_Historians_ have recorded miracles said to have been performed by other persons, but not a word is said by _them_ about the miracles claimed to have been performed by Jesus.
Justus of Tiberias, who was born about five years after the time a.s.signed for the crucifixion of Jesus, wrote a _Jewish History_. Now, if the miracles attributed to Christ Jesus, and his death and resurrection, had taken place in the manner described by the Gospel narrators, he could not have failed to allude to them. But Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, tells us that it contained "_no mention of the coming of Christ, nor of the events concerning him, nor of the prodigies he wrought_." As Theodore Parker has remarked: "The miracle is of a most _fluctuating_ character. The miracle-worker of to-day is a matter-of-fact juggler to-morrow. Science each year adds new wonders to our store. The master of a locomotive steam-engine would have been thought greater than Jupiter Tonans, or the Elohim, thirty centuries ago."
In the words of Dr. Oort: "Our increased knowledge of nature has gradually undermined the belief in the possibility of miracles, and the time is not far distant when in the mind of every man, of any culture, all accounts of miracles will be banished together to their proper region--_that of legend_."
What had been said to have been done in _India_ was said by the "_half Jew_"[277:1] writers of the Gospels to have been done in Palestine. The change of names and places, with the mixing up of various sketches of _Egyptian_, _Phenician_, _Greek_ and _Roman_ mythology, was all that was necessary. They had an abundance of material, and with it they built. A long-continued habit of imposing upon others would in time subdue the minds of the impostors themselves, and cause them to become at length the dupes of their own deception.
FOOTNOTES:
[252:1] Dr. Conyers Middleton: Free Enquiry, p. 177.
[252:2] Indian Antiquities, vol. iii. p. 46.
[253:1] Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p. 237.
[253:2] Hist. Hindostan, vol. ii. p. 331.
[253:3] Ibid. p. 319.
[254:1] Hist. Hindostan, vol. ii. p. 320. Vishnu Parana, bk. v. ch. xx.
[254:2] Prog. Relig. Ideas, vol. i. p. 68.
[254:3] Hist. Hindostan, vol. ii. p. 269.
[254:4] See Hardy"s Buddhist Legends, and Eastern Monachism. Beal"s Romantic Hist. Buddha. Bunsen"s Angel-Messiah, and Huc"s Travels, &c.
[254:5] Hardy: Buddhist Legends, pp. xxi. xxii.
[254:6] The Science of Religion, p. 27.
[255:1] Beal: Hist. Buddha, pp. 246, 247.
[255:2] Dhammapada, pp. 47, 50 and 90. Bigandet, pp. 186 and 192.
Bournouf: Intro. p. 156. In Lillie"s Buddhism, pp. 139, 140.
[256:1] Hardy: Manual of Buddhism.
[256:2] See Prog. Relig. Ideas, vol. i. p. 229.
[256:3] See Tylor: Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 135, and Hardy: Buddhist Legends, pp. 98, 126, 137.
[256:4] See Tylor: Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 135.
[256:5] Thornton: Hist. China, vol. i. p. 341.
[256:6] See Dupuis: Origin of Religious Belief, p. 240, and Inman"s Ancient Faiths, vol. ii. p. 460.
[256:7] See Higgins: Anacalypsis, vol. ii. p. 34.
[256:8] See Lundy: Monumental Christianity, pp. 303-405.
[256:9] See Bonwick"s Egyptian Belief.
[257:1] Quoted by Baring-Gould: Orig. Relig. Belief, vol. i. p. 397.
[257:2] See Prichard"s Mythology, p. 347.
[257:3] See Bonwick"s Egyptian Belief, p. 404.
[257:4] See Dupuis: Origin of Religious Belief, 258, and Anacalypsis, vol. ii. p. 102. Compare John, ii. 7.
A _Grecian_ festival called THYIA was observed by the Eleans _in honor of Bacchus_. The priests conveyed three empty vessels into a chapel, in the presence of a large a.s.sembly, after which the doors were shut and _sealed_. "On the morrow the company returned, and after every man had looked upon his own seal, and seen that it was unbroken, the doors being opened, the vessels were found full of wine." The G.o.d himself is said to have appeared in person and filled the vessels. (Bell"s Pantheon.)
[257:5] c.o.x: Aryan Mytho., vol. ii. p. 295.
[257:6] Bulfinch: The Age of Fable, p. 225. "And they laid their hands on the apostles, and put them in the common prison; but the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth." (Acts, v. 18, 19.)
[258:1] Bell"s Pantheon, vol. i. p. 28.
[258:2] Eusebius: Life of Constantine, lib. 3, ch. liv.
"_aesculapius_, the son of Apollo, was endowed by his father with such skill in the healing art that he even restored the dead to life."
(Bulfinch: The Age of Fable, p. 246.)
[258:3] Murray: Manual of Mythology, pp. 179, 180.
[258:4] See Prog. Relig. Ideas, vol. i. p. 304.
[258:5] Marinus: Quoted in Taylor"s Diegesis, p. 151.
[258:6] Pausanias was one of the most eminent Greek geographers and historians.
[259:1] "And when Jesus departed thence, _two blind men_ followed him, crying and saying: thou son of David, have mercy on us. . . . And Jesus said unto them: Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto him, Yea, Lord. Then touched he their eyes, saying: According to your faith be it unto you, and their eyes were opened." (Matt. ix. 27-30.)
[259:2] Middleton"s Works, vol. i. pp. 63, 64.
[259:3] Ibid. p. 48.
[259:4] Bell"s Pantheon, vol. i. p. 62.
[259:5] See Middleton"s Letters from Rome, p. 76.
[260:1] See Middleton"s Letters from Rome, p. 76.
[260:2]
"Nunc Dea, nunc succurre mihi, nam posse mederi Picta docet temptes multa tabella tuis."