be a striking testimony, not to be despised.  But in fact, few indeed of the “witnesses” add any weight at all to the argument.  No Trinitarian can doubt that Jesus is morally perfect, without doubting fundamentally every part of his religion.  He believes it, because the entire system demands it, and because various texts of Scripture avow it:  and this very fact makes it morally impossible for him to enter upon an unbiassed inquiry, whether that character which is drawn for Jesus in the four gospels, is, or is not, one of absolute perfection, deserving to be made an exclusive model for all times and countries.  My friend never was a Trinitarian, and seems not to know how this operates; but I can testify, that when I believed in the immaculateness of Christ’s character, it was not from an unbiassed criticism, but from the pressure of authority, (the authority of texts,) and from the necessity of the doctrine to the scheme of Redemption.  Not merely strict Trinitarians, but all who believe in the Atonement, however modified,—­all who believe that Jesus will be the future Judge,—­must believe in his absolute perfection:  hence the fact of their belief is no indication whatever that they believe on the ground which my friend assumes,—­viz. an intelligent and unbiassed study of the character itself, as exhibited in the four narratives.

I think we may go farther.  We have no reason for thinking that this was the sort of evidence which convinced the apostles themselves, and first teachers of the gospel;—­if indeed in the very first years the doctrine was at all conceived of.  It cannot be shown that any one believed in the moral perfection of Jesus, who had not already adopted the belief that he was Messiah, and therefore Judge of the human race.  My friend makes the pure immaculateness of Jesus (discernible by him in the gospels) his foundation, and deduces from this the quasi-Messiahship:  but the opposite order of deduction appears to have been the only one possible in the first age.  Take Paul as a specimen.  He believed the doctrine in question; but not from reading the four gospels,—­for they did not exist.  Did he then believe it by hearing Ananias (Acts ix. 17) enter into details concerning the deeds and words of Jesus?  I cannot imagine that any wise or thoughtful person would so judge, which after all would be a gratuitous invention.  The Acts of the Apostles give us many speeches which set forth the grounds of accepting Jesus as Messiah; but they never press his absolute moral perfection as a fact and a fundamental fact.  “He went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil,” is the utmost that is advanced on this side:  prophecy is urged, and his resurrection is asserted, and the inference is drawn that “Jesus is the Christ.”  Out of this flowed the farther inferences that he was Supreme Judge,—­and moreover, was Paschal Lamb, and Sacrifice, and High Priest, and Mediator; and since every one of these