In what has been said of the ability of these men to conceive such a character as Jesus remember we are not speaking of copyists, but creators; not of those who merely put together a story from materials furnished by history, or from some life that has been lived, but of those who invent, think out a character. The copyists, the historians, the biographers, the novelists, easily enough write and talk of greater and better men than themselves. This sort of literary work, this sort of thinking, is done every day; it is as common as the “making of books.” If the materials are furnished us we may well enough write of those who are beyond and above us. We will naturally and often necessarily do this in describing one who actually lived. Great and good men and women have often had biographers immeasurably inferior to them. A clever literary man may draw a fair picture of Julius Cæsar. Froude did it. A man of hard and narrow spirit may so write of heroes as to make us feel their superiority. Carlyle did this for not a few. A small man may tell us of his master. Even Boswell could do this. But in considering whether these four writers could have invented the character of Jesus we are not speaking of the sort of work historians and biographers do, but of pure creative work; the thinking out of a character never described by another and that never lived. For the theory we are now considering is that Jesus never lived; that he is only the product of the dramatic genius of these four writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Now, you will conclude when you have considered it, that very little, if any, of this sort of work is ever done. Perhaps we should hesitate to affirm that such creative work is impossible, but it may well be doubted whether any character in any fiction or drama of any sort, by any writer in any age, is a pure invention. Is there not for every character in fiction as well as in history a man somewhere, in some form? some facts in actual life that furnish the materials for the conception and delineation of that form of life that the writing presents to us? Is there in any writing any character that has not intellectual descent from some life actually lived, or in some way other than by creative processes brought into the writer’s thoughts? Consider Shakespeare’s plays. Life furnished the materials; his heroes and heroines have real men and women back of them. Take Milton’s Satan. He is very like Milton in force and sublimity; but the poet did not create the character. His Satan is a composite work from Bible hints and heathen mythology. This Satan had lived in the thoughts of men before that Milton took him in hand.