LECTURE II.

OUR examination, in the last Lecture, of Dr. Strauss's Introductory Chapter, has put us in possession of his general principle in regard to the character and structure of the gospel narratives; and we are now in a condition to proceed with his specific applications of that principle to the details of them. I may remind you that we found, in the theological literature of Germany, three distinct schools of anti-supernaturalism each as clearly marked off from the other two as they all are together from supernaturalist orthodoxy. First, there are those anti-supernaturalists who regard the miracles as frauds, and the workers of them as conscious deceivers: this school is represented in German literature by the Wolfenbüttel Fragments. Secondly, there are those who take the Scripture narratives as real, honest histories of real events-those events, however, coloured by the opinions of the witnesses and the narrators, and exhibited, after the Hebrew mode, in a costume of supernaturalist idea and phraseology; and who hold it accordingly the great business of the interpreter to re-translate the supernatural into the natural, to separate fact from opinion, and strip bare the actuality which Orientalism has veiled in marvel: of this school the two greatest names are Eichhorn and Paulus. And thirdly, there are those who take the miracles and much else in Scripture, not as history at all, but as poetry, fable, mythus, having but an indirect and usually unascertainable relation to fact of any kind; as having a root in ideas rather than in facts; as symbols of a religious faith rather than transcripts of an historical reminiscence: of this school is Dr. Strauss.

The difference between these two last-named descriptions of anti-supernaturalist theology—the historical and the mythical-is obviously a radical one. It is characteristic of the

historical school to rate high the antiquity of the books of Scripture, and explain their supernaturalism in detail, by tracing each separate miracle to a root in natural fact. It is characteristic of the mythical school to rate low the antiquity of the books of Scripture, to doubt their pretensions to the character of authentic histories, and explain their supernaturalism in the general by reference to the ideas of which it is symbolically expressive. According to the former, for instance, the Gift of Tongues at the Pentecost was a matter of fact, noted by a contemporary historian: there was the sound from heaven, the rushing mighty wind, with a something that might be taken for tongues of fire; and there was the strange impulsive eloquence, the gift of a new speech, at which the dwellers in Jerusalem marvelled; all these things really were, then and there-only they were not miracles, but natural phenomena, in which the rude science and strong faith of the time and the men saw a divine agency and felt a divine inspiration-this is the historico-rationalist account of the matter. According to the mythical view, nothing of all this ever happened, either on the day of Pentecost or on any other day; the whole is fiction together, the sort of fiction called mythus, a poetical expression of the ideas of a somewhat later time respecting apostolic inspiration and its sources. rushing mighty wind symbolised the breathing of the spirit of God, and the tongues of fire the burning eloquence that melted stony hearts—an eloquence wide and manifold in its working as it was resistlessly piercing, intelligible to that common heart of humanity which is the same in all of us, Parthian, Mede and Elamite, Jew and Gentile-breaking down every partition-wall of nationality, and making all one in the power of a common sympathy and a common faith ;the whole localised at Jerusalem, because from Jerusalem the word of the Lord went forth; and timed at the Pentecost, because of the poetical fitness there was in beginning the harvest of the world at the feast of first-fruits, in dating the promulgation of the new law on the festive anniversary of the giving of the old law: this is the mythical view of the matter. It was the baptism of the holy spirit and of fire rendered into

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poetry, enshrined in legend, that the church universal through all time might see how that was fulfilled which had been spoken by the prophet Joel.' This mythical anti-supernaturalism is adopted by Dr. Strauss in its fullest extent, and his "Life of Jesus" is an elaborate application of it to the details of the four gospels.

There is a passage towards the close of our Author's Introduction, defining the nature and sources of the Evangelic Mythus, which I will give you in his own words:

"By an Evangelic Mythus, I understand a narration, relating directly or indirectly to Jesus, which we may more or less regard as expressing not an historical fact, but an idea of his earliest followers. The Mythus, thus defined, will meet us, here as elsewhere, sometimes in its pure form, as the substance of a narration, sometimes mixed, as an accretion to an actual history.

"The pure Evangelic Mythus will have two sources; which, however, generally speaking, will be found to run into one another, and to co-operate, though in varying proportions, in forming the mythical product. The one of these sources is the Messianic idea or expectation, already existing in the Jewish mind before Jesus and independently of him: the other is the peculiar impression which the character and fate, the personality of Jesus left behind him to modify that Messianic idea. For instance, the account of the Transfiguration has flowed almost entirely from the former of these sources; with this single modification taken from the latter, that they who appeared with Jesus on the Mount' spake of his decease.' On the other hand, the rending of the vail of the temple at the death of Jesus seems altogether to have sprung from the relation which he, and his church after him, sustained to the Jewish temple-worship. Since, in this case, something historical, though merely a general feature of character or position, is the source of the mythus, we are thus conducted to the

Historical (or mixed) mythus; which is that of which a definite individual fact supplies the ground-work-such fact, however, acted upon by the Christian inspiration, and consequently cased in mythical accretions. Such a fact is, sometimes, a discourse of Jesus; such, for example, as that about the fishers of men,' and the parable of the barren fig-tree, which now lie before us transmuted into miraculous acts. Sometimes it is an actual transaction or event from his

life; for instance, the mythical traits in the account of the Baptism are connected with an actuality: some of the miracles, too, may have had their ground-work in natural occurrences, which the narrative has either exhibited in a supernatural light, or enriched with features of supernaturalism."

Such is our Author's definition of the Evangelic Mythus, its nature and sources. The practical rule which he adopts in ascertaining the mythical element of a gospel narrative, and the kind of test which he uses in this analysis, are stated in the following canon of criticism:

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Where not only the particular external mode of an occurrence is critically suspicious (as when it runs over incidentally into the marvellous), but the ultimate inner nature, the kernel and groundwork of it, is either inconceivable in itself, or in striking affinity to the Messianic idea of the Jews of that age-then not only the particular alleged form of the transaction, but the whole substance of it together, must be held unhistorical. Where, on the other hand, only the form of a narration bears unhistorical characteristics, but not the narration itself in its essential contents, there it is at least possible to suppose a nucleus of historical fact; although whether such fact actually was, and what it was, we never can confidently say, unless it be discoverable from other sources. It is less difficult, in dealing with traditionary or embellished narrations, by abstracting those features of them which palpably bear the mark of false picturesqueness, exaggeration, and the like-by eliminating extraneous ingredients, and filling in hiatuses-to arrive (proximately at least) at the historical ground-work.

"The boundary-line, however, between the historical and the unhistorical, in narratives which, like our gospels, have a tincture of this latter in their composition, must ever remain fluctuating and unsusceptible of precise ascertainment. Least of all can it be expected that the first comprehensive attempt to treat these narratives from the critical point of view should be successful in drawing that line sharply and clearly. In the obscurity which criticism has produced by the extinction of all lights hitherto held historical, the eye must train itself gradually, by practice, to discriminate objects with precision; and the Author of this work would expressly guard himself against being supposed, in any case, to assert that nothing happened, merely because he declares that he does not know what happened."

With these views of what it is that he is likely to find in the gospel histories, and these laws of inquiry to govern him in the search, Dr. Strauss proceeds to examine in detail the phenomena which those histories exhibit. The first great division of his work is entitled "The History of the Birth and Childhood of Jesus:" and I take this for the subject of the present Lecture. All this portion of the gospel narratives is so rich in illustrative instances of the mythical, that we shall find it worthy of a degree of attention to which its intrinsic importance might scarcely entitle it. To understand well this 'Gospel of the Nativity,' will give us a firm hold of principles which we shall find exceedingly useful in our after-inquiries.

It may be proper to observe at the outset, that there does not seem to be any adequate critical ground for rejecting the initial chapters of Matthew and Luke (so calling them for brevity's sake) as spurious-cutting them out of the canon, or printing them in italics. The first and second chapters of these two gospels are just as canonical, for anything we really know to the contrary, as all the rest of them. The supposed evidence against them is of the slightest and flimsiest texture; amounting to no more than second-hand ecclesiastical hearsay, that certain individuals or sects, of whose means of judging and grounds of judging we are uninformed, did not receive these chapters into their copies-that is all: all the manuscripts have them, all the ancient versions have them, exactly as we have them. So that if we find, in these initial chapters, palpably irrational and false things, the inference is not that Evangelists did not write these chapters, but rather that Evangelists did write irrational and false things; that the prefixed names of Matthew and Luke are no warranty for rationality and truth. Here then, on the very threshold of the early Christian literature, we may look for indications of the influences that formed that literature, and the elements that entered into its composition; we may see what sort of a world we are coming into—whether an historical or a poetical world.

A very general allusion to the contents of these initial chapters of Matthew and Luke-(I may here say, once for all,