The imbecility of preachers, who would dwell on such words as "Weep not," as if nobody else ever uttered such,--had always annoyed me.

I felt it impossible to obtain a worthy idea of Christ from studying any of the details reported concerning him.

If I dwelt too much on these, I got a finite object; but I yearned for an infinite one: hence my preference for John's mysterious Jesus.

Thus my Christ was not the figure accurately painted in the narrative, but one kindled in my imagination by the allusions and (as it were) poetry of the New Testament.

I did not wish for vivid historical realisation: relics I could never have valued: pilgrimages to Jerusalem had always excited in me more of scorn than of sympathy;--and I make no doubt such was fundamentally Paul's[4] feeling.