daily, in old mosaic pictures, a sword coming forth from the mouth of God, they formed a representation of God corresponding to these pictures (Rev. i. 20). And thus many readers of the Gospel suppose that Jesus was really carried up into the air by the devil and placed on the summit of the temple or of a high mountain, that he might show him all the kingdoms of the earth, and tempt him to establish an earthly realm. Is it reverent to imagine Christ borne through the air by the devil, instead of simply learning that Christ himself, as we read, was not a stranger to inward trials, and that he freely confessed them to his disciples? Many parables are represented in the Gospels, as though they had really occurred at the time. Thus, in the parables of the kingdom of heaven, the phrase always runs that it is like seed which a man sowed, and while he slept an enemy came and sowed tares. Or the kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, or like a treasure found by a man in a field, or like a merchant seeking goodly pearls, etc. In listening to these parables or looking at pictorial representations of them, there develops almost unconsciously, especially among the young, a belief in their reality, in their actual occurrence at the time of Christ. In many cases this belief is widely spread, as, for example, in the story of the good Samaritan, Now it is quite possible that some such incident as Jesus related had occurred in his time, or shortly before it; but it is just as likely to have been a parable invented for a specific purpose. And why should not this be true of other things, which the Gospels ascribe to Jesus himself?