ascendancy in his royalty for her two sons and hereby excites jealousy in the ten, Jesus warns them that these high posts must be earned by suffering and by service; yet drops no rebuke on this political ambition as fundamental mistake. In his triumphal entry he assumes to be King of Israel, and again before Pilate avows himself to be a king, and allows Pilate to interpret the word as every Roman was sure to understand it. These ar indications that with the growth of his own ambition, his idea of "the kingdom" became more that of human royalty, divinely established, no longer demoniacally. Indeed immediately after avowing himself to be Messiah, he claims (Matt. xvi. 27) to be the Heavenly Son of Man predicted in Dan. vii. 13. If that be rejected as spurious because the phrase "take up his cross" is anachronistic, yet no just suspicion rests on Matt. xxv. 31-46,—a discourse very characteristic of him, nor on his declaration (xxvi. 64) in reply to the solemn demand of the High Priest. Had he not explicitly claimed to be prefigured in Daniel's vision, it is unintelligible that this should immediately on his death become the cardinal doctrin on which thenceforth his Church was to rest. The duty of watching for the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven does not appear in his earlier stage, and possibly is spurious in the later stage,—an afterthought.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII.

Ir will not be overlooked that in many texts Jesus is represented as avowing that the Pentateuch has Moses for its author, and rests on divine authority. Christians hav in general accepted this as decisiv and final.

Nevertheless modern skill in literature has pursued

its diligent course. The life-labors of many scholars, eminently of Germans, hav established that the Pentateuch is the work of at least three different writers, who wrote at different times,--the last as late as King Josiah. English clergymen, no doubt, struggle to deny this. The learned Professor, Rev. George Rawlinson of Oxford, is a very uncompromising opponent of Bishop Colenso, who has set forth his own argument elaborately on the German lines; and Mr. Rawlinson in answering him (Aids to Faith, p. 251) distinctly admits (1) that Moses made up the book of Genesis from a number of records of more or less antiquity; (2) that the Pentateuch underwent authoritativ revision [a thousand years after Moses] by Ezra, who modernized it and introduced many parenthetic comments; (3) that the last chapter of Deuteronomy is not from Moses.--Ezra's dealing is merely conjectural, his authority so to deal is a fiction: but the admissions here made confess that the book is COMPOSIT and was worked up at a very late age; while no particle of historical evidence is produced in proof that Moses wrote one line in it.

The able German Professor Hupfeldt, commenting on the Sources of Genesis, avows that the discovery of the composit origin of the Pentateuch is as certain as it is important; that no retrograding of opinion is possible, as long as criticism exists; that we now start on this basis as already proved: proof is no longer needed, but at most, improvement in detail. Colenso equally, with unanswerable force, contrasting the versions of the Fourth Commandment in Exodus and in Deuteronomy, infers that the later writer knowingly alters the earlier, and supposed himself at liberty to do so, i. e., regarded the composition not divine, but human. The pretence that the law was recovered under Josiah, was adverted to above, p. 3. Unless we reject the testimony of these Gospels con

cerning the utterances of Jesus, we hav to believe either that he was misinformed on this literary question and was wrongfully dogmatic; else, that he knew the truth and concealed it. The latter is a most improbable imputation. To ascribe to him the knowledge which for us has been worked out by the co-operation of hundreds of students aided by libraries, is as unreasonable as to ascribe to him a knowledge of physical astronomy. On those who accept the Gospels as true, the conclusion presses that Jesus thought himself eminently wise in matters on which he had everything to learn. Therefor, when he assumed to be the Hebrew Messiah, there is no cause to wonder that he deceived himself and fell very deeply.

CHAPTER IX.

FIRST STAGE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

DISMAY and Despair ar described as the first emotions in the disciples deprived of their Master; which were gradually dissipated, when the opinion gained currency, that the soul of Jesus, on leaving the body, had ascended to heaven, and was there glorified. That this was the original meaning of the doctrin, that "God raised him "from the dead" is attested by Peter's first Epistle, which says: "Christ was put to death in flesh, but was "made alive in spirit;" words that show the writer to hay no belief that the flesh of Jesus was called back into life. Indeed in Charles Knight's Cyclopædia the doctrin of Resurrection held by the Pharisees is described as consisting not in the re-animation of the body, but in the passage of the soul into some other body. We might

therefor make sure that this was the current doctrin with those Jews. The same result may be confidently inferred concerning the belief of Paul (1 Cor. xv. 38, 44), who soon became the great apostle of the Gentiles. On so fundamental a topic neither apostle could differ from the collectiv church. No tale concerning the flesh of Jesus being made alive after death is found in any book which can be proved to hav existed in the life-time of

those apostles. We know that the disciples accepted doctrin from what were called visions; which, being either simply dreams, or results of abnormal sleep, can bring no evidence as to exterior truth, certainly no proof of fact. The Church settled down into a belief that the spirit of Jesus had appeared to many, but (according to one tale in Luke) so transformed that he was not recognized by the outward likeness. When we further consider what is assumed by his ascending into heaven in their sight, with flesh and bones (as an Anglican article expresses it), viz., that in the plumb-line vertical to the Mount of Olives, there is a local heaven aloft, into which his body soared, we ar warned as to the credulity of that age; yet, as in the "assumption" of Elijah and Romulus, we hav no reason to believe the tale to hav been current

among actual contemporaries. "Pardon is given to "ANTIQUITY," says the historian Livy, "to mingle things “divine with human, and thus make the origin of cities" [or of religions?] "more august."

With what ease absurd stories were circulated concerning events of an earlier generation is instructivly shown in Matt. xxvii. 50-53. No sooner has Jesus uttered his despairing cry, than (we ar told) the earth quakes, rocks ar rent, the graves open; "and many bodies of the saints "which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his "resurrection, and went into the holy city and appeared "unto many." So vague and impossible a statement

passed as fact fifty or seventy years later. Bodies coming out of the graves! By whom could they be recognized? [But only after his resurrection! We need not comment on this, though the words ar in the Sinaitic version; but they ar absent in some other, according to Titschendorf's note.] Criticism is superfluous.

Comparing our Gospels, we can see indications how stories hav grown in telling. Matthew, after saying that the disciples met Jesus on a mountain of Galilee after his death on the cross, honestly adds, that some doubted. He says nothing about the body of Jesus passing through closed doors. But in the twelve apocryphal verses added to Mark it is stated that Jesus appeared to the eleven as they sat at meat. Luke adds, they supposed it was a spirit, but Jesus showed them his hands and his feet, and said, "Handle me: a spirit hath not flesh and "bones, as ye see me hav." Thus the writer, unlike Peter and Paul, supposed Jesus to hav his old body; so notably had the story grown in two generations. But "John" goes far beyond. far beyond. Out of "some doubted," he boldly manufactures the romance of Thomas. He invents a spear-wound in Jesus's side large enough to receive Thomas's hand, and makes Thomas exclaim,

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My Lord and my God." The moderns, assuming that these Gospels were written in the very first age, ar naturally confounded, and see no reasonable intermediate hypothesis.

In this second stage it was necessary to modify and refashion the idea of Messiah. "He was to suffer "before entering into his glory." A truly new doctrin, quite irreconcilable with Isaiah ix. and xi., and with Micah v. 2-8, the very sources of Messianic expectation. Messiah was still to be personal Ruler on Earth, still to sit with his faithful saints on a royal throne; but he had now to come back from heaven and so assume his dominion.

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