Page:The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks).djvu/86

84 peculiarity. They console the suffering and heavy-laden for the bitter reality which, in the light of the old messianic prophecies, appears only as a nightmare, promptly to be chased away by the dawn of a new day, a new, a perfect era. The Davidic Jesus, in spite or rather because of his servile form, feels that he is himself the secret incognito king of that wonderful realm, the monarch whom God some time in the future, nay, right here and before the passing of the present generation, will transform while at the same time "revealing" his kingdom.

It is but natural that in the mental development of such individuals they should seek to be great, glorious, and to achieve the supernatural, since they, themselves, are denied the ordinary satisfactions. If, in addition, such individuals believe that they have had a divine call, if the disability of the body so preys on the mind that the sensitive structure gives way to delusions, then there results an aberration from the normal and usual processes of thought, to be sure not, the rabid, violent form of mental disease, but yet a deviation from the normal manner of thinking. Such was the case with the Prophet Jesus.

Afflicted in body but endowed with a sensitive mind, exposed to an unusual environment of seething unrest and political ferment, and firmly convinced in the current fancies regarding the approaching destruction of the world, the conquest of the Evil Power, and the Reign of God, Jesus became the subject of a delusion that he was the only true Messiah who had been presaged by the prophets of old.

The greatest difficulty encountered in every attempt to present the life and work of Jesus according to the evidence of his own words preserved in the sources is the sharp, irreconcilable contradiction between the