Justice has been waiting nineteen centuries for intelligent commentators to appreciate this difference between the orthodox Tertullian and the Gnostic Marcion. The brutal violence, unfairness, and bigotry of the “great African” repulse all who accept his Christianity. “How can a god,” inquired Marcion, “break his own commandments? How could he consistently prohibit idolatry and image-worship, and still cause Moses to set up the brazen serpent? How command: Thou shalt not steal, and then order the Israelites to _spoil_ the Egyptians of their gold and silver?” Anticipating the results of modern criticism, Marcion denies the applicability to Jesus of the so-called Messianic prophecies. Writes the author of _Supernatural Religion_:[285] “The Emmanuel of Isaiah is not Christ; the ‘Virgin,’ his mother, is simply a ‘young woman,’ an alma of the temple; and the sufferings of the servant of God (_Isaiah_ lii. 13-liii. 3) are not predictions of the death of Jesus.”[286] CHAPTER IV. “Nothing better than those MYSTERIES, by which, from a rough and fierce life, we are polished to gentleness (humanity, kindness), and softened.”--CICERO: _de Legibus_, ii., 14. “Descend, O Soma, with that stream with which thou lightest up the Sun.... Soma, a Life Ocean spread through All, thou fillest creative the Sun with beams.”--_Rig-Veda_, ii., 143. “... the beautiful Virgin ascends, with long hair, and she holds two ears in her hand, and sits on a seat and feeds a BOY as yet little, and suckles him and gives him food.”--AVENAR. It is alleged that the _Pentateuch_ was written by Moses, and yet it contains the account of his own death (_Deuteronomy_ xxxiv. 6); and in _Genesis_ (xiv. 14), the name Dan is given to a city, which _Judges_ (xviii. 29), tells us was only called by that name at that late day, it having previously been known as Laish. Well might Josiah have rent his clothes when he had heard the words of the Book of the Law; for there was no more of Moses in it than there is of Jesus in the _Gospel according to John_. We have one fair alternative to offer our theologians, leaving them to choose for themselves, and promising to abide by their decision. Only they will have to admit, either that Moses was an impostor, or that his books are forgeries, written at different times and by different persons; or, again, that they are full of fraudulent interpolations. In either case the work loses all claims to be considered divine _Revelation_. Here is the problem, which we quote from the _Bible_--the word of the God of Truth: “And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name of JEHOVAH was I not known to them” (_Exodus_ vi. 3), spake God unto Moses.