Of all the great figures which look down upon us across the gulf and void of time, Jesus of Nazareth is the most gracious and winning of aspect; and, although his memory was soon associated with that policy of craft and exclusiveness, of cruelty and credulity, which in East and West styled itself orthodoxy, nevertheless his name has ever been for the poor and the oppressed, for the despised and disinherited of the earth, a bond and symbol in union of peace and charity. It behooves us, then, more than ever in this age when old faiths are loosening their hold on us, and new superstitions, like Spiritualism, Occultism, and Christian Science, threaten to imprison our minds afresh, to inquire carefully who Jesus of Nazareth was, what were his real aims and ideas, what the means at his command for realizing them, how the great institutions connected with his name originated and grew up. This I have tried to do in the following pages... From the Introduction