It was an idea wholly original with Jesus. He had no prece dent. He had no human authority for it. He predicted that it

should be done. If he had simply delivered a A universal re

ligion.

discourse, in which he had taught the desirableness of this universal religion, and that discourse had been preserved, it would have rendered his fame immortal, and have placed him far in advance of all the wisest and most profound of human thinkers. Coming from an unlettered mechanic, raised in one of the meanest villages of the most narrow and bigoted people on earth, the announcement would have been a marvel of grandest thought. The more remarkable fact is, that each succeeding century has brought his words nearer to a fulfilment, and that none since his death has contributed so much to their accomplishment as the present, a century full of hottest political excitements, of vastest enterprises, of most material progress, and largest liberality of thought.

A claim and prediction.

4. His latest words were a claim and a prediction. They were a claim of perpetuity, of personal presence, and personal influence. He should exist. He should be present with each disciple in every part of the world, every day, until the present system of things shall meet the cataclysm which shall inaugurate another æon, another system of things. All our new science demonstrates that the Great Creator divides His biography into parts and into chapters. The whole universe, so far as we have been able to read it, is falling forward. Nothing in the past gives us much help towards ascertaining the probable length of the present æon; but everything we learn increases the probability that some vast change shall come.

Remarkable fulfilment.*

Everything that Jesus predicted has come to pass, except this, aud this is coming to pass. The present age promises that when the last day of the system, of which thoughtful mortals form a part, shall arrive, there will be disciples of Jesus engaged in his work, according to this prediction. They are now more busy than ever. important series of facts that the books which contain the original history of Jesus, the record of his acts and words, and the predictions which he made, constitute the first volume which was set in type and published at the invention of printing;* that at this

It is an

* It was issued at Mentz, in Germany, | Revived, says of this book: "Though a in 1450. McClure, in his Translators | first attempt, it is beautifully printed on

time there are several presses engaged on each of the continents in printing nothing but that volume; that it is printed and eirculated in more languages and dialects than any other book o books considered by any criticism as sacred or profane; * that so soon as a savage tribe is discovered its language is reduced to a grammar, that there shall be translated into it the volume, the central figure of which is Jesus; that his name occurs more frequently in song than that of any other man who ever lived, and that the eighteenth century after that in which he lived has produced more books investigating his character and claims than all the preceding centuries.

very fine paper, and with superior ink. At least eighteen copies of this famous edition are known to be in existence at the present time. Twenty-five years ago, one of them, printed on vellum, was sold for five hundred and four pounds sterling!"

lated no less than seventy copies of the issues of 1611; yet, after all, this was the day of small things.

Since the beginning of the present century, the British and Foreign Bible Society has issued over sixty-three millions of Bibles and Testaments; the American Bible Society has issued more than twenty-seven millions of volumes; other Bible Societies, not far from twenty millions; while private publish.

and elsewhere, have increased these issues by scores of millions besides.

The whole number of languages and dialects into which the Holy Scriptures have been translated is two hundred and fifty-two. Of these, two hundred and five are versions prepared since the ori-ers in Great Britain, the United States, gin of Bible Societies, at which time the Scriptures had been translated into only forty-seven different languages. Bagster, in his Bible of Ecery Land, gives specimens of the Scriptures in various languages and dialects, to the number of about three hundred, including those which have been printed in different native characters.

It is supposed that within three years after the publication of the Great Bible, in 1539, no less than twenty-one thousand copies were printed. Between 1524 and 1611, two hundred and seventy-eight editions of Bibles or Testaments in English were printed. In 1611, 1612, and 1613, five editions of King James's version were published, besides separate editions of the New Testament; and we have some slight clue to the size of the editions in the fact, that one person in England has recently col

In speaking on this subject, Anderson, in his Annals of the English Bible, says: "The volumes of the Scriptures which have already been printed cannot be numbered. Hitherto we have numbered the editions only; but this is now impossible. No one can say exactly how many editions even of the English Bible · have been published, much less inform us how many copies."

The volumes of Holy Writ circulated within the present century are greater in number than all that were in the world from Moses to Martin Luther, and are more than double the entire production of the press, from the printing of the first Bible in 1450 to the era of Bible Societies in 1804. (See Man ual of the American Bible Society.)

IV.

The Ascension.

There is but one other thing to record. They all returned to Jerusalem. On the fortieth day after his resurrection, Jesus led them out to the neighborhood of Bethany. There, on some part of the Mount of Olives, they saw him for the last time. He blessed them, and while in the act of pronouncing his final benediction, he was parted from them. He ascended in their sight. IIe passed into a cloud. The rapt disciples stood gazing up into that part of the heavens where they had last beheld their Lord. Suddenly two men in white apparel stood beside the silent group, and one said, "Ye men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as you have seen him taken into heaven."

The disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy. They believed that Jesus, who had departed, was still present, and their sorrow was gone; and they who, forty days before, were in the darkness of despair, now continually praised God, and waited for the further direction of Jesus. He had become to them the glory of heaven and of earth.

We have

I have told his story as simply and as conscientiously as possi ble, and have honestly endeavored to apprehend and to represent the consciousness of Jesus at each moment of his career. The work of the historian is completed. Each reader has now the responsibility of saying who he is. All agree that he was man. The finest intellects of eighteen centuries have believed that he was the greatest and best man that ever lived. All who have so believed have become better men therefor. seen that he never performed an act or spoke a word which would have been unbecoming in the Creator of the Universe, if the Creator should ever clothe Himself with human flesh. Millions of men—kings, and poets, and historians, and philosophers, and busy merchants, and rude mechanics, and purest women, and simple children—have believed that he is God. And all who have devoutly believed this, and lived by this as a truth, have become exemplary for all that is beautiful in holiness.

What is he who can so live and so die as to produce such interlectual and moral results?

Reader, you must answer