e of a speedy renewal of all things, it formed
those apocalyptic theories which, without being articles of faith (the
orthodox Sanhedrim of Jerusalem does not seem to have adopted them),
pervaded all imaginations, and produced an extreme fermentation from
one end of the Jewish world to the other. The total absence of
dogmatic rigor caused very contradictory notions to be admitted at
one time, even upon so primary a point Sometimes the righteous were to
await the resurrection;[2] sometimes they were to be received at the
moment of death into Abraham's bosom;[3] sometimes the resurrection
was to be general;[4] sometimes it was to be reserved only for the
faithful;[5] sometimes it supposed a renewed earth and a new
Jerusalem; sometimes it implied a previous annihilation of the
universe.

[Footnote 1: Theopompus, in _Diog. Laert._, Proem, 9. _Boundehesch_,
xxxi. The traces of the doctrine of the resurrection in the Avesta are
very doubtful.]

[Footnote 2: John xi. 24.]

[Footnote 3: Luke xvi. 22. Cf. _De Rationis Imp._, 13, 16, 18.]

[Footnote 4: Dan. xii. 2.]

[Footnote 5: 2 _Macc._ vii. 14.]

Jesus, as soon as he began to think, entered into the burning
atmosphere which was created in Palestine by the ideas we have just
stated. These ideas were taught in no school; but they were in the
very air, and his soul was early penetrated by them. Our hesitations
and our doubts never reached him. On this summit of the mountain of
Nazareth, where no man can sit to-day without an uneasy, though it may
be a frivolous, feeling about his destiny, Jesus sat often untroubled
by a doubt. Free from selfishness--that source of our troubles, which
makes us seek with eagerness a reward for virtue beyond the tomb--he
thought only of his work, of his race, and of humanity. Those
mountains, that sea, that azure sky, those high plains in the horizon,
were for him not the melancholy vision of a soul which interrogates
Nature upon her fate, but the certain symbol, the transparent shadow,
of an invisible world, and of a new heaven.

He never attached much importance to the political events of his time,
and he probably knew little about them. The court of the Herods formed
a world so different to his, that he doubtless knew it only by name.
Herod the Great died about the year in which Jesus was born, leaving
imperishable remembrances--monuments which must compel the most
malevolent posterity to associate his name with that of Solomon;
nevert