Once more: A believer in the divinity of Jesus--I am going to say--invents
the following text: "The Father and I are _one_." An opponent to this
Trinitarian dogma introduces a correction which robs the above text of
its authority: "The Father is greater than I," and makes Jesus admit
openly that there are some things known to the father only. It is
difficult not to see in these passages the beginnings of the terrible
controversies which, starting with Peter and Paul, have come down to
our day, _and which will not end_ until Jesus shall take his place among
the mythical saviors of the world.

To harmonize these many and different Jesuses into something like
unity or consistency a thousand books have been written by the clergy.
They have not succeeded. How can a Jesus represented at one time as
the image of divine perfection, and at another as protesting against
being called "good," for "none is good, save one, God,"--how can these
two conceptions be reconciled except by a resort to artificial and
arbitrary interpretations? If such insurmountable contradictions in
the teachings and character of another would weaken our faith in his
historicity, then we are justified in inferring that in all
probability Jesus was only a name--the name of an imaginary stage
hero, uttering the conflicting thoughts of his prompters.

Again, such phrases as, "and he was caught up in a cloud,"--describing
the ascension and consequent disappearance of Jesus, betray the
anxiety of the authors of the Gospels to bring their marvelous story
to a close. Not knowing how to terminate the career of an imaginary
Messiah, his creators invented the above method of dispatching him.
"He was caught up in a cloud,"--but for that, the narrators would have
been obliged to continue their story indefinitely.