Rousseau's remark that Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus like a god, has in it a truth more important than those who often quote it recognise. Jesus died, legendarily, so much like a god that it is difficult to make out just what happened to the man. Strong arguments have been made to prove that he did not die at all on "the cross" (a word unknown to the New Testament), [56] and that Pilate not only "set himself" to save Jesus (John xix. 12), but succeeded. There may have been from the stake a despairing cry, afterwards shaped after a line from a psalm, but it can hardly be determined whether this may not have been part of the first post-resurrectional doctrine that the Son must be absolutely left by his divine Father, and pass unaided through the ordeal of Satan, in order to fulfil the conditions of a return from death. It is true, however, that this primitive idea had almost vanished when the earliest Gospel was written, and, although a relic of it may have been preserved by tradition, there is an equal probability that Jesus did utter at the stake a cry of despair. The whole miserable murderous affair, unforeseen and disappointing, must have appeared to him a horrible display of diabolism; and even after his friends believed in his resurrection, and saw in the tragedy a sacrifice, they regarded it a sacrifice hateful to his Father, and exacted only by the Devil. Did he pray, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do"? Only Luke reports this; its suppression by the other Gospels suggests that its doctrinal significance was perceived. I heard a preacher in the church of the Jesuits at Rome argue that Judas himself is now in Paradise, because Jesus thus prayed for those who slew him, and the prayer of the Son of God must have been answered. There is no apparent dogmatic purpose in this incident, and it may be true. The story of his confiding his mother to the disciple "whom he loved," told only by John, is evidently meant to complete the assumption of a special favoritism towards that disciple, who is the type of the good Spirit on one side of Jesus in contrast with Judas, Satan's agent, on the other. The two are equally unhistorical and allegorical. John and Judas became the good and evil Wandering Jews of mediæval folklore. The first Solomon had perished as a teacher of wisdom when he was summoned from his tomb to utter the Jahvism of the "Wisdom of Solomon": the second and last Solomon was forever buried on the day when Mary Magdalene saw his apparition, and cried, "My master!" From that time may be dated the loss of the man Jesus, and restoration in Christ of the Jahvism whose burden the wise teacher had endeavored to lift from the heart and mind of the people. Vicisti Jahveh! CHAPTER XIX. POSTSCRIPTA.