that antedates Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu, by countless centuries, and is the burden of the ancientest and uncorrupted Rig-Veda, bears unequivocal testimony to the same primitive conception; and the Buddhas taught that they were, perhaps believed themselves to be, earthly manifestations of the spiritual self-conception of one dual God: for polytheism was never the original form of any primitive nation’s faith, and every people that began with paganism borrowed from some older nation in which the original faith had already been degraded. Strange! most strange! Oh, if it could be proved! If it could only be proved that Jesus of Nazareth is, in very truth, the incarnation of that which was to be ’begotten’ and ’conceived’ of the one dual God, and born of a woman into the world, how grandly would the fact vindicate the primitive utterances of all human faith, and translate its vague but splendid dreams into a glorious reality! It must be true! Surely it must be true! For among Egyptians, Chinese, Indians, and Jews, this original faith preceded all idolatries!" Then, buried in profoundest meditation, the old man ceased to speak. But after a time he roused himself, and looking upon the astonished youth he said: "And thou believest all this! thou hast ’never been such an idiot as to doubt it!’ Happy art thou, boy, if thou shalt preserve unfalteringly and unquestioningly thy serene and all-reliant faith." But the lad’s sturdy independence of thought asserted itself, and he answered: "Nay, sir! I have professed faith in none of the things of which thou speakest. I believe in one God and in Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, and in the Holy Ghost. I believe not in Hesiri-Hes, nor in Chang and Eng, nor in Indra and Agni, nor in any gods which Moses denounced as falsest idols. Nor in Jupiter, nor Venus, nor Mars, nor in any of the gods that came into fashion with the heathen long since Moses died."