public life, without the least allusion to its probable issue. He appeared at Jerusalem in the early days of October, at the Feast of Tabernacles. There we shall find him again in our last volume.

CHAPTER XIII

THE NAMES ASSUMED BY JESUS

THAT we may penetrate yet more deeply

into the mind of Jesus, we have now

to study the names which he gave himself or permitted others to give him, seeking to know in what sense he took them. Faithful to our method, we shall confine ourselves to interrogating and ascertaining the facts.

In our first volume we showed that Jesus believed himself to be the Messiah from the time of his baptism. To follow the development of his thought about himself from that day forward, we must rest upon this historic basis: he believed himself to be the Messiah. This is the starting-point. He was born at the very time when men were expecting the Messiah; and this wholly external historic fact certainly had its influence upon his first decision.

He had been arriving at it little by little, and at his baptism it became definitive.

At the temptation he had repelled the popular Jewish Messianism which was to accomplish a political revolution; it was by a wholly spiritual and moral course of action that he would prepare for the kingdom of God. Toward the end he took a further step: he was to be a suffering Messiah, persecuted and dying as a sacrifice. We must now ask what consequences are involved in this affirmation, "I am the Messiah."

One point must first be ascertained: Did Jesus deceive himself? This question, which we put to ourselves in our first volume, here presents itself anew. Renan has said that Jesus, intoxicated by success, believed himself to be the Messiah. He was sane at the beginning of his ministry, he was no longer so at its close; and his history, as Renan relates it, notwithstanding the carefulness with which he treats it, is the history of the growing excitement of a man who began with good sense, clearness of vision, the moral health of a fine and noble genius, and who ended in a sickly exaltation next door to insanity. The word "madness" was not written by Renan, but the thought may be found expressed on

every page. Well, the facts are opposed to this explanation. We affirmed this in our first volume; here we must demonstrate it. The demonstration is so much the more necessary as the error in question, which is the capital, fundamental, one may almost say the only, error in Renan's Life of Jesus, has been widely spread abroad and received as truth. There is a general belief that Renan found the key to the great enigma, and with it explained Jesus Christ. Therefore Christianity is done away; no one thinks of it any more. Now, what Renan discovered is this: Jesus succeeded, and his success dazzled him, blinded him, turned his head, and he became the mysterious apocalyptic personage of the last days.

Well, we do not think it is possible, with history at hand, to talk of the visible success of the ministry of Jesus. He was misunderstood by the people, and always less and less understood by them. They felt for him the merest passing admiration. The authorities, the leaders, the theologians, for the most part held him in very small estimation; and, above all, however great may have been his popularity in the

early days, it is historically certain that it continually went on diminishing. When Jesus cried, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes," he recognized that these new truths were hidden from the doctors. They were hidden by the decision of a supreme and mysterious will.

And later, when the crisis came, he kept his faith in himself. If he had been at the mercy of success or failure, guided by an external fatality, he would have given up the attempt; he did just the contrary. In the hour of failure, precisely when the people were leaving him, he declared himself to be the Messiah, with an assurance, a decision, a certitude greater than ever. We have pointed out the strength of mind, the faith and courage with which in the midst of the crisis he affirmed his Messiahship. This was the moment, as we have shown, when he might have said, "I have deceived myself, I have lost all, the time of the Messiah has not yet come;" yet, on the contrary, it was at this moment that he 1 Matt. xi. 25.