which their narratives seem to refer. The ablest divines at the present day, of all denominations, have yielded as much as this.'

The Scriptures were in the hands of the clergy only, and they had every opportunity to insert whatsoever they pleased; thus we find them full of interpolations. Johann Solomo Seinler, one of the most influential theologians of the eighteenth century, speaking of this, says:

"The Christian doctors never brought their sacred books before the common people; although people in general have been wont to think otherwise; during the first ages, they were in the hands of the clergy only."

Concerning the time when the canon of the New Testament was settled, Mosheim says:

"The opinions, or rather the conjectures, of the learned concerning the time when the books of the New Testament were collected into one volume; as also about the authors of that collection, are extremely different. This important question is attended with great and almost insuperable difficulties to us in these later times."3

The Rev. B. F. Westcott says:

"It is impossible to point to any period as marking the date at which our present canon was determined. When it first appears, it is presented not as a novelty, but as an ancient tradition."

Dr. Lardner says:

"Even so late as the middle of the sixth century, the canon of the New Testament had not been settled by any authority that was decisive and universally

1 Says Prof. Smith upon this point: "All the earliest external evidence points to the conclusion that the synoptic gospels are non-apostolic digests of spoken and written apostolic tradition, and that the arrangement of the earlier material in orderly form took place only gradually and by many essays."

Dr. Hooykaas, speaking of the four "Gospels," and "Acts," says of them: "Not one of these five books was really written by the person whose name it bears, and they are all of more recent date than the heading would lead us to suppose."

"We cannot say that the "Gospels" and book of "Acts" are unauthentic, for not one of them professes to give the name of its author. They appeared anonymously. The titles placed above them in our Bibles owe their origin to a later ecclesiastical tradition which deserves no confidence whatever." (Bible for Learners, vol. iii. pp. 24, 25.)

These Gospels "can hardly be said to have had authors at all. They had only editors or compilers. What I mean is, that those who enriched the old Christian literature with these

Gospels did not go to work as independent
writers and compose their own narratives out
of the accounts they had collected, but simply
took up the different stories or sets of stories
which they found current in the oral tradition
or already reduced to writing, adding here and
expanding there, and so sent out into the world
a very artless kind of composition. These
works were then, from time to time, somewhat
enriched by introductory matter or interpola-
tions from the hands of later Christians, and
perhaps were modified a little here and there.
Our first two Gospels appear to have passed
through more than one such revision. The
third, whose writer says in his preface, tha
'many had undertaken to put together a narra-
tive (Gospel),' before him, appears to proceed
from a single collecting, arranging, and modi-
fying hand." (Ibid. p. 29.)

acknowledged, but Christian people were at liberty to judge for themselves concerning the genuiness of writings proposed to them as apostolical, and to determine according to evidence."

The learned Michaelis says:

"No manuscript of the New Testament now extant is prior to the sixth century, and what is to be lamented, various readings which, as appears from the quotations of the Fathers, were in the text of the Greek Testament, are to be found in none of the manuscripts which are at present remaining.""

And Bishop Marsh says:

"It is a certain fact, that several readings in our common printed text are nothing more than alterations made by Origen, whose authority was so great in the Christian Church (A. D. 230) that emendations which he proposed, though, as he himself acknowledged, they were supported by the evidence of no manuscript, were very generally received."

In his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius gives us a list of what books at that time (A. D. 315) were considered canonical. They are as follows:

"The four-fold writings of the Evangelists," "The Acts of the Apostles," "The Epistles of Peter," "after these the first of John, and that of Peter," " All these are received for undoubted." The Revelation of St. John, some disavow.”

"The books which are gainsaid, though well known unto many, are these: the Epistle of James, the Epistle of Jude, the latter of Peter, the second and third of John, whether they were John the Evangelist, or some other of the same

Though Irenæus, in the second century, is the first who mentions the evangelists, and Origen, in the third century, is the first who gives us a catalogue of the books contained in the New Testament, Mosheim's admission still stands before us. We have no grounds of assurance that the mere mention of the names of the evangelists by Irenæus, or the arbitrary drawing up of a particular catalogue by Origen, were of any authority. It is still unknown by whom, or where, or when, the canon of the New Testament was settled. But in this absence of positive evidence we have abundance of negative proof. We know when it was not settled. We know it was not settled in the time of the Emperor Justinian, nor in the time of Cassiodorus; that is, not at any time before the middle of the sixth century, "by any authority that was decisive and universally acknowledged; but Christian people were at liberty to judge for themselves concerning the genuineness of writings proposed to them as apostolical.”

Credibility of the Gospels.

2 Marsh's Michaelis, vol. ii. p. 160. The Sinaitic MS. is believed by Tischendorf to belong to the fourth century.

3 Ibid. p. 368.

4 Eusebius: Ecclesiastical Hist. lib. 3, ch.

xxii.

We cannot do better than close this chapter with the words of Prof. Max Müller, who, in speaking of Buddhism, says:

"We have in the history of Buddhism an excellent opportunity for watching the process by which a canon of sacred books is called into existence. We see here, as elsewhere, that during the life-time of the teacher, no record of events, no sacred code containing the sayings of the Master, was wanted. His presence was enough, and thoughts of the future, and more particularly, of future greatness, seldom entered the minds of those who followed him. It was only after Buddha had left the world to enter into Nirvána, that his disciples attempted to recall the sayings and doings of their departed friend and master. At that time, everything that seemed to redound to the glory of Buddha, however extraordinary and incredible, was eagerly welcomed, while witnesses who would have ventured to criticise or reject unsupported statements, or to detract in any way from the holy character of Buddha, had no chance of ever being listened to. And when, in spite of all this, differences of opinion rose, they were not brought to the test by a careful weighing of evidence, but the names of ⚫ unbeliever' and 'heretic' were quickly invented in India as elsewhere, and bandied backwards and forwards between contending parties, till at last, when the doctors disagreed, the help of the secular power had to be invoked, and kings and emperors assembled councils for the suppression of schism, for the settle ment of an orthodox creed, and for the completion of a sacred canon.

"1

That which Prof. Müller describes as taking place in the relig ion of Christ Buddha, is exactly what took place in the religion of Christ Jesus. That the miraculous, and many of the non-miraculous, events related in the Gospels never happened, is demonstrable from the facts which we have seen in this work, that nearly all of these events, had been previously related of the gods and goddesses of heathen nations of antiquity, more especially of the Hindoo Saviour Crishna, and the Buddhist Saviour Buddha, whose religion, with less alterations than time and translations have made in the Jewish Scriptures, may be traced in nearly every dogma and every ceremony of the evangelical mythology.

1 The Science of Religion, pp. 30, 31.

NOTE. The Codex Sinaiticus, referred to on the preceding page, (note 2,) was found at the Convent of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai, by Tischendorf, in 1859. He supposes that it belongs to the 4th cent.; but Dr. Davidson (in Kitto's Bib, Ency., Art. MSS.) thinks different. He says: "Probably it is of the 6th cent.," while he states that the Codex Vaticanus "is believed to belong to the 4th cent.," and the Codex Alexandrinus to the 5th cent. McClintock & Strong's Ency. (Art. MSS.,) relying probably on Tischendorf's conjecture, places the Codex Sinaiticus first. It is probably the oldest of the MSS. of the N. T., and of the 4th cent.," say they. The Codex Vaticanus is considered the next oldest, and the Codex Alexandrinus is placed third in order, and was probably written in the first half of the 5th cent." The writer of the art. N. T. in Smith's Bib. Dic. says: "The Codex Sinaiticus is probably the oldest of the MSS. of the N. T., and of the 4th cent.; " and that the Codex Alexandrinus "was probably written in the first half of the 5th cent." Thus we see that in determining the dates of the MSS. of the N. T., Christian divines are obliged to resort to conjecture; there being no certainty whatever in the matter. But with all their "suppositions," "probabilities," "beliefs" and "conjectures," we have the words of the learned Michaelis still before us, that: "No MSS. of the N. T. now extant are prior to the sixth cent." This remark, however, does not cover the Codex Sinaiticus, which was discovered since Michaelis wrote his work on the N. T.; but, as we saw above, Dr. Davidson does not agree with Tischendorf in regard to its antiquity, and places it in the 6th cent.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

EXPLANATION.

AFTER what we have seen concerning the numerous virginborn, crucified and resurrected Saviours, believed on in the Pagan world for so many centuries before the time assigned for the birth of the Christian Saviour, the questions naturally arise: were they real personages? did they ever exist in the flesh whence came these stories concerning them? have they a foundation in truth, or are they simply creations of the imagination?

The historical theory-according to which all the persons mentioned in mythology were once real human beings, and the legends and fabulous traditions relating to them were merely the additions and embellishments of later times-which was so popular with scholars of the last century, has been altogether abandoned.

Under the historical point of view the gods are mere deified mortals, either heroes who have been deified after their death, or Pontiff-chieftains who have passed themselves off for gods, and who, it is gratuitously supposed, found people stupid enough to believe in their pretended divinity. This was the manner in which, formerly, writers explained the mythology of nations of antiquity; but a method that pre-supposed an historical Crishna, an historical Osiris, an historical Mithra, an historical Hercules, an historical Apollo, or an historical Thor, was found untenable, and therefore, does not, at the present day, stand in need of a refutation. As a writer of the early part of the present century said:

"We shall never have an ancient history worthy of the perusal of men of common sense, till we cease treating poems as history, and send back such personages as Hercules, Theseus, Bacchus, etc., to the heavens, whence their history is taken, and whence they never descended to the earth."

The historical theory was succeeded by the allegorical thory, which supposes that all the myths of the ancients were allegorical and symbolical, and contain some moral, religious, or philosophical

truth or historical fact under the form of an allegory, which came in process of time to be understood literally.

In the preceding pages we have spoken of the several virginborn, crucified and resurrected Saviours, as real personages. We have attributed to these individuals words and acts, and have regarded the words and acts recorded in the several sacred books from which we have quoted, as said and done by them. But in doing this, we have simply used the language of others. These gods and heroes were not real personages; they are merely personifications of the SUN. As Prof. Max Müller observes in his

Lectures on the Science of Religion:

"One of the earliest objects that would strike and stir the mind of man, and for which a sign or a name would soon be wanted, is surely the Sun. It is very hard for us to realize the feelings with which the first dwellers on the earth looked upon the Sun, or to understand fully what they meant by a morning prayer or a morning sacrifice. Perhaps there are few people who have watched a sunrise more than once or twice in their life; few people who have ever known the meaning of a morning prayer, or a morning sacrifice. But think of man at the very dawn of time. . . . think of the Sun awakening the eyes of man from sleep, and his mind from slumber! Was not the sunrise to him the first wonder, the first beginning of all reflection, all thought, all philosophy ? Was it not to him the first revelation, the first beginning of all trust, of all religion?

'Few nations only have preserved in their ancient poetry some remnants of the natural awe with which the earlier dwellers on the earth saw that brilliant being slowly rising from out of the darkness of the night, raising itself by its own might higher and higher, till it stood triumphant on the arch of heaven, and then descended and sank down in its fiery glory into the dark abyss of the heaving and hissing sea. In the hymns of the Veda, the poet still wonders whether the Sun will rise again; he asks how he can climb the vault of heaven? why he does not fall back? why there is no dust on his path? And when the rays of the morning rouse him from sleep and call him back to new life, when he sees the Sun, as he says, stretching out his golden arms to bless the world and rescue it from the terror of darkness, he exclaims, 'Arise, our life, our spirit has come back! the darkness is gone, the light approaches."

Many years ago, the learned Sir William Jones said:

"We must not be surprised at finding, on a close examination, that the characters of all the Pagan deities, male and female, melt into each other, and at last into one or two; for it seems as well founded opinion, that the whole crowd of gods and goddesses of ancient Rome, and modern Varanes, mean only the powers of nature, and principally those of the SUN, expressed in a variety of ways, and by a multitude of fanciful names.

1 "In the Vedas, the Sun has twenty different names, not pure equivalents, but each term descriptive of the Sun in one of its aspects. It is brilliant (Sûrya), the friend (Mitra), generous (Aryaman), beneficent (Bhaga), that

which nourishes (Pushna), the Creator (Tvash-
tar), the master of the sky (Divaspati), and so
on."
(Rev. S. Baring-Gould: Orig. Relig.
Belief, vol. i. p. 150.)

2 Asiatic Researches, vol. 1. p. 267.