proper field—the clergy will more and more, as they cease to struggle against scientific methods and conclusions, do work even nobler and more beautiful than anything they have heretofore done. And this is saying much. My conviction is that science, though it has evidently conquered dogmatic theology based on Biblical texts and ancient modes of thought, will go hand in hand with religion; and that although theological control will continue to diminish, religion, as seen in the recognition of a power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness,' and in the love of God and of our neighbor, will steadily grow stronger and stronger, not only in the American institutions of learning, but in the world at large."

The Christian Bible, like the other sacred Scriptures of the world, is henceforth to be reckoned and treated as literature. As such every intelligent and honest student of it will, not only profoundly revere it (as containing most sacred Truth), but also must sharply inspect, critically investigate, and unsparingly sift it, in order to help gather the wheat into the garner, but to burn the chaff in quenchless fire. There is much to be done; exactly what, can here only be indicated.

XV.-HOW MYTHS GROW.

A typical illustration may be presented which will suffice to show how myths grow; and how tradition should always be suspected, credulity restrained, and the records of traditional literature examined critically and sifted unsparingly.

Even while he was yet alive our own Emerson had occasion frequently to correct misstatements of his sayings that were rapidly and widely circulated, *as also to deny fables that

*The author has preserved a letter which painfully reminds him of his own agency in this matter. Ministering one Sunday at the old Unitarian Church of Concord, in either the morning or evening services, he made reference to a sentence which he had caught, as he supposed, from Mr. Emerson's lips during a lecture he had recently delivered in Music Hall, Boston, on the subject of Immortality. The next morning he received a politely worded letter from Miss Ellen Emerson, who had been present at both the services, saying she had

had already begun to grow concerning his personality and his doings. After his decease these misstatements and fables continued not only to prevail, but also to increase; so that his various biographers-even within ten years of his deceasehave been obliged to sift the evidences and sharply distinguish between truth and fiction. This is by no means uncommon; indeed, it is constant and universal, even in these latter days. How much more so in the former days; and increasingly so, century by century, as we go backward to the ages of unwritten history, and of records preserved only in uncertain memories, and handed down by wonderloving, and almost always-party or partisan-regarding lips!

Everybody knows how, even while they lived, and much more after they were dead, the personalities, deeds, and words of Peter the Great, Napoleon, and Wellington; of Walter Scott, Wordsworth, and Carlyle; of Washington, Webster, and Lincoln-as, indeed, of every other of the greatest men and women of modern centuries down to this day-have quickly and persistently been distorted, perverted, or, obscured by mysteries, fables, and myths. And no intelligent person will now read a history or a biography or any volume of general literature-recognized fiction alone excepted-which has not been sharply examined and thoroughly sifted in order to separate facts from fancies, exaggerations from realities, the genuine from the spurious. So is being fulfilled John the Baptist's prophecy concerning the Living Christ—who has been and is the refining, purifying Spirit of all the ages-"Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."

reported the quotation of the sermon to her father; that he wished to thank the preacher for the honor, but also to assure him that neither the words nor the exact thought were his. Immediately the preacher, being entirely certain that he had heard accurately and quoted correctly, called upon Mr. Emersonwhom he already had the honor of knowing-to convince him of the truthfulness of his report. The result was that, by reference to the manuscript, the sentence was found to be as Mr. Emerson had affirmed.

As an additional hint of the fact that Myth-weaving and Fable-making are still widely and rapidly going on—even among "enlightened Protestants"—with reference to both Christianity and the Christian Bible, we may notice two general facts. The Theology of such books as Milton's Paradise Lost, and the Christology of various Religious Novels, like Prince of the House of David and nearly every one of the many popular Lives of Christ, have insensibly so shaped, and colored, and changed original Christianity, the original Christ, and the original meanings of the Bible, that with every age of Protestantism-as truly though not as completely as with the ages of Roman and Greek Catholicism which preceded it-reversions to Heathenism and consequent degeneration have been and are now going on. The popular Book Reviews of to-day are announcing whole crops and floods of popular Novels by popular Novelists who "have been engaged at enormous prices" to produce for the Demetrius-Publishers, to be used for the diversion of the Great -is- Diana -of-the- Ephesians reading Public—various 'Silver Shrines for Diana" in the way of Popularized Lives of Christ! If such reversions and degenerations are permitted to continue, the Holy Bible will soon become a mere Gemara, like that which ruled the Jewish Church in the days of Jesus; and The Christ will be transformed into a mythic Achilles, Heracles, or Jove, as were the real heroes and shining Saints of Ancient Greece who, to divert the masses, were permitted gradually to degenerate into the "gods" of degenerate Greece, whose degenerate Holy Book came at length to be the Homeric Hymns to the Gods and the Theogony of Hesiod-the former the Old Testament and the latter the New Testament of their Bible for the Masses!

This is the Age of Fiction. Such another has never before been known in History; not excepting even that of St. Paul's time, when "all the Athenians and the strangers sojourning there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear something new." As a confirmation, note such an announcement as this, just made in a thousand periodicals and newspapers all over Christendom: "The

popular novelist — has engaged to write a new story to be called; and, though he has not yet set pen to paper to produce it, he has already been paid $27,000 in advance for the work." Story-writers, Novelists, and Authors of Fiction-all commendable in their proper spheres and helpful under reasonable limitations-are the heroes, sages, and divinities of to-day. They furnish ninety-nine one hundredths of the popular pabulum. They amass fortunes in a year and live in splendid luxury, as did the sophists and literary clients of ancient Greece and Rome. Meanwhile the genuine philosopher, the truthful historian, the writer on exact or actual Science, the author of realistic Literature, the teacher or preacher of genuine Religion "pure and undefiled before God the Father" now as ever-relatively speaking more than ever-must wear the "tattered cloak" and live in humble poverty and retirement. Verily, the danger of today, above that of any previous age that History tells us about, is, that Religion and all will end in Fiction-as transpired in the Ancient Empires of Greece and of Rome, and in every other decayed or decaying Empire and civilization of the Past. Who will "come up to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty?"

XVI. THE WHEAT GARNERED, THE CHAFF BURNED.

This prophecy must also and specially be fulfilled with reference to: first, the Bible itself, and then to the whole mass and body of Religious Literature, Theology, Dogmas, Traditions, Sacraments, Rituals, and Ecclesiasticism, wherever existing among civilized people upon the whole earth.

"Now also the ax is laid unto the root of the trees; therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit, is hewn down and cast into the fire." This is the perpetual renascence of the living Christ; and this the "prepare ye the way," which all intelligent, reverent Christians ought henceforth to hear and to heed. The need of this sharp examination and of this thorough and unsparing sifting, overturning, pruning, and purifying, is greater by far as we approach the

various records, traditions, and institutions of ancient times. We see myths growing, superstitions arising, and prevailing all about us even in these days of exact records, and of immediate and impartial investigation. In spite of our amanuenses and reporters; in spite of our wondrous modern arts, inventions, and appliances, of Photography, Phonetics, Phonographics, Telegraphy, Telephonics; in spite of our Omnipresent Press and Omniscient Eye of public inquisitiveness, introspection, sharp discernment, and unsparing judgment, ("quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart," so that there is "no creature that is not manifest, but all things are naked and open ")-in spite of all these astounding characteristics of our century, (which, more than all the preceding eighteen centuries combined, indicates the presence of the Living Christ, and proclaims the Kingdom of Heaven at hand,) even here and now-(right before our face and eyes)—we see myths growing, superstitions arising and prevailing. How must it have been then in the Bible-forming, dogmafashioning, ritual-building, creed-making, cult-organizing ages! Among untutored, semi-civilized, and highly imaginative Orientals! When legend and fable, extravagance, exaggeration, and supernaturalism were the very nutriment of the popular mind, and the very atmosphere in which everybody lived and moved! When nothing was written down, but everything called to remembrance, then circulated from mouth to mouth, from group to group, from country to country, and from generation to generation; till some well-meaning writer-himself also a product of his credulous age and a victim of his myth-loving environment-should "take it in hand to set forth, in order, a declaration of those things which are most truly believed among us!"

What need to add any further reasons for the Higher Criticism? What need of other enforcements of the sacred demands that are upon all intelligent students of the Bible, as of the other Sacred Scriptures of the world-to be, not