prominence and cast a spell over all the world, than that a mythical
Apollo or Jupiter should rule for thousands of years over the fairest
portions of the earth.

It is also well known that there is in the Talmud the story of a
Jesus, Ben, or son, of Pandira, who lived about a hundred years before
the Gospel Jesus, and who was hanged from a tree. I believe this Jesus
is quite as legendary as the Syrian Hesous, or Joshua. But may it not
be that such a legend accepted as true--to the ancients all legends
were true--contributed its share toward marking the outlines of the
later Jesus, hanged on a cross? My idea has been to show that the
materials for a Jesus myth were at hand, and that, therefore, to
account for the rise and progress of the Christian cult is no more
difficult than to explain the widely spread religion of the Indian
Chrishna, or of the Persian Mithra. [Footnote: For a fuller discussion
of the various "christs" in mythology read Robertson's Christianity
and Mythology and his Pagan Christs.]

Now, why have I given these conclusions to the world? Would I not have
made more friends--provoked a warmer response from the public at
large--had I repeated in pleasant accents the familiar phrases about
the glory and beauty and sweetness of the Savior God, the Virgin-born
Christ? Instead of that, I have run the risk of alienating the
sympathies of my fellows by intimating that this Jesus whom
Christendom worships today as a god, this Jesus at whose altar the
Christian world bends its knees and bows its head, is as much of an
idol as was Apollo of the Greeks; and that we--we Americans of the
twentieth century--are an idolatrous people, inasmuch as we worship a
name, or at most, a man of whom we know nothing provable.