Many things in this book will greatly shock, and even give heartfelt pain to, numerous persons whom I greatly respect. I have a large share of the love of approbation, and naturally desire the good opinion of those with whom I have been associated in a long life. There is no pleasure in the fact that I have to stand quite alone in the eyes of nearly all Christendom. There is no satisfaction in being deemed a disturber of the peace of the great majority of those “professing and calling themselves Christians.” But, at the same time, I must not be indifferent in matters where I believe truth is concerned. Before I withdrew from the orthodox ministry I used to wonder why God in his gracious providence had not seen fit to so order events as to give us a credible and undoubted history of the incarnation and birth of his Son Jesus Christ, and why that Saviour, who had come to repair the great evils inflicted upon our race by Adam, had never once mentioned that unfortunate fall. I do not deny that there was a person named Jesus nearly nineteen hundred years ago. I think there were several persons bearing this name and who were contemporaneous, and that several of them were very good men; but that any one of them was _such_ a person as is described in the Gospels I cannot believe. I lay special emphasis on the word such. Admitting for the sake of the argument the real, historical personality of Jesus of Nazareth, he has by the process of _idealization_ become an _impersonation_, and I have so attempted to make it appear; and I cannot but think that this view is not inconsistent with the most enlightened piety and religious devotion, while this explanation relieves us of many things which are absurd and contradictory. I desire to explain more fully than appears in the _Table of Contents_ the plan of this book. I first combat the policy of _suppression and deception_, and insist that the whole truth shall be published, and have shown that sacerdotalism is responsible for the fact that it has not been done. As so-called Christianity is based upon Judaism, I undertake to show the fabulous character of many of the claims of the Jews, disclaiming all intention to asperse the character of Israelites of the present generation. I thought it proper in this connection to give the substance of an _open letter_ to the Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on _Moses and the Pentateuch_—to which His Honor never responded—showing that the “law of Sinai was not the first of which we have any knowledge,” and that Moses was not “the greatest statesman and lawgiver the world had ever produced,” as the Chief-Justice had affirmed in a lecture before the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania.