Begin with the story of Abraham, in Genesis, and follow through the centuries the thread of Hebrew history to the times of Cæsar Augustus and of Jesus, if you will, till our own time. We find in that history patriarchs, law-givers, priests, judges, soldiers, kings, statesmen, poets, reformers, and prophets. We have Abraham and the other patriarchs; Moses, Aaron, and his successors; Joshua and his compatriots; Samuel, last and best of a long line of judges; Saul, David--poet, as well as soldier and king; Solomon, genius and philosopher, sage and profligate; Isaiah and the other prophets; Nehemiah and other reformers; Daniel, the statesman, in the service of an alien prince, the conqueror of his people. In later times we have Judas Maccabæus, the heroic defender of his country, and the other mighty men who gave their lives in a hopeless struggle for the freedom of their nation. Still later we read of men like Annas and Caiaphas, the wicked high-priests of an evil time. We have Gamaliel, learned in the law, and his pupil, Saul of Tarsus. (But for Jesus there would have been no Paul.) We have the men brought to view as “disciples” of Jesus. Later on appear such a man as Josephus and the brave men who fought the Romans and died for Jerusalem. Consider them all, the strong and the weak, the good and the bad, as they grew upon this Hebrew tree. These men show the best as well as the worst it could do. We must judge this tree by its fruits. Can we place Jesus among them and count him as one of them--the best of them? Could a tree which produces these others produce him? To ask the question is to answer it. I know what some writers have to say when they speak of finding types of Jesus among those who lived before him; what they say of Moses, Joshua, and others. Some of them were truly great and good men--among the best the human race can show for itself. But we cannot place Jesus among them; they do not approach him, and they are not like him. He stands alone and apart. He is not only above them, he is unlike them. The question is not simply whether the Hebrew tree, judging it by all its other fruits, was capable of producing this one perfect character in all the world, but also whether it could have produced this kind of character? Certainly it never did before him or after him. Search history for one shadow of proof that this race--wonderful and unique in all times and countries--from Abraham to Disraeli had in it any powers that could, as a normal development, produce Jesus of Nazareth.