was greater than his judges.


WAS JESUS A COWARD?

I know quite well that this impression of superiority is not
produced on everyone, even of those who profess extreme
susceptibility to it. Setting aside the huge mass of inculcated
Christ-worship which has no real significance because it has no
intelligence, there is, among people who are really free to think
for themselves on the subject, a great deal of hearty dislike of
Jesus and of contempt for his failure to save himself and
overcome his enemies by personal bravery and cunning as Mahomet
did. I have heard this feeling expressed far more impatiently by
persons brought up in England as Christians than by Mahometans,
who are, like their prophet, very civil to Jesus, and allow him a
place in their esteem and veneration at least as high as we
accord to John the Baptist. But this British bulldog contempt is
founded on a complete misconception of his reasons for submitting
voluntarily to an ordeal of torment and death. The modern
Secularist is often so determined to regard Jesus as a man like
himself and nothing more, that he slips unconsciously into the
error of assuming that Jesus shared that view. But it is quite
clear from the New Testament writers (the chief authorities for
believing that Jesus ever existed) that Jesus at the time of his
death believed himself to be the Christ, a divine personage. It
is therefore absurd to criticize his conduct before Pilate as if
he were Colonel Roosevelt or Admiral von Tirpitz or even Mahomet.
Whether you accept his belief in his divinity as fully as Simon
Peter did, or reject it as a delusion which led him to submit to