This phenomenon, however, appears less strange and paradoxical
when we come to examine it more closely. A little reflection will
disclose to us several good reasons why the historical records of
the life of Jesus should be so scanty as they are. In the first
place, the activity of Jesus was private rather than public.
Confined within exceedingly narrow limits, both of space and of
duration, it made no impression whatever upon the politics or the
literature of the time. His name does not occur in the pages of
any contemporary writer, Roman, Greek, or Jewish. Doubtless the
case would have been wholly different, had he, like Mohammed,
lived to a ripe age, and had the exigencies of his peculiar
position as the Messiah of the Jewish people brought him into
relations with the Empire; though whether, in such case, the
success of his grand undertaking would have been as complete as
it has actually been, may well be doubted.

Secondly, Jesus did not, like Mohammed and Paul, leave behind him
authentic writings which might serve to throw light upon his
mental development as well as upon the external facts of his
career. Without the Koran and the four genuine Epistles of Paul,
we should be nearly as much in the dark concerning these great
men as we now are concerning the historical Jesus. We should be
compelled to rely, in the one case, upon the untrustworthy gossip
of Mussulman chroniclers, and in the other case upon the garbled
statements of the "Acts of the Apostles," a book written with a
distinct dogmatic purpose, sixty or seventy years after the
occurrence of the events which it professes to record.

It is true, many of the words of Jesus, preserved by hearsay