, where he 
 prayed to the Lord to remove his shame and give 
 him issue, that his offerings might be acceptable 
 and his standing among his neighbors be regained. 
 
 One day while Joachim was alone, the angel of 
 the Lord stood by him in a prodigious light and 
 the angel said to him, " I am an angel of the 
 Lord sent by him to you, that I might inform you 
 that your prayers are heard; therefore Anna, 
 your wife, shall bring forth a daughter and you 
 shall call her name Mary. She shall, according 
 to 3'our vow, be devoted to the Lord from her 
 infancy, and be filled with the Holy Ghost from 
 her mother's womb. She shall neither eat nor 
 drink anything which is unclean, nor shall her 
 conversation be without among the common peo- 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 145 
 
 pie, but in the temple of the Lord, that she may 
 not fall under any slander or suspicion of what 
 is bad." At the same time an angel appeared 
 unto Anna, his wife, saying, " Fear not, neither 
 think that which you see is a spirit, for I am that 
 angel who hath offered up your prayers and 
 alms before God, and I am now sent to you to 
 inform you that a daughter will be born unto 
 you, who shall be called Mary and shall be blessed 
 above all women." In due course of time a daugh- 
 ter was born unto the marriage of Joachim and 
 Anna, and at the age of three years they took 
 her to the temple of the Lord and delivered her 
 to the keeping of the priest, where she remained 
 until her betrothal to Joseph as his wife. The 
 betrothal of Mary and Joseph came about in this 
 manner: she was kept in the temple and was edu- 
 cated there with other children of her own age. 
 During her infancy she had daily intercourse with 
 angels, and every day she received visits from God, 
 which preserved her from all kinds of evil and 
 caused her to abound in good things, so that at 
 length, when she had arrived at the age of four- 
 teen years, she became very popular in her con- 
 versation and her purity of life, and the priests 
 concluded that she should become a wife. To 
 this she objected because of the fact that her 
 life had been devoted to the service of the Lord 
 by her parents and by her individual choice. 
 
 To dispose of such a difficult case, for under 
 the law and custom all maidens of the proper age 
 
146 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 were required to be married, the high priest 
 called together the principal persons of Jeru- 
 salem and the country surrounding that he might 
 have their advice as to how he had best proceed 
 in such a case. When they had met they unani- 
 mously agreed to consult the Lord on the sub- 
 ject and asked counsel of him on the matter. The 
 high priest went into the holy of holies, the ark, 
 and inquired of the Lord what should be done, 
 during which time the persons concerned in the 
 advice remained in prayer on the outside. And 
 immediately a voice from the ark that all might 
 hear said that all men of the house of David who 
 were marriageable but not married should bring 
 their several rods to the altar, and out of what- 
 soever person's rod a flower should bud forth, on 
 the top of which the spirit of the Lord should sit 
 in the form of a dove, he should be the man to 
 whom the virgin should be given and betrothed. 
 Accordingly, at the appointed time all mar- 
 riageable men of the house of David appeared at 
 the temple with their rods, where on command they 
 were to present their rods, Joseph, a man far 
 advanced in years, drew back his rod, but all the 
 rest presented theirs ; but no phenomenon ap- 
 peared and the high priest judged it proper 
 to consult God again, when he was informed that 
 he to whom the virgin was to be betrothed had 
 not presented his rod. Joseph was therefore be- 
 trayed, and when he did present his rod a dove 
 coming from heaven perched upon the top of it. 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 14(7 
 
 and every one plainly saw that the virgin was 
 to be betrothed to him. 
 
 The ceremony of betrothal being over, Joseph 
 returned to his own city of Bethlehem to set his 
 house in order, and Mary went to her parents' 
 house in Galilee, in accordance with the custom 
 of the Jews after a betrothal. Mary was living 
 with her parents at Nazareth. It was eventide 
 when Mary took her pot to the virgin spring for 
 water, when lo, the angel Gabriel appeared unto 
 her as a messenger from God. 
 
 To break the spell the angel spoke. " Fear 
 not, Mary, for thou hast found favor in the 
 sight of God; the Lord is with thee and thou 
 shalt conceive." With a fluttering heart filled 
 with astonishment, mingled with shame and deep 
 concern, Mary inquired, " Shall I conceive by the 
 living God and bring forth as all other women 
 do.-* " But the angel returned answer, " Not 
 so, O Mary ; but the Holy Ghost shall come upon 
 thee and the power of the Most High shall over- 
 shadow thee; wherefore that which shall be bom 
 of thee shall be holy and shall be called the Son 
 of the Living God, and thou shalt call his name 
 Jesus, for he shall save his people from their 
 sins." Protevangelium ix. 1-15. 
 
 Mary returned to the house and her chamber 
 was filled with a great light from heaven, and 
 the angel spake again unto her : " You shall 
 conceive without sin and bring forth a son while 
 you are a virgin, and he shall be called the ' Son 
 
148 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 of the Highest,' for he who is born in a mean 
 state on earth reigns in an exalted one in heaven." 
 
 What joy was Mary's, as the advent of her 
 child was honored as was never that of an infant 
 before and never will be again. It was his 
 awakening into physical life that induced the 
 jNIagi of Persia, the Wise Men of the East, to fol- 
 low his star for hundreds of miles across deserts, 
 over mountains, into a strange country to present 
 the new babe with their offerings. It was the 
 awakening of this physical life that directed the 
 shepherds to leave their flocks and herds in the field 
 that they might go and pay their adorations to the 
 new-born king. It was this babe that sent a 
 smile across the face of heaven, and gathered to 
 his lowly cradle the hosts of the angel world, 
 singing as they came, " Glory to God in the 
 highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward 
 men." 
 
 The cup of Mary's joy was full, and as the 
 babe grew in strength and in wisdom her soul 
 went out in praise to God for his mindful bless- 
 ings of her virtues and fitness to become the 
 mother of God incarnate in the person of a spirit- 
 ual man, blessed of heaven, honored of earth, fol- 
 lowed by the wise, but shunned and hated by the 
 vile and wicked. As he grew in grace, she grew 
 in anxiety, which ripened into sorrow unspeakable 
 and fathomless as she, the mother of a sinless 
 child, saw her boy bending beneath his cross on 
 the way to Calvary. What grief was hers as 
 
CONDITIONS WHEN JESUS CAME 149 
 
 she listened to the noblest prayer that was ever 
 sent to the throne of God, as her only son gave 
 up his life that we might see the light : " Father, 
 forgive them, for they know not what they do." 
 And with that prayer his last loving look fell 
 upon the face of his dear mother, whom he con- 
 signed to the care of his most faithful disciple 
 John, " Woman, behold thy son." And to his 
 disciple he said, " Behold thy mother." 
 
 Did ever mother have deeper sorrows or greater 
 woes? But as her son had freely given his 
 life that the light of heaven might be seen of 
 man, she was reconciled to her fate and went to 
 the home of her guardian and friend John at 
 Jerusalem, where she remained, as it is supposed, 
 until the time of her death, a time of which we 
 have no record. The last recorded evidence we 
 have of Mary is in Acts, i. 14, when she and the 
 eleven disciples were gathered together in prayer 
 in an upstairs room in Jerusalem. 
 
IV 
 
 WHO WAS JESUS? 
 
 For almost two thousand years the world has 
 been inquiring, " Who was Jesus ? " As yet no 
 universally accepted solution has been given. 
 Some call him the Son of God; others the son of 
 man brought into the world as all other children, 
 but endowed with extraordinary powers of intel- 
 lect and possessing a character above reproach. 
 Authorities on both sides of this question obtain 
 their opinions from the Bible. We will give the 
 statements of the Bible on both sides that our 
 readers may judge for themselves. We are not 
 here to make a life for Jesus, but to write his 
 life. To do that intelligently and truthfully we 
 must not consider Jesus in the abstract, but 
 must take into consideration the intellectual 
 standing of the people to whom the Bible was 
 sent or addressed, and the motives of the authors 
 or its books. 
 
 In those days people attributed supernatural 
 agencies to everything they did not understand 
 from the evidence of their five senses. They 
 heard the voice of God in the thunder, saw his 
 gleaming eyes in the lurid lightning, his wrath in 
 the belching volcano, his goodness in bountiful 
 showers and fruitful seasons, his music in the 
 150 
 
{For description of this picture^ see opposite page. ") 
 
I obtained the following description bf Jesus from my 
 friend, Alonzo Thompson, June 17th, 1907. He writes 
 me concerning the description of the person of Jesus as 
 follows : 
 
 " The following was taken from a manuscript now in 
 the possession of Lord Kelly, in his library, and was 
 translated from an original letter at Rome: 
 
 " IT BEING THE USUAL CUSTOM OF ROMAN GOVERNORS TO 
 ADVISE THE SENATE AND PEOPLE OF SUCH NATURAL THINGS 
 AS HAPPEN IN THEIR PROVINCES, IN THE DAYS OF TIBERIUS 
 C.i;SAR, PUBLIUS LENTULLUS, PRESIDENT OF JUDEA, WROTE THE 
 FOLLOWING EPISTLE TO THE SENATE CONCERNING OUR 
 SAVIOUR." 
 
 " There appeared in those days a man of great virtue, 
 named Jesus Christ, who is yet living among us, and of 
 the Gentiles is accepted as a prophet of truth, but his 
 own disciples call him the son of God; he raiseth the 
 dead and cures all manner of diseases. 
 
 " A man of stature somewhat tall and comely, with 
 very reverential countenance, such as the beholders may 
 both love and fear. His hair of the color of a chestnut 
 full ripe, plain to his ears; whence downward it is more 
 orient and curling and waving about his shoulders. In 
 the midst of his head is a seam, or partition in his hair, 
 after the manner of the Nazarites. His forehead plain 
 and very delicate; his face without spot or wrinkle, 
 beautiful with a loviely red; his nose and mouth so formed 
 that nothing can be reprehended; his beard stockish, in 
 color like his hair, not very long but forked; his looks 
 innocent and mature, but eyes very clear and quick. 
 
 " In reproving he is terrible; in admonishing courteous 
 and fair spoken; pleasant in conversation, mixed with 
 gravity. 
 
 " It cannot be remembered that any one has ever seen 
 him laugh, but many have seen him weep. 
 
 "In proportion of body, most excellent; his hands and 
 arms most delicate to behold. 
 
 " In speaking very temperate, modest and wise. A man 
 for his singular beauty, surpassing the children of men." 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 151 
 
 whispering wind, his love in the invigoration of 
 nature, his displeasure in famine, and his curses 
 in the ravages of war. All good things came 
 from God and all evil from his displeasure 
 through the ministration of the Devil. They 
 were principally controlled through their religious 
 belief and the selfish demands of their physical 
 natures. The basis of their religion was a be- 
 lief in supernatural wonders in which God was 
 individualized, that it was his office to pay them 
 strict attention as his favorites of all the children 
 of the globe. 
 
 With those convictions in the minds of an un- 
 educated people whose passions ruled rather than 
 reason, the fathers of the church had a Herculean 
 task on their hands in presenting the life and 
 works of Jesus in a way that would be acceptable 
 to the masses, and at the same time answer the 
 demands of reason and the coming intelligence of 
 the world. 
 
 Considering the material they had to draw from 
 they did remarkably well ; for their work was 
 unlike any other of an intellectual nature that had 
 ever come before the minds of the people. They 
 had to convince their judgment and at the same 
 time feed their credulity ; and this is yet the con- 
 viction of many among eminent divines, one of 
 whom was no less a personage than Henry Ward 
 Beecher, who believed that you must feed the 
 credulity of men in order to excite their religious 
 emotions. 
 
152 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 With this great mental problem in view, with 
 a knowledge that it must be satisfying to move 
 the masses, the authors of the New Testament en- 
 tered upon their tasks of writing the life of Jesus, 
 each from his own standpoint of knowledge. 
 Matthew and Mark were the only ones of the 
 writers of the four Gospels who knew Jesus ; they 
 were his disciples and were acquainted with his 
 life from the time they were called by him until 
 his ascension. Luke wrote his gospel from 
 rumor and the general belief of the people. 
 John wrote from imagination, called by many 
 inspiration, for inspiration is but imagination 
 sharpened by intelligences from without in the 
 way of mental impressions. 
 
 In studying the Bible we must take into con- 
 sideration that our early Christian fathers, as the 
 first exponents of the religion and life of Jesus 
 were called, were dealing with a class of ignorant 
 people in an age when there were no common 
 schools, newspapers, or other means of mental cul- 
 ture than verbal instruction ; though there were 
 among the priests and the learned those who 
 could read and write, the great masses saw things 
 only through their five senses, and then but dimly. 
 Had the Fathers of the Church treated the life 
 of Jesus from a scientific standpoint his philoso- 
 phy and true mission would not have been re- 
 ceived. The early church fathers were wise 
 enough to know that they must cater to the 
 credulity of the masses to gain their attention. 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 153 
 
 They knew humanity too well to attempt to make 
 proselytes by shooting ideas over their heads. 
 To convince a person, one must shoot ideas at 
 him, not over him. 
 
 The time is now ripe for a scientific study of 
 the Scriptures with the assurance that intellect is 
 sufficiently cultured to prevail over emotional ig- 
 norance and superstition, to the end that truth 
 may prevail and the people be brought back to a 
 scientific knowledge of the whence and whither 
 of the race. In presenting the scientific side of 
 the Bible we know we will arouse the prejudices 
 of some who are wedded to their gods and would 
 risk the loss of salvation rather than give up a 
 pet dogma. 
 
 Who was Jesus? Was He the Son of God? 
 In one sense. Yes ; in another sense. No. 
 When we say that Jesus was the Son of God, we 
 apply it in a spiritual sense. When we say He 
 was the son of Joseph, we apply the term in a 
 physical sense. Man is a dual being, composed 
 of a spiritual body and a physical body. The 
 physical is of the earth, earthy; the spiritual is 
 made up of those invisible forces which we call 
 life and intelligence. In the prophesy of Isaiah 
 the spirit of the Lord was to rest on the object of 
 the prophesy, which is conceded to be Jesus. 
 Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Ghost. 
 The Holy Ghost is a spiritual power and as such 
 Mary was impressed through the power of the 
 mind'. 
 
154 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 Before we can fully understand who Jesus was 
 we must understand who we are. We have ob- 
 served before that man is composed of three 
 parts, the physical body, the life, and the soul. 
 We have already shown what the physical is, but 
 have not explained it. The physical part of man 
 h the house in which he lives. The body in and 
 of itself is nothing but a combination of the 
 elements of the ground, about seventeen in num- 
 ber. If God had stopped in his act of creation 
 when he was through with the body of Adam, 
 he would have been no more than a lump of dirt ; 
 but when he breathed into his body the breath 
 of life, that bod}^ had the power of mobility ; it 
 could move about but could not think, could not 
 articulate, could not exhibit the powers of an 
 intelligent being; but when the mind or soul took 
 charge, he became a fully developed man. 
 
 To further illustrate: The body within and 
 of itself has no sensation. When you look out 
 on the beauties and wonders of the universe 
 around you, it is not the body that looks out 
 but the spirit in the body ; it is not the body that 
 hears, it is the spirit within which uses the or- 
 gans of the body in the act of hearing. It is 
 not the body that feels the sensation of pain, it 
 is the spirit within the body. It is not the body 
 that loves, hates, or thinks, it is the soul that 
 makes the man. 
 
 The workings of the mind may be entirely 
 taken away, and yet the body may live and ex- 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 155 
 
 hibit the powers of life ; but stop the action of 
 the heart, destroy life, and where is the soul? It 
 has left the house in which it dwelled ; it has taken 
 its flight. It has gone to the rewards of its 
 work ; if it has sown to the flesh it will reap cor- 
 ruption, if it has sown to the spirit it will reap 
 life everlasting. 
 
 When God created Adam He made the body; 
 He then breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
 life and man became a living soul. Life and soul 
 are associated, they go together; where one is the 
 other will also be. While they perform diff'erent 
 offices in man, they are associates for eternity. 
 Life is a factor of nature, an element of God, 
 and is as unending as God is infinite. The spirit 
 or soul of man is but a borrowed adjunct of the 
 Infinite, and God through His spirit in us and 
 we in Him. 
 
 Great God Our Father and our love. 
 Our Maker and Protector, 
 Let us in Thy bosom dwell. 
 And know Thee as Thou art. 
 
 Who then was Jesus? He was the physical 
 son of Joseph but the real Son of God through 
 the power of the Holy Ghost, the infinite spirit 
 of our Maker. Who was Jesus? If He was 
 not a real descendant of the house of David, then 
 all prophesy concerning the Messiah has failed 
 and we must look again for His coming. Who 
 was Jesus? If He was not the actual Son of 
 
156 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 God through the power of the Holy Ghost, then 
 nature is deceptive, the science of being a f ounda- 
 tionless fiction and the Bible itself a fabrication. 
 We call attention to Matthew, i. 18, " The Holy 
 Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the 
 Highest shall overshadow thee, and He shall be 
 called the Son of the Highest." And again it 
 says, " And He shall be called the Son of God." 
 Luke i. 26-35. 
 
 The Apocryphal New Testament is more ex- 
 plicit. When the angel of the Lord spoke to 
 Mary on the subject of her coming son, she said 
 unto him, in a spirit of astonishment, " What ! 
 Shall I conceive by the living God and bring forth 
 as all other women do ? " But the angel returned 
 answer, " Not so, Mary, but the Holy Ghost 
 shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most 
 High shall overshadow thee. . . . He shall 
 be called the Son of the Living God." Protevan- 
 gelium ix. 11—15. 
 
 As we have seen, the Holy Ghost is a spiritual, 
 mental power. And as we have also shown that 
 thoughts are organized forces, that by the force 
 of thought God combined the universe, it follows 
 that the spiritual thought of Divinity gave cast 
 and force to the mind and soul of Jesus before 
 his birth into the world; and as it is a scientific 
 fact that the spirit is the man endowed with in- 
 telligence, Jesus was the Son of God, though 
 he called himself " the son of man " over sixty 
 times during his ministry. Both appellations are 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 157 
 
 correct. The title " sons of God " is used all 
 through the Bible, and is used as a common ap- 
 pellation to-day by those believing in Christianity. 
 
 The practice commenced in the early dawn of 
 man's existence. We learn from Biblical records 
 that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, 
 that they were fair; and they took wives of all 
 they chose. When the sons of God came unto 
 the daughters of men, and they bore children 
 unto them. Gen. vi. 2, 4. Ye are not my people, 
 there it shall be said unto them. Ye are the sons 
 of the living God. Hosea i. 10. But as many 
 as received him, to them gave he power to become 
 the sons of God, even them that believe on his 
 name. John i. 12. As many as are led by the 
 spirit of God are the sons of God. For the 
 earnest expectation of the creature wait for the 
 manifestation of the sons of God. Romans viii. 
 14, 18. That ye be blameless and harmless, the 
 sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a 
 crooked and perverse nation, among whom 3^e 
 shall be lights in the world. Phil. ii. 15. Be- 
 hold, what manner of love the father hath be- 
 stowed upon us, that we should be called the sons 
 of God. Beloved now are we the sons of God; 
 and it doth not yet appear what we shall be but 
 we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be 
 like him. I. John iii. 1, 2. 
 
 While Jesus called himself " the son of man," 
 his apostles endeared him to their hearts with more 
 loving words, such as " Lord," " Master," 
 
158 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 *' Savior," " Redeemer " and other terms. In 
 the beginning of the gospels of Jesus Christ, 
 the son of God. Mark i. 11. And unclean 
 spirits, when they saw him, fell down be- 
 fore him, and cried saying, Thou art the son of 
 God. Mark iii. 11. And devils came out of 
 many crying out, saying, Thou art Christ the 
 son of God. Luke iv. 41. And I saw, and bear 
 witness that this is the son of God. John i. 34. 
 He that believeth on him is not condemned; but 
 he that believeth not is condemned already, be- 
 cause he hath not believed in the name of the only 
 begotten son of God. John iii. 18. Verily, 
 verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and 
 now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the 
 son of God, and they that hear shall live. John 
 V. 25. 
 
 The Jews, like all ignorant races, were great 
 sticklers for word worship, and like most people 
 nowadays looking for the mote in the eyes of 
 others, seeing the great work of Jesus and the 
 good he was doing, became jealous and conspired 
 to bring some accusation against him that he 
 might be condemned. When he was in the temple 
 at Jerusalem one winter day they surrounded him 
 and plied him with many questions, one of which 
 was this : " How long dost thou make us to 
 doubt.'' If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly." 
 " I told you, and ye believed me not," said Jesus. 
 " The works that I do in my Father's name, they 
 bear witness of me. But ye believe not, because 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 159 
 
 ye are not of my sheep ; as I said unto you, My 
 sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they 
 follow me ; and I give unto them eternal life ; and 
 they shall never perish, neither shall any man 
 pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which 
 gave them to me is greater than all ; and no man is 
 able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I 
 and my Father are one." Then the Jews took 
 up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered 
 them, Many good works have I showed you from 
 my Father ; for which of those works do ye stone 
 me? The Jews answered him, saying. For a 
 good work we stone thee not ; but for blasphemy ; 
 and because that thou, being a man, makest thy- 
 self God. Jesus answered them. Is it not written 
 in your law, I said. Ye are gods? If he called 
 them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and 
 the Scripture cannot be broken ; say ye of him, 
 whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the 
 world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am 
 the Son of God. If I do not the works of my 
 Father, believe me not. But if I do, though you 
 believe not me, believe the works ; that ye may 
 know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and 
 I in him. John x. 24-28. 
 
 This conversation of Jesus is all fully explained 
 in the 82d Psalm. " God standeth in the con- 
 gregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the 
 gods. How long will ye judge unjustly, and 
 accept the persons of the wicked? Defend the 
 poor and fatherless ; do justice to the afflicted and 
 
160 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 need3\ Rid them out of the hand of the wicked. 
 They know not, neither will they understand; 
 they walk on in darkness. All the foundations 
 of the earth are out of course, i have said, ye 
 
 ARE GODS ; AND ALL OF YOU ARE CHIL- 
 DREN OF THE MOST HIGH. But ye shall die like 
 men, and fall like one of the princes. Arise, 
 O God, judge the earth; for thou shalt inherit 
 all nations." 
 
 That play upon words was rythm in the songs 
 of the Psalmist and served Jesus in explaining 
 his spiritual relations to the occult powers mani- 
 fested through him, which the Jews could not, 
 or would not understand. And there are many 
 Jews in this age. 
 
 All the prophesies concerning Jesus were of his 
 physical nature as a lineal descendant of David. 
 Isaiah in the 11th chapter prophesies that our 
 Lord was to come from out of the stem of Jesse, 
 who was the father of David. 
 
 JESUS THE HIGH PRIEST 
 
 The life of Jesus presents to man the richest 
 field of thought that was ever left as an inheri- 
 tance to the race. There is always something 
 new, inspiring, and rich coming up for our con- 
 sideration in studying him. Intellectually he 
 shows more diversity of culture than any other 
 of the great minds that have Idlest the world with 
 the harvest of their thought and expression. 
 Some of them developed more of a scientific na- 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 161 
 
 ture than he from the fact that each of those 
 scholars was a specialist devoting his life to a 
 single individual subject; while Jesus seemed to 
 grasp all subjects which he was called on to ex- 
 plain with a clearness and depth of comprehen- 
 sion that all generations admire. As a moralist 
 none have as yet approached him in depth of con- 
 ception and beauty of expression. As a spiritual 
 mind his was the comprehension of the laws of 
 man In their most significant importance. As a 
 loving humanitarian extending the blessings of 
 fraternity to the world, he Is the prototype of all 
 goodness. This quality of heart was manifested 
 through his office as high priest after the Order 
 of Melchlzedek. 
 
 It Is not generally understood that Jesus held 
 that office, the reason of which I do not know. 
 Of all the sermons that I have heard I never 
 heard one preached about Jesus as the " High 
 Priest After the Order of Melchlzedek." The 
 reason may be that it is too tame and practical 
 to arouse the emotions of the susceptible. The 
 church in the past has fattened on the emotions 
 of the weak, but In the future the Intellect must 
 be in training or a new cult will be developed. 
 
 In studying the " Order of Melchlzedek " we 
 have but few land-marks to guide us. All we 
 know of it historically Is to be found In Gen. 
 xlv. 18—20 ; Psalms ex. 4, what Paul said In Heb. 
 V. 6, 7, and as It was exemplified in the works and 
 precepts of the Master. We know that the Or- 
 
162 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 der of Melchizedek was a benevolent organization, 
 the object of which was to do good, relieve dis- 
 tress, heal the wounds of the sorrowing, and assist 
 humanity wherever and whenever such help was 
 feasible. 
 
 When Abraham was returning from the de- 
 feat of the five kings his little army became weary, 
 and while he halted in the King's dale to give it 
 rest, " Melchizedek, king of Salem, went out to 
 see him and brought forth bread and wine and 
 refreshed the army of Abraham, and he was the 
 High Priest of the Most High God. And he 
 blessed Abraham and Abraham acknowledged him 
 as his superior and paid tithes unto him." Adam 
 Clark in his Commentaries on the Bible says, 
 " There is something exceedingly mysterious in 
 the person and character of the king of Salem, 
 and to find out the whole is impossible. He seems 
 to have been a sort of a universal spirit, and con- 
 fessedly superior, even to Abraham himself, the 
 father of the source of the Jewish nation." 
 
 After this, when Moses was leading the chil- 
 dren of Israel through the wilderness, where they 
 had to contend with all kinds of opposition and 
 trials, he changed the order of society and es- 
 tablished the priesthood of Aaron which took the 
 place of the order of Melchizedek among the 
 people. When the Aaronic priesthood had ful- 
 filled its mission and a better condition was neces- 
 sary, Jesus was sent upon the earth to re- 
 establish the Order of Melchizedek, which order 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 163 
 
 must have contained all the principles of good 
 society for the betterment of the race. 
 
 Melchizedek was called the King of righetous- 
 ness, also the King of peace. Following the in- 
 tendment of the Order of Melchizedek, Jesus 
 came into the world as a peace maker, relieving 
 distress, healing the sick, binding up the wounds 
 of the sorrowing heart, visiting the fatherless and 
 widows in their afflictions, doing good in every 
 department of life, and bringing the beauties of 
 heaven to the door of every man who would ac- 
 cept, but he did not hold out any inducement to 
 the crime-dj^ed scoundrel who wished for a bank- 
 rupt court in heaven to relieve him of wrongs done 
 on earth, — as Paul most emphatically says, " We 
 must all appear before the judgment seat of 
 Christ ; that every one may receive the things done 
 in his body, according to that he hath done, 
 whether it be good or evil." II. Cor. v. 10. 
 
 It was the mission of Jesus to teach people how 
 to live, not how to die. If a person lives right, 
 according to the teaching of Jesus, he will die 
 right and he cannot by dying escape the realities 
 of living. Jesus held out no hope for the mere 
 asking. He made no promise to the sin-stained 
 man that he might get into heaven after he was 
 dead ; the gist of the teachings of Jesus was that 
 the only sure way to get into heaven Is to sow the 
 seeds in this life and take the smiles of heaven 
 with you in the journey of death. 
 
 To the turbid waters of the soul Jesus spoke 
 
164. LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 words of friendship, love, and truth, the holy 
 trinity of the binding elements of society. They 
 are the rungs of the ladder from earth to heaven ; 
 they form the chart of all social and moral excel- 
 lencies ; and they soothe the ravages of selfish- 
 ness to the softening precepts of fraternity, for- 
 bearance and purity. 
 
 The society of the Jews had eliminated those 
 benign qualities from their practices and in their 
 endeavors to oppress others they were themselves 
 oppressed; they were reaping the harvest of the 
 seeds they had sown. They desired relief and 
 under the promises of the prophets of old they 
 expected a Redeemer, but they expected him to 
 come with the power of the sword of vengeance 
 and lead them to liberty through the gates of 
 carnage and war. The Redeemer of peace, love, 
 and friendship was so foreign to their concep- 
 tions of a Savior that they spurned and despised 
 the very person of Jesus. They had no concep- 
 tion of a spiritual kingdom on earth. They 
 could not understand the meaning of such a 
 proposition. They wanted a physical demonstra- 
 tion of the powers of God. They had been 
 taught under the priesthood of Aaron that God 
 was an individuality, with all the passions, preju- 
 dices, and attributes of man. He was considered 
 a man of war, was subject to fits of anger, and 
 had the servile nature of being pleased with flat- 
 tery and adulations and praise. He had all the 
 sensualities of gross meat-eating men. He de- 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 165 
 
 lighted in blood, in sacrifices, in wine drinking as 
 offerings, which always were sent to Him as a 
 precautionary means of safety, through the holy 
 office of the priesthood. There were fruit offer- 
 ings, bird offerings, kid offerings, and many other 
 delicacies that would satisfy the taste of even the 
 fattest occupant of the office of the Jewish priest- 
 hood. To do those things right and acceptably 
 to their God it was necessary for some one to take 
 charge of the holy duties of feeding God on the 
 sweets of the land, that he might lend his smiles 
 and good wishes to that particular people. So 
 a priesthood was established that was to take the 
 place of the more mild and humanitarian priest- 
 hood of Melchizedek, and as high priest was neces- 
 sary, Aaron was appointed to that office, with his 
 four sons to assist him. The order appointing 
 them was made a perpetual statute and secured by 
 being proclaimed by God himself as being an 
 everlasting priesthood throughout all their gen- 
 erations. Ex. xxix. 9 ; Ex. xl. 15. 
 
 This priesthood was confined to the tribe of 
 Levi, whose duties were to bear the ark of the 
 covenant, to stand before God and administer unto 
 him, and for those services they were separated 
 from the other tribes of Israel. Deut. x. 8. Un- 
 der this peculiar religion the children of Israel 
 became very warlike, cruel and revengeful ; the 
 result was, they were often conquered and en- 
 slaved by other nations, and finally scattered upon 
 the face of the earth without a country. Under 
 
166 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 this priesthood the people were taught that God 
 administered his rewards and punishments in this 
 hfe; they did not believe in a future existence, 
 and under the Old Bible man was considered but 
 a beast. 
 
 " I said in mine heart concerning the estate of 
 the sons of men, that God might manifest them, 
 and that they might see that they themeslves are 
 beasts ; for that which befalleth the sons of men, 
 bef alleth beasts ; even one thing befalleth them ; 
 as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they 
 have all one breath ; so that a man hath no pre- 
 eminence above a beast ; for all is vanity. All go 
 unto one place; all are of the dust and all turn 
 to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man 
 that goeth upward and the spirit of the beast 
 that goeth downward to the earth.'' Wherefore 
 I perceive that there is nothing better, than that 
 a man should rej oice in his own works ; for this 
 is his portion; for who shall bring him to see 
 what shall be after him.?" Eccles. iii. 18-22. 
 Under such teachings it was no wonder the Jews 
 became self-arrogant, warlike, and pillagers of 
 other men's holdings. 
 
 The Order of Melchizedek had been supplanted 
 by all the Jewish sects, save the Essenes. They 
 held on to the faith of a future life, and that this 
 life did not end all of either rewards or punish- 
 ments ; but they were too weak in purpose and 
 spirituality to bring about revolution in the senti- 
 ments of the people and a Redeemer was neces- 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 167 
 
 sary ; for God never intended that the race should 
 become wholly corrupt and beastly. To prevent 
 the continuation of the rapid decadence then 
 manifest among the Jews, the spirit of the order 
 of Melchizedek had to be revived by supplanting 
 the priesthood of Aaron by a better priesthood, 
 through a more righteous and enlightened priest, 
 so Jesus came into the world to accomplish a 
 purpose, and that purpose was to do away with 
 the Aaronic priesthood and re-establish a priest- 
 hood after the order of Melchizedek, as had been 
 prophesied and foretold many times before. 
 '* The Lord hath sworn and will not repent : 
 Thou art a priest forever after the order of 
 Melchizedek." Pisalm ex. 4. All the learned 
 commentators agree that this was a prophecy 
 of the coming of Jesus. " Seeing then that we 
 have a great high priest, that is passed into the 
 heavens, Jesus the son of God, let us hold fast 
 our profession." Heb. iv. 14, 
 
 And again, " So also Christ glorified not him- 
 self to be made a high priest; but he that said 
 unto him. Thou art my son, to-day have I begot- 
 ten thee." Heb. v. 5. This is a very important 
 passage: the keynote that relates Jesus to God 
 as his only begotten son. " To-day have I be- 
 gotten thee." Jesus was begotten of God 
 through heavenly ordination as high priest. It 
 was a spiritual gift and had reference to the 
 sanctification of our Lord rather than to declare 
 him physical son. 
 
168 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 The order of Melchizedek was before the priest- 
 hood of Aaron, for he administered to Abraham 
 four hundred and twenty years before the law 
 was made creating the priesthood of Aaron. 
 Melchizedek was represented as being without 
 father or mother, without descent, having neither 
 the beginning of days nor end of life, but made 
 like the son of God, abideth a priest continually. 
 This scripture had reference to his priesthood and 
 not to his physical existence, on the same prin- 
 ciple that " the king never dies," but abideth on 
 the throne continually. 
 
 Full particulars as to the priesthood of Jesus 
 the reader will find in the 5th, 6th, and 7th chap- 
 ters of Hebrews. 
 
 The mission of Jesus upon the earth was to 
 bring back the teachings and customs of the or- 
 der of Melchizedek, in the mysteries of which or- 
 der he was well versed. To say that he was a 
 highpriest of the order of Melchizedek without 
 his knowing anything about it is absurd. To 
 say that he was made highpriest of the order of 
 Melchizedek when there was no such an order is 
 equally absurd. 
 
 The facts are, Jesus was sent into the world for 
 the especial purpose of reinstating the order of 
 Melchizedek as an improvement one, and inde- 
 pendent of the priesthood of Aaron, and the ma- 
 terialistic teachings of the Jews, and for that they 
 crucified him. It was the practice of the Jews 
 to destroy every one who differed with them in 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 169 
 
 their notions of religion, and Jesus was not an 
 exception. In fact that same intolerant spirit 
 held a bloody reign over the nations of the earth 
 for more than sixteen hundred 3'ears after Jesus. 
 
 THE FATHER, SON, AND HOLY GHOST 
 
 The term " Father, Son, and Holy Ghost " is 
 so familiar in pulpit oratory that it has come to 
 be a kind of universal creed used by all. While 
 it is not a Biblical doctrine yet it is a useful, and 
 I might say, necessary adjunct and foundation 
 of the Christian religion. 
 
 This tenn leads us into the science of God and 
 the relation we bear to Him and He bears to us. 
 
 In considering the science of God, we must not 
 treat him as a personality surrounded by en- 
 vironments as individuals are but as the compre- 
 hension of all things. God is in and of all 
 things, animate, and inanimate, and the author of 
 all. God is absolute wisdom, not of wisdom but 
 wisdom itself; therefore he is all wise. God is 
 absolute knowledge, not of knowledge, but knowl- 
 edge itself; therefore he knows all things. God 
 is absolute thought, not of thought, but thought 
 itself. God is absolute will-force, not of will- 
 force, for no power willed God into being, but 
 he is will-force itself; God is absolute power, not 
 a creature of power but power itself, therefore 
 he is all-powerful. God is absolute spirit, not of 
 spirit, but spirit itself. These are some of the 
 prime factors of God, the only Infinite One. On 
 
170 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 the same principle life is a factor of God mani- 
 festing itself in every combination of nature, ac- 
 cording to the chemical compounds of each being. 
 Man is a compound of the elements of nature ; 
 that physical compound manifests his form of 
 life. There are seventeen of the earth elements 
 and perhaps more in the compound called man ; 
 behind and controlling these seventeen elements 
 are as many spiritual elements in the makeup of 
 each human being. Therefore man is both a 
 physical and a spiritual being. In comprehend- 
 ing this scientific makeup, Paul recognized man 
 as containing both a physical body and a spiritual 
 bod}?^, both of which are eternal factors of na- 
 ture, which as principles never had a beginning 
 and will never have an ending ; but his physical 
 entity, when it will have served its purpose, will 
 be dissolved and go back to its original condition 
 to compose the framework of other physical en- 
 tities ; and his spirit evolve on to the state of 
 perfection, where it will assimilate in the universal 
 spirit of God. In the art of transmitting the 
 human species along the line of life the wisdom 
 of God has made it unnecessary for a special crea- 
 tion in bringing forth each human being; but 
 man is brought forth through the laws of human 
 generation, and his life existence conforms also 
 to general laws which are the conception of divine 
 wisdom. 
 
 It must be remembered that the Divine life of 
 Jesus was the result of the science of spiritology 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 171 
 
 introduced in the formation of society in the days 
 of Abraham and culminated with his life upon 
 the cross. It must also be remembered that 
 neither Jesus nor the Apostles stopped to argue 
 the philosophy of their mission, as they conformed 
 to the Divine will in accomplishing their mission 
 on earth. They simply spoke and wrote of 
 things as they were, and actions of men as they 
 occurred, without entering into the philosophy, 
 science, or reason of the respective events ; hence 
 the world has gone astray in a great measure in 
 its speculations as to the nature of God, of Jesus 
 and the Holy Ghost, never dreaming that they 
 present the demonstration of the great science of 
 spirit, and that Jesus was a physical exponent of 
 that science. To understand the life of Jesus, 
 then, we must study it from a spiritual and not a 
 physical standpoint. 
 
 There is a spirit that permeates nature ; you 
 may call it life endowed with intelligence, if you 
 v."ish. It makes little difference what name you 
 apply to any of the attributes of God; they are 
 the same by whatever name you may call them. 
 That universal spirit is an element that is as 
 eternal as God, because it is a part of God — 
 not on the principle that a man's hand is a part 
 of his body and cannot be severed from the body 
 and leave the body whole, but it is a part of 
 God on the principle that a drop of water is a 
 part of the aqueous fluid of the earth, one por- 
 tion of which may be in the circulatory system 
 
172 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 of man, another in an animal, another in a tree, 
 plant, mineral, or combined in the great salt body 
 of the ocean ; wherever it is, in whatever combina- 
 tion it may be found, it is water composed of 
 two gases. Dissolve the compound and the parts 
 composing it go back to their original elements. 
 Now the spirit of God is in every man, and it 
 is pure spirit, as water is always pure ; — in what- 
 ever combination it may be found, when extracted 
 it is pure. The spirit of God is pure in every 
 person, but its free action is impeded, diverted, 
 and hindered in many ways, — sometimes through 
 defects in the physiological development ; some- 
 times through mental wantonness, sometimes 
 through impressive spiritual forces of a crude and 
 devilish nature. 
 
 While the word God is generic in its term, 
 that infinity that holds and controls the universe 
 is manifest in many individual forms and phases 
 of nature, and is in every condition of man from 
 the embryonic foetus to the archangel that minis- 
 ters to his wisdom in the realms of eternal light. 
 The word God comprehends them all above the 
 grade of man and spirit, in a Biblical sense and as 
 used by Bible writers. This has been explained 
 under the head of " Bible Gods." 
 
 Sometimes the spirit that the Jews recognized 
 under the name of God was bad and led them into 
 trouble and finally destroyed that people as a 
 nation with an abiding home. Every nation has 
 its god. If the people of the nation are good, 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 173 
 
 law-abiding, progressive, and moral, that kind of 
 god attends and administers unto them. If they 
 are immoral, bad, and self-degraded, their god 
 will find them and lead them on, because there are 
 evil gods as there are evil men, because all in- 
 dividual gods came from the earth sphere. As 
 every nation has its god, so does every famil}^ 
 and every individual. In some instances the fam- 
 ily god is very wicked and bad, and the family 
 over which he rules is equally bad, disagreeable, 
 contentious, and wicked. The same rule prevails 
 in individuals ; every individual has his god ; some 
 have bad and some good gods in their indi- 
 viduality, and their characters show accordingly. 
 All of these different manifestations of God in 
 man through the spirit are: controlled by the 
 proper or improper development of the organiza- 
 tion and training of the individual. The life ele- 
 ment and spirit of God Is capable of combining 
 with any phase of human existence. While God is 
 manifest everywhere, and there is a way provided 
 for man's progression, spiritually, mentally and 
 morally, man can divert the upward trend if he 
 wishes to do so, or take the wrong course in life 
 and reap the results of his own waywardness. If 
 a man falls, it is his fault and not the fault 
 of God in His wise provision for man's ultimate 
 redemption. It may not be the fault of the in- 
 dividual man, but the. fault, in every case, rests 
 with the individual or in his progenitors. A man 
 to be right must be born right. If he is not 
 
174 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 bom right, the laws of God have been disregarded 
 and the unfortunate result follows. Let it be 
 noted here that God never punishes any man: 
 if an individual violates one of the laws of God, 
 the violated law punishes him, and not God. 
 
 THE HOLY GHOST 
 
 What a beauty and pleasure as well as profit 
 it is to understand the science of the spirit side 
 of life, which Jesus taught by example, but 
 which has been lost to the conception of men in 
 their race after impractical chimeras based only 
 in dogmas and theories without a foundation 
 on which to build.? 
 
 We have no evidence that Jesus was an edu- 
 cated man in the schools of ancient philosophy. 
 He cannot be ranked with Thales, Pythagoras, 
 Aristotle, Plato, and their compeers in philoso- 
 phy and learning; but in the science of spiritual 
 things, the basis of all science as well as all 
 existence, they were to him as a tallow candle to 
 the glowing sun. Jesus lived so close to God that 
 he knew without learning, he comprehended and 
 explained without going through the process of 
 analysis and synthesis. He spoke, and his words 
 were wisdom. He taught as never man taught. 
 His life was light leading men out of darkness 
 into the glories of God eternal. The founda- 
 tion on which he builded was the eternal rock of 
 truth resting in the bosom of God. He taught 
 science by practice more than by precept. The 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 175 
 
 science that he taught is that occult power of 
 God underlj'ing every physical phenomenon of 
 nature. 
 
 With Jesus was introduced the word " Holy 
 Ghost" designating the difference between an an- 
 gel from the celestial spheres and the departing 
 spirit of man at the time of death. They both 
 mean the same thing only in different degrees 
 of purification. " Then Abraham gave up the 
 ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, 
 and full of years, and was gathered to his peo- 
 ple." Gen. XXV. 8. " In delivering his promises 
 to Abram, God said, Thou shalt go to thy 
 fathers in peace, thou shalt be buried in a good 
 old age." Gen. xv. 15. "And Isaac gave up the 
 ghost and died, and was gathered unto his peo- 
 ple." Gen. XXXV. 29. *' When Jacob had made 
 an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up 
 his feet in bed and yielded up the ghost, and was 
 gathered to his people." Gen. ixl. 33. " But 
 man dieth and wasteth away, yea, man giveth up 
 the ghost, and where is he? " Job xiv. 10. 
 
 It is evident that in the Old Testament ghost 
 was that element of man that left the body at the 
 time of death, and went to its fathers. The 
 same meaning of the departing spirit of man at 
 the time of death is recognized in the New Testa- 
 ment, and most forcibly presented in the death 
 of our Lord. " When Jesus, therefore, had re- 
 ceived the vinegar, he said, It is finished ; and he 
 bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." Matt. 
 
176 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 xxvii. 50. Mark xv. 37. Luke xxiii. 46. John 
 xix. 30. The giving up of the ghost is the 
 act of yielding up the spirit at the time of death. 
 When that spirit, or ghost, is purified and ad- 
 vanced it becomes holy and is then qualified to be 
 a messenger of God, doing His will and perform- 
 ing services appertaining to their exalted position. 
 It is difficult for those who do not understand 
 the science of the spirit side of life to at once 
 comprehend the action of the spirit on persons 
 yet in their physical form. They cannot com- 
 prehend how an individual in a spirit condition 
 can as a spiritual force enter into the person 
 and mind of an individual in the physical con- 
 dition, and control him. The spirit of man is 
 an organized entity ; or, more plainly, a man 
 after death is as much an organized being as one 
 in the flesh ; but the nature of that organization 
 is different. For one is organized in the form of 
 a physical body, the other is organized as a 
 spiritual body; one is ponderable and subject to 
 our five senses, the other is imponderable, as our 
 thoughts are Imponderable. Now there is a 
 thought substance in nature, which acts on the 
 brain as its battery as electricity acts on an 
 electric battery. Now the battery does not 
 create electricity, but is the instrument through 
 which electricity acts in the transmission of mes- 
 sages. On the same principle the brain is a bat- 
 tery through which thoughts are assimilated and 
 sent forth. 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 177 
 
 Thought force, that is, mental intelligence, and 
 life force, is what the spirit of man is composed 
 of. The brain, being a battery through which 
 the power of thought acts and manifests itself, 
 is acted upon by outside influences. The thoughts 
 of one man stimulate the person of another in the 
 physical body in many ways, most usually 
 through the organ of speech, but not altogether 
 by speech, by any means. It can be done by the 
 eye, by conduct, and in many ways which we all 
 understand. Now the spirit of man, being of 
 the substance of thought, can and does penetrate 
 the brain of living, people and impress them to 
 action through the power of thought, which is 
 so natural that the individual thinks it is his 
 own mind that is working, when perhaps it is 
 the mind of some invisible power. 
 
 Does not magnetism infuse itself all through the 
 system of man? Do not infectious diseases im- 
 pregnate the body? Do not poisonous gases 
 destroy the physical by penetrating into the 
 system? Does not the brain of man become 
 crazed by intoxicants? Is it not the fact that 
 fear often produces death, when there is no other 
 harm to the body than that which comes through 
 the brain? These occult forces have wonderful 
 power on the human system. Then, again, let 
 us consider this fact. Man, in the physical, is 
 a caged spirit, undergoing gestation in the body, 
 and when he dies he is born into another condition, 
 and if he has not finished his growth here he must 
 
178 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 complete it over there, — not his physical, but 
 the man himself, the spirit, because the spirit 
 is the man. 
 
 Now the spirit of man in the body and the 
 spirit out of the body are of the same nature, 
 only one is free and the other confined. The 
 free spirit can act upon and influence the con- 
 fined spirit and the confined spirit can influence 
 the free spirit in this way. Thoughts are pictures, 
 or entities in the form of mental pictures. No one 
 can think of an object, without it being pictured 
 before him. Try the experiment. Can you think 
 of nothing? You must have something to think 
 about, and that something is always produced in 
 the form of a picture on the brain. Outside 
 spirits can send those pictures on the mentality 
 of an individual in more ways than one. The 
 invisible powers of nature are greater than the 
 visible, ponderable ones. In our usual way of 
 viewing things we recognize the solidity of the 
 minerals of the earth, such as iron, manufactured 
 steel, granite, the diamond, quartz, as the sub- 
 stantial of the earth structure, spending our 
 lives in studying their properties and uses to 
 man, while the truth is they are the weakest of 
 all nature. The invisible forces that constructed 
 them can and do tear them down and detroy 
 them, or return them to their original condition 
 before they were formed into tangible objects 
 for our uses. 
 
 Let us not, in our supercilious ignorance, dis- 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 179 
 
 regard those invisible forces ; the most powerful 
 of them all is the power of mind, the power 
 of THOUGHT. God thought, and his moving 
 power, saturated with His infinite intelligence, 
 made the earth and all things contained therein. 
 Of that thought of God, one of His constituents 
 is the spirit or living attributes of himself, a 
 part of which is in man ; and that spiritual force, 
 to an extent, is individualized and made the serv- 
 ant of its Master, which servant is independent 
 to a certain extent, but yet in general is sub- 
 servient to the God who made it. 
 
 What is the Holy Ghost? We have shown, 
 from the Bible and the New Testament, that the 
 ghost of man is his departing spirit at the time 
 of death. As the sequence, then, the Holy Ghost 
 is a Glorified Spirit, or Holy Spirit, for those 
 are convertible terms, and used in that way all 
 through the New Testament. What proofs have 
 we of that assertion? The highest evidence of 
 heaven and earth, that of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 When Jesus was trying to enlighten the Jews 
 upon spiritual matters, he was compelled to use 
 language that conveyed a double sense, a physical 
 sense to them, for they knew nothing of spiritual 
 matters, and a spiritual sense, to those spiritually 
 enlightened. It is unfoa-tunate that so many 
 people can only comprehend the physical side of 
 life now, spuming, to their own injury and 
 debasement, spiritual truths. Listen to the words 
 of Our Lord and drink them in as the spiritual 
 
180 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 waters of heaven, the wine of life eternal. When 
 the Pharisees, unable to answer the advanced 
 truths of Jesus, resorted to force, as some to- 
 day when they are unable to answer an argument 
 on divine subjects resort to the force of shallow 
 sarcasm, appealed to the chief priests and requested 
 them to take Jesus into custody. Seeing their ig- 
 norant tribulation and the impulses of evil in the 
 shadow of darkness, Jesus broke into tears, his 
 heart melted at their stubborn condition, and he 
 exclaimed, with outstretched hands, " ' If any man 
 thirst, let him come unto me and drink, come 
 and drink, drink from the fountain of spiritual 
 truths and you will never thirst again. He who 
 believes on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers 
 of living water.' But spake he of the spirit, which 
 they who believe on him should receive ; for the 
 Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that 
 Jesus was not yet glorified." John vii. 37—39. 
 
 In analyzing this teaching of Our Lord, we 
 observe two conditions: one, the power of the 
 spirit on those who believed on him at that time. 
 
 He would bestow on those who came and believed 
 a certain spiritual power ; but he could not bestow 
 the power of the Holy Ghost, because he had not 
 yet been glorified. The Holy Ghost was of a 
 higher nature than that of the spirit, and even 
 Jesus could not bestow that power until he was 
 fitted for that holy office, until he was Glorified, 
 that is, duly empowered. After this Jesus was 
 anointed by God with the power of the Holy 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 181 
 
 Ghost. Peter told the people of Caesarea how 
 God anomted Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy 
 Ghost and with power, who went about doing 
 good and healing all that were oppressed with 
 the devil, for God was with him. Acts x. 38. 
 Hope maketh not ashamed; because the Love of 
 God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy 
 Ghost, which is given unto us. Rom. v. 5. 
 
 In the first epistle of Peter, he speaks of those 
 who preached the gospel with the Holy Ghost 
 sent down from heaven of the things which the 
 angels desired to look into. I. Peter i. 12. 
 At the Pentecost those present were filled with 
 the Holy Ghost and spake as the spirit gave 
 them utterance. Acts ii. 4. Acts iv. 31. Look 
 ye out seven men, of honest report, full of the 
 Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint 
 over this business. Acts vi. 3. Simon, a man who 
 used sorcery, was baptized by Philip at Samaria. 
 When he ascertained the fact that he did not have 
 the power to bestow the gifts of the Holy Ghost 
 by laying on of hands, he offered Peter money 
 for the gift. Peter said unto him, " Thy money 
 perish with thee, because thou hast thought that 
 the gifts of God may be purchased with money." 
 Acts vii. 15-17. 
 
 God did not only have messengers serving him 
 under the title and power of the Holy Ghost, but 
 there were angels also in the service of the Lord. 
 And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, say- 
 ing, Arise, and go toward the south, unto the way 
 
18^ LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 that goeth down to Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is 
 desert. Then the spirit said unto Philip, Go 
 near, and join thyself unto this chariot. Acts 
 viii. 26, 29. 
 
 After the crucifixion of our Lord the disciples 
 being assembled together at eventide, when the 
 doors were shut for fear of the Jews, Jesus came 
 and stood in the midst of them and after proving 
 to them that he was the arisen Christ breathed 
 on them and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy 
 Ghost. John xx. 19-22. I will pour out my 
 spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your 
 daughters shall prophesy ; your young men shall 
 see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 
 Repent ye and be baptized every one of you in 
 the name of Jesus Christ, and ye shall receive 
 the gift of the Holy Ghost. Acts ii. 1, 40. And 
 they were filled with the Holy Ghost, and they 
 spake the words of God with boldness. Acts 
 iv. 21. 
 
 In Paul's travels he came to Ephesus and 
 he there found certain disciples who had been 
 recently converted to the faith. He said unto 
 them. Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye 
 believed.'* And they said unto him. We have 
 not so much as heard if there be any Holy Ghost. 
 Paul baptized them and laid his hands upon them, 
 and the Holy Ghost came upon them ; and they 
 spake with tongues and prophesied. Acts ix 6. 
 Paul, in speaking to the church of God which is 
 at Corinth, of the revelations of God to them 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 183 
 
 informs us plainly that God reveals things unto 
 man through the agency of the spirit, drawing 
 a distinction between the perception of the natu- 
 ral man and the spiritual man. The natural re- 
 ceiveth not the things of the spirit of God for 
 they are foolishness unto him ; neither can he 
 know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 
 The Holy Ghost compares spiritual things with 
 spiritual. I. Cor. ii. 11-14. 
 
 THE BIRTH OF JESUS 
 
 No one knows when or where Jesus was bom. 
 It is conceded, however, that he was bom at least 
 four years before the commonly accepted time 
 which begins the Christian era. The place of his 
 birth is also a matter of uncertainty. The Au- 
 thorized Version of the New Testament fixes the 
 place of his birth in a manger in the city of 
 Bethlehem, which is about five miles south and 
 east of the city of Jerusalem. The Apocryphal 
 New Testament places his birth in a cave near 
 the city of Bethlehem. 
 
 When we consider the state of the country, the 
 habits and intellectual development of the people 
 at that time, both among the Romans and the 
 Jews, we may not think strange that the chron- 
 ology of our Lord is buried in uncertainty. It 
 is also to be borne in mind that " Christ glori- 
 fied not himself." It was the habit and purpose 
 of Jesus, all through his life, to keep self out 
 of sight, but his mission always prominent before 
 
184. LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 the people. At the time of the advent of Jesus 
 into the world and throughout the duration of 
 his ministry, the Jews were under the master- 
 ship of the Romans, under whose yoke they 
 struggled, mutinied, and conspired. The Romans 
 hated the Jews and the Jews detested the Romans. 
 That which Rome wanted Judea hated. That 
 which the Jews wanted the Romans forbade. 
 There was no congeniality between them. Under 
 the Roman yoke, moral decadence fell heavily on 
 the great body of the Jewish nation, while at the 
 same time Rome commenced to totter to her very 
 foundations. Her glory was fast fading and 
 melting into the lascivious debaucheries of the 
 emperor, Tiberius, and Might laughed at the 
 appeals of Right, while all forms of heart moving 
 religion were neglected. Spirituality was a lost 
 sentiment. General morality found no home in 
 the public heart. The art of war, the love of lux- 
 ury, and sensual gratification absorbed the public 
 mind. 
 
 Considering the wrongs and oppressions that 
 were then fastened upon the helpless people, why 
 should they not rejoice and pass into the ecstacy 
 of delight at the advent of a deliverer.'' Not 
 that kind of a deliverer that uses force against 
 force, but it was the coming of that deliverer 
 which spoke " peace " to the hearts of those who 
 loved him. And an angel of heaven in a voice 
 of cheer announced to the shepherds in the fields, 
 who were trembling at the unexpected appearance 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 185 
 
 of those celestial messengers, " Fear not, for be- 
 hold I bring you tidings of great joy, which 
 shall be unto all people, for unto you is bom 
 this day, in the city of David, a Savior, which 
 is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto 
 you, ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling 
 clothes, lying in a manger." Luke ii. 10. And 
 with the angel who brought the good news to the 
 poor men of the field was " a multitude of the 
 heavenly host, praising God, and saying. Glory to 
 God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will 
 toward men." 
 
 And there, timid and joyful beyond expression, 
 lay in the lowly manger, in the very arms of 
 poverty and neglect, the Mother of our Lord. 
 No wonder she was speechless ; words were too 
 weak and expressionless to impart her heart throbs 
 of pleasure as she saw in her own arms her young 
 child. Mary, the mother of God, transcendentally 
 pure, beautiful in her simplicity, glorious in her 
 motherhood, the adored of the adorable and the 
 choice of God for the most sacred gift unto the 
 world, the gift of the promise of heaven and the 
 love of God. The angel proclaimed her services, 
 the wise men knelt around her bed of straw, while 
 the oped eyes of the babe, in its first look of love, 
 in silence exquisite, first greeted her as mother. 
 
 And even that child, whose mission was only 
 to help and save humanity, was conspired against 
 by the powers of government and his young life 
 sought to be cut off by him whose sworn duty 
 
186 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 it was to preserve order and protect the citizen 
 in all grades of society as long as that citizen 
 was unoffending to the laws ; but the hatred of 
 Herod knew no bounds, and his wily vigilance 
 sought the life of the babe whom he professed 
 that he wished to worship, as a veil of expression 
 to the wise men that he might obtain from them 
 the way of murder. Oh, crime detestable, which 
 induced Herod, the wicked, to cause to be slain 
 all the male children two years of age and 
 under in Bethlehem and the coast round about in 
 order to catch the babe bom in the lowly manger. 
 But it was not to be. Jesus came for a pur- 
 pose bom of God, who was able to protect him 
 against the deepest plans of villainous depravity ; 
 and one of his angels went to Joseph in a dream 
 and warned him of the pending design and di- 
 rected him to take the young babe and his mother 
 and flee into Egypt and there remain until 
 word was brought to him to return. On the 
 information that those who sought the young 
 child's life were dead, Joseph returned and went 
 to the village of Nazareth. 
 
 THE STAR IN THE EAST 
 
 Now when Jesus was bom in Bethlehem of Ju- 
 dea in the days of Herod the king. Behold there 
 came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, 
 Where is he that is bom king of the Jews.? For 
 we have seen his star in the east and have come to 
 worship him. Matt. ii. 1, 2. 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 187 
 
 The phenomenon of the appearance of the 
 star to the wise men of the east which guided 
 them to where the new bom child lay in the lowly 
 manger at Bethlehem has been a perplexing puz- 
 zle for the theologians of all the past ages to 
 solve. With us, with our present-day knowledge 
 of spiritual things, with the light of science, his- 
 tory, and the Bible, we see no difficulty at all in 
 its explanation. In the first place the wise men 
 of the east were Magians, a learned class of men 
 who lived in the valleys of the Tigris and Eu- 
 phrates. From that class of minds, both learned 
 and devout, sprang the genius of the Bible. It 
 was from this class of men that Abram derived 
 his learning, training, and spiritual associations 
 with God. Let us understand that God always 
 produces results through his instruments, which 
 sometimes are men, sometimes angels chosen and 
 selected for a particular purpose, sometimes the 
 lower spirits and sometimes the elements of nature. 
 
 The star that pointed out our Savior has been 
 reckoned by some to have been a veritable star 
 from the stellar deep, but a second thought dis- 
 sipates any such idea, for it would take the nearest 
 star 4,500 years, flying with the speed of a 
 cannon ball, to reach our earth, and when arrived 
 here it would be many hundred times larger than 
 the earth. Prof. Kepler tried to trace the con- 
 junction of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, occurring 
 in 1604, back to the conjunction of Jupiter and 
 Saturn in the latter half of the year of Rome, 
 
188 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 747, which conjunction was joined by Mars in the 
 year 748 ; and by this reasoning he thinks he 
 discovered the year of the birth of the Lord, 
 and that it was this conjunction which notified 
 the wise men of that great event. All such spec- 
 ulations are too fallacious to attract serious atten- 
 tion, especially when we have that better author- 
 ity, the Bible and New Testament. Let us always 
 keep in mind that the priesthood of Jesus was 
 that of Melchizedek, the priest of the most 
 HIGH GOD, and that the old law was to be 
 set aside and another priesthood and a New Testa- 
 ment given to the world. Before this time the 
 blessings of God were claimed to be for the Jews 
 alone, but Jesus broke the thrall of that belief 
 and became a savior of the whole world and not 
 of a small petty few, the Jews. This fact throws 
 a great deal of light on the fact that it was to 
 the wise men of the East that the star first ap- 
 peared ; they were not of the Jews ; they were 
 Magians, whose devotion to God and knowl- 
 edge of spiritual tilings made them fit instru- 
 ments, in the hands of God, to bring the 
 " glad tidings of great joy " first to the world. 
 The star that preceded the wise men was no 
 other than a spiritual light, emanating from an 
 angel of the Lord sent to the wise men for the 
 purpose of notif3ang them of the holy advent. 
 The appearance of this star was prophesied 
 fully fifteen hundred years before it came, and 
 this prophecy was the key to the nature of the 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 189 
 
 star that actually appeared. In this connection 
 let us call attention to the prophecy of Balaam. 
 This same prophecy throws a great deal of light 
 on the condition of sensitives, who in this day 
 receive illuminations, both mentally and spiritually, 
 from the spirit world. Balaam was a trance 
 medium, as there are many in this day, but none 
 of equal endowments because they are not devout 
 and clean of body, mind and soul, or God would 
 speak through them as he did in olden times. 
 The spirit that entranced Balaam enabled him to 
 speak with his eyes open ; mediums of this day 
 have their eyes closed. Balaam falling into a 
 trance having his eyes open prophesied : " I 
 shall see him but not now ; I shall behold him but 
 not nigh ; there shall come a star out of 
 
 JACOB, AND a sceptre SHALL RISE OUT OF 
 
 ISRAEL, and shall smite the corners of Moab, 
 and destroy all the children of Sheth." Num. 
 xxiv. 17. 
 
 This was a parable and cannot be taken in its 
 literal sense, as no parable can. Of course it 
 was a prophecy of the advent of our Lord and 
 the star that preceded the wise men. Jesus was 
 a physical descendant of Jacob and out of that 
 line should a star appear which should be the 
 light of the world. " I shall see him but not now ; 
 I shall behold him but not nigh." Spiritually 
 speaking, Jesus came as the life and light of 
 the ATorld. That idea is sufficiently made clear 
 all through the New Testament. 
 
190 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 The star appeared to the wise men in the east 
 far across the desert of Assyria. Before begin- 
 ning their journey, which must have been some 
 time before the actual birth of Jesus as it was 
 a long way from the valley of the Euphrates 
 to Bethlehem, they prepared themselves with rich 
 and costly presents for the babe. From this fact 
 it is evident that they knew that the Savior was 
 to be bom at that time. When Herod had in- 
 quired of them what time the star appeared and 
 had sent them to Bethlehem commanding them to 
 go there and search for the young child and bring 
 him word that he might go and worship him, 
 and they had started, " lo the star, which they 
 saw in the east, went before them until it 
 came and stood over where the young child was." 
 Mat. ii. 9, 10. This star could not have been 
 other than a spirit light, conducting the wise men 
 to the very spot. This was a light guided by 
 some intelligent force and from what we read 
 of it, we must know it was an angelic visita- 
 tion for at that very time as the shepherds were 
 abiding in the field keeping watch by night over 
 their flocks, " the angel of the Lord came upon 
 them, and the glory of the Lord shone round 
 about them and they were sore afraid," but the 
 angel told them to " fear not, for unto you is born 
 this day, in the city of David, a Savior, which 
 is Christ the Lord." Luke ii. 9-11. And there 
 were with the angels " a multitude of the heavenly 
 host praising God and saying. Glory to God in the 
 
WHO WAS JESUS? 191 
 
 highest and on earth peace, good-will unto man." 
 After the angels went away into heaven the shep- 
 herds went to Bethlehem and there found Mary 
 and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger, and 
 they returned praising and glorifying God, for 
 they had seen what the angels had told them of. 
 It seems as though some strain effort to build 
 fabulous stories out of many occurrences re- 
 corded in the Bible as though people must have 
 wonderful stories impressed on their minds in 
 order to believe in the existence of God, or the 
 divinity of the Master, when the simple story 
 to informed people is all-sufficient to impress the 
 truth, while those exaggerations make infidels and 
 disbelievers in the world. When we comprehend 
 the fact that there are two sides to nature, one a 
 physical and the other a spiritual side, we will 
 then understand the workings of the two and 
 that which to the ignorant and uninitiated seems 
 miraculous or absurd, will be but plain, simple 
 facts, all produced according to the laws of 
 nature and the powers that be. 
 
JESUS' EARLY LIFE 
 
 It is a difficult task to write the childhood of 
 Jesus from the fact that there is so little said 
 about him in the authorized version of the New 
 Testament, and the Apocryphal New Testament 
 is so extravagant in its expressions that it is un- 
 safe to give it credence except in those points 
 that address themselves to our good sense and 
 judgment. 
 
 We gather enough from the two editions of 
 the New Testament to warrant us in saying that 
 Jesus came from poor parentage, that Joseph 
 was a carpenter working at his trade to earn a 
 support for his family, of which there were two 
 branches, one by his first wife and the other 
 from Mary, the mother of Jesus. We have no 
 data from which we can judge of the number 
 of children in the family ; of Mary's children, by 
 Joseph, there were James, Joses, Simon and 
 Judas. Jesus had sisters also but we have no 
 record of the number or names. 
 
 After Joseph returned from his sojourn in 
 Egypt, where he went by direction of an angel 
 to escape the evil designs of Herod on the life 
 of the babe, they took up their residence at Naza- 
 reth. The village of Nazareth was not only in- 
 192 
 
JESUS' EARLY LIFE 193 
 
 significant but the inhabitants were looked upon 
 with disfavor ; they were not educated ; they were 
 rude in manners and regarded with contempt by 
 the Judeans. When the reputation of Jesus be- 
 gan to excite the minds of the people it was 
 asked, " Can any good thing come from Naza- 
 reth ? " It seems as though Jesus as a person 
 had everything to contend with, family poverty, 
 want of education, a residence in an insignificant 
 place and a member of a rough, uncultured, 
 despised people, as all Galileans were in the esti- 
 mation of the Judeans. Nothing but sterling 
 worth and properties of mind and soul superior 
 to others could have brought the young Nazarene 
 into prominence at that period of the world's 
 history ; for at that time every department of 
 society was running riot. All kinds of spiritu- 
 ality had been dethroned and sensualism, war, op- 
 pression, intrigue, and murder for place and 
 preferment were the order of the times. To 
 turn the minds of the people to a higher thought 
 and appreciation seemed to be more the work of 
 Divinity than of a poor, uneducated, and unpor- 
 tentious youth. Had he not had the favors and 
 spiritual powers of God within him, Jesus could 
 have done nothing in the way of teaching the 
 people the facts of higher truths and a grander 
 destiny for man than to eat, drink, fight, con- 
 tend, and die as was the thought of that age. 
 
 Jesus did not have to be educated to impart 
 the knowledge and perform the wonders he did 
 
194. LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 before and among that people. He lived so close 
 to the source of Divine wisdom that he knew 
 everything without learning. The battery of his 
 mind was so developed that when a question 
 came up for his mental solution the proper facts 
 clothed in proper language were impressed upon 
 him. He could do nothing within himself, but 
 the Father working in and through him was the 
 demonstrating factor that pushed aside the veil 
 of the two worlds and gave him a knowledge of 
 a future state of existence and how best to act to 
 obtain the highest blessings of both the here and 
 hereafter. Some will perhaps call the powers of 
 Jesus, as exhibited during his ministry, divine 
 entrancement, others may call it inspiration, and 
 others intuition, all of which powers are well 
 known to those versed in the occult forces of 
 mentality. Jesus was strongly endowed with 
 mental powers far superior to his years and the 
 culture of the age. This we learn from what 
 little is said of him by Luke, " And the child 
 grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wis- 
 dom ; and the grace of God was upon him." 
 Luke ii. 40. He did not have to go to school 
 as other children who desired to become educated 
 and wise. He was strong of spirit and filled with 
 wisdom softened and beautified with the grace of 
 God, which was upon him. 
 
 There could have been no better place than 
 Nazareth for his bringing up. He lived among 
 that simple people without ostentation or the 
 
JESUS' EARLY LIFE 195 
 
 spirit of pride being aroused within him. He 
 lived as a natural child among the foothills of 
 Lebanon, with no allurements to attract his at- 
 tention from the contemplation of nature in its 
 crude and simple form. There was nothing so 
 good for this child of nature as independent 
 poverty. He was not a pauper, neither was he 
 a luxurist. His mind, his muscle, and his soul 
 grew and were cultivated together. This was the 
 schooling of Jesus. In this kind of a school he 
 waxed strong of spirit and was filled with wisdom. 
 These powers of the mind of the child were 
 first brought to the notice of the public when 
 he went with his parents to the yearly feast of 
 the Passover at Jerusalem. Jesus was then twelve 
 years old, a mere hardy, sunburned rustic of a 
 lad, running around and mingling with the peo- 
 ple without care or attention from his parents, 
 as is evident from the fact that when they had 
 accomplished the days of the feast, they started 
 home and were a day's journey out before they 
 missed their child. They went back when they 
 ascertained that he was not among the returning 
 company, and searched three days in the city of 
 Jerusalem before they found him, and when they 
 did find him he was entertaining the learned doc 
 tors of the great city of Jerusalem, by answer- 
 ing and asking them questions which were so 
 extraordinary that all who heard him were as- 
 tonished at his knowledge and answers. Could 
 an ordinary child have entertained such a learned 
 
196 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 audience for three days? Children of that age 
 do not reason as a class but when they are en- 
 gaged in conversation of learned subjects they 
 simply repeat parrot-like what they have been 
 taught from others, or from their books ; but in 
 this case, Jesus was not only answering astonish- 
 ing questions but was in turn propounding ques- 
 tions to the doctors. 
 
 This quality of mind was characteristic of Jesus 
 all through his life. He usually spoke in par- 
 ables and displayed a unique wisdom unlike that 
 of other men. But the people did not under- 
 stand him, could not comprehend his parables. 
 " They seeing see not ; and hearing hear not, 
 neither do they understand." Matt. xiii. 13. 
 When he went to his own country, and among 
 his own people, with whom he had been raised 
 and who knew of his state of education and edu- 
 cational advantages they were greatly astonished 
 at the scope of his wisdom and knowledge, and 
 inquired among one another, " Whence hath this 
 man this wisdom and these mighty works? Is 
 not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother 
 called Mary? And his brethren James, and 
 Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, 
 are they not all with us? Whence then hath this 
 man all these things?" Matt. xiii. 54-56. 
 
 Here lies the great secret of the wisdom of 
 Jesus, as exemplified from his early youth up. 
 His mind was trained to comprehend the phil- 
 osophy of all spiritual truths and when a ques- 
 
JESUS' EARLY LIFE 197 
 
 tion came up for his solution, the wisdom of God 
 fructified his brain and he spoke and taught as 
 " never man taught," This endowment was not 
 a miracle but an extraordinary development of 
 mentality. All men have this power more or less, 
 but in some it is very much greater than in 
 others. Some minds comprehend the force and 
 bearing of subjects as soon as they are presented 
 to them, others cannot comprehend at all. This 
 power is evidence of the fact that in nature re- 
 sides perfect knowledge and wisdom, the brain of 
 man is a battery through which this knowledge 
 and wisdom are manifested ; the more sensitized the 
 brain is the more it comprehends and the more 
 easily it gives expression to the facts presented 
 to the mind for solution. Jesus, being abnorm- 
 ally endowed, comprehended the great truths that 
 were agitating the minds of the people at the time 
 and he explained them in such a manner that it 
 astonished the people and they inquired, " Whence 
 hath this man this wisdom? " 
 
 Jesus was brought into the world for a cer- 
 tain Divine purpose; to answer that purpose his 
 early surroundings were most propitious and the 
 lack of a popular education is traceable all 
 through his life. His mother was a devout and 
 pious woman, having been reared in the temple 
 under strict religious training from her fourth 
 year until her espousal to Joseph, when she left 
 the monastery for the practical duties of wife 
 and mother. Joseph, his father, was a poor but 
 
198 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 pious carpenter, who earned a livelihood for his 
 family by his daily labor. When Jesus was old 
 enough he assisted his father in his trade and 
 what education he received was from the oral 
 teachings of his good, devout mother and honest, 
 hard-working father. 
 
 Let it be borne in mind that the mode of edu- 
 cating the youths of those days was different 
 from the school training of to-day. In the days 
 of Jesus, students were taught orally ; they did 
 not have books treating of different subjects as 
 now, but the learning of the ages was carried in 
 the minds of the masters and given to students 
 by word of mouth. Thus, while walking on the 
 porch Socrates taught in the open market; Jesus 
 taught so as he went from place to place, so 
 did Paul, so did the apostles. The same habit 
 was observed by the ancient Jews, for it is cer- 
 tain that the law of Moses was not reduced to 
 writing until long after his death. The great 
 Talmud was carried eight hundred years in the 
 minds of the priests before it was reduced to the 
 form of a book. The doctrines of the order of 
 Masons and the practical lessons of that order 
 to be observed by its members have been carried 
 in the minds of its members for thousands of 
 years and are kept in their purity because they 
 do not allow them to be written and submitted to 
 the criticisms of an ignorant world. For that 
 reason they are kept as pure and undefiled as 
 when they emanated from the minds of its 
 founders in ancient days. 
 
JESUS' EARLY LIFE 199 
 
 From the lips of his mother and the teaching 
 of his father, Jesus then became acquainted with 
 the law of Moses and the Prophets. 
 
 The old Jewish religion was a pure theocracy, 
 in which it was impressed on the minds of the 
 Jews that they were the chosen people of God 
 and must obey His mandates and laws. Those 
 laws and mandates were given to the people by 
 the mouths of the priests and from this habit the 
 crime of heresy sprang; to disregard the will of 
 God as given by the priests and recorded by the 
 prophets was a great crime and when proved or 
 strongly suspected death was the wage at the 
 hands of the executioner. There was no crime 
 so great as that of advancing an idea in contra- 
 vention to the teachings of the priesthood, or 
 questioning their teachings in the least. There 
 never was a time when the priests would tolerate 
 an opposing opinion. Being unable to answer 
 the honest questioner by, arguments, the fagot 
 was usually resorted to as the most convincing 
 evidence of their right to dominate opinions in 
 regard to religion. 
 
 This kind of argument was not peculiar to 
 the Catholic priesthood alone but has always been 
 used by the party or religion in power. The 
 Stoics asserted it against the early Christian 
 Fathers and adherents and the Christians com- 
 plained most bitterly ; but just as soon as they 
 got in power they persecuted the Stoics and all 
 others disagreeing with them as vigorously as 
 
200 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 the Stoics had persecuted them ; when the Refor- 
 mation came about, tjie CathoHc church left no 
 stone unturned to hunt down, spy out, and 
 punish by death those believing in, or suspected 
 of believing in the Protestant faith; and as soon 
 as the Protestants obtained power, they hung, 
 burned, quartered, and tortured the Catholics. 
 That kind of religion has been the blackest curse 
 the world has ever been subject to. That in- 
 tolerant feeling and practice was what led Jesus 
 to the cross. 
 
 While those persecutions were conducted un- 
 der the name of the religion of Jesus, yet not one 
 of them was inflicted but in direct opposition to 
 the true mission of the Master, notwithstanding 
 Luke attributes some cruel sayings to him, such 
 as : " Suppose ye that I have come to give peace 
 on earth? I tell you. Nay, but rather division; 
 for from henceforth there shall be five in one 
 house divided, three against two, and two against 
 three. The father shall be divided against the 
 son, and the son against the father; the mother 
 against the daughter and the daughter against 
 the mother; the mother-in-law against her 
 daughter-in-law and the daughter-in-law against 
 her mother-in-law." Luke xii. 51—53. 
 
 " If any man come to me and hate not his 
 father, and mother, and wife, and children, and 
 brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, 
 he cannot be my disciple." Luke xiv. 26. 
 
 " But those mine enemies which would not 
 
JESUS' EARLY LIFE 201 
 
 that I should reign over them, bring hither and 
 slay them before me." Luke xix. 27. 
 
 Luke never saw Jesus, never heard him preach 
 or teach. He does not claim to have received his 
 information by inspiration but from rumor and 
 what his informants believed or told him. Such 
 teaching is inconsistent with the whole life of the 
 Master or any other good man and must be false. 
 The facts surrounding the writings of Luke are 
 these. The Christians were persecuted on every 
 side by relentless enemies. Luke was a Jew 
 schooled in the Jewish traditions, and as the God 
 of the Jews often inspired those people to acts 
 of bloodshed to avenge wrongs and carry on 
 wars, Luke desired to inspire oppressed Chris- 
 tians with the feeling of opposition and even to 
 acts of violence under the pretense that such 
 things were taught by Jesus. Early Christians 
 had to fight to sustain themselves, and to inspire 
 them with courage Luke put this libel on the 
 name of Jesus. 
 
 JESUS' BAPTISM 
 
 Having spent his youth up to the age of full 
 manhood, having arrived at the age of thirty 
 years, the age when it was lawful, under the Jew- 
 ish law, for those who were competent from their 
 knowledge of the law of Moses to enter into the 
 service of the people as priests, Jesus left his 
 home in Nazareth and its simple surroundings 
 
202 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 for a more extended field of labor in the vineyard 
 of man. 
 
 John the Baptist, his second cousin, had al- 
 ready entered into the service of the ministry, be- 
 ing six months older than Jesus. John had 
 spent his tutelage in the rocky, mountainous 
 country of Judea, called the wilderness, where 
 he lived in the most frugal manner. He sub- 
 sisted on locusts and wild honey ; his clothing 
 was of camel's hair and around his loins was a 
 leather girdle. Notwithstanding his uncouth 
 appearance, his eloquence of tongue drew unto 
 him great numbers of people, both from Jeru- 
 salem and all Judea, to hear him preach and to 
 be baptized by him. 
 
 The Jews were divided into three sects, the 
 Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes. The 
 Pharisees and Sadducees were not in good favor 
 with John, neither were they with Jesus, but the 
 Essenes were. The teachings and spiritual phil- 
 osophy of Jesus were patterned after the doc- 
 trines of the Essenes, and the doctrines of the 
 Essenes were the same as were taught by the 
 Pythagoreans. Josephus says, " The Essenes also, 
 live the same kind of lives as do those whom the 
 Greeks call Pythagoreans." It was the Essenes 
 who came to John to be baptized. As evidence 
 of that fact, Matthew, in narrating the baptism 
 of John, says, "When he saw many of the 
 Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism he 
 said unto them, * O generation of vipers, who 
 
JESUS' EARLY LIFE 203 
 
 hath warned you to flee from the wrath to 
 come? ' " 
 
 John's baptism in the river Jordan was cer- 
 tainly an impressive occasion. The multitudes 
 that gathered around his standard, listening to 
 his words of wisdom and waiting their turn for 
 the ceremony to be administered to them, can 
 only be equaled by the outpouring of the powers 
 of God at the pentacostal services. The early 
 sun had traced his rosy steps over the gloomy 
 desert of the Jordan and was smiling upon the 
 gathered multitude that lined the banks of the 
 sacred river, with hearts atuned to the sweet words 
 of John who held them as by a charm, rather, 
 it would seem, than through the power of mortal 
 man. Jesus was among them, but they did not 
 know him. His life had been so unostentatious 
 that he passed and repassed without creating 
 other than the most common observation. John 
 had so enraptured the people that they took him 
 to be the promised Christ, or Elias. Everything 
 was favorable for John to receive the honors of 
 one sent by God to bring deliverance to the op- 
 pressed people. They were in expectation of a 
 great deliverer and they mused in their minds 
 whether John was the Christ or not ; and as they 
 looked upon him, not expecting to know who he 
 was, for he had lived the life of a recluse among 
 the mountain grottoes of rugged Judea and his 
 own tribe did not know him, he said " I am the 
 voice of one crying in the wilderness, ' Make 
 
204. LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 straight the way of the Lord,' as said the 
 prophet Esaias. I baptize thee with water but 
 there standeth one among you, whom you know 
 not. He it is who, coming after me, is pre- 
 ferred before me, whose shoe's latches I am not 
 worthy to unloose." 
 
 How long John was occupied in the ceremony 
 of baptizing the repentants of Judea we do not 
 know, but that he was there for some period of 
 time is certain ; for the next day, when Jesus 
 stood among the multitude at the baptizing, 
 John seeing Jesus coming unto him, said, " Be- 
 hold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin 
 of the world. This is he of whom I said, ' After 
 me cometh a man which is preferred before me, 
 and I knew him not.' " It seems as though Jesus 
 and John were strangers, though kinsmen, but 
 Jesus was to become manifest to Israel through 
 John, who had been directed by the spirit to 
 baptize with water, to the purification of the 
 body, but typical of the remission of sins, but 
 who was told that he should receive a sign desig- 
 nating the chosen instrument of heaven who 
 should baptize with the Holy Spirit. " I have 
 beheld the spirit," says John, " descending like a 
 dove out of heaven, and it abode upon him, but 
 I knew him not, but he that sent me to baptize 
 with water, he said unto me, ' Upon whomsoever 
 thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and abiding 
 upon him, the same is he that baptizeth with the 
 Holy Spirit.' And I have seen and have bom 
 
JESUS' EARLY LIFE 205 
 
 witness that this is the son of God." John 
 I. 30-34. 
 
 Jesus came from his home in Galilee to John 
 to be baptized by him but John refused the bap- 
 tism saying, " I have need to be baptized of thee, 
 and comest thou to me? " In this Jesus was 
 recognized as the superior of John, and had a 
 better and different baptism. John's baptism 
 was of water, that of Jesus was of the Holy 
 Ghost. The baptism of Jesus was a spiritual 
 baptism, that baptism that one feels in the heart 
 and which converts the soul to the service of 
 righteousness. True followers of Jesus, when 
 once baptized with that conversion, should ever 
 keep it sacred and never violate their pledge. It 
 is a sacred obligation and when once taken it 
 would be better that you should never have been 
 born than to violate it, or renounce it. That is 
 the sin against the Holy Ghost that hath not 
 forgiveness. It is of no light import but of 
 great moment and importance. Jesus came to 
 the baptism of John that he might openly fulfill 
 the law as an example to others, because he re- 
 plied to John, " Suffer it to be so now, for thus 
 it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness." Jesus 
 placed stress on the term righteousness. Mel- 
 chizedek was the king of righteousness. If a 
 man is righteous, he is a walking example of the 
 law of both God and man. 
 
206 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 JESUS IN RETIREMENT 
 
 Having fulfilled the law of righteousness it 
 became necessary for a silent and prayerful 
 preparation before the active duties of teacher 
 were entered upon. That is the law of silent 
 prayer for spiritual purity, wisdom, and devo- 
 tion to the service of God in the vineyard of man. 
 Having resigned himself to the powers of the 
 Spirit and being full of the Holy Ghoet, he re- 
 turned from his baptism by John and was led by 
 the Spirit into the wilderness where he fasted, 
 prayed, and prepared himself for the mission for 
 which he was bom. 
 
 The seclusion of Jesus in that rocky desert, 
 where John had spent the early years of his life, 
 was to fit him, in a spiritual sense for the work 
 of a seer, the work of a servant of God, that 
 through him might be presented to the minds of 
 the world the fact of an intercommunication be- 
 tween the two worlds, and the more important 
 truth that life was eternal, that death did not 
 end all, and that the soul did not sleep in the 
 grave for an indefinite time after dissolution 
 from the body, but that life is a continuous con- 
 dition of man subject to his conduct during this 
 life. To fit himself for that service it was neces- 
 sary for him to go through a schooling of con- 
 templative and spiritual communion with the 
 unseen ; for it is demonstrated that by contempla- 
 tion and persistency of thought we accomplish 
 
JESUS' EARLY LIFE 207 
 
 what we desire if our efforts accord with our 
 motives. This rule is always good in spiritual 
 matters and usually in the common affairs of life. 
 
 All great servants of the spirit-world go into 
 retirement for a time to undergo a spiritual 
 training before they are qualified to enter into the 
 practical demonstration of the science of spir- 
 ituality. Mahomet, before he received his com- 
 munications from the angel Gabriel, retired into 
 a cave in Mount Hara. All the Mahatmas and 
 Adepts of India follow the same training. Moses 
 was with the flocks of Jethro in the wild pasture- 
 lands when he saw the fire in the bush. Pytha- 
 goras required a long novitiate of silence. The 
 Jewish priests had their Holy of Holies, which 
 was held sacred; no one save the priests could 
 enter that holy and sacred place. It was there 
 that they communed with God and received their 
 spiritual instructions. Zoroaster, it is said, lived 
 for twenty years in the wilderness, subsisting dur- 
 ing that time on cheese which never grew stale. 
 He retired to a solitary mountain and devoted him- 
 self to the attainment of perfect holiness by 
 silent contemplation. It was during this retire- 
 ment that he wrote the Zend Avesta, the Persian 
 Bible. 
 
 Sakya, sumamed Buddha, founder of the Bud- 
 dist religion, which bore the same relation to 
 the Brahmin religion that the Christian does to 
 Judaism, is supposed to have lived 1039 years 
 before Christ. At the age of sixteen Sakya, sur- 
 
208 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 named Buddha, married a maiden named Ila. 
 After a son had been born Sakya renounced his 
 princely rank ; he took up the life of an anchorite, 
 and retired into a deep forest infested by wild 
 beasts, lions, and tigers. There amid the prime- 
 val forest, with wild flowers and sweet songsters 
 of the wildwood, he past his time in meditation 
 and spiritual preparation. 
 
 Communion in the solitude of nature is very 
 beneficial to those seeking spiritual purity and 
 celestial help. To this end Jesus instructs those 
 who pray to retire into their closet, " And when 
 you have shut the door, pray to thy Father which 
 is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret 
 shall reward thee openly." 
 
 Jesus never did a foolish or unnecessary thing. 
 Had it not been for the advancement of the 
 cause of his mission in life and his necessar^^ 
 preparation for his great work, he would not 
 have retired to the barren, rocky wilderness of 
 Judea for the term of forty days. The forty 
 days of tribulation had more than a passing im- 
 portance. The time had an esoteric lesson to 
 impress which was hidden under number 40. 
 
 He was tempted of the devil, or in other 
 words, that class of the unseen, known as evil 
 spirits, of which there are many, which always 
 delight in dethroning all virtuous and upbuild- 
 ing causes. They leveled their shafts at Jesus in 
 his lonely preparation for his work, but he said, 
 " Get behind me, Satan." This class of spirits 
 
JESUS' EARLY LIFE 209 
 
 beset every person at times and if they are not 
 sufficiently fortified to resist, they fall by the 
 wayside and become children of the devil. A 
 great lesson is in that one command. If we all 
 could say, " Get behind me, Satan," when we are 
 tempted, we would, like Jesus triumph over our 
 fell enemy the devil. He is a lurking foe, always 
 ready to do his work of destruction and ruin, and 
 the fairest are his favorite mark. But if they 
 hold out, they will triumph and good angels will 
 come to their relief as they did to the relief of 
 Jesus, for after that " the angels administered 
 unto him." 
 
 One of the greatest afflictions to the tender 
 heart of our Lord, while undergoing the pinch- 
 ing wants of hunger during his long fast and 
 the temptations of the devil: — the alluring oifer 
 of the whole world with all of its glories and 
 fascinations for just one act of worship, one 
 confession of surrender to the domination of the 
 flesh over the spirit, one moment's turn from the 
 light of truth and spiritual purity to the im- 
 pressive demands of the world in its campaign 
 of greed, and oppression with their triumphs over 
 youth, virtue, beauty, and innocence — was the 
 news of the fate of his most valued friend, who 
 had proclaimed his coming and acknowledged his 
 crowning glories, when he could have received 
 them himself, — the news that John the Baptist 
 had been placed in prison by Herod. This was 
 a warning to him of what he might expect if 
 
^10 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 he persisted further in his mission of bringing 
 to the minds of the people the truth of a con- 
 tinued hfe after death, and in his efforts for 
 personal reformation in the way of living; but 
 Jesus knew his final fate, knew that an igno- 
 minious death on the cross between two malefac- 
 tors was his to endure, was the reward awaiting 
 him. What were they to his mind? They were 
 rather glories to be sought than inflictions to 
 be shunned. He could not shirk a duty whatever 
 the world might say or inflict upon him. A noble 
 example,, — one that no man had ever given be- 
 fore or since, though the world has produced 
 many martyrs to the convictions of their hearts ! 
 But Jesus is the only example of a man who has 
 voluntarily given up his life to demonstrate a 
 principle. How few of us will refuse the pleas- 
 ures of sin for a fleeting season with full knowl- 
 edge of its coming burdens for the sweeter walks 
 in the peaceful charms of a spiritual life, know- 
 ing that at the end, close at our door, though 
 seeming life may be prolonged, awaits the har- 
 vest of a life sown in the walks of righteous- 
 ness ! After the forty days of preparation in 
 the wilderness Jesus departed and went to Galilee, 
 to his old home, the home of his childhood, to 
 the quietness of nestling Nazareth, amid the ver- 
 dant hills of GaHlee which he had often wandered 
 up and down, absorbing from their hushed elo- 
 quence refreshing wisdom, while his soul went 
 out in reverence to the God of his glory and 
 
JESUS' EARLY LIFE 211 
 
 aspirations. He had passed the tutelage days 
 of his youth in that sequestered place where he 
 had gathered in the richness of spiritual culture 
 and mental development that fitted him to cope 
 with the most astute in learning, whose wiles were 
 often used to entrap him, and which was as the 
 armor of mail to the darts of doubt and dis- 
 paragement. He could read the thoughts of 
 those who purposed his discomfiture. He knew 
 the designs of his enemies before they were ex- 
 pressed, and their cunning tongues he could an- 
 swer with confounding eloquence. He had been 
 baptized to fulfill the requirements of righteous- 
 ness and had retired to the mournful embrace of 
 the sterile wilderness for his last degree of prepa- 
 ration and soul culture, obtained only through 
 meditation and prayer, and now he was ready to 
 enter into the field of man and preach the gospel 
 of promise to a benighted world. 
 
 On the Sabbath day after he had returned to 
 Nazareth, Jesus went, as was his custom, to the 
 synagogue to read. The book of the prophet 
 Esaias was handed to him and he opened the 
 book and read these astonishing words, '' The 
 spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has 
 anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he 
 hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach 
 deliverance to the captives, and recovering of 
 sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are 
 bruised." He closed the book and handed it to 
 the minister and said, " This day is this scripture 
 fulfilled in your ears." 
 
212 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 The astonishment this little episode created 
 among the worshippers at the synagogue can 
 only be pictured by transf ending our imaginations 
 back to the days of that simple Godworshipping 
 people of Nazareth as they looked upon that 
 young man while golden truths of spiritual 
 knowledge and prophecy fell on their ears. 
 With all eyes upon him, in the spirit of astonish- 
 ment, they inquired one of another, " Is not this 
 Joseph's son ? " Thus at his first appearance in 
 public after his triumphs in the wilderness Jesus 
 laid down his platform of principles which were 
 altogether humanitarian in their intentment. He 
 was to preach the gospel to the poor, a class of 
 people too often neglected in favor of the gilded 
 show of wealth and power. He was sent to heal 
 the broken-hearted, a blessed and heaven-bom 
 service, for those who heal the wounds of the 
 heart and close the fountain of tears do a service 
 to man that will find a requital in the acclaims 
 of that angelic host when it is said, " Well done, 
 thou good and faithful servant, enter into the 
 kingdom prepared for thee." He was to preach 
 deliverance to the captive, — those who had been 
 led captive by the thralls of sin and unrighteous- 
 ness, — to deliver them from the powers of dark- 
 ness to the effulgent rays of heavenly light. He 
 was to restore sight to the blind, — those blind 
 in the way of spiritual truths, — and set at 
 liberty them that were bruised and still walking 
 in their wounds of soul to their destruction. 
 
JESUS' EARLY LIFE 213 
 
 And well did he carry out the intentment of that 
 platform during the whole of his ministerial serv- 
 ices on earth, and in heaven he smiles upon those 
 who remember the poor, the broken-hearted, the 
 sin-struck captives, the spiritually blind, and the 
 maimed of soul in the service of the power of 
 evil. The true religion of Jesus is intensely 
 practical and to understand it we need but to 
 brush away the cobwebs of myths to see its prac- 
 tical beauties and its usefulness. The service of 
 Jesus was that of a holy evangelist, lifting men 
 up out of the mires of life and placing them on 
 the smooth road of progress, with flowers of 
 sweetest fragrance on either side to be plucked 
 by those who will. 
 
 We are all passengers on the great ship of 
 life, going to another country to encounter new 
 realities and new experiences. Every person has 
 a ship of his own and is his own pilot; to reach 
 the port safely we should study the chart which 
 Jesus has given us and be sure not to overload 
 our craft and founder in the angry waves, for 
 there is danger. It is well for us to be as mind- 
 ful of the chart as we would if were we going 
 to a new country on this side of life. Were we 
 going to England, Italy, or any other country 
 we had never visited, the first thing we would do 
 would be to procure a chart and ascertain the 
 best and surest route and where to get the best 
 and safest accommodations there. The country 
 after death is far more important than any of 
 
214 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 the political divisions of this earth and why men 
 will pay so much attention to those of earth and 
 so little to those of the other side is hard to un- 
 derstand. Jesus was not a false geographer, was 
 not a false teacher. All of his lessons are prac- 
 ticable and easily followed, and no man will go 
 astray who will observe and follow them. 
 
 THE ANOINTMENT OF JESUS 
 
 On returning to his own home and going to 
 the synagogue he read, " The spirit of the Lord 
 is upon me because he has anointed me to preach 
 the gospel to the poor." Luke iv. 18. This is 
 the most important paragraph in the account of 
 the ministerial duties of our Lord, from the fact 
 that it is the one which marks the dividing line 
 between the Aaronic priesthood and the priest- 
 hood of the order of Melchizedek, of which 
 Jesus was made a high priest. 
 
 There were two kinds of anointing practiced 
 in the Bible and New Testament. One was a 
 material anointing, the other was spiritual. The 
 material anointing was done by applying oil to 
 the head or body. That was a common prac- 
 tice among the Jews and Oriental nations. See 
 Deut. xxviii. 40; Ruth iii. 3; Mic. vi. 15. It 
 was applied upon the introduction of prophets, or 
 seers, into the service of God. I. Kings xix. 16. 
 To such the Lord vouchsafed protection. 
 " Touch not my anointed and do my prophets 
 no harm." I. Chron. xvi. 22 ; Ps. cv. 15. 
 
JESUS' EARLY LIFE SI 5 
 
 Priests were anointed. Ex. xl. 15; Num. iii. 3; 
 Ex. xxix. 29; Lev. xvi. 32, It was also the 
 custom to anoint kings. I. Sam. ix. 16 ; 10, 1 ; 
 
 I. Kings i. 34. David was anointed three times. 
 
 II. Kings ix. 3, 11, 12. Material anointment 
 under the Jewish dispensation was done with oil. 
 
 The ANOINTMENT OF JESUS WAS A SPIRIT- 
 UAL ACT AND DONE BY THE AUTHORITY OF 
 
 GOD. " The spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
 because he hath anointed me," said Jesus. 
 And John bare record, saying, " I saw the spirit 
 descending from heaven like a dove, and it 
 abode upon him. And I knew him not; but 
 he that sent me to baptize with water, the 
 same said unto me, ' Upon whom thou shalt 
 see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, 
 the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy 
 Ghost.' " John i. 32, 33. " That word, I say, 
 ye know, which was published throughout all 
 Judea, and began from Galilee, after the baptism 
 which John preached; how God anointed Jesus 
 of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with 
 power; who went about doing good, and healing 
 all that were oppressed of the devil ; for God was 
 with him." Acts x. 37, 38. 
 
 When Jesus had closed the book and handed 
 it to the minister, he sat down and said, " This 
 day Is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears. I 
 tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel 
 in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut 
 up three years and six months, when great famine 
 
216 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 was throughout all the land, but unto none of 
 them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city 
 of Sidon, unto a woman who was a widow ; and 
 many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus 
 the prophet; and none of them was cleansed save 
 Naaman the Syrian." Luke iv. 20-29. 
 
 Jesus in this conversation intended to impress 
 on the minds of those present that the religion 
 of humanity was preferable to that of the 
 Aaronic priesthood; in other words, that the 
 Jews practiced a false religion, — that the true 
 and proper religion was that of humanity. At 
 this imputation, those present became very angry, 
 forcibly ejected him from the synagogue and 
 took him to the brow of the hill whereon the city 
 of Nazareth was built that they might cast him 
 down headlong; but the strength of the spirit 
 w^orld was upon him and he passed through the 
 midst of them and went his way. 
 
 It is strange how people who believe in a super- 
 natural religion will get angered at those who 
 differ from them. That is an infection that 
 poisoned the minds of the Jews, but not theirs 
 alone. It follows all along the path of religion 
 even unto this day, but now the power is broken ; 
 the religion of humanity, the true religion of the 
 Master, is supplanting that of dogmatism and 
 many are becoming the saviors of men by ex- 
 tending unto them that fraternal aid and com- 
 fort that heals the sorrowing heart, binds up the 
 wounds of the afflicted and sore of spirit, and 
 
JESUS' EARLY LIFE 217 
 
 opens the eyes of those who are blinded in the 
 duties they owe themselves, and by making the 
 meaning of heaven to be that of a condition and 
 not location, a heaven of this world as well as 
 one of the next. 
 
 JESUS GOES TO CAPERNAUM 
 
 Imagine, if you can, the heart burnings of the 
 Master while he was wending his way through 
 the passes of the hills of lower Galilee to escape 
 from the threatening aspect of his neighbors, 
 who would do him bodily harm for extending to 
 them the heart sympathies of humanity and 
 opening to their minds the joys of a new hope of 
 life made glorious through the shadows of the 
 tomb. What anguish, as he looked back on the 
 scenes of his childhood in the quiet environments 
 of Nazareth and said, " Good-bye, sweet dreams, 
 good-bye. Good-bye, mother, on whose warm 
 breast I have listened to the word pictures of 
 heaven in the accents of love. Good-bye, home, 
 the shelter of my weary limbs in the storms of 
 life. I leave you in body for Capernaum, where 
 I go in the work of my Master, with the hope of 
 a better understanding than that of my neigh- 
 bors who would thrust me over the deep preci- 
 pice to death for the simple act of reading to 
 them a prophecy of myself from the book of 
 Esaias, inspired through the agency of my God, 
 whose service it is mj^ delight to perform. 
 Nazareth, nestling Nazareth, I love thee, for it 
 
218 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 was there that was born in my soul an undying 
 love for the world for which my life-blood is 
 soon to ebb and flow in the agonies of a tortured 
 death, to prove to a stubborn people that they 
 have precious souls which may be stranded on 
 the wastes of eternity or glorified in the enchant- 
 ments of love eternal, made pure by my purchase 
 of life on the cross. Good-bye, O thou enchant- 
 ing scenes, good-b^^e." 
 
 Jesus, heavy hearted and tired of foot, went 
 from Nazareth to Capernaum, which he chose as 
 the place of his abode for a time ; but it soon 
 transpired that he had no home, — that he was 
 a wanderer on the face of the earth, up and 
 down the rocky shores of Galilee, despised by 
 the many, a prodigy in the minds of some, and 
 loved by the few, in a country of enemies made 
 alert and ravenous because of his unselfish good- 
 ness, because of his undying efforts to lead his 
 countrymen out of the spiritual darkness in which 
 they were groping and in which they found food 
 for all manner of sin. The Israelites, gi'oaning 
 under the yoke of Roman bondage, being a rest- 
 less and revengeful people, feasted on the dreams 
 of war, rebellion, asassinations, the assertion of 
 liberty, the accumulation of power, the aggre- 
 gation of wealth at whatever cost. They were 
 living in spiritual darkness and when Jesus came 
 with the light of love and heaven in his teachings 
 and life, they hated him, for revenge was sweet 
 to their minds and rebellion dear to their hearts. 
 
JESUS' EARLY LIFE 219 
 
 They rebelled against every thing, — against the 
 Roman power, against the law, against good 
 government, against God and their own souls, — 
 and he who would make a change in their sordid 
 natures which were intensified by national dis- 
 agreements, received but their suspicious hatred. 
 It was that feeling which made those in the syna- 
 gogue at Nazareth, on the first advent of Jesus 
 as a teacher, thrust him out of the place and at- 
 tempt his death by throwing him over the preci- 
 pice. Then he said to them, " No prophet is 
 accepted in his own country." 
 
 This is not strange when we consider the forces 
 of nature. In nature there are two elements, 
 good and evil, right and wrong, hatred and love, 
 cruelty and kindness. The evil side of man is 
 always aggressive, the good side is passive. 
 Love cannot knock down and drag out. Peace 
 is persuasive, war aggressive. A good man will 
 take a struggling brother by the hand and help 
 him up, a bad man will crush him lower and 
 lower, and he will hate you if you tell him of his 
 wrong. Jesus hesitated not to point out evil and 
 chide the evil-doer; for that, those living in dark- 
 ness hated him and would have destroyed him at 
 once had he not been sustained by a greater 
 power than they. His time had not come ; he 
 had a work to do which was his to accomplish 
 despite all the powers that might try to hinder 
 him. 
 
VI 
 
 PREACHING AND HEALING 
 
 When Jesus went to Capernaum he commenced 
 his ministry, his teaching and his humanitarian 
 services to the people. He followed the argu- 
 ments of John when he was informing the people 
 of the coming of the Master, saying " Prepare ye 
 the way of the Lord and make his paths straight,'* 
 and " Repent ye for the kingdom of heaven is at 
 hand." Jesus used the same words, " Repent ye 
 for the k^ingdom of heaven is at hand." What 
 did Jesus and John mean by such language? 
 Were they speaking of a place, person, or 
 condition? 
 
 Gratius said that the Jews divided the heaven 
 into three parts, viz: 1, The air or atmosphere 
 where clouds gather; 2, the firmament in which 
 the sun, moon, and stars are fixed; 3, the upper 
 heaven, the abode of God and his angels. To 
 those, the Evangelists added a fourth, the king- 
 dom of righteousness or the kingdom of God, 
 which is found within each man's heart who lives 
 according to the laws and precepts of the Gos- 
 pels as taught by Jesus. 
 
 The kingdom of heaven, that Jesus and John 
 
 spoke of, was the spiritual light which Jesus 
 
 brought with him and proclaimed unto the world. 
 
 Before that time the people, especially in and 
 
 220 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 221 
 
 about Capernaum^ were living in spiritual dark- 
 ness and in the shadow of spiritual death. Jesus 
 desired to lead them out of that condition by 
 preaching unto them a better way of life through 
 which they could reach the kingdom of heaven or 
 a condition of happiness. Paul said, " The king- 
 dom of heaven is not meat and drink, but right- 
 eousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." 
 Rom. xiv. 17. The kingdom of God and the 
 kingdom of heaven mean the same thing as used 
 in these references. " But seek first the kingdom 
 of God and his righteousness and all these things 
 shall be added unto you." Matt. vi. 33. The 
 kingdom of heaven pertained to this life and to 
 the earth condition. The apostles were instructed 
 to heal the sick, and say unto them, " The king- 
 dom of God is come nigh unto you." Luke 
 X. 9, 11. 
 
 The Pharisees desired to know of Jesus when 
 the kingdom of God should come. Jesus re- 
 plied, " It does not come with observation, or with 
 outward show. Behold, the kingdom of God is 
 within you." Luke xvii. 20, 21. We all have 
 the power of having the kingdom of heaven, or 
 God, within our own bosoms, by proper living, 
 proper meditation, and proper acting, or we can 
 have the other condition if we wish. It is all 
 within ourselves. Jesus, knowing the philosophy 
 of life and the way to promote the condition of 
 happiness on earth, came preaching that the 
 " kingdom of heaven is at hand." 
 
222 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 There is another meaning to the word heaven. 
 This meaning apphes to the spiritual condition 
 and appertains to the next hfe, the condition 
 after the dissolution of the spirit from the body. 
 This condition is often obtained by sensitives 
 who go into a trance when the spirit leaves the 
 body and goes to the spheres called in the spir- 
 itual appellations of the New Testament, heaven. 
 Paul says, " I knew a man in Christ above four- 
 teen years ago (whether in the body, I cannot 
 tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell; 
 God knoweth), such an one caught up to the 
 third heaven. And I knew such a man (whether 
 in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell; 
 God knoweth), how that he was caught up into 
 paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it 
 is not lawful for man to utter." II. Cor. xii. 
 2—4. Paul was no doubt speaking of himself 
 who, while in a trance, was caught up and taken 
 to one of the spheres of the other world, where 
 he heard and beheld those things which were un- 
 lawful for him to utter under the condition of 
 society as it then was. In fact, to this day a 
 person dare not tell the truth about the spirit 
 world without having all the materialists and 
 creed-bound Christians on his back. That is the 
 only thing that the materialists and Christians 
 agree in, to abuse those who know of the powers 
 of the Holy Ghost and the beauties of the spirit 
 world and who venture to tell it to others. 
 
 Paul dared not tell those things; he spoke of 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 223 
 
 them but dared not particularize. " And it came 
 to pass, that while I was come again to Jerusalem, 
 even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a 
 trance." Acts xxii. 17. 
 
 There are degrees in heaven. We have men- 
 tion of seven degrees in the other world and 
 above those, spirits enter into the condition of 
 celestia and go on to perfection in the bosom of 
 God, or a condition of absolute rest in wisdom 
 and glory. 
 
 JESUS THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 " And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in 
 Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast in the 
 borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim. The peo- 
 ple v/hich sat in darkness saw great light ; and 
 to them which sat in the region and shadow of 
 death, light is sprung up." Mat. iv. 13, 16. 
 
 Mingled in this narration of the facts that 
 Jesus left Nazareth and came and dwelt in Caper- 
 naum is a most important allegory that fathoms 
 the very nature of the mission of our Lord as 
 well as his title and the meaning thereof. 
 
 It is asserted by theologians that the affix 
 *' Christ " to the name of Jesus meant " the 
 Anointed." There can be nothing further from 
 the true meaning of the word, as we have shown 
 in a former chapter that Jesus was never anointed 
 under the Aaronic priesthood; and to claim that 
 he was anointed confounds his priesthood with 
 that of the Jewish and makes them both the 
 
224 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 same. None of the Jewish priests were ever 
 anointed by the Holy Ghost, and Jesus was 
 never anointed by oil as expressive of his priest- 
 hood ; therefore, to assert that the word " Christ " 
 means " anointed " is a forced construction and 
 especially untenable in the light of the Bible. 
 
 The word " Christ " means " light " and no 
 other reasonable construction can be placed on 
 the term. As evidence of that fact let us call 
 in some witnesses, the veracity of whose words no 
 one dare dispute. " In him was life ; and the life 
 was the light of men. And the light shineth 
 in darkness ; and the darkness comprehended it 
 not. There was a man sent from God, whose 
 name was John. The same came for a witness, 
 to bear witness of the Light, that all men through 
 him might believe. He was not that Light, but 
 was sent to bear witness of that Light. That 
 was the true Light, which lighteth every man 
 that Cometh into the world." John i. 4-9. " I 
 am the light of the world: he that followeth me 
 shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the 
 light of life." John viii. 12. " Yet a Httle while 
 is the light with you. Walk while ye have the 
 light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that 
 walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he 
 goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light, 
 that ye may be the children of light. These 
 things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide 
 himself from them." John xii. 35-36. " Awake, 
 and Christ shall give thee light." Eph. v. 14. 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 225 
 
 Among the prophesies are the following : For, 
 behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and 
 gross darkness the people; but the Lord shall 
 arise upon thee and his glory shall be seen upon 
 thee, and the Gentiles shall come to thy light. 
 Isaiah Ix. 2, 3. I the Lord have called thee in 
 righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will 
 keep thee and give thee for a covenant of the 
 people, for a light of the Gentiles. Isaiah 
 xlii. 6, 7. The foregoing are sufficient to show 
 that Jesus Christ was considered the spiritual 
 light of the world. His name was to be Jesus 
 according to the command of the angel, but his 
 title should be " Light" ; his office, high priest 
 after the order of Melchizedek. There can be 
 no room for controversy on these points, as I 
 glean from the Bible itself. 
 
 The word " light " means spiritual and intel- 
 lectual light. There were many in Capernaum 
 that sat in darkness. They were an ignorant 
 community, composed of people from different 
 sections of the country roundabout, without cul- 
 ture, or spiritual enlightenment. But when 
 Jesus appeared among them they saw in his per- 
 son, in his demeanor, in his teachings and phil- 
 osophy, that he possessed great intelligence and 
 great spirituality, and those that were in spir- 
 itual darkness beheld in the man comfort, con- 
 solation, goodness, kindness ; and seeing that 
 radiant countenance and illumination of person 
 there awoke in them the impulses of a new life 
 
226 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 and so to them which sat in the region and shadow 
 of death, hght sprang up. 
 
 On this one phrase, " those who sat in the re- 
 gion and shadow of death," hangs the most im- 
 portant concern of the world, and if it were 
 studied and understood as it should be, we would 
 see a reformation in the conduct of men that 
 would revolutionize the world. " The region 
 and shadow of death." What does the term 
 mean.'' To understand the true meaning of the 
 term we must first understand ourselves. 
 
 Who are we.^* What is our make up.^* The 
 great stumbling block on which the world falls 
 is the fact that men do not understand them- 
 selves. Jesus was much wiser than the world and 
 he surpasses t\ie great boasted intelligence of even 
 the 20th centur3^ He gave out scientific tnjths 
 that the world does not comprehend, even now, 
 as a rule. Man is dual in his make-up. He is 
 made up of a physical body and spiritual body. 
 The physical body is the house in which the spir- 
 itual man lives. The house in which the true 
 man lives never offends, never does wrong ; but 
 the man who lives in the house and who con- 
 trols it is prone to evil and wrong-doing. The 
 house gets out of repair some times and then we 
 say the man is sick, and when the house gets very 
 badly out of repair the man inside moves out and 
 leaves the old tenement. That we call death, 
 but it is not death; it is simply a change of con- 
 ditions, usually for the better. But there is a 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 227 
 
 death that we should look upon with fear and 
 trembling and that is the death of the soul. 
 That is the real death of the man, for the soul is 
 the man. When our Lord went to Capernaum 
 there were those who sat in the region and shadow 
 of death. That is, they were so depraved and 
 debauched that their spirits were perishing ; death 
 had cast its shadow upon them and they were 
 sinking down, down, down. They were reach- 
 ing that condition where there was no redemption 
 for them ; extinction in the darkness of evil was 
 inevitable, for they had not the power to reform. 
 Study this lesson well, friends, keep it before your 
 minds and the minds of those of your household, 
 that there are but two destinies for man, — one 
 is the embrace in the bosom of God, the other 
 utter extinction in the maw of Misery. One 
 condition is that of perfection in goodness, the 
 other is destruction in the throes of evil. There 
 are good and evil in the world, — we are either 
 reaping the harvest of one or the dregs of the 
 other. Everything moves in cycles. We came 
 from the bosom of Omnipotence. W^e shall re- 
 turn to that condition again, and become of the 
 essence of Light and Purity if we follow the 
 light of the Master in the deeds of well doing; 
 or we will sink into the region of death in the 
 extremes of darkness. There are two sides of 
 nature, good and bad, happiness and woe. We 
 know that from every-day experiences. Jesus 
 came to give us light and give us knowledge and 
 
^28 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 tell us how to embrace the one and avoid the 
 other. 
 
 In our daily intercourse with men, we find 
 many who have subjected themselves so much to 
 the life of baseness and depravity that they can- 
 not retrace their steps ; they do not have sufficient 
 strength to reform ; they resolve and resolve only 
 to relapse again into their old ruts and habits. 
 Those people are in the region and shadow of 
 death, — spiritual death, — and should they leave 
 the body in that condition, the chances are they 
 cannot reform in the spirit world but will sink 
 and sink to the perishing point in the region of 
 darkness. Criminals live in that spiritual atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 When Jesus went to Capernaum, a light pene- 
 trated the souls of those sitting in darkness. 
 Jesus, the great humanitarian, did all he could 
 to reform that people. He preached to them, 
 talked to them, and did many wonderful things 
 in their presence, but the town had become so 
 corrupted that his teachings were rejected. When 
 he could do no more he exclaimed in a prophecy 
 that was literally fulfilled, " But thou, Caper- 
 naum, which art exalted unto heaven, shall be 
 brought down to hell; for if the mighty works 
 which have been done in thee, had been done in 
 Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 
 But I say unto you. That it shall be more tolerable 
 for the land of Sodom, in the day of judgment 
 than for thee." Matt. xi. 23, 24. How well this 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 229 
 
 prophecy was carried out, for no one knows where 
 this once proud city stood. The same curse was 
 pronounced against Chorasin, and with the same 
 results. 
 
 HEALING THE SICK 
 
 The mission of Jesus on earth was that of 
 doing good. His vineyard was man in all the 
 walks of life. To the proud he enjoined humil- 
 ity ; to the rich a disregard of the fascination 
 of worldly goods and the importance of spiritual 
 riches, the storehouse of which is in the vaults 
 of exalted happiness in the life to come, and he 
 impressed on the minds of the world, the frailties 
 and uncertainties of this life as contrasted with 
 the never-ending future which is enriched or im- 
 poverished by our own acts with which we volun- 
 tarily encumber ourselves in our short journey 
 here. As an example for us to follow, he went 
 forth among the poor and distressed of body, soul, 
 and mind, healing the sick, opening the eyes of 
 the blind, the ears of the deaf, causing the lame 
 to walk, the weak to receive strength, and to 
 those obsessed by devils, or spirits controlling 
 the minds of their victims, he commanded the spirit 
 to leave the obsessed persons that they might 
 be restored to the exercise of the mind and body 
 and become sane again. 
 
 The same services that Jesus extended among 
 the people he enjoined upon his disciples and 
 through his disciples as an example for all his 
 
230 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 anointed. " Is any sick among you? Let him 
 call for the elders of the church ; and let them 
 pray over him, anointing him with oil in the 
 name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall 
 save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up ; 
 and if he hath committed sins they shall be for- 
 given him." James v. 14, 15. The art of heal- 
 ing is a spiritual gift. " For to one is given 
 by the Spirit the word of wisdom ; to another 
 the words of knowledge by the same Spirit ; to 
 another faith by the same spirit ; to another 
 the gift of healing by the same Spirit." I. Cor. 
 xii. 8, 9. The power of healing, as well as the 
 benefit to those who receive the blessing depends 
 on the belief of both the healer and the sick. 
 *'And these signs shall follow them that believe ; 
 in my name shall they cast out devils ; they shall 
 speak with new tongues ; they shall take up ser- 
 pents ; and if they drink any deadly thing, it 
 shall not hurt them ; they shall lay hands on the 
 sick, and they shall recover." Mark xvi. 17. 
 Even the shadow of Peter cured the sick. Acts 
 V. 15. Multitudes came from out the cities round 
 about Jerusalem to Peter and were healed. Acts 
 V. 16. The power of healing was practiced all 
 through the period of the Old Testament. But 
 in all cases the ones seeking to be healed were, 
 as a condition of healing, compelled to ask, 
 " Have mercy on me O Lord, I am weak. Lord, 
 heal me for my bones are vexed." Psalm vi. 2. 
 " Heal me, Lord, and I shall be healed, save 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 231 
 
 me and I shall be saved." Jer. xvii. 18. The 
 sickness of the soul was also cured in days of 
 old. " I said, O Lord be merciful unto me, 
 heal my soul. I have sinned against thee." 
 Psalm xli. 2. " I have seen his ways, and 
 will heal him. I will lead him also and restore 
 comforts unto him and to his mourners." Isaiah 
 Ivii. 18. 
 
 Faith was a necessary condition for those who 
 desired the service of Jesus in bestowing upon 
 them the gracious act of healing. A scribe 
 brought to Jesus his son which had a dumb 
 spirit, which tore the child and made him foam 
 at the mouth and gnash his teeth and caused him 
 to pine away. The disciples could not effect a 
 cure of this child, so the father came to Jesus with 
 him and asked his assistance. The boy fell on 
 the ground, foamed at the mouth and was in a 
 dreadful condition. Speaking to the father of 
 the boy Jesus said, " If thou canst believe, all 
 things are possible to him that believeth." The 
 father said, " Lord I believe, help mine unbelief." 
 Jesus then rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto 
 him, " Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, 
 come out of him and enter no more into him," 
 and the spirit cried and rent him sore and came 
 out of him, and the child was as one dead, inso- 
 much as that many said, " He is dead," but 
 Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up 
 and he arose. Mark ix. 17-27. Jesus healed 
 the servant of the centurion through the power 
 of faith. Matt. viii. 5-13. 
 
2S2 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 The act of healing was a science. Jesus did 
 not stop to explain any of his works, as that 
 of healing. He simply did the act, effected the 
 cure and then went on without explanation. He 
 acted on the same principle as the physicians 
 who give out their remedies and direct how they 
 shall be administered, without explanation as to 
 the compound given. Just so did Jesus work. 
 He effected his cures, but did not tell how they 
 were accomplished. That problem was left to 
 later generations. But in each case the mind of 
 the sick or diseased person was worked upon, 
 A trusting faith in Jesus or those who attempted 
 the cure was necessary. 
 
 Why was faith necessary in the process of 
 curing diseases? There was a reason for the 
 exercising of faith or Jesus would not have re- 
 quired it. He never did a useless thing or gave 
 unnecessary advice or required a useless cere- 
 mony. Long experience and observation have 
 proved to man the power of mind over mind 
 and mind over matter; and, as well, the com- 
 munity of thoughts and their simultaneous pow- 
 ers over the brains of different people at the 
 same time. How often have you spoken of things, 
 disconnected with the subject under consideration 
 and some person speaks up and says, " I was 
 thinking of the same thing." How often has 
 your mind been centered on a person and in 
 a short time that person unexpectedly comes in- 
 to your presence. How often have you been 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 233 
 
 impelled by the force of thought to pay a visit 
 to some of your neighbors and when you had 
 entered the exclamation was, " I was just think- 
 ing of you and wishing that you would come." 
 It is said that every time we think of an 
 absent person we affect him for good or evil. 
 Thoughts are material substances and are po- 
 tent factors of nature, in the same way that 
 electricity and magnetism are substances of na- 
 ture; and the brain serves in its function of the 
 generation of thoughts just as the telegraphic 
 battery does in the transmission of information 
 from one place to another and almost instanta- 
 neously around the earth. The brain is a battery 
 and thoughts charge that battery according to 
 the will force back of it. If one wills to have 
 good thoughts he has them, if he wills evil, evil 
 ensues ; if he wills health, health to a degree fol- 
 lows, and why? The physical body is builded 
 through the powers of intelligence. The phys- 
 ical body does not build itself. Seventeen ele- 
 ments of the earth would always be distributed 
 in and around the earth were they not acted upon 
 by some intelligent force. That proposition 
 must be apparent to ever}'^ thinking mind. That 
 intelligent force must have a conscious existence 
 and must be under the domination of a superior 
 force. The mind of man has all the qualities of 
 will, reason, the accumulation of facts, and mental 
 force that are necessary for his well-being. Now 
 he did not create any of those forces ; while he is 
 
234 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 associated with them and they are a part of his 
 make-up as a man, they are, in fact, independ- 
 ent of him and play upon him in the same way 
 that the sunhght plays upon the plant and gives 
 it vitality. 
 
 Through the force of man's will, his person 
 acts. He wills to go to a certain place and his 
 physical organism takes him there. He wills to 
 do a thing, and he does it. The body never 
 would perform the act of locomotion did not 
 the will first direct the act. The mind not only 
 controls the body in the everyday vocations of life, 
 but it is often the cause of death. How often we 
 hear of a person falling dead from the effects of 
 fright ! Is that not caused from the power of 
 the mind over the ph^^sical? We frequently 
 learn of persons dying from the effects of good 
 news, which struck the mind so forcibly that 
 death followed. There are cases recorded where 
 the lives of culprits have been taken through 
 the force of mind over mind. Take the 
 experiment, for instance, made on a condemned 
 criminal of bleeding him to death. He was 
 informed that he was to die from bleeding, 
 his ej^es were bandaged, his arm corded, and an 
 incision of a slight nature made on the outside ; 
 warm water was poured on the ann and allowed 
 to fall into a vessel in such a way as to allow 
 him to hear it dripping. In a little while the 
 physicians would whisper that he was going, 
 going, going, that in a few minutes he would 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 235 
 
 be dead. The result was that he did expire. 
 What caused that phenomenon ? It was the effect 
 of mind over mind. 
 
 We all know the effects of hypnotism on the 
 person of an individual under its influence. The 
 hypnotist can make the subject do anything 
 and it has been proved in court and established 
 by judicial investigation that hypnotism has been 
 used to cause a person to commit crimes under the 
 power of suggestion. In some cases it has been 
 murder; often seduction and robbery of wealthy 
 persons is produced through these influences. 
 The power of mind over mind is incalculable 
 when carried to its utmost. But in every in- 
 stance the person acted upon must have faith ; 
 without faith there is no redemption and no cure. 
 Is that a scientific truth? If so, why? Jesus 
 never told us. The great divines have never 
 told us only as a saving grace and that is prob- 
 lematical. No man was ever cured against his 
 will. If a man wants to go to hell there is a 
 vehicle alwaj^s at hand. If he wants to get sick, 
 he can do so. 
 
 Man's composition is of two parts, the physical 
 and spiritual. The spiritual is the man, the phys- 
 ical the house in which he lives, as we have often 
 sai(J during the progress of this work. The 
 spiritual is the thinking part of man, the active 
 part, the part that acts, feels, hears, sees, loves, 
 hates, and the part that acts upon all the five 
 senses and stirs every emotion which affects the 
 body. 
 
236 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 The science of mind Is this: The physical 
 is composed of intelligent atoms, little agencies, 
 doing their silent work of building up and tear- 
 ing down when we are asleep or awake. The 
 intelligence of our make-up has a great deal of 
 influence on those intelligent atoms and com- 
 binations of atoms. Whenever the mind is per- 
 ceptibly affected, those atoms are also aff^ected 
 to some degree ; thus, when we come in contact 
 with a healer, one possessed of a surplus of spirit 
 power and put our mind in harmony with his mind, 
 we are affected more or less. Now add to this the 
 putting on of hands as the elders were commanded 
 to do and a cure is usually the result. The 
 science of putting on of hands is this: The cir- 
 culation of all persons who are sick is more or 
 less impeded or accelerated. The healer has a 
 surplus of magnetism in his person. By the 
 contact of hands to the affected part the mag- 
 netism of the healer is imparted to the sick per- 
 son and the affected part, and that additional 
 life-giving power has an effect on the sick one. 
 That, together with the power of the mind or 
 soul, acting in harmony with the other soul, has 
 a healing influence and in the case of Jesus, a 
 cure was brought about in every instance. Had 
 Jesus stopped to explain his magical powers he 
 would not have had the influence he did, for the 
 people are always after the wonderful and mys- 
 tical. Talk common sense to them and they pass 
 it by as of no consequence ; call it some unnatural 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 237 
 
 power, they aver it is true and cling to it the 
 tighter. It is mystery that gets followers. Com- 
 mon sense is too tame to attract attention. 
 
 CASTING OUT DEVILS 
 
 In writing and studying the life of the Master, 
 in order to get the true genius of his works, we 
 must consider the state of society, the manner of 
 living, the education, the peculiar expressions and 
 terms used to indicate certain phases of the mind, 
 religion, belief, and what they meant by certain 
 terms used. Events that are said to have trans- 
 pired in the days of Jesus would be considered, 
 in many instances, as mere figments of a dis- 
 ordered imagination, if reported to-day ; and yet 
 we must concede, that nature is invariable and 
 the same laws through which an event occurred 
 in the days of Jesus are in force at this time, if 
 the conditions are the same. 
 
 When Jesus commenced his ministry, among 
 other acts of healing, he cast out devils. The 
 act of casting out devils is considered by skeptics 
 as a mere play upon words to magnify the powers 
 of Jesus in the minds of the ignorant and sus- 
 ceptible. In the minds of believers, it is con- 
 sidered as a miracle and as indubitable evidence 
 of a divine power in the person of the Master, 
 not bestowed on any other person at any time 
 during the history of man. 
 
 To comprehend this problem in the work of the 
 Master we must first analyze the meaning of the 
 
238 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 word devil. In those days people believed in per- 
 sonal devils and personal gods, which acted upon 
 men and women in various ways ; and in fact, 
 many people believe, at this time, in a personal 
 god and in the prevalence of devils which torment 
 by visitations of evil persons both in this world 
 and the next. It is a scientific fact, well known 
 to all students of the spiritual forces of nature, 
 that under certain conditions evil spirits can and 
 do take possesion of the organisms and drive 
 out the individuality of the victims and make them 
 talk and act like some one other than themselves. 
 No well-informed person will deny that some peo- 
 ple become obsessed, and believe, talk, and repre- 
 sent themselves to be some other person. We 
 call that condition obsession. When found in 
 this sad condition, generall^^ the patient is sent 
 off to an insane asylum as being insane, where 
 he is kept in confinement perhaps for the remain- 
 der of his life. Among the ignorant, that con- 
 dition is called insanity ; among the spiritually 
 enlightened it is called obsession ; the same thing 
 in the days of Jesus was called " being possessed 
 of devils." 
 
 Jesus had power over that condition and could 
 relieve the suff'erer ; there are people who can do 
 the same thing to-day. The Catholic priests 
 have a ritualistic form of driving out evil spirits, 
 which is called exorcism ; this is done by prayer, 
 and a peculiar process of mental action by which 
 the mind of the patient is controlled by the priest 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 239 
 
 or exorcist to such an extent that the obsessing 
 spirit is driven out, or induced to leave the 
 patient, and the person is restored to his normal 
 condition. 
 
 Obsession, or being possessed of the devil, was 
 a very common thing in the days of the Master, — 
 more prevalent than it is now, and more trouble- 
 some. Among the Greeks and other ancients, 
 they had a belief that at the time of the birth 
 of every individual a demon, or spirit, was as- 
 signed to him, to attend, protect, and guide him 
 during life. The Greeks believed that there were 
 two such demons, or Genii, assigned to attend 
 the person through life, — one a good demon and 
 the other evil, — and at death the spirit was taken 
 charge of by the attending Genii and delivered 
 over to his punishment or reward, according to 
 the judgment of the attending spirit. 
 
 Socrates asserted that he had a demon attending 
 him at all times with whom he conversed and held 
 communion and that when any of his friends was 
 going to engage in any undertaking which would 
 prove unfortunate his Genii informed him of the 
 fact and he gave advice accordingly. 
 
 Those invisible powers were called by various 
 names such as demons. Genii, Lares, Penates, Dem- 
 igods, Heroes, Manes, Devils, and Spirits. They 
 were presumed to have the power of transform- 
 ing themselves into any shape or condition they 
 wished, hence they were supposed by the early 
 fathers of the Christian faith to be ungainly 
 
MO LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 monsters, some with horns, some with cloven feet, 
 fire-like 63^68, gnashing teeth, and of beastly and 
 hideous appearance. With that impression on 
 the minds of the ignorant the priests exercised 
 great control over their flocks. 
 
 Adam Clark moderaized the expression of " un- 
 clean devils " as used in Mark i. 23, Luke iv. 33 
 into " unclean spirits," — that is, spirits of dead 
 men who came back and familiarized themselves 
 with the living. It has not only grown into a 
 beHef with some but from many observations and 
 experiments on the line of psychic research it is 
 asserted as a scientific fact, that man is frequently 
 attended by spirits from the other side of life who 
 exercise great influence at times over the living; 
 thus, evil spirits will lead those whom they can 
 reach into all kinds of evil ways and crimes ; 
 good spirits will inspire those they associate with 
 and attend with good thoughts and intentions and 
 keep them from the ways of evil. It is known 
 that men can avoid the one and have the influence 
 of the other class by his own eff^orts of mind and 
 conduct. Evil and good cannot mix ; if the 
 thoughts of a person are evil, evil spirits will 
 find comfort in that atmosphere and good spirits 
 will be driven away. On the other hand, if the 
 thoughts of an individual dwell on the good side 
 of life and he lives with that in view, bad spirits 
 do not find it congenial to be about such an one 
 and will leave association with him for those who 
 feed by their dail}' lives the sordid wishes of the 
 vile of the other world. 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 24-1 
 
 Keeping in mind always, in studying ourselves, 
 that man while in this life is but an incarnate 
 spirit, that those who have experienced the change 
 of death are disincarnate spirits, and that those 
 spirits do not communicate under certain con- 
 ditions with each other, and that the disincarnate 
 spirits have great power over the incarnate, for 
 evil, which is to be avoided, or for good which 
 should be encouraged, we can select our spiritual 
 company on the same principle that we can select 
 our company on this side of life. And one is 
 as important as the other. 
 
 JESUS AS A SENSITIVE 
 All through the old Bible are evidences of a 
 future life in some form or condition, but it is 
 not demonstrated or taught as a life of individual 
 conscious entity. The ancient Jews had their 
 God, angels, archangels, cherubs, devils, demons, 
 spirits, ghosts, and invisibilities of various kinds ; 
 but there was no system, science, or proof of man's 
 immortality, or conscious life after death until 
 Jesus came. He demonstrated the truth of life 
 everlasting, laying down rules by which con- 
 tinued life can be demonstrated and proved be- 
 yond a doubt. But to prove that fact certain 
 rules must be observed or there can be no evidence 
 adduced other than that of reason ; and as reason 
 is so veritable it does not produce the satisfaction 
 that the demonstration does. In fact, reason 
 unless the proper premises are laid to start from, 
 
242 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 will lead Into materialism and total extinction 
 of life at the time of death. 
 
 The power of the spirit world over this world 
 is manifest in the life of Jesus when, according to 
 the record, the angel Gabriel was sent from God 
 to the city of Nazareth and there informed a 
 young woman, Mary, that she should bring forth 
 a son and that she should call his name Jesus. 
 Being doubtful of the fulfillment of the angelic 
 promise, and expressing some surprise at the 
 coming of such an event, the angel to quiet her, 
 said, " The H0I3' Ghost shall come upon thee 
 and the power of the Highest shall overshadow 
 thee." Luke I. 26-38. And the promised son 
 should be called the son of God. The power of the 
 Highest was a spirit power which should Imbue her 
 mind to the comprehension of beautiful thoughts 
 and spiritual things ; that such a power more or 
 less controls the condition of motherhood at this 
 time, is a fixed law of nature. The term Holy 
 Ghost is by some theologians tortured into an 
 entity, into the third person of the Trinity, but 
 the original phrase will not justify that Inter- 
 pretation. The phrase is " ek pneumatos hag- 
 g'lon," meaning, " out of pure spirit." The word 
 pneuma is spirit. Haggion, or aggaion, means 
 good, or pure. Therefore, Mary was under pure 
 spirit power at the time Jesus was conceived. 
 
 The beautiful vision at the baptism of Jesus 
 was a spiritual manifestation which was one of 
 the links In the development of Jesus as a sensi- 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 243 
 
 tlve, or medium, preparatory for his great work 
 in demonstrating spiritual manifestations. This 
 spirit manifestation is recounted in Matt. iii. 16, 
 17. "And Jesus, when he was baptized, went 
 up straightway out of the water, and, lo, the 
 heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the 
 
 SPIRIT OF GOD DESCENDING LIKE A DOVE, and 
 
 hghting upon him, and lo, a voice out of heaven 
 saying, This is my beloved son, in whom I am well 
 pleased." 
 
 The interpretation of this text is generally 
 that the multitude gathered at the time saw the 
 real spirit of God in the shape and form of a 
 dove come from out the sky and light upon 
 the person of Jesus. No one saw this manifesta- 
 tion but Jesus and John. John says, " I saw 
 the spirit of God descending from heaven like a 
 dove and lighting upon him." John i. 32. 
 Mark the language, — the spirit was not like a 
 dove, but it was descending from heaven like a 
 dove; it was the descent, beautiful, gentle, and 
 soothing like that of a dove, that John saw. 
 
 When Jesus had become prepared for his work 
 by cleansing in the form of baptism, and forty 
 days of fast and seclusion in the wilderness, he 
 entered upon his work for humanity. He 
 brought the kingdom of heaven down to man by 
 demonstrating that the way to heaven is through 
 the gateway of human goodness of one unto 
 another. The first service that Jesus rendered 
 to his fellow-man was the act of healing, for which 
 
244 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 he was fully developed and prepared. He began 
 at Galilee after the baptism which John preached. 
 He could not have performed the great acts of 
 healing had he not been fully endowed by God 
 to do so. " For God anointed Jesus of Nazareth 
 with the Holy Ghost and with power; who went 
 about doing good and healing all that were op- 
 pressed of the devil; for God was with him." 
 Acts X. 37, 38. 
 
 THE LIFE THAT JESUS TAUGHT 
 
 How much we have strayed from the life that 
 Jesus taught ! He came into the world a poor, 
 friendless, and unobserved being, unprepared so far 
 as his surroundings were concerned for the ordi- 
 nary battles of life. 
 
 The period of the world's history in which he 
 came was as unforbidding as his preparation 
 seemed unsuited to a great work. The people 
 were spiritually dead. They scrambled for the 
 spoils of the present and despised the demands 
 of the future, although the old Bible from the 
 third chapter of Genesis where we read that God 
 walked through the garden and conversed with 
 Adam and Eve to the last paragraph of the last 
 chapter of Malachi, where the spirit of Elijah was 
 promised which afterwards was sent in the person 
 of John the Baptist, and which says, " Behold, I 
 will send you Elijah the prophet before the com- 
 ing of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; 
 and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 245 
 
 children, and the heart of the children to their 
 fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a 
 curse," is full of evidences of a future life and the 
 intercommunion of the two worlds for the instruc- 
 tion and betterment of men on this side. But 
 those great lessons were heeded not by the people ; 
 they had closed their eyes to the true necessities 
 of life, and had given themselves over to the 
 crowding demands of the flesh, to which alone 
 they gave heed. Their hearts were locked against 
 all spiritual admonitions. The wails of the poor 
 and oppressed were sweet music to their souls, if 
 advantage or revenge found solace there. Hu- 
 man rights were measured by the rule of might; 
 the strong aggressed on the rights of the weak ; 
 and the voices of men's own souls were submerged 
 beneath the waves of clash and clamor. 
 
 Meek, lowly, submissive, kind, and gentle came 
 Jesus among them, and after he had been forty 
 days in preparation and prayer, he opened his 
 mouth with words of goodness and informed the 
 people that the spirit of the Lord was upon him, 
 that he had been anointed to preach the gospel 
 to the poor, he had been sent to heal the broken- 
 hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, 
 recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at 
 liberty them that were bruised. 
 
 Those were some of his physical duties ; his 
 spiritual duties reached out into a broader and 
 grander field ; they penetrated the arcana of 
 heaven and from the bosom and wisdom of God 
 
246 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 brought to man the glorious truths of life eternal 
 in a house " made without hands." In this branch 
 of his work he glorified the grave and on the 
 smiles of the sweet angel of death he imprinted 
 the word " peace." Arising from the cloud of 
 midnight darkness which surrounded his people, 
 he lighted a pathway that leads to the light of 
 eternal day fraught with happiness and harmony* 
 where all may dwell in the sweetest felicity, who 
 will; but the jewels of his heart-work were re- 
 jected, trampled under foot by those he came to 
 save, and for his offered goodness and services to 
 his fellow-man he was compelled to bear his own 
 cross to the hill of " skulls " where his services 
 to man were requited by his own blood. 
 
 Was there ever such a sacrifice for such a 
 cause.'' Was there ever such an example of self- 
 sacrifice.'' Was there ever a more deserving ex- 
 ample to man ? Can there be found a better light 
 to go by, a truer road to follow, than the one 
 lighted by the love divine of our Master, Jesus 
 Christ.? Can we deny his lessons and be true 
 to ourselves.? Dare we close our eyes to his dem- 
 onstrated truths and say there is no hereafter 
 and that spirits do not commune with the living 
 under certain conditions.? Those who maintain 
 such opinions must close their eyes to the demon- 
 strations of the past, their ears to the voice of 
 the ages. 
 
 Jesus foresaw the persecutions that would be- 
 fall his disciples at the hands of those they would 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 247 
 
 enlighten, and instructed them as to their defense 
 when they should be delivered up to the persecu- 
 tors. He enjoins upon them the importance of 
 relying on the spirits for advice and guidance. 
 *' But when they deliver you up, take no thought 
 how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given 
 you that same hour what ye shall speak. For 
 it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your 
 Father which speaketh in you." Matt. x. 19, 20. 
 The spirit here referred to is not an earthly father, 
 but the protective father or guide, on the other 
 side of life. In how many ways that father 
 speaks to us. We hear him through the lips of 
 innocence, from the wail of the woe-stricken, 
 from the bruises of the heart inflicted with words 
 of cruelty. We hear him in the silent hours of 
 prayer when the heart goes out to love ineffable. 
 We hear him in the whispers of the twilight of 
 life. And O, if in the morning, when the heart 
 pulsates with vigor and energy we would only 
 stop for a moment and list to the tones of anxious 
 love that the father sends burning into our souls, 
 how many shoals we would escape, how many 
 regrets we would avoid, how many lamps would 
 be lighted for us along the pathway that leads 
 to the eternity ahead .f* It was the love of that 
 father that Jesus heralded along the way that 
 led him to the cross. It is that love which warms 
 a father's heart for his child, that wells as a 
 spring of perennial flow in the heart of a mother, 
 and an outpour of heaven that God sent along 
 
248 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 the annals of time when " He so loved the world 
 that he gave his only begotten son, that whoso- 
 ever believed on him should not perish but have 
 everlasting life." 
 
 Has this paragraph any meaning when refer- 
 ence is made to everlasting life? Jesus never 
 used or uttered a useless term. If those who have 
 lived a deserving life will eventually evolve to 
 the presence and goodness of God, as a corollary, 
 those who have forfeited their own souls by 
 burdening them beyond the power of reform must 
 sink to the other extreme. If there is a heaven 
 there must be a hell. I do not mean to be under- 
 stood to say a place of extreme torment by heat 
 but a mental and spiritual condition, where the 
 lost one " roves through parched deserts, seek- 
 ing a place of rest and finds none." 
 
 To save the world from that dreadful condition 
 Jesus was sent and he who heeds not that mission 
 mistakes himself. It does no harm to do right, 
 live right, think right, and offer a helping hand to 
 those in need. That is all that Jesus imposed upon 
 us, or rather that is all that is necessary for our 
 safety in the trend of existence. The others 
 are ceremonial and not essentials. But as we are 
 now on the spiritual branch of the teachings of 
 Jesus let us keep to the subject. 
 
 Jesus was a living personification of love and 
 kindness. The wails of suffering humanity 
 wrung his heart with grief and knowing the 
 doom of sin-sunk souls below the line of regenera- 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 249 
 
 tion or reform, he wept. Endowed with the 
 greatest psychic powers of any man that ever 
 hved he went about the country teaching, heahng 
 the sick, and exemplifying the powers of the 
 spirit world through him to such an extent that 
 his wonders reached the stolid ears of cruel Herod 
 and so excited him because he had taken the life 
 of John to appease the wounded pride of his wife, 
 Avho was smarting under John's rebuke because 
 she had married the brother of her dead husband, 
 that Herod exclaimed, when he heard what Jesus 
 was doing, " This is John the Baptist ; he is risen 
 from the dead ; and therefore mighty works do 
 show forth themselves in him." Matt. xiv. 1, 2. 
 When Jesus heard of the death of John his 
 heart grieved him to the extreme of endurance 
 and he departed from the people by ship and 
 thence into a desert place, where alone he could 
 commune with his great heart of love, and where 
 none but God could hear ; but he could not thus es- 
 cape the curiosity of the people ; they sought him 
 out and great multitudes from the cities followed 
 him on foot, taking their sick and afflicted with 
 them. On seeing the anxious faces of the multi- 
 tude following him, Jesus was moved with compas- 
 sion toward them and he healed their sick. The 
 magnetic power of the Master was so great that the 
 multitude lingered in the great desert, unmind- 
 ful of the approaching night or of their own 
 comforts, with nothing to eat. Jesus would not 
 have them sent away in that condition and com- 
 
250 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 manded them to be fed but he was informed that 
 they had but five loaves and two fishes, — a rather 
 scanty repast for a multitude, — but Jesus com- 
 manded the same to be brought to him and after 
 seating the people on the grass, he took the 
 loaves and fishes, and looking up to heaven, he 
 blessed and brake and gave to the disciples, who 
 fed the multitude, numbering five thousand besides 
 women and children. All received plenty to eat 
 and after the repast, the disciples took up twelve 
 baskets-full of scraps. In considering this won- 
 derful phenomenon, we might wonder a little how 
 it was that they were in a desert and yet were 
 seated on grass. There was a great rocky stretch 
 of country lying between Jerusalem and the Dead 
 Sea in a region that was otherwise fertile, that 
 was called in the New Testament, a desert. 
 
 Jesus, after he had fed the multitude and sent 
 them away, commanded his disciples to get into 
 a ship and go before him to the other side, while 
 he went into the mountain to pray. While alone, 
 in the silent hour of the evening, communing with 
 his God in prayer, for it was then at the fourth 
 watch of the night, a windstorm came up, the 
 ship was tempest-tossed and the disciples became 
 greatly alarmed. Jesus, seeing their condition, 
 stepped upon the angry waves and walked upon 
 the bosom of the sea toward the writhing ship. 
 The disciples took Jesus to be a spirit and they 
 were greatly alaraied and cried out with fear, 
 but Jesus quieted them by saying, " It is I, be 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 251 
 
 not afraid." Peter, recognizing the Master, 
 started to meet him, but finding himself sinking, 
 cried out, " Lord save me." How many sinking 
 souls make the same exclamation but without 
 the faith of Peter, and many are submerged be- 
 neath the waves of eternity with no awaiting ship 
 to take them to the other shore. 
 
 The transfiguration on the mount was a great 
 phenomenon, both in a mediumistic sense and as 
 an illustration of spirit-power of return. The 
 phenomenon of transfiguration was not a new 
 manifestation to the children of Israel, for Moses 
 had been transfigured fifteen hundred years before 
 this, as told in Exodus xxxiv. 29. Stephen was 
 also transfigured : " And all that sat in council, 
 looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had 
 been the face of an angel." Acts vi. 15. " Jesus 
 taketh Peter, James, and John his brother up 
 into an high mountain, and was transfigured be- 
 fore them : and his face did shine as the sun, and 
 his raiment was white as the light; and behold 
 there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talk- 
 ing with him, and a bright cloud overshadowed 
 them, and, behold, a voice out of the cloud, which 
 said, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
 pleased; hear ye him. " Matt. xvii. 1-5. 
 
 Jesus foretold his own death and knew the 
 dreadful coming of that hour when supercilious 
 bigotry enthroned in the souls of ignorance would 
 force him to the cross. " The son of man shall 
 be betrayed into the hands of men and they shall 
 
252 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 kill him and the third day he shall be raised 
 again." 
 
 JESUS' PURPOSE 
 
 Jesus was not sent to the Gentiles but to the 
 lost sheep of Israel and on this point he was very 
 tenacious when he first started out on his ministry ; 
 but the worst enemies he had to contend with 
 from the very first, were those of his own nation 
 and people. They contended with him because 
 his disciples failed to wash their hands before 
 eating, as was the custom among the Jews. On 
 that occasion Jesus said, " Not that which goeth 
 into the mouth defileth a man, but the things 
 which proceed out of the mouth come forth 
 from the heart, and they defile the man. For 
 out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, mur- 
 ders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, 
 blasphemies. These are the things that defile a 
 man." Jesus withdrew from their presence then 
 and went out to Tyre and Sidon ; and, behold, 
 a woman of Canaan came out from those borders, 
 and cried, saying, " Have mercy on me, O Lord, 
 thou Son of David. My daughter is grievously 
 vexed with a devil." But he answered her not a 
 word. And his disciples came and besought him 
 saying, " Send her away, for she crieth after 
 us." But he answered and said, " i am not sent 
 
 BUT TO THE liOST SHEEP OF THE HOUSE OF 
 
 ISRAEL." But on account of her faith and per- 
 sistence, he did finally cure her daughter. 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 253 
 
 Jesus was so loyal to his mission that he for- 
 bade his disciples from preaching to the Samari- 
 tans and Gentiles. When he sent them out he 
 said unto them, " Go not into any way of the 
 Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the 
 Samaritans ; but go rather to the lost sheep of 
 the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, say- 
 ing. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal 
 the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast 
 out devils ; freely ye have received, freely give. 
 Get you no gold, or silver, or brass in your 
 purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two 
 coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves, for the labor- 
 er is worthy of his food." Matt. x. 5-15. And 
 he promised his disciples that those who were 
 faithful and followed him, in the regeneration 
 when the Son of man shall set on the throne of 
 his glory they should sit upon the twelve thrones, 
 judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Matt xix. 
 28, 29. 
 
 THE SABBATH, SUNDAY, AND THE LORD'S 
 DAY 
 
 Jesus was a great reformer ; wherever there was 
 a bad law, rule of conduct, belief, practice, or 
 action he was always ready to point out the 
 wrong and suggest the remedy. One of the most 
 notable instances was his repudiation of the 
 binding force of the fourth commandment of the 
 Decalogue given to Moses on Mount Sinai : Re- 
 
254 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 member the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six 
 days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but 
 the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy 
 God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor 
 thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, 
 nor thy maidservant, nor thy, cattle, nor the 
 stranger that is within thy gates ; for in six 
 days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and 
 all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; 
 wherefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and 
 hallowed it. Ex. xx. 9-11. 
 
 This comandment is taught yet by some as a liv- 
 ing law written by the finger of God himself on a 
 table of stone, for the double purpose of enforc- 
 ing a worship, and of observing the seventh day 
 rest from labor. But it was nullified by both 
 Jesus and Paul and has no binding force now as 
 a divine obligation. There was no penalty at- 
 tached to the breaking of the law as given to 
 Moses on the mount, but afterwards the effect of 
 the law was repeated and a penalty for the viola- 
 tion thereof was named, which was death. "And 
 the Lord spake unto Moses, saying. Speak thou 
 also unto the children of Israel, saying. Verily 
 my sabbaths ye shall keep : for it is a sign between 
 me and you throughout generations ; that ye may 
 know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you. 
 Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore ; for it is holy 
 unto you: everyone that defileth it shall surely 
 be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work 
 therein, that soul shall be cut off from among 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 255 
 
 his people. Six days may work be done ; but 
 in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the 
 Lord: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath 
 day, he shall surely be put to death. Wherefore 
 the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to 
 observe the sabbath throughout their generations, 
 for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me 
 and the children of Israel forever : for in six days 
 the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the sev- 
 enth day he rested." Ex. xxxi. 12—17. 
 
 How far the violation of the command might 
 be extended without incurring the extreme 
 penalty of death had not been settled ; but its en- 
 forcement was vigilantly observed and its ex- 
 tremes settled when one of the Hebrews was 
 detected in the crime of picking up sticks on the 
 sabbath. 
 
 " While the children of Israel were in the wil- 
 derness, they found a man that gathered sticks 
 upon the sabbath day. And they that found him 
 gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and 
 Aaron, and unto all the congregation. And they 
 put him in ward, because it was not declared what 
 should be done to him. And the Lord said 
 unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to 
 death : all the congregation shall stone him with 
 stones without the camp. And all the congre- 
 gation brought him without the camp, and stoned 
 him with stones, and he died ; as the Lord com- 
 manded Moses." Num. xv. 32-36. 
 
 The Mosaic law served as a general guide for 
 
256 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 the Israelites to go by, but in many instances it 
 was rather vague and uncertain when it came to 
 the practical uses of the people. That vague- 
 ness called for interpretations and special rulings ; 
 to meet those exigencies a class of learned men 
 was formed called scribes, which answered that 
 people as lawyers and judges of courts do the 
 people of this age. 
 
 Celebrated among that class of expounders and 
 instructors in the laws of Moses was Gamaliel, at 
 whose feet Paul received his early education which 
 induced him into a hatred of the teachings of 
 Jesus and his followers with the wicked ambition 
 to hunt them down and persecute them to the full- 
 est extent. 
 
 The priests were a different class from the 
 scribes ; their duties pertained more particularly 
 to the services in and about the temples, such as 
 sacrifices, worship, and instructions in matters of 
 religion ; while the scribes interpreted the meaning 
 of the laws and prescribed rules to govern the 
 people in that respect. They were a higher class 
 of public servants than were the priests, and had 
 more influence with the people because their rul- 
 ings made the laws of conduct for the Jews at 
 large as well as the laws of individual conduct. 
 In their capacity as judges they passed on the 
 subject of the fourth commandment defining 
 what acts were lawful and what were unlawful for 
 the people on the Sabbath. In their definition 
 they laid down thirty-nine different acts, with cer- 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 257 
 
 tain side acts, which were unlawful for the people 
 to do on that day ; among them were the forbid- 
 ding of harvesting grain, or healing the sick. 
 
 With this class of the Jews Jesus had many 
 controversies. They were on the alert to catch 
 him in some act violating their laws, but Jesus was 
 strong enough in mind and steadfast enough in 
 purpose to do and advise that which was right and 
 proper under all circumstances though death 
 looked him in the face for his acts toward right- 
 ing the wrongs of the people. 
 
 The old Jewish priesthood had served its pur- 
 pose ; the laws under which they officiated had 
 become oppressive and the time had come for them 
 to be repealed and new and better laws enacted. 
 As Moses had been the mouthpiece of God dur- 
 ing his administration, through whom laws were 
 laid down for the Hebrews and the priesthood 
 under the Aaronic rules, Jesus in turn became 
 the instrument in laying down new rules and bet- 
 ter laws than the old. 
 
 The only way Jesus had of reaching the minds 
 of the people as to a change of the old for the 
 new was to give them object lessons ; to that end, 
 after he had concluded his Sermon on the Mount 
 he came down and commenced his ministry with 
 the people, and the first thing he did was to speak 
 to them as follows : 
 
 " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my 
 yoke upon you and learn of me ; for I am meek 
 
258 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto 
 your soul. For my yoke is easy and my burden 
 is light." " And at that time Jesus went on the 
 Sabbath day through the corn, and his disciples 
 were anhungered and began to pluck the ears of 
 corn, and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, 
 they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that 
 which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day. 
 But he said unto them, Have ye not read what 
 David did when he was anhungered, and they that 
 were with him ; how he entered into the house of 
 God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not 
 lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were 
 with him, but only for the priests? Or have ye 
 not read in the law, how that on the Sabbath days 
 the priests in the temple profaned the Sabbath, 
 and are blameless? " Matt. xi. 28; xii. 5. 
 
 Mark in giving his version of this incident says, 
 " And it came to pass, that he went through the 
 cornfield on the Sabbath day ; and his disciples 
 began as they went to pluck the ears of corn. 
 And the Pharisees said unto him. Behold, 
 why do they on the Sabbath day that which is 
 not lawful? And he said unto them, 
 
 THE SABBATH WAS MADE FOR MAN AND NOT 
 
 MAN FOE THE SABBATH." Mark ii. 23, 24, 
 27. 
 
 It was also unlawful to heal the sick on the 
 Sabbath day unless it was to save life. " And 
 behold there was a man which had his hand with- 
 ered. And they asked him, saying. Is it lawful 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 259 
 
 to heal on the Sabbath days? that they might ac- 
 cuse him. And he said unto them, What man 
 shaE there be among you, that shall have one 
 sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day 
 will he not lay hold on it and lift it out? How 
 much then is a man better than a sheep ? Where- 
 fore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days. 
 Then saith he to the man. Stretch forth thine 
 hand. And he stretched it forth ; and it was re- 
 stored whole like as the other." Matt. xii. 10-13. 
 
 Following the subject up a little further we will 
 find what Paul said of the Sabbath days and of 
 sumptuary laws. " Him that is weak in the faith 
 receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. For 
 one believeth that he may eat all things ; another 
 who is weak eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth 
 despise him that eateth not ; and let not him which 
 eateth not judge him that eateth; for God hath 
 received him. Who art thou that judgest an- 
 other man's servant? to his own master he stand- 
 eth or f alleth. Yea, he shall be holden up ; for 
 God is able to make him stand. One man esteem- 
 eth one day above another; another esteemeth 
 every day alike. Let every man be fully per- 
 suaded in his own mind." Romans xiv. 1-5. And 
 in his letter to the Colossians Paul said, " Let no 
 man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or 
 in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or 
 of the Sabbath days." Colossians ii. 16. 
 
 The Sabbath day was regarded by the Jews as 
 a sacred day and observed as holy in commem- 
 
260 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 oration of the time when God rested from his work 
 of creation on the seventh day. The Christians 
 were instructed to disregard the seventh day and 
 in its stead they were instructed to observe the 
 first day of the week in commemoration of the 
 resurrection of Jesus. 
 
 From Eusebius we have the authority to believe 
 that as long as the Jewish Christians held a con- 
 siderable power in the church they exercised 
 their influence to observe both the Sabbath and 
 Sunday as sacred days. As expressed in the 
 Apostolic Constitutions (vol. 8, 33), it was pro- 
 vided for as follows : " Let the slaves work five 
 days, but on the Sabbath and the Lord's day let 
 them have leisure to go to church for instruction 
 and piety." 
 
 But the powers of the church were determined 
 to show their disregard of the old Jewish customs, 
 and to that end church council after council passed 
 orders, decrees and rules expressive of their dis- 
 regard of the Sabbath. The first authoritative 
 step toward making the first day of the week in- 
 stead of the seventh a holy day was taken by 
 Constantine in the year 321, when he issued an 
 imperial decree that all courts of justice, inhab- 
 itants of towns, and workshops were to be at rest 
 on Sunday, with the exception of those engaged 
 in agricultural labor. 
 
 This was the first bold stroke following up the 
 doctrines of both Jesus and Paul, toward annul- 
 ling the sacredness of the Jewish Sabbath, and the 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 261 
 
 first enjoining Sunday as a holy day. Therefore 
 Sunday cannot be binding on the people as a di- 
 vine institution. If Saturday or the Jewish Sab- 
 bath is a binding law of God and the people 
 are under obligations to observe it, then no one 
 has the power to altar it in any respect and he 
 who picks up a stick on Saturday deserves the 
 penalty of death. While this extreme is absurd 
 so we might say of the law authorizing such pen- 
 alties. 
 
 Many decrees followed the one first sent out 
 by Constantine, excusing Christians from observ- 
 ing the Sabbath day. 
 
 In the year 363, at the council of Laodicea, 
 Canon No. 29 was enacted, which forbade 
 Christians from Judaizing and resting on the Sab- 
 bath day and actually enjoined them to work on 
 that day. That council seemed to be determined 
 to wipe out all Sabbatarian obligations for Chris- 
 tians, and as a result Saturday has never been 
 recognized by any considerable body of the Chris- 
 tian people. 
 
 There are many false teachings imposed on 
 people as having come from Jesus, the Apostles, 
 or the New Testament. While some of them are 
 good and wholesome doctrines for the betterment 
 of society, they ought to be presented in their 
 true light and given out- as doctrines of the 
 church, that they may leave no false impressions 
 on the minds of the masses ; for when a thing is 
 once found out to be false in its conception the 
 
262 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 people lose respect for it though it is good within 
 itself, and would have paid due respect to it had 
 it been presented in its real origin. Among some 
 of the false presentations of the church is "Sun- 
 day." Sunday is not mentioned in the New 
 Testament, and it is not a New Testament or 
 Apostolic institution. 
 
 On account of early prejudices, and a strong 
 desire among the Christians to show their dis- 
 regard of the Jewish institutions, decree after de- 
 cree was made impressing the importance on the 
 minds of the Christian people of keeping Sunday 
 as a holy day, and not Saturday. In the year 
 425, Theodosius II ordered all games and theatri- 
 cal exhibitions suspended- on Sunday. At the 
 third council of Orleans in the year 538, all kinds 
 of labor were forbidden on Sunday. But in all 
 those orders and decrees there was no divine au- 
 thority for making and distinguishing any day 
 of the week a holy day. 
 
 In that broad sense, as before quoted, both 
 Jesus and Paul viewed the question, and no one 
 has the authority to substitute Sunday for Sat- 
 urday, or make a day holy when they decreed 
 them all alike. There is a tendency among cer- 
 tain theologians to make Christian religion for 
 themselves ; the teachings of Jesus are not quite 
 good enough for them ; they want to improve on 
 them; to that import they desire to build up a 
 Sunday law of their own. There is a tendency 
 among them to come to an understanding and 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 263 
 
 unitize in one strong battle against the liberties 
 of the people by uniting church and state that 
 the church may dictate to our courts, law makers, 
 and officers, as to what the people shall and shall 
 not do on Sunday. 
 
 The " Lord's day " is also an idea of later day 
 conception. The Lord never had a day. There 
 is but one place in the New Testament where the 
 " Lord's day " is mentioned and that is in Rev. i. 
 10, in which John says, " I was in the spirit in 
 the Lord's day and heard behind me a great voice 
 as of a trumpet." As a hygienic measure it is 
 proper to hold one day in seven as a rest day, 
 and there is no better day than Sunday, but it 
 should not be enforced as a part of religion, or to 
 favor any religious order or conception. Such 
 an attempt would be in direct violation of the 
 constitution of the United States. The first 
 amendment to our constitution says, " Congress 
 shall pass no law respecting the establishment of 
 religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," 
 This law has always been a stumbling block to 
 the over-zealous who desire the union of church 
 and state, but it is to be hoped they will never 
 succeed, for when that is done the liberties of the 
 people will go with it, if the history of the past 
 gives any clue to the events of the future. 
 
 It seems a little strange that any law should 
 have the respect of the people which would make 
 a commendable act lawful on one day and a crime 
 on the next day. As long as a person does not 
 
264 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 encroach on the personal rights of another, all 
 days should be open to his use as he desires. 
 
 JESUS THE CONQUEROR 
 
 Within the range of human effort there have 
 been and are now great conquests and great 
 triumphs in life. Those conquerors have made 
 themselves felt in every department of human 
 affairs. Some have hewn their way to glory and 
 renown and placed their names on the pedestal 
 of honor through the sword, others by the force 
 of intellect in the moral, religious, scientific, and 
 civil concerns of men. 
 
 There have been many great conquerors of in- 
 tellect who have made their names immortal; 
 among them stands prominently the name of 
 Moses, author of the Decalogue and the laws of 
 the Israelitish nation. The name of Copernicus 
 is so associated with the science of astronomy and 
 knowledge of our planetary system that as long 
 as the one is regarded as a true science, the other 
 will be remembered. Of all the great conquerors 
 in the domain of intellect, who stands higher than 
 Sir Isaac Newton.'' His " Principia," though ac- 
 cepted by but few thinkers for forty years after 
 its first publication, is yet the final thought on mo- 
 tion in free space ; of resisted motion and the sys- 
 tem of the world. Dr. Franklin with a kite and 
 small cord caught the lurid lightning and con- 
 quered its waywardness and now electricity is our 
 common servant in the utilities of life. Victors 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 265 
 
 in practical philosophy are now innumerable and 
 nature yields its mysteries to the all-conquering 
 intellect of man to such a degree that the forces 
 of the universe are but toying instruments in its 
 grasp. 
 
 Eloquence has ever been the vehicle of sublime 
 thought, from the flights of Job, the raptures of 
 the Psalmist, and the philippics of Demosthenes 
 to the beauty of Paine, the flights of Cla}^, the 
 pathos of Spurgeon, the grace of Beecher, and 
 the fiery logic of Lincoln and countless others. 
 The tongue has its glories, but no less has the 
 pen, when used for the flow of descriptive history 
 by Herodotus ; or to express the sweetest simplic- 
 ity in the Anabasis of Xenophon. 
 
 But among the many leaders we must not over- 
 look that man who was great in every thought and 
 action. As a soldier none casts a shade upon 
 his name, save Napoleon ; as a statesman, the high- 
 est rank is conceded to him ; as an orator Cicero 
 only could reach a higher flight. He reformed 
 the calendar, and as an author he sheathed his 
 sword at the close of battle and wrote the mem- 
 oirs of his own life at night. Who is referred to 
 but Caius Julius Csesar? Grant alone is to be 
 compared with him as a soldier and author. The 
 pen of Gibbon embellished Rome in her glory and 
 uncovered her shame in her fall. England had 
 her Hume and Macaulay, her sweet singing bards, 
 her Darwin and Huxley. France had her Gui- 
 zot, her Victor Hugo, and her inimitable Voltaire. 
 
^66 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 The United States has a list of conquering pens 
 in her many periodicals, directing the minds of 
 statesmen, molding the sentiments of the people 
 along the line of patriotic devotion to the princi- 
 ples of self-government, domestic purity, eleva- 
 tion of society, and the cultivation of moral recti- 
 tude. Of the great authors of the United States 
 we cannot speak in detail. While America is 
 young in the sisterhood of nations, her sons lead 
 the world in the practical development of the util- 
 ities of life and in the elucidation of man's obli- 
 gations to man for the amity of the world. 
 
 But there is one conqueror who stands alone, 
 above them all ; who has conquered riches with 
 poverty, pride with" humility, ostentation with 
 meekness, hate with love. He succored the weak 
 and suppressed the strong, reproved the tyrant 
 and sympathized with the oppressed. The wails 
 of woe found pity in his heart. He was the per- 
 sonification of goodness, kindness. He was by 
 nature as tender of heart as a pure woman. He 
 was a hero in fortitude and a great warrior in the 
 battles of right against wrong. He was a con- 
 queror of the passions of the body and a director 
 of the intellect to the highest standard of men's 
 duties one to another. The sick of body, soul, 
 and mind were of his charge. He had a deep 
 concern for the afflictions of the world, and in 
 ministering to them forgot himself. And finally 
 he transformed the dreaded king of death into a 
 white-winged angel of peace which kisses the eye- 
 
PREACHING AND HEALING 267 
 
 lids down upon this world that they may open 
 again on a better and brighter one, and made the 
 soul sing the immortal song of jo}', " Oh, Death, 
 where is thy sting? Oh, Grave, where is thy vic- 
 tory?" This was the conqueror Jesus whose 
 words of truth pierced the hearts of men with the 
 barbs of love and led them from the trammels of 
 sin to the glories of righteousness, in mercy, char- 
 ity and good will toward men. 
 
 Jesus, with boundless love and forgiving spirit, 
 carried his own cross to the place of crucifixion 
 and with calmness he met the frowns of scorn, 
 with love he answered the shafts of hate, and as 
 the cruel spear entered his blessed side and they 
 could do no more, he uttered the grandest praj^er 
 that ever ascended to the throne of God: 
 " Father, forgive them, they know not what they 
 do." What a triumph ! What a victory ! What 
 a conqueror! 
 
VII 
 
 THE MISSION OF JESUS 
 
 It is not the fault of the New Testament, nor 
 of the true teachings of Jesus that disbehef and 
 infideHty stalk abroad in the land ; it is because 
 of what those who presume to be teachers set 
 forth in their creeds and dogmas as the true mis- 
 sion of the master. The dogma that Jesus will 
 save in the next world those who are unfit to live 
 in this is so pernicious in its tendencies that good 
 sense revolts against it and doubters arise. There 
 is nothing in the four Gospels that teaches such 
 a doctrine. 
 
 The mission of Jesus was to save people from 
 their sins, not in their sins. When a sin is once 
 committed it is for eternity and can only be 
 purged away by repentance and by the undoing 
 of the wrong by the guilty one as far as it is 
 possible to do so. 
 
 The true meaning of the word sin when applied 
 in a theological sense is " a violation of a moral 
 obligation to God." According to that a sinner 
 may be forgiven at any time by the mere asking. 
 But Jesus did not come into the world to deal with 
 sin in that sense. He came to guide people in 
 the way of right living in this world, that they 
 might inherit a better condition in the next. The 
 268 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 269 
 
 belief that the murderer can be saved from the 
 spiritual results of his crime by a little lip service 
 on the gallows, or after the crime is committed, 
 by the confession of a belief in Jesus, is not only 
 absurd but it is corrupting in the extreme. This 
 is the kind of doctrine that breeds infidelity. 
 
 When Jesus came to the world, it was corrupted 
 by all kinds of evil thoughts and deeds. To save, 
 or keep, the people from those damaging and 
 corrupting influences, he dedicated his life. He 
 desired to lead them into the way of right living 
 here, that they might be saved from the results of 
 wrongdoing, both here and there. 
 
 " We came into this world naked and bare ; 
 We soon will go hence, but don't know where; 
 If we do all right here, we'll be all right there." 
 
 When the angel came to Joseph in a dream he 
 said, "Fear not to take unto thee Mary, thy 
 wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the 
 Holy Ghost ; and she shall bring forth a son, and 
 thou shalt call his name Jesus ; for it is he that 
 shall save his people from their sins." Matt. i. 
 20, 21. That promise applies to this life. It 
 does not hold out a saving clause for the next. 
 In considering the meaning of much of the New 
 Testament, we must take the fact as attempted 
 to be taught, rather than the literal meaning of 
 the words used, because Jesus was compelled to 
 use the language best understood by those he was 
 
270 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 talking to at the time. At the death of each 
 person, there will be messengers from the other 
 side to receive him according to the merits of his 
 life, some to life everlasting, some to the gloom 
 they deserve. The following is rather a play 
 upon words, but it has a significance which, if 
 rightly understood, will prove of value to us. 
 Jesus in speaking to his disciples concerning his 
 own death said, " If any man will come after me, 
 let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and 
 follow me. For whosoever shall save his life shall 
 lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my 
 sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if 
 he shall gain the whole world and forfeit his own 
 soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for 
 his soul? For the Son of man shall come in 
 the glory of his Father with his angels ; and 
 
 THEN HE SHALL RENDER UNTO EVERY MAN 
 ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS. Matt. Xvi. 24— 
 27. 
 
 Paul was also a savior to the extent of his 
 ability. He says, " To the Jews I became as a 
 Jew, that I might gain Jews ; to them that are 
 under the law, as under the law, that I might gain 
 them that are under the law; to them that are 
 without law, as without law, that I might gain 
 them that are without law. To the weak became I 
 weak that I might gain the weak ; I am become all 
 things to all men, that I may by all means save 
 some." I. Cor. ix. 20-23. " Ye know this, my 
 beloved brethren. Let every man be swift to hear, 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 271 
 
 slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of 
 man worketh not the righteousness of God. 
 Wherefore putting away all filthiness and over- 
 flowing of wickedness, receive with meekness the 
 implanted word, which is able to save your souls." 
 James i. 19-21. 
 
 "It is better that ye suffer for well-doing 
 than for evil doing. Because Christ also suffered 
 for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, 
 that he might bring us to God; being put to 
 death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit ; in 
 which also he went and preached unto the spirits 
 in prison, that aforetime were disobedient, when 
 the long suffering of God waited in the days of 
 Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein 
 few, that is, eight souls, were saved through 
 water; which also after a true likeness doth now 
 save you." I. Peter iii. 17-21. 
 
 And Jesus after his ascension, according to 
 the above text, " went and preached to the spirits 
 in prison." To my mind, with our present edu- 
 cation, this is the most important text in the 
 whole Bible; for it most emphatically informs 
 us that in the other life some go to perfection in 
 the glory of God and others to their rewards ac- 
 cording to their conduct in the flesh-life. There 
 were spirits in prison that had been confined since 
 the days of Noah, which Jesus desired to en- 
 lighten by preaching to them. 
 
 The following text is familiar to all but I have 
 seldom heard the latter part explained in the way 
 
n% LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 it deserves. " For God so loved the world, that 
 he gave his only begotten Son, that Avhosoever be- 
 lieveth on him should not perish, but have eternal 
 life. For God sent not his Son into the world to 
 judge the world; but that the world should be 
 saved through him. He that believeth on him is 
 not judged; he that believeth not hath been 
 judged alread}^, because he hath not believed on 
 the name of the only begotten Son of God. 
 And this is the judgment, that the light 
 
 IS COME INTO the WORLD, AND MEN LOVED 
 THE DARKNESS RATHER THAN THE LIGHT; 
 
 FOR THEIR WORKS WERE E^saL. For cvei'y 
 one that doeth evil hateth the light, and 
 Cometh not to the light, lest his works should 
 be reproved. But he that doeth the truth 
 Cometh to the light, that his works may be made 
 manifest, that they have been wrought in God." 
 John iii. 16-21. 
 
 There are some difficult sayings in the New 
 Testament as well as in the Old Bible. The last 
 instructions that Jesus gave to his disciples be- 
 fore he took his final leave of the earth, are diffi- 
 cult of comprehension, and they may possibly be 
 but the extravagant expressions of John ; for 
 there must be many things that Jesus both did and 
 said that are not recorded in the Gospels. And 
 in as much as the Gospels were not written until 
 many years after the crucifixion faulty memory 
 of expression may be the cause of many errors. 
 But had there never been one word written of 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 273 
 
 Jesus the great crowning facts of his life are so 
 intenvoven in our natures we would be forced to 
 a belief in them whether they were given in de- 
 tail or not. For all men believe in the principles 
 of doing right, and believe by doing right they 
 are saved, not only from the penalties of the law, 
 but from conscientious shame and the contumely 
 of the public. Hope of a future life and a crown- 
 ing conviction thereof are held by the most of 
 men. Jesus only came to bring proof of what 
 men already believed or hoped for. 
 
 " All Israel shall be saved," was the declaration 
 of Paul. " There shall come out of Zion the De- 
 liverer, he shall turn away ungodliness for Jacob." 
 Romans xi. 26. "For the time is come for judg- 
 ment to begin at the house of God: and if it 
 begin first at us, what shall be the end of them 
 that obey not the Gospel of God.? And if the 
 righteous is scarcely saved, where shall the un- 
 godly and sinner appear.'' Wherefore let them 
 also that suffer according to the evil of God com- 
 mit their souls in well-doing unto a faithful Crea- 
 ator." I. Peter iv. 17-19. 
 
 Salvation does not depend upon what a man 
 believes, but on the life a man lives. This Jesus 
 taught, as is plainly seen in the case of Zac- 
 chaeus. Passing through Jerico, a certain Pub- 
 lican named Zacchaeus wished to see Jesus, and 
 being short of stature he climbed a sycamore tree. 
 " When Jesus came to the place he looked up 
 and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste and 
 
^74 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 come down, for I to-day must abide at thy 
 house. And he made haste, and came down and 
 received him joyfully. And when they saw it, 
 they all murmured saying, He is gone in to 
 lodge with a man that is a sinner. And Zac- 
 chaeus stood, and said unto the Lord, Behold, 
 Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; 
 and if I have wrongfully exacted aught of any 
 man, I restore fourfold. And Jesus said unto 
 him, To-day is salvation come to this house, for 
 also he is a son of Abraham. For the Son of 
 man came to seek and save that which was lost." 
 Luke xix. 1—10. That quotation contains a point 
 worthy of notice. If one desires to serve Jesus, 
 he must seek him ; or in other words if one desires 
 to do right he must make some effort of his own. 
 He must strive to do good and he must not only 
 do good, but must be charitable and kind to the 
 poor and dependent, and if he wrongs another, 
 restore unto him; but add to it good usury. 
 When that is done salvation will come to his 
 house. 
 
 Where is heaven? Where is man to receive his 
 salvation.? Where is the kingdom of God? Peo- 
 ple generally look upon heaven as a place some- 
 where beyond the skies, and look for happiness 
 there after death, but that is a wrong idea. 
 Heaven is a condition rather than a place. A 
 soul may be miserable and yet reside on the other 
 side of the tomb. Being asked by the Pharisees 
 when the kingdom of God cometh, Jesus answered 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 275 
 
 them and said, " The kingdom of God cometh 
 not with observation ; neither shall they say, Lo, 
 here, or, there ! for lo, the kingdom of God is 
 within you." Luke xvii. 20, 21. "A certain 
 ruler asked Jesus saying. Good Master, what shall 
 I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto 
 him. Why callest thou me good.^^ None is good, 
 save one, even God. Thou knowest the command- 
 ments: Do not commit adultery. Do not kill. 
 Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Honor 
 thy father and mother. And the rich man said, 
 All these things have I observed from my youth 
 up. And when Jesus heard it, he said unto him. 
 One thing thou lackest yet ; sell all that thou hast 
 and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have 
 treasure in heaven." Luke xviii. 21, 22. Salva- 
 tion, according to John's teaching, also consists 
 in doing good to our fellow men. When he was 
 preaching and baptizing and prophesying the 
 multitude asked him what they must do and he 
 said, " He that hath two coats let him impart 
 to him that hath none ; and he that hath food, let 
 him do likewise. And there came Publicans to 
 be baptized and they said upto him. Master what 
 must we do? And he said unto them. Extort no 
 more than that which is appointed you. And 
 soldiers also asked him saying, And we, what 
 must we do ? And he said unto them, Extort from 
 no man by violence, neither accuse any one wrong- 
 fully, and be content with your wages." Luke iii. 
 10-15. 
 
276 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 The Pharisees and Sadducees tried in every way 
 to confound Jesus and make him either ridiculous, 
 or a false teacher, ignorant of the law. Concern- 
 ing the resurrection, they were very curious to 
 know whose wife a woman would be who had had 
 seven husbands. Jesus answered them, " When 
 they arise from the dead they are neither married 
 nor given in marriage; but are as angels in 
 heaven. But as touching the dead, that they are 
 raised ; have ye not read in the book of Moses, 
 in the place concerning the Bush, how God spake 
 unto him saying, I am the God of Abraham, and 
 the God of Isaac and the god of Jacob.? He is 
 not the God of the dead, but of the living ; ye do 
 greatly err." Mark xii. 26, 27. That means 
 God's law and government are of this hfe, which 
 is the preparatory state, molding the condition 
 of the next. 
 
 In all the instructions of Jesus, there is noth- 
 ing more comprehensive than those teachings con- 
 tained in his Sermon on the Mount. While there 
 are some things in it that may seem unsuited to 
 our state of civilization and education, yet it is 
 one of the grandest sermons ever dropped from 
 the lips of man. His blessings were of a soothing 
 and peaceful nature which could come from no 
 other than a kind heart. Blessed are the poor in 
 spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are they that 
 hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are 
 the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed 
 are the peacemakers and blessed are they who are 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 277 
 
 persecuted for righteousness' sake for theirs is 
 the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men 
 shall reproach you and persecute you and say 
 all manner of evil against you falsely, for my 
 sake, for great is your reward in heaven. In 
 speaking of the disciples he said, "Ye are the salt 
 of the earth and ye are the light of the world ; 
 let your light shine before men that they may 
 see your good works and glorify your Father 
 which is in heaven." Jesus said, "Think not that 
 I came to destroy the law ; I came not to destroy, 
 but to fulfill." He enjoined on all an observance 
 of the law ; but "Unless your righteousness ex- 
 ceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall 
 in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." We 
 are instructed not to kill, not to be angry with our 
 brothers, or call them bad names. If your broth- 
 er has anything against you, go and see him and 
 have the difference reconciled between you ; if you 
 cannot come to an understanding, call in some one 
 else as an arbiter and let it be settled that way. 
 That is good and salutary advice, and, if fol- 
 lowed, most of the disputes of the world would be 
 avoided ; even nations would save much blood and 
 much treasure by resorting to arbitration instead 
 of to arms. 
 
 Women in those days were mere vassals of their 
 husbands. They could be thrown out at any time 
 for any cause and a man could have as many 
 wives as he wished, with no offense to the law. 
 With all of this, Jesus taught purity between the 
 
278 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 sexes and denied any man the right to put away 
 his wife for any other cause than that of forni- 
 cation, and then he should give her a written 
 divorcement. "If thy right eye cause thee to 
 stumble, pluck it out and cast it from thee. If 
 thy right hand causeth thee to offend, cut it off 
 and cast it from thee." That is to say, in the 
 practice of life, cut out everything that causes 
 you to do wrong ; let nothing stand between you 
 and right living according to the highest prin- 
 ciples of society, morals, and health. 
 
 He condemns profanity in all its forms. 
 "Swear not by heaven, for it is the throne of God; 
 nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of His 
 feet ; nor by the holy city of Jerusalem ; nor by 
 your head, or in any other form. Resist evil 
 in all of its forms. If any man smite thee on one 
 cheek, turn the other." This is figurative speech, 
 of course ; we must not be pugilistic ; but the 
 first blow must be quite light for an ordinary man 
 to turn the other cheek for a similar smite; for a 
 hard blow would require a parry, at least. The 
 import of this lesson must be to turn our backs 
 from insults, assaults and personal altercations. 
 To turn your back upon an aggressor in a per- 
 sonal altercation requires more bravery than to 
 bristle up for a fight. It does not require much 
 fortitude to strike back when one is hit, but it 
 does require fortitude to turn away and walk off; 
 nevertheless this is what a man should do. 
 
 Do not go to law with j'our neighbor ; you had 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 279 
 
 better give him your coat, that is, what he con- 
 tends for, rather than to resort to the arbitrament 
 of the law, which is expensive, vexatious and un- 
 satisfactory. If you should win the suit, you 
 would be the loser in the end. 
 
 "Love your enemies," seems to be rather a 
 hard command to obey, but at the same time it 
 is the only way to do. If you desire to be happy, 
 entertain no hard feelings toward any one ; have 
 a friendly feeling for the whole world, and if you 
 follow in that line of conduct, you will have 
 no enemy to hate. Good-will to all is health, hap- 
 piness, and serenity of life ; ill-will is poison, dis- 
 ease, discomfiture, and enmity to all that is good, 
 noble, and brave, in a true life. It wears wrin- 
 kles on the brow, scowls the face, ensavages the 
 cast of the eye, and clothes the face with a frown 
 that engenders hate in others. Good nature 
 brightens the countenance, smooths the brow, 
 washes out the wrinkles from the face, softens 
 the heart, and makes all men love you. That is 
 the meaning of this command of Jesus, to " love 
 your enemies." Be charitable, but do not your 
 alms before men to receive praise from them for 
 your liberality ; for there is no reward in your 
 own conscience for such. There is nothing that 
 receives such an insinuating, private criticism, as 
 vain-glory, or self-laudation. The charity of 
 such is always given with a grudge and leaves 
 behind a sting that makes a person hate himself 
 for his meanness. 
 
g80 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 Of all things, the Master disapproved most of 
 hypocrisy and insincerity, especially in the matter 
 of religion. When you pray, be sincere. Do 
 not try to make men believe you are so very good 
 by long prayers. Do not go into public places 
 with long, wordy prayers, but when you pray, 
 go into your closet, close the door and there pour 
 out your soul unto God, and you will be heard 
 and your prayers will be answered. Ask for spir- 
 itual things and spiritual blessings, for it is pre- 
 sumed that you will obtain that which you most 
 need, by proper asking, and due exertion on your 
 part. 
 
 God never digs potatoes, saws wood, runs 
 the loom, or grinds the flour for any one; but 
 with an honest purpose by your own proper effort 
 you will obtain your daily bread. You will ob- 
 tain forgiveness, in a spiritual sense, of your tres- 
 passes, if you forgive those who ti'espass against 
 you ; but you cannot and should not get forgive- 
 ness of your short-comings while you burden your 
 own heart with grudges against others. First, 
 clear your own door-yard before you demand a 
 clearance of others. Do not go moping around 
 the world, with a long face and a sad counte- 
 nance, to make people believe you are religious. 
 Jesus did not recommend such devotion, but 
 rather that men wash their faces and be cheerful. 
 Jesus especially deprecated the practice of plac- 
 ing one's whole efforts on money-making; while 
 money is necessary, yet one's life should be tem- 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 281 
 
 pered with spiritual truths and a spiritual prep- 
 aration for the life to come. For a man has only 
 a short time to stay here, but a long time over 
 there, and as this is the preparatory period of a 
 man's existence, it is but prudent that he make 
 proper preparation for the next life. Jesus 
 taught, that a person should not forget his spirit- 
 ual nature in his rush for worldly possessions, for 
 they will soon be beyond his control. 
 
 Neither cast your pearls before swine ; they 
 will trample them under foot as worthless incum- 
 brances ; but take the richness of your soul with 
 words of kindness to the hungry, to those who 
 ask, and to them impart the beauties of the await- 
 ing harvest for those who have economized their 
 time here in the work of laying a foundation to 
 build on in the future. Enter into the narrow 
 way of living, supply the wants of the body with 
 frugal modesty ; but on the soul lavish the rich- 
 ness of thought and meditation that you may 
 enjoy the hereafter without regrets for the time 
 lost here in efforts to accumulate worthless trash 
 of both body and mind. There are but few that 
 take the narrow way because the broad road of 
 pleasure that caters to the lusts of the flesh is so 
 tempting and pressing that men yield to the de- 
 mands of the flesh to the destruction of the joys 
 of the soul. The flesh, like your old clothes, will 
 be left behind while the spiritual man will step 
 forward into a new field of life, with new clothes 
 suited to his condition. Every act of life will 
 
282 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 leave its Impression ; and woe, intensified with re- 
 gret, awaits those who enter the other world 
 smirched with debaucheries, wrongdoing, and 
 crime. A person is known there by the fruit he 
 brings with him ; it is not those who say, " Lord, 
 Lord," but those who have done the will of the 
 Master by right living, who are rewarded. 
 Empty professions and lip service have no 
 promises awaiting them. There is no promise 
 held out to worshippers ; in every instance, it is 
 to doers. It is what you do and not what you 
 say, that counts in the life to come. 
 
 In the Sermon on the Mount is the promise 
 which says, " Every one therefore which heareth 
 these words of mine, and doeth them, shall be 
 like unto a wise man, which built his house upon 
 the rock ; and the rain descended, and the floods 
 came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that 
 house, and it fell not, for it was founded on the 
 rock. And every one who heareth these words of 
 mine, and doeth them not, shall be like unto a 
 foolish man, which built his house upon the sand ; 
 and the rain descended, and the floods came, and 
 the winds blew, and smote upon that house, and it 
 fell and great was the fall thereof." 
 
 The rich man asked Jesus, "Good Master, what 
 good thing shall I do that I may have eternal 
 life.''" Jesus said, "Thou shalt do no murder; 
 thou shalt not commit adultery ; thou shalt not 
 steal ; thou shalt not bear false witness ; honor 
 thy father and thy mother; and thou shalt love 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 283 
 
 thy neighbor as thyself." The young man said 
 unto him, " All these things have I kept from 
 my youth up ; what lack I yet?" And Jesus said, 
 " If thou wilt be perfect go and sell what thou 
 hast and give to the poor and thou shalt have 
 treasures in heaven, and come and follow me." 
 Matt. xix. 16-24. 
 
 When the disciples rebuked those who brought 
 little children that Jesus might touch them, he was 
 displeased at them, and replied, " Suffer the lit- 
 tle children to come unto me for of such is the 
 kingdom of God." Mark, x, 13, 14. 
 
 What did Jesus mean.'' Was it that the king- 
 dom of God was composed altogether of babies? 
 No, but none could obtain the blessings of that 
 exalted sphere where God is unless they were pure 
 as the babe, for of such is his kingdom com- 
 posed. There are different conditions in the 
 other world — the highest, is that where God 
 reigns in his being ; the lowest, we will not con- 
 template. When the scribes tried to puzzle Jesus 
 with questions they asked him, " Which is the 
 first comandment of all?" And Jesus replied, 
 " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all 
 thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
 mind, and with all thy strength ; this is the 
 first commandment, and the second is like unto 
 it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
 Mark xii. 30, 31. That command is very much 
 criticized, but it is perfectly consistent with our 
 duties to our neighbors, which are to do unto 
 
284 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 them that which we would hke to have them do 
 unto us under similar circumstances. 
 
 The condition in the other world is most graph- 
 ically given by Jesus in the parable of the man 
 who was traveling in a foreign country, and who 
 on his return home received the different reports 
 of his servants. He laid this down as the rule of 
 men's measurement in the next world : " For every 
 one that hath shall be given, and he shall have 
 abundance ; but him that hath not shall be taken 
 away even that which he hath." It would seem 
 a difficult task to take that from a man which 
 he does not have. That reasoning applies to the 
 material side of life, but Jesus was not talking 
 about this side of life at all ; his meaning was 
 a spiritual one. If a person goes into the next 
 world with no spirituality, but loaded down with 
 iniquity, he is reckoned as an unprofitable servant, 
 and is cast into outer darkness, — " there shall be 
 weeping and gnashing of teeth." 
 
 " Then shall the king say to them on the right 
 hand, Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the 
 kingdom prepared for you from the foundation 
 of the world." And this is the service which 
 gained for them that great reward, for the para- 
 ble goes on to say, " For I was anhungered, 
 and ye gave me meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave 
 me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; 
 naked, and ye clothed me ; I was sick and ye 
 visited me ; I was in prison and ye came unto me." 
 Then shall the righteous answer him saying, 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 285 
 
 " Lord when saw we thee an hungered, and fed 
 thee? Or thirsty and gave thee drink? When 
 saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? Or 
 naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee 
 sick or in prison and came unto thee?" And 
 the king shall answer and say unto them, " Verily 
 I say unto you, Inasmuch as you have done it 
 unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye 
 have done it unto me.'' 
 
 Then followed the curse on those who refused 
 to administer unto the needy. The whole sig- 
 nificance of this parable is that good works in 
 the way of humanity is of saving grace in the 
 next life. Or, if a man is a good citizen and 
 does his duty here in relieving suffering as well 
 as he can, he has nothing to fear on the other 
 side of life. 
 
 ATONEMENT 
 
 The doctrine of the atonement is greatly mis- 
 understood, and an undue stress is placed on 
 the word that is unwarranted by the teachings 
 of the Master. The Jews paid a price for their 
 sins by offering cooked meats, bread, and wine 
 to appease the wrath of the Lord, but the meat 
 and bread were always eaten and the wine drunk 
 by the priests who acted as the agents of the 
 Lord in such matters. Jesus died to do away 
 with the blood-offerings of the Jews and to im- 
 press on the world that they were unavailing at 
 the throne of grace. Let us compare the Pauline 
 
286 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 doctrine of the atonement with the old Jewish 
 idea. 
 
 In the twenty-ninth chapter of Exodus, we 
 read : " And this is the thing that thou shalt do 
 to hallow them, to minister unto me in the priest's 
 office: Take one young bullock and two rams 
 without blemish, and unleaven bread, and cakes 
 unleavened mingled with oil, and wafers unleav- 
 ened anointed with oil : of fine wheaten flour shalt 
 thou make them. And thou shalt put them into 
 one basket, and bring them in the basket, with 
 the bullock and two rams. And Aaron and his 
 sons thou shalt bring unto the door of the taber- 
 nacle of the congregation, and shalt wash them 
 with water. . . . And thou shalt cause a bul- 
 lock to be brought before the tabernacle of the 
 congregation: and Aaron and his sons shall put 
 their hands upon the head of the bullock. And 
 thou shalt kill the bullock before the Lord, by the 
 door of the tabernacle of the congregation. . . . 
 But the flesh of the bullock, and his skin, and his 
 dung, shalt thou burn with fire without the camp ; 
 it is a sin off^ering. Thou shalt also take one ram ; 
 . . . and thou shalt take his blood and sprinkle 
 it round about upon the altar, and thou shalt cut 
 the ram in pieces, and wash the inwards of him, 
 and his legs, and put them unto his pieces, and 
 unto his head, and thou shalt bum the whole 
 ram upon the altar: it is a burnt off^ering be- 
 fore the Lord ; it is a sweet savor, an off^ering 
 made by fire unto the Lord. Thou shalt kill the 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 287 
 
 other ram and take his blood and put it on the 
 tip of the right ear of Aaron and upon the tip 
 of the right ear of his sons, and upon the 
 thumb of their right hand, and upon the great 
 toe of the right foot, and sprinkle the blood 
 upon the altar round about, . . . and thou shalt 
 sanctify the breast of the wave offering and the 
 shoulder of the heave offering, which is waved, and 
 which is heaved up, of the ram of the consecration, 
 even of that which is for Aaron, and of that 
 which is for his sons ; . . . And thou shalt take 
 the ram of the consecration, and seethe his flesh 
 in the holy place. And Aaron and his sons shall 
 eat the flesh of the ram, and the bread that is 
 in the basket, by the door of the tabernacle of 
 the congregation. And they shall eat those 
 things wherewith the atonement was made, to con- 
 secrate and to sanctify them : but a stranger shall 
 not eat thereof, because they are holy. And if 
 aught of the flesh of the consecrations, or of the 
 bread, remain unto the morning, then thou shalt 
 burn the remainder with fire: it shall not be 
 eaten, because it is holy. And thus shalt thou 
 do unto Aaron, and to his sons, according to 
 all things which I have commanded thee: seven 
 days shalt thou consecrate them. And thou shalt 
 offer every day a bullock for a sin offering for 
 atonement: . . . Now this is that which thou 
 shalt offer upon the altar: two lambs of the first 
 year day by day continually. The one lamb thou 
 shalt offer in the morning; and the other lamb 
 
288 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 thou shalt offer at even ; and with the one lamb 
 a tenth deal of flour mingled with the fourth 
 part of an hin of beaten oil ; and the fourth 
 part of an hin of wine for a drink ojfFer- 
 ing. And the other lamb thou shalt offer at 
 even, and shall do thereto according to the 
 meat offering of the morning, and according to 
 the drink offering thereof, for a sweet savor, an 
 offering made by fire unto the Lord. This 
 shall be a continual burnt offering through- 
 out your generations at the door of the taber- 
 nacle of the congregation before the Lord ; 
 where I will meet you, to speak there unto thee. 
 And there I will meet with the children of Israel, 
 and the tabernacle shall be sanctified by my glory. 
 And I will sanctify the tabernacle of the con- 
 gregation, and the altar: I will sanctify also 
 both Aaron and his sons, to minister to me in the 
 priest's office. And I will dwell among the chil- 
 dren of Israel and be their God." 
 
 The book of Leviticus has many directions for 
 the offerings of atonement to the Lord for the 
 sins of the people. The book of Numbers has 
 also rules for a drink offering to keep the Lord 
 reconciled to the children of Israel. "And the 
 drink-offering thereof shall be the fourth part of 
 an hin for the one lamb : . . . Strong wine to be 
 poured unto the Lord for a drink offering. And 
 the other lamb shalt thou offer at even: as the 
 meat offering of the morning, and as the drink 
 offering thereof, thou shalt offer it, a sacrifice 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 289 
 
 made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord. 
 And on the sabbath day two lambs of the first 
 year without spot, and two tenth deals of flour for 
 a meat offering, mingled with oil, and the drink 
 offering thereof. This is the burnt offering of 
 every sabbath, beside the continual burnt offering, 
 and his drink offerings. And in the beginnings 
 of your months ye shall offer a burnt offering 
 unto the Lord; two young bullocks, and one 
 ram, seven lambs of the first year without spot; 
 and three tenth deals of flour for a meat offering, 
 mingled with oil, for one bullock; and two tenth 
 deals of flour for a meat offering, mingled with 
 oil for one ram ; and a several tenth deal of flour 
 mingled with oil for a meat offering unto one 
 lamb ; for a burnt offering of a sweet savor, a 
 sacrifice made by fire unto the Lord. And their 
 drink offerings shall be half an hin of wine 
 unto a bullock, and the third part of an hin 
 unto a ram, and a fourth part of an kin unto 
 a lamb : this is the burnt offering of every month 
 throughout the months of the year." Numbers 
 xxviii. 7-15. 
 
 Under certain circumstances they used a scape- 
 goat to bear away the sins of the children of 
 Israel into the wilderness, but in this ceremony 
 the Lord had one goat, too. "And he [Aaron] 
 shall take two goats and present them before the 
 Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the congre- 
 gation. And Aaron shall cast lots upon the 
 two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other 
 
290 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 lot for the scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring 
 the goat upon which the Lord's lot fell, and offer 
 him for a sin offering. But the goat on which 
 the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented 
 alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with 
 him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the 
 wilderness. And Aaron shall lay both his hands 
 upon the head of the live goat, and confess over 
 him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, 
 and all their transgressions in all their sins, put- 
 ting them upon the head of the goat, and shall 
 send him away by the hand of a fit man into 
 the wilderness: and the goat shall bear upon him 
 all the iniquities unto a land not inhabited; and 
 he shall let go the goat in the wilderness." Lev. 
 xvi. 7-10, 21, 22. 
 
 However foolish the above may appear to us, 
 the doctrine of the atonement of Jesus is derived 
 from the scapegoat of the Israelites and their 
 various offerings to appease the Lord. " Who 
 his own self bear our sins in his own body on the 
 tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live 
 unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were 
 healed." I. Peter ii. 24. " But if we walk in 
 the light, as he is in the light, we have fellow- 
 ship one with another, and the blood of Jesus 
 Christ his son cleanseth us from all sin." I. John 
 i. 7. "And ye know that he was manifested to 
 take away our sins ; and in him is no sin." 
 I. John iii. 5. Jesus came to do away with the 
 old, heathenish practice of blood sacrifice to ap- 
 
THE MISSION OP JESUS 291 
 
 pease the wrath of God, and demolish the Aaronic 
 priesthood and all these sacrifices under it. 
 
 Isaiah in his prophesy of Jesus portrayed 
 most graphically his condition, and awakes in 
 our hearts the saddest pity and warmest love for 
 that man of sorrows, who sacrificed home, family, 
 and the comforts of life, turning his back on the 
 traditions and religion held sacred by his race, 
 that he might bring light to the world and by that 
 help the race. We admire him for his ability as 
 a thinker, we adore him for his self-sacrificing 
 nature, we love him because his love was un- 
 bounded and he first loved us. Of all the great 
 and good men of the world, none was so perfectly 
 developed in all the ennobling traits of manhood 
 as was Jesus Christ, our Light and Master. May 
 I live to see the mists that surround his purposes 
 and works lifted, that men may see him as he was 
 and appreciate him for his services to a sinking 
 people in opening anew the gateway to a life 
 beyond the tomb, where men are measured for 
 what they are and receive what they fully deserve. 
 
 The prophetic picture of the coming of Jesus 
 by Isaiah, made years before the advent of the 
 " Man of Sorrow," is sublime in its sadness. 
 " He is despised and rejected of men; a man of 
 sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid 
 as it were our faces from him ; he was despised, 
 and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne 
 our griefs, and carried our sorrows, yet we did 
 esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 
 
292 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 But he was wounded for our transgressions ; he 
 was abused for our iniquities ; the chastisement 
 of our peace was upon him ; and with his stripes 
 we are healed. All we like sheep have gone 
 astray ; we have turned everyone to his own way ; 
 and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. 
 He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened 
 not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the 
 slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearer is 
 dumb, so he opened not his mouth. He was taken 
 from prison and from judgment: and who shall 
 declare his generation? For he was cut off out 
 of the land of the living : for the transgression of 
 my people was he stricken. And he made his grave 
 with the wicked, and with the rich in his death ; 
 because he had done no violence, neither was any 
 deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to 
 bruise him ; he hath put him to grief ; when thou 
 shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall 
 see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the 
 pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. 
 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall 
 be satisfied; by his knowledge shall my righteous 
 servant justify many ; for he shall bear their iniq- 
 uities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with 
 the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the 
 strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto 
 death: and he was numbered with the trans- 
 gressors ; and he bare the sin of many, and 
 made intercession for the transgressors." Isaiah 
 liii. 3-12. 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 293 
 
 We will now quote what is said in the Gospels 
 concerning the Atonement. There were two 
 young men whose mother sought to get them an 
 honored position in the other world, one to sit 
 on the right hand and the other on the left of 
 Jesus in the kingdom. This incensed the ten 
 disciples, but in reply Jesus said, " Ye know 
 that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion 
 over them, and they that are great exercise au- 
 thority upon them. But it shall not be so among 
 you: whosoever will be great among you let him 
 be your minister; and whosoever will be chief 
 among you let him be your servant. Even so 
 the Son of Man come not to be ministered unto, 
 but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
 many." Matt xx. 25-28. 
 
 At the last sad supper of the Lord with his 
 disciples on earth, when their hearts were heavy 
 with grief and sorrow, knowing that the night 
 was coming on amid whose darkness their Lord, 
 guide, instructor and Master would be taken 
 from them, Jesus, as they were eating, took bread, 
 and brake it, and blessed it, and gave it to the 
 disciples and said, " Take, eat, this is my body." 
 And he took the cup, and he gave thanks, and 
 gave it to them saying, " Drink ye all of it, for 
 this is my blood of the new testament, which is 
 shed for many for the remission of sins." Matt, 
 xxvi. 26-28. Matthew is the only one of the 
 Gospel writers who, in describing the last sup- 
 per, mentions the taking of the cup for the remis- 
 sion of sins. 
 
294 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 On the same subject Mark says: "And as they 
 were eating, he took bread, and when he had 
 blessed, he brake it, and gave to them, and said, 
 Take ye: this is my body. And he took a cup, 
 and when he had given thanks, he gave to them, 
 and they all drank of it. And he said unto 
 them, This is my blood of the covenant, which 
 is shed for many." Mark xiv. 22—24. 
 
 Luke gives it a little differently : "And when 
 the hour was come, he sat down, and the apostles 
 with him, and he said unto them : ' With desire 
 I have desired to eat this passover with you before 
 I suffer ; for I say unto you, I will not eat it, until 
 it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.' And he 
 received a cup, and when he had given thanks, 
 he said, ' Take this and divide it among your- 
 selves ; for I say unto you, I will not drink from 
 henceforth of the fruit of the vine until the 
 kingdom of God shall come.' And he took bread, 
 and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and 
 gave to them, saying, ' This is my body which 
 is given for you ; this do in remembrance of me.' 
 And the cup, in like manner, after supper, saying, 
 ' This cup is the new covenant in my blood, even 
 that which is poured out for you.' " Luke xxii. 
 14-20. 
 
 Paul gives his version of the last supper as 
 follows : " For I received of the Lord that which 
 also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus 
 in the night in which he was betrayed took bread ; 
 and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 295 
 
 said, ' This is my body, which is for you : this 
 do in remembrance of me.' In like manner also 
 the cup, after supper, saying, ' This cup is the 
 new covenant in my blood: this do, as often as 
 ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often 
 as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye pro- 
 claim the Lord's death till he come.' " I. Cor. xi. 
 23-27. 
 
 A covenant is an agreement. The New Testa- 
 ment is called a new covenant; the covenant of 
 the New Dispensation, as distinguished from the 
 Old Dispensation. Covenants in ancient times 
 were always sanctified and ratified by the shedding 
 of blood and the making of a mutual vow for the 
 keeping of the same. For instance, according 
 to Homer, a covenant was made between the Greeks 
 and Trojans; a lamb was slain, its throat was 
 cut, and upon the pouring out of its blood, the 
 following adjuration was entered into by the 
 covenanting parties: 
 
 " All glorious Jove, and ye, the powers of heaven. 
 Whoso shall violate this contract first. 
 So be their blood, their children's and their own. 
 Poured out, as this libation, on the ground; 
 And let their wives bring forth to other men." 
 — Iliad, 1, 3, 298, 301. 
 
 Jesus spoke in parables. The eating of the 
 bread of his body and drinking of his blood was 
 used in a spiritual sense, not a literal. That is 
 explained by Jesus himself when we was instruct- 
 
296 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 ing the Jews concerning his mission and spiritual 
 power. In speaking of himself, he says, " I am 
 the living bread, which came down from heaven. 
 If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for- 
 ever." This the Jews did not understand and 
 even some of his disciples forsook him. On see- 
 ing this, Jesus explained, " The words that I 
 have spoken unto you are spirit, and life." John 
 vi. 50-64. 
 
 We must divide the New Testament into two 
 parts, that we may understand clearly the sub- 
 ject we are treating. One part consists of the 
 four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. 
 The other part is made up of the Pauline Gospels, 
 or writings of Paul, which he claimed as HIS 
 GOSPELS, and in considering them we must 
 not confound the teachings of Paul with those of 
 Jesus. " Render unto Caesar that which is Cae- 
 sar's," is applicable to the writings of Paul and 
 to the text of the four Gospels. 
 
 We must take the writings of Paul with some 
 allowance, for he was illy prepared to reflect the 
 true teachings of the Master in their purity and 
 simplicity. Immediately, upon his conversion, he 
 went away into Arabia, and he says, " I conferred 
 not with flesh and blood; neither went I up to 
 Jeinisalem to them which were apostles before me ; 
 but I went away into Arabia ; and again I re- 
 turned unto Damascus. Then after three years 
 I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and tar- 
 ried with him fifteen days. But other of the 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 297 
 
 apostles saw I none, save James, the Lord's 
 brother. Then I came into Syria and SiHcia, 
 and I was still unknown by face unto the churches 
 
 of Judea, which were in Christ Then 
 
 after the space of fourteen years, I went up again 
 to Jerusalem, with Barnabas, taking Titus also 
 with me. And I went up by revelation ; and I laid 
 before them the Gospel which I preach among the 
 Gentiles but privately before them who were of 
 repute lest by any means I should be running, or 
 had run, in vain." Gal. i. 16; ii. 2. 
 
 Please note that Paul preached his gospel, and 
 not the gospel of Jesus, claiming that he got it 
 through revelation from Jesus Christ. Although 
 this is the claim of Paul, must we be reconciled 
 to it as having come from Jesus.? The laws of 
 nature never change whether they be spiritual or 
 physical, and from my knowledge of spiritual 
 laws, which I have been studying from a scien- 
 tific, practical, and demonstrative standpoint for 
 over a quarter of a century, I know that no man 
 can tell from whom he gets a revelation. The 
 spirit revelator may call himself by any name, 
 and the medium through whom it is given must 
 take what is given, with no possibility of finding 
 out who the spirit really is who gives the informa- 
 tion, or makes the revelation. In the case of 
 Paul, I would rather suspect that the revelator 
 was a Jew, who wished to tack some of the old 
 Jewish tenets and dogmas onto the Christian 
 faith, from the fact that in Paul, alone, we get 
 
298 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 the doctrine of vicarious atonement through 
 blood. As he claims to be the author of his gos- 
 pel, we should not load down the beautiful teach- 
 ings of Jesus with unreasonable tenets on the 
 say-so of this newly converted Jew, who was dur- 
 ing all of his life an extremist. Listen to what 
 he says, and then judge if he was not presumptu- 
 ous and arrogant, pretending to teach the truths 
 of the Master but putting in the place of the 
 teachings of Jesus, his own gospels. " For I 
 make known to you, brethren, as touching the 
 gospel which was preached by me, that it is not 
 after man. For neither did I receive it from 
 man ; nor was i taught it, but it came to 
 me through revelation of Jesus Christ. For ye 
 have heard of my manner of life in time past 
 in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I 
 persecuted the church of God, and made havoc of 
 it: and I advanced in the Jews' religion beyond 
 many of mine own age among my countrymen, 
 being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions 
 of my fathers. But when it was the good pleas- 
 ure of God, who separated me even from m}' 
 mother's womb, and called me through his grace 
 to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him 
 among the Gentiles ; straightway I conferred not 
 with flesh and blood : neither went I up to Jerusa- 
 lem to them that were apostles before me, but I 
 went away into Arabia ; and again I returned into 
 Damascus." Gal. i. 11-18. 
 
 Paul, being a converted Jew, in which faith he 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 299 
 
 was so ardent and vindictive against all noncon- 
 formists, may be expected to have much of his 
 early convictions lingering by him in his after- 
 life. To reconcile himself to his own conversion, 
 he often injected his Jewish doctrines into his 
 Christian teachings ; to that end he holds on to 
 the dogma of original sin and blood propitiations 
 through sacrifice. In this, he runs athwart the 
 teachings of Jesus, as given by John. 
 
 Paul says, " There is no distinction between 
 Jew and Gentile ; for all have sinned, and fall 
 short of the glory of God; being justified freely 
 by his grace through the redemption that is in 
 Christ Jesus ; whom God set forth to be a pro- 
 pitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show 
 his righteousness, because of the passing over of 
 the sins done aforetime." Romans iir. 22-25 : 
 
 Now turn to John, who says, " God sent not 
 his Son into the world to judge the world, but 
 that the world should be saved through him. He 
 that believes on him is not judged; he that be- 
 lieveth not hath been judged already ; because he 
 hath not believed on the name of the Only Begot- 
 ten Son of God; and this is the judg- 
 ment: That Light is come into the world, 
 and men loved darkness rather than the light, for 
 their works are evil ; for every one that doeth ill 
 hateth the light and cometh not to the light, lest 
 his works be reproved." John iii. 16-21. 
 
 Again Paul says, " We are ambassadors there- 
 fore on behalf of Christ, as though God were en- 
 
300 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 treating by us : we beseech you on behalf of Christ, 
 be ye reconciled to God. Him who knew no sin 
 he made to be sin on our behalf ; that we might be- 
 come the righteousness of God in him." II. Cor. 
 V. 20, 21. 
 
 "There is no respect of persons with God. For 
 as many as have sinned without the law shall 
 perish without the law: and as many as have 
 sinned under the law shall be judged by the law; 
 for not the hearers of the law are just before 
 God, but the doers of the law shall be justified 
 (for when Gentiles that have not the law do by 
 nature the things of the law, these not having the 
 law are the law unto themselves ; in that they show 
 the work of the law written in their hearts, their 
 conscience bearing witness therewith, and their 
 thoughts one with another accusing or else excus- 
 ing them) ; in the day when God shall judge the 
 secrets of men, according to my gospel, by 
 Jesus Christ." Romans ii. 11—16. 
 
 "Now to him that is able to establish you ac- 
 cording to MY GOSPEL, and the preaching of 
 Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the 
 mystery which hath been kept in silence through 
 times eternal, but now is manifested, and by the 
 scriptures of the prophets, according to the com- 
 mandment of the eternal God, is made known unto 
 all the nations unto obedience of faith: to the 
 only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be 
 the glory forever." Romans xvi. 25-27. 
 
 In the above we are expressly informed that 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 301 
 
 Paul was not only presenting his gospel, but that 
 God had revealed unto him a mystery which had 
 been kept in silence through times eternal. Paul 
 rather glories in the fact that he was preaching 
 his own gospel, obtained by him through revela- 
 tion, independent of the apostles of Christ ; and 
 that after his first visit to Jerusalem he did not 
 go there again for fourteen years, as before 
 stated. 
 
 "But from those who were reputed to be some- 
 what (whatsoever they were it maketh no matter 
 to me; God accepteth not man's person) they, I 
 say, who were of repute imparted nothing to me: 
 but contrariwise, when they saw that I had been 
 intrusted with the gospel of the uncircumcision 
 even as Peter with the gospel of the circumcision 
 (for he that wrought for Peter unto the apostle- 
 ship of the circumcision wrought for me also unto 
 the Gentiles ) : and when they perceived the grace 
 that was given unto me, James and Cephas and 
 John, they who were reputed to be pillars, gave to 
 me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship." 
 Gal. II. 6-9. 
 
 "For this cause, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ 
 Jesus in behalf of you Gentiles, — if so be that ye 
 have heard of the dispensation of that grace of 
 God which was given me to you-ward; how that 
 by revelation was made known unto me the mys- 
 tery, as I wrote before in few words, whereby, 
 when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding 
 in the mystery of Christ; which in other genera- 
 
302 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 tions was not made known unto the sons of men, 
 as it hath now been revealed unto his holy apos- 
 tles and prophets in the Spirit." Eph. iii. 1-6. 
 
 "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, 
 having become a curse for us: for it is written. 
 Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." 
 Gal. m. 13. 
 
 "For there is One God, one Mediator also be- 
 tween God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus, 
 who gave himself a ransom for all." I. Tim. ii. 
 5,6. 
 
 *' We should live soberly and righteously and 
 godly in the present world; looking for the 
 blessed hope and looking for the appearing of our 
 great God and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, who gave 
 himself for us that he might redeem us from all 
 iniquity, and purify unto himself a people for 
 his own possession, zealous of good works." Tit. 
 II. 12, 13, 14. 
 
 Paul was a theologian and sought to build up 
 his own theology and to attach it to that of Jesus, 
 rather than to glorify the Lord, who extended his 
 work with all humility and meekness, not glorify- 
 ing himself in any manner. Jesus kept his 
 personnel in the background, making, at all times, 
 his work prominent; Paul always making himself 
 prominent. Paul was a very smart man and a 
 very ambitious man, taking a leading and active 
 part in all things he was concerned in. 
 
 His theology may be considered in two parts 
 or divisions. In one part, he shows himself a log- 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 303 
 
 ical thinker, and in the other, a mystical con- 
 founder in the use of terms. He belonged to an 
 age in which great thinkers dealt in abstract con- 
 ceptions ; which carried him, at times, to the very 
 heart of the Gnostic teachings. While he was 
 not a Gnostic, he adopted some of the philosophy 
 of that sect without compromising his own. The 
 same thing is observable of the Stoic philosophy ; 
 in some instances, that philosophy found favor 
 with Paul. It must not be considered for a mo- 
 ment that the entire moral and practical philoso- 
 phy of the New Testament was original with 
 either Jesus or the apostles ; wherever they found 
 a truth that was applicable, whether of Jewish or 
 Gentile origin, they used it. The fundamental 
 principles of truth in moral, spiritual, or physical 
 philosophies are alike applicable to all people un- 
 der similar circumstances ; of which fact Paul was 
 keenly observant. 
 
 THE LAST SUPPER 
 
 The last supper of Jesus was the closing of 
 the Jewish festival of the Passover and the intro- 
 duction of the Eucharist. The Passover was cel- 
 ebrated in commemoration of the throwing off of 
 Egyptian bondage and the introduction of the 
 Israelites as an independent, separate nation. The 
 last supper was the abolishment of Jewish sacri- 
 fice in commemoration of the Passover and the 
 introduction of that sacrament which has been 
 kept ever since by Christian believers, in remem- 
 
304 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 brance of the last sad gathering of Jesus with his 
 disciples, where love was poured out upon their 
 souls amidst the deepest sorrow that could befall 
 the lowly Nazarene. 
 
 Entering on his ministry, the greatest the 
 world has ever witnessed, he felt the load of sin 
 and wrong upon it, which was his to penetrate, 
 expose, and roll away, giving instead of the dark- 
 ness of Jewish Theocracy, the light of life beyond 
 the tomb. With those duties resting upon him as 
 he walked the shores of Galilee in the throes of 
 hunger, thirst, and poverty, without a home, with 
 but few friends, and with enemies on every side, 
 well might he exclaim, " The fowls of the air have 
 their nests, the foxes their holes, but the Son of 
 Man hath nowhere to lay his head." 
 
 Those were sorrows sad and heavy enough to 
 crush any other being ; but they were light indeed 
 compared with the sorrow of that night when at 
 that solemn feast Jesus sat with his twelve disci- 
 ples around the table. While eleven of them were 
 partaking of the feast with a feeling of reverence 
 for the old Jewish custom, Jesus alone knew that 
 before morning should rise upon the holy city of 
 Jerusalem and the thousands of people gathered 
 there in commemoration of the paschal feast, he 
 would be in the hands of a fanatical mob and 
 forced away to a prejudiced court, where he 
 would hear the groundless accusations of perjured 
 tongues, and the sentence of crucifixion 
 passed upon him. But the saddest of all was the 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS -305 
 
 knowledge that at that very moment, one of his 
 disciples, one of his chosen, one who had shared 
 the benedictions of love divine in his heart, and 
 received the full confidence and fidelity of the 
 Master had betrayed the trust reposed in him 
 and had already entered in an agreement with 
 those who thirsted for his blood ; his, whose whole 
 life was dedicated to their good, who knew no 
 guile, and could do no wrong. To think that 
 his life had been bargained away by one of his 
 own disciples, one loved and trusted, one who now 
 sat with him at the table and partook of the wine, 
 typical of the blood of his Lord, and would eat 
 of the bread of his body ! 
 
 And Jesus wept. 
 
 Let us go with them to the garden on the 
 Mount of Olives where so often has he sat watch- 
 ing the busy throng in Jerusalem and anticipat- 
 ing the joy of being able some day not far 
 distant to impart to them knowledge of a better 
 way of life and of the joys just beyond the cold 
 river of mortal death. They had not proceeded 
 far on their way when one dropped out to fulfill 
 his contract of betrayal, leaving but eleven to fol- 
 low the Master. The absent one was to impart to 
 the waiting mob the whereabouts of their victim. 
 O what subtlety, what craft on the one hand, and 
 what sorrow on the other. For Jesus knew his 
 every thought and action. 
 
 Jesus was a man with all the sensibilities of a 
 highly nervous system ; he knew the painful sen- 
 
306 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 sations of the penetrating nails in his hands and 
 feet; he knew the sufferings of the cross: the 
 cringing flesh, the trickHng blood flowing from his 
 veins ; and he had ample opportunity to avoid it 
 all by flight. But no ! the cup was ready ; though 
 bitter the anguish, it was his mission to partake of 
 it, that the old thrall of spiritual darkness might 
 be dispelled, and coming ages realize the truth of 
 a continued life. He had told them of this truth, 
 but they would not believe. It was for him to 
 make a demonstration, that they might know from 
 an object lesson, presented to their comprehension 
 through his death in an ignominious manner, and 
 by the resurrection of his body and his material 
 reappearance, as promised. All of this he knew 
 was necessary though it took his life, now in the 
 prime of useful manhood, to prove it. 
 
 But that night at the garden ! Who can con- 
 template it in calmness ! Our sorrow must mingle 
 to some degree with his anguish and grief. Think 
 of that lowly party as they slowly and silently 
 crossed the brook Kedron with its murmuring 
 waters. And the soft moon, in full-orbed beauty, 
 hung over the scene. The trees of the garden of 
 Gethsemane like sepulchral gnomes cast their long 
 shadows across the pathway. The intense gloom 
 and stillness was only broken by the whispering 
 lips of Jesus, who said to his disciples, " Sit ye 
 here while I go and pra^^ yonder." " Come, 
 Peter, and ^^e two sons of Zebedee," methinks he 
 added, " go a little way with me." And he began 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 307 
 
 to be sorrowful and very heavy. "My soul is 
 exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death ; tarry ye 
 here and watch with me." And going a little 
 farther alone, he fell on his face, and with the dust 
 of the ground mingled he his tears of grief, and 
 in the heart throes of sorrow he prayed, " O my 
 Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from 
 me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." 
 
 Returning, he found Peter asleep, and he said, 
 " What ! Couldst ye not watch with me one hour ? 
 Watch and pray, that ye enter not into tempta- 
 tion." Oh, what an hour ! What a trial ! In 
 the midst of his anguish Jesus said to Peter, " The 
 spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." 
 Who but Jesus could have withstood such an or- 
 deal? The spirit said yes, the flesh said no, and 
 amid the conflict of the two elements of his nature, 
 he went away again and prayed, saying, " O my 
 Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, 
 except I drink it, thy will be done." And he came 
 back and found them asleep again. Imagine if 
 you can, the environment of that lone soul in the 
 silent night, as Jesus turned away from his sleep- 
 ing watch to commune with the spirit of God. 
 Coming again to his disciples and finding them 
 still in deep sleep, his pensive eyes fell upon them 
 in their slumbers and he murmured, " Sleep on 
 and take your rest ; behold the hour is at hand and 
 the son of man is betrayed into the hands of sin- 
 ners." 
 
 O, what a reality filled the mind of Jesus then ! 
 
308 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 While we cannot fully realize the awfulness of 
 that dark hour in the garden of Gethsemane as 
 Jesus stood alone with his sleeping Apostles about 
 him awaiting the coming of the mob, we can 
 reverently worship at his shrine of love and grow 
 in strength as we grow in years. 
 
 THE ARREST OF JESUS 
 
 When Judas, the apostate, traitor, and ingrate, 
 backed by a mob armed with staves and swords, 
 came into the peaceful presence of Jesus, Jesus 
 was of all the persons present the most calm and 
 self-possessed. Seeing the tumult, one of the 
 party of the disciples drew his sword and smote 
 off the ear of one of the mob. With the calm- 
 ness of a philosopher teaching a lesson to his pu- 
 pils, Jesus commanded him to put up his sword, 
 and seeing an opportunity to give a wholesome 
 lesson to men, said " Put up again thy sword 
 into its place ; for all they that take the sword 
 shall perish with the sword." 
 
 Then he turned to the mob and upbraided them 
 for their show of violence, and to assure them 
 that their pretensions of strength could avail 
 nothing against him were it not that he was ful- 
 filling his mission on earth in declaring his 
 psychic powers and the availability of the invisi- 
 ble world, should he call upon spirit forces for 
 aid, he said " Thinkest thou that I cannot now 
 pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me 
 more than twelve legions of angels ? " But again 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 309 
 
 thinking of his mission, he said further, " But 
 how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus 
 it must be." 
 
 In this lesson we have the authority of Jesus 
 for angelic power when it is necessary to have 
 that power invoked. If men would study that 
 power, they would find that it is as available now 
 as it was in the time of Jesus, if conditions are 
 favorable and the mediator sufficiently cultured. 
 One of the conditions is that to receive spiritual 
 aid the suppliant must pray to the Father to send 
 His angels to aid a sincere mind. Without 
 prayer from a sincere, believing heart, there is 
 no intervention of angelic power. 
 
 Comprehending the inevitable results flowing 
 from the purposes of the mob, the disciples for- 
 sook Jesus and fled, leaving him in the hands of 
 the power of wickedness. The mob laid hold of 
 Jesus,, as an unwilling culprit, and " led him 
 away to Caiaphas, the high priest, where the 
 scribes and the elders were assembled," Peter fol- 
 lowing afar off. Then came the mock trial ; false 
 and perjured witnesses testified against him, but 
 with all their testimony could establish nothing 
 to give the high priest even a semblance of cause 
 for putting Jesus to death, which above all things 
 they wished to do. 
 
 Caiaphas then took the case In hand and tried to 
 question and cross-question Jesus to catch an ex- 
 pression that he could twist into a crime. After 
 exhausting his arts of speech, he burst into a 
 
310 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 passion, (for Jesus stood in meekness and silence, 
 not making an objection or pretending to care 
 for what they were saying, — he had already un- 
 dergone his trial in the garden, where the weak 
 flesh was conquered by the spirit, and he had 
 given his consent to endure the coming suffering, 
 " thus it must be,") and exclaimed to him, 
 " Answerest thou nothing ? What is it which 
 these witness against thee?" But Jesus held his 
 peace. Becoming more exasperated, the high 
 priest exclaimed, " I abjure you by the living 
 God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, 
 the Son of God?" To this haughtiness the IMas- 
 ter replied, " Thou hast said ; nevertheless I say 
 unto you. Henceforth ye shall see the son of 
 man sitting at the right hand of power, and com- 
 ing on the clouds of heaven." That was a most 
 terrible crime in the estimation of the high priest, 
 who in his priestly rage tore his clothes saying, 
 " He hath spoken blasphemy." 
 
 It seems in those days, and it is somewhat so 
 now, that the highest crime that a man can com- 
 mit is to assert something on religious matters 
 that the majority do not believe, and their belief is 
 usually the result of the want of knowledge. 
 
 Then came the great commotion. " What 
 think ye," said the high priest to those waiting 
 in thirst for the life of the Master. They an- 
 swered and said, " He is worthy of death." Then 
 they commenced by spitting in his face, hitting 
 him with their hands, buffeting him and taunting 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 311 
 
 him and making all manner of ado of his pow- 
 ers as a sensitive. " Prophesy unto us, thou 
 Christ ; who is he that struck thee ?" 
 
 Poor self-deluded creatures, little knowledge 
 had they of the laws governing spiritual discern- 
 ment. It requires the calmest conditions and the 
 most perfect surroundings to give spiritual mani- 
 festations. Perhaps Jesus could have named the 
 roughs who spat in his face and buffeted him, 
 had he desired to do so, and perhaps he could not 
 for the tumult around him. It was then that 
 Peter cursed and denied his Master. Then, of 
 all persons, Jesus was in the hands of a mob, 
 with no pitying eye or responsive heart ; worse, in 
 this respect, than at the cross, for his faithful 
 mother and Mary were there weeping at the great 
 wrong imposed upon an innocent man through re- 
 ligious fanaticism. But Jesus was not the only 
 one who has suffered through ignorant fanaticism, 
 but he is the only one who willingly gave up his 
 life for the enlightenment of the people. 
 
 All night long they kept up their amusement 
 of petty tortures of the Master. When morning 
 came they bound him and led him away to Pilate, 
 the Roman governor, for final disposition. There 
 he stood before the governor, in fetters and hu- 
 miliation, the most innocent of men and the 
 greatest, in the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the 
 smiles of God, of any man that has ever blessed 
 the world by his life. " Art thou the king of 
 the Jews.'"' asked Pilate. Jesus, neither affirming 
 
312 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 nor denying, meekly replied, " Thou sayest." 
 " Hearest thou not the many things they witness 
 against thee?" demanded Pilate; but Jesus an- 
 swered not a word. At this Pilate was greatly 
 surprised and finding nothing against him 
 worthy of death, his idea was to release him. But 
 the mob would not give ear to such a proposi- 
 tion. The life blood of the Master was what 
 they were after, and nothing short of that would 
 satisfy them. This is the only case, in the annals 
 of history, where a high court, presided over by 
 a dignitary of state, defiled the ermine of justice 
 and delivered an innocent man, whom he had so 
 adjudged, over to death to answer the demands 
 of a mob. 
 
 Pilate found no blame in Jesus which would 
 sub j ect him to the extremes of death, and as it was 
 his custom to release a prisoner at each festival of 
 the passover, he asked the people whom they 
 would have released, — Jesus or that notable 
 criminal Barabbas. Being instructed by the 
 high priest and scribes to call for the release of 
 Barabbas, the crowd did so and demanded the cru- 
 cifixion of Jesus. Being warned in a dream of 
 the danger which Jesus was in, even the wife of 
 Pilate sent word to the governor to have nothing 
 to do in the way of inflicting wrong on Jesus, 
 for he was a righteous man. Notwithstanding 
 all this and the entire want of proof of any 
 wrong In Jesus, the mad fanatics demanded his 
 blood, for it had to be so. 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 313 
 
 Being unable to dissuade the people from their 
 thirst for the life of the Master, and yielding 
 to their demands, Pilate, in the face of the tu- 
 mult, took water and washed his hands saying, " I 
 am innocent of the blood of this righteous man ; 
 see ye to it." The mob answered, " His blood be 
 on us and on our children." 
 
 And the poor Jew has no country to-day 
 which he can call his own, and sore has been his 
 national afflictions. They took the blood of our 
 Lord upon themselves and on their children, and 
 have received and are receiving the results. To 
 tempt the power of heaven is a dangerous experi- 
 ment, as the Jews have already learned. 
 
 JESUS' JOURNEY TO THE CROSS 
 
 Let us now take with Christ his last journey 
 from the mock court of Pilate to the Hill of 
 Skulls (Golgotha), and contemplate the signifi- 
 cance of that death march from the heart of the 
 great city of Jerusalem to the little hillock of 
 stone lying just north of the gates, where Jesus 
 gave up his life to demonstrate a truth most vital 
 in importance to the whole human race. The 
 mere death of Jesus, as a man, was not of such 
 great significance as to attract to that fact alone 
 the attention of all the ages, for many good men 
 had been crucified before him and many martyrs 
 have died in their faith since his time, leaving 
 only a mere trace of their unhappy fate. But in 
 Jesus is sustained something more than the mere 
 
314. LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 execution of a good, noble, innocent being ; in him 
 was centered a great principle of nature, the force 
 of which could not be learned or fathomed by any 
 of the physical laws of nature known to man. 
 The force centered in Jesus was of a spiritual na- 
 ture, which alone could be fathomed through the 
 laws of spirituality, which to that age was a dead 
 letter. 
 
 This was more than an ordinary journey of a 
 condemned man from a death-sentencing court to 
 the place of execution. It was a journey from 
 the sentence of death to the joys of life, — a 
 journey that led through the gloom of the tomb 
 to the sunlight of life eternal, a journey that led 
 down through the valley of death into a new field 
 of existence, where false witnesses and mock 
 courts have no standing and men are known as 
 they are and not as they pretend; where Virtue 
 has its own reward and Vice its accusing gnome ; 
 where men are valued according to the deeds done 
 in the body; a journey made hideous by an ig- 
 norant, howling, vindictive, and vicious mob, a 
 mob walking in darkness neath the weight of 
 moral turpitude, not beholding the light of spir- 
 itual truths. 
 
 There are some things in the different records 
 of this journey that are antagonistic to each 
 other, which have been stumbling blocks in the 
 eyes of the scrutinizing public that never have 
 been explained to the satisfaction of the skepti- 
 cal mind; but to my mind no explanation is 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 315 
 
 needed for the earnest investigator after the 
 crowning object of the life, acts, and purposes of 
 the coming of Jesus are properly understood. 
 Matthew, Mark, and Luke say that a man from 
 Cyrene bore the cross of Jesus, while John says 
 " bearing his own cross," he was taken to the 
 place of execution. Now which is true? Did 
 Jesus bear his own cross or was it born by a 
 Cyrenian? The discrepancy can never be 
 solved, and what if it is not? Suppose those men 
 who wrote the Gospels made a mistake in this 
 instance: that does not militate against the true 
 mission and important work of Jesus. 
 
 We know that before his time an absolute, con- 
 tinued, spiritual existence as an individual entity 
 was not taught or understood by the people. He 
 imparted that truth to the world by his life and 
 death. Let us keep those things before our 
 minds and not lose ourselves in trying to explain 
 inexplicable minor assertions of any of the writ- 
 ers of the New Testament. There are many 
 things in the New Testament that are irreconcila- 
 ble, and to attempt to inflict an honest mind with 
 a forced harmony only enhances the infliction of 
 error and drives them farther from the mark. Let 
 the one truth that Jesus came as a spiritual light 
 to the world be our supreme thought, and then 
 those minor discrepancies need not concern us. 
 Jesus lived, and in his life we have a noble ex- 
 ample of perfect manhood, an example that we 
 can follow with safety, an example that no other 
 
316 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 man has exhibited. Why not accept that life 
 as a guide notwithstanding there may have been 
 erroneous statements of physical things sur- 
 rounding his doings while in earth activities. 
 
 We must admit that Jesus gave to the world 
 the most convincing truths of a continued life 
 after death, and informed us how to establish the 
 facts of a future life, a question in which we are 
 all concerned. Then why not study his spiritual 
 life, without prejudice and without the spirit of 
 fault-finding in our hearts.? This is all for our 
 own individual good and why should we be- 
 come enemies to our own welfare in our studied 
 endeavor to hunt out flaws in the phraseology of 
 some one who lived and wrote two thousand years 
 ago.f* In our study of the life of Jesus we should 
 bear in mind that hfe is too short for every man 
 to formulate a code of morals for himself, and 
 he must look to others for a suitable code. Take 
 the life of Jesus, and winnow the wheat from the 
 chaff of the New Testament, and we can find no 
 better morals or rules of life in any other code. 
 Why not take it? We must all die. Can we find 
 a more sublime death than the example left by 
 Jesus .f* The last words he uttered were the most 
 sublime prayer that ever fell from the lips of 
 man. "Father, forgive them, for they know not 
 what they do." 
 
 Is there any other life in all history that has 
 given us greater or clearer proofs of a conscious 
 hfe after death than that of Jesus.? Then why 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 317 
 
 not take him as an example and learn from his life 
 and death what our own destiny will be? This 
 life is but a probationary state of our being. 
 This body is but our earthly tabernacle ; soon 
 we shall lay it aside and enter into a new field of 
 existence. Jesus has opened the gateway of 
 knowledge to that life. Why not study it? Let 
 us seek to find the truths that Jesus taught 
 rather than the errors committed by those who 
 wrote concerning him. Let us not try to make 
 more of the writers of the New Testament than 
 what they were. They were simply men, who 
 wrote from their best understanding at the time. 
 None of them wrote concerning the life and do- 
 ings of Jesus until many years after his death. 
 It is evident that a written history of his life was 
 an afterthought, and that many unimportant er- 
 rors were the result. But it is no fault of the 
 Master, and we should not ignore our own well-be- 
 ing for the want of due diligence in the New Tes- 
 tament writers. They were, save Paul and Luke, 
 an uncultured, honest, spiritual folk ; they knew 
 nothing but from observation of the physical 
 sciences, and of course they shared the popular 
 beliefs of the country, which crept into the 
 woof and web of the sacred narrative to a more 
 or less extent, owing to the subject of which they 
 were treating. In many instances they indulged 
 upon the credulity of the masses, which was neces- 
 sary in those days, for the people were moved 
 then in the trend of divine thought through ex- 
 
318 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 travagant narratives of extraordinary manifesta- 
 tions. Emotions controlled them more then than 
 now ; but it is too prevalent at this time to be 
 creditable to the intellect. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION 
 
 The dogma of the resurrection is a kind of tra- 
 dition from the old Jewish poets and prophets, 
 in their fanciful indulgence in allegories to such 
 an extent that the real subject was often ob- 
 scured by the word picture they painted. Those 
 old writers first applied it to the condition of 
 the Israelites as a debauched and enslaved nation 
 and the New Testament doctrine on that subject 
 is second-hand hearsay from the Jews. Isaiah 
 in his exuberance applied the term to the 
 heathen gods whom they had been worshipping. 
 
 " Lord, our God, other lords beside thee have 
 had dominion over us, but by thee only will we 
 make mention of thy name; they are dead, they 
 shall not live, they are deceased, they shall not 
 rise ; therefore hast thou visited and destroyed 
 
 them, and made all their memory to perish 
 
 Thy dead men shall live together, with 
 
 my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, 
 ye that dwell in the dust, for thy dew is on the 
 dew of herbs and the earth shall cast out the dead. 
 Isaiah xxvi. 14, 19. This is a kind of wild rhap- 
 sody that amuses the imagination but does not 
 satisfy the mind as to any great fact the poet 
 wished to express, 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 319 
 
 Let us now consult Ezekiel, who with all of the 
 inhabitants of Jerusalem, except the very poor 
 and helpless, were living in captivity under the 
 Chaldeans, having been taken prisoners by Nebuc- 
 hadnezzar and carried away into Babylon. In 
 their deplorable condition Ezekiel was directed by 
 the Lord to prophesy as to the Jews, and in his 
 exuberant imagination he exclaims, " The hand 
 of the Lord was upon me and carried me out in 
 the spirit of the Lord, and sat me down in the 
 midst of the valley which was full of bones, and 
 lo they were very dry. And he said again. 
 Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, 
 **0 ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 
 Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones. Be- 
 hold I will cause breath to enter into you, ye shall 
 live, and I will lay sinews upon you and will 
 bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin 
 and put breath in you, and ye shall live and ye 
 shall know that I am the Lord." Ezekiel then 
 relates the fact that he did see sinews and flesh 
 and skin come upon the dry bones, but they had 
 no breath and he prophesied again, and breath 
 came into them and they lived. Then the Lord 
 said unto Ezekiel, " Son of man, these bones are 
 the whole house of Israel; behold they say. Our 
 bones are dried and our hope is lost; we are cut 
 off for our parts." The Lord said, " O my peo- 
 ple, I will open your graves and cause you to 
 come up out of your graves and bring you into 
 the land of Israel." And again he said, " I will 
 
320 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 make them one nation in the land upon the moun- 
 tains of Israel, and one king shall be the king of 
 them all and they shall be no more two nations, 
 neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms 
 any more at all." Ezekiel xxxvii. 1-22. 
 
 Considering the dogma of the resurrection of 
 the dead and wishing to ascertain its force and 
 importance as a belief or doctrine we should go 
 back to its origin as data to draw from. Daniel, 
 in his prophetic description, gives it some im- 
 petus and character, which should be liberally con- 
 strued and interpreted. It must be kept in mind 
 that all prophesies are rather vagarish and unin- 
 telligible and to understand them we must ascer- 
 tain what was in the mind of the prophet when 
 he was giving his vision to the people and the 
 subject he was prophesying about. 
 
 Daniel was a slave, having been carried into 
 Babylon when very young. Being a precocious 
 boy he gained the confidence and favor of the 
 king, and was chosen to be about the king's 
 court and became learned in all the wisdom of 
 the Chaldeans, who were at that time greatly 
 superior to any of the surrounding nations. He 
 soon became distinguished at the Babylonish 
 court, not only as a scholar but as an interpreter 
 of dreams and visions. Surrounded with the op- 
 portunities afforded by the king's graces, he 
 became acquainted with the conditions of neigh- 
 boring nations and peoples, and prophesied as to 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 321 
 
 them as well as concerning his own nation. 
 
 In the eleventh chapter of the Book of Daniel 
 may be found the most wonderful predictions as 
 to the future of Persia, Egypt, Rome, Greece, and 
 other nations, with a forecast of their corruptions, 
 wars, and destinies. In his prophecy of the final 
 delivery of the Israelites from captivity, he 
 describes the great archangel Michael, who was 
 always considered the guardian of the Jewish 
 people, and he caused Daniel to prophesy, " And 
 there shall be a time of trouble, such as never 
 was since there was a nation even to that same 
 time, and at that time thy people shall be deliv- 
 ered, every one that shall be found written in the 
 book ; and many of them that sleep in the dust of 
 the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and 
 some to shame and everlasting contempt." Dan. 
 XII. 1-2. 
 
 In further discussing the question of the res- 
 urrection, we will impress upon the minds of our 
 readers that Jesus, in his prophecy of himself, 
 expressed a spiritual truth dressed in language 
 that satisfied the minds of his followers, who still 
 clung to the idea of a bodily resurrection at 
 some future day. In speaking of his death, Jesus 
 said, " The Son of man shall be delivered up 
 into the hands of men, and they shall kill him, 
 and the third day he shall rise again." Matt, 
 xvii. 23. This prophecy was literally fulfilled. 
 That we may not appear absurd in this assertion. 
 
322 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 let us first inquire, " Who was Jesus? " In an- 
 swering the question, ninety-nine out of every one 
 hundred would say, or imply, that the physical 
 body of the Master that was standing before 
 them, was the man. Most people look upon the 
 physical as the real man, when it is not the man 
 at all but the house in which the man lives. On 
 this subject said Peter, " Yes, I think it meet as 
 long as I am in this tabernacle to stir you up by 
 putting you in remembrance of these things, know- 
 ing that shortly I must put off this tabernacle; 
 even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shown me." 
 II. Peter i. 15-21. The tabernacle or house 
 in which Jesus lived was destroyed, the Jews did 
 kill the physical Jesus; but the man, the spirit, 
 they could not reach ; he was beyond their power ; 
 and after the physical house of Jesus was 
 destroyed, his spirit, or the real man, being dis- 
 engaged from the encumbering earthly body did 
 arise, and exhibited himself on many occasions to 
 his followers and others. 
 
 That spiritual arising was considered a resur- 
 rection. Marvel not at this, for the hour is com- 
 ing in which all that are in their graves shall 
 hear his voice and shall come forth; they that 
 have done good, unto the resurrection of life; 
 and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection 
 of judgment. John v. 28, 29. In this declara- 
 tion the evangelist was speaking in the present 
 tense and had reference to the crucifixion, when 
 Jesus had cried again with a loud voice and 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 323 
 
 yielded up the ghost, and behold the veil of the 
 temple was rent in twain from the top to the 
 bottom ; and the earth did quake, and the rocks 
 were rent ; and the graves were opened and many 
 bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came 
 out of their graves after his resurrection, and 
 went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. 
 Matt, xxvii. 50-53. 
 
 In speaking to his disciples of his death and 
 resurrection, Jesus said, " But after that I am 
 risen I will go before you into Galilee." Mark 
 xiv. 28. Did not Jesus, the morning of the third 
 day after the crucifixion, appear unto weeping 
 Mary? Did she not see two angels robed in 
 white, one sitting at the head and one at the feet 
 where the body of Jesus had lain.? Turning 
 around, did she not see Jesus, whom she took to 
 be the gardener, and did not Jesus make himself 
 known to her, but commanded her not to touch 
 him, for he said unto her, " Touch me not, for I 
 have not yet ascended to my Father " ? Then 
 the same day, at evening, being the first day of 
 the week, Avhen the doors were shut, where the 
 disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, 
 came Jesus and stood in the midst of them. 
 John XX. 11-20. 
 
 And after eight days, again his disciples were 
 within, and Thomas with them. Then came Jesus, 
 the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and 
 said, " Peace be unto you." John xx. 26. After 
 this Jesus showed himself to Simon Peter, 
 
324 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 Thomas, Nathaniel, and the sons of Zebedee, and 
 two other of his disciples, and ate a hearty supper 
 of fish with them. He led them out as far as 
 Bethany. He lifted up his hands and blessed 
 them. While he was blessing them he was parted 
 from them and carried up into heaven. 
 
 Jesus walked with two of his disciples and con- 
 versed with them as they were going to the vil- 
 lage of Emmaus, and on the morning of the 
 resurrection a vision of angels told one of the 
 women who went in search for him that he was 
 alive; and as he sat at meat M'ith them and after 
 he took bread, blessed it, and gave it to his dis- 
 ciples, he then vanished out of their sight. Luke 
 xxiv. Those manifestations of Jesus after his 
 crucifixion were characterized by founders of the 
 New Testament religion as a resurrection of the 
 body of Jesus. In a spiritual sense they were 
 correct; in a physical sense they were not, for 
 flesh and blood cannot enter the kingdom of 
 heaven. Jesus appeared to those people as a 
 materialized spirit, or in a materialized form, and 
 it was nothing new ; for spirits have been mate- 
 rializing and manifesting themselves to the world 
 from ages too remote for history to grasp, and 
 they are still materializing and appearing to the 
 people who put themselves in the way for such 
 manifestations. 
 
 We have express evidence that spirits manifest 
 themselves to men, at proper times and under 
 proper conditions, in every writer and prominent 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 325 
 
 personage who has left an imprint in the Bible 
 from Genesis to Revelations. Not one has failed 
 to give evidence of spiritual manifestations. They 
 may, in some instances, use language different 
 from that used by the people of this age, but 
 the ideas are the same. It would be absurd 
 to infer that during the whole of the existence of 
 the human race, the spiritual side of life was 
 kept from all save the Jews. They claimed to 
 be the especial favorites of God ; for that we have 
 only their word. All other religious orders claim 
 the same thing for themselves. We have passed 
 the age of taking assertions for proof. Evi- 
 dence is what a person says about a thing or 
 subject under consideration; proof is the estab- 
 lishment of the fact. The fact of spirit return 
 has been established by proofs in so many ways 
 that we must deny the forces of our own senses, 
 deny the Bible, deny history, deny the evidence of 
 every nation on the globe and of every age and 
 set ourselves up against them all, or concede the 
 fact and take it as proven. 
 
 The first proof of materialization is when the 
 Lord God walked through the Garden of Eden in 
 the cool of the day. Adam and Eve had hidden 
 themselves from the presence of the Lord God 
 among the trees of the garden ; and the Lord God 
 called unto Adam, and said unto him, " Where art 
 thou? " Then followed the confession, the curse, 
 3nd banishment from the garden ; but taking 
 compassion on them because of their nakedness, 
 
326 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 the Lord God made coats of skins and clothed 
 them. Gen. iii. That story is inconsistent with 
 the idea that the Infinite Creator indulged in 
 such episodes. If the transaction occurred at all 
 it must have been a transaction between Adam, 
 Eve, and a spirit whom the author of the book 
 called the "Lord God." 
 
 What can be said of the story of the " tower 
 of Babel?" "And the Lord came down to see 
 the city and the tower which the children of men 
 builded." Can such ignorance be attributed to 
 the Infinite.'' And again, he said, " Go to, let 
 us go down there and confound their language 
 that they may not understand one another's 
 speech." Gen. xi. 5-8. 
 
 How about the story of the three men appear- 
 ing to Abraham as he sat in his tent door in the 
 heat of the day, whom Abraham addressed as " My 
 Lord," who informed him of the fact that a child 
 was to be bom of Sarah and his name should be 
 called Isaac. Were they men or spirits? They 
 could not have been God, for there were three 
 of them, and besides, the person here speaking 
 was ignorant of the conditions in Sodom and 
 Gomorrah, and had to go down and see for him- 
 self. This story is to be found in Gen, xviii. 
 
 Two angels appeared at Sodom at even, and 
 Lot sat in the gate. Lot called them lords, took 
 them to his house, washed their feet and kept 
 them all night, making them a feast of unleaven 
 bread, and they did eat. Then followed the story 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 327 
 
 of the mob and the destruction of Sodom and the 
 four other cities of the valley. Gen. xix. 
 
 There appeared unto Moses in the wilderness 
 of Mount Sinai an angel of the Lord in a flame 
 of fire in a bush. Acts vii. 30. Many other in- 
 stances of spirit manifestation are left unnoticed 
 for the want of space. Did not the woman of 
 Endor call up Samuel who had been dead for 
 many years, and did not Saul converse with 
 him.'' And for the disobedience of Saul, did not 
 Samuel inform him that " The Lord will also 
 deliver Israel with thee into the hands of the 
 Philistines, and tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons 
 be with me." (I. Sam. xxviii.) Saul and his son 
 Jonathan were killed in battle the following day, 
 Jonathan by the hands of the enemy and Saul 
 by his own hand. " Tomorrow shalt thou and 
 thy sons be with me," said the materialized spirit 
 of Samuel to Saul, and it was so. When Nebu- 
 chadnezzar was holding a drunken revel, came 
 forth the fingers of a man's hand and wrote on 
 the wall of the king's palace; and the king saw 
 part of the hand that wrote. Dan. v. 5. 
 
 There is evidence that the term " resurrection " 
 did not always mean the rising of the physical 
 body after death, in the estimation of the writers 
 of the New Testament, but was applied to the 
 spiritual man rather than to the physical man. 
 The spirit was considered by both the Old and 
 the New Testament writers as the inner man. 
 " Thus saith the Lord, which stretcheth forth 
 
328 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the 
 earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him." 
 Zech. xii. 1. 
 
 When the impure spirit is gone out of the man 
 it roves through parched deserts seeking a place 
 of rest and finds it not ; and then it says, " I 
 will return to my house [the man], whence I 
 came." Matt. xii. 43, 44. Jesus took Peter, 
 James, and John, his brother, up into a high moun- 
 tain and was transfigured before them, and be- 
 hold there appeared Moses and Elias talking with 
 him. Matt. xvii. 1-3. Moses was transfigured 
 fifteen hundred years before that. Ex. xxxiiii. 
 29. And Stephen was transfigured after this. 
 Acts vi. 1—15. At the crucifixion, when life could 
 no longer be associated with the physical, when 
 the spirit was compelled to take its departure from 
 the body, Jesus cried with a loud voice and " gave 
 up the ghost." Matt, xxvii. 50. That is, the 
 spirit departed, and his body was left a lifeless 
 corpse. 
 
 Let us not be too opinionated as to our branch 
 of religion ; it is good enough and we must not 
 claim too much. It is absurd to contend that 
 Jesus was the first fruit of the grave ; that he 
 was the first one who had risen from the state 
 of death to that of life. All religions are based 
 on the fact of a future life and a superintending 
 intelligence, which they call God, or some other 
 name meaning the same thing. 
 
 Plato taught that man is a dual being, pos- 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 329 
 
 sessing both a physical body and soul, main- 
 taining that the existence of the soul was not 
 dependent on the physical body, that the body 
 might die but the soul would live on ; it is true 
 Plato believed in reincarnation in its broadest 
 sense. Socrates believed that he was constantly 
 attended by spirits, which he called demons. 
 Pythagoras believed in the separate existence of 
 the soul from the body. Every poet and master 
 of music since the " morning stars sang together " 
 has left inspiring proofs of the immortality of 
 man independent of the physical body. 
 
 In one sense of the word Jesus was the first 
 fruits of the grave, and his spiritual ascension 
 was the first resurrection. There were two pre- 
 vailing religions in the Roman empire at that 
 time. One was the Jewish religion and the other 
 was Paganism, as it is usually called; but in 
 reality it was the religion of philosophy, based 
 on Polytheism, or plurality of Gods. The Jews 
 were almost unknown to the civilized world in 
 olden times and their religion was confined to the 
 little country of Palestine, their nationality be- 
 coming a factor only after they had become a 
 nation without a country. When the meek and 
 lowly Nazarene commenced to preach and teach, 
 it awoke gi'eat interest in the minds of all who 
 heard him, for it was a new philosophy and a new 
 religion. He founded no church, formulated no 
 creed, but went about doing good, healing the 
 sick, consoling those in trouble, impressing the 
 
330 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 doctrines of the brotherhood of man upon all 
 and how to make this life ripen into a noble 
 existence in the life to come. He was the first 
 fruit of this new religion ; the first one who was 
 sacrificed to its truths at the behest of envious 
 bigots who could only answer his beautiful teach- 
 ings by taking his innocent life. The only an- 
 swer that could ever be made to the philosophy 
 of Jesus was the argument of force. 
 
 The spiritual resurrection of man has been 
 proven in so many ways that we may say the 
 question is settled forever, — settled because there 
 have been so many witnesses testifying to the 
 fact of a future life, with not one against it. 
 I say, not one against it. And why is there not 
 one witness to the contrary in this great age of 
 disbelief? Because it is impossible to prove a 
 negative. One affirmative witness of a fact is 
 worth more than a thousand witnesses who do 
 not know. There was a man once convicted of 
 the larceny of a pig on the testimony of three 
 witnesses who saw him steal it. When he was called 
 up for sentence and asked if he had anything to 
 say why sentence should not be passed on him 
 for the crime, he said. Yes ; there were only 
 three witnesses who testified against him, and he 
 could have produced fifty good men who would 
 swear they never saw him do the deed! 
 
 No one can prove the non-existence of spirit 
 life, while countless millions have had affirmative 
 proofs of the fact. Agnosticism proves nothing. 
 
THE MISSION OF JESUS 331 
 
 Negations prove nothing. But affirmation fur- 
 nishes the proofs of every fact susceptible of 
 proof. Some say that a future life is not sus- 
 ceptible of proof. How do they know it is not.'' 
 There is a large class of good meaning people 
 who are wedded to negative assertions about 
 spirits returning after death. How do they 
 know it.? Others says they do return and do 
 communicate, under certain conditions, with peo- 
 ple on this side of life. Which is the better 
 authority, the man who knows or the man who 
 does not know? We have the record of many 
 witnesses who saw and conversed with the Master 
 after his crucifixion. Who is able to say they did 
 not? 
 
 The best evidence of a man's sincerity on any 
 subject is the personal sacrifice he makes in the 
 advocacy of his belief. No man will make a sac- 
 rifice of his life for a principle unless he be- 
 lieves he is right. The apostles of the Lord were 
 witnesses of the acts, life and doings of Jesus, and 
 as evidence of their sincerity they suffered death 
 in advocating his cause. Bear in mind that was 
 long before their religion became a power in the 
 little country in which they lived. They gave 
 their lives in proof that they saw our Lord and 
 Master after his bodily death, and no man ever 
 brought proof that they had no such experiences. 
 
VIII 
 JESUS SAW THEIR THOUGHTS 
 
 *'And Jesus, seeing their thoughts, said. Why 
 do you think evil in your hearts?" Matt. ix. 4. 
 
 This is a most wonderful declaration ; one 
 which we cannot pass by as a miracle ; but it is a 
 scientific fact which, if the world could under- 
 stand, would greatly benefit the race. 
 
 It has become an established fact in the minds 
 of psychic students that thoughts are material 
 things, or substances of nature evolved from the 
 battery of the individual brain, and that those 
 thoughts can be seen by certain finely developed 
 minds. Thoughts are not only seen by sensitives, 
 but felt also. " And there entered a thought into 
 them, which of them should be greater. But 
 Jesus seeing the thoughts of their hearts took 
 a child and seated him by his side." Luke ix. 47. 
 
 Observe the wording closely and you will see the 
 force of my argument. " And there entered a 
 thought into them." Logically, how could a 
 thought enter into the minds of the disciples that 
 was" not in existence? We know to-day that 
 thoughts are factors of nature which are drawn 
 to the battery of the brain from the thought sub- 
 stance of the spiritual realm, and when the 
 thought of " who should be greater " entered into 
 332 
 
JESUS SAW THEIR THOUGHTS 333 
 
 their minds, Jesus, " seeing the thoughts of their 
 hearts," spoke to them on the question they were 
 secretly thinking about. 
 
 " But seeing their thoughts, he said unto them. 
 Every kingdom divided against itself shall be 
 brought to desolation, and house upon house shall 
 fall." Luke xi. 17. 
 
 Paul was not a stranger to the working of the 
 thoughts of men. He also recognized thoughts 
 as working individualities, as things, in the minds 
 of men. In his letter to the Romans he said, 
 " Who show the works of the law written in their 
 hearts, their conscience bearing witness to 
 them, and their thoughts between them- 
 selves ACCUSING OB ALSO DEFENDING ONE 
 
 ANOTHER." Rom. ii. 15. He here recog- 
 nized thoughts as things accusing or defend- 
 ing one another. If the brain sent forth 
 thoughts as its own manufactured articles 
 he would have used different language; he would 
 have said of those who were working under or 
 against the law that they, desiring to accuse or 
 defend as their inclinations directed, sent forth 
 the thoughts of their hearts accordingly. 
 
 From earliest times our greatest artists, in rep- 
 resenting Jesus on canvas, present him with an 
 aureola surrounding his head, radiance of which 
 but speaks of the spiritual purity of the mind 
 of the Master. The representation of the Mas- 
 ter with a beautiful halo around his head was 
 not a figment of the minds of the artists who 
 
334 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 transmitted the features of Jesus to canvas ; it 
 was a real presentation to their minds of the 
 mental emanations from the person and brain of 
 that exalted personage. 
 
 From the brain of every person emanates his 
 mental aura. If It be Intellectual and spiritual it 
 will be pure and radiant, representing the source 
 from whence it came ; If the mind be clouded with 
 selfish and jealous thoughts, the character of the 
 person will be of the same, and from that brain 
 will arise an aura of a somber cast ; If an individ- 
 ual Is mercenary the emanations will be of a red 
 cast ; If he be beset with crime, dark will be his 
 surroundings ; all of which, a finely organized 
 sensitive can see. Every phase of the human 
 mind emits its peculiar aura ; on the same princi- 
 ple that every flower emits Its own peculiar aroma. 
 
 Thought is the architect of the man. Jesus 
 could read the thoughts of men but did not know 
 the physiological seat of them. He thought 
 It came from the heart Instead of the brain, knowl- 
 edge which later science has developed. But 
 that want of scientific knowledge must not be 
 placed to the disparagement of our Lord; he 
 came as a moral and social reformer, a spiritual 
 adept, and founder of a great religion. 
 
 It is important in the investigations of all sub- 
 jects to start with a firm foundation and on that 
 build the structure. Before we start to building 
 the superstructure of the " how " of thinking, let 
 us ascertain the source of thought. Where do 
 
JESUS SAW THEIR THOUGHTS 335 
 
 thoughts come from? What are they when ex- 
 pressed? 
 
 Aristotle was the father of metaphysics, which 
 comprehends according to his philosophy the 
 science of being, the science of first principles, 
 and the science of God. If the science of being 
 and the science of first principles can be explained 
 according to natural laws, then the science of God 
 is natural and may be explained. 
 
 What is God? Is he above and beyond nature 
 or is he the comprehension of nature? If he is 
 above and beyond nature then he is not in har- 
 mony with nature. If he is in harmony with na- 
 ture then he must be of its nature, and if so, he 
 is the comprehension of the whole of the universe. 
 Aristotle, Kant, Bishop Berkeley, Roger Bacon, 
 Jonathan Edwards, and a host of other metaphy- 
 sicians class the mind and spirit as one and the 
 same thing and make it an essence of God. Were 
 they right or were they wrong? 
 
 Those great minds took God as a postulate, 
 and mind as a part of his being, and treated him 
 as self-conscious and absolute wisdom. Those at- 
 tributes of God are issued out to man according 
 to his needs, as occasion requires. According 
 to their philosophy man is a dual being; his cor- 
 poration is a physical entity ; his mind or soul is 
 another distinct part ; the former is of the dust 
 of the earth, the latter a part of God. 
 
 That school of philosophers go on the theory 
 that truth can be obtained with regard to facts ; 
 
336 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 they look through the subjective to find all things 
 and that subjective something they call God. 
 " Because I am he is." " Because I am," pre- 
 supposes a greater; that is beyond question. But 
 does that proposition solve the mysteries of the 
 greater ? 
 
 The Ionic school of Greece sought to find 
 through an objective philosophy an explanation 
 of all things. The Eleatics divided nature into 
 the finite and infinite, and maintained that it was 
 not possible for the finite to comprehend the infi- 
 nite ; and therefore, to comprehend the universe all 
 things should be resolved into the unity of the 
 Infinite Being, and from that source reach out 
 into pre-existing nature, and also fathom the in- 
 finitude of the future. This school has swayed 
 the dominant speculations of men ever since, and 
 the result is that most of our thinkers, in solving 
 the problems of nature, start with God as a pos- 
 tulate and then attempt to reason all things into 
 his absoluteness. This Is what is termed sub- 
 jective philosophy, or the art of reasoning from 
 a postulate to the nature of things, in contradis- 
 tinction to objective philosophy, which takes 
 known objects and principles as its basis of inves- 
 tigations and through scientific tests and analyti- 
 cal observations and by deductive reasoning ar- 
 rives at truth. 
 
 In objective philosophy the thinker rises from 
 the particular to the universal, from the observa- 
 tion of the crude to an understanding of the re- 
 
JESUS SAW THEIR THOUGHTS 337 
 
 fined, from the material to the ethereal, from the 
 homogeneous to the heterogeneous, from the sim- 
 ple to the complex. In this philosophy there are no 
 postulates ; the thinker starts with the known and 
 from that reasons out the unknown. The subjec- 
 tive philosophers start with a postulate, the un- 
 known, and from that reason themselves into mys- 
 ticisms. 
 
 What do we know about thought ? Where does 
 it come from? Is it a thing, a something, or is it 
 the result of the action of the brain? Let us 
 take some known subjects and from that stand- 
 point take a short step into the realms of esoteric 
 nature. 
 
 We know that there is a force in nature we 
 call electricity. How do we know that? Be- 
 cause we can harness it up and make it do many 
 useful things for us ; as for instance, we can make 
 it transmit intelligence around the world in an 
 instant of time. How is that done? By the ap- 
 plication of certain instruments called batteries. 
 Now we know of that force, but where does it 
 come from? Did the batteries manufacture the 
 fluid, or force? Do you not recognize the fact 
 that electricity is an element of nature and that 
 the batteries and appliances we use for its con- 
 trol are but instruments through which it demon- 
 strates itself in some ways ? 
 
 Steam is but an expression of a latent force in 
 nature. It does not make itself, it emanates from 
 a power behind it. Vapor rises upon the bosom 
 
338 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 of the air, not of itself but by a power greater 
 than it is; when it comes in contact with a cool- 
 ing element it condenses and comes down in rain, 
 snow, or hail. Every one of these and millions 
 more are elements of nature behind which resides 
 something greater than they. 
 
 On the same principle, thoughts did not make 
 themselves, nor is the brain of man the mill that 
 grinds them out ; but it is the battery that digests 
 them into human expression. Man is not the 
 only intelligent expression of nature; every ani- 
 mal, tree, flower and vegetable product expresses 
 their peculiar intelligence, and so does the min- 
 eral kingdom in all its multiplied forms. Do 
 they manufacture their own intelligence and shape 
 it to their own peculiar expressions? Do they 
 come by chance and express themselves without 
 law, order, or design? Or is there not a source 
 from which they derive their peculiar virtues? 
 Did you ever consider the sources of thought? 
 If you have not, let me suggest that we derive 
 certain classes of thought through our five senses ; 
 thus, prick j'our finger, pain ensues and thought 
 is evolved ; a beautiful landscape is brought to 
 your notice — your optic nerve carries the 
 shadow to the perceptive brain and thought is 
 evolved through the medium of sight; come in 
 contact with an offensive odor, — the olfactory 
 nerves are excited and thought evolves from the 
 scent. The same rule holds good through the 
 process of hearing, — a concussion produces a 
 
JESUS SAW THEIR THOUGHTS 339 
 
 sound wave; that strikes the auditory nerves, you 
 hear the sound and thought is produced. The 
 same is true in regard to taste : sweets evolve pleas- 
 ant sensations, acids unpleasant and correspond- 
 ing thoughts are brought forth. 
 
 Are they all the sources of thought .f* Is there 
 not a class of thoughts we call reason.? What 
 evolves that class of brain cerebrations.? Do not 
 ideas flash upon the mind with which we are un- 
 familiar.? What causes that class of brain ac- 
 tion.? They arise from none of the five senses 
 but seem to be independent of our nervous sys- 
 tem so far as nervous impressions are concerned, 
 but seem to be impressed from some source discon- 
 nected from the senses. 
 
 The power of thought Is not confined to man 
 alone, but runs through all animal nature. All 
 classes, or species, have their own peculiar ways 
 of thought expression. Some animals do not have 
 all the five senses that man has. There are 
 animals which only have the nerves of sensation 
 developed; they can neither see nor hear, there- 
 fore their mind is limited to the other senses. 
 Other animals have the nerves of sight developed 
 and a corresponding addition to their powers of 
 thought. " Animals," says Spencer, " in the nat- 
 ural order of being, are moved by their senses. 
 One smells the odor of food; his impulses are to 
 go and find it and satisfy his hunger ; sight is 
 developed; the appearance of an object excites 
 fear," and so forth. 
 
340 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 Let us take one step lower in the order of 
 nature and consider the vegetable world, learn its 
 language as far as we can and see if we cannot 
 gain something from even the tiny creeper that 
 always twines its tendrils against the course of the 
 sun. 
 
 Nature is always constructing and always tear- 
 ing down ; always aggregating life energies and 
 producing death results. All plants, like animals, 
 have their circulatory systems ; both have ducts or 
 pores for the passage of fluids ; both build them- 
 selves from the inside out, by cellular duplication, 
 by the absorption of nutriment ; one, mainly 
 through the stomach from food introduced 
 therein ; the other, from rootlets and leaves by 
 food given through their circulatory channels; 
 both inhale and exhale gases ; both have electric 
 and magnetic currents as factors of their beings ; 
 both possess atomic intelligence through their 
 structures ; even some plants have a slight nervous 
 system if not mentality. Plants placed in a dark 
 room invariably turn their heads towards the 
 light. If a twining vine is planted near a tree 
 or post, it goes to that object for support. This 
 phenomenon, or mental sense is strikingly observa- 
 ble in the convulvus, a vine peculiar to India. 
 Said a correspondent from that country, " One 
 morning when I was sitting on the veranda at the 
 hotel, I noticed the tendrils of a convulvus turn- 
 ing towards my limb. In a very short time they 
 had actually entwined it. I then placed a pole 
 
JESUS SAW THEIR THOUGHTS 341 
 
 in reach of the vine but at least ten inches away 
 from it, and the vine in a very short time turned 
 towards the pole. And during one night's time 
 the pole was entwined about with the tendrils of 
 the vine." 
 
 Two trees may be planted in close proximity 
 to each other ; the more thrifty will grow straight 
 up ; the other will incline toward the open space, 
 seemingly trying to get away from the other one 
 without even being touched by its branches. Is 
 this mentality, vegetable sense, atomic repulsion, 
 or outside Deific care? It is certainly an intelli- 
 gent manifestation which shows more of mentality 
 than of mere chance. 
 
 Following the similarities of animal and vege- 
 table life further, we find that both of them come 
 from the cell and both cells are very nearly alike 
 in appearance ; both live, die, and are dissolved 
 and go back to their original elements ; both con- 
 tain oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen but the animal 
 contains other structural elements not in the vege- 
 table. Both animal and vegetable expressive life 
 commence with the protoplasm and in the first 
 stages of expression are very similar; yet they 
 soon diverge into wonderful fields of dissimilarity, 
 though through the whole expression of life there 
 are striking similarities. 
 
 The sap of the plant in the tree answers in its 
 life-giving qualities to the blood of the ani- 
 mal, the circulation of which commences as soon 
 as the germ swells into active life; the blood of 
 
Sm LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 the plant circulates through the system as the 
 blood of the animal through the physical body of 
 its being. Both of the circulating fluids are laden 
 with constructing material and both distribute 
 their loads in the proper places for the uses neces- 
 sary. It is even claimed by some eminent botan- 
 ists that some plants have the power of locomo- 
 tion. Agardh observed that " under particular 
 circumstances, the contents of the cells of cer- 
 tain water weeds, being set free, moved about with 
 considerable velocity, which he called zoosporis." 
 
 Says Mr. Huxley, " At the present day, innum- 
 erable plants and free plant cells are known to 
 pass the whole or the greater part of their lives 
 in an active locomotive condition, in no wise dis- 
 tinguishable from that of one of the simpler ani- 
 mals ; and while in this condition, their move- 
 ments are to all appearances spontaneous ; are as 
 much the product of volition as those of such ani- 
 mals." 
 
 In the year 1837, Schwan & Schleiden founded 
 the science of histology, or that branch of anato- 
 my which treats of the ultimate visible structure 
 of organisms. They discovered the important 
 fact of the fundamental unity of animal and veg- 
 etable structure, and however diverse may be the 
 fabrics or tissues of which their bodies are com- 
 posed, the varied structure observed in them re- 
 sulted from the change of cells, which in both 
 animals and plants are similar when compared to- 
 gether. Mr. Huxley says, " It must be admitted 
 
JESUS SAW THEIR THOUGHTS 343 
 
 that plants may be contractile and locomotive; 
 that, while locomotive, their movement may have 
 as much appearance of spontaneity as those of the 
 lowest animals, and that many exhibit actions 
 comparable to those brought about by the agency 
 of a nervous system in animals, and it must be al- 
 lowed to be possible that further research may 
 reveal the existence of something comparable to a 
 nervous system in animals. So I know not where 
 we can hope to find any absolute distinction be- 
 tween animals and plants, unless we turn to the 
 modes of nutrition." 
 
 The seeming barriers between the animal and 
 vegetable kingdoms were entirely broken down by 
 the discovery of carnivorous plants, of which 
 there are several kinds ; among which is the Snow- 
 dew (drosera), which preys upon insects. Also 
 Venus' fly-trap (dionsea muscipula). These 
 plants have a nervous system in their leaf struc- 
 ture and also digestive qualities. On their leaves 
 are small sensitive filaments which stand out at 
 right angles, and which are possessed of a quality 
 that attracts insects. As soon as an insect 
 touches one of the leaves, it at once contracts and 
 encloses the unsuspecting fly in its maw, which 
 secretes a kind of a fluid, and fulfills the office of 
 the gastric juice in the stomach of animals, and 
 digests the prey as food. 
 
 Darwin took a lot of snow-dew plants and 
 proved beyond question their carnivorous nature. 
 He supplied a part of them with a small quantity 
 
344 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 of roast beef, by laying the same in small bits on 
 their leaves. Of the fed plants 69 per cent, more 
 survived than of the unfed ones, and their stems 
 weighed 41 per cent. more. The fed ones ex- 
 ceeded the starved ones by the number of their 
 seeds 141 per cent, and the aggregate weight of 
 their seeds 279 per cent. Harmon Munk, in ex- 
 perimenting with the same plant, found it pos- 
 sessed with electric currents and with electromo- 
 tive corresponding to the latent stimulation of 
 muscles and electronus of nerves in animals. 
 
 Huxley says, "There is every reason to believe 
 that living animals always respire, and in respir- 
 ing absorb oxygen and give off carbonic acid; 
 but the green plant being exposed to the light 
 of day or the electric light, the quantity of oxy- 
 gen evolved in consequence of the decomposition 
 of carbonic acid, by a special operation which 
 green plants possess, exceeds that absorbed in the 
 current respiratory process." The green power 
 in plants is derived from the abundance of chloro- 
 phyl in their leaf structure. 
 
 It was ascertained by John Ray of Lancaster, 
 and others, that there are certain animals which 
 possess the vegetable functions of containing and 
 utilizing plant chlorophyl, that they have the 
 power; and the chlorophyl actually served to 
 decompose carbonic acid, the same as plants ; and 
 that the same process attended and supported the 
 life of these animals in the use of chlorophyl as in 
 plant life. Plants inhale and exhale as animals. 
 
JESUS SAW THEIR THOUGHTS 345 
 
 The cuticle, in plants, is provided with a great 
 number of oval holes, which Lindel calls breathing 
 pores. They are always over the green pulp with 
 several intercellular passages, and when open, the 
 air has free access to the green pulp of the leaf. 
 This answers the same to plants that lungs do to 
 animals. There are two little oblong bladders 
 placed parallel with each other; and having the 
 power of contraction and expansion, they serve 
 in their offices the same as the two lobes of the 
 lungs in animals ; they have the power of closing 
 the pores in wet weather and opening them in dry ; 
 they act as the needs of the plant require. There 
 is, what Mr. Huxley hints at, a kind of an inde- 
 pendent kingdom between animal and vegetable 
 life, which he calls " No Man's Land," a kind of a 
 connecting; link between the two king-doms. He 
 gives us evidence in verification of his position as 
 follows : " So far as form is concerned, plants and 
 animals are not separable, and in many cases it is 
 a mere matter of convenience whether we call a 
 given organism an animal or a plant. There is a 
 living body called Aethealium Speticum which ap- 
 pears upon decaying vegetable substances ; and, 
 in one of its forms, is common upon the surface 
 of tanpits. In this condition, it is to all intents 
 and purposes a fungus, and formerly was always 
 regarded as such ; but the remarkable investiga- 
 tions of Le Bary have shown that in another con- 
 dition the Aethealium is actually a locomotive 
 creature and takes in solid matter upon which 
 
346 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 apparently it feeds ; thus exhibiting the most char- 
 acteristic features of animality." Mr. Huxley 
 then asks, " Is this a plant? Or is it an animal? 
 Or is it both? Or is it neither? " 
 
 Some decide In favor of the last supposition 
 and establish an intermediate kingdom, a sort of 
 biological " No Man's Land." In fact, the evi- 
 dence is incontrovertible that, while plants belong 
 to a separate division from the animal, there is a 
 striking relation between them ; evidencing beyond 
 a doubt, that in the evolution of matter from the 
 simple to the complex, atomic affinity and natural 
 chemistry built up the differences by adaptation, 
 and not design. The learned Mr. Huxley is trying 
 to build up a pet theory of evolution through en- 
 vironment, conditions, and the survival of the fit- 
 test, rather than recognizing In all nature an 
 intelligence fitting every thing for its place In the 
 universe. The Darwinian theory of evolution is 
 that the higher manifestations of nature have 
 grown out of the lower manifestations of life, 
 without one particle of evidence to sustain his po- 
 sition. We admit that conditions may modify the 
 nature of some animals and plants, and that in 
 species the rule is the survival of the fittest, and 
 that under certain manipulations some animals 
 seem to have changed or modified their natures 
 by their surroundings, breeding, and training; 
 but science has never pointed out one instance 
 where one species of aimals have changed their 
 natures and grown into another species. Until 
 
JESUS SAW THEIR THOUGHTS 347 
 
 that is done the Darwinian theory of evolution 
 must stand as a figment of a fertile imagination. 
 
 While evolution from a lower to a higher con- 
 dition is a beautiful reality when applied to the 
 moral and physical condition of a part of our 
 race, yet in no case, in all the school of nature, 
 have we learned that one species of animals has 
 grown out of another. The monkey was always 
 a monkey, the baboon a baboon, the bear a bear, 
 the wolf a wolf, and man a man. There are 
 gradations in the order of life brought about 
 through atomic intelligence but never by the 
 growth of one species out of another. The ten- 
 dency of even cultivated nature is to return to its 
 lower condition and not to the higher. If the cul- 
 tivation of man's moral nature were neglected and 
 his intellect allowed to remain untrained how long 
 would it be before he would lapse into the state 
 of savagery and contend with the beast for the 
 mastery of the caves again? 
 
 Three simple gases, carbon, oxygen, and hydro- 
 gen, form all the woody structure of every tree, 
 shrub, plant, in existence. The seeming differ- 
 ence in the fibrous substances of different vege- 
 table growths is due to the different arrange- 
 ments of the molecules that form the structures; 
 and those molecules that build the fibers of all the 
 different vegetable growths are always, for each 
 plant, shrub, or tree, compounded just alike. 
 Does all this order come by chance, by cultiva- 
 tion, by one thing growing out of another? Is 
 
348 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 there not a superintending intelligence in them 
 all? Every manifestation of nature carries with 
 it its own intelligence. That proposition is too 
 plain for controversy. What is that diffusive in- 
 telligence? It is every where and in every thing, 
 whether mineral, vegetable, or animal. Do you 
 want to name it God? Then do so. 
 
 Nature possesses all of the forces of the uni- 
 verse and man is a part of the universe. Every 
 part of the universe is accompanied and controlled 
 by intelligences. The intelligences of nature are 
 forces of nature on the same principle that elec- 
 tricity and magnetism are forces of nature. Man 
 has manufactured certain instruments and charged 
 them with certain elements or chemicals so they 
 can convey thoughts by wireless telegraphy from 
 place to place and from person to person ; but to 
 do that, the instruments at both extremes must be 
 in accord. 
 
 Human thoughts are intelligences residing in 
 nature, for it is said that no one has an inde- 
 pendent thought, that every thought that comes 
 from the mind of man has been thought over and 
 over again by other minds. Mental telepathy, 
 that is, the power of two minds to impress each 
 other though they be far apart is an established 
 fact. Thoughts are things most of which are 
 made by picturing themselves on the mind. Elim- 
 inate from your imagination abstract reason, and 
 see if you can think without the thought being 
 a picture on your mentality. Can you do it? 
 
JESUS SAW THEIR THOUGHTS 349 
 
 Think of Mary picking daisies from the sward. 
 Can you do it without seeing the girl, the sward, 
 and the flowers? Can you think of a horse with- 
 out the mental picture of the animal, or can you 
 think of any other object without picturing the 
 object itself? Did you ever speak of something 
 to a friend to have that friend reply, " I was 
 thinking of the same thing?" 
 
 I think I have demonstrated sufficiently that 
 life and intelligence are factors of nature 
 and on the same principle thoughts that are man- 
 ifested through the battery of the brain belong 
 to and are a part of nature. As an element they 
 exist independently of man who is used simply 
 as an instrument through, which thoughts are 
 manifested in the form of speech, gestures, 
 actions, and the many ways by which human 
 intelligences are expressed. 
 
 This brings us back to the first proposition: 
 What is a thought? Answer: It is a property 
 of nature which expresses itself through all ani- 
 mal existences but in a less demonstrative form 
 in the vegetable kingdom, also reaching into the 
 mineral kingdom (for minerals did not chance of 
 themselves). On the same principle vegetation 
 did not manufacture the intelligence that builds 
 all the multiplied forms of vegetable life from 
 three simple gases. Neither did all the various 
 kinds of animals, birds, and beasts manufacture 
 their own intelligences. Did the babe manufac- 
 ture its first thouffht of mother? Did the brain 
 
350 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 of Newton manufacture the thoughts that 
 brought forth his Principia, the greatest mental 
 effort of man ? Digested thoughts come through 
 the manifestations of the brain. The brains of 
 all men are composed of the same materials. If 
 that is true, and it is, or science is a liar and 
 mental philosophy a cheat, and if it is also 
 true that thoughts are manufactured by the 
 brain of man, then the different brain machines, 
 being composed alike, would manufacture the 
 same kind of thoughts and use the same ex- 
 pressions. 
 
 The brain is that part of the central nervous 
 axis which is contained in the cavity of the skull. 
 It is divided and subdivided into a great many 
 parts and subparts. The principal divisions are 
 the Medulla oblongata, pons, cerebellum and 
 cerebrum. There are also the right and left 
 hemispheres, lobes, and convolutions, or folds. 
 The divisions and convolutions are divided by 
 fissures of more or less extent, differing in the 
 forces or depressions in different individuals ; as 
 the weight, particular developments, and texture 
 of the brain differ in different people; hence, 
 different casts of minds. 
 
 The brain, according to the analysis of Vaque- 
 lin, consists of an emulsive mixture of albumen, 
 fatty matter, and water, holding in solution saline 
 and other matter common to it with other tissues. 
 
 The following table gives the result of his 
 analysis ; 
 
JESUS SAW THEIR THOUGHTS 351 
 
 Albumen 7 . 00 
 
 Cerebral fat ,^f^"^ ^'I^) 5.23 
 
 (stearine, 4.53) 
 
 Phosphorus 1.50 
 
 Osmazome 1.12 
 
 Acids, salts, sulphur 5.15 
 
 Water 80.00 
 
 100.00 
 
 The Medulla oblongata contains more cerebral 
 fat but less albumen, osmazome, and water. 
 
 Premy's analysis confirmed that of Vaquelin's 
 and showed the following proportions : 
 
 Albumen 7 . 00 
 
 Water 80.00 
 
 Fatty matter 5 . 00 
 
 He extracted from the fatty matter the follow- 
 ing principles: 1. Cerebric acid, a white, granular, 
 crystalline substance, containing no sulphur, a 
 little phosphorus, 66 per cent, of carbon ; 2. Oleo- 
 phosphoric acid, separated from the cerebric by 
 its solubility in ether, containing about 2 per 
 cent, of phosphorus in the condition of phosphoric 
 acid and combined with saline; 3. Cholesterine, 
 the same as that obtained from bile; and traces 
 of saline, margarine and fatty acids. 
 
 I assert that the brain element in all men is 
 made of the same material and is the instrument 
 through which the thought elements of nature 
 
352 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 manifest themselves. If all men's brains are 
 alike, why do they not all think alike? We might 
 answer that by asking another question. If all 
 magnetic batteries are alike why do they not 
 send all messages alike.'' The answer to both is: 
 Because the powers manifesting the different in- 
 telligences are different agencies. To be plainer, 
 the brain of man is a battery through which 
 thought fluids are transmitted in intelligent forms 
 to enable men to communicate with each other, 
 and that enables the race to take care of itself. 
 
 We have demonstrated that there is a universal 
 intelligence or universal thought element, as there 
 is universal electricity. The brain is the instru- 
 ment through which a degree of that intelligence 
 manifests itself. As that brain instrument is 
 trained and developed, so does that intelligence 
 or thought-force act through it. If one brain 
 is schooled to the digestion of criminal thoughts, 
 the man will think of criminal things and be a 
 criminal, for a man is as he thinks. If he keeps 
 his mind on ennobling thoughts, he will act nobly 
 and be a noble man. The brain instrument of 
 Jesus was receptive to the great thought waves 
 that pass from brain to brain, hence he could 
 read the thoughts of men as many people can do 
 in this age, and as has been done in all ages 
 and among all spiritually trained minds. 
 
 There are many ways of impressing the brain 
 instrument of man with living thoughts. In the 
 first place let us remember it is the spirit which 
 
JESUS SAW THEIR THOUGHTS 353 
 
 thinks and not the flesh. The spirit that is within 
 an individual may receive thoughts within and 
 of itself, for no man can think of a thing that 
 has no reality behind it, or behind the thought. 
 Or thoughts may be impressed through some or 
 all of the five senses, or by human agencies, or by 
 outside spiritual agencies, for men are always 
 in company. No man is ever alone. Silently 
 by his side is a walking spirit always keeping 
 vigil over him whether he is asleep or awake. 
 Those attending spirits are attracted to him by 
 his thoughts and the manner of his life, and they 
 to a great measure mold his conduct and give 
 cast to his character. Spirits talk with each 
 other and communicate intelligences. The spirit 
 in a man in this sphere of life is constantly giv- 
 ing out intelligences to spirits in the next con- 
 dition of life and spirits of the next condition 
 of life often impress the spirit in the body of 
 mortal man. Men should be as careful in select- 
 ing the spirits about them as they are in choos- 
 ing earth associates. 
 
 The Jews were governed, while they were as 
 one sect, by what their prophets and high priests 
 said; but in time, like all other people who are 
 fed on speculative religion, they divided them- 
 selves into sects. The rich and opulent Jews 
 did not believe in a future existence; they were 
 called Sadducees. The Pharisees, of which sect 
 Paul was a member, believed in a life after death. 
 While the Essenes, of which sect Jesus was a 
 
354 LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 member (if he was not actually enrolled as a 
 member, he taught the same doctrine and im- 
 pressed the same morality on the minds of his 
 followers), believed that the body is corrupt- 
 ible, and that the matter of which the body 
 is composed is not permanent but that the souls 
 of men are immortal and live forever. Josephus 
 was a Pharisee, which sect had all the intolerance 
 of bigotry, and those who did not believe as 
 they did, or as they would have them, were to 
 suffer eternal punishment. 
 
 The religion of olden times was built on the 
 theory that the chief duty of man was to serve 
 God; some in one way and some in another; if 
 the service was not of the prescribed form, the 
 delinquent incurred the personal displeasure of 
 God and dire consequences were the result; but 
 the later conception is that " he who serves man 
 the best serves God the best," and the highest 
 type of religion is that of humanity. It has 
 taken thousands of years to get the people out 
 of the idea of the punishments of God and into 
 the better conception of becoming like God in 
 kindness, goodness, pity, charity, love, and doing 
 no harm that will require a forgiveness. 
 
 Had the Master and the apostles at once ig- 
 nored all the fallacies of the people of their age, 
 their teachings would never have been heard of 
 by the world, and we would to-day be floundering 
 along in the streams of life as they did in the 
 Dark Ages, when the weak were the prey of the 
 
JESUS SAW THEIR THOUGHTS 355 
 
 strong, and death marked the man who had a 
 thought that reached beyond the Vatican of 
 Rome. 
 
 The advanced thinkers and the great reformers 
 of the world could only make gradual impressions 
 on the minds of the people, and many a stake has 
 illuminated the face of heaven with those martyrs 
 to human progress. We are not out from under 
 the cloud yet, but that time is coming, with each 
 one doing a little good; in time the sun of the 
 true and undefiled religion before God, which 
 consists in visiting the widow and orphan in 
 their afflictions, in ministering to the sick, bury- 
 ing the dead, and keeping one's self unspotted 
 from the world, will shine. It will not be long 
 until the Christian religion will be a religion of 
 common sense. When that day shall arrive the 
 masses will be enrolled on the list of Christian 
 followers. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 357 
 
APPENDIX 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT 
 
 Sorry is the task of anyone who attempts to 
 write the life of the Master, from the fact that it 
 is so shrouded in the mystery thrown around it by 
 the many, many books relating to him that 
 flooded the country at the time our present Can- 
 onical Gospels were being produced. For a can- 
 did mind it is difficult to say if there ever was a 
 true life of Jesus written. Let those who pick 
 up the New Testament with reverential care as the 
 only true revelation from God as expository of 
 his will concerning his Son, take into considera- 
 tion that our present New Testament writings 
 have been culled from time to time out of a mass 
 of Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses to 
 no less a number than one hundred and forty-six, 
 and that the culling was done by different per- 
 sons according to their conceptions of what was 
 revealed history and what was not, a part of 
 which was done hundreds of years after the com- 
 mencement of our era. 
 
 Do not condemn, but consider that those mul- 
 tifarious writings are the strongest proofs we 
 could have of the genuineness, sublimity and 
 grandeur of the mission of Jesus. The twenty- 
 seven books that we have of the New Testament 
 359 
 
360 APPENDIX 
 
 might be forgeries if standing alone and unsup- 
 ported, but it is incredible to suppose that one 
 hundred and forty-six different writers at differ- 
 ent places and at different times, would all com- 
 mit forgeries to build up a myth, or found a phil- 
 osophy that met with no other approval than that 
 of martyrdom. 
 
 While we may regret that bold and selfish men 
 have assumed to abridge, cull, and reject such 
 a large mass of books and writings relating 
 to Jesus, thereby denying us the right to read 
 and select for ourselves as we do concerning 
 other men and events, they, with all their cun- 
 ning and manipulation, have not been strong 
 enough to dim the lustre of Jesus. 
 
 I take the following list of the lost Apocryphal 
 books from " The New Testament Apocrypha," 
 by Rev. William Heber Wright, as an appendix 
 to the Bible, under the title of " Bible Readers' 
 Aids." He only claims this to be a partial list 
 of the Apocrypha of the New Testament. 
 
 1. History of Joseph The Carpenter. 
 
 2. Gospel of Nicodemus. 
 
 3. Gospel of Peter. This Gospel was dis- 
 covered in a tomb in Egypt in the year 1886 
 and published in 1902. 
 
 4. The Assumption of Mary. 
 
 5. Correspondence between Abgar, King of 
 Edessa, and Jesus. 
 
 6. The Story of Veronica. 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 361 
 
 7. The Giving up of Pilate. 
 
 8. The Death of Pilate. 
 
 9. The Narrative of Joseph of Arimathea. 
 
 10. The Saviour's Revenge. 
 
 11. Clement of Alexandria, in the third cen- 
 tury, and other writers, have preserved frag- 
 ments of the so-called Apocalypse of Peter. 
 
 12. The Apocalypse of Paul is a description 
 of what that apostle saw and heard when caught 
 up into the third heaven. (II Cor. 12.) 
 
 13. Among the epistolary writings is the 
 Epistle of Barnabas. The original Greek text 
 forms a portion of that celebrated Sinattic MS. 
 discovered by Tichendorf in 1859. 
 
 14. The Epistle of Clement. The writer in 
 this epistle incidentally alludes to the martyrdom 
 of Paul at Rome and of Peter, but does not give 
 the place of Peter's execution. 
 
 15. There was also a second epistle of Cle- 
 ment, or at least an epistle attributed to him. 
 
 16. An epistle under the title of " Shepherd of 
 Harmas." 
 
 17. The Didache of the twelve Apostles. 
 
 The following list of lost Apocryphal books 
 I take from " The Apocryphal Books of the 
 New Testament " of 1901. 
 
 A 
 
 18. The Acts of Andrew. Euseb. Hist. 
 Eccl. I. 3 c. 25. Philastr. Hares. 87. Epl- 
 phan. Hceres. 47 § 1. Hceres. 61 § I. et Hceres. 
 
362 APPENDIX 
 
 63, § 2. Gelas, in Decret. apud. Concil. Semct. 
 torn. 4. p. 1260. 
 
 19—20. Books under the name of Andrew. 
 August, contr. Adversar. Leg. et I. c. 20. et 
 Innocent I. Epis, 3 ad Exuper. Tholos. Episc. 
 § 7. 
 
 21. The Gospel of Andrew. Gelas. in De- 
 cret. 
 
 22. A Gospel under the name of Apelles. 
 Hieron. Pros fat. in Comment, in Matt. 
 
 23. The Gospel according to the Twelve 
 Apostles. Origen. Homil. in Luc. i. 1. Ambros. 
 Comment, in Luc. i. 1. et Hieron. Prosfat. in Com- 
 ment, in Matt. 
 
 B 
 
 24. The Gospel of Barnabas. Gelas. in De- 
 cret. 
 
 25. The Writings of Bartholomew the 
 Apostle. Dionys. Areopagit. de Theol. Myst. 
 c. 1. 
 
 26. The Gospel of Bartholomew. Hieron. 
 Catul. Script. Eccles. in Pantoen. et Prcefat. in 
 Comm. in Matt. Gelas. in Decret. 
 
 27. The Gospel of Basilides. Orig. in Luc. 
 i. 1. Ambros. in Lu£. i. 1. Hieron. Prcefat. in 
 Comm. in Matt. 
 
 C 
 
 28. The Gospel of Cerinthus. Epiphan. 
 Hares. 51. § 7. 
 
 29. The Revelation of Cerinthus. Caias 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 363 
 
 Fresh. Rom. lib. Disput, apitd. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 
 1. 3. c. 28. 
 
 30. An Epistle of Christ to Peter and Paul. 
 August, de Consens. Evang. 1, 1. c. 9. 19. 
 
 31. Some other Books under the name of 
 Christ. Ibid, c, 3. 
 
 32. An Epistle of Christ, produced by the 
 Manichees. August, contr. Faust, 1, 28. c. 4. 
 
 33. A Hymn, which Christ taught his dis- 
 ciples. Epis. ad Ceret. Episc, 
 
 E 
 
 34. The Gospel according to the Egyptians. 
 Clem. Alex. Strom. 1. 3. p. 452, 465. Origen. 
 in Luc. il I. Hieron. Prcef. in Comm. in Matt. 
 Epiphan. Hoeres. 62 § 2. 
 
 35. The Acts of the Apostles, made use of 
 by the Ebionites. Epiphan. Hceres. 30. § 16. 
 
 36. The Gospel of the Ebionites. Ephan. 
 Hceres. 30. § 13. 
 
 37. The Gospel of the Encratites. Epi- 
 phan. Hceres. 46. 1. 
 
 38. The Gospel of Eve. Epipha/n. Hceres. 
 26 § 2. 
 
 H 
 
 39. The Gospel according to the Hebrews. 
 Hegesipp. lib. Comment, apud Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 
 1. c. 22. Clem. Alex. Strom. 1. 2. p. 380. 
 Origen. Tract. 8. in Matt. xix. 19. et 1. 2, Joan. 
 p. 58. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 1. 3. c. 25, 27, et 39. 
 Jerome in many places, as above. 
 
364 APPENDIX 
 
 40. The Book of the Helkesaites. Euseh. 
 Hist. Eccl. 1. 6. c. 38. 
 
 41. The false Gospels of Hesychius. Hieron. 
 Prcefat. in Evang. ad Damas. Gelas. in Decret. 
 
 42. The Book of James. Origen. Comm. in 
 Matt. xiii. 55, 56. 
 
 43. Books forged and published under the 
 name of James. Epiphan. Hceres. 30. § 23. 
 Innocent I. Epist. 3. ad Exuper. Tholos. Episc. 
 § 7. 
 
 44. The Acts of John. Euseh. Hist. Eccl. 
 1. 3. c. 25. Athanas. in Synops. § 76. Philastr. 
 Hceres. 87. Epiphan. Hceres. 47. § 1. August, 
 contr. Advers. Leg. 1. 1. c. 20. 
 
 45-46. Books under the name of John. 
 Epiphan. Hceres. 30. § 23. et Innocent I. ibid. 
 
 47. A Gospel under the name of Jude. Epi- 
 phan. Hceres. 38. § 1. 
 
 48. A Gospel under the name of Judas Isca- 
 RioT. Iren. advers. Hceres. 1. 1. c. 35. 
 
 49. The Acts of the Apostles by Leucius. 
 August, lib. de Fide contr. Manich. c. 38. 
 
 50. The Acts of the Apostles by Lentitus. 
 August, de Act. cum Fcelic. Manich. 1. 2. c. 6. 
 
 51. The Books of Lentitus. Gelas. in De- 
 cret. 
 
 52. The Acts under the Apostles' name by 
 Leontius. August, de Fide contr. Manich. c. 5. 
 
 53. The Acts of the Apostles by Leuthon. 
 Hieron. Epist. ad Chromat. et Heliodor. 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 365 
 
 54). The false Gospels, published by Lucianus. 
 Hieron. Proefat. in Evang. ad Damas. 
 
 M 
 
 55. The Acts of the Apostles used by the 
 Manichees. August, lib. cont. Adimant Mun- 
 ich, c. 17. 
 
 56. The Gospel of Marcion. Tertull. adv. 
 Marcion. lib. 4. c. 2. et 4. Ephiphan. Hceres. 42 
 Prcem. 
 
 57. Books under the name of Matthew. 
 EpipTian. Hceres. 30. § 23. 
 
 58. The Gospel of Matthias. Orig. Comm. 
 in Luc. i. 1. Euseh. Hist. Eccl. 1. 3. c. 25. Am- 
 hros. in Luc. i. 1. Hieron. Proefat. in Comment 
 in Matt. 
 
 59. The Traditions of Matthias. Clem. 
 Alex. Strom. 1. 2. p. 380. 1. 3. p. 436. et 1. 7. p. 
 748. 
 
 60. A Book under the name of Matthias. 
 Innocent 7. ibid. 
 
 61. The Gospel of Merinthus. Epiphan. 
 Hares. 51. § 7. 
 
 N 
 
 62. The Gospel according to the Nazarenes. 
 See above concerning the Gospel according to the 
 Hebrews. 
 
 P 
 
 63. The Acts, of Paul and Thecla. Tertull. 
 de Baptism, c. 17. Hieron. Catal. Script. Eccl. 
 in Luc. Gelas. in Decret. 
 
366 APPENDIX 
 
 64. The Acts of Paul. Orig. de Princip. 1. 
 1. c. 2. et 1. 21. in Joan. torn. 2. p. 298. Euseb. 
 Hist. Eccl. 1. 3. c. 3. et 25. Philastr. Hoeres. 87. 
 
 65. The Preaching of Paul (and Peter). 
 Lactant de Ver. Sap. 1. 4. c. 21. Script, anonym, 
 ad calcem 0pp. Cypr., and, according to some, 
 Clem. Alex. Strom. 1, 6. p. 636. 
 
 66. A Book under the name of Paul. Cy- 
 prian. Epist. 27. 
 
 67. The Revelation of Pauh Epiphan. 
 Hoeres. 38. § 2. August. Tract. 98. in Joann. in 
 fin. Gelas. in Decret. 
 
 68. The Gospel of Perfection. Epiphan. 
 Hceres. 26. § 2. 
 
 69. The Acts of Peter. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 
 1. 3. c. 3. Athanas, vn Synops. S. Scriptur. 
 § 75. Philastr. Hceres. 27. Hieron. catal. Script. 
 Eccl. in Petr. Epiphan. Hceres. 30. § 15. 
 
 70. The Doctrine of Peter. Orig. Proem, in 
 lib. de Princip. 
 
 71. The Gospel of Peter. Scrip, lib. de 
 Evang. Petri., apud. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 1. 6. c. 
 13. TertuU. adv. Marc. 1. 4. c, 5. Orig. Com- 
 ment, in Matt. xiii. 55, 56, tom. i. p. 223. 
 Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 1. 3. c. 3. et 25. Hieron. Catal. 
 Script. Eccles. in Petr. 
 
 72. The judgment of Peter. Ruffin. Ex- 
 posit, in Symbol. Apostol. § 36. Hieron. Catal. 
 Script. Eccles. in Petr. 
 
 73. The Preaching of Peter. Heracl. apud. 
 Orig. 1. 14. in Joan. Clem. Alex. Strom. 1. 1. p. 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 367 
 
 357, 1. 2. p. 390. 1. 6. p. 635, 636, et 678. 
 Theodot. Byzant. in Excerpt, p. 899. ad cede. 
 0pp. Clem. Alex. Lactant. de Ver. Sap. 1. 4. c. 21. 
 Euseb. Hist. Eccles. 1. 3. c. 3. et Hieron. Catal. 
 Script. Eccl. in Petr. 
 
 74. The Revelation of Peter. Clem. Alex, 
 lib. Hypotypos, apud. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 1. 6. c. 
 14. Theodot. Byzant. in Excerpt, p. 806, 807. 
 ad. calc. 0pp. Clem. Alex. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 1. 
 3. c. 3. et 25. Hieron Catal. Script. Eccl. in 
 Petr. 
 
 75. Books under the name of Peter. Irmo- 
 cent. I. Epist. 3 ad Exuper. Tholos. Epist. § 7. 
 
 76. The Acts of Philip. Gelas. in Decret. 
 
 77. The Gospel of Philip. Epiphan. Hceres. 
 26. § 13. 
 
 s 
 
 78. The Gospel of Scythianus. Cyrill. 
 Catech. v. 
 
 1. § 22. et Epiphan. Hceres. 66. § 2. 
 
 79. The Acts of the Apostles by Selsucus. 
 Hieron. Epist. ad. Chromat. et Heliodor. 
 
 80. The Revelation of Stephen. Gelas. in 
 Decret. 
 
 T 
 
 81. The Gospel of Titan. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 
 1. 4. c. 29. 
 
 82. The Gospel of Thaddaeus. Galas, i/n 
 Decret. 
 
 83. The Catholic Epistle of Themison the 
 
368 APPENDIX 
 
 Montanist. Apollon. lib. cont. Cataphryg. 
 apud Euseh. Hist. Eccl. 1. 5. c. 18. 
 
 84. The Acts of Thomas. Epiphan. Hoeras. 
 47. § 1. et 61. § 1. 
 
 85. Athanas. in Synops. S. Script. § 76. et 
 Galas, in Decret. 
 
 86. The Gospel of Thomas. Orig. in Luc. i. 
 1. Euseh. Hist. Eccl. 1. c. 3. 25. Cyrill. Catech. 
 IV. § 36. et Catech. VI. § 31. Ambros. in Luc. 
 § i. 1. Athan. in Synops. S. Script. § 76. 
 Hieron. Prof, in Comment, in Mattli. Gelas. in 
 Decret. 
 
 87. 88, 89, 90. Books under the name of 
 Thomas. Innocent 1. Epist. 3. ad Exuper. 
 Tholes. Episc. § 7. 
 
 91. The Gospel of Truth made use of by the 
 Valentinians. Iren. adv. Hoeres. 1. 3. c. 11. 
 
 V 
 
 92. The Gospel of Valentinus. Tertull. de 
 Proescript. adv. Hoerets. c. 49. 
 
 From wrecks of the despoilers, who deemed it 
 more expedient to destroy evidence which existed 
 in the now lost writings concerning Jesus, than 
 to tolerate their existence, we have twenty-three 
 books, in the existing Apocrypha, as follows: 
 
 CHAPTERS. 
 
 Mary 8 
 
 Protevangelion 16 
 
 I. Infancy 22 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 369 
 
 CHAPTERS. 
 
 II. Infancy 4 
 
 Christ and Abgarus 22 
 
 The Apostles' Creed 1 
 
 Laoniceans 1 
 
 Paul and Seneca l* 
 
 Paul and Thecla 12 
 
 I. Corinthians 23 
 
 II. Corinthians 4 
 
 Barnabas 15 
 
 Ephesians 4 
 
 Magnesians 4 
 
 Trallians 4 
 
 Romans 3 
 
 Philadelphians S 
 
 Smyrnaeans 3 
 
 Polycarp 3 
 
 Philippians 4 
 
 I. Hermas — Vision 4 
 
 II. Hermas — Commands 12 
 
 III. Hermas Similitudes 10 
 
 Of those books Dr. Talmage wrote : " Christ 
 was the joyous boy of the fields. We are not 
 permitted to think that the shadows of Calvary 
 darkened His pathway as a youth, and the Apoc- 
 ryphal Books of the New Testament show a great 
 deal of the early life of Christ not to be found 
 in the four Evangelists." 
 
 Long was the period of formation of the pres- 
 ent New Testament books. It took almost six 
 hundred years for the cullers of the many books 
 
370 APPENDIX 
 
 and writings concerning the life, teachings, na- 
 ture, and philosophy of Jesus to settle down on 
 what should be considered the standard, or ca- 
 nonical, books of the New Testament. The Rev. 
 A. Plummer, D.D., Master of University Col- 
 lege, Durham, has. appended to the Bible the 
 result of his learning on the " Canon of The New 
 Testament," in which he says, in part : " The 
 early history of the canon, both of the Old Testa- 
 ment and the New Testament, is involved in ob- 
 scurity. We know but very little about the way 
 in which the books of the New Testament were 
 gradually collected into one volume. . . . St. 
 Paul knows nothing of written Gospels, but ap- 
 peals to tradition. (I. Cor. xv. 3.) Barnabas 
 (A. D. 70-100) is the first to quote from the 
 Gospels, with the formula, * It is written.' Pa- 
 pias (A. D. 130) is the first to speak of ' books ' 
 from which the teachings of the Lord may be 
 known. In Justin Martyr (140-160) the 
 ' Memoirs of the Apostles ' are primitive his- 
 torical documents . . . which were read in 
 the Sunday services of the church. . . . Justin 
 shows no knowledge of a canon even of the Gos- 
 pels." 
 
 The quotations which Justin made in many in- 
 stances differ from the present Gospels. About 
 this time (A. D. 70-100), Marcion formed a 
 canon consisting of the Gospels of St. Luke, 
 which were much abbreviated from what they, 
 are now, and ten epistles of Paul. 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 371 
 
 "Near the end to the close of the second cen- 
 tury," says Mr. Plummer, " the evidence becomes 
 full, and the gradual formation of the canon is a 
 process which is approaching completion." Dur- 
 ing the first centuries of the Christian era, the 
 churches were not all in accord as to the genuine- 
 ness of some of the books then used by some and 
 rejected by others. " It must be carefully noted 
 that they had not quite the same New Testament 
 that we have," Mr. Plummer continues, " and 
 that different parts of Christendom at that period 
 had not quite the same New Testament that other 
 parts had. Not only did some churches accept 
 as authoritative certain books of our New Testa- 
 ment which other churches rejected or did not 
 know, although they were afterwards accepted by 
 all ; but some churches accepted a few books, which 
 two hundred years later were rejected by all. This 
 want of unanimity respecting a portion of the 
 books to be admitted to the New Testament is an 
 unquestionable fact in the history of primitive 
 Christianity, and at first sight we are inclined 
 to lament it. 
 
 " Before the close of the sixth century, all 
 questions respecting any of the present books 
 had ceased and doubts were not revived until the 
 Reformation. The books which were for a time 
 regarded in some parts of Christendom as inspired, 
 and treated as Scripture by being read in public 
 worship and quoted as of authority, were prin- 
 cipally the following: The Epistle of Barnabas, 
 
372 APPENDIX 
 
 The Epistle of Clement (with which an ancient 
 homily became associated under the erroneous 
 title of the Second Epistle of Clement), and the 
 Shepherd of Hermas, with perhaps the Gospel 
 according to the Hebrews and the Revelation of 
 Peter." 
 
 Towards the end of the fourth century (A. D. 
 393), a council was held at Hippo and another 
 at Carthage (A. D. 397), which collected the 
 books of the New Testament and published a list 
 which they deemed to be canonical. This hst 
 was in the next century generally accepted, and 
 those books were the same that we have now. 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON 
 
 By the canon of Scriptures is meant the books 
 of the Bible as now accepted. There is the Old 
 Testament canon and the New Testament canon. 
 When the books of the New Testament were 
 passed on and rendered authoritative among all 
 the churches is a question not fully settled. The 
 New Testament was a long while in process of 
 formation, and when we go back into the days 
 of early Christianity and acquaint ourselves with 
 the perplexities that the promulgators of the new 
 religion had to contend with as to what should 
 be their written guides, we stand appalled and 
 dumfounded. 
 
 We want to think and feel that our books of 
 the New Testament are just what they were 
 when coined in the minds of their authors, and that 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 375 
 
 when we open the New Testament we are living 
 in the thoughts of the apostles and evangelists 
 of old, who had no contending rivalries in the 
 field of sacred writers ; but facts to the contrary 
 are too stubborn to allow us the felicity of such 
 thoughts and we must deal with cold truths as 
 we find them. 
 
 When either of the four Gospels was given to 
 the world, we know not ; it is certain that Paul 
 knew nothing of such books during his ministry. 
 The first intimation we have of any kind of writ- 
 ten documents or books came from Barnabas, who 
 was a cousin of St. Mark and a co-worker with 
 Paul, and who wrote some time between the years 
 A. D. 70 and 100. He casually says, " It is 
 written." What writing he refers to we cannot 
 tell. Papias, one of the earliest, if not the very 
 earliest, of church writers (A. D. 150), made use 
 of the word " books." What books we know not. 
 
 In no case is the title, " according to Matthew," 
 " Mark," " Luke," " John," original. When or 
 by whom the titles of the four gospels were placed 
 at the head, as names of the respective books, we 
 do not know. Neither do we know who wrote 
 either of the Gospels, yet the general opinion is 
 that the names of the authors are rightly placed 
 at the head of the books. It is quite evident, 
 however, from our sense of discrimination that 
 either Matthew and Luke copied Mark's writings, 
 or that Mark plagiarized from them, or that 
 the three copied from some book unknown to us, 
 
374. APPENDIX 
 
 as they are alike in too many instances for all 
 of them to be original. 
 
 Out of the twenty-seven books which form our 
 New Testament there were twenty which were 
 generally accepted by all of the churches, but 
 the remaining seven were held in critical suspense 
 for a long time. The four Gospels, Acts, the 
 thirteen epistles of Paul, with I. John and I. Peter 
 were universally accepted. The epistles of Paul 
 were collected into one volume at an early date, 
 and this collection was commonly called " the 
 Apostle " ; likewise the four Gospels were called 
 " the Gospel," and with these two collections the 
 Acts, I. Peter and I. John were soon associated. 
 The book of Hebrews, James, II. Peter, II. and 
 III. John, Jude, and Revelations were long held 
 in abeyance and doubt. In those centuries there 
 were many spurious gospels, and to cull the gen- 
 uine from the counterfeits was a long and tedious 
 task. 
 
 The learned Dr. Lardner is constrained to ad- 
 mit that " even as late as the middle of the six- 
 teenth century, the canon of the New Testament 
 had not been settled by any authority that was 
 decisive and universally acknowledged; but Chris- 
 tian people were at liberty to judge for themselves 
 concerning the geniuneness of writings proposed 
 to them as apostolical, and to determine accord- 
 ing to evidence." Vol. iii. pages 54-56; Tay- 
 lor's Diegesis 108. 
 
 Is Jesus to blame for the many opinions among 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 375 
 
 theologians of all ages as to what books should 
 be taken as canonical, or which ones were unau- 
 thentic? Should a disagreement on these points 
 disparage the true mission of Jesus? The facts 
 that Jesus taught were fundamental factors of 
 life, for the betterment of humanity, and the 
 squabblings have always been for loaves and fishes 
 and for personal ends ; it is no wonder the people 
 doubt. But yet the facts are alive, and the smiles 
 of the Master are as pure and inviting beyond 
 and above the clouds of doubt as they were when 
 the young Galilean proclaimed that the "Ax 
 is laid unto the root of the trees ; therefore every 
 tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn 
 down and cast into the fire." (Matt. iii. 10.) 
 All of the contentions are being eliminated, the 
 absurdities thrown off, and the crucial truth of 
 life eternal is awakening the minds of the masses 
 with renewed love for the one who died that we 
 might know the truth which no power can destroy. 
 Does the sun shine any less brightly because of 
 the Ptolemaic system of the universe, and the 
 believers of the writers of the Old Testament 
 that it revolved around the earth instead of the 
 earth around the sun? Does it impede the flow 
 of thought in the brain because the old prophets 
 believed that the heart was the seat of thought? 
 Did not the blood circulate through the system 
 before the discovery of Harvey? Was not the 
 earth round before Magellan made his great 
 voyage? Will not a rose smell just as sweet by 
 
376 APPENDIX 
 
 " any other name ?" Can a lie destroy a fact ? 
 Can envious, jealous bigots kill the flow of human 
 sympathy and love by dissensions among them- 
 selves and their fabrications for selfish purposes? 
 Suppose there were a thousand books instead of 
 one hundred and forty-six written about Jesus, 
 would the passage to the other condition of life 
 be closed? Would his tears of sympathy for the 
 poor and afflicted bear no fruit of love, if some 
 one does say that life is a failure and Jesus a 
 myth? The diamond shows not its full brilliancy 
 until the outer rubbish is cleaned away. The 
 night of darkness cannot obscure the bloom of 
 day, nor the world of guilt escape the feast of 
 sorrow. 
 
 Let us quit caviling about what other people 
 have done, taught, or believed, and improve the 
 present hour, live for the betterment of ourselves 
 and the race, wrong no man, cultivate the princi- 
 ples of friendship, soothe the heart of sorrow, re- 
 lieve distress, and welcome the future with clean 
 hands. 
 
 WAS IT MATTHEW OR LEVI? 
 
 Our reverence for sacred authority can only 
 be canonized into the heart with a fixedness that 
 lives with us and becomes a part of our lives, — 
 when we say to intelligent investigation, " stop 
 before you commence to doubt." 
 
 Was it Matthew or was it Levi that Jesus 
 called from the receipt of custom? We are told 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 377 
 
 in Matthew : " And as Jesus passed from thence, 
 he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the 
 receipt of custom ; and he saith unto him, Follow 
 me; and he rose up and followed him." (Matt, 
 ix. 9.) Mark says it was Levi, in these words: 
 *• And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of 
 Alphaeus sitting at the receipt of custom, and he 
 said unto him. Follow me ; and he rose up and fol- 
 lowed him." (Mark ii. 14.) 
 
 Luke uses this language: "And after these 
 things he went forth, and saw a publican named 
 Levi sitting at the receipt of custom ; and he said 
 unto him, Follow me; and he left all, rose up, 
 and followed him." (Luke v. 27.) On which 
 occasion Levi made a great feast and invited many 
 guests ; among them were Pharisees, apostles, and 
 Jesus. 
 
 Do those discriminations disparage the estima- 
 tion we should have of the Master? No ; but it 
 does lessen our esteem for the sacredness of the 
 books as being the product of inspiration. 
 
 THE BOOK OF MATTHEW 
 
 The first three books of the Gospels are called 
 synoptic, because they are considered a kind of 
 compendium of the books that preceded them. 
 The heading of the book of Matthew shows that 
 the man did not write the book that is headed 
 by his name. The title is, " The Gospel Accord- 
 ing to Saint Matthew" ; that is, the gospel as it 
 was' probably learned from the preaching of 
 
378 APPENDIX 
 
 Matthew. Had it been written by Matthew the 
 language would have been different. If we con- 
 cede that Matthew wrote that Gospel the proper 
 analysis of the language would be, the "gospel 
 according to Matthew written by Matthew," 
 which would seem a little awkward, at least. 
 
 But that makes no difference; the book is here 
 for what it is worth, that is, we must value it 
 for what it contains and profit by all that is 
 good therein. If there is anything in it we do not 
 understand, or cannot explain, let it go, as we do 
 other things we cannot subscribe to, and profit 
 by the sunshine of truth that sparkles all through 
 its pages. 
 
 The book of Matthew was written for the 
 instruction and guidance of the Christian Jews, 
 as is affirmed by Irenaeus, who wrote A. D. 180. 
 His opinion is abundantly confirmed by the in- 
 ternal evidence of the Gospel itself. The Jews 
 were sticklers for tradition, the Mosaic law, the 
 prophets, and ancient beliefs. They looked for a 
 Messiah, in the line of David, to come to their 
 delivery. So Matthew starts out with a genealogy 
 of Jesus, given in evidence that Jesus was the 
 promised Messiah, and brings other evidence to 
 show that Jesus was the fulfillment of the many 
 prophesies of the Old Testament. 
 
 To fasten the point in their minds that Jesus 
 was the promised Messiah, and that the Jews were 
 his particular and chosen people, he makes Jesus 
 say in his instructions to his disciples that they 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 379 
 
 *' go not in the way of the Gentiles and into the 
 city of the Samaritans enter ye not ; but go rather 
 to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." (Matt. 
 X. 5, 6.) The Sermon on the Mount abounds jn 
 references to the Mosaic law. In short, the whole 
 of the Gospel is Hebraic, the intention of which 
 was to gently lead the Jews out of the old and 
 into the new. Matthew was written for a special 
 purpose, but the Jews were too much wedded 
 to their gods to espouse a new philosophy or 
 embrace a new religion. 
 
 THE BOOK OF MARK 
 
 The book of Mark comes to us better identified 
 as to authorship than does that of Matthew. 
 The evangelist's full name was John Mark. His 
 conversion to Christianity was procured, prob- 
 ably, through Peter, who was a great friend of 
 IMark's mother, Mary, at whose house the apostles 
 often gathered for consultation and sometimes 
 to avoid capture by their enemies. When Mark 
 started out in the service of the Master he became 
 acquainted with Paul, and they worked together 
 for awhile ; but when the plan was laid for Paul 
 and Barnabas to go into the cities they had 
 visited before, Barnabas wanted Mark to accom- 
 pany them, to which Paul objected. This cre- 
 ated an estrangement between them, and the result 
 was that Paul and Silas went through Syria and 
 Cilicia while Barnabas and IMark went to Cyprus. 
 But after the lapse of eight or nine years they 
 
380 APPENDIX 
 
 were found again in harmony and working to- 
 gether. 
 
 The Gospel according to Saint Mark was ob- 
 tained, doubtless, from Peter. Peter was a favor- 
 ite apostle of the Master, although he denied him 
 when the extreme moment came ; yet he sat afar 
 off and witnessed his crucifixion and afterwards 
 preached his Gospel, for which he, too, suffered 
 death. Mark was a learned man, while Peter 
 was uneducated and therefore needed an amanu- 
 ensis ; and it is a favorite opinion among scholars 
 that Mark obtained his information principally 
 from Peter for his book, which was, no doubt, 
 the first of the four Gospels written. 
 
 One remarkable feature about the book of 
 INIark is that there are only about twenty-four 
 verses in his whole Gospel that are not contained 
 in INIatthew, or in Luke, or in both. In the nar- 
 ration of the passion it is certain that either 
 Matthew copied from Mark, or Mark from Mat- 
 thew. Passing that by, we do know, from our 
 sense of discrimination, that either INIatthew and 
 Luke copied from Mark, or that Mark plagiarized 
 from them, or that the three copied from some 
 other book now unknown to us. While some of 
 the early fathers of the church were of the opinion 
 that Mark wrote his gospel at Alexandria, the 
 riper opinion is that it was written at Rome. It 
 is regrettable that so much of the New Testament 
 is shrouded in mystery, considering the importance 
 of the subject involved. 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 381 
 
 The book of Mark was written to reconcile 
 the Romans and Gentiles to the new faith. So 
 cautious was Mark on this point, and so de- 
 sirous was he not to arouse the prejudices of 
 the Romans anew against the religion of the 
 Jews, for fear of the effects on the philosophy 
 he was trying to establish, that he quotes only 
 two passages from the Old Testament (Mark 
 i. 2, 3). He makes no reference to the Mosaic 
 law, gives no genealogy of Jesus, and simply 
 presents him as a spiritual conqueror, doing won- 
 ders in physical manifestations, showing spirit 
 powers and spirit return, demonstrating the fu- 
 tility of old dogmas by subjecting his own life 
 to immolation on the cross for others. 
 
 The vividness of the pictures drawn by Mark 
 of the new dispensation indicates most strongly 
 that he drew his information of the works of the 
 Master from an eyewitness, and so adroitly 
 does he present them to the world that it must 
 be conceded that he was a devout believer him- 
 self, and in presenting the facts contained in his 
 book, he desired to retain the good opinion of 
 those he wished to reach. While the manner of 
 presentation in many instances is almost crude, 
 yet there is a strength of expression that carries 
 conviction. That strength of presentation shows 
 him to have been an original thinker of great 
 ability. 
 
 Biblical scholars who have made a study of 
 the Gospels for the sole purpose of ascertaining 
 
382 APPENDIX 
 
 all facts surrounding them, tell us that the last 
 twelve verses of the Gospel of Mark were not 
 written by him, that he left his Gospel incomplete, 
 and some unknown person added those twelve last 
 verses to the last chapter. Those twelve verses 
 have been the source of much criticism, and have 
 given rise to regrets that they had ever been 
 attached as the concluding paragraphs to his 
 Gospel. But few have ever attested their belief 
 in Mark by drinking " a deadly thing," lest it 
 might harm them, notwithstanding Mark is made 
 to say, "it shall not hurt them." 
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE 
 
 Saint Luke is accredited with the authorship 
 of the third Gospel and also of The Acts of The 
 Apostles. He was a Jew, born at Antioch, the 
 metropolis of Syria. That city was celebrated 
 for its schools and facilities for education. It 
 was the opinion of some of the ancient fathers 
 of the church that he was a manumitted slave, 
 a position that would seem antagonistic to a high 
 state of learning; but that kind of slavery was 
 not like our African slavery, where education was 
 prohibited as a dangerous thing to the best inter- 
 ests of ownership in chattel property. 
 
 Luke was a physician by profession, and it is 
 thought that he was converted to Christianity by 
 the preaching of Paul, from which preaching he 
 obtained much of the material for his Gospel 
 and the Acts ; and by his association with Paul 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 383 
 
 he became familiar with the leading characters of 
 the apostles and early proselytes and believers. 
 
 He was an honest expounder of the principles 
 of the new religion, and in his writings he gave 
 his best opinions and obtained facts concern- 
 ing the things of which he wrote. While we 
 are led to think, from the consensus of critics, 
 that the three Synoptic Gospels were written 
 by different persons, at different times and places, 
 without any concurrence of design, yet there are 
 internal evidences that each part, or book, was 
 made to serve and complete a system for general 
 use. 
 
 The book of Matthew was written to fit the 
 Jewish idea of the promised Messiah, and to 
 mellow the old Mosaic conception into a sweeter 
 Gospel of peace and love. Mark wrote for the 
 Romans and to soothe their asperities against 
 the presentation of religious thought different 
 from their own, when they saw all that was neces- 
 sary in the Stoic philosophy. Luke addressed 
 his Gospel to the consideration of the Gentiles 
 generally. 
 
 Thus by the three all the prejudices and reason- 
 able objections of the various classes with dif- 
 ferent views on religion might be met. The plan 
 of salvation, as laid down in the Gospels, indicates 
 a system of thought and concurrence of design 
 that seem more than mere coincidence. Let us 
 keep in mind that that system of philosophy which 
 is called religion was not founded altogether for 
 
384 APPENDIX 
 
 the glory of God and the souls of men, but was 
 originally a great political and business organiza- 
 tion as well. It is not so much a political factor 
 now as formerly, yet it is a mammoth business 
 concern, the corner-stone of which is cemented 
 in the credulity of the masses. 
 
 The leading principles of the three Synoptic 
 Gospels were the concentration of power in the 
 hands of the few, the head of whom was the 
 pope of Rome. For seventeen hundred years 
 European crowned heads depended upon the will 
 of the pope for the security of their positions, 
 and it would be so now were not his powers 
 weakened by divisions in religious sentiment. 
 Our Catholic friends place great stress on that 
 passage in which Jesus said to Peter, "And I 
 say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon 
 this rock I will build my church ; and the gates 
 of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matt. 
 xvi. 18.) To build that church were the three 
 Synoptic Gospels written. 
 
 Matthew tickled the vanity of the Jews by pre- 
 tending to them that they were God's chosen 
 people, and that Jesus regarded them as his 
 especial favorites. Luke addressed himself more 
 to the practical understanding of the Gentiles, 
 to whom he went with his especial gospel. He 
 did not claim an estrangement from the general 
 philosophies of the day, but a kind of better 
 graft on the stem of the old stock of religion, 
 from which Jesus was presented as a descendant 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 385 
 
 direct from God through the channel of Adam. 
 He did not claim to the Gentiles that he obtained 
 the material out of which he wrote his Gospel 
 from any source other than from hearsay and 
 rumor. On this subject he sa3^s, " For as much 
 as many have taken it in hand to set forth in 
 order a declaration of those things which are 
 most surely believed among us, even as they deliv- 
 ered them unto us, which from the beginning 
 were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it 
 seems good to me also, having had perfect under- 
 standing of all things from the very first, to 
 write to thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, 
 that thou mightest know the certainty of these 
 things wherein thou hast been instructed." (Luke 
 i. 1.) 
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAINT JOHN 
 
 Let us be candid and freely admit that we 
 neither know when, nor by whom, the fourth 
 Gospel was written. The generally accepted 
 opinion is that it was written some time between 
 the years A. D. 80 and 95 ; but that is mere con- 
 jecture. If it was as late as A. D. 95, John 
 must have been nearly one hundred years old when 
 he wrote it. The weight of authority is that 
 John was as old as, if not older than, Jesus, 
 and Jesus was four years older than the accepted 
 era makes him. We infer that John was as 
 old as, if not older than, Jesus from the fact that 
 he must have been a man and acquired a home be- 
 
386 APPENDIX 
 
 fore he was called as a disciple. After he became 
 a disciple he had no time to accumulate property. 
 
 When Jesus was on the cross, he consigned 
 the keeping of his mother to John, and she lived 
 with him at Jerusalem during the remainder of 
 her life. If John was of the same age as Jesus, 
 or older, he was ninet3^-nine years old at the time 
 the fourth Gospel was written, if it was written 
 in the year 95. The weight of evidence is, how- 
 ever, that the Gospel according to John was not 
 known at the time Justin ^lartyr wrote his Apol- 
 og}'^, in A. D. 140 ; it was first alluded to by 
 Theophilus and Irenaeus not earlier than A. D. 
 180. It was an anonymous book; at least so 
 secretly was the authorship kept that none of the 
 early fathers knew its name, and it was along 
 in the centuries of the Christian era before it was 
 named, and then the name was placed at the head 
 of the book without certain proof as to the 
 authorship and by men whose names were kept 
 from the public, as well as the time of the trans- 
 action. 
 
 This great secrecy might lead a skeptical mind 
 to infer that the whole thing was gotten up by 
 wily monks to conserve their own interests at a 
 time when It was safer to conceal the name of the 
 true author than to give it publicity ; there was 
 no genuine reason for John, if he was the author, 
 to keep his name in the dark, for the book itself 
 is certainly a literary production that anyone 
 might well be proud of. 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 387 
 
 During the first and second centuries after 
 Jesus, the Christian countries where the religion 
 of Christ was being planted were flooded with 
 gospels, books, epistles, and writings concerning 
 the life, mission, and religion of Jesus, all of 
 which claimed to be genuine, and of the many 
 translations none, not even those we have, are 
 what they were when first presented to the world. 
 There have been so many translations, so many 
 versions, and so many changes, that no one can 
 tell what the originals were. 
 
 We have no right, under the laws of God or 
 man, to stultify ourselves, or hold up a theory 
 or dogma that our senses revolt at. One of the 
 revolting features is the assertion that the whole 
 of the Scripture canon comes to us through the 
 inspiration of God. The Scriptures do not claim 
 any such thing, and why should we, in the face 
 of some of their extravagance, attempt to do 
 so.'' Here is an example from John. In speak- 
 ing of that wonderful draught of fishes and the 
 final ascension of Jesus, the writer of the Gospel 
 says : " This is the disciple which testified of these 
 things, and wrote these things ; and we know 
 that his testimony is true, and there are also many 
 other things which Jesus did, the which, if they 
 should be written, every one, I suppose that even 
 the world itself could not contain the books that 
 should be written." John xxi. 24, 25. Adam 
 Clark, in his commentaries on the Bible, says, " It 
 is, I think, very likely that these two verses were 
 
388 APPENDIX 
 
 added by some of the believers, at the time, as tes- 
 timony to the truth of the preceding naiTation." 
 
 The ministry of Jesus, according to the 
 Synoptic Gospels, extended but a little over one 
 year and was confined generally to Galilee ; John 
 makes it almost three years, reckoning according 
 to the Jewish Passover. See John ii. 13; vi. 4; 
 xiii. 1. 
 
 There are learned critics who claim that " John, 
 the beloved apostle of Jesus," was the author of 
 not only the gospel of John, but the three epistles, 
 John I., II., Ill,, and also the book of Revela- 
 tions. If that be true, then John was a wonderful 
 mental magician, for the style of the books, ex- 
 cept, perhaps, the first epistle of John and his 
 Gospel are entirely different. A person may 
 change his religion, politics, and mode of living, 
 but his mannerisms in writing are discernible all 
 through his life, if he is an author, even though 
 he may wish to counterfeit his style. 
 
 The principal purpose of the writer of the 
 book of the Gospel of John was doctrinal. It was 
 from John that the doctrine of the Godhead was 
 introduced into the Christian religion. It was 
 on this book that the Bishop of Alexandria and 
 Bishop Arias became divided. The interpreta- 
 tion thereof caused the rise of the Arian sect of 
 Christians, which resulted in the death of Arias. 
 
 The Alexandrian branch of the church believed 
 that Jesus was coeternal with God and assisted 
 in the creation of the world and all things con- 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 389 
 
 tained in it. Arias taught that the being of 
 Jesus commenced with his physical birth into the 
 world. The Alexandrian doctrine sought to tor- 
 ture the being of Jesus into a God, equal in all 
 things with the Creator of the universe. The 
 difference of opinion grew out of the first five 
 verses of the first chapter of John, which begins : 
 " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word 
 was with God, and the Word was God. The 
 same was in the beginning with God. All things 
 were made by him, and without him was nothing 
 made that hath been made. In him was life, and 
 the life was the light of men. And the light 
 shineth In the darkness, and the darkness appre- 
 hended it not." 
 
 The book of John is simply a poem, with very 
 obscure meanings in many instances. If there is 
 any meaning at all to be attached to the opening 
 of the Gospel of John, we must gather that 
 meaning by the ordinary way of construing 
 obscure passages. In all writings we get at the 
 meaning of the author from the light of the 
 subject he is writing about. John wove his best 
 thoughts into prose poetry. He starts out with 
 four principal divisions of his subject. He wrote 
 from inspiration, as all poets do. His inspired 
 meaning, no doubt, is, if possible, both scientific 
 and sensible, but clothed in the drapery of the 
 imagination. 
 
 Let us analyze that sentence according to Bib- 
 lical doctrines. The Bible says, God created all 
 
390 APPENDIX 
 
 things. Now how did that creation come about? 
 By His command. God did not make things 
 as a carpenter makes a house, or a potter his ves- 
 sel of clay, but he did it by the fiat of infinite 
 intelligence. He said, " Let there be light ; and 
 there was light." That was the word of God, and 
 that word was a principle of a force in nature 
 expressed by the word, " Let there be light," and 
 that principle of divine force was as eternal as 
 God, because it is a part of God. 
 
 " In Him. was life." Of course that is a 
 self-evident proposition. All life is a factor of 
 nature and consequently a part of God. "And 
 the life was the light of men." What is the 
 life of men? It is the spirit that lives in the 
 physical house called the body. When that spirit 
 takes its flight, the body is lifeless. The spirit 
 is a principle of nature and is a part of God and 
 of course eternal with him. "And the light 
 shineth in the darkness and the darkness appre- 
 hended it not." There are many people who do 
 not apprehend the spirit of light now, because 
 they are in darkness, — the darkness of spiritual 
 ignorance which leads into sin, sin into crime, 
 and crime into utter darkness, — the darkness of 
 the soul. Jesus taught the way of life and light, 
 that " light that shineth in darkness, and the 
 darkness comprehended it not." The light of 
 Jesus illumes the tomb and reveals the Flowers of 
 Beauty on the Shores of Eternity. 
 
 We are taught to investigate aU things and 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 391 
 
 hold fast to that which is good. This does not 
 mean that we must be ruled by our emotions, but 
 by our reason. Error never ripens into truth 
 by age, and because interested men made a mis- 
 take two thousand years ago is no reason why we 
 should venerate their blunders today. It is not 
 irreverent for us to question things that other 
 people tell us, though the fountain source is aged 
 and comes from what men call sacred sources. 
 There is but one thing sacred in earth or heaven, 
 and that is Truth ; and we have the right to sus- 
 pect every thing that comes to us through the 
 instrumentality of a hidden hand or covered by 
 the veil of darkness. 
 
 If the New Testament is what it purports to be, 
 there could be no cause for hiding its authorship, 
 the date of its production, the language in which 
 it was written, or the meaning of its terms ; and 
 while it is so shrouded in mystery we must be 
 allowed to take it for what it is worth, as we do 
 other mental and spiritual productions, and for 
 nothing more. If that be sin, then condemn the 
 Bible. " Come now, and let us reason together, 
 saith the Lord." Isa. i. 18. " As Paul reasoned 
 of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to 
 come, Felix trembled." Acts xxiv. 25. " But 
 sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and be ready 
 always to give an answer to every man that asketh 
 a reason for the hope that is in you, with meek- 
 ness and fear." 1. Pet. iii. 15. " The sluggard 
 is wiser in his own conceit than seven men that 
 can render a reason." Prov. xxvi. 16. 
 
392 APPENDIX 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT LANGUAGE 
 
 Adam Clark says that whether the Gospel of 
 Matthew " was written originally in Hebrew or 
 Greek is a question by which the most eminent 
 critics have been greatly puzzled and divided." 
 
 The Book of Mark. The early fathers were of 
 the opinion that the book of Mark was written 
 in Latin, but the later opinion is it was written in 
 Greek. Adam Clark, in his Commentaries on the 
 Bible, says : " Critics are also divided concern- 
 ing the language in which it (the book of Mark) 
 was written and the people to whom it was writ- 
 ten. Some have contended for a Latin original." 
 That it was originally written in Greek is a point 
 now acknowledged by almost all learned men. 
 
 The Gospel of Luke. The prevalent opinion 
 is that the Gospel of Luke was written in Greek, 
 for his efforts were to convert the Gentiles to the 
 Christian faith. Opinions differ as to the place 
 of writing ; some think it was written at Alexan- 
 dria, Eg3'pt, but the most general opinion is that 
 it was pubUshed at Achaia, Greece. 
 
 There seems to be an effort all through the 
 course of the Gospels to conceal the " hand that 
 made the feast," rather than to give those things 
 that people generally look for that open publicity 
 that satisfies. 
 
 The Gospel of John. The language in which 
 the fourth Gospel Avas written is a matter of con- 
 jecture also. The opinion prevails that John 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 395 
 
 was bom at Bethsaida and was consequently a 
 Galilean. As he was the son of a fisherman, a class 
 among whom education was not generally dif- 
 fused, we may well presume that he wrote in his 
 mother tongue, the Hebrew or the Aramaic. The 
 first mention of John that we have any record of 
 was by Theophilus in the latter part of the second 
 century. But those early days of uncertainty 
 leave us in doubt as to the language of the orig- 
 inal Gospel. 
 
 The language of Jesus. This is as much a 
 matter of conjecture as the language of the 
 writers of the Gospels. It is not known whether 
 the Master in his teachings spoke Greek or Ara- 
 maic. It is presumed, however, that he spoke 
 his mother tongue, as most of his disciples were 
 Galileans. 
 
 The Epistles of Paul. Paul was an educated 
 Jew and could write in either the Greek or the 
 Hebrew language; but as his letters were directed 
 to different individuals and churches, it is pre- 
 sumed that he wrote in that language which they 
 could respectively understand. His four great 
 Epistles, the Corinthians, Galatians, and the Ro- 
 mans, were written in Greek ; the other of his 
 Epistles were probably written in Hebrew. 
 
 THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES 
 
 In reading the history of this epistle, if such a 
 thing be possible, through the mists thrown 
 around it, we are struck with the apparent du- 
 
S94. APPENDIX 
 
 plicity of the authors of the New Testament. 
 There is no other personage, real or fictitious, that 
 the wildest dreams might invent, that could safely 
 can-y the load that Jesus has borne for the last 
 two thousand years. Any other character than 
 that of our Master would long since have been 
 buried from the minds of the masses. But the 
 virtues and the mission of Jesus can never die ; they 
 are ingrained in the nature of men; they adjust 
 the philosophy of duty with the glow of love ; the 
 realities of this life to the onward reach of the 
 next. It is the helping hand of Jesus that raises 
 the fallen, supports the tottering, guides the er- 
 ring. The people want Him, the people love Him, 
 and will rally to his standard, let whatever wind 
 that wist to blow, whatever storm to howl, and 
 dark Adversity impend his frowns : Jesus is both 
 the anchor that holds the ship and the pilot that 
 guides it to the haven of safety. 
 
 The epistle of James, in my estimation, is the 
 most important production of the New Testament. 
 It is in every way practical as applied to human 
 life, religion, and man's duty to man ; and yet it 
 was considered spurious for a long time, and only 
 admitted in the canon of the New Testament 
 after many objections and trials. 
 
 No one knows the date of the letter, or who 
 wrote it, or the language in which it was written. 
 James, the brother of Jesus, is supposed by some 
 to be the author, and I am inclined to think he 
 was from the fact that the epistle accords with 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 395 
 
 the known life and teaching of the Master. It is 
 commonplace, easily understood, and reaches to 
 the very bottom of good sense. The author de- 
 fines religion, and is the only one in the New 
 Testament who does. His definition is in full 
 accord with the practical religion that Jesus 
 taught by example. " If any man among you 
 seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, 
 but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion 
 is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God 
 and the Father is this : To visit the fatherless 
 and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself 
 unspotted from the world," James i. 26, 27. 
 
 The author of " Notes on Saint James " says : 
 " There is scarcely doubt that the writer was 
 James, the brother of the Lord. As the brother 
 of the Lord he had been much in the society of 
 Christ before he learned to believe on him, and 
 this accounts for the numerous reminiscences of 
 Christ's words which we find in his epistle, and 
 seem to be independent of the reports of his words 
 contained in the Gospels." 
 
 Here come more perplexities, " There were 
 two disciples of our Lord who bore the name of 
 James. One was the son of Zebedec, who was put 
 to death by Herod Agrippa A. D. 44. The 
 author of this epistle was James the Less, son of 
 Alpheus." From " Note on Book of James." 
 Adam Clark, in his commentaries on the Bible, 
 says in his notes on James : " James, the son of 
 Zebedee, called also James the elder, and James 
 
396 APPENDIX 
 
 the less, or little one, called the son of Alpheus, 
 and brother of our Lord, — whether one of these, 
 or if one of them, which, or whether one by the 
 same name different from both, are points that 
 cannot be satisfactorily determined. Michaelis, 
 who has examined the subject with his usual abil- 
 ity, leaves the matter in doubt, but leans to the 
 opinion that James, the son of Zebedee, was the 
 author and that the epistle was written before 
 any of those in the New Testament. Other great 
 authorities ascribe it to James, called the brother 
 of our Lord, who was president or bishop of the 
 church in Jerusalem." 
 
 There are many other great men who have risen 
 to explain, but their explanations seem lost in 
 their explications. 
 
 THE EPISTLES OF PETER 
 
 That Peter was a fisherman is conceded ; that he 
 was unlearned is also the prevailing opinion. It 
 is the general opinion, also, that Mark was Peter's 
 clerk and from Peter obtained the material for 
 the Gospel of Mark, that Peter was the true 
 author of the book of Mark, but from modesty 
 did not" allow his name to- appear as author. 
 INIight not Mark have written the epistles of Peter 
 also.? The mechanical act of writing the epistles 
 has nothing to do with their authorship. The 
 first epistle of Peter was admitted early as canoni- 
 cal; the second epistle was controverted. Euse- 
 bius says, " Of the controverted books of the New 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 39*7 
 
 Testament, yet well known and approved by 
 many, are that called the epistle of James, and 
 that of Jude, and the second and third of John. 
 And in another place, one epistle of Peter, the 
 first, is universally received." 
 
 Peter was a Galilean and perhaps wrote his 
 epistle in the Aramaic language. He was con- 
 sidered chief of the apostles, and a man of great 
 power of thought and purpose, and firm in his 
 convictions. He is the rock on which the Cath- 
 olic church is founded. " And I say also unto 
 thee, that thou art Peter; and upon this rock I 
 will build my church, and the gates of hell shall 
 not prevail against it." Matt. xvi. 18. 
 
 THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JUDE 
 
 It is presumed that the epistle of Jude was writ- 
 ten by one of the brothers of Jesus, called Judas. 
 This epistle was not recognized as proper to be 
 placed among the canonical writings of the New 
 Testament, — not because of a question of its 
 genuineness but of its weight, and in that opin- 
 ion I most heartily concur. Were it not classed 
 among the sacred writings of the New Testament, 
 it would be passed by as literary trash not of 
 sufficient importance, either as to facts or man- 
 ner, to attract attention. 
 
 As Jude was one of the brothers of Jesus, it 
 is presumed that he spoke and wrote in the lang- 
 uage of the Master. The supposed date of this 
 epistle, as given by different critics, runs all the 
 
398 APPENDIX 
 
 way from A. D. 64 to 80. Dr. Lardner places 
 the date between 64 and 66; Davidson, before 
 A. D. 70 ; Credner, A. D. 80. I confess that my 
 mind is not convinced as to the language in which 
 the New Testament was written. But what of 
 it? The human race is concerned only in one 
 thing, life and its affairs. Were it not to pre- 
 serve life and secure its enjoyments, we would 
 give no concern to the pressing present, receding 
 past, or promising future; for there would be 
 nothing gained one way or the other, with life 
 running on and spending its course without a 
 human effort. But we live now and must care 
 for the present and the future, both of this life 
 and the next. 
 
 So we must deal with facts, for we all have 
 to confront them sooner or later, and nothing 
 should have weight with us that is not of itself 
 true, though it be dressed in the garb of ancient 
 cult and classed as holy, — for that is holy only 
 which is true. 
 
 WHEN WERE THE NEW TESTAMENT BOOKS 
 WRITTEN? 
 
 When were the books of the New Testament 
 written.'' This is a question that has never been 
 answered, and probably never will be ; except, per- 
 haps, we can come nearer arriving at the dates 
 of the writings of Paul than of any other of the 
 apostles. It is worthy of observation that Paul 
 was the first man who wrote anything about the 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 399 
 
 Master, and he may justly be considered the 
 Father of the New Testament. Had it not been 
 for Paul, we should likely never have been blessed 
 with the New Testament, and without that, spir- 
 itual darkness would be hovering over the world 
 and the depravity of man have no check. 
 
 Perhaps someone asks: What has Christian- 
 ity done for the world? Are not the people as 
 wicked now as they were when Greece gave her 
 learning to men, and the Augustan reign smiled 
 from the seven hills of Rome and blessed the 
 world with its rule of justice.? Were there more 
 wars then than now? More murders, thieves, 
 robbers, rapes, grafters, and monsters of human 
 greed than now ? No ! I answer no ! The devil 
 still enthrones himself in the human heart and 
 his excursions are as frequent, perhaps, as when 
 Cassar fought his battles in the daytime and 
 wrote them up at night, or when Homer, blind 
 to the external world, saw gods dethroning virtue 
 and demigods ravaging the spoils of the de- 
 spoiler; and the reason is that Jesus has been 
 dethroned, except in name, and merchandise made 
 of his blood by substituting creedalism for his 
 truths and ritualism for his word. How long 
 would the devil and his minions stand before the 
 guns of Jesus, charged with his declaration of 
 principles at his first public meeting in the city of 
 his childhood, when he prefaced his services by 
 reading from the book of Esaias. " The spirit of 
 the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me 
 
400 APPENDIX 
 
 to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent 
 me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliver- 
 ance to the captives, and recovering sight to the 
 bhnd, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to 
 preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Luke 
 IV. 18, 19. 
 
 How long could evil stand before such a leader 
 if his followers were loyal to his cause? When I 
 use the word devil, I mean the spirit of wrong 
 that actuates every degrading or criminal act 
 which impels men on to vileness. I mean no harm 
 in exposing the pious deviltries spread out before 
 me, and were it not for the hope of good, my 
 pen should rust and my ink dry in the horn, for 
 I know that my name shall be tarnished and feel- 
 ings crucified for what little good I hope to ac- 
 complish by exposing those pious frauds through 
 which the people are innocently led astray and 
 made to be their own worst enemies, 
 
 I know that if we would all follow the advice 
 of James, who says, " Pure religion and unde- 
 filed before God and the Father is this. To visit 
 the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and 
 keep himself unspotted from the world" (James 
 I. 27), many fat ministers would lose the velvet 
 that now softens their fingers above other men. 
 But can we spare the knife and let the cancer 
 kill the patient? 
 
 But to return to the comparison of the different 
 dates assigned to the various books of the New 
 Testament. I quote from three lists, taken from 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 401 
 
 three different editions of the Bible, one published 
 by the National Publishing Company, one by the 
 International Bible Agency, and one from the 
 New Revision of the New Testament, 
 
 National Publishing Co. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 Matthew 64 
 
 Mark 64 
 
 Luke 63 or 64 
 
 John 68 
 
 Acts 63 or 64 
 
 Romans 58 
 
 I. Corinthians Feb. 58 
 
 II. Corinthians 57 
 
 Galatians 52 or beginning of 53 
 
 Ephesians April 6l 
 
 Philippians 62 
 
 Colossians 62 
 
 I. Thessalonians ' 52 
 
 II. Thessalonians 52 
 
 I. Timothy 56 
 
 II. Timothy 6l 
 
 Titus 56 
 
 Philemon 62 
 
 Hebrews 63 
 
 James 6l 
 
 I. Peter 64 
 
 II. Peter 64 
 
 I. John 80 
 
 II. John 90 
 
 III. John Between 80 and QO 
 
 Jude 64 or 65 
 
 Revelations 95 or 96 
 
4m APPENDIX 
 
 International Bible Agency. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 Matthew 60 to 70 
 
 Mark 67 to 70 
 
 Luke 60 to 70 
 
 John 80 to 95 
 
 Acts 62 to 70 
 
 Romans 57 or 58 
 
 I. Corinthians Feb. 57 
 
 II. Corinthians 57 
 
 Galatians 57 
 
 Ephesians April 63 
 
 Philippians no date 
 
 Colossians 63 
 
 I. Thessalonians 52 or early 53 
 
 I. Thessalonians 58 
 
 I. Timothy 67 or 68 
 
 II. Timothy 67 or 68 
 
 Titus 66 or 67 
 
 Philemon 63 
 
 Hebrews 70 
 
 James 62 or 63 
 
 I. Peter 64 
 
 II. Peter Just before his execution 
 
 I. John 85 to 95 
 
 II. John 85 to 95 
 
 III. John 85 to 95 
 
 Jude Date not known or place it was written at 
 
 Revelations 95 or 96 
 
 New Revision of New Testament. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 Matthew 39 
 
 Mark 43 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 403 
 
 A.D. 
 
 Luke 56 
 
 John 56 
 
 Acts 63 
 
 Romans 57 
 
 I. Corinthians Feb. 57 
 
 II. Corinthians 57 
 
 Galatians 56 
 
 Ephesians April 56 
 
 Philippians 62 
 
 Colossians 62 
 
 I. Thessalonians 52 
 
 II. Thessalonians 52 
 
 I. Timothy 63 
 
 II. Timothy 63 
 
 Titus 63 
 
 Philemon 62 
 
 Hebrews 62 
 
 James 66 
 
 I. Peter 52 
 
 II. Peter 63 
 
 I. John 98 
 
 II John 98 
 
 III. John 98 
 
 Jude 66 
 
 Revelations 94 
 
 WHERE ARE THE ORIGINALS? 
 
 There are no original manuscripts of the New 
 Testament in existence. The oldest Hebrew text 
 now extant does not date earlier than the year 
 1000. The other manuscripts date no further 
 back than the last half of the 4th century, and 
 
404 APPENDIX 
 
 none of those contain the whole of the New Testa- 
 ment. Jerome commenced a Latin translation of 
 the New Testament in the year 385 and finished it 
 in the year 405. He used the Hebrew manu- 
 scripts, Greek, Arabic, and the Syriac, and from 
 them all produced the New Testament in Latin, 
 which is the basis of the Vulgate. It is to be 
 lamented that none of the manuscripts which Je- 
 rome used in the production of his Latin New 
 Testament were subject to revision by any one 
 else, as they disappeared after he used them. The 
 Vulgate is the basis of the Catholic Bible. 
 
 The superstitious favored the LXX, as the 
 edition of the Old Bible was called because it was 
 asserted by the clerical Fathers in charge that 
 that Bible was translated by seventy, or seventy- 
 two, chosen men of God for that purpose. They 
 were placed in separate cells, and the work placed 
 in their hands, each man to make a translation as 
 directed by God. After they had been seventy 
 days in separate cells, each brought forth his 
 work and the whole agreed in every particular 
 and was therefore accepted as the W^ord of God. 
 
 Jerome's new translation had to struggle for a 
 place, but after 200 or 300 years it found general 
 favor and in time became popular among the 
 western Christians. In the 9th century, by the 
 aid and countenance of Charlemagne, Alcuin cor- 
 rected Jerome's version by the Hebrew and Greek 
 originals. Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, 
 in the 11th century gave it another revision; and 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 405 
 
 all the churches of the western world rejoiced at 
 the light that great mind shed upon it. 
 
 But the mother church, becoming grieved at 
 the changes and revisions of the Vulgate, at the 
 convention of Trent (1545) decreed that it would 
 take particular charge of the work and have a 
 new edition of the Vulgate made and that " it 
 should be printed as accurately as possible." To 
 give it the force of authenticity, two popes, 
 Pius IV and V, undertook the task. The work 
 was finished in 1590, and dubbed " Infallible." 
 But it proved to be so imperfect that Gregory 
 XIV called another assembly of scholars to make 
 another revision. This time the duty was more 
 thoroughly performed and this revision became 
 the basis of other editions. 
 
 The first English version known is supposed to 
 have been made in 1290. John De WyclifFe, 
 sometimes called the " Morning Star of the Ref- 
 ormation in England," in the year 1390 com- 
 pleted a translation of the whole Bible in the 
 English tongue. This, and his opposition to 
 some of the practices and teachings of the Cath- 
 olic church, drew upon him the displeasure of 
 the pope, and although he escaped the stake 
 during his life, forty years after his death the 
 Council of Constance ordered his bones to be 
 burnt and thrown into a brook. Fuller said of 
 the event : " This brook has conveyed his ashes 
 into the Avon, Avon into the Severn, Severn into 
 the narrow seas, they into the main ocean, and 
 
406 APPENDIX 
 
 thus the ashes of WyclifFe are the emblems of his 
 doctrine, which is now dispersed all over the 
 world." 
 
 Next comes Tyndale's- version, and by this 
 hangs a curious tale of diabolism under the false 
 cloak of religion. William Tyndale was bom 
 in 1484, and was hanged and burnt at the stake 
 Oct. 6th, 1536. He made a translation of the 
 Scriptures. He was a Reformer and a friend to 
 Martin Luther. In his time there was a law of 
 Parliament against any kind of translation of 
 the Scriptures. It was made a double crime to 
 do so, such an offense being treason against the 
 government and heresy against God. The pen- 
 alty for treason was hanging, for heresy it was 
 burning at the stake. Notwithstanding, Tyndale 
 made a translation, for which he was arrested, 
 tried, and found guilty. A gallows was erected, 
 under which was made a fire. The condemned 
 man was first taken upon the scaffold and hanged 
 by the neck, but before death took place by 
 strangulation the rope was cut and the body, half 
 alive, was dropped into the fire below, where the 
 penalty for heresy was meted out to him. 
 
 After this, in 1604, King James determined to 
 have a perfect translation of the Bible into the 
 English tongue. He appointed fifty-four learned 
 men for the task, and instructed them what previ- 
 ous translations to use in the execution of their 
 work, one of the translations mentioned in his 
 list of authorities being Tyndale's version. 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 407 
 
 Miles Coverdale, a learned English bishop, took 
 it into his head that the Bible was not just right, 
 and he made a complete translation, concluding 
 it in 1529. Afterwards, John Rogers translated 
 what is known as "Matthew's Bible," which was 
 a careful revision of both the Tyndale and Cover- 
 dale revisions. This was in 1537. In the year 
 1539, what was called the "Great Bible" ap- 
 peared. It was called great because of its size, 
 fifteen Inches long and nine inches wide. It was 
 a kind of compromise production, reconciling, if 
 possible, the Catholics with the Reformation. 
 
 Then followed quickly Taverner's Bible, by 
 Richard Tavemer, which was a hasty revision of 
 Tyndale's translation. This translation was un- 
 der the patronage of Lord Cromwell, and it 
 passed through several editions in the first few 
 years. There seemed to be a mania for Bible 
 making about that time. In the year 1540, the 
 Great Bible was revised, called the Cranmer Bible, 
 because Archbishop Cranmer wrote a prologue to 
 the edition. The Bible was printed in London by 
 Persian workmen, and through the influence of 
 Cromwell it received the approbation of the 
 king; but when Cromwell went down. Bishops 
 Tunstall and Heath were put In charge of the 
 work of new editions, and Cromwell's figure on 
 the title page was removed and a blank left in its 
 place. 
 
 In 1557 the Genevan New Testament made Its 
 appearance, which was probably the work of 
 
408 APPENDIX 
 
 William Whittingham, pastor of the English 
 refugees. This was the first portion of the Eng- 
 lish Scripture divided into verse. John Calvin 
 wrote the preface and many of the marginal 
 notes. There were several persons engaged in 
 the translation of the Genevan Bible, among 
 whom were Whittingham, Coverdale, Gilby, Samp- 
 son, Cole and perhaps John Knox. 
 
 The Cranmer Bible proving unsatisfactory, 
 Archbishop Parker of Canterbury, in the year 
 1565 distributed the Cranmer Bible among " able 
 bishops and other learned men " for revision, sub- 
 ject, however, to his own decision. In the year 
 1568 the results of their labor were published, 
 but a better revision appeared in 1572. This was 
 known as the " Bishops' Bible." This was the 
 Bible of the Established Church, while the Gene- 
 van was the Bible of the dissenters. The Refor- 
 mation had created such a wide difference between 
 the Reformers and the Catholics that they must 
 each have a Bible of their own in sentiment and 
 construction. Geneva was the place of refuge 
 for the Protestants, and Rheims became the refuge 
 for the English Catholics. 
 
 In 1582 the Catholics issued a New Testament 
 translated into the English tongue, made from 
 the authentic Latin. In 1609 the Old Testament, 
 translated by Roman Catholics, was issued at 
 Douay. These two versions to this day are the 
 English standards in the Catholic church. 
 
 All the above versions preceded the King 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 409 
 
 James version. When James I was placed upon 
 the throne of England, he found society divided 
 up, and general discontent reigning everywhere. 
 Religion seemed to be the most disturbing element 
 among them. The Catholic forces having been 
 overthrown a new schism sprang up between the 
 Protestants, the Established Church party on 
 the one side and the Puritans on the other. To 
 satisfy them the king called a conference of 
 leading men, that they might confer together 
 and adjust matters so that harmony might pre- 
 vail. During this conference. Dr. John Reynolds 
 suggested that a new version of the Bible was 
 exceedingly desirable because of the many er- 
 rors in the Bible then in use. The suggestion 
 led to the action that afterwards caused the king 
 to appoint fifty-four learned men, with the in- 
 structions that they secure the assistance and 
 help " and furtherance of all our principal 
 learned men within our kingdom." This un- 
 biased instruction secured to the king and the 
 work the hearty cooperation of all parties. But 
 it must be remembered that the king gave posi- 
 tive directions how the committee should proceed 
 and what books they should use in their work. 
 The following are his instructions : 
 
 1. The ordinary Bible read in the Church, 
 commonly called the Bishops' Bible, to be fol- 
 lowed, and as little altered as the original will per- 
 mit. 
 
 2. The names of the prophets and the holy 
 
410 APPENDIX 
 
 writers, with the other names in the text, to be 
 retained, as near as may be, accordingly as they 
 are vulgarly used. 
 
 S. The old ecclesiastical words to be kept, as 
 the word church, not to be translated congrega- 
 tion. 
 
 4. When any word hath divers significations, 
 that to be kept which hath been most commonly 
 used. 
 
 5. The division of chapters to be altered either 
 not at all, or as little as may be, if necessity so 
 require. 
 
 6. No marginal notes at all to be affixed, but 
 only for the explanation of the Hebrew or 
 Greek words, which cannot, without some circum- 
 locution, so briefly and fitly be expressed in the 
 text. 
 
 7. Such quotations of places to be marginally 
 set down as shall serve for the fit reference of one 
 Scripture to another. 
 
 8. Every particular man of each company to 
 take the same chapter or chapters ; and, having 
 translated or amended them severally by himself 
 where he thinks good, all to meet together to 
 confirm what they have done, and agree for their 
 part what shall stand. 
 
 9. As any one company hath dispatched any 
 one book in this manner, they shall send it to the 
 rest, to be considered of seriously and judicious- 
 ly; for his Majesty is very careful on this point. 
 
 10. If any company, upon the review of the 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 411 
 
 book so sent, shall doubt or differ upon any places, 
 to send them word thereof, to note the places, and 
 therewithal to send their reasons; to which if 
 they consent not, the difference to be compounded 
 at the general meeting, which is to be of the chief 
 persons of each company, at the end of the work. 
 
 11. When any place of special obscurity is 
 doubted of, letters to be directed by authority to 
 send to any learned man in the land for his judg- 
 ment of such a place. 
 
 12. Letters to be sent from every bishop to the 
 rest of the clergy, admonishing them of this trans- 
 lation. 
 
 13. The directors in each company to be the 
 Deans of Westminster and Chester, for Westmins- 
 ter, and the king's professors in Hebrew and 
 Greek in the two universities. 
 
 14. These translations to be used, when they 
 agree better with the text than the Bishops' Bible : 
 Tyndale's, Coverdale's, Matthew's [Rogers'], 
 Whitechurch's [Cranmer's], Geneva. 
 
 Three or four of the most ancient and grave 
 divines, in either of the universities, not em- 
 ployed in translating, to be assigned to be over- 
 seers of the translation, for the better observa- 
 tion of the fourth rule. 
 
 Only forty-seven of the men appointed for 
 this work are known to have engaged in it. These 
 were divided into six companies, two of which 
 met at Oxford, two at Cambridge, and two at 
 Westminster. They were presided over several- 
 
412 APPENDIX 
 
 ly by the Dean of Westminster and by the two 
 Hebrew Professors of the Universities. 
 
 This was called the Authorized Version of the 
 Bible, and has been in use by Protestant Christ- 
 ians since 1611, and has been accepted as author- 
 itative and correct by the masses, though critics 
 have been assaulting its authenticity ever since 
 it was issued. But the pulpit called it the " In- 
 fallible Word of God," and it had been the rule 
 of faith for almost three hundred years. But 
 criticism became too keen for the steadfast clergy, 
 with the result that in February, 1870, the Con- 
 vocation of the Province of Canterbury, Eng- 
 land, by a resolution adopted by both houses of 
 the Province, undertook a revision of the Bible. 
 Two companies were formed, one for the revision 
 of the Authorized Version of the Old Testament 
 and one for the New Testament. The work was 
 commenced on the twenty-second day of June, 
 1870. 
 
 In a short time, by a resolution passed by 
 both houses of the Convocation, the cooperation 
 of American scholars was invited, and eventually 
 two companies were formed in America for the 
 purpose of acting with the two English com- 
 panies. The work was brought to a close and 
 the first edition of the New Testament printed 
 Nov. 11th, 1880. 
 
 In this revision the Revisers, to give the ap- 
 pearance of faithfulness to the original texts, 
 obliterated all the verses and chapters, but at 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 41S 
 
 the same time "made punctuation more pro- 
 nounced than in any of the previous editions. It 
 is well known that the original manuscripts had 
 no punctuation marks, and if the Revisers were 
 so punctilious as to chapters and versification of 
 the Bible, so as to make a show of conforming 
 to the originals, they ought to have finished the 
 task by obliterating punctuation, for one is just 
 as sensible as the other. They complain that 
 there were 120,000 errors in the Authorized Ver- 
 sion, but principally in the matter of punctua- 
 tion. But how could there be errors in the orig- 
 inal punctuation when there were no punctua- 
 tion marks in the original manuscripts? 
 
 Of course we are all glad that they punctuated 
 so well, but grieved that they destroyed the chap- 
 ters and verses, for they were for the conven- 
 ience of the public in reading and reference. It 
 is too late now to be sticklers on the original 
 manuscripts, for no one knows anything about 
 them. They have been in the tomb of oblivion 
 for over a thousand years, and the Bible has 
 been tampered with, revised, translated, and re- 
 revised by irresponsible parties, every one for self- 
 ish purposes, until now it puts honest conviction to 
 shame for any one to pretend that our present 
 Bible is a copy of the originals. All we can 
 say, and all that is necessary to say, is that the 
 Bible holds a place in the literature of our tongue, 
 and no one can pretend to be educated without a 
 fair knowledge of its contents. And no one can 
 
414 APPENDIX 
 
 deny in that book beauty of lan^age, sub- 
 limity of thought, and the Hght of moral precepts 
 that will lead any man aright if they be fol- 
 lowed ; but there is, withal, some very bad morals 
 and detestable language. 
 
 BIBLICAL ERRORS 
 
 I quote from the Reviser's edition of the New 
 Testament of 1881, page 54: " Concerning ex- 
 isting defects it may be said briefly, that the 
 variations already detected and noted as existing 
 in various manuscripts, versions, and editions 
 amount to about 120,000. It is doubtful if any 
 two editions of the Bible, as now published, are 
 exactly alike. But of this large number of errors 
 it is probable that at least 90,000 are of small 
 importance." 
 
 From the Note by authors of the Revised New 
 Testament I glean a few errors that they have 
 exhumed in their researches in old editions of the 
 Bible. Out of the many I have space for but a 
 few. 
 
 In the Matthews Bible of 1551, in translating 
 Psalms xci. 5, the Psalmist is made to say : "So 
 that thou shalt not nede to be afrayed for any 
 buggs by night." 
 
 In the Genevan Bible of 1560, in rendering 
 Gen. III. 7, Moses has the credit of saying : 
 " They sewed fig-leaves together and made them- 
 selves breeches." The WychfFe Bible of 1382 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 415 
 
 had the same rendering. The Golden Legend 
 made the same rendering. 
 
 The Bishops' Bible of 1568 says; "Is there 
 no tryacle in Gilead?" The Douay Bible of 1610 
 has it : " Is there no rosin in Gilead ?" 
 
 Cotton Mather tells of a Bible before 1702 in 
 which David is made to say, in Psalm cxix. 161 : 
 '^Printers have persecuted me without cause." 
 
 In an edition of the Authorized Version of 
 1653, I. Cor. VI. 9 was made to read: "Know 
 ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the king- 
 dom of God.?" 
 
 In the Oxford Bible of 1804, Paul says, in 
 Gal. V. 17: "For the flesh lusteth after the 
 spirit." 
 
 In the Genevan Bible of 1562, the chapter 
 heading of Luke xxi, reads : " Christ condemeth 
 the poor widow." 
 
 In Matthew of the same edition, v. 9, in the 
 Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is made to say: 
 " Blessed are the place-makers, for they shall be 
 called the children of God." 
 
 In the Authorized Version of Oxford, 1717, in 
 the parable of the vine, Luke xx, the heading of 
 the chapter is : " The parable of the vinegar." 
 
 In the Cambridge Bible of 1805, in Gal. iv. 
 29, is this : " Persecuted him that was born after 
 the spirit to remain even so it is now." 
 
 In the Authorized Version of 1631, in giving 
 the ten commandments, the third one reads : 
 "Thou shalt commit adultery." The same render- 
 
416 APPENDIX 
 
 ing, a century later, in the German language, is 
 found in the Lenox Library in New York. 
 
 In all the Bibles for the last hundreds of years 
 the Lord's Prayer as rendered in our Old Bible 
 has been kept up and every child in the land 
 knows it, but the New Version has taken out its 
 very vitals. The Old Bible says : " Forgive us 
 our debts as we forgive our debtors." The New 
 Version says: "Forgive us our debts as we also 
 have forgiven our debtors." And " deliver us 
 from the evil one," instead of from " evil." That 
 beautiful ending, " And thine is the kingdom, 
 and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen." 
 has been omitted entirely in the Revised Version. 
 Luke, in chapter ii., gives the Lord's Prayer 
 somewhat differently. 
 
 Since about the 7th century this verse in I 
 John v. 7 has been a prominent doctrinal author- 
 ity on the Godhead, " For there are three that 
 bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and 
 the Holy Ghost, and these three are one." This 
 verse is entirely eliminated in the Revised Version. 
 
 If anyone has a lingering doubt that the Bible 
 is a scientific book from end to end, let him read 
 the following, and then with a heart of contrition 
 ask forgiveness for his want of discernment. I 
 also take this from the Revised Version of the 
 New Testament of 1881, page 116. 
 
 An Improved Version. In 1754 there was pub- 
 lished in London, "Genesis. The first chapter 
 by way of Essay towards an Interpretation of 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT 417 
 
 the whole Pentateuch." Cotton quotes from the 
 " Gentleman's Magazine " for August, 1754, the 
 following as a specimen : 
 
 " 1. ^Elohim, beginning, created lucid and illu- 
 cid matter. 2. And the illucid, void of co-ad- 
 junct cohesion, was unmodified, and distinguish- 
 ableness was no where upon the face of chaos; 
 And the Ruach of ^fElohim emanated over the per- 
 iphery of the fluctuation. 3. Until yElohim said 
 that JEther should coallesce to the production of 
 light. 4. And ^^lohim saw the light was good, 
 when it was become a separation from obscurity. 
 5. And ^lohim deemed this day-light, and the 
 obscurity was yet as night, which was light, and 
 obscuration the consummation of the first day." 
 Amen. 
 
THE EARLY GODS 
 
 In going back in our imaginations to the days 
 of ancient knowledge, we must view men as they 
 were, — from their standpoint, and not from ours. 
 We are a different people and resemble the ancient 
 Israelites only in our physical make-up. We are 
 not like them in thought, morals, education, re- 
 finement, society, government, laws, language, or 
 religion. They were a hardy, crude, pastoral 
 class. They could not, until well along in their 
 advancement as a people, either read or write, 
 and then the priests alone enjoyed those ac- 
 complishments. The masses were ignorant, su- 
 perstitious, and warlike in nature. They knew 
 nothing of the physical divisions of the surface 
 of the earth, nor of its conformation. They 
 were ignorant of the ph^^sical sciences and of the 
 rules of civil government. They were governed 
 through the forces of religion acting on their emo- 
 tions and credulity. They knew that there were 
 invisible powers, which under certain conditions 
 influenced men in this life. The secrets of obtain- 
 ing this information were confined to the keeping 
 of the high priests, prophets, and afterwards the 
 apostles. Those invisible powers they called gods 
 we call spirits. From this source came the gods 
 of the Bible. 
 
 The first three Gospels of the New Testament 
 418 
 
THE EARLY GODS 419 
 
 do not command us to worship. They do not 
 make worship an act of saving ordinance. In 
 fact, Jesus circumscribed it to a spiritual act and 
 not to a physical manifestation. 
 
 When the woman met Jesus at the well, she 
 said unto him, " Our Fathers worshipped in this 
 mountain ; and ye say that in Jerusalem is the 
 place where men ought to worship." Jesus said 
 unto her, " Ye worship ye know not what ; we 
 know what we worship, for salvation is of the 
 Jews ; but the hour cometh and now is, when the 
 true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit 
 and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to 
 worship Him. God is a spirit, and they that 
 worship him must worship him in spirit and in 
 truth." John iv. 20-24. 
 
 Jesus here spoke of the god of the Jews, which 
 we can do well to take up and investigate as a 
 principle. Jesus used no idle words in his in- 
 structions to his followers. 
 
 Every god that has made a manifestation to 
 man, mentioned in the Bible, has done so as an 
 individual power, for a particular purpose, at a 
 particular time, to a particular people. Those 
 gods gave orders to their subordinates of this life 
 and often talked to men, face to face, as one man 
 talks to another. They appeared in many ways 
 to the Jewish people ; sometimes in material forms, 
 as the three spirits did to Abraham ; sometimes in 
 a dream, as they did to Joseph ; sometimes in a 
 vision, as to Zacharias in the temple ; sometimes 
 
420 APPENDIX 
 
 in tongues, as at the Penticost ; sometimes by 
 transfiguration, as to Jesus on the Mount, when 
 Moses and EHas appeared in a materialized con- 
 dition to him, James, John, and Peter. 
 
 Those manifesting spirits were not intended to 
 be worshipped, any more than people in this life 
 are intended for worship. 
 
 We view life on the other side of the tomb as we 
 view all other questions, in a philosophical man- 
 ner. Who are those on the other side of life? 
 They are people who once lived on this side, and 
 are just the kind that left here, no better, no 
 worse. People change their conditions, not their 
 natures, in the act of dying. A good man here 
 is a good man there. A bad man here is a bad 
 man there. An intellectual man here is an intel- 
 lectual man there. A fool is a fool everywhere. 
 
 That spirits on the other side of life influence 
 people on this side has been proven in all ages, 
 among all nations, peoples, and clans. All 
 classes, from the very humblest to the most ex- 
 alted, have given proofs of spirit power. All 
 Sacred Books and all religions are founded on 
 this theory. All national histories furnish proofs 
 of such power, and I will not presume to raise my 
 voice against the evidence of the world repeated 
 over and over again. They do in the other life 
 what they did here, some endeavoring to upbuild, 
 and some to tear down, as in our own human so- 
 ciety. 
 
 From those various classes sprang the gods of 
 
THE EARLY GODS 421 
 
 the Old Bible, who at different times manifested 
 in one way, sometimes in another. A partial list 
 of these I herewith append, from my former 
 work, " Orthopaedia." 
 
 The word God is mentioned over three thousand 
 four hundred times in the Bible. Of course we 
 cannot elaborate on each mention of the name, but 
 must be content with a few quotations, which, we 
 think, will suffice to show that there are many 
 gods mentioned with no evidence whatever that 
 they were all esteemed all-perfect, all-wise, or all- 
 abounding in nature. The endeavor to make the 
 Bible the mouthpiece of one God only is a con- 
 ception of later times, that it may be made to con- 
 form to the genius of the age of progress. It 
 seems that man-made gods must progress to keep 
 pace with the people. 
 
 The word God, in the original, is Elohim, and 
 Elohim is the plural of God. (Smith's Diction- 
 ary of the Bible, definition of " God.") Note the 
 first verse of the first chapter of Genesis, which 
 starts out with an individual Deity, called God, a 
 creator. In the very inception of the Bible we 
 are plainly informed of the plurality of gods ; for 
 in the winding up of the six days of creation 
 (Gen. I. 26) "And God (Elohim, gods) said, 
 Let us make man in our image after our like- 
 ness." " So God created man in his own image ; 
 in the image of God created he him ; male and fe- 
 male created he them." (i. 27). This ended the 
 work of creation. God then rested from his 
 labor. 
 
42^ APPENDIX 
 
 The proper reading should be, " The gods 
 created man in their own Hkeness. In their own 
 hkeness created they them. Male and female 
 created they them. And the gods rested from all 
 their labors." But as the Bible now reads, God 
 is made to hold a conversation with other gods, 
 and at the same time we are told there were no 
 other gods for him to talk to. When God said, 
 *' let us make man in our own image," he must 
 have been speaking to some other god, for there 
 was no man to speak to at that time. 
 
 God, the Creator, now retires from view. In 
 the second chapter of Genesis, the Lord God is 
 introduced and another pair of human beings is 
 made, not created ; the first pair God created, the 
 second pair, which was Adam and Eve, the Lord 
 God made. 
 
 Gen. n. 5, 6, 7 : " And there was not a man to 
 till the ground ; and there went up a mist from the 
 earth and watered the whole face of the ground, 
 and the lord god fonned man out of the dust of 
 the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the 
 breath of life, and man became a living soul." 
 
 This Lord God then took Adam and placed 
 him in the garden of Eden, with orders to " dress 
 it and keep it ;" but he had no wife and was lone- 
 some, so this Lord God took pity on him, put 
 him to sleep, and made a woman out of his rib. 
 Now mark, this was after the six days of creation 
 and was along in the period of the organization 
 of business on the earth, how long no one knows ; 
 
THE EARLY GODS 423 
 
 but that it was after the six days of creation is 
 certain, and long enough for an orchard to grow, 
 which takes several years at least. 
 
 Gen, II. 21, 22: " And the Lord God caused 
 a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, 
 and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh 
 instead thereof, and the rib which the Lord God 
 had taken from man he made woman, and brought 
 her unto man." 
 
 The plurality of Bible gods appears again in 
 the colloquy of Eve and the serpent, and the con- 
 fession of God to the truth of what the serpent 
 said. Gen. iii. 1-23. 
 
 Verses 2, 3, 4, 5 : " And the woman said unto 
 the serpent. We may eat of the fruits of the trees 
 of the garden : but of the fruit of the tree which 
 is in the midst of the garden God hath said. Ye 
 shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it lest ye 
 die. And the serpent said unto the woman. Ye 
 shall not surely die: for God doth know that in 
 the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be 
 opened ; and ye shall be as gods, knowing good 
 and evil." 
 
 Eve ate and gave to Adam and he ate also, and 
 then their eyes were opened and they saw that they 
 were naked. God came down and missing the 
 pair, called unto Adam, and said, " Where art 
 thou ? " The reader will please observe that God 
 did not know where Adam and Eve were, nor did 
 he know that they had eaten of the forbidden 
 fruit until they confessed the sin to him. Had 
 
424. APPENDIX 
 
 this god been all-wise he would have known of his 
 own wisdom. 
 
 Gen. II. 22. And the Lord God said, " Behold 
 the man has become as one of us, to know good 
 and evil: and now lest he put forth his hand and 
 take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live 
 forever," he was sent out of the garden. Now 
 this was the Lord God speaking, the same one that 
 made Adam and Eve, and from his own mouth we 
 are informed that Adam had become as one of the 
 gods, working in harmony with them " to know 
 good and evil." 
 
 The Jews, like the surrounding nations, believed 
 that the gods held social intercourse and brought 
 forth offspring; for we are told (Gen. vi. 2) that 
 the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that 
 they were fair; and they took them wives of all 
 which they chose, and children were the result 
 of such marriages. 
 
 Verse 4 : " There were giants in the earth in 
 those days ; and also after that, when the sons of 
 God came in unto the daughters of men, and bore 
 children unto them, the same became mighty men, 
 which were of old, men of renown." It was very 
 common in the days of myths to have gods con- 
 sorting with earth-women and bringing up chil- 
 dren of great parts ; they never brought forth a 
 dwarf, fool, or good man. 
 
 We now have a slight introduction to the Lord, 
 one of the original makers of the earth, as quite a 
 capricious kind of being ; a being that had a heart, 
 
THE EARLY GODS 425 
 
 one that was subject to grief, got angry, saw 
 with his eyes, repented and forgave some, and de- 
 stroyed the whole world besides. 
 
 Gen. VI. 5, 6, 7, 8. " God saw that the wicked- 
 ness of man was great in the earth .... And it re- 
 pented the Lord that he had made man on the 
 earth. . . .And the Lord said, I will destroy man 
 whom I have created from the face of the ground. 
 . . . .But Noah found grace in the ej^es of the 
 Lord." Noah and his family journeyed to a 
 plain in the land of Shinar and there commenced 
 to build for themselves a city and a tower. 
 
 Gen. XI. 4, 5, 7. " And the Lord came down 
 to see the city and the tower which the children 
 of men builded." This Lord was deficient in 
 knowledge, or he would not have been compelled 
 to go down to see what Noah and his people were 
 doing. 
 
 " Go to, let us go down and there confound 
 their language, that they may not understand one 
 another's speech." The Lord was speaking to 
 some other god and asked assistance in the work 
 of confounding their language. There were 
 grades among the gods, and of course gods of 
 diflPerent powers, which Abram knew. Gen. xiv. 
 23. " Abram said unto the king of Sodom, I 
 have lift up mine hand unto the Lord the most 
 HIGH GOD, the possessor of heaven and earth." 
 The lower gods he does not name. 
 
 Gen. XVI. 9-13. Hager saw an Angel, Lord 
 and God, all in one being. Verse 9 : " And the 
 
426 APPENDIX 
 
 angel of the Lord said unto her, Return to thy 
 mistress." Verse 13 : " And she called the name 
 of the Lord that spake unto her: Thou God 
 seest me." 
 
 Gen. XVII. 1. " And when Abram was ninety- 
 years old and nine, the Lord appeared unto Abram 
 and said unto him i am the almighty god." 
 Verse 4 : " Behold my covenant is with thee and 
 thou shalt be a father of many nations, neither 
 shalt thy name any more be called Abram, but 
 thy name shall be Abraham." Verse 9: "And 
 I will establish my covenant between me and thee, 
 and thy seed after thee, in the generations for an 
 everlasting covenant, to be a god unto thee and 
 THY SEED AFTER THEE." Tliis Almighty being 
 was to be a god to Abraham and his seed. Not 
 the God, but a god. And this god established 
 a covenant between Abraham and his seed, and 
 that covenant was circumcision. Verse 10: 
 " This is my covenant which ye shall keep between 
 me and you and thy seed after thee ; every man- 
 child among you shall be circumcised." Those 
 who are not circumcised do not belong to this god. 
 
 In the story of the destiniction of Sodom and 
 Gomorrah (Gen. xrx) several gods figure under 
 different names. They were sometimes called men, 
 sometimes angels. Lord, and God. In Gen. xxiv. 
 3, Abraham made his eldest servant swear by two 
 gods not to make his son marry a Canaanite 
 woman. " And I will make thee swear by the 
 Lord, the god of heaven, and the god of the earth, 
 
THE EARLY GODS 427 
 
 that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of 
 the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I 
 dwell." Had he spoken of the god of heaven and 
 earth, he would have been speaking of one god. 
 But he made him swear by the god of heaven and 
 the god of the earth, evidently meaning two gods. 
 
 Gen. XXXI. 11-13. Abraham had a visitation 
 from the god of Beth-el, who was simply an 
 angel. " And the angel of God spake unto me in 
 a dream saying, Jacob, and I said. Here am I ; 
 and he said. Lift up now thine eyes and see all 
 the rams that leap" upon the cattle are ring- 
 streaked, speckled, and grisled: for I have seen 
 all that Laban hath done unto thee. I am the 
 God of Beth-el," Laban and Jacob introduce 
 the God of Nahor, which is a new God. 
 
 Gen. XXXI. 53: "The God of Abraham and 
 the God of Nahor, the God of their father judge 
 between us." Gen. xxxii. 1 : " And Jacob went 
 on his way and the angels of God met him, and 
 when Jacob saw them, he said, This is God's 
 host." 
 
 We now come to a queer story concerning a 
 great wrestling match between Jacob and God, 
 which is certainly inconsistent with the idea of 
 the Creator of all things, and the only rational 
 conclusion that any one can come to is that the 
 god here referred to was nothing more than a 
 materialized spirit. 
 
 Gen. XXXIII. 24, 29, 30. " And Jacob was left 
 alone and there wrestled a man with him until the 
 
428 APPENDIX 
 
 break of day. And Jacob asked him and said, 
 Tell me, I pray thee, thy name? And he said. 
 Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name ? 
 And he blessed him there, and Jacob called the 
 name of the place Penial: for I have seen god 
 face to face and mj^ life is preserved." 
 
 If there is any doubt that this man who wrestled 
 with Jacob was esteemed a god, and in fact was 
 nothing more than a spirit whom Jacob recog- 
 nized as god, and was in fact the god of Jacob, 
 turn to Gen. xxxv. 1 : " And God said unto Ja- 
 cob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there ; and 
 make there an altar unto god, that appeared unto 
 thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau 
 thy brother." Jacob was fleeing from Esau when 
 he had that wonderful wrestling match. In 
 verse 11, this same god appeared unto Jacob and 
 said unto him, " i am god almighty," but it took 
 him all night to get the better of Jacob. 
 
 Jacob is afterwards visited by another god, who 
 seems to be the god of Isaac, which fact this god 
 made known to Jacob. Gen. xlvi. 1, 2, 3: 
 " And Israel took his j ourney with all that he 
 had, and came to Beer-Sheba and offered sacrifice 
 unto the god of his father Isaac. And God spake 
 unto Israel in the visions of the night, and said, 
 Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here am I. And he 
 said, I am God, the God of thy father; fear not 
 to go down to Egypt." 
 
 The god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was 
 nothing more than an- angel, and an angel is a 
 
THE EARLY GODS 429 
 
 spirit of the advanced degrees who was one of the 
 spirit guides of Moses. Exodus iii. 1-6: " Now 
 Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in- 
 law .... And the angel of the Lord appeared unto 
 him in a flame of fire, out of the midst of a bush 
 .... And Moses said, I will turn aside and see this 
 great sight. . . .And when the Lord saw that he 
 turned aside to see, God called to him out of the 
 midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And 
 Moses said, Here am I. And he said. Draw not 
 nigh hither; put off' thy shoes from off thy feet, 
 for the place where on thou standest is holy 
 ground. Moreover, he said, I am the god of thy 
 father, the god of Abraham, the god of Isaac, 
 and the god of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; 
 for he was afraid to look upon God." 
 
 In further proof that this god was nothing 
 more than a spirit of limited knowledge and not 
 a ubiquitous being peruse the whole third chapter 
 of Exodus and especially verses 7, 8, 9 : " And 
 the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of 
 my people. And I have come down to deliver 
 them out of the hand of the Egyptians. Now, 
 therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel 
 has come unto me." 
 
 Moses was then instructed to go to Pharaoh 
 and intercede with him to let the children of Israel 
 go, and when Moses objected this spirit said, I 
 will surely be with thee, just as spirit guides tell 
 their mediums that they will be with them in un- 
 dertakings which are approved of by the spirit. 
 
430 APPENDIX 
 
 The children of Israel understood that there was 
 more than one god, or spirit, recognized as gods 
 of their fathers, and known by different names, 
 just as different controlling spirits are now known 
 by different names by their mediums. 
 
 Moses was anxious to know the name of the 
 spirit, or god, that was talking to him and giving 
 him instructions to undertake the task of deliver- 
 ing the children of Israel out of their Egyptian 
 bondage. Verses 13, 14 : " And Moses said unto 
 God, Behold, when I come unto the children of 
 Israel, and shall say unto them. The god of your 
 fathers hath sent me unto you ; and they shall 
 say unto me, what is his name? what shall I say 
 unto them? And God said unto Moses, i am 
 THAT I AM : and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto 
 the children of Israel, i am hath sent me unto 
 you." " And this is my name forever." 
 
 Ex. XXIX. 45. " And I will dwell among the 
 children of Israel and be their god." 
 
 Ex. XXXIII. " And the Lord spake unto 
 Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his 
 friend." Spirits often speak to their mediums in 
 this way. 
 
 That there were many gods that the children of 
 Israel recognized let the following verses give evi- 
 dence : 
 
 Ex. XV. 11. " Who is like unto thee, O Lord, 
 among the gods? Who is like thee, glorious in 
 holiness, fearful in praise, doing wonders." Ex. 
 XX. 3 : " Thou shalt have no other gods before 
 
THE EARLY GODS 431 
 
 me." Now if we come across any other god we 
 may know that it is not this one who wrote the ten 
 commandments, for i am is not to have his name 
 changed, but he is a generous god and com- 
 mands due respect to be paid to other gods. Ex. 
 xxn. 28 : " Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor 
 curse the ruler of thy people," says i am. 
 
 We are now introduced to another god whose 
 name is jealous, and who had not the respect for 
 other gods that i am had. Ex. xxxiv. 6 : " And 
 the Lord passed before him (Moses), and pro- 
 claimed, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and 
 gracious, long suffering, and abundant in good- 
 ness and truth." Verse 9 : And Moses said, " If 
 now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let 
 my lord go among us, and take us for thine inher- 
 itance. Verse 12: " Take heed of thyself, (said 
 this god,) lest thou make a covenant with the 
 inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest 
 it be for a snare in the midst of thee ; but ye shall 
 destroy their altars, break their images, and cut 
 down their groves ; for thou shalt worship no 
 other god : for the Lord, whose name is jealous, 
 is a jealous god." Yes, he was jealous and mean 
 besides, and quite different in disposition from 
 I am. 
 
 Next we come to a warlike spirit, of whom 
 there were many. Ex. xv. 2, 3 : " The Lord is 
 my strength and song and he is becoming my sal- 
 vation: he is my god and I will prepare for him 
 an habitation; my father's god and I will exalt 
 
432 APPENDIX 
 
 him. The Lord is a man of war. The loed is 
 his name." 
 
 Passing to Deuteronomy we are informed of 
 the greatness of one of the gods of the children 
 of Israel. Deut. x. 17 : " For the Lord your 
 god is the God of gods and Lord of lords, a great 
 God, a mighty and terrible, which regardeth not 
 persons nor taketh rewards." If that be true, 
 then he must have disapproved the practice of the 
 children of Israel of offering sacrifices to other 
 gods. 
 
 Joshua XXIV. 14: "Therefore fear the Lord 
 and serve him in sincerity and in truth, and put 
 away the gods which your fathers served on the 
 other side of the flood and in Egypt, and serve ye 
 the Lord." Judges x. 6 : " And the children of 
 Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served 
 Baalim, and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, 
 and the gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab 
 and the gods of the children of Ammon, and the 
 gods of the Philistines, who forsook the Lord and 
 served not him." 
 
 In the tenth chapter of Judges, we have the 
 combination of " an angel of the Lord, a man 
 of God, and the Lord," all of whom were gods. 
 Judges xin. S-23 : The narration is too long to 
 quote here, but the important points are as fol- 
 lows : Verse 3 : " And the angel of the Lord ap- 
 peared unto the woman" .... Verse 6 : And then 
 the woman came and told her husband saying, " A 
 man of god came unto me, and his countenance 
 
THE EARLY GODS 433 
 
 was like the countenance of an angel of God, very 
 terrible." .... Verse 8 : " Then Manoah entreated 
 the Lord, and said, my Lord, let the man of 
 God which thou didst send come again unto us." 
 
 Verse 21 : " But the angel of the Lord did 
 
 no more appear unto Manoah and to his wife and 
 Manoah knew that he was an angel of the Lord, 
 and Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely 
 die because we have seen God." 
 
 Ruth I. 11 : " And Naomi said, Turn again, 
 my daughters, why will ye go with me." Verses 
 15, 16: " Behold thy sister-in-law has gone back 
 unto her people and unto her gods." " And 
 Ruth said. Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to re- 
 turn from following after thee, for whither thou 
 goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will 
 lodge ; thy people shall be my people, and thy god 
 my god." 
 
 We often find references to the god of Israel 
 and of Jacob, but here appears a different god, the 
 Lord God of Hosts. 11. Sam. x : " And David 
 went on and grew great; and the Lord God of 
 Hosts was with him." Here is another god which 
 administered unto David who had a special resi- 
 dence, which was on the Mercy seat between the 
 cherubim of the ark. II. Sam. vi. 2 : " And 
 David arose and went with all the people that were 
 with him from Baale of Judah to bring up from 
 thence the ark of god, whose name is called by the 
 name of the Lord of Hosts, that dwelleth between 
 the cherubim." I. Sam. iv. 4 : "So the people 
 
434 APPENDIX 
 
 sent to Shiloh that thej might bring from thence 
 the ark of the covenant of the Lord of Hosts 
 which dwelleth between the cherubim." 
 
 I. Kings VIII. 23 : " Lord God of Israel, there 
 is no god hke thee, in heaven above or earth be- 
 neath, who keepeth covenants and mercy with thy 
 servants that walk before thee with all their 
 hearts." Judges viii. 33 : " And it came to pass 
 as soon as Gideon was dead, that the children of 
 Israel turned again, and went whoring after Baa- 
 lim and made Baal-Berith their god. 
 
 Judges X. 13, 14: "Yet ye have forsaken, 
 me, and served other gods, wherefore I will deliver 
 thee no more. Go and cry after the gods ye have 
 chosen, let them deliver you in the time of your 
 tribulation." Judges x. 16: "And they put 
 away the strange gods that were among them and 
 served the Lord, and his soul was grieved for the 
 misery of Israel." I. Kings xi. 33 : " Because 
 the}' have forsaken me and worshipped Ashtoreth 
 the goddess of the Zidonians, Chemoth the god 
 of the Moabites and Milcom the god of the chil- 
 dren of Amnion." 
 
 Deut. xxxn. 16 : *' They provoked him to jeal- 
 ousy with strange gods, they sacrificed unto devils, 
 not unto God: to gods whom they knew not, to 
 new gods that came newly up, whom your father 
 feared not." Psalms ex. 1 : " The Lord said 
 unto my Lord Sit thou at my right hand until I 
 make thine enemies thy footstool." 
 
 What Lord was it that was speaking to the 
 
THE EARLY GODS 435 
 
 Lord of David? There were two Lords speaking 
 to each other if we can credit the Psalmist. 
 
 We have the visitation of three gods in Daniel. 
 Daniel i. 2 : " And the lord gave Jehoiakim 
 king of Judah, into his hand with a part of the 
 vessels of the house of god, and he carried them 
 into the land of Shinar to the house of his god, 
 and he brought the vessel into the treasure house 
 of his god." 
 
 The book of Leviticus mentions two different 
 gods. Lev. XIX. 18: "Thou shalt not avenge, nor 
 bear any grudge against the children of thy peo- 
 ple, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 
 I am the Lord." Lev. xx. 7: "Sanctify your- 
 selves, therefore, and be ye holy, for I am the 
 
 LORD YOUR GOD." 
 
 Job was the most poetical genius of the Bible, 
 and he presents various gods in his interesting 
 narration. Job i. 6 : " Now there was a day 
 when the sons of god came to present themselves 
 before the Lord, and Satan came also among 
 them." In that verse there are three immortal 
 personages represented. God is represented 
 through his sons, who represented themselves to 
 the Lord, and Satan, who is here mentioned for 
 the first time in the Bible, and who appears as 
 powerful as the Lord. Job seems to have had two 
 attending gods or spirits ; one was known by the 
 common name of God, and the other Almighty. 
 This distinction is kept up all through the book 
 of Job. 
 
436 APPENDIX 
 
 Passing from Job, we come to Psalms, and in 
 that transit we perceive a new conception of god. 
 David intended the Psalms as songs of praise to 
 his ideals. His gods were like those of Job, and 
 administered their blessings and curses in this 
 life ; neither believed in a future existence. 
 
 Psalms IV. 4, 5 : " Return, Lord, deliver my 
 soul : O save me for thy mercies' sake, for in death 
 there is no remembrance of thee; in the grave, 
 who shall give thee thanks?" The Lord is the 
 god of David. 
 
 Ps. VII. 1, 3: "O Lord my God, in thee I 
 put my trust. O Lord my God, if I have done 
 this." Ps. vn. 17 : "I will praise the Lord ac- 
 cording to his righteousness ; and will sing praise 
 to the name of the Lord most high." Ps. viii. 
 9 : " O Lord, how excellent is thy name in all 
 the earth?" Ps. xviii. 31: "For who is god 
 save the Lord? Or who is the rock save our 
 God?" Ps. XX. 7: " Some trust in chariots, and 
 some in horses : but we will remember the name of 
 the Lord our God." Ps. xxiv. 9: "Lift up 
 your heads, O ye gates ; even lift them up, ye 
 everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall 
 come in. Who is the King of glory? The Lord 
 of hosts, he is the King of glory." Ps. xxxi. 14 : 
 " But I trust in thee, O Lord : I said thou art my 
 god." Ps. xxxni. 12 : " Blessed is the Nation 
 whose god is the Lord; and the people whom he 
 hath chosen for his own inheritance." 
 
 Here comes a new god. Ps. lxviii. 4 : " Sing 
 
THE EARLY GODS 437 
 
 unto god, sing praise unto his name: extol htm 
 that rideth upon the heavens by his name jah, 
 and rejoice before him." 
 
 Here we are introduced to a local god of one 
 certain hill, he cannot be the God of heaven. Ps. 
 XLViii. 16: " Why leap ye, ye high hills.? This 
 is the hill which god desireth to dwell in ; yea, the 
 Lord will dwell in it forever." 
 
 Then David goes on to speak of his powers as 
 a warrior. Verse 17 : "The chariots of God are 
 twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the 
 Lord is among them as in Sinai, in the holy 
 place." Job xxiii. 16: "For God maketh my 
 heart soft, and the ai^mighty troubleth me." Job 
 XXVII. 11 : "I will teach you by the hand of 
 God: that which is with the Almighty I will not 
 conceal." Job xxxiii. 4 : " The spirit of God 
 hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty 
 hath given me life." Job xxxiv. 12 : " Yea, 
 surely God will not do wickedly, neither will the 
 Almighty prevent judgment:" Job xxxv. 13: 
 *' Surely God will not hear vanity, neither will the 
 Almighty regard it." Job xxxviii. 7 : " When 
 the morning-stars sang together, and all the sons 
 of God shouted for joy." 
 
 God certainly had sons, for that fact is often 
 spoken of in the Bible, which proves one of two 
 things : that is, that there was more than one god 
 recognized by the children of Israel, or that Jesus 
 Christ was not the only begotten son of God. 
 
 Hosea presents us with a business spirit under 
 
438 APPENDIX 
 
 the name of god ; he must have been a Jew in his 
 earth life, for he seems to understand all the 
 tricks of trade. Hosea xii. 6, 7 : " Therefore 
 turn thou unto thy god ; keep mercy and judg- 
 ment and wait on thy god continually ; he is a 
 merchant, the balances of deceit are in his hands, 
 he loveth to oppress." 
 
 Isaiah xlh. 8 : "I am the Lord ; that is my 
 name: and my glory will I not give to another, 
 neither my praise to graven images." 
 
 This does not comport well with the following : 
 Ps. Lxxxm. 18: "That men may know that 
 thou, whose name alone is jehovah, art most high 
 over all the earth." 
 
 The Jews and Christian divines are pleased to 
 ascribe to the name of jehovah, the one true God, 
 but we think the reading of the Bible in the light 
 of the writers Avill not warrant that interpretation. 
 
 Ex. vi. 2, 3 : " And God spake unto Moses, and 
 said unto him, I am the Lord: And I appeared 
 unto Abraham, unto Isaac and unto Jacob by 
 the name of God Almighty, but by my name je- 
 hovah was I not known unto them." Isaiah xn. 
 2 : " Behold, God is my salvation ; I will trust, 
 and not be afraid: for the Lord Jehovah is my 
 strength and my song; he also is become my 
 
 SALVATION." 
 
 Here God and the Lord-Jehovah are two dif- 
 ferent gods, God is acknowledged his salvation 
 and the Lord Jehovah is become also his salva- 
 tion. Isaiah xxvi. 4 : " Trust ye in the Lord 
 
THE EARLY GODS 439 
 
 forever, for in the Lord-Jehovah is everlasting 
 strength." It is plain that the lord-jehovah 
 is a different god from Jehovah. 
 
 We have many references to the compound Je- 
 hovah. Jeremiah xxiii. 6 : "In his day Judah 
 shall dwell safely, and this is his name whereby 
 he shall be called, the lord of our righteous- 
 ness." The marginal note says "Jehovah-Tsid- 
 kenu." We have Jehovah-Shammah, Jehovah- 
 Jireh, Jehovah-Nissi, Angel-Jehovah and Jeho- 
 vah-Shalom. 
 
 Isaiah had a Holy One for a god. Isaiah xxx. 
 11 : " Get ye out of the way, turn aside out of 
 the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease 
 from before us." Verse 12 : " Thus saith the 
 Holy One of Israel." 
 
 In the New Testament, besides the Old Testa- 
 ment gods we have God the father, the Holy 
 Ghost, and Jesus Christ. 
 
 Now if there be any question that God was es- 
 teemed a spirit by the Bible writers, we will call 
 no less important witnesses than John and Paul. 
 John IV. 24 : " God is a spirit, and they that 
 worship him must worship him in spirit and in 
 truth." I. Cor. xv. 45 : " And so it is written. 
 The first man Adam was made a living soul ; the 
 last Adam was made a quickening spirit." II. 
 Cor. ni. 17: " Now the Lord is that spirit; and 
 where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." 
 
 When the Jews were condemning Jesus for 
 **being a man, maketh himself god," Jesus an- 
 
440 APPENDIX 
 
 swered, " Is It not written in your law, I said, Ye 
 are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the 
 word God came, and the scripture cannot be brok- 
 en ; say ye of him, whom the Father has sanctified, 
 and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest be- 
 cause I said, I am the son of God ?" John x. 34, 
 35, 36. So Jesus claimed to be God on the same 
 principles that the Jews did in olden times. Men, 
 spirits, angels, and demons were all called gods, 
 or spirits, which meant the same thing only in 
 different degrees of power or importance. 
 
 We assert, therefore, that by authority of the 
 Scriptures we are warranted in sa3ung that the 
 whole Bible representations of God are unreliable 
 fictions, that no one is warranted in following it 
 for proofs of a Supreme Being as such, and if the 
 Bible were all we have of a controlling intelligence 
 of the universe we would be in the dark, with no 
 way to extricate ourselves. For no one ever saw 
 God ; no one knew Jesus, nor the father of Jesus. 
 Matthew xi. 25, 26, 27: "At that time Jesus 
 answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord 
 of heaven and earth, for thou hast hid these 
 things from the wise and pinident, and hast re- 
 vealed them unto babes. Even so. Father: for so 
 it seemed good in thy sight. All things are de- 
 livered unto me of my Father : and no man know- 
 
 ETH THE SOX BUT THE FATHER,* NEITHER KNOW- 
 ETH ANY MAN THE FATHER, SAVE THE SON, AND 
 HE TO WHOMSOEVER THE SON WILL REVEAL HIM." 
 
 John I. 18: "No man hath seen God at any 
 
THE EARLY GODS 441 
 
 time ; the only begotten son, which is in the bosom 
 of the Father, he hath declared him." I. Timothy 
 VI. 16: "Who only hath immortality, dwelling 
 in the light which no man can approach unto ; 
 whom no man hath seen nor can see: to whom be 
 honor and power everlasting." If these last quo- 
 tations are true, then we may relegate all the 
 former gods of the Israelites to the region of 
 myths, and think it well. 
 
 Following the fashions of earth, as all of these 
 gods did to a certain extent, there must be queens 
 as well as kings of heaven, for Jeremiah found 
 one. How many more there were we do not know, 
 for women were kept in the background in those 
 days more than they are now. Jeremiah vii. 18: 
 *' The children gather wood, and their fathers 
 kindle the fire, and the women kneed their dough, 
 to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour 
 out their drink-offerings to their gods, that they 
 may provoke me to anger." Jeremiah xliv. 17, 
 18 : " For we will certainly do whatsoever thing 
 goeth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto 
 the queen of heaven, and pour out drink-offerings 
 unto her as we have done; we, our fathers, our 
 kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and 
 in the streets of Jerusalem ; for then we had plenty 
 of victuals and were well and saw no evil; but 
 since we left off to burn incense to the queen of 
 heaven, and pour out drink-offerings unto her, 
 we have wanted all things, and have been con- 
 sumed by the sword and by the famine." 
 
442 APPENDIX 
 
 What a travesty on the conception of the Ulti- 
 mate Wisdom, Goodness and Power ! No one can 
 study the Bible conception of God and come to 
 any other conclusion than that the Jews recog- 
 nized many gods, and that those gods were none 
 other than the spirits of dead men ; of this fact 
 many other proofs might be presented, were it 
 necessary. 
 
BS2420 .W222 
 
 The life and teachings of Jesus, 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00013 1088 
 
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