as

laboriously pleads, by how much will he be the nearer to his proposed object ? Allowing, an imaginable case, that it can be demonstrated that dogmatic Christianity, as it is at present taught in one or other of the great provinces of Christendom, cannot be proved to be true by a critical examination of the New Testament, how can such a result justify the assertion that all religion-all idea of man's relation to the invisible world-is a delusion? Yet that is the purport of the book.

The author is not unjust in the remark which he makes with reference to certain assailants when he says that the defence "has, perhaps, rather too much taken the shape of picking out a few supposed errors of detail, and triumphantly shaking them with a persistence not characteristic of strength." It is not by captious and minute criticism of the mass of references compiled in the work that the position of its author is to be shaken. It is not the man, but the method, that has to be dealt with; not the mode in which the facts of the case are represented, but the intimate nature, and true relation of the actual facts. So long as this simple truth is disregarded, it is perfectly intelligible why the attempts at a reply to Supernatural Religion should have proved more discouraging to many of those who have been disquieted by the work, than even the statements it contains. The defence has been, perhaps, more damaging than the assault. This has not unusually proved to be the case in theological controversy. We expect the assailant to understate the case which he attacks. It is only from the reply of the defenders that it can be learned that he has not actually done so. Not that is to

say-in this particular case, but as a general rule.

If so fatal to the object of the work is the disproportion which exists between the aim proposed, and the means employed in order to attain it, what can be said of the envoi to the reader-the peroration of the third volume now before us? Does the writer adopt a formula which has no object but to disguise a too outspoken hostility? Does he mock his readers? Or is he so utterly unconvinced by his own arguments as to forget, not only their gist, but their precise statements? "Turning away from fancied benefits," are his words, "to be derived from the virtue of his death, we may find real help and guidance from more earnest contemplation of the life and teaching of Jesus." What source has this writer left us, if we are convinced by his arguments, whence to derive materials for such earnest contemplation? The only books shewn to us, from which such help and guidance are to be derived, are twenty-seven in number. What reliance is to be placed on each of them, according to this advice, we may intimate in our author's Own words. As to the work discussed at the greatest length in the volume before us, the Acts of the Apostles, we are told that "It is almost inconceivable that any serious mind could maintain the actual truth of such a story, upon such evidence! "It requires very little examination to detect that this story is legendary, and cannot for a moment be maintained as historical. Those who dwell upon its symbolical character do nothing to establish its veracity."t "We are unable to regard the narrative as historical." "The narrative of the Acts is not

† Id. p. 416.

As

authentic." The Gospels have been discussed in the previous volumes, with what result is intimated in the third by the quiet remark that "in comparison with it," that is to say, with the Acts of the Apostles, "the Gospels seem almost sober narratives." There remain only the Epistles and the Apocalypse. Of the former, thirteen are, if genuine, the writing of Paul, and possess the special value of a signature. But we are told that "the life and teaching of Jesus have scarcely a place in the system of Paul." The remaining books are dealt with in even a more summary manner. "The first Epistle of Peter might have required more detailed treatment, but we think little would be gained by demonstrating that the document is not authentic, or shewing that, in any case, the evidence which it would furnish is not of any value." to the Epistle to the Hebrews, "we are freed from any need to deal at length with it, not only by the absence of any specific evidence in its contents, but by the following consideration. If the Epistle be not by Paul-and it not only is not his, but does not even pretend to be so the author is unknown, and therefore the document has no weight as testimony." If it were ascribed to Paul, we have seen above what would be its worth. Finally, "The so-called Epistles of James, Jude, and John do not contain any evidence which, even supposing them to be authentic, really bears upon our inquiry." And as to the seven books, the Epistles of James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse, the evidence for most of these being avowedly "less complete," (than that on which some of the other books have been received into the

* Id. 270.

Canon), "its nature may be conceived."§ Such being, in the writer's view, the character of all the works which profess to give some account of "the life and teaching of Jesus," is the advice to direct" earnest contemplation" to the subject a mockery, an hypocrisy, or a sheer imbecility?

It is not with the object, of attempting that of which we think that an author has just cause to complain, namely, damaging the personal credit of a writer, in order to throw discredit on arguments which cannot be fairly met, that we call attention to such blots as we have denoted or have yet to denote, in this work. It is our object to shew that the method employed is so essentially imperfect that any results attained by its use not only may be, but ought to be, neglected. In so saying, we readily admit that there is much contained in the volume that is deserving of study; and that, like the preceding volumes, it has a permanent value to the student by way of a tolerably exhaustive index of the literature of the subject.

Not, however, that even as a book of reference, it is satisfactory. Of that literature which, of all others, it is most important to the writer on the New Testament to master-the contemporary Jewish literature-the ignorance of the author of Supernatural Religion appears to be well-nigh absolute. One single unborrowed citation from the Talmud graces the notes; but a reference to the passage cited raises the doubt whether the writer has quite fairly represented its. import. Not only is he thus altogether in the dark when he ventures on any opinion of his own. as to the accordance or discrepancy between any statement in the books

which he criticises and the law, the ideas, and the habits of the writers and their contemporaries, but he is betrayed into errors that would be called ludicrous were the question one of literature alone. It may be admitted that it would be difficult to find an example where a writer, assuming a very lofty critical tone, not only flatly contradicts himself, but further manages to be equally in error in each of these contradictory statements. An instance of this unusual literary feat will be instructive.

"We are asked to believe," the author urges, in discredit of the first Evangelist, "that the chief priests and the Pharisees actually desecrated the Sabbath, and visited the house of the heathen Pilate on so holy a day, for the purpose of asking for a guard." But in depreciation of the statement of the third Evangelist our author had previously remarked, "There is no injunction of the Mosaic law declaring such interview-that of a Jew with Gentiles-unlawful, nor indeed is such a rule elsewhere heard of, and even apologists who refer to the point have no deed of authority by which to support such a statement." This latter clause diametrically contradicts that previously cited. If there is no prohibition to keep company with heathens, how did the priests desecrate the Sabbath by so doing? It turns out, however, that profound as may have been the ignorance of the Evangelists as to the habits and laws of their contemporaries, it is at all events less absolute than that of their critic. The treatise De Sabbatto of the Talmud, which is the judicial exposition of the entire law regulating the observance of that day, is one of the largest and most detailed tracts in the entire

The

Mishna. It contains no less than twenty-four chapters, comprising altogether as many as seventy-six Mishnaioth. It not only details the thirty-nine "fathers of works," by performing any act coming under either of which the prohibition of labour on the day is broken, but it even enters into so much detail as to prohibit the letting forth from its enclosure of an ox carrying a straw in its mouth. The questions of what was dress, and what ornament, and of what might, and what might not, be borne by man or woman on the Sabbath, as well as the entire doctrine of limits, or as to "resting in their place" on that day, are described with the most exhaustive minuteness. But from the first line of this treatise to the last there is not a word that can reflect on the propriety of the entrance of the priests into the prætorium on the Sabbath. law forbad nothing by implication. What it did not forbid it permitted. The question, therefore, of the "desecration of the Sabbath" arose only in the imagination of the author or his authorities. In fact, a reference to the next tract of the Mishna, De commistionibus termini Sabbatti (cap. vi. §§ 1), conclusively shews that no such objection could have been legally raised. It may be urged, then, that the writer must thus be safe from the peril of the other horn of the dilemma. If Jews might even dwell in the same atrium as Gentiles, which the passage assumes, the writer of the Acts must be wrong. It is a very remarkable circumstance, as bearing on the assertion, "such an affirmation could not have been made by Peter," that although it was permitted for Israelites, in the plural, to dwell or converse with idolators, it was

un

forbidden for one Israelite to do so alone. As to this the distinct statements of Maimonides and of Bartonora, in their comments on the Mishna last cited, may be read with advantage. The exact language attributed to Peter, lawful for a Jewish man, ," is in accurate accordance with the law, as explained by these perfectly impartial witnesses. And thus each blow which the writer has aimed at the documents he has so contemptuously criticised, returns, with double force, on his own mouth.

A double misstatement of this gravity, which strikes the eye at the first glance over the book, may be taken as illustrative of the fallacy of the attempt to criticise Jewish books in ignorance of Jewish literature, law, and habit. But eliminating, as the reader will now be prepared to do, all such statements as expressing merely the opinion of the author, there remains the more important question of the discrepancies exhibited by that comparative analysis of the of the different different accounts which he has wrought out, with a detailed minuteness not before practised, to this end, by an English writer.

As to this, it may be premised that the statements from which our ideas of the historic details of the life of Jesus Christ are drawn are chiefly derived from five writers, namely, the four Evangelists and the Apostle Paul. Not one of these writers has proposed to write a systematic and orderly history, according to our modern views of such a work. The Evangelist who possesses the greatest knowledge of literary form, and who tells us that he gathered his materials from witnesses, or from ministers of the Word, after his earliest chapters makes no effort to attach any data

* Gal. iii, 16.

*

whatever to any one of the recollections which he transcribes. The Jewish rabbi, whose entire dogmatic position depends on the descent of Jesus from the lineage of David, does not utter a single word-any more than does either of the other writers of the New Testamentto shew that Mary was of the house of David, and thus to establish the fact that the Royal blood of Judah ran, even by female descent, in the veins of Jesus. In language which is to be found almost verbatim in the Talmud, the disciple of Rabban Gamaliel draws an argument from the use of a singular collective noun, instead of a plural, which occurs in the Septuagint version, and not in the original Hebrew; but although it is essential to the sequence of his pleading to shew that Jesus was a descendant of David, he has never taken the trouble to adduce any direct statement that such was the fact. This same absolute neglect of those points which, to the exact habit of the philosophic Aryan mind, are of primary importance, characterize all Semitic literature. It is not peculiar to the writers of the New Testament. It is so universal amongst Semitic thinkers that the adoption of a more exact form would at once betray the presence of a foreign element. An historian like Thucydides or Herodotus, or a biographer like Tacitus, approaches his subject from a point of view utterly dissimilar to that taken by Paul, by Josephus, by the writers of the Book of Kings, or by the great teachers cited by Rabbi Judah the Saint. Neither the Evangelists nor the writers of the Epistles have professed to give either a history of Christianity or a biography of Jesus Christ. What they did write was, like the entire corpus of Jewish

The

literature, purely controversial. The second Gospel announces, not history, but good tidings. The third was written for the confirmation of the opinions already entertained by Theophilus. The fourth was written that its readers might believe that Jesus was the Messiah. Paul told the Corinthians that he cared to know nothing but the doctrine of the Crucifixion.* No New Testament writer has given a clear historic date for any event recorded or referred to, with the exception of the third Evangelist; and his reference to the fifteenth year of the hegemony of Tiberius Cæsar, to the census under Cyrenius, and to Ananias as High Priest during the procuratorship of Felix, are all, if not pure anachronisms, as yet unreconciled with other information. No Evangelist has given the year of either the nativity, the baptism, or the crucifixion of Jesus. latter year we fix on astronomical grounds alone; and the fourth Evangelist, in giving both a different hour of the day, and a different day of the lunar month from those mentioned by the other three, virtually assigns a date later by three years than the accepted era.t As to the other two dates, we are absolutely without information. When we observe this total disregard of those points which we are apt to regard as cardinal, it is clear that we have no reason to expect, from the works in which they occur, the orderly sequence or the careful preciseness of a formal biographic narrative. No doubt we should much prefer the latter, but it is not a kind of work which Semitic writers either executed or valued. It is the same to this day. We have seen accounts of recent events, written by natives of Palestine for the purpose of judicial testi

mony, which differ so widely from the official narrative of the European actors, that the identity of the facts is hardly discernible. We may as well quarrel with a negro for being black as with a Jewish writer for adopting the invariable style of his national literature.

The fact is that the very centres of gravity of Semitic and of Aryan thought are differently disposed. The primary condition of the pursuit of truth, namely, the accurate collection, and impartial co-ordination, of facts, was first raised to its proper rank by Aristotle. The observer-his wishes, his objects, and his belief-are eliminated by that philosophical method. Among the Semitic people, and among those who are unfamiliar with exact method, the very reverse is the case. In such cases the personal belief of the writer is the motive of all his work. To shew that such belief is orthodox-that it is legitimate, necessary, not an innovationis the one object in view. Thus every speech of any magnitude made to the Jews ascends to Moses. The first Evangelist prefixes to his work a pedigree remounting to Abraham; and attaches the first incident to which he refers to a passage in the prophetic writings. The second Evangelist even more pointedly commences, "As it is written in the Prophets." The third traces back the pedigree of the first personages to whom he refers to Abia and to Aaron in the first paragraph of his narrative. The accordance of the faith they held with the Word of God, as given by Moses and the Prophets, were the central motives and main idea of the Jewish writers of the New Testament; and the exactitude