Philosophy in the University of Oxford, holds that it is quite certain. He says that the Myth is the highest form of religious instruction. He believes that if the early narratives of Genesis had not been myths they would not have served their purpose, they would not have conveyed to man that knowledge of God and of man's own life which they do convey. If the early narratives of Genesis had not been myths they would long ago have been buried in oblivion.

Professor Stewart has published a book on the Myths of Plato (Macmillan; 14s. net). In that book he shows that in the Dialogues of Plato the Myth, although but an occasional instrument of instruction, is an instrument of the highest value. The Myth is mostly placed in the mouth of Socrates himself. And it is made use of at the moment when the argument has touched those eternal things which are of the deepest interest to men. It is as if Plato had realized that, much as reasoning or logical debate may do, there is a point in the search after the knowledge of God and the duty of man where it stops short, and the rest must be done by the Myth. Professor Stewart accordingly gives this volume to the study of the Platonic Myth. He gathers the Myths out of the Dialogues, translates them, annotates them, and shows by many means, but chiefly by a long illuminating Introduction, that not in the Dialogues of Plato only, but everywhere, the highest and absolutely essential form of religious instruction is the Myth.

What is a Myth? It is a story. It is a fanciful tale in which, by the aid of imaginative language, the fundamental conditions of the knowledge of God and the conduct of life are set forth. Its characters are not real nor its events historical. At least they need not be. It does not matter whether they are or not. They are often absurdly unreal and unhistorical, as when animals are made to think and speak as men. Professor Stewart would at once describe the story of the Fall as a myth, the evidence that it is a myth being

quite unmistakable when the serpent is made to speak.

Now the Myth is not a story with a moral. Indeed, the less of a moral there is in it the more it is a Myth. Nor is it simply a story. It is a story in which such language is employed, or such a situation is created, as brings the mind into the presence of the Eternal; or, to use Professor Stewart's words, into a state in which we feel 'that which was and is and ever shall be' overshadowing us. The charm of the Myth is the charm of Poetry generally. There is no essential difference indeed between the Myth and such Poetry as is truly religious like the Divina Commedia. It is a species of Poetry which uses its own vehicle to fulfil its ends, that vehicle being the imaginary experiences of imaginary beings which go to form a story.

Professor Stewart, then, says that the Myth is essential to instruction in religion. What does he mean? Can we not instruct our children directly by teaching them actual facts and events? No, he says, we cannot. He recalls the words of Plato in the second book of the Republic about the religious instruction of children. The education of children, says Plato, is not to begin with instruction in 'facts' or 'truths.' It is not to begin, as we should say, with the 'elementary truths of science' and the facts of common life.' We fill our primers with such things, and thrust them into our children's hands. But Plato says we do wrong. Children cannot yet understand what is true in fact. We must begin with stories, with fictions, with what is false in fact. We must teach them what is literally false in order that they may get hold of what is spiritually true. And it is not simply because their only interest is in stories, although that is significant; it is because the story is the only possible means of instructing them in the things that are unseen and eternal.

Professor Stewart agrees with Plato. And it is, he seems to say, because we have been taking the wrong way with our children, that there are so

say that your watch is infallible you mean as a timekeeper; not that it has a flawless case, not that it will tell you the day of the month or predict to-morrow's weather' (page 151).

'Before we form any opinion about the Gospels, and even though we see much in them that we cannot accept, they set before us this unique figure-a figure far beyond the creative power of the writers, and carrying in it its own authentication, its own direct appeal to heart and conscience and reason. We need as little fear the nibblings of criticism as we fear the minute erosions of our shores by the ocean' (page 157). 'Too much may very easily be made of the distance in time between the events and their

record. A second generation is sometimes spoken of as if it arrived all at once, and in a day displaced and abolished the first generation, like changing guard at a military post, or like the sudden displacement of day by night in the tropics' (p. 183).

'What, then, was our Lord's purpose in performing miracles? The answer is, He performed them not to convince people that He was the Messiah, the messenger and representative of God, but because He had that understanding of God's love and that perfect fellowship with God which made Him the Messiah. . . . But just because the primary purpose of the miracles was to give expression of God's mercy and not to prove our Lord's Messiahship, on this very account they can be appealed to as evidence that Jesus was the Messiah. The poet writes because he is a poet, and not for the purpose of convincing the world that he is a poet. And yet his writing does convince the world that he is a poet' (pages 225-227).

Thoughts like these seem to me to be really helpful. One of them is taken from the chapter on Infallibility; the main point, however, as it is formulated on page 137, is hardly stated with the writer's usual felicity. The awkwardness is due to the attempt to bring under one head the lesser fallibilities that are found in the Bible with the one great infallibility in the Person of Christ.

For myself, I should deprecate the antithesis that is drawn out in chap. ii. between the Romanist and the Protestant view of the Canon;

as though the Romanist accepts Scripture as the Word of God because the Church tells him so, and the Protestant accepts it as the Word of God because God tells him so' (p. 41; cf. 57, 58), in other words, because his conscience commends it to him. The verdict of the individual conscience is surely strengthened by having the support of a number of consciences; and that is, in the last resort, what the judgment of the Church comes to. Is it not better to try to find out the real principle that lies behind other people's beliefs than to foster our own self-complacency by treating our beliefs as so much better than theirs? The strength of the Protestant position lies, not in the fact that it is more securely founded, but rather in that, at some point in the chain, it implies more personal reality of apprehension. When Luther pronounced the Epistle of St. James 'an epistle of straw,' it was a subjective and rather hasty opinion, which as such was open to correction; but it did mean that he had a real understanding-not of St. James but of St. Paul.

We observe that the centre of gravity of Dr. Dods' book rests much more on the New Testament than on the Old, and in the New Testament specially upon the Gospels. The reasons for this are very intelligible, when the point of view is so essentially practical. At the same time there would be something to be said for the opposite method; because, historically, the idea of inspiration and of a 'sacred book' attached to the Old Testament before it attached to the New, and therefore we must study it in the Old Testament if we would really trace it back to its origin. It is also, I suppose, in connexion with the Old Testament that the greatest advances in recent thought have been made.

I have said that the seven chapters of the book were originally delivered as lectures. It is explained in a preliminary note that these were given under the 'Bross Foundation,' which is associated with Lake Forest College, Illinois, U.S.A. It may be rather tantalizing to British scholars to gather from the same note that a munificent prize of 6000 dollars (roughly = £1200) is offered for competition for works of apologetic theology coming under the heads laid down in the Trust, the MSS of which, however, must be sent in by 1st June of the present year. Unless their attention has been called to this announcement before, it is to be feared that our countrymen will not have very much chance of competing.

THE reason assigned in Deuteronomy (163) for the unleavened bread during the Passover festival is, that Israel may remember that they were 'sent out of Egypt in haste'; in other words, that Israel may remember the pressure-the supernatural pressure-God brought to bear upon an obdurate Pharaoh, as to have wrenched from him not only his permission to depart, but even his insistence upon their instant departure.

This we know. But this is not the reason given in Exodus. New as this may sound to some, it is a fact, nevertheless, that in this instance, as in that of the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath, the Book of Exodus (1217) gives quite a different reason-a reason at once more poetic, more symbolic, and, perhaps, even more appropriate-bearing not so much upon the Departure, as upon the sojourn. To appreciate, however, the reason given in Exodus, we must first digest the following physiological fact:

Any dough made of the five specified kinds of grain (wheat, barley, rye, oats, and spelt-T.B. Pesachim, Mish. ii. 5) will rise of itself, though no artificial aid, as barm or yeast, be put in will rise of itself if only allowed to. The alcoholic properties, or ferment peculiar to, and inherent in the cereal, contain all the force and vigour, all the potentiality and energy sufficient to make the dough rise of its own accord. The leaven, yeast, or barm do not create, but only stimulate the ferment already possessed by the cereal. makes the dough rise sooner; but rise it would even without it. The ancient Egyptians never did put any barm into their bread, but left it entirely to time and congenial temperature to produce the state of leaven required in the bread. Thus Chameż,' i.e. Leaven, rises of itself; and so would ‘Mażah,' ¿.e. Unleaven, if only permitted to. But it is just here where the difference lies; that while in the former this natural tendency is encouraged, or at least given free play, in the latter it is rigidly suppressed and circumventedkept down by design.

The 'Mażah' dough is deprived of all and every opportunity of self-rising. Its energy is stifled, its force checked, its development stunted

by the overpowering heat of the oven into which it is precipitated in all haste, which reduces the possibility of its rising to a minimum. Even this minimum is successfully checked in advance by the application of the ratchet-the ragged, sharptoothed wheel driven all over its surface, which, cutting into the dough deep furrows of sharp indentation, cuts off its last chance of ever rising.

Hence, while 'Chameż,' as self-rising, may well stand as the symbol of 'self-emancipation,' 'Mazah,' on the other hand, with all the 'rise' taken out of it, serves as the appropriate symbol of self-impotence, of utter self-helplessness-of an emancipation, effected not from within, but from without.

The analogy between Israel's position in Egypt and that of the 'Mażah' is so complete, so striking, that it needs but stating to be recognized.

Other nationalities, besides Israel's, were at various times reduced to subjection, and experienced much oppression. To take modern instances, let us name Italy, Greece, and the Balkan States for example. But these peoples, having remained on their native soil, the subjection and oppression, great though they were, still left space for the national soul to breathe in. With all the oppression, the oppressors were powerless to stifle or smother the organs of national respiration of the subjected nationalities. Spite of all restrictive measures, the national leaven of the subdued asserted itself, produced internal motion, agitation, and ferment; and, nurtured by time, aided by congenial temperature, and favoured by opportunity, the 'dough' began to rise. The people bestirred themselves, began to move. They called meetings, organized demonstrations, fanned the embers of patriotism into a blaze, and the 'dough' rose to its full height. The oppressed rose to a man, broke the yoke of foreign domination, and so, by their own inherent strength, brought about their selfemancipation.

They rose, Chameż-like, by their own efforts. They themselves generated all the 'leaven' required for the 'rise'-all came from within. 'Chameż' is the symbol of their emancipation,

and 'Chameż' should they therefore eat on the anniversary of their restoration to independence. With Israel, however, the case was very different. Israel was on foreign soil during the period of his subjection. Strangers in the Valley of the Nile they were, amidst the proverbially suspicious native, whose suspicion had but to be roused from the throne to make him see to it that the Hebrew in his midst shall not rise, if he can help it. And he did see to it; so that the Hebrew 'leaven' remained very much unlike Chameż! At one stroke of the pen, or stylus, the free Hebrews were deprived of all rights of citizenship, and precipitated into the fiery furnace of Egyptian thraldom, which overpowering heat soon arrested all internal motion, checked all national agitation, stunted the 'leavening' propensity, stifled all aspiration for independence, and took the 'rise' out of the 'dough' completely. Even this did not quite satisfy the oppressor. The Hamite was still apprehensive lest the Semite might rise in spite of it all; and so had recourse to the rachet to cruel and murderous enactments, which treated the Hebrews in true 'Mazah '-fashion. The sharp-toothed wheel of torture, of diabolic atrocity, was driven over the enslaved now and again, and this ratchet, cutting deeply into the 'dough,' had performed its fiendish work to perfection. It punctured the paste so thoroughly, crushed their spirit so completely, that it left them past raising themselves-lying flat 'Mazah '-like, insipid and spiritless-a real object of pity. If Emancipation had to fall to their lot, it had to come all from without; for from within there was left neither energy, capacity, nor even hope.

Israel's position in Egypt was, as shown, analogous to the 'Mażah.' So apt, so faithful, so complete, and so striking is the comparison, that the 'Mażah' is the very symbol of an emancipation from such a state. We need not, therefore, be surprised if this is the reason given in Exodus (1217).

'You shall observe the unleavened bread.' Why? Because,' continues the text, 'on this self-same day have I BROUGHT you out of the land of Egypt.' You, implies the text, did not -because you could not-come out of your own accord, by your own efforts, but had to be brought out. You were past self-rising. Yours was not a self-emancipation as to make 'Chameż' the appropriate symbol; your Emancipation was a Redemption, pure and simple, and for a Redemption 'Mażah' is the appropriate symbol. Hence on this anniversary ye shall eat 'Mażah!'

'Zionism,' the great Jewish national movement which is stirring the nation just now to its very depth, is seeking to agitate the national 'leaven' and make the 'dough,' as it were, rise this time of its own accord to render the Jewish national resuscitation, not a Redemption but a Self-Emancipation! and, perhaps, unconsciously, spare the nation the necessity of having to eat Mażah' on the anniversary of the next restoration! That one Matzah' festival a year is enough to satisfy the scruples of even the most orthodox of the nation, we all agree; and it would be but sheer justice on the part of the European nations, were they to extend a helping hand to a nation with such a history as the Jews, to help them to help themselves, and effect their own restoration.

As

that ought to disturb the mind of Christians. he himself anticipates in his preface, his book may provoke hostile criticism from extreme men on both sides, but it will probably appeal to many as an example of a safe middle course. For ourselves we confess that we have more sympathy with his treatment of the Babel-Bibel question than of the 'higher' criticism. But there can be only one opinion as to the excellent spirit and the candour with which the author deals with his whole subject.