The minister of the South Congregational Church, who heard the debate, has publicly called your lecturer an "unscrupulous sophist," who "practices imposition upon a popular audience" and who "put forth sentence after sentence which every scholar present knew to be a perversion of the facts so outrageous as to be laughable."

As one of the leading morning papers said, the above "is not a reply to arguments made by Mr. Mangasarian."

Invited by several people to prove these charges, the Reverend replies: "In the absence of any full report of what he (M. M. Mangasarian) said, or of any notes taken at the time, I am unable to furnish you with quotations." When the Reverend gentleman was addressing the public his memory was strong enough to enable him to say, "sentence after sentence was put forth by Mr. Mangasarian which every scholar present knew to be a perversion of the facts." But when called upon to mention a few of them, his memory forsakes him. Our critic is not careful to make his statements agree with the fact.

One instance, however, he is able to remember which "when it fell upon my ears," he writes, "it struck me with such amazement, that it completely drove from my mind a series of most astonishing statements of various sorts which had just preceded it."

We refrain from commenting on the excuse given to explain so significant a failure of memory. The instance referred to was about the denial of some in apostolic times that "Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." But as Mr. Mangasarian had hardly spoken more than twenty minutes when he touched upon this point, it is not likely that it could have been "preceded by a series of most astonishing statements of various sorts."

And what was the statement which, while it crippled his memory, it did not moderate his zeal? We will let him present it himself; "I refer to the use he made of one or two passages in the New Testament, mentioning some who deny 'that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.' 'So that,' he went on to say, 'there were those even among the early Christians themselves who denied that Jesus had come in the flesh. Of course, they were cast out as heretics.' Here came an impressive pause, and then without further explanation or qualification, he proceeded to something else."

This is his most serious complaint. Does it justify hasty language?

St. John writes of those who "confessed not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." The natural meaning of the words is that even in apostolic times some denied the flesh and bone Jesus, and regarded him as an idea or an apparition—something like the Holy Ghost. All church historians admit the existence of sects that denied the New Testament Jesus—the Gnostics, the Essenes, the Ebionites, the Marcionites, the Cerinthians, etc.

As the debate is now in print, further comment on this would not be necessary.

Incidents like the above, however, should change every lukewarm rationalist into a devoted soldier of truth and honor.

To us, more important than anything presented on this subject, is this evidence of the existence of a very early dispute among the first disciples of Jesus on the question of whether he was real or merely an apparition. The Apostle John, in his epistle, clearly states that even among the faithful there were those who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is very important. As early as John's time, if he is the writer of the epistle, Jesus' historicity was questioned.

The gospel of John also hints at the existence in the primitive church of Christians who did not accept the reality of Jesus. When doubting Thomas is told of the resurrection, he answers that he must feel the prints of the nails with his fingers before he will believe, and Jesus not only grants the wishes of this skeptical apostle, but he also eats in the presence of them all, which story is told evidently to silence the critics who maintained that Jesus was only a spirit, "the Wisdom of God," an emanation, a light, and not real flesh and bones.