“The Saviour-God’s birth was foretold by a dream. He was born of a virgin mother in consequence of her contact with a God. He was visited by wise men, guided to his birthplace by a star, who had read of his birth in the heavens; and also by shepherds. Angels were with him at his birth. He was of royal descent. He was preceded by a kinsman who prepared the way for his teaching, etc., etc.

“In all, the number of god-men known to history comes to thirty-four; of these seventeen were crucified saviours, and around the life of all these saviours runs a story similar to that told about Jesus.”

Yet he admits that “Christianity, apart from the cruel laws and impurity noticeable in Judaism, to which it is so inseparably bound, is on a higher moral and spiritual level than any of the older religions.”

Likewise, he speaks greater than he knew when he says, after ridiculing the claims of those who believed Jesus to be God:

“If Jesus was God, he is still God; if God consists of three parts, he is one of them. Christians say, or at least every Sunday they believe, this. If this be so, then Jesus must have known all the past, the present and the future. To him all wisdom, all knowledge must have been an open book; and yet he went to his death without telling the world one single fact he did not know before.”

This one statement proves how little he comprehended the great significance of Jesus’ mission, or of those wondrous words spoken to His disciples in the upper room the last night before His betrayal, about His going away and sending the Comforter, the Holy Spirit in His stead, Who would teach them all things and lead them to all truth; when they would know that He was in the Father, and the Father in Him, and He in them. Or of the many sayings of Jesus proving that He did know the past, the present and the future, and possessed all wisdom and knowledge.

And especially of the real meaning of His words, “He who hath seen me, hath seen the Father;” “I and my Father are One;” “All that the Father hath is mine;” “I am the vine, ye