Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/202

186 having done my best to dispel your natural prejudice, I will take in detail the six or seven principal miracles attributed to Christ by all the three Synoptic Evangelists, and will endeavour to shew you that these accounts did actually spring up in a natural and inevitable way, after the manner of illusions, without any attempt to deceive on the part of the compilers of the Gospels. It will appear, I think, that the life and doctrine of Christ are independent of these miracles and can easily be separated from them.

For the present then I am to speak of the naturalness or inevitability of illusions gathering about Christ's acts and words in the minds of His disciples. Does any student of the Fourth Gospel need to be convinced of this? Perhaps the author of that work discerned the illusions of the early Church even too clearly, so that he slightly overshot the mark in the frequency of the false inferences and misunderstandings with which he delights to encompass the words and deeds of Jesus. Perhaps the composer of "the Spiritual Gospel" has been led even too far by his profound and true perception that this Incarnate Word—this Being from another sphere who was and is in the bosom of the Father—could not move on the earth, among earthly creatures, without being perpetually misunderstood by them. But is there not manifest truth in his conception of Jesus as of One having different thoughts from those of common men, different ways of regarding all things small or great, a spiritual dialect of His own, not at once to be comprehended by ordinary beings? Certain it is that, in the Fourth Gospel, Christ's discourses are one string of metaphors which are literally and falsely interpreted by those to whom they are addressed. "Flesh," "blood," "water," "sleep," "birth," "death," "life," "temple," "bread," "meat," "light," "night," "way,"—these and I know not how many more simple words present themselves, as we rapidly turn over the pages of that Gospel, always metaphorically used,