pure, lofty,
ennobling life cannot impress the eternal upon the souls of men, then
assuredly no bread, wine or oil, can do it.[6] Hence, we see, a
prophet is born, not made. No consecration can make one any more than
installing a scene painter in the studio of a Raphael could ensure a
reproduction of a Transfiguration, or the Madonna di Foligno. And no
desecration, no excommunication from church, chapel or sanhedrin can
unmake him. The prophet is one of those royal beings who are kings by
right Divine, aye and human too, for all fall down instinctively before
him. It is the verdict of history that all that is most blessed we owe
to the prophets--not to the priests--to Moses, Confucius, Chrishna,
Buddha, Socrates, Zoroaster and Christ.

Now, surely no one can seriously question that the life of Christ as
described in the gospel narrative is of a pronounced anti-sacerdotal
type. He was not of the priestly family, no man laid hands upon him,
he never exercised priestly functions. His teaching so directly tended
to the disparagement of priesthood as such, that the official hierarchy
of his country, quick to perceive it, compassed his death in the
interest of their self-preservation. "What do we, for lo! the whole
world has gone after him?" His first sermon was the announcement of a
prophetic mission. In the synagogue of his own town, among the humble
folk who had seen him grow from boyhood to youth and manhood, he made
the announcement: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord
hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor". If he entered the
stately courts of the temple, it was to teach rather than to worship,
and never to sacrifice. At the close of a day's teaching, he retires
to the hillside of Olivet, and feels the Great Presence in the night
breeze upon his brow and in the heaven above him as deeply as within
the walls of the "Holy Place". It is not, "Lo here, lo there!" for
"the Kingdom of God is within you". A priest would have said the
Divine Presence is upon the altar, but Christ discerns it always and
everywhere. His teaching was almost entirely delivered under the
canopy of heaven--on the mount of beatitudes, in a public street, in
the market-place, from a fishing boat to crowds upon the strand, in a
corn-field, or occasionally in some private dwelling-place. The only
invective that broke the calm of his peaceful speech was directed
against the ruling sacerdotal influence; he was em