emerged from Chaldea. Abraham's date is 2870 B. C., 750 years after the reign of Menes began. Between the two, we have important monuments and there are synchronistic points down to the time of Joseph. Regular chronology began with Menes. His reign consolidated Upper and Lower Egypt into one empire, but it began when civilisation was mature, and with registers of previous reigns, which must at the very least have stretched through 5500 years. It had already language, written character and a completed mythos. Down to the lowest time the Pharaohs were called Lords of the Upper and Lower Country. The Government was based on Twenty-seven Nomes, ten belonging to the upper country, ten to the lower, and seven constituting the Heptanomys or Central Egypt. These Nomes were the independent bases of all democratic Egyptian life. Their existence was opposed to the despotic element in the later empire. With Menes they possessed much power and many privileges. The Labyrinth was the temple and the tomb of their latest liberty, yet even under the new empire every province had its own capital, shrine and peculiar privileges. The formation of these Twenty-seven Nomes, which was consummated before chronology begins, must have occupied a large part of the 5500 years before Menes. It was a stage of life posterior to the family and the patriarchal, and a strong bond of common language and religion, originally held them together. The language and people of China may be older than those of Egypt, but the regular chronology of Egypt, goes back to 5000 years before Christ, an advantage enjoyed by no other nation. The world's history is the development of two races and two languages, the Semitic and the Iranian. For the Egyptian is only the African deposit of a very early form of the Semitic, in which the Semitic germs are organised. We can link the Egyptian to the Chinese and the Turanian; we expect therefore to find some connexion between their mythologies. People who say there is no authority for certain conclusions forget that language is the very best of authority. Egypt represents the real middle age of the world. It is the chrysalis of primeval Asia, in which a new life begins to stir. This Semitic branch stretched through Menes, even to the Mediterranean, and obtained positive rank in the world. It struggled on in antagonism to the land and race from which it had sprung. Both fell under the Aryans, who keep the throne of the world to this day. Egypt yielded first, to the Persian branch of the Aryans. Cyrus conquered the Medes and Bactrians, and by taking Babylon, subjected all Semitic nations to himself. But it was Alexander, the great European Aryan, who severed forever the thread of Egyptian life. Renan denies the affinity between the language and religion of Egypt and Asia, which Bunsen asserts, but reiterates Bunsen's assertion when he admits elsewhere the identity of Coptic and Semitic pronouns. The Bible is on the side of Bunsen. Ham is the father of Canaan, and it was the Semitic language of the Canaanites, which the descendants of Abraham adopted. Those Canaanites, driven back from Egypt, became themselves the Pelasgi (Coptic Pelashet) or wanderers of the world. Modern history begins with Abraham. CONCLUSIONS. 1. There is an historical connexion between Greek mythology, the primeval Bible record, and the oldest religions of Egypt and Asia. 2. The religion of Egypt is merely the mummy of the religion of Central Asia; the deposit of the oldest mythology on African soil. 3. Primeval Asia is the starting point for us and them. 4. The Greeks did not invent their mythology, they only humanised it. 5. Moses adopted no ideas from Egypt, which had not an older common source in Asia. The Bible contains no conscious mythology. Any personification of Divine Ideas is foreign to its intention. 6. The popular sentiment reflected in the Bible had its root nevertheless in old mythologic times. 7. The personal history of the Jews begins with Abraham, but many of the ancient traditions which he brought out from a mythological people, clung to him and to Isaac and Jacob, were interwoven with the story of their lives, and influenced them to idolatry from the time of the Exodus to that of the Captivity. CONCLUSIONS IN REGARD TO LANGUAGE. 1. Language developes quietly, but in the end its central stem is so modified that the oldest and the newest forms cannot hold intelligible communion with each other, any more than with their offshoots. 2. Foreign words may come into its Dictionary but not into its grammar. 3. Every stage of such a language, becoming more affluent in words, becomes poorer in its grammar. 4. The Iranian languages from India to Iceland and Lithuania, are identical in grammar and roots, as also are among themselves the different Semitic forms. Every Chinese word is a root, which may be a noun or a verb, according to its position, consequently it is not yet an individualised stem. There was an interval of a thousand years between Charlemagne the first king of the Germans, and Francis II. the last, and they both belonged to the same race. The art of writing existed in the time of Charlemagne, and German civilisation has never been violently broken up, but these two persons could not understand each other if they were now to meet. These are the philological principles which assist in the development of the oldest chronologies, and which are to be borne in mind throughout our whole discussion. CAROLINE H. DALL. IT GENIUS vs. MEDIOCRITY. T has long been a recognized fact that among men of genius those of strongest passions and consequently strongest affections, are those who have the warmest followers. Your cool, well balanced men, suave and politic, have none of that indescribable magnetism which draws the ever truth-hungering multitude to the man of strong emotions and fearless actions. In merely personal friendships we are often most strongly attracted to those whose individual characteristics are widely different from our own. We worship the will, the strength, the intellect or the beauty, that we, ourselves lack. And so the helpless multitude feeling their own weakness, and lack of vigor from habitual inactivity, almost worship in the strong man, the excess of energy, the persistent effort, the over-mastering emotion which from very contrast alone, seems something grand and incomprehensible. us " It is difficult to say what we mean by genius. The dictionary may tell extraordinary mental power," but the definition is inadequate. Dr. Johnson says, "that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold and knowledge is inert." But we mean more than is. The power is more readily felt than described. It is a gift of the gods that glorifies the whole nature and turns every endowment to the best account. It calls forth the best wit, the deepest wisdom of those with whom it comes in contact. laugh with the joyous, give confidence to the timid, has a silent, healing sympathy for the sorrowing, and leaves wherever it goes a pleasant remembrance that will last for years. It can Other men may be as good, may be better, may have more of the courtesies of life, may be more refined, more scrupulous in dress and speech, but he on whom the Gods have laid their blessing becomes a demi-god. Many times the men who have most of this indescribable power, are cast in a coarse mould, are none of your fine gentlemen, have terrible passions, yet correspondingly strong impulses for good, are seldom well-balanced men. Yet we forget the vagaries, the follies, the sins of a Goethe, a Heine, or a Burns in loving admiration of that great human-divine power which glori fies everything that it touches. It is not from the man who is after the straitest of his sect a Pharisee, that we learn the deepest lessons in life; but rather from him whose great nature loves, aspires, struggles, despairs, yea even sins, most. There is little merit in keeping onesself unspotted from the world by shunning contact with it. The fine lady prides herself on her white hands and her spotless raiment, but sensible people regard these things as cause of shame rather than of rejoicing when they are obtained by shirking the labor which is the voice of God calling to every one. We cannot become clean by saying "We wash our hands of these things; if men will be fools and sinners let them perish in their folly and sin " There will be stains upon our hands, the blood of our brothers whom we have suffered to perish, and we shall cry in vain, “Out! damned spots!" We can help those whom the rude world jostles and throws and tramples on, only by mingling in the throng, and feeling ourselves the great surges of passion, of hate, of despair that roll over the weak and the unwary. Better that our own skirts be a little soiled in the contact with humanity than that we keep them pure in the closet. The man whose genius does most for the world, is he who treads its most uneven paths, helping those who stumble, even though sometimes stumbling himself. Those who love most shall be forgiven most. The strong souls that although they may be more divine than we, are yet, more human; that perhaps sin more yet still love more than we, can we doubt that their mission to humanity is a glorious one? The religion of such men must be more than that of those who shun contact with the world, having no faith in the capacity of men for good, because they have no faith in their own strength to resist evil, except by cowardly flight. We wonder sometimes that there are so many virtuous people in society, when we consider the amount of commonplace morality and stupid goodness that is taught. Because the rebound when the bands of early habit are loosened, too often carries the inexperienced to the far extreme of indulgence. It is a small, mean nature, that is utterly contented with itself and all its surroundings. The complaisance of mediocrity is astonishing. The smallest scope of duties and enjoyment are to it matter of congratulation, and any extension of horizon is deprecated as an innovation, instead of being welcomed as a heavenly boon. It is a bad sign when a man is contented with his own performances. It is nobler to pass the bounds of propriety in the search after higher life, than to sit for ever hedged by the commonplaces of a mean existence. Far be it from us to extenuate wrong doing; but no one can be the standard of measurement for his brother. The nature which has greatest capacity for good, has frequently greatest capacity for evil, and he who succeeds in keeping the true balance of such a soul, nay even if he fall a little short of this, is doing more for himself and humanity, than the man of small soul, whose mere inertia or stubbornness keeps him in the path of rectitude. Such goodness is no virtue. Shall those who stay all their lives in safe harbors, presume to dictate to those who war with the winds and the waves on tempestuous seas. The dwellers at home have no safe charts for those whose wanderings drive them on dangerous coasts. They must learn by sufferings, mark the shoals and the rocks they would avoid, and if now and then they are stranded, wait in patience for the great floodtide that sooner or later God will send to help them. X. W THE FOUR GOSPELS. ARTICLE XI.-THE MARVELLOUS NARRATIVES. E resume our treatise upon the gospels for the purpose of concluding with a discussion of the marvellous, or supernatural, stories which they contain. It will be remembered that we have intended only to discuss the gospels so far as affected by the circumstances of their origin and transmission; with this in view, we have discussed the facts connected with the oral gospel, its transmission in manuscript, and its early fortunes in print, and have brought briefly into view the various readings, and the discrepancies of context, ideas and incidents which are the inevitable results of such a history. We now enter upon the subject of the marvellous stories of the New Testament, solely because we believe that these aiso are results of the circumstances among which the gospels originated and were transmitted. In discussing this subject, it will be necessary to consider the nature of the marvellous, in what it consists, and its relation to evidence and testimony. Our whole plan of treatment will be as follows: I. Laws of evidence, and their application to the marvellous. II. The application of the foregoing to the Gospels; the idea of the myth. III. Objections. IV. Examples; discussions of particular stories in the Gospels. I. Evidence and Testimony :Many authors make a distinction between "matters of fact" and "matters of opinion," the former being such truths as are amenable to the senses and admit of human testimony, the latter being such truths as cannot be observed or confirmed by the senses and consequently admit of no testimony. This distinction, however, is of very doubtful validity or utility. It is better to say that all things are "matters of fact," since, one way or another, they are absolutely true. Thus Idealism and Realism, though not to be judged by the senses, still, as being contradictories, mutually exclude and posit each other, and one of them must be the fact. Moreover, it is plain that matters affected by human testimony admit of diverse opinions, as testimony may be insufficient or conflicting. Opinion is not opposed to fact, but to necessary conviction. An alleged fact may be by nature indubitable, in which case we have irresistible and universal conviction; or it may be by nature dubitable, in which case we have opposing opinions. Evidence is that array of proof which is brought to maintain either side of a dubitable proposition. That evidence which consists of human affirmations or denials, conveyed in language or signs, and resting upon knowledge acquired through the senses, is called Testimony. Authority is the relative weight allowed to the opinions of those who have examined the evidence. The marvellous incidents recorded in our gospels are, in general, such as, if they happened at all, were cognizable by the senses. The kind of evidence called Testimony, is therefore, applicable to them. The facts in question may be true; but they are not of the class of indubitable truths; hence an adverse opinion is possible. It is necessary, therefore, if we would have our opinion intelligent, that we should fix clearly in the outset the relations of testimony and evidence to the present class of cases. In every case of testimony, two things are to be examined, 1st. The person testifying, i. e. the subject of the testimony, or the wit ness. 2d. The thing testified to, i. e. the object of the testimony. We will examine first the conditions which affect the subject of the testi mony. never be 1. The first requisite is that the subject of testimony should be honest. Now, it is plain that the honesty of a witness can never be absolutely proved, since honesty is an inward condition. It is possible for a witness to speak the truth, supposing himself to be falsifying. For the same reason, the dishonesty of a witness can established absolutely; for he may forget, mistake, or be himself deceived, and fully intend to state the truth to the best of his ability. But both honesty and dishonesty may be made highly probable, and the value of the testimony affected accordingly, though never heightened to absolute demonstration nor reduced to absolute worthlessness. The honesty of a witness rests primarily on a presumption founded on the general moral trustworthiness of the human race. This pre sumption is strengthened positively by evidence as to character, the esteem of contemporaries, and a love of truth displayed in other cases: it is strength |