forty years; tempted by hunger, as Israel was before him; tempted to presumptuous sin, as Israel was before him; tempted to tempt God, as Israel was before him (according to the idiom of the familiar text, "Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years"); tempted to devil-worship, or idolatry, as Israel was before him; tempted by the devil, in Scripture-texts, as Abraham was before him, according to the rabbis; victorious through all, like himself, Messiah of God as he was, come to destroy the works of the devil-and then ministered unto by angels, as angels ministered unto Elijah.

And if, in this Temptation in the Wilderness, there is mythical fitness for the Hebrew fancy, still more is there moral truth in it for the common human heart. It is all true, every word of it. The parallelism of type and antitype still holds. We are all tempted, to this hour, very much after the similitude of Christ's temptation. The Wilderness and the Devil are still with us: many devils there are, busy and crafty ones, as many as are our greeds, our vanities, and our ambitions. They know where and when to find us. With the sagacity of true devil-nature, they ask little and promise much—only fall down and worship them, and they will give us all things. Well for him who has one short answer for them all-the stern, prompt 'Get thee hence, Satan,' of a heart true to the One True, and serving only Him. The victory of the principles brings, now as then, the repose of the affections:angels of heaven they are, visiting the very wilderness itself with food for the worn and wearied Son of God.

LECTURE IV.

BEFORE going to the main subject of this Lecture the Miracles of Christ's Public Life-I may mention one of Dr. Strauss's miscellaneous illustrations of the Evangelic Mythus, shewing the way in which fact shaped itself in the traditions of the early church, and clothed itself in mythical imagery out of the ever-ready wardrobe of Old-Testament legend. I allude to the gospel accounts of the Calling of the Apostles. We are told by the first two evangelists that,' as Jesus walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew, casting a net into the sea (for they were fishers), and he said unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men; and straightway they left their nets and followed him.' And, a little further on, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them; and straightway they left the ship and their father, and followed him.' And we also read elsewhere, that Jesus saw a man named Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom; and he said unto him, Follow me; and he arose, left all, and followed him.' All this strikes one as singular-this unexplained readiness of fishermen and publicans to leave their nets and fishing, their parents, their posts of public duty, and their unsettled public accounts, on the brief verbal summons even of a prophet. Professor Paulus, indeed, has a very short solution at hand, as regards the call of Matthew. He thinks that the 'Follow me' was simply an intimation to the Publican (who had invited Jesus to a feast that day) that the morning's work was over, and that the Prophet was ready to accompany his entertainer home, and partake of his hospitalities-Follow me, I have done now, and am ready to go: though in that case, as Strauss remarks, the more polite and

appropriate phrase would have been, I will follow thee,' rather than the short, peremptory Follow me.' The true explanation of the matter is to be found, as usual, in the Old Testament, where we have a not inapt precedent for the whole story: Elijah found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen before him, and he with the twelfth; and Elijah passed by him, and cast his mantle upon him; and he left the oxen, and ran after Elijah, and said, Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee; and he said unto him, Go back again' and he returned for a while, and afterwards 'he arose, and went after Elijah.' This is the Hebrew model of a 'Follow me;' the type of a prophet's summons to his disciple and successor. There is fine suggestiveness in it. It is rich in the poetry of contrast: on the one side, the coarse material handicraft and its implements, the plough, the oxen, the nets, the fishes, the seat of custom-on the other, prophetic inspiration and authority, fishing of men, thrones in the kingdom of God. The type would not be lost sight of; and when evangelists came to write of the Calling of the Apostles, they would perfectly well know how to do it. There was the material form ready-made for the moral fact. The fishermenapostles at their nets and fishing, the publican-apostle at the receipt of custom, would hear and obey, like Elisha at his plough, the divine Follow me.' With a difference, however: the obedience would be prompt and unquestioning. There must be no saying 'Let me go back this once to my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee,' or 'I must prove my new-bought yoke of oxen, and then I will follow thee;' that would not do for Apostles of the Christ; they left all straightway-ship, nets, father, and receipt of custom-and immediately followed him. It is sufficiently plain here, what is fact, and what mythical embellishment. The fact was, that Jesus had followers, some of whom had once been fishermen, and another a publican: the rest is poetry, fact crystallised into mythus.

The number of the apostles, again—twelve, neither more nor less, with seventy of lower degree-this has a somewhat

mythical look, when one remembers the twelve tribes of Israel; the seventy elders of Israel, coadjutors of Moses, upon whom the Lord put the spirit of prophecy; the seventy members of the Sanhedrim, too: to which Strauss adds that, according to rabbinical and early Christian notion, there were seventy Gentile nations and languages. Now one can hardly imagine Christ making up a college of apostles, like a college of cardinals, by the rule of this mystic arithmetic: the poetical proprieties of it shew pretty plainly that it belongs to the world of poetry. It fits in so very well: twelve apostles for the twelve tribes of Israel, seventy disciples for the seventy nations of heathendom-teachers and preachers for the Jew first, and for the Gentile also. There was no resisting this. And then it might have been all true, for anything that was known or remembered to the contrary. The Christ really had been followed by a chosen few, who were with him in life and carried on his work after death-perhaps somewhere about twelve of them there might have been; and there had been many others, in relations to him, more or less direct, of spiritual affinity and discipleship—you could not be far wrong in taking these at somewhere about seventy. And it is curious that the evangelists give, in part, different names in their lists of the Twelve: they did not quite well know who the twelve were, but they were quite sure that there were twelve. I think all this, however unimportant in itself, casts light upon the structure and growth of an evangelic mythus. The Follow me' and the 'leaving all straightway,' the mystical Twelve and the mystical Seventy-just mean that Jesus had disciples, in different degrees of personal and spiritual nearness to him, some of whom had once been fishermen, and one a publican.

We now proceed to the Miracles of Christ's Public Life. To this large and complex question Dr. Strauss devotes fourteen sections of close analytical disquisition; classifying the miracles according to their leading characteristics, taking each class separately, and dealing in detail with its most remarkable specimens. I shall make no attempt to follow him through all the minutiæ of his inquiry; but shall simply endeavour to

put you in possession of his general view respecting the gospel miracles, with so much of detailed illustration as this may require.

The books called Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John-those documents of unknown authorship and date, of which we know little more than that we find them, in distinctly recognised and established literary being, during the latter half of the second century-describe Jesus of Nazareth as a Miraculous Man; the subject of miracles, and the worker of miracles; born miraculously, under the auspices of the angel Gabriel, with a miraculous star shining on his infant head; thrice declared Son of God, by voice from the sky; tempted of the devil in a wilderness after a six-weeks' fast; turning water into wine, healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, giving sight to the blind and strength to the crippled, by a word or a touch; exorcising demons out of men, and sending them into swine; feeding famished multitudes with a few loaves and fishes; walking on the surface of water; giving fishermen miraculous draughts of fishes-fishes even with money in their mouths; blasting a fig-tree with perpetual barrenness; raising the dead; shone upon with preternatural brightness, and holding converse with Moses and Elijah; reappearing after death; and finally vanishing in a cloud, and ascending into heaven.

This is the account which the gospels give of Jesus of Nazareth. And on this, two questions arise; or rather, one great question arises, with another behind it ready to arise in the event of a negative being put upon the former. First, is all this mass of prodigy historically, objectively true? And secondly, if untrue, what is the source and nature of its untruth? is it mistake (the notion of fraud being out of the question), or is it poetry? The first of these questions is that at issue between the supernaturalists and the anti-supernaturalists: the second is the question at issue between the two schools of anti-supernaturalism-the rationalist and the critical, as they call them in Germany; the one represented by Professor Paulus, and the other by Dr. Strauss.

The first question about the miracles of the Christian bio