X. Thou shalt treat with profound respect and tenderness all the powers that be, and all popular opinions, social, political and religious, however thou mayest contemn them in thy heart; for great Bumble is the sole lord of large circulations, and only through his continued grace can our circulation continue to increase. It is by assiduously conforming themselves to this most wise and holy decalogue, that the members of the staff of the _Daily News_ have become such rare flowers of sweetness and light; worthy of that serene Professor of Haughty-culture, Matthew Arnold himself, ere he had perpetrated “Literature and Dogma.” But while, in common with all the other worshippers of the _Daily News_, I exult in its world-wide and ever-increasing circulation, I am haunted by a horrible fear, which I cannot conceal, but will hint and whisper as gently as possible. When a stone falls into a pond—but no, pond is vulgar—when a stone falls into a still lake, the first small rings are clearly defined, but the circlings as they enlarge grow fainter and fainter, until at length they can no more be perceived. Now, as all the world knows, our beloved and revered Daily News, in its ever-increasing circulation, has hitherto followed precisely the same law; and my dread is that it will continue to do so unto the utmost extremity, becoming ever more and more faint and undefined as the circulation increases, until it shall altogether vanish away. It is getting so refined that I fear it will soon be fined away to nothing; so delicate and dainty, that it is already unfit for this rough world, whose slightest shock may kill it; so ethereal that its complete evaporation seems imminent; so supernal that it must surely soon disappear, absorbed into the Empyrean. May that good God, who we have been told “will think twice before damning a person of quality,” think many, many times before condemning our fashionable world to such an irreparable loss! JESUS: AS GOD; AS A MAN (1866.) “These hereditary enemies of the Truth... have even had the heart to degrade this first preacher of the Mountain, the purest hero of Liberty; for, unable to deny that he was earth’s greatest man, they have made of him heaven’s smallest god.”—Heine: Reisébilder. The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus, which, in whatever relation regarded, is full of self-contradictions and absurdities, is, above all, pernicious in its moral and spiritual results. Most myths have a certain justification in their beauty, in their symbolism of high truth. This one distorts the beauty, degrades the sublimity, stultifies the meaning of the facts and the character wherein it has been founded, taking away all true grandeur from Jesus, benumbing our love and reverence.