6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



highest moral virtue and reaches heroism. Now, all this is true ; it is 

 a part of our natural knowledge. But it is not vicarious sacrifice ; it 

 is not sacrifice at all in the true sense. It is the order of the succes- 

 sion of life in Nature. The living present is always reared upon the 

 dead past. Not only men, but races and nations 



" May rise by stepping-stones of their dead selves 

 To higher things." 



The six noble citizens of Calais who surrendered themselves to the 

 vengeance of the English king were offering themselves as a vicarious 

 sacrifice. They were willing to die, that their fellows might live ; but 

 this act bears no resemblance to the order of Nature above alluded to, 

 and from which the great preacher drew his illustration. It rises to 

 a region of which unconscious Nature knows nothing the region of 

 heroism. But neither fact nor set of facts contains any hint that can 

 lead to a rational explanation of how the death of Christ benefited 

 mankind other than in the way the death of every hero benefits us. 

 This is an esoteric, mysterious doctrine upon which no light can be 

 thrown by an appeal to any known fact or law of the visible universe. 



The eloquent preacher tries to help out his analogy by an original 

 conception of Sin as " a single world-spirit, exactly as electricity, with 

 which the universe is charged, is indivisible, imponderable, one, so 

 that you can not separate it from the great ocean of fluid. The elec- 

 tric spark that slumbers in the dew-drop is part of the flood which 

 struck the oak. Had that spark not been there, it could be demon- 

 strated that the whole previous constitution of the universe might 

 have been different and the oak not have been struck." Every sepa- 

 rate act of sin is the manifestation of an original principle as broad 

 and universal as this the world-spirit, the spirit of evil. Grant this, 

 and still the connection can not be made. Grant that this world-spirit 

 slew all the prophets, opposes the good in every age, and crucified 

 "the Just One" himself, as, of course, it did and does, how did the 

 death of Christ modify or conquer or remove this spirit, or shield man 

 from the supposed wrath of his Creator, in any other way than the 

 death of every just person for a worthy cause accomplishes these ends ? 

 These aTc mysteries that can not be explained, or the explanation even 

 hinted at. The human faculties of reason and insight can never 

 fathom them. Dying that others may live is truly the order of this 

 universe, its natural order. But what examples history affords of its 

 having been in so many instances the conscious human order the or- 

 der which makes heroes ! Even in our selfish and materialistic age, 

 as it is called, not a year passes but our pulse is quickened by the re- 

 cital of some act of heroism during some disaster upon the sea or in 

 the mines or in burning cities, wherein men have calmly faced death 

 that others might have a chance to live. But there is no analogy here 

 to the popular theory of the sufferings and death of Christ. All men 



