to say, "and we heartily welcome to our fellowship all who desire to work with us in advancing the kingdom of God." Thus we should have indicated our faith in the purely spiritual significance of Christianity, and made its meaning so large that no earnest soul could possibly have felt that we were excluding him. Thus we should have said: "We will be judges whether you are Christian or not, but our test shall be spiritual, not dogmatic, and if you desire to work with us in advancing the kingdom of God, if you desire to spend your life in blessing on your fellow-men, we will insist upon it that you are a Christian whether you allow it or not." For we were all carrying in our hearts one man, Abbot of Dover, who, as you all know, insists that he is not a Christian, and we felt that if we could not make our doorways wide and high enough for him we should win the battle only in part. For whatever he might choose to call himself, we knew that in the highest sense in which the word Christian can be used, there was not in that whole conference a more Christian man than he. The word Christian has three great leading, significations.

1. It means the system of dogmas concerning Jesus popularly received as true by the majority of so-called Christian Churches. In this sense Mr. Abbot is not a Christian; neither am I. There is not, in this sense, a Christian in this congregation. And when Mr. Abbot insists that he is not a Christian this is all he means to say. But

2. Christianity means a great river of influence running across human history on which all the inhabitants of Christendom have been upborne. In this sense Mr. Abbot is surely a Christian, and it is a much higher sense than that of which we have just spoken. But there are many who have never sailed upon this stream-Jews and Mahometans, and disciples of Confucius and Cakya Mouni-who are, nevertheless, much better, purer, holier men than many who are Christians by dogmatic leaning or historic right. Therefore we rejoice that

3. Christianity means that love to God and man which Jesus of Nazareth so gloriously taught and so divinely illustrated. In this sense Francis Abbot may not say he is a Christian. It would not, perhaps, be quite modest for him to do so. But we will say it for him, and say that we will never rest until the conference is open to the coming of his stainless feet. Is it not too absurd to think of, that we are now in a position to admit the emissaries of that enemy of all freedom, truth and progress, the Roman Catholic Church (and I would not have it otherwise,) and are not in a position to admit this strong manchild of our own loins, this lover of all truth and seeker for all good?

Do you fear that possibly it might not do to make our fellowship as bread. and free as this. Friends, between this and Romanism lies our choice. Principles never stop half-way. A creed is a creed though it is contained in one sentence or one word. And any creed accepted as a finality is a sin against the ever-lasting, ever growing truth. And for myself, though you could make a statement that would not vary by a hair's breadth from my own

belief concerning God and Jesus, and all the great facts and relations that are the staple of the world's most deep reflection,-though it should express my own belief better than I could express it myself; so that, reading it, I should exclaim: "There! I never could exactly state myself, but you have done.it ;” if you could do all this, and should do it, and then ask me to sign this statement as a creed, I would no more do it than I would sign the Nicene creed, the Westminster catechism, and the contents of the Koran rolled into one. Of the perfect law of liberty it is most true that he that sins against its least particular has offended in all. "Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus." Nor need we fear, when we have once apprehended this principle, to accept it as the ruling principle of our lives. There were men in the conference who talked as if this principle of perfect intellectual freedom might leave us open to the approaches of unworthy men. They need not worry. Great principles do not attract little men. Believers in authoritative men and books and institutions would nowhere feel so out of place as in a company of liberal-minded reasonable men and women. When a man has really apprehended the principle of religious freedom he has so evidently set his face toward the eternal city that we need not be afraid to travel in his company. As for bad men, when did these ever choose to come into the society of earnest, loving and obedient souls? I wish that they would come. They would become infected with goodness and die of it, die to impurity and falsehood, and live to righteousness and truth.

"A bad man, like a leaky tub,

May waste his helps to right;

But largely pour thy generous gifts,

How soon a crack soaks tight."

No, we need not fear that the principle of religious liberty will draw after it unworthy men. The load-stone draws not wood and brass and dirt, but iron and steel; and so this moral load-stone draws not men of wood or brass or dirt, but men of iron and steel; aye, men of gold and pearl,—men whose life-blood is as ruddy as the garnet's glow, men whose rectitude is brighter than the diamond's spotless gleam-the mystery of whose godliness is as tender and as beautiful as are the permeating fires that slumber in the opal's hidden

veins.

Long ago it was written: " In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, bond nor free." There comes a day in which it shall be written In religion, in humanity, in love, in God, there is neither (in the dogmatic sense) Christian nor unchristian, black nor white, male nor female, but a new creature, a divine life, all things that are tender, all things that are gentle, pure and high." Not that it makes no difference what a man believes. It makes a great deal, though it does not make so much difference as the churches generally teach. The difference in amount of faith and love is the real difference between man and man. And not only this, but this also it is not the opinion which a man swallows with shut eyes that profits him, nor

that which is poured down his throat like medicine, but that which he accepts consciously and joyfully because it approves itself to him as true. Free thought and true thought are almost synonymous terms. To-day, theology is the falsest of the sciences because it has always been the least free. But already on the hill-tops I see the first forewarnings of a happier, holier time.

"The day of the Lord is at hand, at hand!

Its storms roll up the sky :

A nation sleeps starving on heaps of gold;

All dreamers toss and sigh;

The night is darkest before the dawn-
When the pain is sorest the child is born,

And the Day of the Lord is at hand.

"Gather you, gather you, angels of God,
Freedom and Mercy and Truth;

Come, for the earth is grown coward and old-
Come down and renew us her youth.
Wisdom, Self-sacrifice, Daring and Love,
Haste to the battle field, stoop from above,

To the Day of the Lord at hand.

"Gather you, gather you, hounds of hell

Famine and Plague and War;

Idleness, Bigotry, Cant and Misrule,

Gather and fall in the snare!

Hirelings and Mammonites, Pedants and Knaves,
Crawl to the battle-field-sneak to your graves,

In the Day of the Lord at hand.

Who would sit down and sigh for a lost age of gold,

While the Lord of all ages is here?

True hearts will leap up at the trumpet of God,

And those who can suffer can dare.

Each old age of gold was an iron age too,

And the meekest of saints may find stern work to do,
In the Day of the Lord at hand."

THE FOUR GOSPELS.

ARTICLE XIX. THE MARVELLOUS NARRATIVES.

(III.-Objections to the Mythical Interpretation.)

HAVING in previous articles stated and answered several arguments

against the application of the idea of the myth to the Gospel miracles,— chiefly the argument that the myth making epoch had long past among the Jews we proceed in the present article to finish the subject of the objections to the mythical interpretation.

It has been argued with great force, by some scholars, that the mythical interpretation of the Gospel miracles is refuted by the insufficiency of the time allowed for their formation and development as myths. The thirty or forty years between the death of Jesus and the composition of the Synoptic Gospels, in their present form, is altogether too short a time, it is contended, to account for the appearance and growth of so large a body of myths and of a mythical history so well connected; and as a consideration tending to strengthen this argument, we should bear in mind the existence of written accounts of Jesus and his works, before the composition of our present Gospels (v. Lc., i, 1-4: also, Art IV., FRIEND, May, 1866). We are anxious to allow all the force that it deserves to this argument, and to confess that it certainly is entitled to candid consideration. Yet we think that the argument is valid only against the unwarranted exaggeration of the mythical theory, with which Strauss is justly chargeable; it certainly is of much less force, or even altogether valueless, if urged against the existence of mythical or legendary fragments in the Gospels. We suppose that very few would subscribe to the thorough going resolution of the Gospel history into myths, which distinguishes Strauss. Indeed, the manner and extent of application of the mythical hypothesis, advocated by that great scholar, is all that is distinctively his own; for he produces many authorities who have admitted the myth within narrow limits before him. But while it is to be admitted that Strauss acts frequently the part of a determined theorizer, rather than of an impartial critic, it would be equally extreme to deny all value to the immense array of critical arguments which he brings to the substantiation of his views; and that the use made by Strauss of the Old Testament stories and prophecies, to neutralize the objection founded on the brief period allowed for the production of the Gospel myths, has some value and importance, and to some extent enjoys the assent of other scholars, is as certain as that it is pushed by Strauss himself to an unwarrantable extreme. Strauss contends that the short time during which the myths must have been formed, is really an element of little or no consequence, because they did not have to be created or evolved

So

anew and independently, but were drawn directly from the books of the Old Testament, which furnished abundance of incidents to be imitated, and plenty of expectations and prophecies concerning the Messiah which were simply and easily applied to Jesus, and appear as the fabulous element of the Gospels. This argument, we repeat, however much overdrawn by Strauss, must be admitted to be a reflection of fact, and, in a general way also, whatever difficulty there may be in specific applications, to be a consideration of force and importance. At least it may be said that the existence of the sacred Old Testament stories could not but furnish unconscious models, and present an easy beaten track to the people again excited to mythopoeic activity; and that the vivid Messianic expectations of the day, and the burning words of the old prophets which received a Messianic interpretation, could not but furnish a ready type of fable to be applied to Jesus by his followers who believed in him as the Messiah; and we think that the Gospels actually exhibit traits derived from these sources. But while we are disposed to lay some stress on this fact, the truth is (and on this point we rest our answer to the objection in question,) that the element of time is really an element of the least possible importance in all questions connected with myths. true is this, that it may almost be said that the evolution of very considerable bodies of myths is in no degree a matter of time, but exclusively a matter of condition. Let the proper popular state, the mental and moral condition, be realized, and time is unimportant, unheeded, unfelt, or felt only in the limitations of transmission by conversation and speech. Mind is as independent of time in this exercise as in any other. A mythical narrative and series of narratives will flash almost instantaneously into existence. History is full of illustrations of this truth. Such for example are the miracles of St. Stephen, just referred to; such also are the miracles related in profusion of every mediaeval saint, immediately after his death, and even during his own life-time, forming an extended collection of myths, which were no less contemporaneously produced, than implicitly believed. Renan remarks, that "among the Arabs, Napoleon has already a fabulous legend fully developed;" and that he knows" of no myths more distinctly marked than those which still break out every day among certain tribes in the South of Africa, under the influence of Christian preaching," (Relig. Hist. and Crit., p. 200). Upon this point, we repeat, founded in the essential nature of the myth, and illustrated by many familiar historical examples, we are content to rest our argument against the objection proceeding from the brief time between the death of Jesus and the composition of the Gospels; while it is also not to be forgotten that it is natural that the people should reproduce and use many times over its own peculiar legends and special type of myth; that accordingly the Old Testameut stories and Messianic ideas would tend naturally to facilitate and accelerate the evolution of a fresh body of kindred fables; and that the Gospels bear obvious traces of the actual operation of such an influence.