It will be remarked that the moral teaching is more vague and mystical than it was in the early time. The theological spirit prevails over the human; the ecclesiastical supersedes the ethical. Practical principle is postponed to theoretical doctrine. The virtues prescribed are ghostly, technical; the graces of a church, not the qualities of a brotherhood. The intellectual air is thinner and more difficult to inhale. The spiritual atmosphere is not inspiring. Intelligence can make nothing of writing like this: "The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church; and He is the Saviour of the body. Therefore, as the Church is subject to Christ, so let wives be subject in all things to their husbands. Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word; that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish." The absence of rational ground for duty in the most familiar relations of life could not be more explicitly declared than in a passage like this. That such an age should have had a scientific system of morality cannot be expected; but that the traditional system should have been lost, and a fantastical one set up in its place, is a testimony to the influence of the mystical spirit. The fanciful morality of a small and enthusiastic body may be interesting to the members of the body and influential on their conduct; but it is no evidence of health in the moral constitution of the generation. The representation of the Christian warfare as a conflict "not against flesh and blood,"--that is, against organized evil in society and the State,--"but against principalities, against powers, against the princes of darkness, against wicked spirits that dwell in the air," is another evidence that conscience had become visionary. Such reasoning is of a piece with the argument for there being four gospels and no more, namely, that there were four quarters of the heaven, and four winds; or with the argument for perpetual virginity, that it supplied the Church with vestals. Such theologising shows how far speculation may be separated from reality and yet be entertained by human minds. VII. THE LAST GOSPEL.