t nature, he
went still further, and we shall see him trampling under foot
everything that is human, blood, love, and country, and only keeping
soul and heart for the idea which presented itself to him as the
absolute form of goodness and truth.

[Footnote 1: Luke ii. 42 and following. The Apocryphal Gospels are
full of similar histories carried to the grotesque.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. xiii. 57; Mark vi. 4; John vii. 3, and following.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xii. 48; Mark iii. 33; Luke viii. 21; John ii. 4;
Gospel according to the Hebrews, in St. Jerome, _Dial. adv. Pelag._,
iii. 2.]

[Footnote 4: Luke xi. 27, and following.]

CHAPTER IV.

THE ORDER OF THOUGHT WHICH SURROUNDED THE DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS.

As the cooled earth no longer permits us to understand the phenomena
of primitive creation, because the fire which penetrated it is
extinct, so deliberate explanations have always appeared somewhat
insufficient when applying our timid methods of induction to the
revolutions of the creative epochs which have decided the fate of
humanity. Jesus lived at one of those times when the game of public
life is freely played, and when the stake of human activity is
increased a hundredfold. Every great part, then, entails death; for
such movements suppose liberty and an absence of preventive measures,
which could not exist without a terrible alternative. In these days,
man risks little and gains little. In heroic periods of human
activity, man risked all and gained all. The good and the wicked, or
at least those who believe themselves and are believed to be such,
form opposite armies. The apotheosis is reached by the scaffold;
characters have distinctive features, which engrave them as eternal
types in the memory of men. Except in the French Revolution, no
historical centre was as suitable as that in which Jesus was formed,
to develop those hidden forces which humanity holds as in reserve, and
which are not seen except in days of excitement and peril.

If the government of the world were a speculative problem, and the
greatest philosopher were the man best fitted to tell his fellows
what they ought to believe, it would be from calmness and reflection
that those great moral and dogmatic truths called religions would
proceed. But it is not so. If we except Cakya-Mouni, the great
religious founders have not been metaphysicians. Buddhism itself,
whose origin is in pure thought, has conquered one-half of Asia, by
motives w