Among the latter, the belief in the special action of God led to a foolish credulity, and the deceptions of charlatans.

With him it led to a profound idea of the familiar relations of man with God, and an exaggerated belief in the power of man--beautiful errors, which were the secret of his power; for if they were the means of one day showing his deficiencies in the eyes of the physicist and the chemist, they gave him a power over his own age of which no individual had been possessed before his time, or has been since.
[Footnote 1: Matt.vi.

13.] His distinctive character very early revealed itself.

Legend delights to show him even from his infancy in revolt against paternal authority, and departing from the common way to fulfill his vocation.[1] It is certain, at least, that he cared little for the relations of kinship.

His family do not seem to have loved him,[2] and at times he seems to have been hard toward them.[3] Jesus, like all men exclusively preoccupied by an idea, came to think little of the ties of blood.