184 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with destruction. And, from their point of view, they were quite 

 riglit. In the course of a century, Pauline influences had a large 

 share in driving primitive Nazarenism from being the very heart 

 of the new faith into the position of scouted error ; and the spirit 

 of Paul's doctrine continued its work of driving Christianity fur- 

 ther and further away from Judaism, until " meats offered to idols " 

 might be eaten without scruple, while the Nazarene methods of 

 observing even the Sabbath or the Passover were branded with 

 the mark of Judaizing heresy. 



But if the primitive Nazarenes of whom the Acts speaks were 

 orthodox Jews, what sort of probability can there be that Jesus 

 was anything else ? How can he have founded the universal 

 religion which was not heard of till twenty years after his death ? * 

 That Jesus possessed in a rare degree the gift of attaching men 

 to his person and to his fortunes ; that he was the author of many 

 a striking saying, and the advocate of equity, of love, and of humil- 

 ity ; that he may have disregarded the subtleties of the bigots for 

 legal observance, and appealed rather to those noble conceptions 

 of religion which constituted the pith and kernel of the teaching 

 of the great prophets of his nation seven hundred years earlier ; 

 and that, in the last scenes of his career, he may have embodied 

 the ideal sufferer of Isaiah — may be, as I think it is, extremely 

 probable. But all this involves not a step beyond the borders of 

 orthodox Judaism. Again, who is to say whether Jesus proclaimed 

 himself the veritable Messiah, expected by his nation since the 

 appearance of the pseudo-prophetic work of Daniel, a century and 

 a half before his time ; or whether the enthusiasm of his follow- 

 ers gradually forced him to assume that position ? 



But one thing is quite certain : if that belief in the speedy sec- 

 ond coming of the Messiah which was shared by all parties in the 

 primitive church, whether Nazarene or Pauline ; which Jesus is 

 made to prophesy, over and over again, in the synoptic Gospels ; 

 and which dominated the life of Christians during the first cent- 

 ury after the crucifixion — if he believed and taught that, then 

 assuredly he was under an illusion, and he is responsible for that 

 which the mere effluxion of time has demonstrated to be a pro- 

 digious error. . 



When I ventured to doubt "whether any Protestant theologian 

 who has a reputation to lose will say that he believes the Gadarene 

 story," it appears that I reckoned without Dr. Wace, who, referring 

 to this passage in my paper, says : 



* Dr. Harnack, in the lately published second edition of his " Dogmengeschichte," says 

 (p. 39), " Jesus Christ brought forward no new doctrine " ; and again (p. 65), " It is not diffi- 

 cult to set against every portion of the utterances of Jesus an observation which deprives 

 him of originality." See also Zusatz 4, on the same page. 



