o realize the prophetic ideal in
the center of the religious life of the Jewish nation. The people
received him enthusiastically but his opponents were too strong and
clever for him. He feared only secret assassination while they induced
the Roman power to intervene.

The story draws to a close. In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus felt the
possibility of a tragic end to his hopes of an early coming of the
Kingdom. The real situation shines clear through all the legend which
a later age has woven around it. When he saw himself surrounded by a
multitude of armed men, he knew that resistance was vain. He was
delivered into the hands of his enemies. Through all the humiliation
and pain of those days, he seems to have hoped that his God would
rescue him. It was only on the cross that he finally gave up hope.
The heavens were dumb as they always have been and always will be.

The body of Jesus was probably thrown into the common pit reserved for
malefactors, as Abbe Loisy suggests, while the story of the burial by
Joseph of Arimathea grew up to save him from the terrible dishonor of
such a last resting-place. The rest of the traditional narrative is
unquestionably mythical. Paul speaks of him as buried and evidently
thinks of the risen Jesus as an incorruptible or spiritual man. Paul
did not believe in a bodily resurrection. The visions which led to a
belief in the resurrection of Jesus were ecstatic in character. We
must remember that the ancients were far less critical than we are in
regard to dreams and illusions and did not consider a return to life in
some shadowy form as very unusual. I have not the {83} slightest
difficulty in my own mind in accounting for the belief in the
resurrection of Jesus in an entirely natural way. Once this belief
arose and became important as a part of a new religion, the rise of
legendary details was simply inevitable.

The position I have taken is relatively conservative. Many scholars
have even become skeptical whether such a person as Jesus ever lived.
We cannot be certain but it seems more plausible to give a relative
credence to the older strands of tradition in the New Testament. That
such an ethical reformer lived who believed in the coming of the
Messianic kingdom, that he was embroiled with the priestly class and
was done to death by them with the aid of the Roman governor who feared
a seditious outbreak, that his disciples after his death came to
believe in his re