In the scene of the Lord's Supper, James was apparently the most prominent character. His removal from the list of the twelve apostles in the canonical gospels is significant. "And when the Lord had given his shroud to the servant of the priest, he went to James and appeared to him. "For James had sworn that he would not eat bread from the hour wherein he had drunk the cup of the Lord until he saw him rising again from the dead. "And the Lord said, Bring a table and bread. "And he took the bread, and blessed and broke, and afterwards gave it to James the Just, and said, My brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of Man is risen from them that sleep." Now, the suppression of all this in the orthodox gospels is, as Renan shows, of immense importance. ("Les Evangiles," ch. vi.) "Then was he seen by James," says St. Paul (1. Cor. xv. 7), "then by all the Apostles." This shows that the incident was known to the very earliest Church. CHAPTER VII. _The Essene Jesus._ We now come to an important question, Did Christianity emerge from Essenism? Historical questions are sometimes made more clear by being treated broadly. Let us first deal with this from the impersonal side, leaving out altogether the alleged words and deeds of Christ, Paul, etc. Fifty years before Christ's birth there was a sect dwelling in the stony waste where John prepared a people for the Lord. Fifty years after Christ's death there was a sect in the same part of Palestine. The sect that existed fifty years before Christ was called Essenes, Therapeuts, Gnostics, Nazarites. The sect that existed fifty years after Christ's death was called "Essenes or Jesseans," according to Epiphanius, Therapeuts, Gnostics, Nazarites, and not Christians until afterwards. Each had two prominent rites: baptism and what Tertullian calls the "oblation of bread." Each had for officers, deacons, presbyters, ephemereuts. Each sect had monks, nuns, celibacy, community of goods. Each interpreted the Old Testament in a mystical way, so mystical, in fact, that it enabled each to discover that the bloody sacrifice of Mosaism was forbidden, not enjoined. The most minute likenesses have been pointed out between these two sects by all Catholic writers from Eusebius and Origen to the poet Racine, who translated Philo's "Contemplative Life" for the benefit of pious court ladies. Was there any connection between these two sects? It is difficult to conceive that there can be two answers to such a question. And if it can be proved, as Bishop Lightfoot affirms, that Christ was an anti-Essene, who announced that His mission was to preserve intact every jot and tittle of Mosaism as interpreted by the recognised interpreters, this would simply show that he had nothing to do with the movement to which his name has been given. There are two Christs in the gospels. Let us consider the Essene Christ first.