These are some of the features of the founder of the new religion as revealed in the Gospels--features that permanently compel attention, but after all it was not the consideration of these that conquered the world. Of far more account in winning the world was the death of this man upon the cross. It was the cross that gave certainty to all that Jesus had taught about God. The church sturdily and indignantly repudiated any suggestion, however philosophic, that in any way seemed likely to lessen the significance of the cross. That he should taste the ultimate bitterness of death undisguised, that he should refuse the palliative wine and myrrh (an action symbolic of his {139} whole attitude to everything and to death itself), that with open eyes he should set his face for Jerusalem, and with all the sensitiveness of a character, so susceptive of impression and so rich in imagination, he should expose himself to our experience--to the foretaste of death, to the horror of the unknown, and to the supreme fear--the dread of the extinction of personality; and that he should actually undergo all he foresaw, as the last cry upon the cross testified--all this let the world into the real meaning of his central thought upon God. It was the pledge of his truth, and thus made possible our reconciliation with God. If we may take an illustration from English literature, Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_ may suggest something here. It has been noticed how small a part Caesar plays in the drama--how little he speaks; what weakness he shows--epilepsy, deafness, arrogance, vacillation; and how soon he disappears. Would not the play have been better named _Brutus_? Yet Shakespeare knew what he was doing; for the whole play is Julius Caesar, from the outbreak of Cassius at the beginning-- Why! man he doth bestride the narrow world Like a colossus, to the bitter cry of Brutus at the end-- O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet! Caesar determines everything in the story. Every character in it is a mirror in which we see some figure of him, and the life of every man there is made or unmade by his mind toward Caesar. Caesar is the one great determining factor in the story; living and dead, he is the centre and explanation of it all.