by the cross of the Savior's crucifixion, which could not without impropriety be given to the Father. The Hindu goddess Maya wears a cruciform nimbus exactly resembling that worn by figures of God. The circumference of the nimbus, in the same way, is notched, and its field striated with luminous sparks, while parallel with the temples and forehead, stretching bepond the circumference, three clusters of rays shoot forth, corresponding precisely with the cross lines in the divine nimbus of Christian art. The nimbus upon the head of the Savior often resembles a terrestrial globe, and reminds us at once of numerous figures in Egyptian iconography, that bear the world on their heads. Such correspondences are not accidental, nor are they insignificant; for every symbol is a doctrine, and not only a doctrine, but a central and root doctrine.

With these facts before us-and a closer research would discover many more such is it not a fair conclusion that Christianity is not of Christ? By what right is the name of Christ attached to doctrines which existed centuries before he was born, to which he contributed nothing, to which he did not so much as give his countenance, and which probably he never heard of? The doctrines may be true that is not the question. They are not held as being true, but as being Christian. They are not recommended to the philosophical on grounds of reason, but are dogmatically asserted in spite of reason, on the authority of Christ. The popular Christianity, under every existing form thereof, may be supposed true without being supposed Christian. It may be supposed false, also, without the slightest disrespect to the religion of Jesus. It is a mixed system of mysticism and metaphysics, dependent for every one of its essential parts upon the human philosophy which it derides, and owing its very existence to the ancient religion which it claims to have overthrown.

Still, it may be contended that Christianity is Christian, inasmuch as it is the offspring of Christianized minds, which, drawing their material from the dogmas already existing in the world, were diligent in remoulding and reconstructing them in accordance with the faith of Jesus. But, even were this true, the dogmas themselves by such a process do not become Christian. Can a Christian man have none but Christian ideas? And are all the notions which professing Christians may entertain on religious matters to be ascribed to Jesus? But let this pass. How stands the fact

itself? Were they Christianized minds that constructed the creeds of the church? It is notorious that the Christian Fathers, early and late, were Gentile philosophers, who held fast to their philosophy, and prided themselves upon it to the end. Justin Martyr was a revering disciple of Plato before he became a Christian, and was no less one after his conversion. He regarded his new faith as a supplement to his old philosophy. "The doctrines of Plato," he says, "are not foreign to Christianity. When we Christians say that all things are created and ruled by God, we seem to utter a thought of Plato, and between our view of God's being and his, the article makes the sole distinction." Clement of Alexandria gloried in Grecian philosophy, and especially in Plato, with whose writings he delighted to enrich his own pages. He loved to draw comparisons between Platonic and Christian doctrines, held that true philosophy and true religion were one and the same thing, and looked upon Christianity as the perfect and effective Platonism. The learned and influential Origen was a true Platonist, both in letter and in spirit. The very genius of Plato rules and often creates his thought. Origen," says Huetius, "did not so much accommodate the doctrine of Plato to the dictum of Christ, as reduce the dogmas of Christianity to the rules of Platonic thought." And again: "Origen seems to have transferred the entire academy into the church." Even the dogmatical Irenæus, in his ethical and psychological teaching, and in his doctrine of the Logos, shows his respect for Plato. Eusebius of Cesarea calls Plato the only Greek who pressed into the very porch of Christian truth. And Theodoret avows his belief that this prince of philosophers did much to prepare the way for the new faith. Especially did the famous Augustine acknowledge his own and the world's obligation to the Grecian sage. He too had been a zealous disciple of the academy, and never wholly repudiated his old leaders. His book, called "The City of God," contains some very strong passages; for example: "This very thing which is now called. the Christian religion existed with the ancients, and was extant at the commencement of the human race: until Christ came in the flesh, when the true religion which already was known began to be called Christian." And again, in the " Confessions," he says: "If I had first been instructed in the holy books, and had afterwards fallen in with these volumes [the writings of Plato], they might either have torn me away from the foundations of faith, or,

if I had preserved in my heart the wisdom I had imbibed, might have persuaded me that the same could have been found in these books, by one who had been taught from them only." Jerome, the laborious scholar and the renowned saint, though born of Christian parents, received his education in the schools, and was an accomplished philosopher. He repented of his profane studies and abandoned them, but not until they had moulded his mind and established his methods of thought. He himself narrates with solemn asseverations, that, being ill with afever, so that the heat of life failing his death was expected, he was suddenly caught up in the spirit before the judgment-seat of God, and being questioned as to his condition, and answering "A Christian," it was replied, "Thou liest thou art a Ciceronian, for where thy treasure is, there thy heart is also." And Jerome was silent, and the Judge commanded him to be scourged severely. But entreating for mercy, and those standing near interceding for him, he was released on promising no more to read secular writings.

The Latin Fathers of the West did not share with the Greek Fathers their admiration of the philosophers. But their dread of philosophy is the strongest possible testimony to the power which it exerted upon Christian speculation, and betrays, like a similar fear in the cardinal Bellarmin, a secret belief in it. When the Pope Clement VIII. proposed introducing the Platonic philosophy as a higher branch of study in the universities, Bellarmin dissuaded him, because, he said, the philosophy of Plato so closely resembles the Christian theology, that those who are seeking for what is Christian will be drawn into it, and restrained from further inquiry. The mystical theology that prevailed in the fifth and sixth centuries was purely philosophical in its origin. The system of Dionysius the Areopagite, says Ackermann, was nothing but Neoplatonism translated into Christianity. Scotus Erigena, one of the most eminent names in speculative thought, was 8 Platonist. So was, later, the great Anselm of Canterbury, and even St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who found fault with Abelard for being so zealous to prove that Plato was a Christian.

Men like the early Fathers were much better qualified for interpreting the old religious systems, than for understanding the spirit of Jesus, and were more likely to borrow their ideas from Alexandria or Rome than from Nazareth. They were Greeks in native cast of mind, and in acquired culture. Their leading thoughts,

their methods of reasoning, the terms they employed were peculiarly an-Jewish and un-Christian. Their intellectual material, and their mode of working it up, was Gentile. No doubt they received something from Christianity; no doubt Christianity affected them morally and spiritually. But in the popular sense of the word, they did a great deal more for Christianity than Christianity did for them, for they made of it a philosophy, and exalted it to the throne of that imperial thought which for thousands of years has ruled the mind of man.

If, then, we would find the religion of Jesus, we must not seek it in what is called Christianity; we must not look for it among the Fathers of the church. We must abandon our hopeless picking and choosing among the dogmas of the various sects. Nothing will be gained by the old method of controversy, which at the best but analyzes, compares and weighs against one another credences none of which, perhaps, contain the faith of Christ. We must set aside as irrelevant at least, and as based on false assumptions, every received statement respecting the person and the teaching of Jesus, and must go back to the original sources of information to study the problem afresh, by the aid of a better philosophy and a finer criticism.

We have negative interpretations of Christianity enough. We have been told again and again what Christianity is not. The Lutheran says it is not Romanism; the Calvinist says it is not Lutheranism; the Socinian says it is not either of these; the Presbyterian says it is not Episcopacy; the Congregationalist says it is not Presbyterianism. Each denomination defines itself against some other, and is more concerned to deny its antagonist error, than to affirm its own truth. Every sect is a heresy, borrowing something from the sect it has abandoned, but emphasizing what it has rejected, not what it has retained. It is known by the doctrines it has abjured. It is created and supported by controversy. If it ceases from disputation, it ceases from being. endures so long as it is aggressive; for its life is an excited fever of hot strife against what it does not believe, rather than a natural vitality of faith in what it does. The Catholic church snatched its doctrine from the philosophers, whom it straightway denounced as heretics, covering up its act of plunder by casting a suspicion of dishonesty upon the plundered, and securing its prize, not by proving its own right of possession, but by decrying theirs and

It

refusing even to acknowledge an identity of goods; doing scarcely anything else for five centuries but affirm that Christianity was not this, and was not that. The Protestant church took what it wanted from the Roman, then turned its back, repudiated its benefactor, and once more spoiled the Egyptians. The divers Protestant sects followed these distinguished examples, until at length each had so much to do, in declaring what was not its own, that no time was left to declare what was.

The Roman Catholic church, though collecting its doctrines from all ages, and from all parts of the world, did nevertheless claim to receive the spirit of truth from Christ himself; not through the medium of any written scripture, or any formal teaching, but by way of tradition, private and exclusive, and by the influx of his ever-present light. The Protestant churches, though denying that any such channel of communication existed, have not succeeded in opening another, and have occupied themselves wholly with the task of discussing, analyzing, and resolving into its parts that heterogeneous body of dogmas which was assumed to be true in the main, under the name of Christianity.

The truth of these dogmas is now questioned by multitudes. A keen and wide-spread skepticism scrutinizes the received belief of Christendom in all its forms. But the name of Jesus is still revered, and the faith of Jesus is still appealed to, not as a system of dogmatic theology, but as the inspiring principle of divine and human enterprises. It remains to be seen whether this name can be applied to a person, and whether the faith of this person can be discovered whether we are still to receive influence from a living soul of matchless grandeur and beauty in the past, or whether we must grant that the blessed being whom Christendom has worshipped, is but a heavenly vision, a phantom shape which the spirit of man has projected upon the dark background of history, to represent its ideal of truth, purity, trust and love,-a creature of the imagination, enduring through its loveliness, and reflecting eternal power and glory upon the divine reason that called it into being.