I have, in fact, little doubt that it _was_ a Romanized appropriation or translation of the Judaean Messiah. One thing only I must warn you against. You will naturally say: 'Since two writers among the very few surviving have both refuted this prophecy, and Josephus besides, this implies that many thousands did so. For if out of a bundle of newspapers two only had survived quite disconnected, both talking of the same man, we should argue a great popularity for that man.' And you will say: 'All these Roman people, did they interpret?' You know already--by Vespasian. Now whilst, on the one hand, I am far from believing that chance only was the parent of the ancient [Greek: eustochia], their felicitous guessing (for it was a higher science), yet, in this new matter, what coincidence of Pagan prophecy, as doubtless a horrid mistrust in the oracles, etc., made them 'sagacious from a fear' of the coming peril, and, as often happens in Jewish prophecies--God when He puts forth His hand the purposes attained roll one under the other sometimes three deep even to our eyes. _XIX. CONTRAST OF GREEK AND PERSIAN FEELING IN CERTAIN ASPECTS._ Life, naturally the antagonism of Death, must have reacted upon Life according to its own development. Christianity having so awfully affected the [Greek: to] + of Death, this + must have reacted on Life. Hence, therefore, a phenomenon existing broadly to the human sensibility in these ages which for the Pagans had no existence whatever. If to a modern spectator a very splendid specimen of animal power, suppose a horse of three or four years old in the fulness of his energies, that saith _ha_ to the trumpets and is unable to stand _loco_ if he hears any exciting music, be brought for exhibition--not one of the spectators, however dull, but has a dim feeling of excitement added to his admiration from the lurking antagonism of the fugacious life attached to this ebullient power, and the awful repulsion between that final tendency and the meridian development of the strength. Hence, therefore, the secret rapture in bringing forward tropical life--the shooting of enormous power from darkness, the kindling in the midst of winter and sterility of irrepressible, simultaneous, tropical vegetation--the victorious surmounting of foliage, blossoms, flowers, fruits--burying and concealing the dreary vestiges of desolation.