76o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



upon my journey of inquiry with little doubt about the general 

 truth of what I had been taught ; and with that feeling of the un- 

 pleasantness of being called an " infidel " which, we are told, is so 

 right and proper. Near my journey's end, I find myself in a con- 

 dition of something more than mere doubt about these matters. 



In the course of other inquiries, I have had to do with fossil 

 remains which looked quite plain at a distance, and became more 

 and more indistinct as I tried to define their outline by close 

 inspection. There was something there — something which, if I 

 could win assurance about it, might mark a new epoch in the his- 

 tory of the earth ; but, study as long as I might, certainty eluded 

 my grasp. So has it been with me in my efforts to define the 

 grand figure of Jesus as it lies in the primary strata of Christian 

 literature. Is he the kindly, peaceful Christ depicted in the Cata- 

 combs ? Or is he the stern judge who frowns above the altar of 

 SS. Cosmas and Damianus ? Or can he be rightly represented in 

 the bleeding ascetic, broken down by physical pain, of too many 

 mediaeval pictures ? Are we to accept the Jesus of the second, or 

 the Jesus of the fourth Gospel, as the true Jesus ? What did he 

 really say and do; and how much that is attributed to him in 

 speech and action is the embroidery of the various parties into 

 which his followers tended to split themselves within twenty 

 years of his death, when even the threefold tradition was only 

 nascent ? 



If any one will answer these questions for me with something 

 more to the point than feeble talk about the " cowardice of agnos- 

 ticism," I shall be deeply his debtor. Unless and until they are 

 satisfactorily answered, I say of agnosticism in this matter, " J'y 

 suis, etfy reste." 



But, as we have seen, it is asserted that I have no business to 

 call myself an agnostic ; that if I am not a Christian I am an 

 infidel ; and that I ought to call myself by that name of " un- 

 pleasant significance." Well, I do not care much what I am 

 called by other people, and, if I had at my side all those who since 

 the Christian era have been called infidels by other folks, I could 

 not desire better company. If these are my ancestors, I prefer, 

 with the old Frank, to be with them wherever they are. But 

 there are several points in Dr. Wace's contention which must be 

 eliminated before I can even think of undertaking to carry out 

 his wishes. I must, for instance, know what a Christian is. Now 

 what is a Christian ? By whose authority is the signification of 

 that term defined ? Is there any doubt that the immediate fol- 

 lowers of Jesus, the " sect of the Nazarenes," were strictly ortho- 

 dox Jews, differing from other Jews not more than the Sadducees, 

 the Pharisees, and the Essenes differed from one another; in 

 fact, only in the belief that the Messiah, for whom the rest of 



