They equally proclaim the paradox of its insignificance and its importance.
But above all the prophet was not and is not like other prophets; and the proof of it is to be found not primarily among those who believe in him, but among those who do not.
He is not dead, even where he is denied.

What is the use of a modern man saying that Christ is only a thing like Atys or Mithras, when the next moment he is reproaching Christianity for not following Christ?
He does not suddenly lose his temper and talk about our most unmithraic conduct, as he does (very justly as a rule) about our most unchristian conduct.

We do not find a group of ardent young agnostics, in the middle of a great war, tried as traitors for their extravagant interpretation of remarks attributed to Atys.
It is improbable that Tolstoy wrote a book to prove that all modern ills could be cured by literal obedience to all the orders of Adonis.
We do not find wild Bolshevists calling themselves Mithraic Socialists as many of them call themselves Christian Socialists.

Leaving orthodoxy and even sanity entirely on one side, the very heresies and insanities of our time prove that after nearly two thousand years the issue is still living and the name is quite literally one to conjure with.
Let the critics try to conjure with any of the other names.
In the real centres of modern inquiry and mental activity, they will not move even a mystic with the name of Mithras as they will move a materialist with the name of Jesus.
There are men who deny God and accept Christ.
But this lingering yet living power in the legend, even for those to whom it is little more than a legend, has another relevancy to the particular point here.

Jesus of Nazareth, merely humanly considered, has thus become a hero of humanitarianism.
Even the eighteenth-century deists in denying his divinity generally took pains to exalt his humanity.