Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/31

tories. These extraordinary rumors having reached the ears of the servants of Cesar, inspired them with vague apprehensions and terror. This vague uneasiness and fear soon passed, however, when they saw the days and nights succeed each other as always, in their perpetual rotations, and that the sun continued as before to illumine the horizon of Rome. Then the imperial governors said to each other, Cesar is immortal, and the reports which have reached us were spread by timid and idle people. The most efficacious remedy against the prejudices of the vulgar is contempt and oblivion.

Thus passed away thirty years. But, at the expiration of thirty years, silly and discontented people again sought, in new and still more surprising rumors, a fresh aliment for their stupidity. They said that the child had become a man, and, while receiving upon his head the waters of Jordan, the heavens opened, and a spirit, in shape like a dove, descended upon him, and a voice came from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son." In the mean time, he who had baptized him, a grave and austere man, an inhabitant of the desert, and a man who avoided society, exhorted the people, continually saying, "Repent ye;" and, pointing to the child made man, gave this testimony of him: "This is the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world."

There was no doubt whatever among the strong minded of the age that all this was simply a farce, badly enacted, and performed by players of low repute. The Jewish people had always been prone to sorceries and superstitions. In past ages, and when captives of Babylon, they turned their eyes, dimmed with weeping, toward their abandoned temple and lost country; a great