by the adoption of a definite ceremony and the
pronouncement of a precise formula. Nay, in virtue of his peculiar
status, the priest is able to superinduce a physical sanctity in solid
and liquid substances, like bread and wine, and quite independently of
his own belief, or the belief of the bystanders, or even the
recipients, cause those substances to be no longer what to every
conceivable physical test they still continue to be, but the body and
blood of a man who lived more than 1800 years ago. In a word, a ritual
may be described as "a system of consecrated charms or spells, and the
priest is the great magician who dispenses them".[5]

What we ask, then, is precisely this: Was Jesus a priest in this sense?
Unhesitatingly and most emphatically we reply--and without any fear of
serious attempt at refutation--that he was not, and that, in
consequence, the whole scheme of sacerdotal religion as prevalent in
the Roman and Oriental Christian Churches, and to a moderate extent in
the Anglican Church, is entirely baseless, grounded, not on the
institution of Jesus their reputed founder, but on an infantine
superstition which the third century of Christianity took over from the
Jewish and Pagan traditions which had preceded it. Hence the whole
protracted controversy, which has set no end of theological hair on
end, about the validity of these orders and the invalidity of those, is
so much beating the air, because Christianity, as understood and
instituted by Christ, knows no place, any more than Buddhism or
Mohammedanism, for priest, rite or sacrament.

Let us proceed to offer some evidence for this statement. In the first
place, the whole tenor of Christ's life was not that of the priest, but
of something entirely different; Christ was a prophet. What is a
prophet? We shall very imperfectly appreciate the character of the
prophet if we look upon him as nothing more than an historian "for whom
God has turned time round the other way," so that he reads the future
as if it were the past. Most extraordinary instances of clairvoyance
are brought to our notice in which things, eventually realised, turn
out to have been previously known, but the clairvoyant is not the
prophet. The prophet is the spirit representative of the Supreme
Spirit before our own. He is the image--perfected by intercourse with
the Unseen--of "the Invisible Goodness". He uses no rites, sacraments
or symbols, for he is all that in himself. If his