CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY fieSERVED, ]5rEW OHAPTEES IJ^ ^0_^^jmm<,, THE WARFARE Q ^ ^ >^/. " rrC M-^^ •■' Cornell University Library \jf.'^ \ m/ 1 "^ BL245 .W581 V.20 New chapters in the warfare of science. -N'" '. ANDREW DICK-SON BY oiin 3 1924 032 329 496 ANDREW DICK-SON WHITE, LL. D., L.H.D. ^ » » y- FORMBBLY PBESIDEKT OF OOBNELL HHIVEEBITY /■A ^ XX. FROM THE DIYINE ORACLES TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM nUPBINTEl} FROM THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY FOR JUNE, JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, AND OCTOBER, 1895 NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1895 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032329496 SET CHAPTEES IN THE WARFARE OP SCIENCE BY ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL. D., L. H. D. FOEMEBLT PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY XX. FROM THE DIVINE ORACLES TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM SEPBINTEV FBOM THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY "V NEW YOEK ' ' i ' ■■ '' '' D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1896 d3L 2.4'5^-' WS5 VU5 v'X.ft ^ NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. tinued even after he had been driven into England, and, as vota- ries of the older thought passed away, men of ideas akin to his were gradually elected into chairs of biblical criticism and inter- pretation. Wellhausen's great work, which Smith had intro- duced in English form, proved a power both in England and Scotland, and the articles upon various books of Scripture and scriptural subjects generally, in the ninth edition of the Encyclo- paedia Britannica, having been prepared mainly by himself as editor or put into the hands of others representing the recent critical research, this very important work of reference, which had been in previous editions so timid, was now arrayed on the side of the newer thought, insuring its due consideration wher- ever the English language is spoken. In France the same tendency was seen, though with striking variations from the course of events in other countries — varia- tions due to the very different conditions under which biblical students in France were obliged to work. Down to the middle of the nineteenth century the orthodoxy of Bossuet, stiffly opposing the letter of Scripture to every step in the advance of science, had only yielded in a very slight degree. But then came an event ushering in a new epoch. At that time Jules Simon, afterward so eminent as an author, academician, and statesman, was quietly discharging the duties of a professorship, when there was brought to him one day the visiting card of a stranger bearing the name of " Ernest Renan, Student at St. Sulpice." Admitted to M. Simon's library, Renan told his story. As a theological student, even before he entered the seminary, he had devoted himself most earnestly to the study of Hebrew and the Semitic languages, and he was now obliged, during the lectures on biblical literature at St. Sulpice, to hear the reverend professor make frequent com- ments upon the Scriptures, based on the Vulgate, but absolutely disproved by Renan's own knowledge of Hebrew. On Renan's questioning any interpretation of the lecturer, the latter was wont to rejoin : " Monsieur, do you presume to deny the authority of the Vulgate, the translation by St. Jerome, sanctioned by the Holy Ghost and the Church ? You will at once go into the chapel and say ' Hail Mary ' for an hour before the image of the Blessed Virgin." " But," said Renan to Jules Simon, " this has now become very serious ; it happens nearly every day, and, mon Dieu ! monsieur, I can not spend all my time in saying ' Hail Mary ' before the statue of the Virgin." The result was a warm personal attachment between Simon and Renan ; both were Bre- tons, educated in the midst of the most orthodox influences, and both had unwillingly broken away from them. Renan was now emancipated and pursued his studies with such effect that he was made professor at the College de France. NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 57 His Life of Jesus, and other books showing the same spirit, brought a tempest upon him which drove him from his professor- ship and brought great hardships upon him for many years. But his genius carried the day, and, to the honor of the French Re- public, he was restored to the position from which the Empire had driven him. From his pen finally appeared the Histoire du Peuple Israel, in which scholarship broad, though at times inac- curate in minor details, was supplemented by an exquisite acute- ness and a poetic insight which far more than made good any of those lesser errors which a German student would have avoided. At his death, in October, 1893, this monumental work had been finished ; in clearness and beauty of style it has never been ap- proached by any other treatise on this or any kindred subject. It is a work of genius, and its profound insight into all that is of importance in the great subjects which he treated will doubtless cause it to hold a permanent place in the literature not only of the Latin nations but of the world. The anathemas lavished upon him by Church authorities dur- ing his life, their denial to him of Christian burial, and their refusal to allow him a grave in the place he had chosen, only increased popular affection for him during his last years and deepened the general mourning at his death.* But, in spite of all resistance, the desire for more light upon the sacred books penetrated the older Church from every side. In Germany, toward the close of the eighteenth century^ Jahn, Catholic professor at Vienna, had ventured, in an Introduction to Old Testament Study, to class Job, Jonah, and Tobit below other canonical books, and had only escaped serious difficulties by am- ple amends in a second! edition. Early in the nineteenth century, Herbst, Catholic professor at Tubingen, had endeavored in a similar Introduction to bring more modern research to bear on the older view ; but the Church authorities saw that all passages really giving any new light were skillfully and speedily edited out of the book. Later still. Movers, professor at Breslau, showed remarkable gifts for Old Testament research, and much was expected of him ; * The facts as to the early relations between Renau and Jules Simon were told in 1878 by the latter to the present writer at considerable length and with many interesting details not here given. The writer was also present at the public funeral of the great scholar, and can testify of his own knowledge to the deep and hearty evidences of gratitude and respect then paid to Renan, not merely by eminent orators and scholars, but by the people at large. As to the refusal of the place of burial which Renan especially chose, see his own " Souvenirs," in which he laments the inevitable exclusion of his grave from the site which he most loved. As to calumnies, one masterpiece very widely spread, through the zeal of clerical journals, was that Renan received enormous sums from the Rothschilds for attacking Christianity. ^i NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. but his ecclesiastical superiors quietly prevented his publishing any extended work. During the latter half of the nineteenth century much the same pressure has continued in Catholic Germany. Strong schol- ars have very generally been drawn into the position of " apol- ogists/' and, when this has been found impossible, they have been driven out of the Church. The same general policy had been evident in France and Italy, but toward the last decade of the century it was seen by the more clear-sighted supporters of the older Church in those countries that the multifarious " refutations " and explosive attacks upon Renan and his teachings had accomplished nothing; that even special services of atonement for his sin, like the famous " Triduo " at Florence, only drew a few women and provoked ridicule among the public at large ; that throwing him out of his professorship and calumniating him had but increased his influence ; and that his brilliant intuitions, added to the careful researches of German and English scholars, had brought the thinking world beyond the reach of the old methods of hiding troublesome truths and crush- ing persistent truth-tellers. Therefore it was that about 1890 a body of earnest Roman Catholic scholars began very cautiously to examine and explain the biblical text in the light of those results of the newer research which could no longer be gainsaid. Among these men were, in Italy, Canon Bartolo, Canon Berta, and Father Savi, and in France Monseigneur d'Hulst, the Abb^ Lois.y, Professor at the Roman Catholic University at Paris, and, most eminent of all. Professor Lenormant, of the French Institute, whose researches into biblical and other ancient history and litera- ture had won him distinction throughout the world. These men, while standing up manfully for the Church, were obliged to allow that some of the conclusions of modern biblical criticism were well founded. The result came rapidly. The treatise of Bartolo and the great work of Lenormant were placed on the Index ; Canon Berta was overwhelmed with reproaches and virtually silenced ; the Abb^ Loisy was first deprived of his professorship, and then ignominiously expelled from the university ; Monseigneur d'Hulst was summoned to Rome, and has since kept silence.* * For the frustration of attempts to admit light into scriptural studies in Roman Catholic Germany, see Bleek, Old Testament, London, 1882, vol. i, pp. 19, 20. For the general statement regarding recent suppression of modern biblical study in France and Italy, see an article by a Roman Catholic author in the Contemporary Review September, 1894, p. 365. For the papal condemnations of Lenormant and Bartolo, see the Index Librorum Prohibitorum Sanctissimi Domini Nostri Leonis XllI, P. M., etc., Rome 1891 ; Appendices, July, 1890, and May, 1891. The ghastly part of the record, as stated NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 59 The matter was evidently thought serious in the higher regions of the Church, for, in November, 1893, appeared an encyclical letter on The Study of Sacred Scripture by the reigning Pope, Leo XIII. Much was expected from it, for, since Benedict XIV in the last century, there has sat on the papal throne no Pope in- tellectually so competent to discuss the whole subject. While, then, those devoted to the older beliefs trusted that the papal thunderbolts would crush the whole brood of biblical critics, vota- ries of the newer thought ventured to hope that the encyclical might, in the language of one of them, prove "a stupendous bridge spanning the broad abyss that now divides alleged ortho- doxy from established science." * Both these expectations were disappointed; and yet, on the whole, ib is a question whether the world at large may not con- gratulate itself upon this papal utterance. The document, if not apostolic, won credit as " statesmanlike." It took pains, of course, to insist that there can be no error of any sort in the sacred books ; it even defended those parts which Protestants count apocryphal as thoroughly as the remainder of Scripture, and declared that the book of Tobit was not compiled of man, but written by God. His Holiness naturally condemned the higher criticism, but he dwelt at the same time on the necessity of the most thorough study of the sacred Scriptures, and especially on the importance of adjusting scriptural statements to scientific facts. This utter- ance was admirably oracular, being susceptible of cogent quotation by both sides ; nothing could be in better form from an orthodox point of view ; but, with that statesmanlike forecast which the present Pope has shown more than once in steering the bark of St. Peter over the troubled waves of the nineteenth century, he so far abstained from condemning any of the greater specific results of modern critical study that the main English de- fender of the encyclical, the Jesuit Father Clarke, did not hesi- tate publicly to admit a multitude of such results — results, indeed, which would shock not only Italian and Spanish Catholics, but many English and American Protestants. According to this in- terpreter, the Pope had no thought of denying that there are dif- ferent sorts of documents in the Pentateuch, or the plurality of sources of the books of Samuel, or the twofold authorship of Isaiah, or that all after the ninth verse of the last chapter of St. Mark's Gospel is spurious ; and, as regards the whole encyclical, the distinguished Jesuit dwelt significantly on the power of the papacy at any time to define out of existence any previous de- in this edition of the Index, is that both these great scholars were forced to abjure their " errors " and to acquiesce in the condemnation — Lenormant doing this on his deathbed. * For this statement, see an article in the Contemporary Reriew, April, 1894, p. 576. 6o n:ew chapters in the warfare of science. cisions which may be found inconvenient. More than that. Father Clarke himself, while standing as the champion of the most thor- ough orthodoxy, acknowledged that, in the Old Testament, "numbers must be expected to be used Orientally," and that " all these seventies and forties, as, for example, when Absalom is said to have rebelled against David for forty years, can not possibly be meant numerically " ; and, what must have given a fearful shook to some Protestant believers in plenary inspiration, he, while advocating it as a dutiful son of the Church, wove over it an exquisite web with the declaration that " there is a human element in the Bible precalculated for by the divine." Considering the difficulties in the case, the world has reason certainly to be grateful to Pope Leo and Father Clarke for these utterances, which perhaps, after all, may prove a better bridge between the old and the new than could have been framed by engineers more learned but less astute. Evidently Pope Leo XIII is neither a Paul V nor an Urban VIII, and is too wise to bring the Church into a position from which it can only be extricated by subterfuges as ludicrous as those by which it was dragged out of the Galileo scandal, or by a policy as tortuous as that by which it writhed out of the old doctrine regarding the taking of interest for money. In spite, then, of the attempted crushing out of Bartolo and Berta and Savi and Lenormant and Loisy, during this very epoch in which the Pope issued this encyclical, there is every reason to hope that the path has been paved over which the Church may gracefully recede from the old system of interpretation and quietly accept and appropriate the main results of the higher criticism. Certainly she has never had a better opportunity to play at the game of " beggar my neighbor " and to drive the older Protestant orthodoxy into bankniptcy. In America the same struggle between the old ideas and the new went on. In the middle years of the century the first ade- quate effort in behalf of the newer conception of the sacred books was made by Theodore Parker at Boston. A thinker profound and of the widest range— a scholar indefatigable and of the deep- est sympathies with humanity — a man called by one of the most eminent scholars in the English Church " a religious Titan," and by a distinguished French theologian " a prophet," he had strug- gled on from the divinity school until at that time he was the foremost biblical scholar and preacher to the largest regular con- gregation on the American continent. The great hall in Boston could seat four thousand people, and at his regular discourses every part of it was filled. In addition to his usual pastoral work he exercised a vast influence as a platform speaker, especially in opposition to the extension of slavery into the Territories of the NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 6i United States, and as a lecturer on a wide range of vital topics. During each year at that period he was heard discussing the most important religious and political questions in all the greater north- ern cities ; but his most lasting work was in throwing light upon our sacred Scriptures, and in this he was one of the forerunners of the movement now going on, not only in the United States but throughout Christendom. Even before he was fairly out of col- lege his translation of De Wette's Introduction to the Old Testa- ment made an impression on many thoughtful men ; his sermon in 1841 on The Transient and Permanent in Christianity marked the beginning of his great individual career; his speeches, his Lectures, and especially his Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion, greatly extended his influence. His was a deeply devo- tional nature, and his public prayers exercised by their touching beauty a very strong religious influence upon his audiences. He had his reward. Beautiful and noble as were his life and his life work, he was widely abhorred. On one occasion of public wor- ship, in one of the more orthodox churches, news having been received that he was dangerously ill, a prayer was openly made by one of the zealous brethren present that this arch-enemy might be removed from earth. He was even driven out from the Uni- tarian body. But he was none the less steadfast and bold, and the great mass of men and women who thronged his audience room at Boston and his lecture rooms in other cities spread his ideas. . His fate was pathetic. Full of faith and hope, but broken prematurely by his labors, he retired to Italy, and there died at the darkest period in the history of the United States, when slavery in the State and the older orthodoxy in the Church seemed absolutely and forever triumphant. The death of Moses within sight of the promised land seems the only parallel to the death of Parker less than six months before the election of Abraham Lincoln and the publication of Essays and Reviews.* But here it must be noted that Parker's effort was powerfully aided by the conscientious utterances of some of his foremost opponents. Nothing during the American struggle against the slave system did more to wean religious and God-fearing men and women from the old interpretation of Scripture than the use of it to justify slavery. Typical among examples of this use were the arguments of Hopkins, Bishop of Vermont, a man whose noble * For the appellation " religious Titan " applied to Theodore Parker, see a letter of Jowett, Master of Balliol, to Frances Power Cobbe, in her autobiography, vol. i, p. SS"?, and for Eeyille's statement, ibid., p. 9 ; for a pathetic account of Parker's last hours at Flor- ence ibid, i pp. 10, 11. For the statement regarding Parker's audiences and his power over them the present writer trusts to his own memory. There is a, curious reference to Bishbp Hopkins's ideas on slavery in Archbishop Tait's Life and Letters. 62 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. character and beautiful culture gave liini very wide influence m all branches of the American Protestant Church. While avow- ing his personal dislike to slavery, he demonstrated that the Bible sanctioned it. Other theologians. Catholic and Protestant, took the same ground, and then came that tremendous rejoinder which echoed from heart to heart throughout the Northern States : " The Bible sanctions slavery ? So much the worse for the Bible." Then was fulfilled that old saying of Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg : " Press not the breasts of Holy Writ too hard, lest they yield blood rather than milk." Yet throughout Christendom a change in the mode of inter- preting Scripture, though absolutely necessary if its proper au- thority was to be maintained, still seemed almost hopeless. Even after the foremost scholars had taken ground in favor of it, and the most conservative of these whose opinions were entitled to weight had made concessions showing the old ground to be un- tenable, there was fanatical opposition to any change. The Sylla- bus of Errors, issued by Pius IX in 1864, as well as certain other documents issued from the Vatican, had increased the difficulties of this needed transition ; and, while the more able-minded Roman Catholic scholars skillfully explained away the obstacles thus created, others published works insisting upon the most extreme views as to the verbal inspiration of the sacred books. In the Church of England various influential men took the same view. Dr. Baylee, Principal of St. Aidan's College, declared that in Scrip- ture " every scientific statement is infallibly accurate ; all its his- tories and narrations of every kind are without any inaccuracy. Its words and phrases have a grammatical and philological accu- racy, such as is possessed by no human composition." In 1861 Dean Burgon preached in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, as follows: "No, sirs, the Bible is the very utterance of the Eternal; as much God's own word as if high heaven were open and we heard God speaking to us with human v6ice. Every book is inspired alike, and is inspired entirely. Inspiration is not a dif- ference of degree, but of kind. The Bible is filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit of God ; the books of it and the words of it and the very letters of it." In 1865 Canon MacNeile declared in Exeter Hall that "we must either receive the verbal inspiration of the Old Testament or deny the veracity, the insight, the integrity of our Lord Jesus Christ as a teacher of divine truth." As late as 1889 one of the two most gifted pulpit orators in the Church of England, Canon Liddon, preaching at St. Paul's Cathe- dral, used in his fervor the same dangerous argument : that the authority of Christ himself, and therefore of Christianity, must rest on the old view of the Old Testament ; that, since the founder NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 63 of Christianity, in divinely recorded utterances, alluded to the transformation of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, and to Noah's ark and the flood, the biblical account of these must be accepted as historical. In the light of what was rapidly becoming known regarding the Chaldsean and other sources of the accounts given in Genesis, no argument could be more fraught with peril to the interest which the gifted preacher sought to serve. In France and Germany many similar utterances in opposition to the newer biblical studies were heard, and from America, espe- cially from the college at Princeton, came resoiindiug echoes. As an example of many may be quoted the statement by the eminent Dr. Hodge that the books of Scripture "are, one and all, in thought and verbal expression, in substance, and in form, wholly the work of God, conveying with absolute accuracy and divine authority all that God meant to convey without human additions and admixtures " ; and that " infallibility and authority attach as much to the verbal expression in which the revelation is made as to the matter of the revelation itself." But the newer movement of thought went steadily on. As al- ready in Protestant Europe, so now in the Protestant churches of America, it took strong hold on the foremost minds in many of the churches known as orthodox : Toy, Briggs, Francis Brown, Evans, Preserved Smith, Moore, Bacon, developed it, and, though opposed bitterly by synods and councils of their respective churches, they were manfully supported by the more intellectual clergy and laity. The greater universities of the country ranged themselves on the sides of these men ; persecution but intrenched them more firmly in the hearts of all intelligent well-wishers of Christianity. The triumphs won by their opponents in assem- blies, synods, conventions, and conferences were really victories for the nominally defeated, since they revealed to the world the fact that in each of these bodies the strong and fruitful thought of the Church, the thought which alone can have any hold on the future, was with the new race of thinkers ; no theological tri- umphs more surely fatal to the victors have been won since the Vatican defeated Copernicus and Galileo. And here reference must be made to a series of events which, in ihe second half of the nineteenth century, have contributed most powerful aid to the new school of biblical research. 64 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. V. VICTORY OP THE SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY METHODS. WHILE the struggle for the new truth was going on. in vari- ous fields, aid appeared from a quarter whence it was least ■expected. The great discoveries by Layard and Botta in Assyria were supplemented by the researches of George Smith, Oppert, Sayce, and others, and thus it was revealed beyond the possibility of doubt that the accounts of the Creation, the tree of life in Eden, the institution of the Sabbath, the deluge, the Tower of Babel, and much else in the Pentateuch were simply an evolution out of earlier myths, legends, and chronicles. So perfect was the proof of this that the most eminent scholars in the foremost Christian seats of learning were obliged freely to acknowledge it. The more general conclusions which were thus given to bibli- cal criticism were all the more impressive from the fact that they had been revealed by various groups of earnest Christian scholars working on different lines, by different methods, and in various parts of the world. Very honorable was the full and frank testimony to these results given in 1885 by the Rev. Fran- cis Brown, a professor in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at New York. In his admirable though brief book on Assyri- ology, starting with the declaration that " it is a great pity to be afraid of facts," he showed how Assyrian research testifies in many ways to the historical value of the Bible record; but at the same time he freely allowed to Babylonian history an an- tiquity fatal to the sacred chronology of the Hebrews. He also cast aside a mass of doubtful apologetics and dealt frankly with the fact that very many of the early narratives in Genesis belong to the common stock of ancient tradition, and, mentioning as an ■example the cuneiform inscriptions which record a story of the Accadian king Sargon— how " he was born in retirement, placed by his mother in a basket of rushes, launched on a river, rescued and brought up by a stranger, after which he became king "—he ■did not hesitate to remind his readers that Sargon lived a thousand years before Moses ; that this story was told of him several hun- dred years before Moses was born ; and that it was told of vari- ous other important personages of antiquity. The professor dealt just as honestly with the inscriptions which show sundry state- ments in the book of Daniel to be unhistorical ; candidly making admissions which but a short time before would have filled ortho- doxy with horror. A few years later came another testimony even more striking. Early in the last decade of the nineteenth century it was noised abroad that the Rev. Professor Sayce, of Oxford, the most emi- NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 65 nent Assyriologist and Egyptologist of Great Britain, was about to publish a -work in which, what is known as the " higher criti- cism" was to be very vigorously and probably destructively dealt with in the light afforded by recent research among the monuments of Assyria and Egypt. The book was looked for with the most eager expectation by the supporters of the tra- ditional view of Scripture; but, when it appeared, the exulta- tion of the traditionalists was speedily changed to dismay. For Prof. Sayce, while showing some severity toward sundry minor assumptions and assertions of biblical critics, confirmed all their more important conclusions which properly fell within his prov- ince. A few of the statements of this champion of orthodoxy may be noted. He allowed that the week of seven days and the Sabbath rest are of Babylonian origin; indeed, that the very word " Sabbath " is Babylonian ; that there are two narratives of Creation on the Babylonian tablets, wonderfully like the two leading Hebrew narratives in Genesis, and that the latter were undoubtedly drawn from the former; that the " garden of Eden" and its mystical tree were known to the inhabitants of Chaldsea in pre-Semitic days ; that the beliefs that woman was created out of man, and that man by sin fell from a state of innocence, are drawn from very ancient Chaldgean-Babylonian texts; that As- syriology confirms the belief that the book Genesis is a compila- tion ; that portions of it are by no means so old as the time of Moses ; and that the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife was drawn in part from the old Egyptian tale of The Two Brothers. Finally, after a multitude of other concessions. Prof. Sayce al- lowed that the book of Jonah, so far from being the work of the prophet himself, can not have been written until the Assyrian Empire was a thing of the past ; that the book of Daniel contains serious mistakes; that the so-called historical chapters of that book so conflict with the monuments that the author can not have been a contemporary of Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus; that " the story of Belshazzar's fall is not historical " ; that the book must have been written at a period later than that of Alexander the Great; and that it associates persons and events which are really many years apart. He also acknowledged that the book of Esther " contains many exaggerations and improbabilities, and is simply founded upon one of those same historical tales of which the Persian chronicles seem to have been full." Great was the dissatisfaction of the traditionalists with their expected cham- pion ; well might they repeat the words of Balak to Balaam, " I took thee to curse mine enemies, and behold ! thou hast blessed them altogether." * * For Prof. Brown's discussion, see his Assyriology, its Use and Abuse in Old Testament Study, New York, 1885, passim. Tor Prof. Sayce's yiews, see The Higher Criticism and S 66 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. No less fruitful have, been modern researclies in Egypt. While, on one hand, they have revealed a very considerable num- ber of geographical and archaeological facts proving the good faith of the narratives entering into the books attributed to Moses, and have thus made our early sacred literature all the more valu- able, they have at the same time revealed the limitations of the sacred authors and compilers. They have brought to light facts utterly disproving the sacred Hebrew date of creation and the main framework of the early biblical chronology ; they have shown the suggestive correspondence between the ten antedilu- vian patriarchs in Genesis and the ten early dynasties of the Egyptian gods, and have placed by the side of these the ten ante- diluvian kings of Chaldsean tradition, the ten heroes of Armenia, the ten primeval kings of Persian sacred tradition, the ten " fathers " of Hindu sacred tradition, and multitudes of other tens, throwing much light on the manner in which the sacred chronicles of ancient nations were generally developed. These scholars have also found that the legends of the plagues of Egypt are in the main but natural exaggerations of what occurs every year ; as, for example, the changing of the water of the Nile into blood — evidently suggested by the phenomena ex- hibited every summer, when, as various eminent scholars, and, most recent of all, Maspero and Sayce, tell us, " about the middle of July, in eight or ten days the river turns from grayish blue to dark red, occasionally of so intense a color as to look like newly shed blood." These modern researches have also shown that' some of the most important features in the legends can not the Monuments, third edition, London, 1894, and especially his own curious anticipation, in the first lines of the preface, that he must fail to satisfy either side. For the declaration that the " higher critic " with all his oilenses is no worse than the orthodox " apologist," see p. 21. For important admission that the same criterion must be applied in researches into our own sacred books as into others, and even into the mediaeval chronicles, see p. 26. For justification of critical skepticism regarding the history given in the book of Daniel, see pp. 2'7, 28, also chap. xi. For very full and explicit statements, with proofs, that the " Sabbath," both in name and nature, was derived by the Hebrews from the Chaldseans, see pp. 74 et seq. For a very full and fair acknowledgment of the " Babylonian element in Genesis," see chap, iii, including the statement that the expression in our' sacred book, " The Lord smelled a sweet savor," at the sacrifice made by Noah, is " identical with that of the Babylonian poet," and " it is impossible to believe that the language of the latter was not known to the biblical writer," on p. 119. For an excellent summary of the work see Dr. Driver's article in the Contemporary Review for March, 1894. For the inscription on the Assyrian tablets relating in detail the exposure of King Sargon in a basket of rushes his rescue and rule, see George Smith, Ghaldasan Account of Genesis, Sayce's edition London 1880, pp. 319, 320. For the derivation of the Hebrew Sabbath, not only the institution but the name, from the Chaldajan, see ibid., p. 308. For various other points of similar interest see ibid., passim, especially chaps, xvi and xvii ; also Jensen, Die Kosmologie der Babylonier, and Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament ; also Lenor- mant, Origines de I'Histoire. NHW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SGIENVE. 67 possibly be reconciled ' with the records of the monuments ; for example, that the Pharaoh of the Exodus was certainly not over- whelmed in the Red Sea. As to the supernatural features of the Hebrew relations with Egypt, even the most devoted apologists have become discreetly silent. Egyptologists have also translated for us the old Nile story of The Two Brothers, and have shown, as we have already seen, that one of the most striking parts of our sacred Joseph legend was drawn from it; they have been obliged to admit that the story of the exposure of Moses in the basket of rushes, his rescue, and subsequent greatness, is a story told not only of King Sargon, but of various other great personages of the ancient world ; they have published plans of Egyptian temples and copies of the sculp- tures upon their walls, revealing the earlier origin of some of the most striking features of the worship and ceremonial claimed to have been revealed especially to the Hebrews ; they have given to the world copies of the Egyptian texts showing that the theology of the Nile was one of various fruitful sources of later ideas, statements, and practices regarding the brazen serpent, the golden calf, trinities, miraculous conceptions, incarnations, resurrections, ascensions, and the like, and that Egyptian sacro-scientific ideas contributed to early Jewish and Christian sacred literature state- ments, beliefs, and even phrases regarding the Creation, astrono- my, geography, magic, medicine, diabolical influences, with a multitude of other ideas, which we also find coming into early Judaism in greater or less degree from Chaldsean and Persian sources. But Egyptology, while thus aiding to sweep away the former conception of our sacred books, has aided biblical criticism in making them far more precious ; for it has shown them to be a part of that living growth of sacred literature whose roots afe in all the great civilizations of the past, and through whose trunk and branches are flowing the currents which are to infuse a higher religious and ethical life into the civilizations of the future.* * For general statements of agreements and disagreements between biblical accounts and the revelations of the Egyptian monuments, see Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, especially chap. iv. For discrepancies between the Hebrew sacred accounts of Jewish relations with Egypt and the revelations of modem Egyptian research, see Sharpe, History of Egypt ; Flinders Petrie, History of Egypt ; and especially Maspero and Sayce, The Dawn of Civilization in Egypt and Chaldaea, London, published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1894. For the statement regarding the Nile, that about the middle of July " in eight or ten days it turns from grayish blue to dark red, occa- sionally of so intense a color as to look like newly shed blood," see Maspero and Sayce, as above, p. 23. For the relation of the Joseph legend to the Tale of Two Brothers, see Sharpe and others cited. For examples of exposure of various great personages of antiquity in their childhood, see G. Smith, Chaldsean Account of Genesis, Sayce's edition, p. 320. 68 NSW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. But while archaeologists thus influenced enlightened opinion, another body of scholars rendered services of a different sort — the center of their enterprise" being the University of Oxford. By their efforts was presented to the English-speaking world a series of translations of the sacred books of the East, which showed the relations of the more Eastern sacred literature to our own, and proved that in the religions of the world the ideas which have come as the greatest blessings to mankind are not of sudden revelation or creation, but of slow evolution out of a remote past. The facts thus shown did not at first elicit much gratitude from supporters of traditional theology, and perhaps few things brought more obloquy on Renan, for a time, than his statement of the simple fact that " the influence of Persia is the most power- ful to which Israel was submitted." But this was now seen to be strictly true. Not only was it made clear by study of the Zend Avesta that the Old and New Testament ideas regarding Satanic and demoniacal modes of action were largely due to Persian sources, but it was also shown that the idea of immortality was mainly developed in the Hebrew mind during the close relations of the Jews with the Persians. Nor was this all. In the Zend Avesta were found in earlier form sundry myths and legends which, judging from their frequent appearance in early religions, grow naturally about the history of the adored teachers of our race. Typical among these was the Temptation of Zoroaster. It is a fact very significant and full of promise that the first As to Trinities In Egypt and Chaldsea, see Maspero and Sayoe, especially pp. 104-106, p. lYS^ and pp. 659-663. For miraculous conception and birth of sons of Ra, ibid., pp. 388, 389. For ascension of Ra into heaven, ibid., pp. 167, 168 ; for resurrections, see representations in Lepsius, Prisse d'Avennes, et al. , and for striking resemblance between Egyptian and Hebrew ritual and worship, and especially the ark, cherubim, ephod, Urim and Thummim, and wave offerings, see same, joassim. For very full exhibition of the whole subject, see Renan, Histoire du Peuple Israel, vol. i, chap. xi. For Egyptian and Chaldsean ideas in astronomy, out of which Hebrew ideas of " the firmament," " pillars of heaven," etc., were developed, see text and engravings in Maspero and Sayce, pp. 17 and 543. For creation of man by a divine being in Egypt out of clay, see Maspero and Sayce, p. 154 ; for a similar idea in Chaldjea, see ibid., p. 645 ; and for the creation of the universe by a word, ibid., pp. 146, 147. For Egyptian and Chaldjean ideas on magic and medicine, dread of evil spirits, etc., antici- pating those of the Hebrew Scriptures, see Maspero and Sayce, as above, pp. 212-214, 217 636 ; and for extension of these to neighboring nations, pp. 782, 783. For visions and use of dreams as oracles, ibid., p. 641 and elsewhere. See also, on these and other resemblances Lenormant, Origines de I'Histoire, vol. i, passim ; see also George Smith and Sayce, as above, chaps, xvi and xvii, for resemblances especially striking, combining to show how simple was the evolution of many Hebrew sacred legends and ideas out of those of earlier civiliza- tions. For an especially interesting presentation of the reasons why Egyptian ideas of im- mortality were not seized upon by the Jews, see the Rev. Barham Zincke's work upon Egypt. For the sacrificial vessels, temple rites, etc., see the bas-reliefs figured by Lepsius Prisse d'Avennes, Mariette, Maspero, et al. IfEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 69 large, frank, and explicit revelation regarding this whole subject m form available for the general thinking public was given to .the English-speaking world by an eminent Christian divine and scholar— the Eev. Dr. Mills. Having already shown himself by his translations a most competent authority on the subject, he in 1894 called attention, in a review widely read, to " the now un- doubted and long since suspected fact that it pleased the Divine Power to reveal some of the important articles of our Catholic creed first to the Zoroastrians, and through their literature to the Jews and ourselves." Among these beliefs Dr. Mills traced out very conclusively many Jewish doctrines regarding the attributes of God, and all, virtually, regarding the attributes of Satan. There, too, he found accounts of the Miraculous Conception, Vir- gin Birth, and Temptation of Zoroaster. As to the last. Dr. Mills showed a series of striking coincidences with our own later ac- count. As to its main features, he showed that there had been developed among the Persians, many centuries before the Chris- tian era, the legend of a vain effort of the arch-demon, one seat of whose power was the summit of Mount Arezura, to tempt Zoro- aster to worship him; of an argument between tempter and tempted, and of Zoroaster's refusal ; and the doctor continued : " No Persian subject in the streets of Jerusalem, soon after or long after the Return, could have failed to know this striking myth." Dr. Mills then went on to show that, among the Jews, " the doc- trine of immortality was scarcely mooted before the later Isaiah — that is, before the captivity^while the Zoroastrian scriptures are one mass of spiritualism, referring all results to the heavenly or to the infernal worlds." He concludes by saying that, as re- gards the Old and ISTew Testaments, " the humble, and to a certain extent prior, religion of the Mazda worshipers was useful in giv- ing point and beauty to many loose conceptions among the Jew- ish religious teachers, and in introducing many ideas which were entirely new, while, as to the doctrines of immortality and res- urrection — the most important of all — it positively determined belief." * * For the passages in the Vendidad of special importance as regards the Temptation Myth, see Fargard, xix, 18, 20, 26, also 140, 147. Very striking is the account of the Temptation in the Pelhavi Tersion of the Vendidad. The devil is represented as saying to Zaratusht (Zoroaster), " I had the worship of thy ancestors, do thou also worship me." I am indebted to Prof. E. P. Evans, formerly of the University of Michigan, but now of Munich, for a translation of the original text from Spiegel's edition. For a good account, see also Hang, Essays on the Sacred Language, etc., of the Parsees, edited by West, Lon- don, 1884, pp. 252 et seg. See also Mills's and Darmesteter's work in Sacred Books of the East. For Dr. Mills's article referred to, see his Zoroaster and the Bible, in The Nine- teenth Century, January, 1894. For the citation from Kenan, see his Histoire du Peuple Israel, tome xiv, chap iv ; see also, for Persian ideas of heaven, hell, and resurrection, 70 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. Even more extensive were the revelations made by scientific criticism applied to tlie sacred literature of southern and eastern Asia. The resemblances of sundry fundamental narratives and ideas in our own sacred books with those of Buddhism were espe- cially suggestive. Here, too, had been a long preparatory history. The discov- eries in Sanskrit philology made in the latter half of the eight- eenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, by Sir William Jones, Carey, Wilkins, Foster, Colebrooke, and others, had met at first with some opposition from theologians. The declaration by Dugald Stewart that the discovery of Sanskrit was fraudulent, and its vocabulary and grammar patched together out of Greek and Latin, showed the feeling of the older race of biblical stu- dents. But researches went on. Bopp, Burnouf, Lassen, Weber, Whitney, Max Miiller, and others continued the work during the nineteenth century. More and more evident became the sources from which many ideas and narratives in our own sacred books had been developed. Studies in the sacred books of Brahminism, and in the institutions of Buddhism, the most widespread of all religions, its devotees outnumbering those of all branches of the Christian Church together, proved especially fruitful in facts re- lating to general sacred literature and early European religious ideas. Noteworthy in the progress of this knowledge was the work of Fathers Hue and Gabet. In 1839 the former of these, a French Lazarist priest, set out on a mission to China. Having prepared himself at Macao by eighteen months of hard study, and having arrayed himself like a native, even to the wearing of the queue and the staining of his skin, he visited Pekin and penetrated Mongolia. Five years later, taking Gabet with him, both dis- guised as Lamas, he began his long and toilsome journey to the chief seats of Buddhism in Thibet, and after two years of fearful dangers and sufferings accomplished it. Driven out finally by the Chinese, Hue returned to Europe in 1852, having made one of the most heroic, self-denying, and, as it turned out, one of the most valuable efforts in all the noble annals of Christian mis- sions. His accounts of these journeys, written in a style simple, clear, and interesting, at once attracted attention throughout the world. But far more important than any services he had ren- dered to the Church he served was the influence of his book upon Haug, as above, pp. 310 et seq. For an interesting risumt of Zoroastrianism, see Laing, A Modern Zoroastrian, chap, xiii, London, eighth edition, 1893. For the Buddhist Tersion of the judgment of Solomon, etc., see Fausbbll, Buddhist Birth Stories, translated by Rhys Davids, London, 1880, vol. i, p. 14, and following. For very full statements regarding the influence of Persian ideas upon the Jews during the captivity, see Kohut, Ueber die jiidische Angelologie und Daemonologie in ihren Abhaugigkeit von Parsismus, Leipsic 1866. NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WAMFARE OF SCIENCE. 71 the general opinions of thinking men. For he completed a series of revelations made by earlier, less gifted, and less devoted trav- elers, and brought to the notice of the world the amazing simi- larity of the ideas, institutions, observances, ceremonies, and ritual, and even the ecclesiastical costumes of the Buddhists to those of his own Church. Buddhism was thus shown with its hierarchy, in which the Grand Lama, an infallible representative of the Most High, is surrounded by its minor Lamas, much like cardinals, with its bishops wearing mitres, its celibate priests with shaven crown, cope, dalmatic, and censer, its cathedrals with clergy gathered in the choir ; its vast monasteries filled with monks and nuns vowed to poverty, chastity, and obedience; its church arrangements, with shrines of saints and angels ; its use of images, pictures, and illuminated missals ; its service, with a striking general resem- blance to the Mass ; antiphonal choirs ; intoning of prayers ; re- cital of creeds ; repetition of litanies ; processions ; mystic rites and incense ; the offering and adoration of bread upon an altar lighted by candles ; the drinking from a chalice by the priest ; prayers and offerings for the dead ; benediction with oiitstretched hands; fasts, confessions, and doctrine of purgatory — all this and more was now clearly revealed. The good father was evidently staggered by these amazing facts ; but his robust faith soon gave him an explanation : he suggested that Satan, in anticipation of Christianity, had revealed to Buddhism this divinely constituted order of things. This naive explanation did not commend itself to his superiors in the Roman Church. In the days of St. Au- gustine or of St. Thomas Aquinas it would doubtless have been received much more kindly ; but in the days of Cardinal Anto- nelli this was hardly to be expected : the Roman authorities, see- ing the danger of such plain revelations in the nineteenth cen- tury, even when coupled with such devout explanations, put the book under the ban, though not before it had been spread throughout the world in various translations. Father Hue was sent on no more missions. Yet there came even more significant discoveries, especially bearing upon the claims of that great branch of the Church which supposes itself to possess a divine safeguard against error in belief. For now was brought to light by literary research the irrefragable evidence that the great Buddha— Sakya Muni him- self—had been canonized and enrolled among the Christian saints whose intercession may be invoked, and in whose honor images, altars, and chapels may be erected; and this, not only by the usage of the mediseval Church, Greek and Roman, but by the special and infallible sanction of a long series of Popes, from the end of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth- a sane- 72 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. tion granted under one of the most curious errors in human his- tory. The story throws an additional light upon the way in which many of the beliefs of Christendom have been developed, and especially upon the way in which they have been influenced from the seats of older religions. Early in the seventh century there was composed, as is now believed, at the Convent of St. Saba near Jerusalem, a pious ro- mance entitled Barlaam and Josaphat, the latter personage, the hero of the story, being represented as a Hindu prince converted to Christianity by the former. This story, having been attributed to St. John of Damascus in the following century, became amazingly popular, and was soon accepted as true : it was translated from the Greek original not only into Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, and Ethiopic, but into every important European language, including even Polish, Bohemian, and Icelandic. Thence it came into the pious historical encyclo- psedia of Vincent of Beauvais, and, most important of all, into the Lives of the Saints. Hence the name of its pious hero found its way into the list of saints whose intercession is to be prayed for and it passed without challenge until about 1590, when, the general subject of canoniza- tion having been brought up at Rome, Pope Sixtus V, by virtue of his infallibility and immunity against error in everything re- lating to faith and morals, sanctioned a revised list of saints, authorizing and directing it to be accepted by the Church ; and among those on whom the seal of Heaven was thus forever infal- libly set was included " The Holy Saint Josaphat of India, whose wonderful acts St. John of Damascus has related." The 27th of November was appointed as the day set apart in honor of this saint, and the decree, having been enforced by successive popes for over two hundred and fifty years, was again officially ap- proved by Pius IX in 1873. This decree was duly accepted as in- fallible, and in one of the largest cities of Italy may to-day be seen a Christian church dedicated to this saint. On its front are the initials of his Italianized name ; over its main entrance is the inscription -Dt-uo Josafat; and within is an altar dedicated to the saint— above it being a pedestal bearing his name and supporting a large statue which represents him as a youthful prince wearing a crown and contemplating a crucifix. Moreover, relics of the saints were found, and bones alleged to be patts of his skeleton having been presented by a Doge of Venice to a King of Portugal, are now treasured at Ant- werp. But even as early as the sixteenth century a pregnant fact re- garding this whole legend was noted : for the Portuguese historian Diego Conto showed that it was identical with the legend of Bud- JVUW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 73 dha. Fortunately for the historian, his faith was so robust that he saw m this resemblance only a trick of Satan ; the life of Bud- dha bemg, in his opinion, merely a diabolic counterfeit of the life of Josaphat centuries before the latter was lived or written— just as good Abb€ Hue saw in the ceremonies of Buddhism a similar anticipatory counterfeit of Christian ritual. There the whole matter virtually rested for about three hun- dred years— various scholars calling attention to the legend as a curiosity, but none really showing its true bearings, until, in 1859, Laboulaye in France, Liebrecht in Germany, and others following them in research, demonstrated that this Christian work was drawn almost literally from an early biography of Buddha, being conformed to it in the most minute details, not only of events but of phraseology ; the only important changes being that, at the end of the various experiences showing the wretchedness of the world, identical with those ascribed in the original to the young Prince' Buddha, the hero becomes a Christian, and that for the appella- tion of Buddha— "Bodesat"— is substituted the more scriptural name Josaphat. Thus it was that by virtue of the infallibility vouchsafed to the papacy in matters of faith and morals Buddha became a Christian saint. Yet these were by no means the most pregnant revelations. As the Buddhist scriptures were more fully examined, there were disclosed interesting anticipations of statements in later sacred books. The miraculous conception of Buddha and his virgin birth, like that of Horus in Egypt and of Krishna in India ; the previous annunciation to his mother Maja; his birth during a journey by her; the star appearing in the east, and the angels chanting in the heavens at his birth ; his temptation— all these and a multitude of other statements were full of suggestions to larger thought regarding the development of sacred literature in general. Even the eminent Eoman Catholic missionary, Bishop Bigandet, was obliged to confess in his scholarly life of Buddha these striking similarities between the Buddhist scriptures and those which it was his mission to expound, though by this hpn- est statement his own further promotion was rendered irppossible. FausboU also found the story of the judgment of Solomon im- bedded in Buddhist folklore ; and Sir Edwin Arnold, by his poem. The Light of Asia, spread far and wide a knowledge of the antici- pation in Buddhism of some ideas which, down to a recent period, were considered distinctively Christian. Imperfect as the revela- tions thus made of an evolution of religious beliefs, institutions, and literature still are, they have not been without an important bearing upon the newer conception of our own sacred books : more and more manifest has become the interdependence of all 74 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. Iniman development ; * more and more clear the truth, that Chris- tianity, as a great fact in man's history, is not dependent for its life upon any parasitic growths of myth and legend, no matter how beautiful they may be. No less important was the closer research into the New Tes- tament during the latter part of the nineteenth century. This work has already been touched upon, but a few of the main truths which it brought before the world may be here summa- rized. By the new race of Christian scholars it has been clearly shown that the first three Gospels, which, down to the close of the last century, were so constantly declared to be three independent tes- * For Hue and Gabet, see SouTenirs d'un Voyage dans la Tartaric, le Thibet, la Chine, English translation by Hazlitt, London, 1861 ; also supplementary work by Hue. For Bishop Bigandet, see his Life of Buddha, passim. As authority for the fact that his book was condemned at Rome and his own promotion prevented, the present writer has the bishop's own statement. For notices of similarities between Buddhist and Christian insti- tutions, ritual, etc., see Rhys Davids's Buddhism, London, 1894, passim,- also Lillie, Bud- dhism and Christianity — especially chaps, ii and xi. It is somewhat difficult to under- stand how a scholar so eminent as Mr. Rhys Davids should have allowed the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which published his book, to eliminate all the interesting details regarding the birth of Buddha, and to give so fully everything that seemed to tell against the Roman Catholic Church ; cf. p. 27 with p. 246 et seq. For more thorough pres- entation of the development of features in Buddhism and Brahmanism which anticipate those of Christianity, see Schroeder, Indiens Literatur und Cultur, Leipsic, 188Y, espe- cially Vorlesung xxvii and following. For full details of the canonization of Buddha under the name of St. Josaphat, see FausboU, Buddhist Birth Stories, translated by Rhys Davids, London, 1880, pp. xxxvi and following ; also Prof. Max Miiller in the Contemporary Review for July, 1890; also the article Barlaam and Josaphat, in ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For the more recent and full accounts, correcting some minor details in the foregoing authorities, see Kuhn, Barlaam und Joasaph, Munich, 1893, especially pp. 82, 83 ; also Zotenberg, cited by Gaston Paris in the Revue de Paris for June, 1896. For the trans- literation between the appellation of Buddha and the name of the saint, see FausboU and Sayce as above, p. xxxvii, note ; and for the multitude of translations of the work ascribed to St. John of Damascus, see Table III on p. xcv. The reader who is curious to trace up a multitude of the myths and legends of early Hebrew and Christian mythology to their more eastern and southern sources can do so in Bible Myths, New York, 1883. The present writer gladly avails himself of the opportunity to thank the learned Director of the National Library at Palermo, Monsignor Marzo, for his kindness in showing him the very interesting church of San Giosafat in that city ; and to the custodians of the church for their readiness to allow photographs of the saint to be taken. The writer's visit was made in April, 1896, and copies of the photographs may be seen in the library of Cornell University. As to the more rare editions of Barlaam and Josaphat, a copy of the Icelandic translation is to be seen in the remarkable collection of Prof. Willard Fiske at Florence. As to the influence of these translations, it may be noted that, when young John Kuncewicz afterward a Polish archbishop, became a monk, he took the name of the sainted Prince Josafat ; and, having fallen a victim to one of the innumerable murderous affrays of the seventeenth century between Greek and Roman Christians in Poland, he also was finally canonized under that name, evidently as a means of annoying the Russian Government. (See Contieri, Vita di S. Giosafat, Arcivescovo e Martira Ruteno, Roma, 1867.) JSrHW CHAPTERS IN THE WABFABE OF SCIENCE. 75 timonies agreeing as to the events recorded, are neither independ- ent of each other nor in that sort of agreement which was for- merly asserted. All biblical scholars of any standing, even the most conservative, have come to admit that all three took their rise in the same original sources, growing by the accretions sure to come as time went on — accretions sometimes useful and often beautiful, but in no inconsiderable degree ideas and even narra- tives inherited from older religions ; it is also fully acknowledged .that tothis growth process are due certain contradictions which can not otherwise be explained. As to the fourth Gospel, exqui- sitely beautiful as large portions of it are, there has been growing steadily and irresistibly the conviction, even among the most de- vout scholars, that it represents an infusion of Greek conceptions into Hebraism, and that its final form is mainly due to some gifted representative or representatives of the Alexandrian school. Bit- ter as the resistance to this view has been, it has during the last years of the nineteenth century won its way more and more to acknowledgment. A careful examination made in 1893 by a com- petent Christian scholar showed facts which are best given in his own words, as follows : " In the period of thirty years ending in 1860, of the fifty great authorities in this line, four to one were in favor of the Johannine authorship. Of those who in that period had advocated this traditional position one quarter— and certainly the very greatest — finally changed their position to the side of a late date and non-Johannine authorship. Of those who have come into this field of scholarship since about 1860, some forty men of the first class, two thirds reject the traditional theory wholly or very largely. Of those who have contributed impor- tant articles to the discussion from about 1880 to 1890, about two to one reject the Johannine authorship of the Gospel in its present shape ; that is to say, while forty years ago great scholars were four to one in favor of, they are now two to one against, the claim that the apostle John wrote this gospel as we have it. Again, one half of those on the conservative side to-day — scholars like Weiss, Beyschlag, Sanday, and Reynolds — admit the existence of a dogmatic intent and an ideal element in this Gospel, so that we do not have Jesus's thought in his exact words, but only in substance." * In 1881 came an event of great importance as regards the de- velopment of a more frank and open dealing with scriptural * For the citations given regarding the development of thought in relation to the fourth Gospel see Crooker, The New Bible and its Uses, Boston, 1893, pp. 29, 30. For a very careful and candid summary of the reasons which are gradually leading the more eminent among the newer scholars to give up the Johannine authorship of the fourth Gospel, see Schiirer, in the Contemporary Review for September, 1891. 76 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. criticism. In that year appeared the Revised Version of the New Testament. It was exceedingly cautious and conservative ; but it had the vast merit of being absolutely conscientious. One thing showed, in a striking way, ethical progress in theological methods. Although all but one of the English revisers repre- sented Trinitarian bodies, they rejected the two great proof texts which had so long been accounted essential bulwarks of Trinita- rian doctrine. Thus disappeared at last from the Epistle of St. John the text of the Three Witnesses, which had for centuries held its place in spite of its absence from all the earlier important manuscripts, and of its rejection in later times by Erasmus, Luther, Isaac Newton, Porson, and a long line of the greatest bib- lical scholars. And with this was thrown out the other like unto it in spurious origin and zealous intent, that interpolation of the word " God " in the sixteenth verse of the third chapter of the First Epistle to Timothy which had for ages served as a war- rant for condemning some of the noblest of Christians, even such men as Newton and Milton and Locke and Priestley and Channing. Indeed, so honest were the revisers that they substituted the correct reading of Luke, ii, 33, in place of the time-honored cor- ruption in the King James version which had been thought ne- cessary to safeguard the dogma of the virgin birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus came the true reading, "His father and his mother," instead of the old piously fraudulent words "Joseph and his mother." An even more important service to the new and better growth of Christianity was the virtual setting aside of the last twelve verses of the Gospel according to St. Mark. For among these stood that sentence which has cost the world more innocent blood than any other — the words "He that believeth not shall be damned." From this source had logically grown the idea that the intellectual rejection of this or that dogma which dominant opinion had happened at any given time to pronounce essential, since such rejection must bring punishment infinite in agony and duration, is a crime to be prevented at any cost of finite cruelty. Still another service rendered to humanity by the revisers was in substituting a new and correct rendering for the old reading of the famous text regarding the inspiration of Scripture, which had for ages done so much to make our sacred books a fetich. By this more correct reading the revisers gave a new charter to liberty in biblical research.* * The texts referred to as moat beneficially changed by the revisers, are I John, t 7 • I Timothy, iii, 16. Though the revisers thought it better not to suppress altogether the last twelve verses NHW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 77 Most valuable, too, have been studies during the latter part of the nineteenth century upon the formation of the canon of Scripture. The result of these has been to substitute something far better for that conception of our biblical literature, as forming one book handed out of the clouds by the Almighty, which had been so long practically the accepted view among probably the majority of Christians. Eeverent scholars have demonstrated our sacred literature to be a growth in obedience to simple laws natural and historical ; they have shown how some books of the Old Testament were accepted as sacred, centuries before our era, and how others gradually gained sanctity, in some cases only acquiring it long after the establishment of the Christian Church. The same slow growth has also been shown in the New Testament canon. It has been demonstrated that the selection of the books composing it was a gradual process, and indeed that the rejection of some books and the acceptance of others was accidental, if anything is accidental. So, too, scientific biblical research has, as we have seen, been obliged to admit the existence of much mythical and legendary matter, as a setting for the great truths, not only of the Old Testa- ment but of the New. It has also shown, by the comparative study of literatures, the process by which some books were com- piled and recompiled, adorned with beautiful utterances, strength- ened or weakened by interpolations expressing the views of the possessors or transcribers, and assigned to personages who could not possibly have written them. The showing forth of these things has greatly weakened that sway of mere dogma which has so obscured the simple teachings of Christ himself; for it has shown that the more we know of our sacred books, the less certain we become as to the authenticity of proof texts, and it has disen- gaged more and more, as the only valuable residuum, like the mass of gold at the bottom of the crucible, the personality and general of St. Mark's Gospel, they softened the word " damned " to " condemned," and separated them from the main Gospel, adding a note stating that " the two oldest Greek manuscripts, and some other authorities, omit from verse nine to the end " ; and that " some other au- thorities have a different ending to this Gospel." The resistance of staunch high churchmen of the older type even to so mild a reform as the first change above noted may be exemplified by a story told of Philpotts, Bishop of Exeter, about the middle of the nineteenth century. A kindly clergyman reading the invi- tation to the holy communion, and thinking that so affectionate a call was disfigured by the harsh phrase " eateth and drinketh to his own damnation," ventured timidly to substitute the word " condemnation." Thereupon the bishop, who was kneeling with the rest of the congregation, threw up his head and roared ^^ damnation I " The story is given in T. A. Trollope's What I Kemember, vol. i, p. 444. American churchmen may well rejoice that the fathers of the American branch of the Anglican Church were wise enough and Christian enough to omit from their prayer book this damnatory clause, as well as the Comminatiou Service and the Athanasian Creed. 78 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. teachmg and ideals of the blessed Founder of Christianity. More and more, too, the new scholarship has developed the conception of the New Testament as, like the Old, the growth of literature in obedience to a divine law — a conception which in all proba- bility will give it its strongest hold on the coming centuries. In making this revelation Christian scholarship has by no means done work mainly destructive. It has, indeed, swept away a mass of noxious growths, but it has at the same time cleared the ground for a better growth of Christianity— a growth through which already pulsates the current of a nobler life. It has forever de- stroyed the contebtion of scholars like those of the eighteenth century, who saw, in the multitude of irreconcilable discrepancies between various biblical statements, merely evidences of priest- craft and intentional fraud. The new scholarship has shown that even such absolute contradictions as that between the date as- signed for the crucifixion in the first three Gospels and that given in the fourth, and other discrepancies hardly less serious, do not affect the historical character of the essential part of the narra- tive. Even the hopelessly conflicting genealogies of the Saviour and the evidently mythical accretions about the simple facts of his birth and life are thus full of interest when taken as a nat- ural literary development.* Among those who have wrought most effectively to bring the leaders of thought in the English-speaking nations to this higher conception, Matthew Arnold should not be forgotten. By poetic insight, broad scholarship, pungent statement, pithy argument, and an exquisitely lucid style, he aided effectually during the lat- ter half of the nineteenth century in bringing the work of spe- cialists to bear upon the general development of a broader and deeper view. In the light of his genius a conception of our sacred books at the same time more literary as well as more sci- entific has grown widely and vigorously, while the older view which made of them a fetich and support for unchristian dogmas has been more and more thrown into the background. The con- tributions to these results by the most eminent professors at the great Christian universities of the English-speaking world, Ox- ford and Cambridge taking the lead, are most hopeful signs of a new epoch. Very significant, also, is a change in the style of argument against the scientific view. Leading supporters of the * Among the newer English works on the canon of Scripture, especially as regards the Old Testament, see Ryle in work cited. As to the evidences of frequent mutilations of the New Testament text, as well as of frequent charge of changing texts made against each other by early Christian writers, see Reuss, History of the New Testament, vol. ii 8 362 For a reverent and honest treatment of some of the discrepancies and contradictions which are absolutely irreconcilable, see Crocker, as above ; also Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma. JSTEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 79 older opinions see more and more clearly the worthlessness of rhetoric against ascertained fact : mere dogged resistance to co- gent argument evidently avails less and less, and tlie readiness of the more prominent representatives of the older thought to con- sider opposing arguments, and to acknowledge any force they may have, is certainly of good omen. The concessions made in Lux Mundi regarding scriptural myths and legends have been already mentioned. Typical, also, among the evidences of a better spirit in contro- versy has been the treatment of the question regarding mistaken quotations from the Old Testament in the New, and especially regarding quotations by Christ himself. For a time this was ap- parently the most difficult of all matters dividing the two forces ; but, though here and there appear champions of tradition, like the Bishop of Gloucester, effectual resistance to the new view has virtually ceased ; in one way or another the most conservative authorities have accepted the undoubted truth revealed by a sim- ple scientific method. Their arguments have indeed been varied. While some have fallen back upon Le Clerc's contention that " Christ did not come to teach criticism to the Jews," and others upon Paley's argument that the Master shaped his statements in accordance with the ideas of his time, others have taken refuge in scholastic statements — among them that of Iren^us regarding "a quiescence of the divine word," or the somewhat startling explanation by sundry recent theologians that " our Lord emptied himself of his Godhead." * But for all this dissolving away of the traditional opinions regarding our sacred literature, there has been a cause far more general and powerful than any which has been given, for it is a cause surrounding and permeating all. This is simply the atmos- phere of thought engendered by the development of all sciences during the last three centuries. Vast masses of myth, legend, marvel, and dogmatic assertion, coming into this atmosphere, have been dissolved and are now dissolving quietly away like icebergs drifted into the Gulf Stream. In earlier days, when some critic in advance of his time * For Matthew Arnold, see especially his Literature and Dogma and his St. Paul and Protestantism. As to the quotations in the New Testament from the Old, see Toy, Quota- tions in the New Testament, 1889, p. 72 ; also Euenen, The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel. For Le Clerc's mode of dealing with the argument regarding quotations from the Old Testament in the New, see earlier parts of the present chapter. For Paley's mode, see his Evidences, Part III, chapter iii. For the more scholastic expressions from Irenseus and others, see Gore, Bampton Lectures, 1891, especially note on p. 267. For a striking pas- sage on the general subject, see B. W. Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, p. 33, ending with the words, "We must decline to stake the authority of Jesus Christ on a question of literary criticism." 8o JVJEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. insisted that Moses could not have -written an account emhracing the circumstances of his own death, it was sufficient to answer that Moses was a prophet ; if attention was called to the fact that the great early prophets, by all which they did and did not do, showed that there could not have existed in their time any " Levitical code," a sufficient answer was " mystery " ; and if the discrepancy was noted between the two accounts of crea- tion in Genesis, or between the genealogies or the dates of the crucifixion in the Gospels, the cogent reply was "infidelity." But the thinking world has at last been borne by the general development of a scientific atmosphere beyond that kind of refu- tation. If, in the atmosphere generated by the earlier developed sci- ences, the older growths of biblical interpretation have drooped and withered and are evidently perishing, new and better growths with roots running down into the newer sciences have arisen. Comparative mythology and folklore, comparative religion and literature, by searching out and laying side by side the main facts in the upward struggle of humanity in various old seats of civilization, are giving a new interpretation of these great problems which dogmatic theology has long labored in vain to solve. Thus, while they have established the fact that accounts formerly supposed to be special revelations to Jews and Chris- tians are but repetitions of widespread legends dating from far earlier civilizations, and that beliefs formerly thought funda- mental to Judaism and Christianity are simply based on an- cient myths, they have also begun to impress upon the intel- lect and conscience of the thinking world the fact that the religious and moral truths thus disengaged from the old masses of myth and legend are all the more beautiful and serviceable, and that all individual or national life of any value must be vitalized by them.* N'or should there be omitted a tribute to the increasing justice and courtesy shown in late years by leading supporters of the older view. During the last two decades of the present century there has been a most happy departure from the older method of resistance, first by plausibilities, next ■ by epithets, and finally by persecution. To the bitterness of the attacks upon Darwin, the Essayists and Reviewers, and Bishop Colenso, have succeeded, among really eminent leaders, a far better method and tone. * For plaintive lamentations over the influence of this atmosphere of scieutiiic thought upon the most eminent contemporary Christian scholars, see the Christus Comprobator, by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, London, 1893, and the article in the Contemporary Keview for May, 1892, by the Bishop of Colchester, passim. For some less known exam- ples of sacred myths and legends. Inherited from ancient civilizations, see Lenormant, Les Originea de I'Histoire, passim, but especially chapters ii, iv, v, vi. See also Goldziher. ]Sri:W CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 8i While Matthew Arnold, no doubt, did much in commending " sweet reasonableness " to theological controversialists, Mr. Glad- . stone, by his perfect courtesy to his opponents, even when smart- ing under their ' heaviest blows, has set a most valuable example. Nor should the spirit shown by Bishop Ellicott, leading a forlorn hope for the traditional view, pass without a tribute of respect. Truly pathetic is it to see this venerable and learned prelate, one of the most eminent representatives of the older biblical research, even when giving solemn warnings against the newer criticisms, and under all the temptations of ex cathedra utterance, remaining mild and gentle and just in the treatment of adversaries whose ideas he evidently abhors. Happily, he is comforted by the faith that Christianity will survive ; and this faith his opponents fully share.* Thus at last, out of the old conception of our Bible as a collec- tion of oracles — a mass of entangling utterances, fruitful in wrangling interpretations, which have given to the world long and weary ages of " hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness," of fetichism, subtlety, and pomp, of tyranny, bloodshed, and sol- emnly constituted imposture, of everything which the Lord Jesus Christ most abhorred — has been gradually developed through the centuries, by the labors, sacrifices, and even the martyrdom of a long succession of men of God, the conception of it as a sacred literature, a growth in obedience to divine light in the mind and heart and soul of man. No longer an oracle, good for the "lower orders " to accept, but to be quietly sneered at by " the enlight- ened" — no longer a fetich, whose defenders must become perse- cutors or " apologists," but a most fruitful fact, which religion and science may accept as a source of strength to both.f * As examples of courtesy between theologic opponents may be cited the controversy between Mr. Gladstone and Prof. Huxley, Principal Gore's Bampton Lectures for 189], and Bishop EUioott's Charges, published in 1893. ■f To the fact that the suppression of personal convictions among " the enlightened " did not cease with the MedieeaB Popes there are many testimonies. One especially curious was mentioned to the present writer by a most honored diplomatist and scholar at Rome. While this gentleman was looking over the books of an eminent cardinal, recently deceased, he noticed a series of octavos bearing on their backs the title Acta Apostolorum. Surprised at such an extension of the Acts of the Apostles, he opened a volume and found the series to be the works of Voltaire. As to a similar condition of things in the Church of England may be cited the following from Froude's Erasmus : " I knew various persons of high repu- tation a few years ago who thought at bottom very much as Bishop Colenso thought, who, nevertheless, turned and rent him to clear their own reputations — which they did not suc- ceed in doing.'' See work cited, close of Lecture XI. Syracuse, M.Y. Stockton, Calif. ! <^i.-t i'-'7 ^^- :^ ■:>•■- /:;>* V-' .^ 4.1.-. r "^ 1 ' -' ^ /f a ■'..V -'V ;- 1 ... f::> ^- J.'.r ^ r'-v r.Tr ^,.? \