later work. And how colourless, imitative, is the New when compared to
the Old Testament,--echoing with the antiphonal thunders of Jehovah and
his stern-mouthed Prophets! The passage in Josephus touching on Christ
is now known to have been interpolated. Authentic history does not
record the existence of Christ. Not one of His contemporaries mentions
him. That tremendous drama in Galilee was not even commented upon by the
Romans, a nation keen to notice any deviation from normal history. The
Jewish records are doubtful, written centuries after His supposed death.
And they are malicious. What cannot happen in two centuries? Hyzlo
reflected sadly upon Moslemism, upon Mormonism, upon the vagaries of a
strange American sect at whose head was said to be a female pope.

The similarity of circumstances in the lives of Buddha and Christ also
annoyed him. Both were born of virgins, both renounced the world, both
were saviours. There were the same temptations, the same happenings;
prophecies, miracles, celestial rejoicings, a false disciple, the seven
beatitudes--a reflection of the Oriental wisdom--an expiatory death and
resurrection. The entire machinery of the Christian church, its saints,
martyrs, festivals, ritual, and philosophies are borrowed from the
mythologies of the pagans. Sun-worship is the beginning of all
religions. To the genius of the epileptic Paul, or Saul,--founders of
religions are always epilepts,--a half Greek and disciple of the
Pharisee Gamaliel, who saw visions and put to the sword his enemies, to
Paul, called a saint, a man of overwhelming personal force, to this
cruel anarchist, relentless, half-mad fanatic and his theological
doctrines we owe the preservation and power of the Christian Church. At
first the Christians were the miserable offscourings of society, slaves,
criminals, and lunatics. They burrowed in the Catacombs, they fastened
themselves upon a decaying and magnificent civilization like the
parasites they were. A series of political catastrophes, a popular