supernatural foreshadowing of the birth of Jesus, but there must also be supernatural occurrences connected with the coming of his forerunner, John the Baptist. So that in the first instance the angel appears to Zacharias as he ministers in the temple, and tells him that a wonderful child is to be born and the name by which he is to be called; for he is not to be the Messiah, but the forerunner of the Messiah. And, as Zacharias doubts, the angel strikes him dumb. Judgments always hang over the head of the man who asks for proof. And he is not able to speak again until the time of the naming of the child, when he calls for a tablet, and writes "his name as John." Then his speech returns to him, and he breaks out into a prophetic strain of adoration and praise. Meantime, another angel has appeared, not to Joseph,—as in the account in Matthew, but to Mary, and announced to her the birth of her child. All this time, in Luke, you must remember, Joseph and Mary are living in Nazareth; for that, according to Luke, was their original home, and not Bethlehem, as in Matthew. After the annunciation of the birth of the wondrous child to Mary, there is no story here of any doubt on the part of Joseph, or of any trouble about the consummation of the marriage. There must be some way of having the supposed prophecy fulfilled, of the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem ; and so we find that Luke has recourse to a story of there having been a taxing—an enrolment of the people throughout the whole world as he says, by which of course he means the Roman Empire - in the days of Augustus Cæsar. And so, as he tells us, all the Jews were obliged to leave the homes where they were living, and go to the place where their family had originated. And Joseph, being of the lineage of David, takes Mary and goes to Bethlehem, quite a long journey and a difficult one at this time, and there finds the place crowded and full,-no

room for them in the caravansary, and the child is born, amid the asses and the camels, in a manger. Meanwhile, angels have appeared to the shepherds. There is no star, no wise men, no Herod, no slaying of the innocents in Luke; but the angels appear; the shepherds hear their song of "Peace on earth, good-will to men," and then they come seeking for the birthplace of the wondrous child. And, after the presentation of the child on the eighth day after its birth in the temple, they return again to their home in Nazareth.

Now let us compare two or three of the points of these different narratives, and see if we can make them seem to us real and veritable history; or whether, as I have said, we must not regard them as the poetic, legendary growth of the loving imagination of the friends and followers of Jesus grown famous. In the first place, you will have noticed that Matthew opens with an account of the genealogy of Joseph. Luke also has a long genealogy. But, if you have ever tried to compare them together, you will see that they contradict each other hopelessly at almost every point: there is no possibility of reconciling them; and then, furthermore, supposing we could reconcile them, they have no bearing whatever on the question, according to the popular belief about Jesus. For, if Jesus was not the son of Joseph, how does it make him of the lineage of David to prove that Joseph was a descendant of David? Of course Joseph's family tree has nothing more to do with it, according to the popular belief, than has yours or mine. Then, as I have already indicated, Luke makes the parents of Jesus live in Nazareth. Matthew makes them live in Bethlehem. We find again that this story of the Holy Spirit having been the father of Jesus could not possibly have sprung up among the Jews; for the word for "spirit" or "ghost" in the Hebrew was a feminine word,

while in the language of the Greeks it was masculine. It was very easy, then, for the Greeks to think of the Holy Ghost or Spirit as being the father of the child, but it could not possibly have occurred to the mind of the Hebrew. And, as illustrating this and bearing upon it,—bearing also upon what must have been felt even then as the difficulty concerning these genealogical tables, — we find another legend, curiously enough, among the fragments of lost and forgotten Gospels, of the Holy Spirit as a goddess having been the mother of Jesus, and Joseph's having been his father. In one of these fragments, Jesus himself is represented as speaking of the Holy Spirit as his mother. We find, then, that these two accounts contradict each other at almost every point, and there is no possibility of reconciling them. You cannot possibly, if you take Matthew and sit down with it, find a place in his account to put in the incidents that Luke says occurred. If, on the other hand, you sit down with Luke, you cannot possibly find a place to put in the stories of Matthew. The two do not go together, and cannot be made to go together.

And then let us glance just for a moment at one way by which some of these stories may have originated in the first place, and at the curious misinterpretation and mistakes of each one of these writers. We find, for example, that Matthew speaks of this virgin birth as having been prophesied by one of the Old Testament writers. If you turn back to that prophecy, you will find that it has no bearing whatever upon the subject. The original word there does not mean a virgin at all, but only a young woman; and the prophecy is not something that is to occur in the far distant future, but of something that the prophet says particularly shall take place before the child to be born shall have grown large enough to know good from evil. Then in regard to this rising of the star. It was easy enough in those times when

astrology was believed in, when it was supposed that every remarkable occurrence or change in the life of a great man or country or church in the world would naturally be heralded by some wondrous appearance of star or constellation in the heavens,—it was natural enough for them to believe in the guidance of the wise men by a star; but can we to-day soberly take such a narration as simple matter of fact? And then we find the attempt on the part of Matthew-which, by the way, is apparent all through his Gospel from one end to the other to find in the life of Jesus a fulfilment, not only of every real prophecy, but of every supposed prophecy, in regard to the Messiah. There is the saying in the old writings about a star rising out of Jacob. Of course this star in the original prophecy is only a figurative way of representing the king himself who was to come. But the story had sprung up in the time of Jesus that the Messiah was to be heralded by a star; and, a hundred years after Jesus, the last pretender to the Messiahship took the name of Bar-Cochba, son of a star. And then these three wise men. In one of the stories that we have of them, we learn their names, Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar. One came from Europe, another from Asia, and another from Africa, America not being discovered, none comes from there, to represent the whole world as laying its homage at the feet of the new-born king. They presented gold, because that was a proper gift for a king; frankincense, as a fitting way of paying devotion to a god, burning incense to him; and myrrh, as a prophecy of the embalming of his body for the burial after his death. And then there is another prophecy. He is made to fly into Egypt, that it might be fulfilled where it is said, "Out of Egypt have I called my son." You look at the original, and you find it has nothing whatever to do with the Messiah, but simply refers to Israel in Egypt, hundreds and hundreds of

-

years before. This prophecy that is applied to the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem, in the original, refers to the lamentations of Rachel, the mythical mother, when her children are carried away captive into Babylon. The whole story of the destruction of "the innocents" is probably baseless. Josephus, with no love for Herod, tells everything bad about him that he can discover, but makes no mention of this. Furthermore, every mythology has its story of the "Dangerous Child"-like Moses - whose death is sought because his life is to bring revolution or overthrow to the existing order of things. And then he says at the last, "He shall be called a Nazarene,”—that there is a prophecy like that. We look at the prophecies all the way through, and we find that he has here quoted something that does not exist in the first place, and that he has misunderstood the word which he makes to read Nazarene. The only thing we can find in the Old Testament that looks like it reads, in the original, Nazarite; and Nazarite has nothing whatever to do with the city of Nazareth, but refers to a person like Samson, who let his hair grow long, drank no wine or strong drink, and was consecrated in a special way and to a particular kind of life. So that here, again, a prophecy is quoted that does not exist, and even the word that does exist is misunderstood and misapplied.

And then, when we come to Luke, just take one more mistake, I cannot go into details in regard to them all. Luke makes this taxing of the whole world to have taken place at the time of the birth; and he says that Cyrenius, or Quirinus as we should now spell the word, was then governor of Syria. We know from the records of history that Cyrenius was not governor of Syria for ten years after, and that another man was then holding the office. And this taxing - Luke misunderstands entirely the purpose of it.