Romans will come and destroy the temple and the nation...... And Caiaphas said, It is expedient that one man die instead of the people, and that the people do not perish." This is in accordance with the stern fanatic patriotism of the Jewish nation, but by no means requires us to believe that Jesus was the inaugurator of a new dispensation, who threw down the gauntlet to the Church of His time, and was delivered to the secular arm as a blameless blasphemer. To think so is to contradict His own words :-"I came not to destroy the Law but to fulfil." And, lastly, we are called upon to observe how this conclusion tallies with and explains the singular silence, upon the subject of Jesus, of the contemporaneous Jewish historians, Justus and Josephus. Had Jesus been a sectary who attempted a religious revolution, and if the Jewish nation and their rulers had thereupon judged and condemned Him, the case would have formed an affair of too much importance to be entirely ignored by Jewish historians. If, on the contrary, He was merely a too ardent Israelite who first excited the people of Galilee, and finally the Holy City itself, so that the more cautious of His countrymen gave Him up to the police with a view to their own security, the circumstance might well have appeared to Jewish historians an embarrassing business about which it was more prudent to make no remark.

And this brings M. Havet to the third and last of his propositions. What is the evidence that Jesus was an opponent of Judaism who contemplated the admission of the world at large to the spiritual advantages arrogated as the special privilege of the chosen people? Certainly not, thinks our author, the prophetic denunciations of Mark XII. and Matthew XXIII. The sufferings of His followers there referred to were not undergone till the persecution under Hanan in A.D. 62. The murder of Zacharias, the son of Barachias, took place later still, in the temple, during the siege under Titus, as we learn from Josephus. To represent Jesus as speaking of these future events as already past, is to attribute to Him an amount of prophetic insight which is opposed to M. Havet's notions of sound criticism. It is further, doing a great violence to grammar. This passage must have been written after the fall of Jerusalem, whatever we may think of the rest of the narrative.

But, even in a more general way, it is hard to believe, says M. Havet, that the sentiments found in these predictions and in such utterances as the parable of the vineyard, can be authentic monuments of the teaching of Jesus: for they are not capable of reconcilation with the rest of the record. Thus :-"Go not into the way of the Gentiles; and if ye come to a city of the Samaritans, enter ye not" (Matt. X. 5.). They are also told that

:

they "shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come" (i.d. 23.). And in the Acts of the Apostles (XI, 19, 20), we find that, after the death of Stephen and conse. quent persecution, the dispersed members of the sect travelled about the Levant, " preaching the word to noue but unto the Jews only but some-who were natives of Cyprus and Cyrene-when they came to Antioch, preached the Lord Jesus to the Grecians." This (nearly ten years after the Crucifixion) is the first notice of any preaching to the Gentiles, if we except the isolated, and almost contemporaneous mission of Peter to the devout Centurion Cornelius, who may have been a proselyte, and who (with his associates) evidently constituted a special and controverted case. Nor was it, apparently, until the events commemorated in the Epistle to the Galatians that the erection of a distinct Gentile Church took place, through the courageous initiative of the new Apostle Paul, who had never known the Lord. The celebrated commission of Peter, upon which Catholicism so much rests, is given up as a simple anachronism; indeed, the Greek play upon words is enough to prove that the speech could not have been uttered by a teacher addressing his followers in Aramaic.

As to the attacks on the Pharisees which fill so large a place in some of the Gospels, M. Havet remarks that it is only in the fourth Gospel that we meet with any notice of a corresponding hostility on the part of the Pharisees against Jesus; while the most energetic of His followers, S. Paul, was not only a Pharisee, but claimed the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as a point in common between Pharisaism and the Gospel. Indeed, in one Gospel (Luke XIII. 31) the Pharisees are represented as taking active steps to save Jesus from the pursuit of Herod while they are not once mentioned in Mark's account of the Passion as taking any part in the proceedings against Him. Again, in the Acts, we find Gamaliel, a chief doctor of the school, defending Peter before the Sanhedrim; and elsewhere (XV., 5) we come upon "certain of the sect of the Pharisees who believed." It is, remarks M. Havet, difficult to reconcile such evidences of friendly relations with those which are elsewhere represented as existing between Jesus and the Pharisees. Further, in Josephus, we read that, when the persecution of the Christians of Jerusalem took place under Hanan, "they who were most strict in the observance of the Law blamed their execution." The fact that Hanan was the head of the Sadducees shows that the historian is speaking of the Pharisees; and if Jesus had been such a bitter opponent

* M Renan shows reason for believing that the book of Revelation (written in A.D. 69.) contains a

denunciation of S. Paul and his teaching in the message to the Church of Ephesus (Antichrist.)

of that school, it is hard to understand why they should have shown such favour to His followers. It seems more probable that the Evangelists, writing after the fall of Jerusalem, express a state of things which occurred at a later date, when embittered feelings had been created by the national misfortunes of the Jews, and when their most influential sect became hostile to that other sect whom they had learned to look on as apostates and deserters from the commonwealth of Israel.

Nevertheless, after this searching scrutiny (in which, as M. Havet himself allows, the very soul of Jesus seems to fade away), there still remains the strange and beautiful personality whose influence has been felt so far and deep. Jesus lived; He lived a life so powerful that it carried away "the multitude," those poor "lost sheep" that He loved so well, who followed Him in life and crowned Him in death, with the thorny crown of Messiahship. Could such a life have left no traces; could no true impression of it remain upon the writings consecrated to its record? Surely something of Him must lurk in the narratives; but how to seize it, and to say with Pilate, "Behold the Man," this is the task to which our author next addresses himself.

In the first place, says M. Havet, Jesus has inspiration, and this is the dominant feature of his spiritual physiognomy. This is clearly shown by His keen vision and His tones of authority and of command. He is obeyed and followed as one having some uncommon power and exercising some unusual influence. His very opponents admit this force, in attributing it to the help of Beelzebub. Faith, not knowledge, is the principle of his doctrine. Nothing is so evil in His eyes as to ignore inspiration when you meet it; all sins will be forgiven, but blasphemy against the holy spirit; He who causes the humble to make a false step will have reason for regretting that he was ever born: the relations of life so sacred for others are nothing to Him; those who hear His words, they are His mother and His brethren. Such, in other measures, was the spirit of Socrates, of Joan of Arc, of Blaise Pascal: a spirit of power in days of faith, but in an age of criticism like the present, apt to be misunderstood. Even in His own country the Prophet complained of not being honoured; and we are told that His own family sought to lay hands upon Him as if they thought Him insane (Mark III. 21.) But inspiration is not madness; and the power of Jesus endures from age to age. In virtue of this inspiration the Great Teacher s hrank from no disregard of conventionality. He did not think Himself bound by fasts or by rules for ablution; without disrespect for the Sabbath He claimed liberty regarding it; He used the same liberty in the choice of His company, so as to incur the reproaches of the stricter members of society (II, 17.) But He did this not as

approving sin, but only as covering sinners with the mantle of His great charity. The orthodox Jews asked Him for His authority, and demanded miraculous testimonials; but He rested his credentials on His general work, and said that no sign should be given them.

M. Havet goes on to cite expressions which show that this earnest character sometimes revealed itself in bitter and even harsh language: as when, thinking that Simon had shown too much worldliness, He rebuked him under the name of "Satan" (VII. 33.) Associating such traits as these with others more in conformity with Isaiah XLII. 2, M. Havet sees in the character of Jesus a Jewish ideal which excludes imperiousness and violence, but does not exclude a somewhat severe austerity. Even in those sweet passages of tenderness when the weak and infantile attract His love, the smile is shaded with a frown: when His disciples tried to keep away the children, he was "much displeased" (X. 14.)

When

M. Havet is of opinion that one of the most potent means by which Jesus swayed the crowd was an impulse towards a future which was full of menace for the privileged classes; and that this was in fact the ultimate cause of His apparent ruin. He announced that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, He implied that the Kingdom of the Romans and of Herod was about to end. The first were then to be last, and the last first; whosoever would save his life should lose it; those who did not mortify themselves would be cast into everlasting pain. In all these sayings M. Havet finds traces of a disturbing dispensation for His contemporaries. So also in the preference of the poor, and in the denunciations of the rich-in which He is followed by His brother S. James, see especially James V. 1, et. seq. It is hard for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God; and Dives suffers eternal torment, apparently for the sole reason that he had been prosperous in this life. For Himself, as for His immediate followers, there was to be no property, no thought for worldly needs. After His death His society had all things in common.

The next peculiarity noted is the tendency to teach in parables; a tendency exhibited also by the Indian reformer Sakya Muni, and by Jewish Doctors in the Talmud and elsewhere. The mingled prudence and courage of His answers to embarrassing questions next receives notice; and we are bid to remark a certain suppleness of mind that-as afterwards to a minor degree with Joan of Arc-agreed so wonderfully with the exalted moods of inspiration.

Such, according to M. Havet, is a faint representation of the portrait of Jesus as painted by the oldest of the Evangelists. The remainder of his study is devoted to an attempt to sup

plement its traces from the other Gospels. But, as he has begun by entirely discrediting the evidential and historical value of these documents, we may be excused for not detaining the reader with such details, which must be somewhat arbitrary, and are, in fact, of quite inferior interest.

To sum up: M. Havet concludes that Jesus is not to be regarded as a Christian, or even as the founder of Christianity; but rather as a sort of Ebionite Rabbi who, expecting the approaching end of the world and the restoration of the tribes of Israel and Judah, desired to prepare His hearers for those events. The Gentiles He called "dogs "He took no interest in the Samaritans; He sought the salvation of none but "the lost sheep of the house of Israel;" He did not contemplate the boundless mission of Paul. What He has imparted to Christianity, however, is of real value; a spirit of pity, almost of pessimism, an acceptance of sorrow in this life to be redressed abundantly in a world to come; a tenderness for the meek and lowly, partly the result of the misery of the time, but in a great measure the impress of His own lofty, yet loving, soul. He is purely a Jew, and there is no genuine word or deed of His that is not Jewish. But He is a Jew of Galilee rather than of Jerusalem, following inspiration rather than authority, formed by Nature rather than by the schools, born to compromise His country and Himself, but also to disturb and regenerate a wicked world.

If we seek further to know what has been His exact share in the production of modern society, we must have recourse to some other guides who have gone further than M. Havet has yet gone. Among these is Professor Burnouf of Athens; who contributed a dozen years ago a series of remarkable articles to the Revue des deux Mondes which have been since reproduced as a book under the title of Science de la Religion.

Professor Burnouf, with much learning and ingenuity, is not always a safe instructor. For instance, he clings to the theory, now generally abandoned, that S. Matthew's is the oldest of the Gospel narratives. He is also wrong-at least if M. Havet be right -in thinking that Jesus had an esoteric doctrine which was hostile to Judaism, for preaching which he was persecuted and sentenced to death by the Jews. But he is right in holding that Christianity was founded by S. Paul, and that it had to include a non-Jewish and wholly foreign element before it could assume the character of a universal creed.

Jesus and his immediate school were (according to M. Havet) Nazarene Ebionites; forming a Jewish sect which would perhaps have been absorbed if left to itself. The first "Christians," in the true sense of the word, were Hellenic and even Gentiles, the Church of Antioch and of Asia Minor rather than of