7, and following; viii.

3, and following.] What was the progress of the ideas of Jesus during this obscure period of his life?
Through what meditations did he enter upon the prophetic career?
We have no information on these points, his history having come to us in scattered narratives, without exact chronology.

But the development of character is everywhere the same; and there is no doubt that the growth of so powerful individuality as that of Jesus obeyed very rigorous laws.

A high conception of the Divinity--which he did not owe to Judaism, and which seems to have been in all its parts the creation of his great mind--was in a manner the source of all his power.

It is essential here that we put aside the ideas familiar to us, and the discussions in which little minds exhaust themselves.