Such is the historical impasse at which open-minded students find themselves when they would finally frame a reasoned conception of the origin of the Christian religion. The documentary analysis having yielded results which absolutely repel the accepted tradition, however denuded of supernaturalism, we are driven to seek a solution which shall be compatible with the data. And some of us, after spending many years in shaping a sequence which should retain the figure of the Founder and his twelve disciples, have found ourselves forced step by step to the conclusion that these are all alike products of myth, intelligible and explicable only as such. And when, in absolute loyalty to all the clues, with no foregone conclusions to support--unless the rejection of supernaturalism be counted such--we tentatively frame for ourselves a hypothesis of a remote origin in a sacramental cult of human sacrifice, with a probable Jesus-God for its centre in Palestine, we are not surprised at being met by the kind of explosion that has met every step in the disintegration of traditional beliefs from Copernicus to Darwin. The compendious Mr. Sinclair, who makes no pretension to have read any of the works setting forth the new theories, thus describes them:-- The arguments of Baconians and mythomaniacs are alike made up of the merest blunders as to fact and the sheerest misunderstanding of the meaning of facts. Grotesque etymologies, [35] arbitrary and tasteless emendations of texts, forced parallels, unrestrained license of conjecture, the setting of conjecture above reasonably established fact, chains of argument in which every link is of straw, appeals to anti-theological bias and to the miserable egotism which sees heroes with the eyes of the valet--these are some of the formidable "evidences" in deference to which we are asked to reverse the verdicts of tradition, scholarship, and common sense. They have never imposed on anyone fairly conversant with the facts. Those who have not such knowledge may either simply appeal to the authority of scholars, OR, BETTER STILL, SUPPORT that authority by exercizing their own IMAGINATION AND COMMON SENSE. That tirade has seemed to me worth preserving. It is perhaps a monition to scholars, whose function is something higher than vituperation, to note how their inadequacies are sought to be eked out by zeal without either scholarship or judgment, and, finally, without intellectual sincerity. The publicist who alternately tells the unread that they ought to accept the verdict of scholars, and that it is "better still" to "support" that verdict by unaided "imagination and common sense," has given us once for all his moral measure.