impossible to please God." He declared that all who were not for him were against him; and all who were not on the same road are "heathens and publicans." His disciples were enjoined to shake off the dust from their feet as a manifestation of displeasure toward those who could not conscientiously subscribe to their creeds and dogmas. Thus we discover a strong vein of intolerance and sectarianism in the religion of the otherwise, and in other respects, the kind and loving Jesus. Though most benignantly kind and affectionate while moving and acting under the controlling impulses of his lofty manhood, yet when his ardent religious feelings were touched, he became chafed, irritated, and sometimes intolerant. He then could tolerate no such thing as liberty of conscience, or freedom of thought, or the right to differ with him in religious belief. His extremely ardent devotional nature, when roused into action in defense of a stereotyped faith, eclipsed his more noble, lofty, and lovely traits, and often dimmed his mental vision, thus presenting in the same individual a strange medley, and a strange contrast of the most opposite traits of character. That such a being should have been considered and worshipped as a God, and for the very reason that he possessed such strange, contradictory traits of character, and often let his religion run riot with his reason, will be looked upon by posterity as one of the strangest chapters in the history of the human race. But so it is. Extraordinary good qualities, though intermingled with many errors and human foibles, have deified many men. Note. One Christian writer alleges, in defense of the objectionable precepts of Jesus Christ, that "He taught some errors in condescension to the ignorance of the people." If this be true, that he taught both truth and falsehood, then the question arises, How can we know which is which? By what rule can we discriminate them, as he himself furnishes none? Or how are we to determine that he taught truth at all? And then this plea would account for and excuse all the errors found in the teachings of the oriental Gods. If it will apply in one case, it will in the other. And thus it proves too much. CHAPTER XLII. CHRIST AS A SPIRITUAL MEDIUM THERE are many incidents related in the life of Christ, which, when critically examined, furnish abundant evidence that he was what is now known as a spiritual medium. He unquestionably represented, and often practically exhibited, several important phases of modern mediumship. 1. The many instantaneous cures which he wrought, as reported in his Gospel narrative, performed in the same manner that "spirit doctors" now heal the sick, prove that he was an excellent "healing medium."