Renan had to do, if he thought the contrary, was not to assume, but to prove, that in these repeated instances in which they report His announcements, the Evangelists mistook or misquoted the words of their Master. He accepts, however, their statement that no one at first hoped that the words would be made good; and he proceeds to account for the extraordinary belief which, in spite of this original incredulity, grew up, and changed the course of things and the face of the world. We admire and respect many things in M. Renan; but it seems to us that his treatment of this matter is simply the _ne plus ultra_ of the degradation of the greatest of issues by the application to it of sentiment unworthy of a silly novel. In the first place, he lays down on general grounds that, though the disciples had confessedly given up all hope, it yet _was natural_ that they should expect to see their master alive again. "Mais I'enthousiasme et l'amour ne connaissent pas les situations sans issue." Do they not? Are death and separation such light things to triumph over that imagination finds it easy to cheat them? "Ils se jouent de l'impossible et, plutôt que d'abdiquer l'espérance, ils font violence à toute réalité." Is this an account of the world of fact or the world of romance? The disciples did not hope; but, says M. Renan, vague words about the future had dropped from their master, and these were enough to build upon, and to suggest that they would soon see him back. In vain it is said that in fact they did not expect it. "Une telle croyance était d'ailleurs si naturelle, que la foi des disciples aurait suffi pour la créer de toutes pièces." Was it indeed--in spite of Enoch and Elias, cases of an entirely different kind--so natural to think that the ruined leader of a crushed cause, whose hopeless followers had seen the last of him amid the lowest miseries of torment and scorn, should burst the grave? Il devait arriver [he proceeds] pour Jésus ce qui arrive pour tous les hommes qui ont captivé l'attention de leurs semblables. Le monde, habitué a leur attribuer des vertus surhumaines, ne peut admettre qu'ils aient subi la loi injuste, révoltante, inique, du trépas commun.... La mort est chose si absurde quand elle frappe l'homme de génie ou l'homme d'un grand coeur, que le peuple ne croit pas à la possibilité d'une telle erreur de la nature. Les héros ne meurent pas.