Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/207

Letter 17] is no instance in which a single one of the Twelve carried out this precept during the life of their Master, and only one in which one of the Twelve (Peter) is said to have raised a woman from the dead (for St. Paul's incident with Eutychus can hardly be called a case in point); thirdly the precept is recorded by only one Evangelist; fourthly that same Evangelist records only one case in which our Lord Himself raised any one from the dead, i.e. the revivified daughter of Jairus—and it seems absurd to represent Christ as commanding all the Apostles to do that which most of them probably never did, and He Himself (according to the First Gospel) only did once.

We pass now to another cause that may have originated miraculous narratives in the Gospels. Try to extricate yourself from our Western, cold-blooded, analytical, and critical way of looking at things. Sit down in the reign of Vespasian or Domitian in the midst of a congregation of Jewish and Græco-Oriental brethren, assembled for a sacred service, "singing a hymn" (as Pliny says, describing them a few years afterwards) "to Christ as to a God." What effect on the traditions of Christ's life and works would be produced by these "hymns and spiritual songs" which St. Paul's testimony (as well as Pliny's) shews to have been a common part of the earliest Christian ritual? Would they not inevitably tend, by poetic hyperbole and metaphor, to build up fresh traditions which, when literally interpreted, would—like the songs and psalms of the Chosen People—give rise to miraculous narratives? Part of the service indeed would not consist of hymns but of the reading of the "Scriptures" i.e. the Old Testament; but this also would tend in the same direction. For there you would hear, read out to