What we ask, then, is precisely this: Was Jesus a priest in this sense? Unhesitatingly and most emphatically we reply--and without any fear of serious attempt at refutation--that he was not, and that, in consequence, the whole scheme of sacerdotal religion as prevalent in the Roman and Oriental Christian Churches, and to a moderate extent in the Anglican Church, is entirely baseless, grounded, not on the institution of Jesus their reputed founder, but on an infantine superstition which the third century of Christianity took over from the Jewish and Pagan traditions which had preceded it. Hence the whole protracted controversy, which has set no end of theological hair on end, about the validity of these orders and the invalidity of those, is so much beating the air, because Christianity, as understood and instituted by Christ, knows no place, any more than Buddhism or Mohammedanism, for priest, rite or sacrament. Let us proceed to offer some evidence for this statement. In the first place, the whole tenor of Christ's life was not that of the priest, but of something entirely different; Christ was a prophet. What is a prophet? We shall very imperfectly appreciate the character of the prophet if we look upon him as nothing more than an historian "for whom God has turned time round the other way," so that he reads the future as if it were the past. Most extraordinary instances of clairvoyance are brought to our notice in which things, eventually realised, turn out to have been previously known, but the clairvoyant is not the prophet. The prophet is the spirit representative of the Supreme Spirit before our own. He is the image--perfected by intercourse with the Unseen--of "the Invisible Goodness". He uses no rites, sacraments or symbols, for he is all that in himself. If his pure, lofty, ennobling life cannot impress the eternal upon the souls of men, then assuredly no bread, wine or oil, can do it.[6] Hence, we see, a prophet is born, not made. No consecration can make one any more than installing a scene painter in the studio of a Raphael could ensure a reproduction of a Transfiguration, or the Madonna di Foligno. And no desecration, no excommunication from church, chapel or sanhedrin can unmake him. The prophet is one of those royal beings who are kings by right Divine, aye and human too, for all fall down instinctively before him. It is the verdict of history that all that is most blessed we owe to the prophets--not to the priests--to Moses, Confucius, Chrishna, Buddha, Socrates, Zoroaster and Christ.