"He is," says Strauss, "the highest object we can possibly imagine with respect to religion, the Being without whose presence in the mind perfect piety is impossible."[129] "The Christ of the Gospels," says Renan, "is the most beautiful incarnation of God in the most beautiful of forms. His beauty is eternal; His reign will never end."[130] Max Nordau betrays secret Jewish pride in Jesus when he says: "Jesus is soul of our soul, even as he is flesh of our flesh. Who, then, could think of excluding him from the people of Israel? St. Peter will remain the only Jew who has said of the Son of David, 'I know not the man.' Putting aside the Messianic mission, this man is ours. He honors our race, and we claim him as we claim the Gospels--flowers of Jewish literature and only Jewish." "Is it a truth," asks Keim, "or is it nothing but words, when this virtuous God-allied human life is called the noblest blossom of a noble tree, the crown of the cedar of Israel? A full vigorous life in a barren time, a new building among ruins, an erect strong nature among broken ones, a Son of God among the godless and the God-forsaken, one who was joyous, hopeful, generous among those who were mourning and in despair, a freeman among slaves, a saint among sinners--by this contradiction to the facts of the time, by this gigantic exaltation above the depressed uniformity of the century, by this compensation for stagnation, retrogression, and the sickness of death in progress, health, force and color of eternal youth--finally, by the lofty uniqueness of what he achieved, of his purity, of his God-nearness--he produces, even with regard to endless new centuries that have _through him_ been saved from stagnation and retrogression, the impression of mysterious solitariness, superhuman miracle, divine creation."[131] "Between Him and whoever else in the world," said Napoleon at St. Helena, "there is no possible term of comparison."[132] Throughout Napoleonic literature two names constantly recur as exhibiting the Corsican's ideals of spiritual and intellectual perfection. These names are those of Jesus Christ and Julius Cæsar. Napoleon's stupendous genius and incomprehensible destiny formed the basis of a secret conviction within his soul that with Jesus and Cæsar displaced, he himself would be the grandest ornament of history. But in the mind of the emperor there was no element of equality or comparison between Jesus and Cæsar. The latter he regarded as the crown and consummation of Roman manhood, the most superb character of the ancient world. The former he believed to be divine.