There is no reliable evidence that he ever claimed to be the Messiah of Hebrew prophecy. He is quoted on several occasions as having accepted the appellation when applied to him by others. On one occasion only is he quoted as having affirmatively declared himself the Messiah; and that was to the woman of Samaria, and the whole circumstance of it renders it incredible. It would certainly be a very unusual course to take, for the Jewish Messiah to come and announce himself as such, not to the Jews themselves, but to a very obscure, not to say disreputable woman, of the most despised race known to the Jews. It was however quite natural that, after his followers had universally accepted him as the Jewish Messiah, they should recall some occasional remarks that he may have made, upon which to base this belief; and that these remarks would finally take more concrete form, until when written, fifty to a hundred years after they were uttered, they were perhaps entirely different from anything Jesus ever said. As a matter of fact there is nothing in the life or teachings of Jesus, as recorded in the New Testament, that at all corresponds to the personality or character of the Messiah of Hebrew prophecy. And may I add here, that the Messiah of Hebrew prophecy, for whose coming the Jews were looking at that time, and for which most of the Jews have been looking ever since, is but a fiction and a myth, born entirely out of the patriotic devotion and fervid poetic fancy of the Old Hebrew prophets? In the days of Israel's adversity, when all the really unquestioned Messianic prophecies were uttered, the mind of prophet and people turned back to the golden days of David's glorious reign; and in their intense patriotism and unfaltering faith in Jehovah, they hoped and _believed_ that he would some day raise up a King of the line and house of David that would restore the ancient glory of Israel; and so they prophesied--"the wish being father to the thought." And this is all there is to Old Testament Messianic prophecy. And a great many of the most intelligent Jews of the Reformed School of today are beginning to think the same.