Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/22

xii guidance. Because of the pleasure taken in a good story, whole pages of history are mistold and some of the noblest characters in the world's annals have been misrepresented.

The average modern, rationalistic and sophisticated, would far rather read Renan's “Life of Jesus,” with its vivid coloring, its subtle suggestion, its bold deduction, and human sympathy, than the simple gospel of St. Mark. Renan flatters his intellect and panders to his sensuality; he is made to feel himself superior in intelligence to the Lord of this earth, and his sensual nature is elevated in importance by the argument that it was the illusion of an impassioned woman which gave to the world the idea of a Deity resurrected from the grave.

What an interpretation of Christ's agony and victory and its proclamation by the purified and sanctified Mary Magdalene, — she who gave Christendom that immortal phrase, “He is risen!” To be dominated by such interpretation is no less than a moral catastrophe occurring in the region of consciousness; for not only does Renan's “Life of Jesus” entertain, flatter, and excite the intellect as an adventure in the realm of ideas, but, as in the case of most intellectual audacities, it leaves the adventurer in disastrous confusion. Renan, indeed, professes a delicate and reverent appreciation for the divine character he so ruthlessly handles and at the close of his drama you behold him a dejected chorus with tear-bedimmed eyes, inviting you to sigh with him over the monstrous blunder of Gethsemane. But the reader finds no tears to shed.