After he had confirmed by his silence the belief that he had used a dishonest evasion indicative of consciousness that he was no real Messiah, he suddenly burst out with a full reply to the High Priest’s question; and avowed that he was the Messiah, the Son of God; and that they should hereafter see him sitting on the right-hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven,—­of course to enter into judgment on them all.  I am the less surprized that this precipitated his condemnation, since he himself seems to have designed precisely that result.  The exasperation which he had succeeded in kindling led to his cruel death; and when men’s minds had cooled, natural horror possessed them for such a retribution on such a man.  His words had been met with deeds:  the provocation he had given was unfelt to those beyond the limits of Jerusalem; and to the Jews who assembled from distant parts at the feast of Pentecost he was nothing but the image of a sainted martyr.

I have given more than enough indications of points in which the conduct of Jesus does not seem to me to have been that of a perfect man:  how any one can think him a Universal Model, is to me still less intelligible.  I might say much more on this subject.  But I will merely add, that when my friend gives the weight of his noble testimony to the Perfection of Jesus, I think it is due to himself and to us that he should make clear what he means by this word “Jesus.”  He ought to publish—­(I say it in deep seriousness, not sarcastically)—­an expurgated gospel; for in truth I do not know how much of what I have now adduced from the gospel as fact, he will admit to be fact.  I neglect, he tells me, “a higher moral criticism,” which, if I rightly understand, would explode, as evidently unworthy of Jesus, many of the representations pervading the gospels:  as, that Jesus claimed to be an oracular teacher, and attached spiritual life or death to belief or disbelief in this claim.  My friend says, it is beyond all serious question what Jesus was:  but his disbelief of the narrative seems to be so much wider than mine, as to leave me more uncertain than ever about it.  If he will strike out of the gospels all that he disbelieves, and so enable me to understand what is the Jesus whom he reveres, I have so deep a sense of his moral and critical powers, that I am fully prepared to expect that he may remove many of my prejudices and relieve my objections:  but I cannot honestly say that I see the least probability of his altering my conviction, that in consistency of goodness Jesus fell far below vast numbers of his unhonoured disciples.

[Footnote 1:  I have by accident just taken up the “British Quarterly,” and alighted upon the following sentence concerning Madame Roland:—­“To say that she was without fault, would be to say that she was not human.”  This so entirely expresses and concludes all that I have to say, that I feel surprise at my needing at all to write such a chapter as the present.]