the

the purpose to enquire on what, after all, is this plea of inspiration based? It rests ultimately, it would seem, on the very literature which it is invoked to accredit. The Bible is divine, it is urged, because the Church attests it. But how is the Church empowered to give this attestation? Because its chief teachers are guided by the Spirit. Where, then, is the proof of such guidance? It is found only in very record itself. Receive ye the Holy Spirit,' says the risen Jesus, as he breathes on the Apostles, John 2022. To say nothing of the colossal assumption that this gift was continued to their episcopal successors, it cannot be overlooked that the record is thus first summoned to guarantee the teaching authority of the Church. Scripture and Tradition thus in turn support each other. It is not usual for the foundations and the roof alternately to exchange places, and serve in each capacity in the same building. The inspiration claimed for the Church may really belong to it. But it cannot be

into view about 165 A.D. (Harnack), in Asia Minor; they seem to have been designated by this name from their rejection of the Doctrine of the Logos, and the Gospel in which it occurred: if the Johannine tradition had been absolutely stable, would this rejection have been possible? More remarkable is the fact that Gaius, a learned writer of the church at Rome, raised objections to it at the opening of the third century, to which Hippolytus replied. The possibility of erroneous literary ascription has received ample illustration in our own country; for example in the seventeenth century, Eikon Basilikê was widely attributed to the royal martyr,' though the Bishop of Exeter, Dr. Gauden, confessed his authorship. The 'Christian Paradoxes,' published in 1648 in a volume of Remains' of Bacon, were assigned to him in repeated editions and by numerous critics, till Dr. Grosart showed in 1865 that they had appeared under the name of their proper author, Dr. Palmer of Cambridge, in 1645, and had gone through several editions both before and after their incorporation in Bacon's works. See Dr. Martineau's Seat of Authority, pp. 177-8.

proved out of the Bible, so long as the only witness to the inspiration of the Bible is that very Church. Let us consider some similar cases which the investigations of the last century have disclosed in the East.

It is more than a hundred years since Dr. Johnson laid it down that there are two objects of interest, the Christian world and the Mohammedan world: all the rest may be considered as barbarous.' The great Catholic missions had then been long at work in the East; they had become acquainted with the existence of vast literatures both in India and China; and after the foundation of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta in 1784, under the auspices of Sir William Jones and a distinguished band of fellow-workers, the chief facts concerning the sacred books of the Hindus were quickly brought to light. The teachings of the Brahmans were traced back to the Veda, the divine knowledge' primarily embodied in the ancient collections of hymns and liturgical formulæ,' on which were based huge aggregates of ritual treatises, philosophical speculation, and social law, all included in the same general group, though distinguished into two orders of Revelation' and 'Tradition.' ( Subsequent to

the Veda and the literature founded upon it, came the Three Baskets' in which the Buddhist Order preserved the record of the teachings of its founder, about 400 B.C.2 From the ancient community of

1 The Rig-Veda, Sāma-Veda, and Yajur-Veda; a fourth, the Atharva-Veda, only acquired canonical recognition at a later date.

2 On the recent publication of these Scriptures, see Lect. II, ante, p. 49.

the Parsees the adventurous Anquetil du Perron brought precious manuscripts, among which was a copy of the venerable text known in the West as the Zend Avesta (of which du Perron published a translation in 1771), containing the colloquies of the prophet Zoroaster with Ahura Mazda, the Lord allknowing. In 1799 the discovery of the Rosetta stone supplied the key to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and during the last half century the hymns and prayers of ancient Egypt, the mysteries of the progress of the soul through the regions of the dead, and its solemn judgment in the Hall of the Two Truths before Osiris, have been laid open from the rocky tombs to the light of day. The recovery of the records of the ancient empires of Mesopotamia has been already described. In ancient Greece, too, the beginnings of similar literature were not wanting; collections of its sacred oracles were made; and the utterances of ancient seers were gathered for the use of believers.

In these several groups the idea of Revelation is repeatedly present. The beginnings of law and religion are everywhere divine. On the walls of the temple of Edfu were inscribed the books of Thoth, embodying the sacred knowledge which the son of Rā (but also 'the unborn,' the 'one God,' the ' alone only One'), had deigned to impart to man. Nebo, son of Marduk, is the Babylonian prophet-god, ilu tasmitu 'god of revelation' ('causing to hear '), source of all inspiration and learning. The Angel of the Sacred Law of Zoroaster was believed to have

2

3

been produced by Vohu Mano, the 'Good Mind of Ahura,' along with the light of the world, and she dwelt in the heavenly house. Issuing from the Lord Omniscient, the Law bore the title of the Holy Word'; and its most ancient elements, the sacred verses known as Gāthās, possessed such sanctity that they were the objects of actual worship. The early Buddhist Scriptures make no claim to be themselves of supernatural origin. They are produced, according to their own statements, in the course of events which followed the death of the Teacher whose instructions they report. But they do claim to be a faithful record; and the word of the Buddha, the enlightened,' the all-knowing, is perfect and unerring truth. Moreover, the Buddha founded an Order or Union for the diffusion and maintenance of his message of deliverance. He was its centre for a whole generation. He witnessed its growth; he promoted its extension; he gave it an elaborate body of rules; hundreds and thousands of disciples were received into it during his life-time. He repeated his teachings again and again during long wanderings in the Ganges Valley; on his death-bed he bade his followers find in them their stay and support. He was even believed to have foreseen the possibility that error might arise in the exposition of the truth or

1 Bundahish, i. 25, in Sacred Books of the East, v. p. 9.

2 S. B. E., iv. p. 207.

3 Yasna, lv., S. B. E. xxxi. p. 294.

On the period to which they really belong see the introduction by Prof. T. W. Rhys Davids to his translation of the Digha Nikāya, Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. i.

the sacred rules of the discipline, and to have provided for a comparison of such teachings with the traditions preserved in the two great groups of discourse and of regulations known as known as Sutta and Vinaya.1 Yet the Christian student, approaching an alien Scripture with his own preconceptions, has no hesitation in rejecting a claim thus carefully guarded.

2

More striking still is the analogy presented by the faith which gathered around the ancient hymns of the Rig Veda. In one of the latest poems in the collection they are traced to a divine source in the mystical sacrifice of the Cosmic Man, Purusha, from which, in fact, the whole creation was derived. In this view the Veda belonged to another realm than that of space and time. Its true home was in the ideal world, which was not liable to change or decay, the world of the 'deathless,' where there were no bounds or limits, so that it might be called 'un-ending' (an-anta) or infinite. In that world the hymns had been 'seen' by the ancient sages, to whom they were traditionally assigned. were not, in truth, of human authorship. They were transcripts from the eternal. Immense philosophical ingenuity was expended on the defence of this conception of their heavenly origin. The Veda, it was argued, shone by its own light; it was admitted by age-long tradition; it was accepted in

But they

1 See the Maha-Parinibbāna Sutta, in S. B. E., xi. p. 67.