In spite of the heartless "scheme" of things he still found it in his heart to say, "When God shall be complete, He will be just," at the same time saying that "nothing proves to us that there exists in the world a central consciousness--a soul of the universe--and nothing proves the contrary." So, whatever was the verdict of his brain, his heart asked for immortality. He wanted his dream, and he was willing that others should have theirs. Such is the wish and will of all great souls. He knew the church thoroughly and anticipated what would finally be written about him by churchmen: "Having some experience of ecclesiastical writers I can sketch out in advance the way my biography will be written in Spanish in some Catholic review, of Santa Fé, in the year 2,000. Heavens! how black I shall be! I shall be so all the more, because the church when she feels that she is lost will end with malice. She will bite like a mad dog." He anticipated such a biography because he had thought for himself, and because he had expressed his thoughts--because he had declared that "our universe, within the reach of our experience, is not governed by any intelligent reason. God, as the common herd understand him, the living God, the acting God--the God-Providence, does not show himself in the universe"--because he attacked the mythical and the miraculous in the life of Christ and sought to rescue from the calumnies of ignorance and faith a serene and lofty soul. The time has arrived when Jesus must become a myth or a man. The idea that he was the infinite God must be abandoned by all who are not religiously insane. Those who have given up the claim that he was God, insist that he was divinely appointed and illuminated; that he was a perfect man--the highest possible type of the human race and, consequently, a perfect example for all the world. As time goes on, as men get wider or grander or more complex ideas of life, as the intellectual horizon broadens, the idea that Christ was perfect may be modified. The New Testament seems to describe several individuals under the same name, or at least one individual who passed through several stages or phases of religious development. Christ is described as a devout Jew, as one who endeavored to comply in all respects with the old law. Many sayings are attributed to him consistent with this idea. He certainly was a Hebrew in belief and feeling when he said, "Swear not by Heaven, because it is God's throne, nor by earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is his holy city." These reasons were in exact accordance with the mythology of the Jews. God was regarded simply as an enormous man, as one who walked in the garden in the cool of the evening, as one who had met man face to face, who had conversed with Moses for forty days upon Mount Sinai, as a great king, with a throne in the heavens, using the earth to rest his feet upon, and regarding Jerusalem as his holy city.