[Footnote 1:  Matt. x., entirely, xxiv. 9; Mark vi. 8, and following, ix. 40, xiii. 9-13; Luke x. 3, and following, x. 1, and following, xii. 4, and following, xxi. 17; John xv. 18, and following, xvii. 14.]

[Footnote 2:  Mark ix. 38, and following.]

[Footnote 3:  Matt. x. 8.  Comp.  Midrash Ialkout, Deut., sect. 824.]

[Footnote 4:  Matt. x. 20; John xiv. 16, and following, 26, xv. 26, xvi. 7, 13.]

A strange ardor animates all these discourses, which may in part be the creation of the enthusiasm of his disciples,[1] but which even in that case came indirectly from Jesus, for it was he who had inspired the enthusiasm.  He predicted for his followers severe persecutions and the hatred of mankind.  He sent them forth as lambs in the midst of wolves.  They would be scourged in the synagogues, and dragged to prison.  Brother should deliver up brother to death, and the father his son.  When they were persecuted in one country they were to flee to another.  “The disciple,” said he, “is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord.  Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.  Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father.  But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  Fear ye not, therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows."[2] “Whosoever, therefore,” continued he, “shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.  But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven."[3]

[Footnote 1:  The expressions in Matt. x. 38, xvi. 24; Mark viii. 34; Luke xiv. 27, can only have been conceived after the death of Jesus.]

[Footnote 2:  Matt. x. 24-31; Luke xii. 4-7.]

[Footnote 3:  Matt. x. 32, 33; Mark viii. 38; Luke ix. 26, xii. 8, 9.]

In these fits of severity he went so far as to abolish all natural ties.  His requirements had no longer any bounds.  Despising the healthy limits of man’s nature, he demanded that he should exist only for him, that he should love him alone.  “If any man come to me,” said he, “and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."[1] “So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple."[2] There was, at such times, something strange and more than human in his words; they were like a fire utterly consuming life, and reducing everything to a frightful wilderness.  The harsh and gloomy feeling of distaste for the world, and of excessive self-abnegation which characterizes Christian perfection, was originated, not by the refined and cheerful moralist of earlier days, but by the sombre giant whom a kind of grand presentiment was withdrawing, more and more, out of the pale of humanity.  We should almost say that, in these moments of conflict with the most