historic religious language—the language of myth. But is there anybody who ventures to claim that he has any proof of such antiquity? Our grandfathers did not put these documents that far into the past, and modern scholarship has pushed them in the other direction. The race history dates doubtless from prehistoric time, but these documents date from a time comparatively recent.1 Nor does anyone suppose they were a copy of prehistoric documents. If such ancient mythical material were used the writer did his best to eliminate all appearance of having used it, and he succeeded remarkably. All parties acknowledge this. But this emphasizes our second objection. The Hebrew race because of its monotheism -which was its life from its earliest historic appearance-was dead set against every heathen myth. No one claims that this is a myth which the Hebrews originated. If it is here it is borrowed material. But while heathen nations might borrow some of these "struggles of the gods," the followers of the jealous Jehovah would have died rather than do this knowingly. Did the writer not know, then, of these similar Babylonian stories? How could he have escaped this knowledge? At every date which scholars mention as the probable period when these narratives were written the Hebrews, as we now know, were in close touch with Babylonian literature. Every new discovery in Palestine illustrates this. But these myths were the most popular of all cuneiform writings. Wherever the Babylonians went they went. There is positive evidence from Scripture that the serpent dragon of Babylon was known to the Hebrews (Job 26. 12; Isa. 51. 9); but surely when one considers how closely and constantly these peoples were thrown

This is an important point. It is a popular method now to interpret this record as if its origin dated from an era when beasts were thought of as "more cunning than men" (Gunkel); being able to speak like men and think better than men; the man of that period being interested only in the problem of physical, not moral, evil (Wellhausen); or at any rate, considering moral accountability as "a troublesome power" which Jehovah was sorry to see him obtain (Piepenbring). Altogether the narrative is very religious but not true" (Driver) and the myth more pessimistic" than even that of Babylon; since Jehovah did not want man to rise above the animals or win knowledge (Jastrow). But all this is a guess, from certain terms used in the narrative, and certainly was not in the mind of the man who actually wrote the document as we possess it. He was a man of culture, who used elegant Hebrew and lived (as is acknowledged) in days of religious reflection and synthesis. But could such a man at such an era have left such low teaching in his revised manuscript? Even prehistoric myth-making man was no moral idiot. Prof. Sabatier has well said that for primitive man to create a myththat is to catch a glimpse of a higher truth behind a palpable reality-is the most manifest sign of the greatness of the human soul, and the proof of a faculty of infinite growth and development." Many of these myths symbolize profound truth. The struggle between light and darkness, for example, which is pictured in almost every race still appears to us the best possible symbol of the antagonism between good and evil. But this modern man was not recording an ancient myth. He was teaching religion to his own age in the language to which it was accustomed.

together during the literary era of Israel the opposite theory becomes incredible. We can be very sure, therefore, that the Genesis writer did not invent this myth, if it is here (it was long past the myth-making age); he did not think he was using heathen myth (to do that would be to prove himself a heathen); yet in all probability he was acquainted with the Babylonian stories, so remarkably similar to these, which recent archæology shows were current in his locality at all the chief epochs of Israel's literary activity-but evidently he did not consider these similarities to be, in any true sense, characteristic marks of the heathen mythology. Finally, let it be noted that the internal evidences upon which modern scholars-like Driver, Gunkel, and the restground their claims that this narrative rests upon a mythical base do not substantiate this hypothesis. The style, calm, pure, brief, reserved, differs in a marked way from that of all other mythical narratives. The central thought is absolutely opposed to the universal mythical thought. The general contents are also diametrically different. All the evidence of myth in the account rests wholly upon a few words which seem to have a philological connection with certain characters of the Babylonian mythology and upon the appearance here of the serpent, a tree, fruit, cherubim, etc. But we have explained the presence of these literary pictographs. This was a part of the widespread language of symbol which was being used by all nations on the same level of culture throughout the literary world. It is wholly inconsistent, merely because of a verbal terminology which is confessedly late— tehom and bohu are used elsewhere even in Scripture with a welldefined impersonal meaning-and because of a symbolic terminology which is found both in the earlier and later periods among all Semitic peoples as a common form of rhetorical speech-being used not only in mythical but other literature--to jump at the conclusion that we have here at least the relic of a myth; although it is acknowledged that the most universally characteristic mythical feature (the God struggle) is absent from it. These narratives are not myths. They are simply written in the same symbolic vocabulary in which the myths were also written a vocabulary which for centuries was popular among all branches of the

Semitic and other ancient families. The garden, the tree, the fruit, these are not deftly-hidden thefts from a Babylonian God story. They are found in Phoenicia, Persia, India. Did these also borrow this particular myth? Is the serpent, as tempter, peculiar to this Hebrew story and some Babylonian myth from which it was borrowed so stealthily that no Hebrew ever suspected it? Not at all. There is no ancient nation in whose literature the serpent does not appear-and always as a symbol of evil or wisdom. That he appears as a "symbol" and not merely as a "personage" is proved from the fact that a number of characters in different myths in Babylon, and a number of individuals in very different environments and relations in Egypt and Persia, and many personages in other lands in widely separated myths and legends which have no possible unity of origin, are all represented by this same creature, which in each and every story maintains his character of the "evil" and the "wise." What stronger argument could be required to prove the symbolic character of this reptile, which can be seen crawling into every ancient religious tragedy as the enemy of the gods and of man? In a series of articles in the HOMILETIC REVIEW we have recently made an examination of the early Genesis narratives, and pointed out in detail how this method of interpretation relieves those narratives from all just criticism maintaining their integrity and the vividness of their far-reaching spiritual lessons, while at the same time preserving the simple pictorial sense which the first readers found

Does this not also help us to explain the astounding similarities between the early Christian terms ("salvation," "new birth," etc.) and rites (baptism, communion, confirmation) and those used in the Mysteries of Isis, Sabazius, and Mithros? The relation, as I see it, is chiefly verbal. It is absolutely inconceivable to me that the Christian leaders (as Renan and even Hatch admit) would deliberately borrow either rites or language from cults which they regarded as of diabolic origin. Is it not more reasonable to suppose that both Christianity and the Mysteries used a common and well-understood symbolic language-just as John Wesley and Thomas Paine used the same vocabulary even when expressing opposite views? So the Gnostic sect of Ophiks enticed a serpent (the world-wide symbol of wisdom) to coil about the sacramental bread, and in several early Christian Church buildings Christ is represented on the cross in the form of a serpent. I am inclined to believe that a good many of the strange parallelisms between Buddhism and Christianity may be explained in the same way. Why does not some scholar compile a Dictionary of Symbols, showing the exact meaning of each as used in the literature of each nation at each great library epoch? This passionate love of symbolic speech fills all early Christian literature. Melito, Bishop of Sardis (second century), gathered a list of many hundreds of animals, plants, and minerals which were symbols of Christian virtues. Down to the Middle Ages the Holy Spirit was represented as an eagle, Christ as a panther, etc. This is very Oriental. In Japan today the tea-table is to morals and philosophy what Plato's Academy was in Greece the position of the tea-grounds and everything else having symbolic significance-while the highest religious instruction is given by means of "the Three Exemplary Monkeys." So in India the most sacred teachings are enfolded in sentences and symbols as puzzling as any in the Apocalypse. Even Vivikananda (Raja Yoga, 1901), with all his effort to put his native faith in Western mold, urges those who desire knowledge to think of the lotus!" (Net comp. Moulton "Gram. N. T. Gk." 1906, pp. 84,102,

in them, and enabling us to be true to every discovery of modern times.1 The terminology, both verbal and symbolic, was the same as that used by the nations surrounding the Hebrew people, but the teaching was a worthy opening to the book whose first pages picture a paradise lost and whose closing pages picture a paradise regained. The pictures are counterparts. Both are painted with earthly and local pigments. Neither is literal; neither is mythical. Both are true, and both need to be interpreted by the language of symbolism current in their day.

While we have confined the illustration of our symbolic principle to the first Genesis narrative it is evident that, if our principle be admitted as true, it opens up a new and fruitful field of research, and ought to throw fresh and important light on the interpretation of several other Old Testament books, as well as upon the New Testament Apocalypse.

Camden M. Cabern

I have long felt that the Tabernacle and Temple were not simply to the Hebrews, but to all foreign visitors, constant picture lessons of high spiritual truth. We know now that in all the surrounding nations the architecture, dimensions, colors, building materials, priestly garments, etc., had a symbolic meaning. So it is quite possible that these early narratives of Genesis may have had a mission originally for some outside the Hebrew fold. Perhaps this Hebrew seer may have been another Jonah sent forth to preach the gospel of the one true God to the heathen-one who did not flee from his duty and was not, like so many of his countrymen, swallowed up by the Babylonian sea monster.

"One of the worst results, historically, following upon the loss of the old Oriental method of Scripture interpretation, is seen in the Augustinian doctrines of original depravity, predestination, etc., which in all their injustice and horror flowed logically from the interpretation of these Genesis narratives as literal history. Even Augustine felt it necessary to say we were all in that one man when we were all that one man who fell into sin," but the Hebrew, from the very name, knew "This is I" (adam, Man). That guilt came upon the race from a first man's first transgression no Jewish theologian ever taught. The idea that Adam, as an individual, was responsible for their sins, never occurred to any Oriental who ever read this account, for the very good reason that the Hebrew word itself explained its meaning as clearly as Bunyan's Mansoul explained his meaning. I fell in Adam not because I was in Adam but because Adam is in me; I am he, adam, the Man. So am I saved when Christ, the second Adam, comes into me and I am changed into his image. The Hebrews would not have been interested in Adam as a local individual, or in the Eden narrative as a local history. The Semite race has never seen a historian. Josephus may seem an exception but such an exception proves the rule-and it took the Hebrew race fifteen centuries to produce one successor to Josephus who even pretended to care for history as history. The Scripture writers when they attempt to give historic details do so, as is now universally acknowledged, with an accuracy never attained by other Orientals; but these matters were always illustrative. History became interesting only when it could be used didactically. The prophets had bigger business on hand than to write history. They referred to history, geography, chronology, and even to Nature itself, only when in their beautiful picture language they could turn these to sermonic purposes.

ART. III.-ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH

AMONG the most potent and beneficent influences in England during the decade from 1830 to 1840 were the teaching and the example of Thomas Arnold, Headmaster of Rugby school. The distinctively intellectual qualifications of Arnold for his work -his scholarship, his executive capacity, his stimulating methods of instruction, his vivid historical imagination-all these he himself considered subservient to the highest purpose of education: the formation of intelligent, independent moral character. His famous statement to his boys became the watchword of Rugby: "It is not necessary that this should be a school of three hundred, or one hundred, or even of fifty boys; but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen." And such he made it. It was not so much that he taught religion; rather that all his teaching was religious. He was not prone to religious introspection. His whole cast of mind was not philosophical or speculative, but outward and practical. Impatient of our factitious distinctions between sacred and secular things, he thought and spoke of religion as duty and service rather than as belief, and as binding equally upon all the acts of life. It was inevitable that pupils who passed years under the training of such a teacher should imbibe much of his temper. "What I want to find in a boy," Arnold used to say, "is moral thoughtfulness." It soon came to be noticed that the boys of his sixth form had unusual maturity and strength of practical judgment, and an unusual sense of the moral quality of action. They had not been encouraged to think overmuch on the grounds of religious belief, or to be constantly interrogating their own inner experiences; on the contrary, they were interested beyond the wont of boys of their years in the affairs of the world outside-political, historical-and they had become accustomed to measure all these affairs by ethical and religious standards. Accepting implicitly the great principles of Christian teaching, they applied those principles in healthy, outward fashion to conduct.

In 1837 there were two boys in Rugby who were to become