At all events, the strictness of a studied theology by no means existed in such a state of society.  All the ideas we have just stated formed in the mind of the disciples a theological system so little settled, that the Son of God, this species of divine duplicate, is made to act purely as man.  He is tempted—­he is ignorant of many things—­he corrects himself[1]—­he is cast down, discouraged—­he asks his Father to spare him trials—­he is submissive to God as a son.[2] He who is to judge the world does not know the day of judgment.[3] He takes precautions for his safety.[4] Soon after his birth, he is obliged to be concealed to avoid powerful men who wish to kill him.[5] In exorcisms, the devil cheats him, and does not come out at the first command.[6] In his miracles we are sensible of painful effort—­an exhaustion, as if something went out of him.[7] All these are simply the acts of a messenger of God, of a man protected and favored by God.[8] We must not look here for either logic or sequence.  The need Jesus had of obtaining credence, and the enthusiasm of his disciples, heaped up contradictory notions.  To the Messianic believers of the millenarian school, and to the enthusiastic readers of the books of Daniel and of Enoch, he was the Son of man—­to the Jews holding the ordinary faith, and to the readers of Isaiah and Micah, he was the Son of David—­to the disciples he was the Son of God, or simply the Son.  Others, without being blamed by the disciples, took him for John the Baptist risen from the dead, for Elias, for Jeremiah, conformable to the popular belief that the ancient prophets were about to reappear, in order to prepare the time of the Messiah.[9]

[Footnote 1:  Matt. x. 5, compared with xxviii. 19.]

[Footnote 2:  Matt. xxvi. 39; John xii. 27.]

[Footnote 3:  Mark xiii. 32.]

[Footnote 4:  Matt. xii. 14-16, xiv. 13; Mark iii. 6, 7, ix. 29, 30; John vii. 1, and following.]

[Footnote 5:  Matt. ii. 20.]

[Footnote 6:  Matt. xvii. 20; Mark ix. 25.]

[Footnote 7:  Luke viii. 45, 46; John xi. 33, 38.]

[Footnote 8:  Acts ii. 22.]

[Footnote 9:  Matt. xiv. 2, xvi. 14, xvii. 3, and following; Mark vi. 14, 15, viii. 28; Luke ix. 8, and following, 19.]

An absolute conviction, or rather the enthusiasm, which freed him from even the possibility of doubt, shrouded all these boldnesses.  We little understand, with our cold and scrupulous natures, how any one can be so entirely possessed by the idea of which he has made himself the apostle.  To the deeply earnest races of the West, conviction means sincerity to one’s self.  But sincerity to one’s self has not much meaning to Oriental peoples, little accustomed to the subtleties of a critical spirit.  Honesty and imposture are words which, in our rigid consciences, are opposed as two irreconcilable terms.  In the East, they are connected by numberless subtle links and windings.  The authors of the Apocryphal books (of “Daniel” and of “Enoch,” for instance), men highly exalted, in order to aid their cause, committed, without a shadow of scruple, an act which we should term a fraud.  The literal truth has little value to the Oriental; he sees everything through the medium of his ideas, his interests, and his passions.