water into wine of excellent quality; that he fed five thousand men with
five loaves, walked on the water, opened the eyes, ears, and mouths of
men born blind, deaf, and dumb, and at a touch or a word brought back
a maimed limb. They called him a SAVIOUR, sent from God to redeem the
Jews, and them only, from eternal damnation; next, said that he was the
Saviour of all mankind,--Jews and Gentiles too; that he was a Sacrifice
offered to appease the wrath of God, who had become so angry with his
children that he intended to torment them all forever in hell. By and by
his followers were called CHRISTIANS,--that is, men who took Jesus for
the Christ of the Old Testament; and in their preaching they did not
make much account of the noble ideas Jesus taught about man, God, and
religion, or of his own great manly life; but they thought his DEATH
was the great thing,--and that was the means to save men from eternal
torment. Then they went further, and declared that Jesus was not the
son of Joseph and Mary, but THE SON OF GOD and Mary,--miraculously born;
next, that he was GOD'S ONLY SON, who had never had any child before,
and never would have another; again, that he was a GOD who had lived
long before Jesus was born, but for the then first time took the human
form; and at last, that he was THE ONLY GOD, the Creator and Providence
of all the universe; but was man also, the GOD-MAN. Thus, gradually,
the actual facts of his history were lost out of sight, overgrown with
a great mass of fictions, poetic and other stories, which make him a
mythological character; the Jesus of fact was well-nigh forgot,--the
Christ of fiction took his place.

Well, after the death of Jesus, his followers went from town to town,
from country to country, preaching "Christ and him crucified;" they
taught that the world would soon end, for Jesus would come back and
"judge the world," raising the dead,--and then all who had believed in
him would be "saved," but the rest would be "lost forever;" a new world