The Bishop, not content with such subtle logic, goes on to illustrations drawn from the Bible, and speaks of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. He said there is a moral to be drawn from this temptation story, because Jesus is said to have been with the wild beasts, and there was a deep meaning in this saying. I do read the Gospels sometimes, and therefore puzzled myself about these wild beasts, not having read much of them. I remembered the Jesus-God being taken up a high mountain and shown all the kingdoms of the earth, as a possible bribe if he would worship his own creature the devil. I remembered his being taken up to a pinnacle of the temple and invited to cast himself down; but I did not remember, nor do I now remember, anything about wild beasts, save a few words in the Gospel of Mark, and it is not even there shown that these wild beasts had anything to do with the Lord’s temptation. Whether the Bishop has a special version of his own I do not know. Another point of the Bishop was, that when lower natures have to contemplate higher natures, there is some mystery or contradiction to the lower natures. The man who tries to predetermine your decision on an alleged matter of fact, by declaring that it is too mysterious for you to understand, and that being mysterious, you must accept it as he explains it, is a juggler with his intellect, and takes a position to which he has no right. The Bishop was good enough to talk of our degrading creed. Let him talk of his own degrading creed. Our creed has not invented a bottomless pit filled to its brink with brimstone for everlasting torture, nor has it manufactured a devil more mighty than God to destroy God’s work. Our degrading creed, at any rate, does not despair of human kind, nor tell us that we should be poor here in order to be rich hereafter, and be miserable here that we may be happy bye and bye, when the life-ability for happiness is entirely gone. We don’t despair of human kind, we assert the improvability of the human race and we say if we make this life as good as we can, we shall not be affrighted from our task by any declaration that we may be unhappy hereafter.