Becker had the modesty to say that he would not undertake to fix the character of Jesus, but merely collect the fragments of it from his _wretched_ biographers. The friends had great mutual esteem, but John saw in Jesus a higher spirit than his own. Both had the same hatred of the priests, their pride and hypocrisy; both thought the Mosaic law no longer fit for the time, and that the notion of a national God was the source of all the evil in Judea. After long meditation they decided that Jesus must be the Messiah; and John found the part of a precursor fixed for himself. Christ, partly from his power of attraction, and partly from the hope of future power, made his disciples depend blindly on him. It was only with great caution that he could undertake his great work of destroying the priests. The people were divided into sects; and the characteristics of his plan were, his choice of the lowest people, and his withdrawing himself frequently from public view, that the priests might not nip his plan in the bud. As all the prophets had worked miracles, and many were expected from the Messiah, he too was obliged, according to Becker, to undertake them or renounce his hopes. No doubt he performed miracles; for the power of the mind on the body is such that we need not doubt his curing the melancholy and the nervous. As to the miraculous meals, raising the dead, curing the blind and deaf, these things must be attributed to the calculation of his historians; and we need not hesitate to do so after observing such tangible fabrications as Christ's walking on the sea, his blasting the fig tree, devils driven into the swine, and virtue going out of himself. In the story of Lazarus we cannot help suspecting some secret concert. Christ did perform some uncontested miracles, however and there was in his manner that inexpressible something which makes greatness irresistible. The mystic obscurity thrown over his future kingdom, the many parables he used, and his assured manner of speaking of future things, begot reverence. The prudence of his judgment and the strictness of his life are praiseworthy. He could pursue the destruction of old usages but very slowly; first he allowed the neglect of the Sabbath, and at last made open war with the priests, "_on whom, he lanced all the thunder of a Ciceronian eloquence_."