A spiritual crucifixion, death, and resurrection, in strict analogy with the equinoctial crucifixion, death, and resurrection of the mystic rites, is the foremost idea of this passage. The baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan and his forty days’ temptation in the wilderness were of the same character. There was no literal dying signified in the case. Indeed, nobody knew better than Paul that the Jewish Sanhedrim did not sit and that capital punishments were not inflicted at the period of the Passover, the day of the crucifixion, being, according to the law, “a day of holy convocation.” The crucifixion being figurative and suggested by an astrological period, we are fully warranted in the hypothesis that the victim likewise was a symbolic personage of an astral character. This ideal Jesus, with the emphatic but ambiguous phrase of Paul—“Him crucified”—was not sufficient for the exigencies of the Christian leaders of the subsequent century. The Gnostics and other cultured men were satisfied, but the lower classes wanted a more tangible character, a physical corporeity. The great want, therefore, was some proof of the literal existence of the individual by the evidence of men that had seen him and been familiar with him. This was now furnished by the production of the three synoptic Gospels and their adoption in the place of other evangelical literature. Afterward, Irenæus or some one with his approval added the Gospel according to John. The fiction of an apostolic succession was then originated, and forgery for religious purposes was a general practice. The quarrels of Christians with Christians were for centuries more scandalous than all the atrocities of actual martyrdom. Previous to this the Church had labored indefatigably and successfully to destroy the influence and reputation of Paul. He was now taken into favor; his Epistles were revised, interpolated, toned down, and accepted as canonical. The Acts of the Apostles was next produced. It is a work in two parts—one set apart to the story of the apostle Peter, and the other to the achievements of Paul. The purpose evidently was to indicate that the two were not at variance, but were laborers in the same field. The work of harmonizing must have been difficult. In our day it would not have been possible. Books cannot be got out of the way as in former centuries, and inconsistencies of writers are sure to be exposed.