“The prologue of the story of that new religion opens in Galilee. Almost two thousand years ago there was born in the Galilean village of Nazareth, a Jewish child to whom was given the name of Joshua, or Jesus. We do not know for certain how the early years of this child [Browne adheres to the lower cases in all emergencies] were spent. The Gospels recount many legends concerning his conception, birth, and youth, but they are no more to be relied upon than the suspiciously similar legends told many centuries earlier about Zoroaster.”[162] The anthropologists were only possibly wrong; but the Gospels recount legends, and Browne here does not say maybe. Neither does he say where he gets his information concerning the birthplace of Christ. Had he ever read even the first Gospel he would have learned that Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judæa. Perhaps our author referred himself only to his own stranger-than-fiction history of the Jews. Anyway, he goes on to declare that this Child “cherished many of the primitive notions of the simple folk to whom he belonged, believing that disease and sometimes even death were caused by the presence of foul demons, and could be removed by prayer. He knew little if any Greek, and could never have even heard of Greek science or philosophy. All he knew was the Bible, and probably the text of that had been taught him only by rote.... Above all he must have been taught to prize as dearer than life the old obsession of his people that someday they would be miraculously freed by the Messiah. Indeed, so well was that last drilled into him that, as he matured, the hunger for the realization of the hope became his all consuming passion.”[163] We now have One “who preached only ethics,” and yet cherished an all-consuming passion for the realization of the obsessive hope of His people that someday they would be miraculously freed by a Messiah. If Browne will turn to another book with which he seems to be as unfamiliar as he is with the Bible, the dictionary, to wit, he will find ethics defined in some such manner as follows: “Ethics, the science that treats of the principles of human morality and duty; moral philosophy; morals.” An obsessive belief in miracles is something quite beyond ethics, either of a puritanically Jewish or any other variety. Nor do the cherished primitive notions of simple folk to the effect that diseases may be cured by prayer savor much of ethics. I do not of course mean that Christ had no ethics; but Browne has introduced Him to us as one who preached ethics only. Did He, then, keep his one “all consuming passion” out of his preaching?