But, further than this, I have great difficulty in assuring myself that even James, “the brother of the Lord,” and his “myriads” of Nazarenes, properly represented the doctrines of their Master.  For it is constantly asserted by our modern “pillars” that one of the chief features of the work of Jesus was the instauration of Religion by the abolition of what our sticklers for articles and liturgies, with unconscious humour, call the narrow restrictions of the Law.  Yet, if James knew this, how could the bitter controversy with Paul have arisen; and why did not one or the other side quote any of the various sayings of Jesus, recorded in the Gospels, which directly bear on the question—­sometimes, apparently, in opposite directions.

So, if I am asked to call myself an “infidel,” I reply:  To what doctrine do you ask me to be faithful?  Is it that contained in the Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds?  My firm belief is that the Nazarenes, say of the year 40, headed by James, would have stopped their ears and thought worthy of stoning the audacious man who propounded it to them.  Is it contained in the so-called Apostles’ Creed!  I am pretty sure that even that would have created a recalcitrant commotion at Pella in the year 70, among the Nazarenes of Jerusalem, who had fled from the soldiers of Titus.  And yet, if the unadulterated tradition of the teachings of “the Nazarene” were to be found anywhere, it surely should have been amidst those not very aged disciples who may have heard them as they were delivered.

Therefore, however sorry I may be to be unable to demonstrate that, if necessary, I should not be afraid to call myself an “infidel,” I cannot do it.  “Infidel” is a term of reproach, which Christians and Mahommedans, in their modesty, agree to apply to those who differ from them.  If he had only thought of it, Dr. Wace might have used the term “miscreant,” which, with the same etymological signification, has the advantage of being still more “unpleasant” to the persons to whom it is applied.  But why should a man be expected to call himself a “miscreant” or an “infidel”?  That St. Patrick “had two birthdays because he was a twin” is a reasonable and intelligible utterance beside that of the man who should declare himself to be an infidel, on the ground of denying his own belief.  It may be logically, if not ethically, defensible that a Christian should call a Mahommedan an infidel and vice versa; but, on Dr. Wace’s principles, both ought to call themselves infidels, because each applies the term to the other.

Now I am afraid that all the Mahommedan world would agree in reciprocating that appellation to Dr. Wace himself.  I once visited the Hazar Mosque, the great University of Mahommedanism, in Cairo, in ignorance of the fact that I was unprovided with proper authority.  A swarm of angry under-graduates, as I suppose I ought to call them, came buzzing about me and my guide; and if I had known Arabic, I suspect that “dog