best worth and reality. The unerring and consummate felicity of Jesus, his prepossessingness, his grace and truth, are, moreover, at the same time the law for right performance on all men's great lines of endeavour, although the Bible deals with the line of conduct only.
Even those corrections, and they are many and grave, which will have to be applied to popular Christianity, are to be drawn from Christianity itself. The materialistic future state, the materialistic kingdom of God, of our popular religion, will dissolve 'like some insubstantial vision faded.' But they will dissolve through the action, through the gradually increasing influence, of other and profounder texts of Scripture than the popular texts on which they base themselves. Using the language of accommodation to the ideas current amongst his hearers, Jesus talked of drinking wine and sitting on thrones in the kingdom of God; and texts of this kind are what popular religion promptly seized and built upon. But other profounder texts meanwhile there were, which remained, one may say, in shadow. 'This is life eternal, to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent;'—'The kingdom of God is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.' These deeper texts will gradually come more and more into notice and prominence and use, as it becomes evident that the future state built on the language of accommodation has no reality. The teachers of religion will more and more bring these texts forward and develope them. And as, from being everywhere preached and believed, the illusory future state gained power and apparent substance, so too, by coming
