Again he is caught up and carried along as before. This time halt is made at the door of a college in a German town, in which the class-room of one of the professors is open for lecture this Christmas Eve. It is, intellectually considered, the opposite pole to both the Methodist chapel and the Roman Basilica. The poet enters, fearful of losing the society of “any that call themselves his friends.” He describes the assembled company, and the entrance of “the hawk-nosed, high-cheek-boned professor,” of part of whose Christmas Eve’s discourse he proceeds to give the substance. The professor takes it for granted that “plainly no such life was liveable,” and goes on to inquire what explanation of the phenomena of the life of Christ it were best to adopt. Not that it mattered much, “so the idea be left the same.” Taking the popular story, for convenience sake, and separating all extraneous matter from it, he found that Christ was simply a good man, with an honest, true heart; whose disciples thought him divine; and whose doctrine, though quite mistaken by those who received and published it, “had yet a meaning quite as respectable.” Here the poet takes advantage of a pause to leave him; reflecting that though the air may be poisoned by the sects, yet here “the critic leaves no air to poison.” His meditations and arguments following, are among the most valuable passages in the book. The professor, notwithstanding the idea of Christ has by him been exhausted of all that is peculiar to it, yet recommends him to the veneration and worship of his hearers, “rather than all who went before him, and all who ever followed after.” But why? says the poet. For his intellect, “Which tells me simply what was told (If mere morality, bereft Of the God in Christ, be all that’s left) Elsewhere by voices manifold?” with which must be combined the fact that this intellect of his did not save him from making the “important stumble,” of saying that he and God were one. “But his followers misunderstood him,” says the objector. Perhaps so; but “the stumbling-block, his speech, who laid it?” Well then, is it on the score of his goodness that he should rule his race? “You pledge Your fealty to such rule? What, all-- From Heavenly John and Attic Paul, And that brave weather-battered Peter, Whose stout faith only stood completer For buffets, sinning to be pardoned, As the more his hands hauled nets, they hardened-- All, down to you, the man of men, Professing here at Göttingen, Compose Christ’s flock! So, you and I Are sheep of a good man! And why?” Did Christ _invent_ goodness? or did he only demonstrate that of which the common conscience was judge? “I would decree Worship for such mere demonstration And simple work of nomenclature, Only the day I praised, not Nature, But Harvey, for the circulation.”