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Rh unity of elements in the great variety of religions, and will admit no exception to the law of natural development.

Here, again, there is a profession of opposition to the great body of mythologists, so ably represented in England by Professor Max Müller. Mr. Lang, a competent critic and well-informed mythologist, though neither a philologist like Max Müller, nor an anthropologist like Tylor, heads the revolt against the Rationalist school. But there is here a similar confusion to that which we have seen in the preceding chapter. There is no more opposition between ethnological mythology and philological than there is between the literary criticism of the Bible and Assyriology. The Rationalists have, for the present, confined their attention principally to the Aryan religions. Mr. Lang adduces non-Aryan myths, to which, he thinks, their explanations cannot be extended. The positions of Lang and Max Müller are simply those of Cheyne and Sayce on the critical question. Like the dispute about the mode of the ultimate origin of myths, such controversy tends only to obscure the results which are already established, and with draw attention from their profound significance. In one word, all the supposed distinctive doctrines of Christianity have been traced to earlier religions; there is no element of direct revelation either in Judaism or in Christianity. In proof of that thesis, and before proceeding to the further conclusion of the mythologists, it is well to summarize some of the evidence which has been collected. That the scientific form which Christian dogmas have in the more elaborate theologies (of the Roman, Anglican, and Greek Churches) is a natural development no one will question. The process by which they have been constructed out of the simpler statements of the Gospels is made clear by the labours of such scholars as Neander and Harnack. But, if we take the simple version of Christian doctrine, which is common to all Christian sects (not, of course, including Unitarianism under that title), and which is clearly contained in the Bible, we shall find, on comparison with the legends of older religions all over the world, that it was no new revelation, but a modification of old myths, which can be ultimately traced to a natural origin. We commence with the Christology of the New