If clerics cannot rise above the old disingenuous sectarian spirit, it is time at least that laymen should. The more historic comprehension a man has of the ancient world, of Plutarch's world, with all its sins and delusions, the less can he harbour the notion of the moral miracle involved in the thesis of the unique teacher, suddenly revealing to an amazed humanity heights of moral aspiration before undreamt of. And any considerate scrutiny of the logia of the Gospels will inevitably force the open-minded student to recognize multiplicity of thought and ideal, and compel him to seek some explanation. An effort to detach a possible personality by the elimination of impossible adjuncts is the next natural step.
For anyone who will soberly and faithfully face the facts there must sooner or later arise the problem, Is there any unifying personality behind this medley of many sets of doctrines, many voices, many schools? Even if it were possible to piece together from it a coherent body of either ethical or religious thought, and jettison the rest, is there any reason to believe that the selected matter belongs to the Gospel Teacher with the Twelve Disciples, crucified on the morning after the Passover under Pontius Pilate? When the crowning doctrine of sacrament and sacrifice is seen to be but the consummation of a religious lore beginning in prehistoric and systematic human sacrifice, and traceable in a score of ancient cults, is it possible to claim that the palpably dramatic record of Last Supper, Agony, Betrayal, Trial, and Crucifixion is a historic record of a strange coincidence between cult practice and biography? And if that goes, what is left? If, says Loisy, the condemnation of Jesus as pretended Messiah by Pilate "could be put in doubt, one would have no motive for affirming the existence of Christ." [14] And it can!
Some, assuming to settle the problem by rhetoric, in effect stand for a "personality" without any pretence of establishing what the "personality" taught. And this inexpensive device will doubtless long continue to be practised by the large class who insist upon solving all such problems by instinct. An example of that procedure is afforded by an article headed "A Barren Controversy," by the Rev. Frederick Sinclair, in a magazine entitled Fellowship, the organ of the Free Religious Fellowship, Melbourne, issue of March, 1915. The controversy is certainly barren enough as Mr. Sinclair conducts it. His religious temper is of a familiar type. "It is a hard task to prove the obvious," he begins; "and no obligation is laid on us to examine and refute the evidences alleged in support of this or that cock-and-bull theory." We can imagine how the reverend critic would have shone in the sixteenth or the seventeenth century, disposing of the Copernican theory, which so presumptuously assailed "the obvious." True to his principles, he does not hamper himself by meeting arguments or evidence. "Mythical theories about Christ have about as much scientific value and importance as the theories of the Baconians about Shakespeare. They ... are products ... of that perverted credulity which will swallow anything, so long as it is not orthodox; and they are best met by the method of satire adopted by Whately in his 'Historic Doubts' on Napoleon." And yet our expert renounces that admirable instrument in favour of the simpler procedure vulgarly known as "bluff." He is in reality a good example of the psychosis of the very Baconism which he contemns, and which he would probably be quite unable to confute. An æsthetic impression of "reality" derived from a hypnotized perusal of Mark, and a feeling that only one man could deliver such oracles, are the beginning and end of his dialectic and scholarly stock-in-trade; even as a consciousness that Bacon must be the author of the Plays, and that the actor Shakespeare could not have written them, is the beginning and end of the ignorant polemic of the Baconists.