surrection and his coming Messiahship upon earth, all
this appears to me more than probable. Human life is a fertile field
for tragedy. The more we rid the narratives of their fairy-story
accompaniments and see Jesus, not as a god who foreknows his human life
and plays it out gravely as an actor who knows his role, but as a human
being hurried to issues he had not at first dreamed of, the more his
career becomes comprehensible. Its pathos is increased by this truer
perspective, while the moral grandeur of his life gains by the human
atmosphere which descends upon it. He lived his life sincerely as
other men have done and did not dream of the use history would make of
his name.

{84}

CHAPTER VII

THE EVOLUTION OF CHRISTIANITY

Christianity did not arise in the form we associate with it. The
followers of Jesus, after they had become convinced that their
crucified leader had arisen from the dead and had become a spiritual
agent, grouped themselves together in Jerusalem and formed a religious
congregation whose distinguishing tenet was a belief in the near
approach of the earthly kingdom of God, whose ruler would be Jesus. In
his powerful name, the members of the congregation could perform
miracles of healing where the faith was sufficient. This form of
Christianity did not differ very widely from Judaism in anything but
this belief in Jesus as the expected Messiah. It is obvious that this
difference has no essential meaning to us to-day who know the origin
and import of the Messianic hope of the Jews. Let us be frank with
ourselves and clear our minds of these dreams of the past. These early
Christians deceived themselves; their hopes were not fulfilled; the
earthly kingdom of God did not come. Jesus was not the Messiah for the
simple reason that there is no such person. He was not the Messiah any
more than Mohammed Ahmed was the Mahdi--and for the very same reason.
Mahdis and Messiahs and Buddhas are creations of religious and race
imagination just as King Lear is the product of the poetic imagination
of William Shakespeare. The {85} educated man of the present must
classify these figures as tremendous fictions whose power is waning.
When he faces them squarely and asks himself what significance they
have for his life, his answer must be, "Only historical and artistic."
We may say, then, that Christianity in its first form has been outgrown.

But the Messianic form of Christianity gave it a vivid