doors; how railways and telegraphs were denounced from a few noted pulpits as heralds of Antichrist; and how in Protestant England the curate of Rotherhithe, at the breaking in of the Thames Tunnel, so destructive to life and property, declared it from his pulpit a just judgment upon the presumptuous aspirations of mortal man.

The same tendency is seen in the opposition of conscientious men to the taking of the census in Sweden and the United States, on account of the terms in which the numbering of Israel is spoken of in the Old Testament. Religious scruples on similar grounds have also been avowed against so beneficial a thing as life insurance.

Apparently unimportant as these manifestations are, they indicate a widespread tendency; in the application of scriptural declarations to matters of social economy, which has not yet ceased, though it is fast fading away.*

Worthy of especial study, too, would be the evolution of the modern methods of raising and bettering the condition of the poor,--the evolution, especially, of the idea that men are to be helped to help themselves, in opposition to the old theories of indiscriminate giving, which, taking root in some of the most beautiful utterances of our sacred books, grew in the warm atmosphere of medieval devotion into.

* For various interdicts laid on commerce by the Church, see Heyd, Histoire du Commerce du Levant au Moyen-Âge, Leipsic, 1886, vol. ii, passim. For the injury done to commerce by prohibition of intercourse with the infidel, see Lindsay, History of Merchant Shipping, London, 1874, vol. ii. For superstitions regarding the introduction of the potato in Russia, and the name "devil's root" given it, see Hellwald, Culturgeschichte, vol. ii, p. 476; also Haxthausen, La Russie. For opposition to winnowing machines, see Burton, History of Scotland, vol. viii, p. 511; also Lecky, Eighteenth Century, vol. ii, p. 83; also Mause Headrigg's views in Scott's Old Mortality, chap. vii. For the case of a person debarred from the communion for "raising the devil's wind" with a winnowing machine, see Works of Sir J. Y. Simpson, vol. ii. Those doubting the authority or motives of Simpson may be reminded that he was to the day of his death one of the strictest adherents to Scotch orthodoxy. As to the curate of Rotherhithe, see Journal of Sir I. Brunel for May 20, 1827, in Life of I. K. Brunel, p. 30. As to the conclusions drawn from the numbering of Israel, see Michaelis, Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, 1874, vol. ii, p. 3. The author of this work himself witnessed the reluctance of a very conscientious man to answer the questions of a census marshal, Mr. Lewis Hawley, of Syracuse, N. Y.; and this reluctance was based upon the reasons assigned in II Samuel xxiv, 1, and I Chronicles xxi, I, for the numbering of the children of Israel.

great systems for the pauperizing of the labouring classes. Here, too, scientific modes of thought in social science have given a new and nobler fruitage to the whole growth of Christian benevolence.*

Among the vast number of authorities regarding the evolution of better methods in dealing with pauperism, I would call attention to a work which is especially suggestive-Behrends, Christianity and Socialism, New York, 1886.

CHAPTER XX.

FROM THE DIVINE ORACLES TO THe higheR CRITICISM.

I. THE OLDER INTERPRETATION.

THE great sacred books of the world are the most precious of human possessions. They embody the deepest searchings into the most vital problems of humanity in all its stages: the naïve guesses of the world's childhood, the opening conceptions of its youth, the more fully rounded beliefs of its maturity.

These books, no matter how unhistorical in parts and at times, are profoundly true. They mirror the evolution of man's loftiest aspirations, hopes, loves, consolations, and enthusiasms; his hates and fears; his views of his origin and destiny; his theories of his rights and duties; and these not merely in their lights but in their shadows. Therefore it is that they contain the germs of truths most necessary in the evolution of humanity, and give to these germs the environment and sustenance which best insure their growth and strength.

With wide differences in origin and character, this sacred literature has been developed and has exercised its influence in obedience to certain general laws. First of these in time, if not in importance, is that which governs its origin: in all civilizations we find that the Divine Spirit working in the mind of man shapes his sacred books first of all out of the chaos of myth and legend; and of these books, when life is thus breathed into them, the fittest survive.

So broad and dense is this atmosphere of myth and legend enveloping them that it lingers about them after they have been brought forth full-orbed; and, sometimes, from it are

even produced secondary mythical and legendary concretions-satellites about these greater orbs of early thought. Of these secondary growths one may be mentioned as showing how rich in myth-making material was the atmosphere which enveloped our own earlier sacred literature.

In the third century before Christ there began to be elaborated among the Jewish scholars of Alexandria, then the great centre of human thought, a Greek translation of the main books constituting the Old Testament. Nothing could be more natural at that place and time than such a translation; yet the growth of explanatory myth and legend around it was none the less luxuriant. There was indeed a twofold growth. Among the Jews favourable to the new version a legend rose which justified it. This legend in its first stage was to the effect that the Ptolemy then on the Egyptian throne had, at the request of his chief librarian, sent to Jerusalem for translators; that the Jewish high priest Eleazar had sent to the king a most precious copy of the Scriptures from the temple at Jerusalem, and six most venerable, devout, and learned scholars from each of the twelve tribes of Israel; that the number of translators thus corresponded with the mysterious seventy-two appellations of God; and that the combined efforts of these seventy-two men produced a marvellously perfect translation.

But in that atmosphere of myth and marvel the legend continued to grow, and soon we have it blooming forth yet more gorgeously in the statement that King Ptolemy ordered each of the seventy-two to make by himself a full translation of the entire Old Testament, and shut up each translator in a separate cell on the island of Pharos, secluding him there until the work was done; that the work of each was completed in exactly seventy-two days; and that when, at the end of the seventy-two days, the seventy-two translations were compared, each was found exactly like all the others. This showed clearly Jehovah's approval.

But out of all this myth and legend there was also evolved an account of a very different sort. The Jews who remained faithful to the traditions of their race regarded this Greek version as a profanation, and therefore there grew up the legend that on the completion of the work there was dark

ness over the whole earth during three days. This showed clearly Jehovah's disapproval.

These well-known legends, which arose within what-as compared with any previous time-was an exceedingly enlightened period, and which were steadfastly believed by a vast multitude of Jews and Christians for ages, are but single examples among scores which show how inevitably such traditions regarding sacred books are developed in the earlier stages of civilization, when men explain everything by miracle and nothing by law.*

As the second of these laws governing the evolution of sacred literature may be mentioned that which we have constantly seen so effective in the growth of theological ideas -that to which Comte gave the name of the Law of Wills and Causes. Obedient to this, man attributes to the Supreme Being a physical, intellectual, and moral structure like his own; hence it is that the votary of each of the great world religions ascribes to its sacred books what he considers absolute perfection: he imagines them to be what he himself would give the world, were he himself infinitely good, wise, and powerful.

A very simple analogy might indeed show him that even a literature emanating from an all-wise, beneficent, and powerful author might not seem perfect when judged by a human standard; for he has only to look about him in the world to find that the work which he attributes to an allwise, all-beneficent, and all-powerful Creator is by no means. free from evil and wrong.

But this analogy long escapes him, and the exponent of each great religion proves to his own satisfaction, and to the edification of his fellows, that their own sacred literature is absolutely accurate in statement, infinitely profound in mean

*For the legend regarding the Septuagint, especially as developed by the letters of Pseudo-Aristeas, and for quaint citations from the fathers regarding it, see The History of the Seventy-two Interpretators, from the Greek of Aristeas, translated by Mr. Lewis, London, 1715; also Clement of Alexandria, in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Edinburgh, 1867, p. 448. For interesting summaries showing the growth of the story, see Drummond, Philo Judeus and the Growth of the Alexandrian Philosophy, London, 1888, vol. i, pp. 231 et seq.; also Renan, Histoire du Peuple Israel, vol. iv, chap. iv; also, for Philo Judæus's part in developing the legend, see Rev. Dr. Sanday's Bampton Lectures for 1893, on Inspiration, pp. 86, 87.