Thus the Jesus who is to be compared with Paul, according to the modern naturalistic theory, is not the Jesus of the Gospels; he is a Jesus who can be rediscovered only through a critical process within the Gospels. And that critical process is very difficult. It is certainly no easy matter to separate natural and supernatural in the Gospel picture of Jesus, for the two are inextricably intertwined. In pulling up the tares, the historian is in danger of pulling up the wheat as well; in the removal of the supernatural elements from the story of Jesus, the whole of the story is in danger of being destroyed. Certain radical spirits are not afraid of the consequence; since the Jesus of the Gospels, they say, is a supernatural person, He is not a real person; no such person as this Jesus ever lived on earth. Such radicalism, of course, is absurd. The Jesus of the Gospels is certainly not the product of invention or of myth; He is rooted too deep in historical conditions; He towers too high above those who by any possibility could have produced Him. But the radical denials of the historicity of Jesus are not without interest. They have at least called attention to the arbitrariness with which the separation of historical from unhistorical has been carried on in the production of the "liberal Jesus." But suppose the separation has been completed; suppose the historical Jesus has been discovered beneath the gaudy colors which had almost hopelessly defaced His portrait. Even then the troubles of the historian are not at an end. For this historical Jesus, this human Jesus of modern liberalism, is a monstrosity; there is a contradiction at the very center of His being. The contradiction is produced by His Messianic consciousness. The human Jesus of modern liberalism, the pure and humble teacher of righteousness, the one who kept His own person out of His message and merely asked men to have faith in God like His faith--this Jesus of modern liberalism thought that He was to come with the clouds of heaven and be the instrument in judging the earth! If Jesus was pure and unselfish and of healthy mind, how could He have applied to Himself the tremendous conception of the transcendent Messiah? By some the problem is avoided. Some, like Wrede, deny that Jesus ever presented Himself as the Messiah; others, like Bousset, are at least moving in the same direction. But such radicalism cannot be carried out. The Messianic element in the consciousness of Jesus is rooted too deep in the sources ever to be removed by any critical process. It is established also by the subsequent development. If Jesus never thought Himself to be the Messiah and never presented Himself as such, how did His disciples come to regard Him as the Messiah after His death? Why did they not simply say, "Despite His death, the Kingdom of God is coming?" Why did they say rather, "Despite His death, He is the Messiah?"[88] They could only have done so if Jesus