whole, he failed tragically. He spoke puzzlingly, paradoxically and poetically, and failed to find any common ground with most of his hearers. He died leaving no written testament.
In the course of time four of his followers wrote short biographies of him, comprising recollections or hearsay as to what he had done and said, amid which they mingled the guesses of "average" men—tax collectors, physicians and the like—as to who he was and what he really meant. Three of these biographers got their leading idea largely from traditional sources; and accordingly they made much of the supernatural birth, miracles and fulfillments of prophecy. The fourth, who seems to have written much later, was a mystic with access to experience and forms of thought which appear to have been quite alien to the harlots and publicans and the Scribes and the Pharisees to whom Jesus had tried to convey his message.
Yet whether or not they fully comprehended his mission, from the earliest time to the present day, people in increasing numbers have believed, or suspected, that there was focused in this obscure Nazarene an extraordinary power, perhaps a unique power, to relieve hearts of their burdens and to replace the burdens with a sense of abundant life and happiness. The four little biographies, for example, make mention of a number of persons, both men and women, who seem to have troubled themselves little about the fulfillment of prophecy or difficult questions regarding the Logos or the Godhead; but they went straight, by a kind of bee instinct, to the source of the Master's fascination for them.
They did not attempt to fathom or explain him. They loved him and they loved one another, as he
