h, how they have
been cursed by the crucifixion of Jesus!

"Men ask to-day: Did Jesus really live? Or is he a mythical character,
like the gods of pagan Rome? Let us ask, in making our reply, how
truth comes to mankind? Is it not always through some human channel?
Then the great sayings attributed to Jesus at least came from a human
being. Let us go further: it is the common history of mankind that
truth comes to the human mind only after a period of preparation. Not
conscious preparation, necessarily, but, rather, a preparation forced
by events. The truth of a mathematical principle can not come to me
unless I am prepared to receive it. And the greatest good comes to men
only after they have learned the nothingness of the material ambitions
and aims which they have been pursuing. By its own rottenness the
world had been made fallow for truth. The awfulness of its own
exposure in its rampant, unlicensed revels, had shown as never before
the human mind's absolute nothingness--its nothingness as regards real
value, permanence, and genuine good--in that first century of our
so-called Christian era. And when the nothingness of the carnal mind
was made plain, men saw the reality of the truth, as revealed in the
Christ, back of it all. The divine message was whispered to a human
mentality. And that mentality expanded under the God-influence, until
at last it gave to the sin-weary world the Christ-principle of
salvation. Let us call that human mentality, for convenience, the man
Jesus.

"And now, was he born of a virgin? Impossible! And yet--let us see. It
was common enough in his day for virgins to pretend to be with child
by the Holy Ghost; and so we do not criticise those who refuse to
accept the dogma of the virgin birth. But a little reflection in the
light of what we have been discussing throws a wonderful illumination
upon the question. If matter and material modes are real, then we must
at once relegate the stories of the virgin birth, the miracles, the
resurrection, and the ascension to the realm of myth. If the so-called
laws of matter are real, irrefragable laws, then we indulgently, pass
by these stories as figments of heated imaginations. But, regarding
matter as a human, mortal concept, entirely mental, and wholly subject
to the impress and influence of mind, and knowing, as we do now, that
_mental concepts change with changed thought_, we are forced to look
with more favor upon these questions which for centur