helpless, but really had strength enough to walk when roused to the effort; the resurrection of Jesus was caused by the effect of the myrrh and spices in restoring his vital forces, which had not been destroyed by the crucifixion. A book filled with such remarkable explanations is decidedly entertaining: as Fairbairn remarks, "One of the driest of books, it has yet come to be one of the most amusing." No later writer has fully repeated the attempt of Paulus, but some of his explanations are still brought forward by rationalists; e. g., that the daughter of Jairus was not really dead but only seemed so (Holtzmann); and that Jesus did not expect to feed the five thousand with his little supply of food, but was ready to share it as far as it might go, and this display of generosity shamed others into bringing forward their own hidden supplies which amply sufficed for all (Keim). Such attempts to keep the gospel story, and yet reject the supernatural, are ingenious but unsatisfactory: it is much simpler and more logical to throw out the miraculous events entirely.

The discarding of the miracles, however, not only makes great gaps in the gospel narrative, but also renders that which remains almost valueless for a Life of Jesus. And this for two reasons: (1) The career of Jesus becomes unintelligible without certain miracles which shaped its course; e. g., what caused the crisis that practically ended his work in Galilee, if there

was no miraculous feeding of the five thousand? No multitude would ever be roused to a wild enthusiasm and an attempt to crown him king, if Jesus simply shamed them into sharing their food with one another. What happened at Bethany to alarm the Sadducees and make them join with the Pharisees in the decision that Jesus must be put to death? Even Renan feels that something like a miracle must have taken place -"some motive proceeding from Bethany helped to hasten the death of Jesus": it was, he thinks, either some saying of Jesus to the sisters which was distorted into a report of a resurrection of Lazarus, or else there was a fraudulent miracle. What happened at Jericho to arouse the popular Messianic enthusiasm that led up to the triumphal entry? Even Keim is disposed to believe that in some way-perhaps through the intense power of faith working on the physical system-the blind actually was made to see; "at any rate this healing is by far the best attested among all the accounts of the blind in the gospels" (5: 63). Above all, what happened to revive the faith of the disciples after it had been destroyed by the crucifixion of Jesus? Every critic, though he may deny the resurrection, admits that the church from the outset believed it, since otherwise the existence of the church at all is inexplicable. And (2) the teachings of Jesus are often inseparable from miracles; e. g., the discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum (John 6:26ƒ.) pre

supposes the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Such an utterance about the Sabbath as Mark 3: 4 is hard to explain unless some miracle of mercy performed on that day had called forth the censure of the Pharisees. The story of the temptation in the wilderness-which originally was his own account of a profound spiritual experience loses all its significance unless Jesus really supposed he had the power to work miracles, and here at the threshold of his public ministry was pondering on the problem how that power should be employed.

"On the whole," says Gore, "miracles play so important a part in Christ's scheme that any theory which would represent them as due entirely to the imagination of his followers or of a later age, destroys the credibility of the documents not partially but wholly, and leaves Christ a personage as mythical as Hercules" ("The Incarnation," 54). Dr. Gore's statement ends in exaggeration. Even without the gospels Jesus would be more than a mythical personage: the Christian Church, the Lord's Supper, and the Lord's Day bear witness to his historic existence. But without the gospels the story of his life and work would have to be reconstructed almost wholly by imagination: and, indeed, that is the way in which rationalistic writers do reconstruct it.

Most influential of all the factors that determine a critic's use of the gospels as sources for a life of Christ, is his attitude toward the divinity of Jesus. It might

seem that since the gospels are practically the sole record of what he was or claimed to be, our opinion of the gospels would shape our opinion of Jesus: but in actual experience the reverse proves true. No one takes up the study of the gospels without some mental -not to say spiritual-bias for or against his divinity. This is created in part by the influences of childhood and early years; for life in a Christian land cannot be lived without some definite attitude toward the Founder of the Christian faith. But it is created even more by the system of philosophical thought accepted by a student. What we think about God and his attitude toward man, and about man himself and his spiritual needs and possibilities, will shape our whole opinion of the credibility of an incarnation, and therefore of the proofs that Jesus of Nazareth was God incarnate. The student of the gospels having thus already-consciously or unconsciously-framed an opinion concerning the divinity of Jesus, will be inclined to accept in them only those facts that confirm his opinion.

Though his miracles formerly were set forth as the first and chief proof that Jesus was divine, they are rarely used in this way now. In fact, their position has been almost completely reversed. Instead of saying "We believe that Jesus was divine because we know that he worked miracles," the defender of the Christian faith to-day says, "We believe that Jesus worked miracles because we know that he was divine."

And for the main proof of the divinity he points not only to his character as portrayed in the gospels (see p. 179), but also to his teachings concerning himself— in which would be included his attitude toward God and men. The sceptic, therefore, who has settled to his own satisfaction the matter of miracles, has still to meet the far more important evidence of the teachings of Jesus. And in his endeavor to explain away the statements of Jesus that seem to be proclamations of his divinity, he is not as ready as were his predecessors to pronounce the gospels late and worthless, and their record of Jesus' words pure fabrication. He recognizes the strength of the proofs that they, or their sources, are early, and reproduce the teachings of Jesus with, at least, a considerable degree of accuracy. He seeks accordingly some way by which the record may be accepted without admitting the divinity. One of these ways is so new and also just now so popular that a brief statement of it must be given.

The Revelation of St. John and the latter part of the Book of Daniel are examples of a special class of writings, called sometimes apocalyptical because they profess to unveil the future, and sometimes eschatological because they deal with events in the last days of the present age or eon. Mark 13 and other passages both in the New Testament and in the Old belong to the same class, as also do a number of uncanonical books, some of which have only recently been dis