Nothing, therefore, but unreasoning faith in the dogma of scriptural infallibility prevents Protestant theologians from meeting the claims of Rome-not with controversial interpretations-but a bold denial that Jesus ever uttered the fatal words which consecrated sacerdotal despotism, and held Christendom bound in ecclesiastical fetters for more than a thousand years. It is vain to contend, through Hebrew scholarship, that binding and loosing' simply means defining right and wrong, and also, the weakest possible casuistry to affirm that Jesus himself-not Peter-was the rock indicated by the speaker; for most assuredly, if the words were spoken by a Being divinely prescient of their momentous influence on the future of Christianity, Peter and, inferentially, his successors enjoy so commanding an influence on earth and in heaven, that prudence suggests our speedy departure for Rome, that we may tender our submission to the Supreme Pontiff controlling the spiritual destinies of mankind.

The second passage in which the word church occurs supplies the warrant for the ecclesiastical excommunication of an erring brother, henceforth classed with publicans, as if this were a term of opprobrium from the lips of a speaker who, in defiance of Pharisaic exclusiveness, had included this class of men among his familiar companions. The presence of a clumsy interpolator is, however, at once disclosed in the irrational assumption that an accuser is always in the right. There is no question of impartial investigation into the merits of the quarrel. The plaintiff, as judge in his own cause, personally condemns the accused, and simply seeks confirmation of his judgment through sympathis

ing friends or excommunicating priests. This blot on the pages of the gospel is, however, at once removed as we listen to Jesus instructing Peter to forgive his offending brother, not seven, but seventy times seven.1 Shall we, therefore, sustain the infallibility of Scripture by convicting Jesus of self-contradiction, or vindicate his consistency by expunging obvious interpolations?

Matthew xix. 10-12 is evidently another ecclesiastical interpolation introduced to sanction celibate fanaticism. Apologetic theologians tell us that the language is figurative, and means nothing more than divine approval of voluntary celibacy, as conducive to a life of pious devotion. If this mode of interpretation be admissible for Roman Catholics who prove the depth of their convictions through monastic retirement from the world, how can it be sustained by Protestants who condemn all celibate vows? We solve the question by denying that Jesus ever uttered words literally suggestive of a barbarous superstition, or figuratively commending celibate asceticism. Ecclesiastical manipulators of the Gospels doubtless sought for Scriptural sanction of their interpolations, and in this case found a precedent in the Wisdom of Solomon (iii. 14), pronouncing an eloquent eulogium on the miserable victims of Oriental despotism.

If it should be said how could these important alterations in the text of Christian literature be effected without the knowledge and consent of Christian communities, we answer interrogatively: how did the translators of the authorised version of Scripture retain in the pages of Protestant Bibles, accepted as verbally

1 Matt. xviii. 21, 22.

infallible by episcopal communities, the following alleged attestation of the Trinitarian dogma, absent from every MS. antecedent to the fifteenth century: 'There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one ?" If millions of confiding students of Scripture have lived and died for centuries, in the full assurance of faith that this is the word of God proclaiming the truth of Trinitarian mysticism, and the passage is now rejected by eminent Greek scholars as an undoubted forgery, what limits can we place to the possibilities of textual corruption during the earliest stages of ecclesiastical evolution?

1 1 John v. 7.

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CHAPTER III.

JESUS AND THE BAPTIST.

WHEN we turn to the personal history of Jesus of Nazareth, we necessarily experience disappointment in the absence of all information respecting the first thirty years of his life. The legend of precocious wisdom in the Temple contains all the elements of self-destruction. If Jesus was conscious of Messianic duties as a mere child, what means the succeeding blank of nearly twenty years in his life? If his opinions at the age of twelve harmonised with the views of Hebrew sages, had they undergone so great a change by thirty, as to evoke the judicial condemnation of his former admirers? And if he had attained the age of fifty, might not a maturer wisdom have, then, so modified his opinions as to have given to Christianity another history?

The credulous compilers of Luke seem quite unconscious that the legend of the Temple destroys the legend of the Annunciation; for if the angel Gabriel had revealed to Mary the divine origin of Jesus, could his precocious wisdom have caused her any surprise, if even manifested from the moment of his birth ?—a phenomenon which the Gospel of pseudo-Matthew records in logical sequence with the supernatural nativity.1

In utter ignorance, therefore, of the early life of

1 Pseudo-Matthew xviii.

Jesus, it remains for us to inquire what were the social and intellectual surroundings which fashioned him, as all other men, in harmony with the tendencies of his age and generation ?

The authorised version of Scripture being the source whence popular views of Judaism are drawn, modern Bible-readers are more or less ignorant of the great changes in Hebrew thought effected through contact with Aryan races from the Babylonian captivity to the reign of the Herods. This period of transition from Mosaic barbarism to Persian, Grecian, and Roman civilisation is partially depicted in the pages of the Apocrypha, through neglect of which students of Scripture pass so abruptly from Moses and the Prophets to the school of Galilee, that the natural sequence of events is lost, and Jesus appears upon the scene, not as the lineal descendant of the ages, but as a mysterious stranger introducing the unknown.

To the majority of the exiles returned from Babylon, Hebrew had become a dead language, known only to the learned Scribes (Sopherim), who, as members of the Great Synagogue, said to have been founded by Ezra, collected the Sacred Canon, and became authoritative interpreters of the civil and religious law, adapted to the wants of the age by modifications attributed to Moses through the pious fiction of the Cabbala (tradition), imaginatively traced to the dispensation of Sinai-a fabulous origin of such imposing authority that the 'Words of the Scribes' became even more binding than the written law, and enlightened Rabbis of liberal views could thus combine Aryan philosophy with Semitic faith, without prejudice to the prescriptive rights of Moses and the Prophets.