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 agnosticism," I
shall be deeply his debtor. Unless and until they are satisfactorily
answered, I say of agnosticism in this matter, "_J'y suis, et j'y
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 "unpleasant 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 elucidated 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 followers of Jesus, the "sect of the Nazarenes," were
strictly orthodox 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
their nation waited, had come? Was not their chief, "James, the
brother of the Lord," reverenced alike by Sadducee, Pharisee, and
Nazarene? At the famous conference which, according to the Acts, took
place at Jerusalem, does not James declare that "myriads" of Jews,
who, by that time, had become Nazarenes, were "all zealous for the
Law"? Was not the name of "Christian" first used to denote the
converts to the doctrine promulgated by Paul and Barnabas at Antioch?
Does the subsequent history of Christianity leave any doubt that, from
this time forth, the "little rift within the lute" caused by the new
teaching, developed, if not inaugurated, at Antioch, grew wider and
wider, until the two types of doctrines irreconcilably diverged? Did
not the primitive Nazarenism, or Ebionism, develop into the
Nazarenism, and Ebionism, and Elkasaitism of later ages, and finally
die out in obscurity and condemnation, as damnable heresy; while the
y