to fight our enemies, he did tell us to love them, and warned us
that they who draw the sword shall perish by the sword. All this
shows a great power of seeing through vulgar illusions, and a
capacity for a higher morality than has yet been established in
any civilized community; but it does not place Jesus above
Confucius or Plato, not to mention more modern philosophers and
moralists.



MARK.

THE WOMEN DISCIPLES AND THE ASCENSION.

Let us see whether we can get anything more out of Mark, whose
gospel, by the way, is supposed to be older than Matthew's. Mark
is brief; and it does not take long to discover that he adds
nothing to Matthew except the ending of the story by Christ's
ascension into heaven, and the news that many women had come with
Jesus to Jerusalem, including Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had
cast seven devils. On the other hand Mark says nothing about the
birth of Jesus, and does not touch his career until his adult
baptism by John. He apparently regards Jesus as a native of
Nazareth, as John does, and not of Bethlehem, as Matthew and Luke
do, Bethlehem being the city of David, from whom Jesus is said by
Matthew and Luke to be descended. He describes John's doctrine as
"Baptism of repentance unto remission of sins": that is, a form
of Salvationism. He tells us that Jesus went into the synagogues
and taught, not as the Scribes but as one having authority: that
is, we infer, he preaches his own doctrine as an original moral-