and qualities, such as greed, or pride, or the desire of
power, or the dominant demands of intellect. Among men the poets alone
have really understood Jesus: and in the category of the poets must be
included the saints, whose religion has always been interpreted to them
through the imagination. The poets have understood; the theologians
rarely or never. Thus it happens that men, being the general and
accepted interpreters of Christ, have all but wholly misinterpreted
Him. The lyric passion of that life, and the lyric love which it
excites, has been to them a disregarded music. They have rarely
achieved more than to tell us what Christ taught; they have wholly
failed to make us feel what Christ was. But Mary Magdalene knew this,
and it was what she said and felt in the Garden that has put Christ
upon the throne of the world. Was not her vision after all the true
one? Is not a Catherine a better guide to Jesus than a Dominic? When
all the strident theologies fall silent, will not the world's whole
worship still utter itself in the lyric cry,

Jesu, Lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly.

Is it then not within the competence of man to interpret Christ aright,
simply because the masculine temperament is what it is? By no means,
for such a statement would disqualify the evangelists themselves, who
are the only biographers of Jesus. But in the degree that a
temperament is only masculine, it will fail to understand Jesus.
Napoleon could not understand; he was the child of force, the son of
the sword, the very type of that hard efficiency of will and intellect
which turns the heart to flint, and scorns the witness of the softer
intuitions. Francis could understand because he was in part
feminine--not weakly so, but nobly, as all poets and dreamers and
visionaries are. Paul could understand for the same reason, and so
could John and Peter; each, in varying degrees, belonging to the same
type; but Pilate could not understand, because he had been trained in
the hard efficiency of Rome; nor Judas, because the masculine vice of
ambition had overgrown his affections, and deflowered his heart. What
is it then in Paul and John and Peter, what element or quality, which
we do not find in Pilate, Judas, or Napoleon? Clearly there is no lack
of force, for the personality of these three first apostles lifted a
world out of its groove and changed the course of history. Was it not
just this, that each had beneath h