TREE OF GOOD AND EVIL CUT DOWN BY JESUS. 327

all false, and that all the truth man possesses is only relative and not absolute.

When Jesus proclaimed his glad tidings of salvation, he practically laid an axe to the root of the tree of knowledge of good and evil theism. Like a true physician, he goes to the seat of disease or false centre of vital action; he cuts like a practised surgeon, with a strong wrist and well nerved power, down into the internal cancer that shoots its fibres hidden from the eye. He shews that evil imaginations beget evil diseases, that perverted mental action palsies the limbs, blinds the eyes, and deranges its own operations, by throwing its energies in selfish eagerness in upon itself, so that men actually become possessed of the very demons they conjure up, and their hallucinations or diseased convictions bind their minds in the very shape of the devils so raised. Men become bound in the cords of their own misconcepts, and finally, silk-worm like, are completely covered with a cocoon of sins of their own spinning. When Jesus cured diseases he aimed at men's sensorial consciousness, and says, "If you can believe (or give me your mind) it. "shall be." In his own neighbourhood they disbelieved and despised him; and it is reported that he could not cure them because of their obstinate unbelief. He controverted the idea that eating anything could defile the supposed immortal soul; he said that the mind of man was not a god, as it was often a fountain of evil conceptions; that man was not inspired to commit murder, rape, licentiousness, robbery, perjury, all unnatural crimes, by an evil power or spirit, but that the human mind was itself the fountain head whence issued these sins. It was these things that came from the supposed immortal mind that defiled the man, and not what went into him. To the pure in thought all things are really pure, but the mind of man is not in itself a fountain of pure water when it originates bad thoughts.

Moses combated evil in the human mind by permitting it to be acknowledged, he had to deal with a generation too low in the scale of intelligence to understand any other teaching. So he applies palliatives, he did not attempt to

uproot the evil tree bodily. He took human consciousness as he found it, and was not in a position to propound any absolute and eternal precepts for the radical reformation of the human mind, thus he was limited to giving elementary lessons, that left the pupil in the outer court of ontological and theological science. He could not permit any vulgar intrusion behind the veil that hid the innermost of all. Moses administered medicine to diseased minds, but did not grapple with human consciousness in its innermost recess, for it would have been so much time and labour thrown away upon intellects too gross to comprehend his refined teaching.

This was left for Jesus to do, and he effects this by refusing to allow his disciples to entertain the knowledge of sacerdotal evil in their consciousness, and enforces his protest by refusing to combat the antagonism of others as an evil or injury. He counsels his hearers to return good for evil, to be perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect, who does not see as man sees, and consequently knows no such human distinction or division of moral from physical force, for in his eyes nature is "all very good." The sun in the centre of this planetary system shines upon all alike, both on just and unjust. He is kind, said Jesus, both to the thankful and those who thank him not, and to the wicked. He can have no enemies, but those who are enemies to themselves. He gives to those who make him an enemy: sinners are selfpunishers, for God does not seek their punishment, on the contrary he is willing that they should turn and embrace the law of life. He judges no man, to judge he would have to condemn, to condemn is to acknowledge evil.

The expressions made use of in the Bible, relative to God's hatred and destruction of his enemies, are relative to mankind's own standards of truth, and are the prophets' adaptations to human views of justice. They are not God's views, for he is not the Father or God of men at all. If the cattle of the field perish without divine aid, so does man. This question of divine and special providence was pressed upon Jesus of Nazareth, and two cases were brought before him for his opinion. The first was Pilate's brutal massacre of

SACERDOTAL THEISM COMBATED BY JESUS CHRIST. 329

certain Galileans, and the second the fall of Siloam's tower, and the question was put to him, if these unhappy victims were special objects of divine vengeance for their sins? Now this query is one that cuts down to the marrow of the subject of divine providence over man, for if there be divine aid, how does it operate? Is it by law, or by interference and suspension of all law? If it operates by law, how is it in case of exceptions which we see, and how does it operate if interference is arbitrary and capricious? And by parity of reasoning, how is the standard of good and evil regulated? for upon this all-important scale of morality we must depend for the regulation of our reward and punishment, which it is most important to know, inasmuch as it is the foundation of our religion, and involves the great question of our future state.

Christ's answer is prompt and plain, so plain and straightforward, that there can be no more quibbling about good and evil, or reward and punishment; and there can be no foundation whatever for the assumption of a future state, based upon this theory of theological evil. He says, that the men in the cases quoted were not sinners above others, and were not singled out for punishment by divine providence; and that unless his hearers embrace the eternal word of life, they shall every man of them likewise ultimately perish. That is the solution of the fiercely debated question of divine providence by Jesus of Nazareth. There is then no divine providence for mankind in the way theologians preach of it. There is no more regard for good than there is vengeance upon the bad men with God. All men perish alike, they lie down and perish like sheep. This is endorsing Solomon's declaration in the Ecclesiastes, that there is one death, or one event, to all men alike, all perish just as the brutes do. Let a man be righteous or wicked, good and clean, or let him be a filthy beast; let him be religious and offer sacrifice, or let him be a scoffer and sacrifice not, let him be virtuous or let him be evil, let him be truthful or a perjurer, it matters not, there is one fate before all, they all alike perish for ever.

The mind of man is not clean in the sight of absolute good, let man be ever so righteous, insanity lurks in all minds while men live, and afterwards they all indiscriminately go to the dead. A living dog is better than a dead lion, and a living beggar is better than a dead king, for the living do know one thing, viz., that they shall die eventually, but as for the dead they know absolutely nothing, neither have they any more hope of a reward, for their memory is forgotten.

Jesus declared that his mission was to the poor, the blind, the deaf, the dregs of society, because they were more likely to acknowledge their need of some cure, than those who intuitively supposed themselves to be the "elect" or saints of God. Jesus regarded all sin in man, as Solomon treats it, as the result of dementia, or lurking insanity. He treated sin as a disease, as a sort of internal itch, a something that could be cleared off by the operation of powerful fluid; a derangement of cerebration, that must be treated not metaphysically or mystico-psychologically as the rabbins taught, but as if these evil thoughts were the excremention of an insane state requiring the purging of an electric fire, and that fire nothing less than the fire baptism of the eternal power. As water baptism clears the skin, so fire baptism attacks the bodily obstructions of insanity; for all mental perversion is organical obstruction, malformation, or decay. To treat mental unsoundness upon abstract theological assumptions was not Jesus' task. He left that system for the regenerating rabbins, and a pretty mess they made of their work, as he shewed them.

The word of life in the mouth of Christ was a fire of such searching power that it pierced down to the centres of life in man. Paul declared from his experience, that it cleaved down to the sundering of joints and spinal marrow, it cut to the quick, or to the centres of life in him, sharper than any two edged sword.

Now it is plain, from Jesus' teaching and life, that the selfrighteous, or intuitively conscious saints, are beyond the aid of a physician, because they don't see their mental unsoundness. They neither murder nor break the smallest of any of

DIVINE WORSHIP OF THE PHYSICIAN-PRIEST.

331

the ten commandments, and they never did; moreover, they imagine themselves elect. But as it is a matter of relative goodness after all, they may suffer from latent insanity, such as ill temper, pride, malice, undying hatred, and narrow or dull-minded bigotry and envy, and so are practically lost in sin after all.

From one unfortunate woman Jesus cast what is orientally called seven devils, she was the victim of a complicated case of unsound mental, and consequently organic disease, and she knew her state, and was prepared to receive the quickening, renewing power of the spirit of life. But how was it with the Jewish clergy, scribes, law expounders, and pharisees, who taught that the kingdom of immortality was the privilege of the "elect," that is, of those learned in the Sinaitic law? These pious folks paraded their experiences, new births, and other saintly gifts, just as our modern pharisees or separatists do, who sit upon exclusive committees of salvation, and constitute themselves pronouncers general of eternal damnation, to the great admiration and applause of all who are of such small mental calibre as enables them to fire the same very light pounder moral shot. They cannot see that the characters highly applauded among men are abomination in God's sight, in whose eyes we are told the greatest abhorrence may be a character highly esteemed among men.

The Jews of Jesus' time were a pattern to the surrounding nations, they were a sober and industrious race, there was but little of that great staring prostitution of women that out-blazed the sun in other countries, there was some dissipation and loose living it is true, for Jerusalem was an attraction for all people then, and among these Hebrews, so superior to the world in general, the church-frequenting portion, the pharisees, and others, were to human eyes a pattern even to the Jews themselves. But what does Jesus say to these saints? does he ever use strong language, but to those people? Why, he has no expression too bitter, no form of words that could be used by him or any one else that convey meanings so pregnant with scorn, contempt, and