and of an oracular Christ," as inconsistent with my own
principles. But this is mere misconception of what I have said. I find
_Jesus himself_ to set up oracular claims. I find an assumption
of pre-eminence and unapproachable moral wisdom to pervade every
discourse from end to end of the gospels. If I may not believe that
Jesus assumed an oracular manner, I do not know what moral peculiarity
in him I am permitted to believe. I do not _demand_ (as my friend
seems to think) that _he shall be_ oracular, but in common with all
Christendom, I open my eyes and see that _he is_; and until I had read
my friend's review of my book, I never understood (I suppose through
my own prepossessions) that he holds Jesus _not_ to have assumed the
oracular style.

If I cut out from the four gospels this peculiarity, I must cut out,
not only the claim of Messiahship, which my friend admits to have
been made, but nearly every moral discourse and every controversy: and
_why_? except in order to make good a predetermined belief that Jesus
was morally perfect. What reason can be given me for not believing
that Jesus declared: "If any one deny ME before men, _him will I deny_
before my Father and his angels?" or any of the other texts which
couple the favour of God with a submission to such pretensions of
Jesus? I can find no reason whatever for doubting that he preached
HIMSELF to his disciples, though in the three first gospels he is
rather timid of doing this to the Pharisees and to the nation at
large. I find him uniformly to claim, sometimes in tone, sometimes in
distinct words, that we will sit at his feet as little children and
learn of him. I find him ready to answer off-hand, all difficult
questions, critical and lawyer-like, as well as moral. True, it is no
tenet of mine that intellectual and literary attainment is essential
in an individual person to high spiritual eminence. True, in another
book I have elaborately maintained the contrary. Yet in that book I
have described men's spiritual progress as often arrested at a certain
stage by a want of intellectual development; which surely would
indicate that I believed even intellectual blunders and an infinitely
perfect exhaustive morality to be incompatible. But our question here
(or at least _my_ question) is not, whether Jesus might misinterpret
prophecy, and yet be morally perfect; but whether, _after assuming
to be an oracular teacher_, he can teach some fanatical precepts, and
adv