Part 3

When Jesus was first examined on the charge of blasphemy he remained silent, and would not answer any questions put to him. Then Caiaphas said--"I adjure thee by the living God that thou tell us whether thou be Christ, the Son of God." Jesus at last replied--"Thou hast said," which may fairly be interpreted to mean, "You say I am, not I." This is in keeping with his usual evasive mode of answering, as before pointed out. Especially as he continued--"Nevertheless I say unto you, _Hereafter_ shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." This was declared blasphemous, and we know how excited bigoted people get when that word is pronounced. So they struck the enthusiast, as he had struck others in the temple. In the morning he was bound and led before Pilate the governor, who asked him, "Art thou the king of the Jews?" He again answered, "Thou sayest" And when the Chief Priests and elders repeated their charges, he still refused to answer them, which surprised Pilate. However, Pilate saw no harm in what he had done, and was anxious to set him at liberty; but the priests, as is usual with them, persisted in their demands of vengeance against one who had offended them. Then Jesus was delivered over to the soldiers to be crucified, which was a very barbarous mode of execution. He was cruelly treated by the soldiers, who were incited thereto by the priests. He died the death of a malefactor, but his end was brought about by his own wild and extravagant conduct. In these days he would have been confined as a lunatic, but in that barbarous time, and under the influence of priests, he was tortured to death. No one can contemplate his fate, whatever his faults may have been, without feelings of sorrow. But if his death was to fulfil prophecy, and to save a lost and ruined world, we ought to regard it with exultation and great joy, and not only observe Good Friday as a national holiday, but every Friday as a public festival. But who, on calmly reading the narrative, and dismissing from his mind the fables taught him in his childhood, can see anything supernatural in Jesus' life and death? He displayed through life all the infirmities and littlenesses of a man, and he died like one who had brought about his own death by his own acts. When on the cross, and no doubt in mortal agony, he exclaimed, in the utterness of despair, like one who had long trusted to a delusion, and when too late had found out his mistake--"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The Chief Priests and elders, the people about, and even the two thieves who were dying with him, jeered him for his folly, saying, "He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God." But there was no deliverance from heaven for him more than for any other man.

Jesus had acted so extravagantly from the time he entered on public life that it is not surprising that his followers were infected by his example, and it is to them we are indebted for the re-appearance of Jesus after he was dead and buried. He himself said that he was to fulfil the prophecy of Jonas, for, as he was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so should the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Yet he never went into the heart of the earth, but was laid in a tomb or cave with a door to it; and he was not even there three days and three nights, but only two nights, and not two days altogether. And so that prophecy was fulfilled! Jesus prophesied his own resurrection only, but the earthquake which followed his death was no respecter of persons, for when the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and the earth did quake, and the rocks were rent, the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. No orthodox, Christians doubt for a moment that Jesus rose again from the dead, because he was to do so, and he was the Son of God; but do they believe these unknown saints revisited the glimpses of the moon, and experienced a resurrection equal to that of Jesus, for no purpose at all, and for no merit of their own? Yet we have no more authority for the one than the other, and no reason to believe one more than the other. Toward the end of the Sabbath (that is, Saturday evening) came Mary Magdalene, with the other Mary, to see the sepulchre where Jesus was laid, and another earthquake took place, and the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment like snow. He told the women that Jesus had risen, and asked them to see the place where the Lord lay. But whether they looked or not we are not told, but they ran away with fear and great joy to tell the disciples. And as they went, whom should they meet but Jesus himself, who said to them, "All hail." But then there is some little confusion in this infallible narrative. It was not towards the end of Saturday, but very early in the morning of Sunday, at the rising of the sun, that the women came, and for the purpose of anointing the body. And the stone was still against the door, and they said, Who shall roll us away the stone? But when they looked again the stone was away, and on entering the sepulchre they saw a young man dressed in white sitting _inside_, and no angel with a lightning face sitting _outside_. The women fled with terror, but told no man what they had seen; and it isa mystery to this day how that which was never told to any one is known to nearly all the world. Jesus did not meet the two Marys, but appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. She went and told the disciples about the resurrection, but they believed her not. He appeared afterwards to two of his disciples, but they did not believe in his resurrection, neither did the eleven disciples, to whom he appeared. If they who knew him intimately did not believe in it after only three days' absence from them, shall we, after a lapse of eighteen hundred years, put faith in this clumsy, impossible, and absurd fable? But perhaps the condition he attached to the belief may have something to do with the faith of so many people in these days. He said, after upbraiding his disciples for their unbelief and hardness of heart--"He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." That threat, fulminated from thousands of pulpits, has frightened timid and weak people in nearly every age of the Christian era. But then again there were not two women but many who went to the sepulchre, and they found the stone away; and when they entered they saw two men in shining garments, and the women did not conceal what they had seen, but went and told all the disciples, but they were not believed. This time the lively Peter ran to the tomb to look for himself, and saw nothing but the linen clothes lying by themselves. After that two of the disciples went to Emmana, where Jesus himself joined them, but they knew him not, and did not believe the story of his resurrection. He then rebuked them in his usual sweet and placid style, by exclaiming, "O fools, and slow of heart," and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, "he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself," which must have been a tolerably long discourse for one so recently out of the grave. They asked him to stop with them and have something to eat, which, his appetite being as good as ever, he consented to do; and it was his mode of breaking bread and blessing it that convinced them that he was Jesus. And he then vanished out of their sight. They went to Jerusalem and told the others what they had seen, and while they were talking Jesus stood in the midst of them; but they did not know him again, but took him to be a spirit. He said--"Behold my hands and my feet, that it is myself; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have." And while they yet believed not for joy and wondered, he said unto them, "Have ye here any meat?" He was again hungry, and they gave him a piece of broiled fish and a honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them. That was enough to convince them a second time. "And he led them out as far as Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven," with the broiled fish on his stomach, where he entered into joy everlasting.

The foregoing will certainly be declared "blasphemous" by all true believers, and will no doubt be pronounced a "caricature" of Jesus by even Unitarians. But the fault does not lie with us--it is in the text, which we did not make. We are not responsible for the representation, for we have scrupulously followed the inspired delineations of the Evangelists. Let us briefly sum up this biography.

Jesus was the Son of God, and not the son of his mother's husband, and his mother remained a virgin notwithstanding his conception and birth, although she strangely offered the usual sacrifice when the days of her purification were accomplished.

He was descended from the royal line of David, that is, Joseph the husband of his mother was so descended; but then Joseph was not his father at all.

The miraculous boy was to fulfil many prophecies; but although he often purposely acted in order to fulfil them, several given as illustrations are singularly wide of the mark.

At twelve years of age he was a match for learned doctors in disputation, and could pertly rebuke his mother for inquiring where he had been for three days and three nights.

He was baptised at thirty by John, who taught him rudeness of manners; and though a dove descended direct from heaven, and alighted on his head, he was immediately taken by the spirit into very dangerous places, was kept a remarkably long time without food, and was very strangely tempted by the Devil in person.

He became a great talker, dealt largely in mystical language, and gathered followers from the poorest, most ignorant, and most credulous of his countrymen.

He cured all sorts of diseases and afflictions, though there is no evidence that he ever underwent a medical training.

He worked miracles, as became an Eastern founder of a sect, but his achievements scarcely rank as high as the tricks of an Indian juggler.

He was uneducated, and never, so far as the record goes, wrote a line in his life; but as a preacher he was famous, and always succeeded in making his hearers marvel at his strange doctrines--doctrines so contradictory that no sane man can follow them.

He was vituperative in his language, austere in his manners, undutiful and repelling to his mother.

He appropriated other persons' property, and immediately after violently assaulted a large number of men, whom he charged with being dishonest.

When asked questions touching vital points of his own doctrines, he usually gave evasive answers.

He promised his disciples all sorts of wonderful powers if they would believe in him, and he promised also to come in a cloud with great glory before that generation passed away; but having risen from the grave, and ascended into heaven, he has not returned in a cloud with glory up to the time of our going to press.

He ultimately met the death of a malefactor, and in the last moments of agony his fanaticism was strong upon him, for he promised to the thief who flattered him that he would meet him that day in paradise, though he did not go there himself till about six weeks afterwards.

After his death he was brought to life again, thus defying all the laws of physiology. When but just out of the grave, his powers of preaching were as strong as ever, and his appetite as vigorous as though he had returned from a long journey; and after partaking of a singular repast, and before he had had time to digest it, he ascended into the clouds without the aid of a balloon, and was seen no more.

All this, with much more of the same incredible nature, is taught as infallible truth by some of the best educated men the Universities can produce, and belief in the whole of it is necessary to "respectability" in this life, and to salvation in a life after death. How educated men can believe it, is a mystery which we trust the School Boards of the future will be able to unravel; at present we find it as insoluble as all the other sublime mysteries of Christianity, for we cannot believe that a University training necessarily makes men hypocrites, and we are loth to believe that on one most important subject it necessarily makes them imbecile.

There would be fewer believers if there were more inquirers. The advocates of Bible reading in Elementary Schools must feel that there is danger to the faith lurking in the future if that "precious book" is read and not "expounded." Dogmatic teaching is the stronghold of the religion of Christendom. The "plain, unvarnished tale" of the Four Gospels would carry with it its own condemnation, for the best refutation of Christianity is a true knowledge of Christ.

Printed and Published by C. Watts, 17, Johnson's Court, Fleet St, London, E.C. PRICE TWOPENCE