'on peut supposer que les soldats detacherent le corps de la croix avant le soir et le mirent dans quelque fosse commune, ou l'on jetait pele-mele les restes des supplicies. Les conditions de sepulture furent telles qu'au bout de quelques jours il aurait ete impossible de reconnaitre la depouille du Sauveur, quand meme on l'aurait cherchee.'[72] The disciples, however, had been too profoundly stirred by hope to accept defeat. None of them had seen Jesus die; and though they knew that He was dead, they hardly realised it. Besides, they were fellow-countrymen of those who had asked whether Jesus was not Elijah, or even John the Baptist, come to life again. What more natural than that Peter should see the Master one day while fishing on the lake? 'The impulse once given, this belief grew by the very need which it had to strengthen itself.' Christ 'appeared also to the eleven,' So it was that their faith brought them back to Jerusalem, and Christianity was born. 'The supernatural life of Christ in the faithful and in the Church has been clothed in an historical form, which has given birth to what we might somewhat loosely call the Christ of legend.' So the Italian manifesto sums up the result of this reconstruction or denudation of the Gospel history.[73] 'Such a criticism,' say the authors not less frankly than truly, 'does away with the possibility of finding in Christ's teaching even the embryonic form of the Church's later theological teaching.'[74] Readers unfamiliar with Modernist literature will probably have read the foregoing extracts with utter amazement. It seems hardly credible that such views should be propounded by Catholic priests, who claim to remain in the Catholic Church, to repeat her creeds, minister at her altars, and share her faith. What more, it may well be asked, have rationalist opponents of Christianity ever said, in their efforts to tear up the Christian religion by the roots, than we find here admitted by Catholic apologists? What is left of the object of the Church's worship if the Christ of history was but an enthusiastic Jewish peasant whose pathetic ignorance of the forces opposed to Him led Him to the absurd enterprise of attempting a _coup d'etat_ at Jerusalem? Is not Jesus reduced by this criticism to the same level as Theudas or Judas of Galilee? and, if this is the true account, what sentiment can we feel, when we read His tragic story, but compassion tinged with contempt?