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IN

THE FOUR GOSPELS.

ARTICLE XVI. THE MARVELLOUS NARRATIVES.

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

N our last article we described in detail as much as possible the nature of the myth. In the present article we shall continue the subject by giving some reasons for believing that the mythical interpretation should be applied to the New Testament-i. e., that the marvellous stories of the Gospels are, in general, myths, as heretofore described.

(a.) The mythical interpretation appears to be necessitated by the refutation of the two other systems, the literal and the naturalistic. The literal or supernatural mode is refuted by the argument which invalidates the credibility of miracles: the naturalistic mode is refuted by the utterly worthless and unhistorical character of its results, as well as by its gross violations of the plain language and intention of the record. But if the literal mode, which makes the narrative all fact, and the naturalistic mode, which makes the narrative part fact and part fiction, be abandoned, there is left only the view that the narrative is wholly fictitious. But if the narrative is wholly fictitious, it must be an intentional and deliberate fiction, which is refuted by many critical facts, by the general air of honesty of purpose, and by the known character of some of the witnesses, and is now held by very few, if any, authorities of any weight whatever; or it must be an unconscious and unintentional fiction, implicitly accepted by the author as fact,-and this falls under the notion of the myth. When, therefore, the literal and naturalistic methods fail, the only alternative left is the mythical.

(b.) The Gospels are the sacred books of a religion, the oracles of a new faith, a new form and institution also, which over-ran the earth. But all religions have issued forth from myths: all old religious records and sacred documents abound in mythical stories. Every religion appears first as an infant wrapped in the swaddling clothes of fiction. By these shape and size are concealed and mystery preserved. Only much later in life does religion appear arrayed in such garments as betray the form; and, last of all, the courageous sculpture of philosophy undertakes the figure in its own naked and magnificent proportions. Religions and races are usually young, or at least immature, together. Ail religions, therefore, display in their beginning the traits which mark the youth of races; and these are poetry, fancy, myth, personification. Such a people are conscious of personality in themselves, but have not attained the idea of law outside of themselves; all phenomena, therefore, especially the strange, unknown, or startling, and, above all, the circumstances or forms closely connected with the popular religion, are referred directly to the agency of arbitrary personal action-i. e., to the immediate interference of deity. This tendency is so natural to the uninstructed and

devout people that the scientific idea has been growing for centuries in the learned classes side by side with the belief in the supernatural, yet unshaken in the breasts of the unlettered population. Now, why should it be imagined that this tendency to myths which is the characteristic of every other religion has been escaped altogether by the Christian religion? To reply, that Christianity is the one true religion is to say nothing to the purpose, since the truth may surely be united with some mythical element: a form or faith of the most unquestionable divine origin does not necessarily thereby preclude from its records all legendary accretion, and the question becomes one of amount; while the presumption is that at least some will be found, because, however divine a religion may be in its origin or revelation, it is impossible to deny that it appears subject to human conditions in its transmission.

(c.) But if we should, therefore, expect more or less of mythical narrative in the Christian, as in all other, religious records, the probability is greatly increased by the character of the people among whom Christianity arose. Among the Greeks, who developed into comparative proficiency in all branches of art, learning, and philosophy, the popular religion overflowed with myths most implicitly believed. How much more, then, were these to be expected in the Hebrew theocracy, where fire, fancy and song reigned always supreme, where philosophy never reared its head, and the historic idea was never realized? The Hebrews were an essentially believing people; and while no more credulous, doubtless, than the Greek, and exhibiting even less mythopoeic fertility than that polytheistic race which boasts the highest secular, epic and lyric poetry in the world, yet the very monotheism of the Hebrew made his mythical credence more crystalline and enduring; and it is quite certain that the Greek possessed, far more than the Hebrew, the mental and historical elements that enabled him to outgrow and finally repudiate his myths. The Hebrew was naturally tenacious, conservative, theocratically patriotic, and he shared the utter credulity and somewhat rank imagination which has distinguished eastern races in general, and characterize, with some variations, the primitive ages of all races. The Hindoos present

an instructive analogy: I cite an authority quoted by Grote (vol. i., p. 343; Am. ed.): "Any Englishman can easily conceive a poet, in his highest calenture of the brain, addressing the ocean as a steed that knows his rider, and patting the crested billow as his flowing mane; but he must come to India to understand how every individual of a whole community of many millions can address a fine river as a living being-a sovereign princess who hears and understands all they say, and exercises a kind of local superintendence over their affairs, without a single temple in which her image is worshipped or a single priest to profit by the delusion. As in the case of the Ganges, it is the river itself to whom they address themselves, and not to any deity residing in it, or presiding over it,—the stream itself is the deity which fills their imaginations and receives their homage." And again: "With the Hindoos, the greater the improbability the more monstrous and preposterous

the fiction-the greater is the charm it has over their minds; and the greater their learning in the Sanscrit the more are they under the influence of this charm. * The analogies of nature are never for a moment considered : nor do questions of probability or possibility, according to those analogies, ever obtrude to dispel the charm with which they are so pleasingly bound. They go on through life reading and talking of these monstrous fictions, which shock the taste and understanding of other nations, without ever questioning the truth of one single incident, or hearing it questioned" (Ibid., p. 431). Such, no doubt, will answer for a picture-scarcely, if any, exaggerated-of the state of the Hebrew mind in the time of Jesus ;* and so evidently are myths to be expected in the Hebrew history and sacred books that very many eminent authorities who still contend for the truth of the Gospel miracles have long ago remanded to the domain of myths many or most of the marvels of the Old Testament. But the presumption is in favor of a similar treatment of both the Old and the New Testaments, and the Gospels must make out their case in respect to this special, and to us unreasonal, exemption.

(d.) But not only was there thus no doubting, questioning, and examining spirit to be found in the society in which the Gospels arose; there was, on the other hand, present in it an exceptional and peculiar element which tended powerfully to the production of mythopoeic fertility, and would act directly to repress doubt, if any should perchance happen to arise. I refer to the Messianic hopes and expectations of the Hebrews, which in the time of Jesus had produced a state of intense and feverish excitement and expectancy. Daily and hourly they looked for the advent of their great national deliverer. They thought themselves on the eve of the re-establishment of David's line with royal glory and magnificence. The chosen people should be again illustrious. Every line and word and letter of the Old Testament was tortured and mystically interpreted to minister to, and to shape, their hopes; and aged men and women passed their time in and near the Temple, praying that they might not die till the long-delayed out now soon-coming Messiah had appeared. Now, such an eager, expectant, and patriotic excitement in an imaginative, unphilosophical and comparatively non writing people, would be in itself highly productive of a mythopoeic spirit; while the special object of hope and expectation among the Hebrews was calculated to encourage the marvellous and mythical in the highest degree, for they were expecting the natural course of history to be turned aside by the direct interference and miraculous action of Jehovah. And when it was once believed, as it was undoubtedly believed by the apostles, that Jesus was the promised Messiah, at last arrived, and ready at the proper moment to enter upon his kingdom, this mythopoeic excitement would be very certain to invest his career with wonders and signs; and if any spirit of doubt could ever arise, which is hardly

* "There was a time, and that not far distant, when it was the same in England, and in ery other European nation; and there are, I am afraid, some parts of Europe where it is so 11" (Grote, vol. i., p. 431).

possible, it would be speedily quenched by the authority of the Messiah's name, as the classic poets appealed to the authority of the muse. (Grote, vol. i., p. 335).

For the reasons foregoing, as well as from more special and detailed considerations, which can be better stated when we come to treat of particular examples among the marvellous narratives of the Gospels, we think it is plain that the miracles in general of the Bible, both of the Old Testament and the New Testament, should be classed as myths, with the similar stories in all other religious records, sacred books, and primitive histories. In the next article we shall state and answer the chief objections to the foregoing view.

MARRIED.

T

HE Doctor passed two miserable days. I suppose there come crises in the experience of every man and woman when Life seems a gift unworthy the Giver a cup from which the wine is exhaled, and there is left only the bitter, nauseous dregs. All sights and sounds are alike disgustful; the heart-strings vibrate only a jangling discord; the way from earth to heaven is choked with vapors; there is nothing beauteous or pleasant,above, below, or around. Rash souls glide from this mood to despair and a tragic end; if indeed that may be called an end which is more truly a beginning. Temperaments more leaden, grow sour and disdainful of their kind; but a few strong, serene natures there are, that hoid on strong and all-glorious to the anchor of Hope; who stretch a subtle cord serene and invisible into the skies and bring down at last out of their turbulent threatenings, the very lightning of heaven to be the meek servant of their will. The Doctor was conscious of the gloom and the tempest, but he had not learned how perfect a conductor was the strong pure purpose of his soul, which through all weathers bore itself steadily aloft.

VI.

On the third day, just as his irritation had passed its crisis and was beginning to subside into that state of chronic discord which is so well known to the victims of circumstances in general, there came a summons from Mrs. Vaughan. The Doctor's teeth came together sharply as he read it. Some men would perhaps have evaded it; but the Doctor's mood was by this time somewhat analogous to that of the sullen bull-dog who follows your butcher's cart, rather hoping that somebody will attempt a raid upon it, so that he may show how beautifully nature has prepared him to defend it.

He had some respect for Mrs. Vaughan, and felt by no means afraid of her; albeit he well knew that an encounter with her would be no pastime. If Miss Zarie should happen to come in his way so much the better for the bull-dog.

It was a quiet summer evening as he walked over to the Vaughan mansion. All influences of air and sky were tranquilizing and perhaps who knows?-some kindly angel breathed over his troubled spirit an air from the upper worid which soothed and

softened and uplifted him, for the moment, beyond the vibrations of earthly discords. The atmosphere of a great Idea is always calm as Heaven itself, of which it is a part; and before the Doctor reached his destination, he had somehow come to feel the littleness of all personal resentment, and the necessity for all those who would live the true life of the spirit, to carry about with them constantly that broad mantle of charity which "covereth a multitude of sins."

So tempered by wisdom, he awaited Mrs. Vaughan. She came into the room with a bland air, and gave him a kindly "good evening." Her presence was always more or less imposing, but this evening, just as she had softened her heavy and somewhat sombre robe of black silk by the addition of delicate laces and bows of rosecolored ribbon, she had graced her manner with a sweetness and gentleness beyond her ordinary wont. After a few remarks that were only preliminary, she opened upon the subject which lay so near her heart.

"Richard," she said, and her voice was as kind as though she had been speaking to her own son; "Richard, I have sent for you because I wanted to speak to you about something which it pains me very deeply to mention, and which yet, for the sake of all concerned, I feel must be mentioned and calmly and affectionately discussed, to the end, if possible, that a great danger may be averted. You will, of course, understand what I mean; but you will pardon me for dwelling a moment upon my own feelings in the matter. I want you to consider, before answering me, that you and Elsie, and especially Eloise, are all to me as nearly as possible like my own children. I learned to love you for Proctor's sake, long before I thought of you as a relative. I welcomed you to the family most heartily, feeling that no better thing could have -happened to Elsie than to have won such a husband. Elsie is our brother's

orphan and our ward, and so by more than ordinary ties made dear to us, and your child is my only namesake. Concerning Eloise, you know that I have always regarded her as my daughter, and stand, in point of fact, her nearest of kin. Looking at all these circumstances, I am sure you will not deny me the right of love to discuss with you a subject which, you must be aware, affects me more nearly than any other except the persons primarily concerned in it."

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My dear madam," replied Richard, with unfeigned kindliness, “I do feel and acknowledge your right in the premises, and have no misgiving in the matter save one; and that arises from the fact that it is so difficult for any person to judge fairly and dispassionately of another person's conduct in a case like this, where there seems to me to be a direct opposition between absolute right and all the received and established teachings of mankind, unless the person so judging shall have had some similar experience, which shall have opened his eyes to the true relation of things. Abstractly it would not be necessary to complete my view of the case that you should know some things concerning my first acquaintance with Eisie, which to this day are known only to her and to myself; but because your judgment is likely to be so largely influenced by circumstances, I feel that I have a right to place them fairly before you. You will please to take into consideration therefore that I had become acquainted with Eloise Vaughan through my friendship with. Proctor; had learned to admire her from his representations; to associate her in all my dreams with my future married life: that I came to Brockendale fully resolved to make her acquaintance, and if possible to win her love; that I naturally enough mistook Elsie for the woman whom I had so long admired; that Elsie herself knew of my self-deception and purposely fostered it; and that it was not

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