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sentiments, of the absence of all vanity in his presence, of the earnestness of his convictions, and, what is ever the noblest, of his love for mankind, which ennobles his words and makes them fruitful.

I doubt not this feeling will take deeper root, and that when his character is better understood his works will be more widely read.

THE FOUR GOSPELS.

Article XIV. THE MARVELLOUS NARRATIVES.

(II.-Direct application to Gospel text. Idea of the Myth.)

HAVING, in our last article, concluded our discussion of the laws of evi

dence and testimony applicable to miraculous or marvellous narratives, we come now to concern ourselves directly with the Gospels, and to ask the question, What are the marvellous stories of the Gospels? How are they to be regarded and how explained?

There are three chief methods which have been, and are still, actually employed to describe or explain the miracles of the Gospels. These are— 1. The Thorough-going Supernatural. 2. The Naturalistic. Mythical.

3. The

1. The Supernatural method takes all the accounts literally, both as to the marvellous facts themselves, and as to the explanation of them on the ground of the direct interference and extraordinary action of Deity. This view is denied and rebutted by our argument and conclusion concerning the laws of testimony, gives in Arts. XI., XII., XIII., and therefore need no longer occupy our attention.

2. The Naturalistic (otherwise called the Rationalistic) method accepts as literally as possible the facts recorded, but denies the writers' supernatural mode of accounting for them, and strives in all cases to reduce them to embellished or figurative narratives of possible physical events. This mode of interpretation (best represented by Paulus' critical works), may now be regarded as generally abandoned by good critics and all who understand the nature and importance of historical evidence. It gives merely a mass of ingenious hypotheses; but generally many other hypotheses would serve as well, and at the best hypothesis is not history. Paulus' Commentary may be compared to the multitude of absurd conjectural emendations which appeared in the text of Shakespeare in the last century, wherein the Poet was made to say on every page what he never dreamt of. The naturalistic interpretation "allows conjecture to supply deficiencies of record; adcpts individual speculations as a substitute for real history, and seeks by vain endeavors to represent

that as natural which the narrative describes as supernatural." The attempt is to explain how the events narrated could perhaps have taken place; the result is much ingenuity but no history. De Witte very properly contends that we can derive history only from the narrative. To invent history is only to increase the legendary lore. If e. g., God's covenant with Abraham be denied as a matter of fact (Gen. xv.), we have no means of explaining it away as a vision. The narrative says it was a covenant. How do we know it was a vision? If we reject the narrative, we have no right to elevate into history our assumption of a total different fact, which is not recorded. Take, for example, in the N. T., the narrative of the feeding of the five thousand. As this stands, we do not see how its miraculous character in the mind of the writers can be denied. It is said by naturalistic interpreters that Jesus distributed his small stores, making them go as far as they would, and that by this example the people were induced to share the food which they had with each other, so that all were fed; and the circumstance is thus made a purely natural one; this view is adopted by the author of "Fog Bells," in THE FRIEND for Nov., 1867, p. 341,-adopted with an innocent unconsciousness of all difficulties that would be charming were it not in a critical article. "Who does not see how the miracle of the five thousand came about?" exclaims the writer as a prelude to the interpretation before mentioned. Now we confess that we do not see; a careful study of the six accounts (for we hold the stories in Mt. xv. and Mc. viii., to be different versions of the same circumstances given in Mt. xiv. and Mc. vi.) does not reveal to us that the Evangelists had idea they were narrating merely a copy by the people of Jesus' benevolence, excited by a "tumult of love and admiration ;' nor do we find it safe, possible, or even decent from a critical point of view, to cast out of the text every inconvenient passage, on the ground of "common sense," as "an impudent modern gloss."* But the naturalistic interpretation in this case, as in all others, does not really interpret the narrative so much as supplement it or invent another. Thus nothing is said in the gospels about a distribution among the people of food to each other. The narrative says that Jesus and the disciples distributed a few loaves and fishes, and this is all that is in the text; the naturalistic interpreter interpolates other distributors, viz., those of the multitude. who were well provided, and a new object of distribution, viz., their provisions, which may be, perhaps, a pleasant story, but is no more entitled to be considered history than a hundred other suppositions. On the contrary, the 4th Gospel distinctly declares it a miracle (vi., 14, onuɛiov, a sign, token; but v. Mc. viii., 11, xvi., 17, Lc. xxiii., 8, et. al., for the signification miracle

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* A "gloss" is a note, comment, or explanation in the margin, which has crept into the text; and as (see the seventh edition of Tischendorf's Minor Greek Test.) there is not the slightest documentary evidence for the omission of Mt. xii., 40, "common sense" would suggest that under these circumstances it is best not to be too certain that the passage is a "gloss,' "impudent" or otherwise. Moreover, we should be glad to learn the writer's sense of "Modern," since the passage stands unquestioned in MSS. reaching back to the 4th century.

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as being the appropriate and expected token of the Messiah: in the 4th Gospel, this is its only sense; see ii., 11; iv., 54, vii., 31, et. al.), and says, moreover, that the twelve baskets of fragments which were taken up were "the fragments of the five barley loaves which remained over and above unto them that had eaten" (vi., 13). Mc., furthermore, says that the two fishes were divided " among them all” (vi., 41) and declares that the whole five thousand eat of the loaves (vi., 44). Thus in this case, the naturalistic explanation not only as usual adds its own inventions to the record, but directly contradicts the express language of the record.

Again, take the example of the cure of the man born blind (Jh. ix). Here the naturalistic interpreters rejoice in many opportunities for invention. According to them, the man was not totally blind, since Jesus tells him to go to the pool of Siloam; the clay was in reality an eye-salve; also when Jesus applied it, he very probably performed some operation on the eye, by friction or otherwise; finally, the washing in the pool of Siloam is to be understood as a protracted use of the bath, producing a cure after a considerable time (Strauss, Life of Jesus, Part II, chap. ix, § 95; this critic remarks upon the last point, that when the closely connected words, he went his way therefore and washed and came seeing, are stretched out into a process of cure lasting several weeks, it is just as if the words veni, vidi, vici were translated thus,— After my arrival I reconnoitred for several days, fought battles at suitable intervals, and finally remained conqueror."); Now, it is obvious that such an interpretation is a mere string of inventions, of no more validity historically than any other set of suppositions. It may have been so; but then, equally as well, it may not; and the evangelist says nothing at all of eye-salves, surgical operations and baths; but only that Jesus made clay with his spittle, put it on his eyes, and directed him to wash in a certain pool, and that he forthwith received sight (ix, 7, 11, 14).

The narrative of the Transfiguration has been an attractive field for the romancing of the naturalistic interpreters. According to them, the story is a vision, a merely subjective experience though supernaturally given (Mt. xvii. 9, opaua, a vision, but in general and literally, a sight, spectacle, and v. Acts vii, 31 for the literal use of the word: see also its parallels in Mc. ix, 9, à eidov, what they had seen, and in Lc. oudev av tópaкav, nothing of what they had seen); or a purely natural dream (Lc. ix, 32, "Peter and those with him were heavy with sleep"; but when they awoke, they saw, etc., idav Tv Sožav avrov K.T.λ.; see also the sleep in Gethsemane, Mt. xxvi, 40 parallel; it seems incredible and improbable that several people should have at once a precisely similar complex dream, therefore it is said that Peter alone had it; but see Mt. xvii, 2, 6, Mc. ix, 4, 6, Lc. ix, 32, 34); or there was a storm while the disciples were asleep, and the lightning and thunder caused in them ideas of splendor and of voices (But see Lc. ix, 32 seq.; they were awake long before the voice came); or it was a phenomenon of electricity or magnetism (But how then account for the men talking with Jesus?); or, finally, it was a

secret interview prearranged by Jesus, to which he took his three most intimate followers; while waiting, the disciples fall asleep; on the arrival of the two visitors of Jesus, their talking awakes the disciples, who behold the party a little higher up the mountain enveloped in the rays of the rising sun, and mistake the visitors for Moses and Elias; suddenly, before they recover from their surprise, a cloud descends and covers the men as they turn to depart, and one of them speaking out of the cloud is mistaken for a voice from heaven. Now, what strange romances, what a confusion of hypotheses, are these to elevate into history. The narrative gives us a very simple account of a miraculous occurrence, a light supernaturally irradiating Jesus, the visit to him of Moses and Elias, witnessed by his confidential disciples, and a distinct articulate voice from heaven; there is no storm, no thunder and lightning, no rosy cloud of the morning, no preconcerted interview with two unknown men; all this is pleasant fiction, and may be admirable as ingenious invention; but it has no other foundation than the imagination of the inventor.

In thus exhibiting what seems to us the exceeding weakness and the uncritical assumptions of the naturalistic method, we are far from saying that none of the Gospel marvellous stories have any foundation in fact. This would be to elevate our ignorance into fact in a manner quite as rash and uncritical as the method we have been describing. It is a remark of Strauss that when he says, with regard to any Gospel narrative, that he does not know what happened, he does not wish to be understood to say that he knows nothing happened. It is of course admitted by all and is abundantly proved, that many most incredible narratives have a kernel of fact, and that any event which from any cause is exciting or impressive, is liable at any time, and especially in primitive epochs, to assume a more or less exaggerated and legendary garb. We only insist that it cannot be assumed that as much is true as can in any way be represented as possible; and that, consequently, whatever fact there may be in miraculous stories is not to be discovered and separated by the reduction of every incident to a natural place by means of suppositions and inventions, which have not for their support even the poor authority of the record. We will here give some remarks from Grote, the first volume of whose history of Greece is one of the best works that exist upon myths, though it is specially devoted to the Grecian myths. The historian says— The utmost which we accomplish by means of the semi-historical theory, [naturalistic interpretation,] even in its most successful applications, is, that after leaving out from the mythical narrative all that is miraculous, or highcolored, or extravagant, we arrive at a series of credible incidents which may, perhaps, have really occurred, and against which no intrinsic presumption can be raised. This is exactly the character of a well written modern novel, (as for example, several among the compositions of De Foe), the whole story of which is such as may well have occurred in real life; it is plausible fiction, and nothing beyond. To raise plausible fiction up to the superior dignity of truth, some positive testimony or positive ground of inference must be shown;

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even the highest measure of intrinsic probability is not alone sufficient. A man who tells that on the day of the battle of Platæa rain fell on the spot of ground where the city of New York now stands, will neither deserve nor obtain credit, because he can have had no means of positive knowledge, though the statement is not in the slightest degree improbable." The historian furthermore remarks, that popular "belief is of little or no evidentiary value, and that the growth and diffusion of it may be satisfactorily explained, without supposing any special basis of matters of fact. The popular faith, so far as it counts for anything, testifies in favor of the entire and literal myths, which are now universally rejected as incredible. We have thus the very minimum of positive proof and the maximum of negative presumption; we may diminish the latter by conjectural omissions and interpolations, but we cannot by any artifice increase the former; the narrative ceases to be incredible, but it still remains uncertified-a mere commonplace possibility. Nor is fiction always or essentially extravagant or incredible. It is often not only plausible and coherent, but even more like truth, (if a paradoxical phrase may be allowed,) than truth itself. Nor can we in the absence of any extrinsic test, reckon upon any intrinsic mark to discriminate the one from the other." (Hist. of Greece, Vol I, pp. 429-431, Amer. Ed.)

In the next article we shall take up the mythical system of interpretation.

R

OUR ROMAN CATHOLIC BRETHREN.

ELIGIOUS toleration, and absolute freedom of worship, are the fundamental principles of our government. All sects are and must be equal before the law. Our republic could not endure a day if this were not so. It was possible to keep a tenth part of our population in slavery while the other nine-tenths boasted of their freedom, but it will never be possible to impose ecclesiastical or religious restraints upon any part of our people, and still retain a republican form of government. All Christendom acknowledges the obligations to what is called the Lord's Day; but the nature of these obligations differ very greatly in different countries. The day is observed here with Puritanical severity; and it was because an attempt was made to compel the German element in our population to comply with this severity that the Republican party has lost its political ascendency in the States where the Germans are the most numerous.

The people are right to stoutly resist all attempts at religious domination. The immediate moral consequences which result from any laws which are based upon religious beliefs are of very small importance compared with the danger to our liberties which must inevitably result from making the religious opinions of the law-maker the rule for his conduct. So far as human law

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