And yet no man had appeared in Israel for many generations endowed in so high a degree with all the qualities which mark us Israelites out from the nations around. He was tender to the poor; and which of the nations has given thought for its poor, their feelings as well as their welfare, like unto Israel? He bare the yoke of the Law willingly, yet as a son, not as a slave, of the Most High. God was to him, as to all of us, as an ever‐ present Father, to love, to chasten, and to reward; not as a harsh taskmaster or as a boon‐companion, as with the commoner minds of thy people, Aglaophonos; nor as a vain figment of the reason, as with thy higher minds. Even in what thou regardest as defects in our nation, this Jesus seemed also to share. Thou makest us the reproach that we give no thought to the beauties and grandeur of nature, and in nothing that I had seen and heard of him did the Nazarene differ from the rest of us in this. Thou complainest that we look upon life with all too much seriousness. “Ye cannot see the smile upon the face of things,” thou saidst once to me. In this surely Jesus was a Jew of the Jews. We never saw him smile, still less heard him laugh. Thou wouldst hold up to me as a model Socrates thy teacher, who taught the Hellenes truth with a smile. That man there, dying upon the cross, had tried to teach Israel the truth with tears and threats. Herein he followed the exemplar of our prophets. Only in Israel have the men who have led us farthest reviled us most. As our God, who has been to us a Father, has chastened us while he loved us, so our prophets have rebuked us their brethren. Many generations of men have passed since the last of the prophets spake his words of loving reproof. Now has appeared this Jesus, who again takes up their work. But in one thing, and that a great thing, he differs from our prophets. All these spake never but as messengers of the Most High. This man alone of the prophets speaketh in his own name: therefore he hath been a stumbling‐block and an offence unto us. He spake as one having authority, and it seemed to us as arrogance. And when we would speak with him in the gates, and know his own thought, he evaded our questionings and eluded our testings. He seemed aloof from us and our desires. All Israel was pining to be freed from the Roman yoke, and he would have us pay tribute to Rome for aye. Did he feel himself in some way as not of our nation? I know not; but in all ways we failed to know him. And as I was communing thus, the sun shone forth from a rift in the clouds and illumined for a space the crown of Calvary, and I stretched forth my hands to the figures on the cross, and cried aloud in my perplexity, “Jesus, what art thou?” And then I bethought me, and my hands fell to my side, and I said, “What wert thou, Jesus?” Naught answered me but the distant rumbling from the gloomy clouds.