The following peculiar expressions of Jesus are found in no book of the New Testament save the gospel of John.'

"I and my Father are one."

"I am in the Father and the Father in me."

"He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father." "Before Abraham was, I am."

"I am the light of the world."

"I am the resurrection and the life."

"The Father hath committed all judgment to the Son." "For judgment I am come into this world."

"I am not of the world."

SEC. 511. The Gospels.—No one of the gospels tells us the day, the month, or the year of the birth, or the year of the death, of Jesus. Some scholars think he was crucified in 29; others infer that he lived until 37 a. D. For more than ten centuries the Christian world supposed that Jesus was born in the year I A. D.; it has now been proved that he must have been born as early as 5 B. C., that is if the improbable story of Herod's massacre be true. That king died in March of 4 A. D. The mistake was caused by the lack of information about the time of Herod's death, and the lack of any other indication in the gospels of the date of the birth of Jesus. As for the day of his birth, that was not discovered until more than a century after his death, and the method of the discovery then remains a mystery to this day.

Jesus never wrote anything. On one occasion, when he taught publicly, "the Jews marveled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" He had then never received any education. He had no secretary. He did not select any person of literary experience or capacity as an apostle. He did not succeed in

converting any scribe or Pharisee. He did not instruct anyone to write down his sayings or to publish a record of his life. He did nothing to indicate that he wished his work to be made familiar to distant times. After his death, his apostles did not choose a secretary, or establish an office of ecclesiastical records, or order the preparation of an account of the speeches and movements of their Master. The story of their ministry in the New Testament contains no mention of any gospel accepted by or known to them. No manuscript written within a century after the death of Jesus, by a Christian, has come down to us; nor does any Christian inscription dating from that period give us information. For the doctrine and discipline of the church for three generations after the crucifixion we must depend on the vague information of the New Testament and the suspicious traditions of later times.

The apostles, the apostolic fathers who succeeded them, and the post-apostolic fathers in the third generation, accepted as Sacred Scripture no book save the Old Testament. We have no direct proof that the four gospels known to us as those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were in existence before 150 A. D. Twenty years later they were accepted as Sacred Scripture by some Christians and perhaps by Christians generally; but many churches accepted other gospels, which have been excluded from the New Testament. The growth of that collection was slow and gradual. No book in it was ordered to be written, or within three centuries after the crucifixion was accepted, by any council or other authorized representative of the whole Christian church. Different congregations accepted different books, and after centuries of inharmonious usage, the predominant

opinion adopted the books now in the canon and rejected many others that had been used as Sacred Scripture for more than six generations, and some books that had been rejected by many churches for an equally long period were finally admitted into the New Testa

ment.

It is impossible to deduce from the gospels a clear conception of Jesus. The statements made about him are, in many respects, incomplete, improbable, and conflicting. Of his life between his twelfth and his thirtieth year not a word is said. We have no definite information about his education; his training as a carpenter; the department of carpentering to which he gave most of his attention; his mode of working, whether as master or journeyman, and by the job or by the day; his associations, his friendships, or his amusements.

The authors of the four gospels not only had no direct knowledge of Jesus, but they had no trustworthy information at second hand. They made their compilations in a blind way, accepting much that had its origin in the legends of the apostolic and post-apostolic generations. The school of Peter and the school of Paul had each its own myths of Jesus, and some of each have been preserved in the gospels. Much that Jesus said and did has been lost; much that he never said or did has been ascribed to him.

The system of publishing false accounts of the life and doctrines of Jesus, mentioned in the gospel of Luke, was one of the prominent features of early Christianity. There never was such another epidemic of ecclesiastical forgery. The church was flooded with books attributed falsely to apostolic times and authors. The names of many of these books, and the texts of some, are preserved.

Distinguished saints and learned fathers of the faith openly commended the invention and acceptance of falsehoods designed to aid the conversion of the world to what they believed to be truth.

From the facts presented in the preceding portions of this chapter we should draw the conclusions that we have no authentic history of the life of Jesus, and that most of the statements of the gospels in reference to him are to be believed only in so far as they agree with general probability and with the natural course of human

events.

SEC. 512. A Jew.—Among the many important ideas which have arisen and have gained extended credence in the XIXth century is one that Jesus did not intend to establish a new religion. In other words, instead of being the founder of Christianity, he was merely the occasion of its foundation. Till the day of his death he was a Jew by belief and practice, as well as by birth. He never became a Christian. He never used or heard the words Christian or Christianity or any equivalent of either.

That he had some important project is implied by his devotion of at least a year to his public ministry, by his selection of an apostle or assistant for each of the Jewish tribes, and by his assumption of the title of the Messiah. The evangelists agree in their statements that Jesus was in the habit of teaching his doctrines in the Jewish synagogues. According to Matthew, he "went about all the cities and villages [of Judea] teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom.” Mark tells us that "he preached in their synagogues throughout Galilee." Luke has a similar phrase. In the evangel of John we read that when questioned by the high priest, Jesus said, "I ever taught in the synagogue

and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort." Thus he claimed to be a Jew; and in no other character could he teach in those buildings with respect or safety for himself. The preaching of Christianity in a synagogue or temple was just as contrary to all the rules of courtesy and justice in the time of Jesus as it is now.'

The Pharisees rejected his doctrine, but did not exclude him from the synagogue or accuse him of violating its sanctity. They did not habitually shut the doors of their sacred buildings against him, or drive him out with violence. The main complaints which, according to tradition, Jesus made of the Jews, were not that they refused to give him a hearing, but that common people were indifferent and that the Pharisees were hypocritical.

In the speeches attributed to Jesus by the evangelists, we find two sets of opinions, one accepting, and the other rejecting, the ceremonial law of Moses. Thus he said that he came not to destroy but to fulfill the law; that while the earth should stand, not one jot of the law should pass away; that he who quarreled with his brother should take a gift to the altar; that the healed leper should go to the priest and make the offering commanded by Moses; that his preaching was addressed to none save the Jews; that any labor of his in healing a sick Gentile would be like throwing to the dogs the bread that belonged to the Jews; that his twelve apostles should sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel; that the Jews should obey the scribes and Pharisees because they sat in Moses' seat; and that the man who violated the rules of the church should be excluded from all fellowship as if he were a Gentile (the last word is translated heathen in the authorized version and correctly rendered in the revised version).2