single hint or suggestion in them of such a Jesus as is depicted in
the gospels. The gospel Jesus was not yet put together or compiled,
when Paul was preaching.

Once more; if we peruse carefully and critically the writings of Paul,
the earliest and greatest Christian apostle and missionary, we find
that he is not only ignorant of the gospel stories about the birth and
miracles of Jesus, but he is equally and just as innocently ignorant
of the _teachings_ of Jesus. In the gospels Jesus is the author of the
Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, the Parable of the Prodigal
Son, the Story of Dives, the Good Samaritan, etc. Is it conceivable
that a preacher of Jesus could go throughout the world to convert
people to the teachings of Jesus, as Paul did, without ever quoting a
single one of his sayings? Had Paul known that Jesus had preached a
sermon, or formulated a prayer, or said many inspired things about the
here and the hereafter, he could not have helped quoting, now and
then, from the words of his master. If Christianity could have been
established without a knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, why, then,
did Jesus come to teach, and why were his teachings preserved by
divine inspiration? But if a knowledge of these teachings of Jesus is
indispensable to making converts, Paul gives not the least evidence
that he possessed such knowledge.

But the Apostle Paul, judging from his many epistles to the earliest
converts to Christianity, which are really his testimony, supposed to
have been sealed by his blood, appears to be quite as ignorant of a
Jesus who went about working miracles,--opening the eyes of the blind,
giving health to the sick, hearing to the deaf, and life to the dead,--as
he is of a Jesus born of a virgin woman and the Holy Ghost. Is not
this remarkable? Does it not lend strong confirmation to the idea that