he same fate that many prophets
before him had met, and many more since. If he should appear today
here in America and pursue the same course toward public institutions
and popular beliefs and practices, he would meet with a reception
little different from what he met in Palestine nineteen hundred years
ago. He might not indeed be crucified on a cross; but he would stand a
good chance to be cast into jail and sent to a penitentiary for a term
of years for sedition and attempting to interfere with the established
order. And no persons would be more active in his prosecution than
some of the modern Pharisees who occupy high places in that great
institution that bears his name. If he had appeared in Europe some
four or five hundred years ago, he would have been almost dead certain
to meet the same fate of John Huss, Savonarola and Giordano Bruno. But
now, as then, the poor, down-trodden and oppressed would doubtless hear
him gladly.

There is no reliable evidence that he ever claimed to be the Messiah of
Hebrew prophecy. He is quoted on several occasions as having accepted
the appellation when applied to him by others. On one occasion only is
he quoted as having affirmatively declared himself the Messiah; and
that was to the woman of Samaria, and the whole circumstance of it
renders it incredible. It would certainly be a very unusual course to
take, for the Jewish Messiah to come and announce himself as such, not
to the Jews themselves, but to a very obscure, not to say disreputable
woman, of the most despised race known to the Jews.

It was however quite natural that, after his followers had universally
accepted him as the Jewish Messiah, they should recall some occasional
remarks that he may have made, upon which to base this belief; and that
these remarks would finally take more concrete form, until when
written, fifty to a hundred years after they were uttered, they were
perhaps entirely different from anything Jesus ever said. As a matter
of fact there is nothing in the life or teachings of Jesus, as recorded
in the New Testament, that at all corresponds to the personality or
character of the Messiah of Hebrew prophecy. And may I add here, that
the Messiah of Hebrew prophecy, for whose coming the Jews were looking
at that time, and for which most of the Jews have been looking ever
since, is but a fiction and a myth, born entirely out of the patriotic
devotion and fervid poetic fancy of the Old Hebrew prophe