rathon and Salamis. Directly that reflection enters, the formation of myths and the belief in myths ceases: myths disappear like the stars of night before the clear day of historic consciousness. A few anecdotes may still occur, connected with great personalities, legendary features, fabulous tales, superstitions and conscious deceptions, but a mythical world cannot be thought of. Next let us view the age in which the Gospels were composed. It was a time of special intellectual activity, of unbelief and doubt, viewing myths as Plato and Cicero regarded them, as nothing but a play of the poetical faculty. Mythism is only possible with a people that does not yet know any writing-which Livy describes as the true guardian of history-a people that has neither history nor chronology. The appearance of Christianity was at a time when an historical consciousness and historical knowledge were everywhere lively and active; when Greece had a Thucydides, Rome a Livy and Tacitus, Palestine a Josephus Flavius, and, centuries before him, the Maccabees, and when all the surrounding countries-Egypt, Phoenicia, Chaldæa-had their historians. In such an age there may be untruths, intentional inventions, but no myths, the offspring of unartificial poetic legends. And such was the time when the Gospels arose. Moreover, the formation of myths is the result of a lengthy, gradually-producing activity; scarcely had a generation passed from the death of Christ, when the Gospels appeared; they were universally attested at the middle and end of the second century, in the most different regions of the world, in Gaul, in Asia Minor, in Alexandria, and at Rome.

The apostles lived to the end of the first century, especially St. John, at a time when, according to the account of the prætor Pliny, Christianity was universally diffused in Asia Minor. In the year A.D. 137 the Gospels were already in existence and universally known. Homer's poem appears at the earliest, two hundred years after the Fall of Troy. Never were the Gospels accused of being a made-up production, either by Christians, Jews, or heathens. Quadratus says: "The facts of the biography of our Saviour had an enduring basis, for they had reality. To show this I appeal to those healed, those raised from the dead, and who were alive after the Ascension of our Saviour, so that some of them have remained to our time." Quadratus lived at the beginning of the second century, and would not then witnesses have contradicted the Gospels if they contained anything false?

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The Evangelic history cannot be a myth, because the character of the mythical and Evangelic narrative exclude each other. Mythus bears everywhere a local and national impress, because it is the reflex of national life, and of its instinctive activity. The contents of the Gospel affect the whole of humanity and in great measure contradict the views of the age and of the people among whom they arise. Mythus knows no chronology; it forgets and mixes up times, places, and persons. On the other hand, in the Gospels appears the minutest exactness in the order of time; everywhere the actions of the life of Jesus agree with the general march of the world's history, so that the narrative in the Gospels is fully borne out by the events occurring in the pagan history of Palestine at the time.

CHAPTER LII.

TACITUS, SUETONIUS, PLINY, JOSEPHUS.

BUT the heathens and the Jews were to stamp the truth and Divinity of Christianity, without knowing it. The superscription on the Cross was in three languages, and we have the evidence of non-Christian writers in these three languages to the truth of Gospel history.

We have first Tacitus the relative of Roman emperors, who in his immortal annals wrote the history of Jesus Christ, in a few words, in fact, in three lines, but of such weight that they are comparable to a lapidary inscription, having the exactness of This document a public record, giving name, place, and year. relating to Jesus Christ, appeared in the capital of the world. Tacitus became thus an evangelist, and his "Annals" are a second Gospel. Now what does Tacitus testify?

Nero had probably himself set Rome on fire, in order that, looking down from a high tower over the ocean of flames, he might have an image of the siege of Troy. This occurred A.d. 64, scarcely thirty years after the death of Christ. Nero in order to remove the obloquy from himself, accused others of setting fire to the city. We continue in the words of Tacitus : "In order to crush this report, he accused others of being guilty of the fire, and punished with refined tortures those who are commonly called Christians, and who were hated on account of their crimes. This name has its rise from Christ, who, under

the reign of Tiberius, had been punished with death by the procurator Pontius Pilate. Their superstition, repressed for a moment, broke out afresh, not only in Judæa, where this evil had arisen, but also at Rome. At first they seized those who acknowledged that they were Christians, afterwards an immense multitude were accused by judicial inquiry, not only as guilty of the fire, but because they were hated by the whole human race."

The principal contents of the Gospel relate to the year when Christianity was founded, the character of Christ's doctrines, and their wonderful diffusion. And we find all this in Tacitus.

The account is confirmed by his contemporary, the Roman historian Suetonius, who relates that on account of Christ, a powerful movement arose among the Jews, and that the Emperor Claudius had driven them out of Rome on that account: this occurred twenty years after the death of Christ.* Suetonius states further that the Christians were martyred under Nero, because they adhered to a new and pernicious superstition.t

Who then was this Christ? Seventy years after His death, Pliny, procurator of Bithynia, and friend of the Emperor Trajan, gives the following information after a judicial inquiry. He says: "This superstition has spread everywhere, in towns, in villages, and in the country; the temples of the gods are deserted, and they have long ceased to offer sacrifices to them. I caused a few women to be seized, who are called deaconnesses, and placed on the rack, but I found nothing, save an excess of pernicious superstition. . . . They stated that they met before dawn to sing a hymn to Christ, as to their God." Pliny admits their exalted morality, which, differing so entirely from the views of the Romans, appears to him as madness and unbending obstinacy.‡ How uniform is the testimony of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny! Then as to the Greeks. Three years after Christ, was born Flavius Josephus, by birth and religion a Jew, by education and training, a Greek, who wrote the history of the Jewish people. He speaks in it of John the Baptist, mentions his preaching, his virtues, and his violent death; he speaks of James the Apostle, whom he calls the brother (or cousin) of Jesus, who is named Christ. To continue in his words: "At that time, lived Jesus, a wise man, if he ought to be styled a man, for he performed. wonderful works, a teacher of men who hear the truth with joy. He had many disciples who followed him, as well among the Jews as the Greeks. This was the Christ (Messiah). After that Pilate, on the accusation of the chief authorities of our people, * Taciti Annal. xv. 38, 44. ↑ Suet. Nero Claud. xvi. Ep. xcvii.

caused him to be crucified, this did not prevent his disciples from continuing to love him. He appeared to them, alive, three days after his death, because the divine prophets had foretold this and many other wonders, and this race of Christians still exist and is called after him."*

But the Jewish people was also to bear witness to the truth of the history of Christ, while rejecting it. Thus the Talmud a most remarkable work, containing the oldest traditions of the Jewish people, and originating before the birth of Christ, attests in the Sanhedrin Treatise : "On the evening before Easter, Jesus was hanged, because he had practised sorcery, had perverted the people of Israel, and led it after a strange religion. . . As nothing was found in his justification, they hanged him on the evening before Easter." This sorcery, according to the Talmud, he had learnt in Egypt.

...

Let us now sum up all the proofs and present them in brief. Twelve fishermen, Galilæans, are by sceptics supposed to have invented the conception of Jesus, and on it to have founded this immense structure of Christianity, the highest and most perfect in knowledge and morals that the world has ever seen! Twelve men of the lowest class, without any culture, are represented as having conceived and carried out what Plato and Aristotle, the wisest pagans, had scarcely dreamed of! And then for this fiction, this ideal, which was never a real existence, millions on millions of martyrs would have shed their blood, or suffered as confessors in a life of entire self-denial and hardest sacrifice! We are to suppose that this was a fantastic conception, at which the fathers of the Church, and the wisest and deepest thinkers for 2000 years nourished their souls, that poured an inexhaustible supply of new ideas and powers into the sinking world, and worked its regeneration.

CHAPTER LIII.

THE PAGAN WORLD.

AND what was this pagan world, through which the light of the Gospel broke, as an effulgent sunshine piercing through the darkness of a polar winter? All was united in it that could move the mind of man, and produce the effect of the venerable. The world of heathen ideas was stamped on the mind of the people, * Antiq. Jud. xviii. 3.

sucked in with the milk of infancy, striking the deepest roots in their souls-the sacred inheritance from their fathers, regarded as the condition of their greatness, and the basis of the empire. Rome was indebted to its religion for universal empire.

The trophies of the victor were laid at the feet of the gods. The temples were filled with grateful inscriptions recording their protection, and many places were pointed out where they had interfered in favour of the people by their supposed miracles. The piety of the Romans to their gods was indissolubly united with the love of their country. Death on the battle-field was a sacrifice to the gods. Military operations were subject to the decisions of augurs and soothsayers; the very camp was a temple, and civil life was similarly interwoven with religious rites blending with political duties. All institutions and choice of dignities were conducted by religious forms. Under the later empire a new form of religion appeared in the actual worship of the emperors. Accordingly not to offer sacrifice to the emperor was at once high treason and sacrilege.

No wonder, then, that the appearance of a new religion, subversive of paganism, must appear the most terrible calamity for the republic. Soon the belief spread among the heathen that the Christians were to blame for all their misfortunes, which were inflicted on the state by the wrath of the gods because their service was abandoned.

Everything seemed to have united to rivet paganism permanently on the nations. To the other reasons adduced above we have to add that most powerful of arguments, human corruption and the indulgence of the passions, sanctioned by the example of the gods. The pagan religion had consecrated the passions; divine service had become a worship of the senses.

The apostles stood up in a world like this, teaching the most sublime morality, with restrictions that seemed impossible to the natural man, requiring self-denial, mortification, sacrifice, condemning revenge, insisting on brotherly love, pointing to a future life, and promising no reward in this life.

And the adherents of these supernatural views, offering nothing to attract the natural man, had to attack a system adorned with all that could flatter the senses, and belonged to a race of hated and despised foreigners and Jews, consisting chiefly of the most abject classes and slaves. Accordingly, in their nightly assemblies (held to avoid danger by day) they were accused of being the greatest of criminals-thieves, poisoners, desecrators of temples and graves, etc.