pawing to get free his hinder parts." Culture lends him a helping hand; it says to soil and climate, "You are not my masters, and shall not be, while man is himself;" therefore culture demands a thickly-settled country-it demands society and civilization, it asks the labor of all for each, and of each for all. It is easy, therefore, to see why New England is the home of culture and the birthplace of free religion. New England is a country of rocks and fogs, a country of hills and running water: "the water good, the soil good for nothing, and winter nine months in the year," as John Randolph said. It was a compliment to culture. The land is so poor that it does not raise food for its own population. Are they starving, then? The people of New England are well fed, well dressed, comfortable, rich. The Governor's daughter dresses no finer than her neighbor, the tradesman's. She probably knows no more; for she has the same culture, the same advantages. The red school-house, or the white academy, stands at every cross-road, in every hollow, and on every hill-top of New England. The inhabitants are healthy, wealthy, and wise. Massachusetts is the richest State in the Union. Her secret is capital, culture, brains. Her great men saw the worth of brains; they took care to avoid the worst poverty. Unable to raise much off the soil, they "built school-houses and raised men." Now we are told that New England is a good place to emigrate from-a noble nursery of men and women, who seem raised on purpose for transplantation West! Ah! they are modest, those Western people. Well, the West is a great place, and only waiting to be filled up by a great people. The destiny of New England is to go west. The movement of peoples has been from east to west, from the days of Columbus, and before that. The Pacific Railroad will give a new impetus to the movement, and a new meaning to Berkley's famous line.

"Westward the course of empire takes its way;" the empire of brains, undoubtedly. But what so sad and useless as the movement of bodies of men and animals? These come mostly from the "old countree." "Ferried across the Atlantic, and carted over the prairie," as Emerson says, "to make guano." Let us have an emigration of ideas. Come to our gardens and our nurseries, if you will. Already the finest heads are raised for the Western market. We export ideas; they send us swine and cattle in return. Suum cuique. New England is a workshop; the West is a farm. They raise stock as we raise ideas. We grow men and women. It is something to stock a country with manhood and womanhood. The advantage of culture. Thoughts are better than things; they are the seeds of great things. Plant them on the prairies and along the Western avenues: they will give warmth and shelter in the winter-time, and in midsummer coolness and shade.

JOHN SAVARY.

IN

THE FOUR GOSPELS.

ARTICLE XVIII. THE MARVELLOUS NARRATIVES.

(III.-Objections of the Mythical Interpretation.)

N our last article we stated and answered several of the most important objections to the mythical interpretation of the Gospel miracles. among those mentioned, and indeed the only one having much force, we considered the argument that the myth-making time among the Jews had long ago passed, and that consequently the miraculous stories of the New Testament cannot be myths, and can only be accounted for on the ground of their historical truth. This argument we answered by showing the connection between the myth-believing and the myth-making power, in virtue whereof the latter may indeed become latent, but cannot be destroyed, and may be at any time called into activity, while the former continue to exist. We propose to occupy this article with some historical examples of this law; for history is not wanting in examples of the revivification of the mythopoeic power, after a long period of inactivity and torpor, and of the evolution of a new and rich body of myths, artlessly produced and implicitly believed, not only long after the former mythical productiveness had ceased, but also long after the old myths had fallen into comparative insignificance, and, in educated quarters, even into contempt. We refer to the two classes of myths which arose and flourished in the middle ages,-the miracles of the saints and the legends of chivalry. As the simple and primitive character of these mythical formations, and their perfect similarity to the old religious myths which they superseded, cannot be better stated in brief than in Grote's own language, we quote the following passage from his History of Greece (vol. i.)—a volume which, as we believe we have before said, cannot be too carefully studied by any one who desires to understand the nature of the myth :

"A new vein of sentiment had arisen in Europe, unsuitable indeed to the old myths, yet leaving still in force the demand for mythical narrative generally. And this demand was satisfied, speaking generally, by two classes of narratives, the legends of the Catholic saints and the romances of chivalry, -corresponding to two types of character, both perfectly accommodated to the feelings of the time,-the saintly ideal and the chivalrous ideal. Both these two classes of narrative correspond, in character as well as in general purpose, to the Grecian myths,-being stories accepted as realities, from their full conformity with the predispositions and deep-seated faith of an uncritical audience, and prepared beforehand by their authors, not with any reference to historical proof, but for the purpose of calling forth sympathy, emotion, or reverence. The type of saintly character belongs to Christianity, being the history of Jesus Christ, as described in the Gospels, and that of the prophets

in the Old Testament; whilst the lives of holy men, who acquired a religious reputation from the fourth to the fourteenth century of the Christian era, were invested with attributes, and illustrated with ample details, tending to assimilate them to this revered model. . . . The dove was connected, in the faith of the age, with the Holy Ghost, the serpent with Satan. Lions, wolves, stags, unicorns, &c., were the subjects of other emblematic associations; and such modes of belief found expression for themselves in many narratives which brought the saints into conflict or conjoint action with these various animals. Legends of this kind, so indefinitely multiplied, and so preeminently popular and affecting, in the middle ages, are not exaggerations of particular matters of fact, but emanations in detail of some current faith or feeling, which they served to satisfy, and by which they were in turn amply sustained and accredited. The lives of the saints bring us ever back to the simple and ever-operative theology of the Homeric age; so constantly is the hand of God exhibited, even in the minutest details, for the succor of a favored individual,-so completely is the scientific point of view, respecting the phenomena of nature, absorbed into the religious. During the intellectual vigor of Greece and Rome, a sense of the invariable course of nature and of the scientific explanation of phenomena had been created among the superior minds, and through them, indirectly, among the remaining community; thus limiting, to a certain extent, the ground open to be occupied by a religious legend. With the decline of the pagan literature and philosophy, before the sixth century of the Christian era, this scientific conception gradually passed out of sight, and left the mind free to a religious interpretation of nature not less simple and naif than that which had prevailed under the Homeric paganism. The great religious movement of the Reformation, and the gradual formation of critical and philosophical habits in the modern mind, have caused these legends of the saints-once the charm and cherished creed of a numerous public-to pass altogether out of credit, without even being regarded, among Protestants at least, as worthy of a formal scrutiny into the evidence, a proof of the transitory value of the public belief, however sincere and fervent, as a certificate of historical truth, if it be blended with religious predispositions. The same mythopoeic vein, and the same susceptibility and facility of belief which had created both supply and demand for the legends of the saints, also provided the abundant stock of romantic narrative poetry in amplification and illustration of the chivalrous ideal. What the legends of Troy, of Thèbes, of the Kalydônian boar, of Edipus, Thèseus, &c., were to an early Greek, the tales of Arthur, of Charlemagne, of the Niebelungen, were to an Englishman, or Frenchman, or German, of the twelfth or thirteenth century. They were neither recognized fiction nor authenticated history; they were history, as it is felt and welcomed by minds unaccustomed to investigate evidence, and unconscious of the necessity of doing so. That the chronicle of Turpin, a mere compilation of poetical legends respecting Charlemagne, was accepted as genuine history, and even pronounced to be such by Papal authority, is well known; and the authors. of the romances announce themselves, not less than those of the old Grecian epic, as being about to recount real matter of fact.”—(Vol. i., p. 469.)

The medieval passion for the marvellous is vividly described in two ad mirable chapters in Lecky's History of Rationalism,-chap. i., on "Magic and Witchcraft," and chap. ii., on "The Miracles of the Church." A full and adequate comprehension of the universal mythical activity of imagination.

which prevailed for a thousand years, and was nourished by the most implicit credence, can only be acquired by the study of the immense mass of details connected with the subject. To say that this period was distinguished for wonderful mythical production is only to express the fact in an unimpressive general form, which entirely fails to bring into our imagination a state of mind so long past and so different from our own. But to peruse story after story of the time, formed on the revered Gospel models, to find repeated on every page of countless works (e. g., the fifty-five folio volumes of the Bollandist Lives of the Saints) prodigies and miracles of the most extravagant kind, performed daily and hourly as simply the natural events to be expected in the life of a saint, enables us more fully-though at the best, we suppose, still inadequately to realize this trait of the time as it really existed. We subjoin a quotation from Lecky, vol. i., p. 157:

"If we pass from the Fathers into the middle ages, we find ourselves in an atmosphere that was dense and charged with the supernatural. The demand for miracles was almost boundless, and the supply was equal to the demand. Men of extraordinary sanctity seemed naturally and habitually to obtain the power of performing them, and their lives are crowded with their achievements, which were attested by the high sanctions of the church. Nothing could be more common than for a holy man to be lifted up from the floor in the midst of his devotions, or to be visited by the Virgin or by an angel. There was scarcely a town that could not show some relic that had cured the sick, or some image that had opened and shut its eyes, or bowed its head to an earnest worshipper. It was somewhat more extraordinary, but not in the least incredible, that the fish should have thronged to the shore to hear St. Anthony preach, or that it should be necessary to cut the hair of the crucifix at Burgos once a month, or that the Virgin of the Pillar, at Saragossa, should, at the prayer of one of her worshippers, have restored a leg that had been amputated. Men who were afflicted with apparently hopeless diseases started in a moment into perfect health when brought into contact with a relic of Christ or of the Virgin. The virtue of such relics radiated in blessings all around them. Glorious visions heralded their discovery, and angels have transported them through the air. If a missionary went abroad among the heathen, supernatural signs confounded his opponents, and made the powers of darkness fly before his steps. If a Christian prince unsheathed his sword in an ecclesiastical cause, apostles had been known to combat with his army, and avenging miracles to scatter his enemies. If an unjust suspicion attached to an innocent man, he had immediate recourse to an ordeal which cleared his character and condemned his accusers. All this was going on habitually. in every part of Europe without exciting the smallest astonishment or scepticism. Yet this was but one department of miracles. It does not include the thousands of miraculous images and pictures that were operating throughout Christendom, and the countless apparitions and miscellaneous prodigies that were taking place in every country, and on all occasions."

Milman mentions the universal diffusion of reverence for the saints and their legends and belief in their tutelary powers. Each country had its own peculiar guardian saint,-St. Denys, St. James, St. Andrew, St. George, re

spectively the patrons of France, Spain, Scotland, and England. “In Germany alone, notwithstanding some general reverence for St. Boniface, each kingdom or principality, even every city, town, or village, had its own saint." (Latin Christianity, viii., 214.) "Thus, throughout Christendom, was there to every community and every individual man an intercessor with the one Great Intercessor between God and man, some intermediate being, less awful, more humble, whose office, whose charge, almost whose duty it was to speed, or who, if offended, might withhold the supplicant orison. Every one of these saints had his life of wonder, the legend of his virtues, his miracles, perhaps his martyrdom, his shrines, his relics. The legend was to his votaries a sort of secondary Gospel, wrought into the belief by the constant iteration of its names and events.”—(Ibid., p. 216.)

Now, when these facts are realized by the mind, it is to be understood that they are historical facts of the highest importance in the inquiry in which we are engaged. For this unbounded mythical fertility, producing stories so simple in invention, so implicit in reception as to be "a sort of secondary Gospel," existed in a writing age, and in the bosom of an established and organized church; which is proof positive that the existence of writing in Gospel times in no wise demonstrated the impossibility of mythical invention; and if Europe could lose a high scientific and philosophical culture and lapse back into a myth-making state "no less simple and naif than that which had prevailed under the Homeric paganism;" that the Hebrews, who never even attained to any such culture, should have outgrown all possibility of mythical formations, would seem to be a most unfounded assumption. We regard the argument in our last article, therefore, as illustrated and sustained by a very exact historical parallel to the mythical element in the Gospels, viz., the mythical excitability of the middle ages; for both arose among communities which had long passed their early mythopoeic state and had entered on decline and decay; and both originated in a religious movement and excitement which quickened the decaying powers into renewed activity,-in the one case the belief in the Messiah as having once been on the earth and soon to reappear; in the other case the zeal for the new religion into which their Messianic hopes subsided, and which, with the zeal and vigor of a fresh revelation, gained an easy victory over paganism.

In our next article we shall conclude the subject of the objections to the mythical interpretation.