His own personal nickname was Verrucosus, because he had a little wart growing on his upper lip. The name of Ovicula, signifying sheep, was also given him while yet a child, because of his slow and gentle disposition. He was quiet and silent, very cautious in taking part in children's games, and learned his lessons slowly and with difficulty, which, combined with his easy obliging ways with his comrades, made those who did not know him think that he was dull and stupid. Few there were who could discern, hidden in the depths of his soul, his glorious and lion-like character.
This is biography, accurate or otherwise. Take again the Life of Pericles, where after the brief account of parentage, with the item of the mother's dream, we get this:--
His body was symmetrical, but his head was long out of all proportion; for which reason in nearly all his statues he is represented wearing a helmet; as the sculptors did not wish, I suppose, to reproach him with this blemish.... Most writers tell us that his tutor in music was Damon, whose name they say should be pronounced with the first syllable short. Aristotle, however, says that he studied under Pythocleides. This Damon, it seems, was a sophist of the highest order....
The "biographer" who so satisfies Mr. Sinclair's sense of actuality has not one word of this kind to say of the youth, upbringing, birthplace, or appearance of the Teacher, who for him was either God or Supreme Man. Seeking for the alleged "freedom and variety of life" in the narrative, we go on to read:--
And they go into Capernaum; and straightway on the sabbath day he entered into the synagogue and taught. And they were astonished at his teaching: for he taught them as having authority, and not as the scribes. And straightway there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit--
and straightway we are back in the miraculous. Mr. Joseph McCabe, who in his excellent book on the Sources of the Morality of the Gospels avows that he holds by the belief in a historical Jesus, though unable to assign to him with confidence any one utterance in the record, fatally anticipates Mr. Sinclair by remarking that "If the inquirer will try the simple and interesting experiment of eliminating from the Gospel of Mark all the episodes which essentially involve miracle, he will find the remainder of the narrative amazingly paltry." To which verdict does the independent reader begin to incline? Thus the "episodes" continue, after three paragraphs of the miraculous:--