THE CONTROVERSIALIST 21 3 



onstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the 

 agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and un- 

 dented, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe 

 in the face, whatever the future may have in store for 

 him. 1 



It was no hard matter to show that the vagueness 

 was on the other side. The phrase " belief in Jesus 

 Christ " has as many meanings as there are sects. 

 The Episcopalian has one definition of it; the Uni- 

 tarian has another. And Huxley showed what diffi- 

 culty attends any effort to construct a consistent 

 portrait of Jesus from the Synoptics and the gospel 

 of John, and then to reconcile this with the Jesus of 

 the creeds. The New Testament witnesses to dis- 

 ruptions on the question of "belief" in him soon 

 after his death. His immediate followers were 

 u Nazarenes," who acknowledged his brother James 

 as their head, and who conformed to the Jewish law, 

 differing from their copatriots only in believing that 

 the Messiah had already come in the person of Jesus. 

 The division of the disciples of the Master into 

 Nazarenes and Christians, which latter appellation is 

 said to have been first used at Antioch, arose through 

 the contention of Paul and Barnabas that the com- 

 mands regarding circumcision and abstinence from 

 certain foods were abrogated. So the " primitive 



1 Coll. Essays, v. p. 245, and see ante, p. 40. 



