One cannot read the New Testament without feeling a preference for everything in it which is the subject of abuse—not to speak of the “wisdom of this world,” which an impudent windbag tries in vain to confound “by the foolishness of preaching.” Even the Pharisees and the Scribes derive advantage from such opposition: they must certainly have been worth something in order to have been hated in such a disreputable way. Hypocrisy—as if this were a reproach which the “first Christians” _were at liberty_ to make!—After all the Scribes and Pharisees were the _privileged ones;_ this was quite enough, the hatred of the Chandala requires no other reasons. I very much fear that the “first Christian”—as also the “_last Christian” whom I may yet be able to meet,—_ is in his deepest instincts a rebel against everything privileged; he lives and struggles unremittingly for “equal rights”!... Regarded more closely, he has no alternative.... If one’s desire be personally to represent “one of the chosen of God”—or a “temple of God,” or “a judge of angels,”—then every _other_ principle of selection, for instance that based upon a standard of honesty, intellect, manliness and pride, or upon beauty and freedom of heart, becomes the “world,”—_evil in itself._ Moral: every word on the lips of a “first Christian” is a lie, every action he does is an instinctive falsehood,—all his values, all his aims are pernicious; but the man he, hates, _the thing_ he hates, _has value._ ... The Christian, more particularly the Christian priest, is a _criterion of values_—Do I require to add that in the whole of the New Testament only _one_ figure appears which we cannot help respecting? Pilate, the Roman Governor. To take a Jewish quarrel _seriously_ was a thing he could not get himself to do. One Jew more or less—what did it matter?... The noble scorn of a Roman, in whose presence the word “truth” had been shamelessly abused, has enriched the New Testament with the only saying which _is of value,_—and this saying is not only the criticism, but actually the shattering of that Testament: “What is truth!”... 47