some corner of the blue sky; the Son of God sinks to the level of a prince of the house of David, the Saviour to a miracle doctor, and his message of salvation to a promise of resurrection from physical death. There are many good men and women fulfilling in their daily walk the commands of Christ, to whom the true historical conception of the gospel story would be a terrible disillusion. Well, such Christians are at liberty to remain in their own views. Our own interpretation of many of the details in the traditional representation of the Gospels, though details certainly of very great significance, makes no claim to papal authority. It gladly concedes the possibility of error, and only claims to give an interpretation of the evangelic writings, founded on nature and history. It should answer, and at the same time appease, the very numerous and, at bottom, honest men, who, like the Horseherd, declare the gospel narratives, as ordinarily understood, full of falsehood and fraud or even pure fancy, and who have consequently broken with the Christian revelation from conscientious scruples. Their number is greater than is generally supposed, and it must on no account be supposed that they are necessarily wicked or even immoral men. When they declare the Christian revelation to be an absurdity, it is because they do not know it in its historical origin and its divine truth. To assume that every word, every letter,—for it has been carried even so far,—that every parable, every figure, was whispered to the authors of the Gospels, is certainly an absurdity, and rests only on human and often only on priestly authority. But the true revelation, the real truth, as it was already anticipated by the Greek philosophers, slowly accepted by Jews like Philo and the contemporaries of Jesus, taught by men like Clement and Origen in the ancient Greek church, and, in fine, realised in the life of Jesus and sealed by his death, is no absurdity; it is for every thinking Christian the eternal life or the kingdom of God on earth, which Jesus wished to establish, and in part did establish. To become a citizen of this kingdom is the highest that man can attain, but it is not attained merely through baptism and confirmation; it must be gained in earnest spiritual conflict.