as I have lived, and many blasphemers as I have heard and seen, I
have never yet heard or witnessed any direct and conscious
blasphemy or irreverence; but of indirect and habitual, enough.
Where is the man who is guilty of direct and personal insolence
to Him that made him?

One memorable addition to the old mythology is due to this
era,--the Christian fable. With what pains, and tears, and blood
these centuries have woven this and added it to the mythology of
mankind. The new Prometheus. With what miraculous consent, and
patience, and persistency has this mythus been stamped on the
memory of the race! It would seem as if it were in the progress
of our mythology to dethrone Jehovah, and crown Christ in his
stead.

If it is not a tragical life we live, then I know not what to
call it. Such a story as that of Jesus Christ,--the history of
Jerusalem, say, being a part of the Universal History. The
naked, the embalmed, unburied death of Jerusalem amid its
desolate hills,--think of it. In Tasso's poem I trust some
things are sweetly buried. Consider the snappish tenacity with
which they preach Christianity still. What are time and space to
Christianity, eighteen hundred years, and a new world?--that the
humble life of a Jewish peasant should have force to make a New
York bishop so bigoted. Forty-four lamps, the gift of kings, now
burning in a place called the Holy Sepulchre;--a church-bell
ringing;--some unaffected tears shed by a pilgrim on Mount
Calvary within the week.--

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, when I forget thee, may my right hand