It will be observed that certain distinct traits appear in the central figure, and that these traits are not merely those of the conventional religious hero, but the more simple human touches of anger, pity, indignation, despondency, exultation; these scattered touches, each so vivid, fuse into a natural and intelligible whole. The Jesus of Mark is a real man, who moves and speaks and feels like a man (!)--"a creature not too bright or good for human nature's daily food"-- a notable variation from the more familiar thesis of the "sublime" and "unique" figure of current polemic. Looking for the alleged details, we find Jesus calling the fifth disciple: "He saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose and followed him"--another touch of "freedom and variety." Then, after a series of Messianic utterances, including a pronouncement against Sabbatarianism of the extremer sort, comes the story of the healing of the withered hand, with its indignant allocution to "them" in the synagogue: "Is it lawful on the sabbath day to do good, or to do harm, to save a life or to kill?" Here, in a miracle story, we have an intelligible protest against Sabbatarianism: is it the protest or the indignation that vouches for the actuality of the protesting figure? Nay, if we are to elide the miraculous, how are we to let the allocution stand? These protests against Sabbatarianism, as it happens, are the first approximations to actuality in the document; and as such they raise questions of which the "instinctive" school appear to have no glimpse, but which we shall later have to consider closely. In the present connection, it may suffice to ask the question: Was anti-Sabbatarianism, or was it not, the first concrete issue raised by the alleged Teacher? In the case put, is it likely to have been? Were the miraculous healing of disease, and the necessity of feeding the disciples, with the corollary that the Son of Man was Lord of the Sabbath, salient features in a popular gospel of repentance in view of the coming of the Kingdom of God? If so, it is in flat negation of the insistence on the maintenance of the law in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. v, 17-20), which thus becomes for us a later imposition on the cultus of a purely Judaic principle, in antagonism to the other. That is to say, a movement which began with anti-Sabbatarianism was after a time joined or directed by Sabbatarian Judaists, for whom the complete apparatus of the law was vital. If, on the other hand, recognizing that anti-Sabbatarianism, in the terms of the case, was not likely to be a primary element in the new teaching, that its first obtrusion in the alleged earliest Gospel is in an expressly Messianic deliverance, and its second in a miracle-story, we proceed to "strike out" both items upon Mr. Sinclair's ostensible principles, we are deprived of the first touch of "indignation" and "anger" which would otherwise serve to support his very simple thesis. CHAPTER V