However, He begins His teaching. Where He learned it, how He learned it, why it took the form it did, how _He_ came to give moral law to the world, where He found the words of wisdom and consolation--the divine words of power--for all generations, there is positively not one sentence of explanation. Of all the young Jews of His day, how came He by these powers and this omnipotent wisdom? Now the Christian theory _does_ attempt an explanation. It gives an ample answer to the question. M. Renan gives no answer whatever. He flies to sentiment. We have all sorts of adjectives--'delicious,' 'enchanting, 'beautiful,' 'sweet,' 'charming'--he beats a whole female seminary at the business, in attempting to describe how, like full-grown babes, everybody in Galilee lived, _so_ innocent, so simple, so Arcadian were they all--_and that is all_! What shall a man do, whom this fine style of novel writing doesn't answer--to whom, in fact, it seems just a bit of disgusting nonsense? Is this wonderful power, this omnipotent wisdom, a production of the 'delicious' climate? Is this all 'philosophical criticism' has to offer, and is he to accept that as more reasonable than the Gospel theory that they were supernatural and divine? In this wonderful romantic dialect, M. Renan describes the beginning of our Lord's ministry. He is embarrassed, however, by the fact that, as Jesus goes on, He Himself makes claims, and sets up pretensions, and exercises powers, which are totally at variance with the proposed explanation. M. Renan cannot deny that He claimed to be the Son of God, the Messiah, the Son of David, that He claimed to work 'miracles,' to possess supernatural powers, to be somewhat altogether different from the amiable, sentimental, young carpenter of his modern biographer. How is this to be got on with? Why, by declaring boldly that Jesus was half deceiver and half deceived! by accepting the difficulty, and confessing that He cheated men for their good--that, as they wished to be deceived, He stooped to deceive them, and at last half deceived Himself! We know nothing more thoroughly _immoral_ than is M. Renan on this matter. This Jesus of his, about whom he sentimentalizes, whom he declares a thousand times to be so 'charming,' and so 'divine,' and the rest, turns out to be a deliberate cheat and quack, putting out claims He does not Himself believe, and acting in sham miracles which people coax Him, according to his biographer, to perform.