The Apocrypha - Hebrew Holy Forgeries by Joseph Wheless 1930

The Apocrypha - Hebrew Holy Forgeries by Joseph Wheless 1930

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SUNDRY HOLY HEBREW men of old, we are told on the authority of the name of the pseudo-first Jewish-Christian Pope, "spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Peter, i, 21). These literary movings of the Spirit were sometime reduced to writing in "Sacred Scriptures"; and again later Christian authority assures: "All scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 Tim. iii, 16),-though this is a falsified rendition: the true reading is: "Every scripture suitable for edification is divinely inspired," as the original Greek text is quoted by Father Tertullian. (ANF. iv, 16.)

It is the popular supposition that the 66-(Catholic Bible 73)-"little books" which comprise the Bible as we know it, are the whole sum of Hebrew and Christian "sacred writings," which have claimed and have been accorded the sanction of Divine inspiration and "treated by the Church as canonical." The term "canonical" in ecclesiastical parlance means Books accepted as divinely inspired; books which "were definitely canonized, or adjudged to have a uniquely Divine or authoritative quality," as is the authorative definition. (CE. iii, 267.) "Canonicity depends on inspiration." (EB. i, 653.) The holy Hebrew "canon" was closed, or the last inspired Book of the Old Testament written, according to Jewish "Tradition," by Ezra, about 444 B.C. (Ib. i, 658, 662.) In truth, however, several of the Books of the Old Testament were written much later, and were never heard of by Ezra; and "some found their way in, others not, on grounds of taste-the taste of the period," says Wellhausen. (Einleitung, p. 652, 6th Ed.)

The popular idea is that when the "moving" of the above inspired 66 sacred writings was ended, the moving Spirit retired from the field of Hebrew, and later of Christian literature, and thus closed the "sacred canon" of the respective Hebrew and Christian Testaments. This will be seen to be a mistake, in the judgment of the True Christian Church, according to which the Jews evidently did not know their own inspired writings, and curiously omitted from their "canon" a number of divinely "moved" books and scraps of books, which the better-instructed Christian Church has adopted as full of inspiration into its own present official Bible, as we shall notice in its place. There is also a much greater number of such books, of both Hebrew and Christian origin, which the inspired Church formerly and for ages regarded as inspired and "canonical," but which it now repudiates as "apocryphal" and acknowledges as forgeries; as we shall also duly note.

There is, indeed, an eminence mass of religious writings, the work of Jewish or Christian priests or professional religious persons, or composite productions of both sets of forgers, which are generally known as "apocrypha" or pious forgeries; but which each and all have been held by the Church through many ages of faith as of the highest inspired sanctity and accredited with the full rank of "canonical" truth of God.

The term apocryphal or forged "takes in those compositions which profess to have been written either by Biblical personages or men in intimate relation with them." (CE. i, 601.) "Since these [apocryphal] books were forgeries, the epithet in common parlance today denotes any story or document which is false or spurious, ... apocryphal in the disparaging sense of bearing names to which they have no right; all come under the definition above, for each of then has at one tine or another been treated as canonical." (EB. i, 249-250.)

That the above 66 (or 73) Books of the accepted Bible of Christianity come exactly, both as to manner of spurious origin and matter of fictional content, within the above definition of apocrypha or forgery, shall be made exceedingly evident. A brief review of these acknowledged religious forgeries in the name of God and of his inspired biographers, will afford a curious and instructive study of the workings of the fervid, credulous and contorted priestly mind, reckless of truth, and shed a floodlight of understanding on the origins and incredibility of the so-called "canonical" Books of the Bible, Hebrew and Christian alike.

While speaking here immediately of the Jewish Apocrypha or pious forgeries, it is to be noted and borne in mind that it is the Holy-Ghost-guided True Christian Church which alone has accepted and cherished these spurious productions of Jewish priestcraft-(scornfully repudiated by the Jews), has adulterated and re-forged them to more definite deceptive purposes of Christian propaganda, and has outdone Jewry by adding innumerable like forgeries,-"a whole literature" of fabrications-to its own spurious hagiography, or sacred writings. There will thus occur some necessary and unavoidable over-lappings of Jewish and Christian forgeries in the course of our treatment.

"It must be confessed," admits the Catholic Encyclopedia, "that the early Fathers and the Church, during the first three centuries, were more indulgent towards Jewish pseudograph [i.e. forged writings] circulating under venerable Old Testament, names. The Book of Henoch [Enoch] and the Assumption of Moses had been cited by the canonical Epistle of Jude. Many Fathers admitted the inspiration of Fourth Esdras. Not to mention the Shepherd of Hermas, the Acts of St. Paul (at least in the Thecla portion) and the Apocalypse of St. Peter were highly revered at this and later periods. ... In the Middle Ages ... many pseudographic [i.e. forged] writings enjoyed a high degree of favor among both clerics and laity." (CE. i, 615.)

A curious and edifying side-light on the chronic clerical flair for forgery is thrown by a sentence from the paragraph above quoted from the Catholic Encyclopedia. The earliest papal decree condemning certain of these pious forgeries is itself a Christian forgery! "The so-called 'Decretum de recipiendis et non recipiendis libris,' which contained a catalogue of some half-hundred works condemned as apocryphal, was attributed to Pope Gelasius (495), but, in reality is a compilation dating from the beginning of the Sixth century." (CE,. i, 615.)

And, be it noted, these Christian forgeries were not at all condemned by the Church as forgeries and pious lies, but simply because they contained some dogmatic doctrines which were regarded by the Orthodox as "heresies" they were condemned "always, however, with a preoccupation against heresy." And again in the same article: "Undoubtedly it was the large use heretical Circles, especially the Gnostics made of this insinuating literature which first called out the animadversions of the official guardians of doctrinal purity." (Ib. p. 615.)

The same authority cautiously and clerically explains, that "ancient literature, especially in the Orient, used methods much more free and elastic than those permitted by our modern and occidental culture. Pseudographic [falsified] compositions was in vogue among the Jews in the two centuries before Christ and for some time later. This holds good for the so-called 'Wisdom of Solomon,' written in and belonging to the Church's sacred cannon.-[This admits that this book of the Catholic Bible is spurious.] In other cases, where the assumed name did not stand as a symbol of a type of a certain kind of literature, the intention was not without a degree of at least literary dishonesty." (Ib. p. 601.)

Apocryphal religious literature consists of several classes, one of the most important subdivisions being that designated as "apocalyptic," and which consists of "pretended prophecies and revelations of both Jewish and Christian authorship, and dating from about 200 B.C. to about 150 A.D.," the latter being the approximate date of the new "canonical" Books of the New Testament, Their general subject is the problem of the final triumph of what is called the Kingdom of God. Speaking particularly of the apocalypses, the best known of which are the Hebrew Book of Daniel, written about 165 B.C., and the Jewish-Christian Book of Revelation imputed to the Apostle John of Patmos, a recent secular authority (corroborated at all points by clerical authorities) points out that many if not all of the Jewish apocalypses are adulterated with "alterations and interpolations by Christian hands, making the alleged predictions, point more definitely to Jesus," which pious tempering "gave certain of these Jewish works a very wide circulation in the early Church. ... The revelations and predictions are set forth as though actually received and written or spoken by ancient worthies, as Enoch, Moses, etc. ... They were once widely accepted as genuine prophecies, and found a warm reception in Jewish and early Christian circles." (The New International, Encyclopedia, vol. i, p. 745.) This form of pious fraud is admitted as quite the expected thing: "Naturally basing itself upon the Pentateuch and the Prophets, it clothed itself fictitiously with the authority of a patriarch or prophet who was made to reveal the transcendent future" (CE. i, 602),-most usually long ex post facto.

The vast and varied extent of Jewish-Christian forgery of religious books is shown by the groupings under which the several kinds of apocrypha forgeries are quite exhaustively considered in the technical works treating of them, such as the Catholic Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia Biblica, as well as the more popular Britannica and New International Encyclopedias, where the subject is fully discussed. "Speaking broadly," says the first, "The Apocrypha of Jewish origin are coextensive with what are styled of the Old Testament, and those of Christian origin the apocrypha of the New Testament. The subject will be treated ["according to their origin"]-as follows: (I) Apocrypha of Jewish origin: (II) Jewish Apocrypha with Christian accretions; (III) apocrypha of Christian origin, comprising (1) apocryphal Gospels; (2) Pilate literature and other apocrypha concerning Christ; (3) apocryphal Acts of Apostles; (4) apocryphal doctrinal works; (5) apocryphal Epistles; (6) apocryphal Apocalypses, (IV) the apocrypha and the Church." (CE. i, 601.)

What a catalogue of confessed ecclesiastical forgers, and fraud in the name of God, Christ and his Apostles, and the Church of God, for the propaganda of priestly frauds as "our Most Holy Faith"!

What will probably-In view of the foregoing and what is yet to come-be appreciated by many as a peculiarly rare bit of apocrypha (in its secondary sense) is the following, uttered apparently with the due and usual ecclesiastical solemnity, in the celebrated Dictatus of Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085), stating the presumptuous pretenses of the Papacy:

"The Roman Church has never erred, nor will it err to all eternity. No one may be considered a Catholic Christian who does not agree with the Catholic Church. No book is authoritative unless it has received the papal sanction. ... The pope is the only person whose feet are to be kissed by all princes"; "the Pope may depose emperors and absolve subjects from allegiance to an unjust ruler." (Cited by Robinson, 'The Ordeal of Civilization, pp. 126, 128; Library of Original Sources, vol. iv, p. 126-321.)

This puts the stamp of canonical inspiration and verity on some dozen Jewish books and parts of books of the Catholic Bible which the Jews and the whole body of otherwise discordant sects of Protestants hesitate not unanimously to pronounce apocryphal and forged. These "apocrypha" are either entire rejected Jewish books, all doubtless with Christian "interpolations," or apocryphal chapters or parts, interpolated probably by the same industry into the equally apocryphal books of the accepted Jewish canon. The names of these books, original and interpolations, and which are not included in the Hebrew Old Testament, -- but are in the True Church Bible,-are: Tobit, Judith, Baruch, with the Epistle of Jeremiah, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach (or Ecclesiastics), I and II Maccabees, Prayer of Manasseh, Additions to Esther, and Additions to the Book of Daniel, consisting of the Prayer of Azarias, the Song of the Three Holy Children (in the Fiery Furnace), the History of Susannah, the History of Bel and the Dragon, and sundry such precious fables. (See CE. iii, pp. 267, 270; iv, 624, passim.) These are all included in the Greek Septuagint and in the Latin Vulgate, were read as Scripture in early Christian Church, and were declared by the Council of Trent, at its Fourth Session, in 1546,-under the Curse of God on all skeptical doubters,-to be "inspired and canonical"; and they are so held by the Roman, and some of the Greek and Oriental Catholic Churches, but are declared "apocrypha" and forged by Jewry and all the rest of Christendom. To several of these extra-revelations of Judaism included in the Christian True Bible, head-notes apologetic for their inclusion are attached, of which that to the celebrated Book of Tobit or Tobias is typical: "Protestants have left it out of their modern Bibles, alleging that it is not in the canon of the Jews. But the Church of Christ, which received the Scriptures not from the Jews, but from the Apostles of Christ,-[who were all Jews, to believe the Christian record]-by traditions from them, has allowed this book a place in the Christian [sic] Bible from the beginning." (See Cath. Bible, Tobit, et passim).

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Supernaturals in Fiction by Mary Austin 1920

SUPERNATURALS IN FICTION by Mary Austin 1920

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THE mind of man is a very curious place. It is a place in which it appears entirely logical to turn the professional ghost raiser, at a dollar a ghost, over to the police, and the same evening pay two dollars to see the Ghost of Hamlet's Father walk, by way of uplift. It is a place in which one may be nourished on tales of Talking Heads and Magic Carpets, and look with deep suspicion on the time- and space-exceeding marvels of modern invention.

There never was an age that spent so much intellectual ingenuity as this one in proving that there never were and never could be any sort of beings but men. But among the stories most enjoyed by human kind and longest in circulation, about one character in every five is a Supernatural, or one in every five incidents originates in a supernormal contrivance or attribute. Measured against the history of human society, any doubt that the world is crammed full of non-human, unordinary beings, is almost as new as electricity. The farther back you go into good and popular fiction, the fewer humans, the more gods, genii and fairy godmothers, the more elixirs of life and instantaneous transportations.

After an examination of the world's fiction which has been enjoyed long enough to be called classic, one inevitably concludes that if a story is to survive more than four or five generations, a liberal proportion of its elements must be non-natural.

Begin, for example, with Cinderella, beloved of the world's childhood: There is Ella herself, the proud sisters, who for structural purposes are to be treated as one, the stepmother, and the Prince. And for supernaturals, there are the Fairy Godmother, the pumpkin coach, the magic transformation, three to four of the humans. Aladdin gives us five humans against the Slaves of the Lamp and the Ring and innumerable magic happenings, and this proportion holds throughout that universal favorite The Arabian Nights Entertainment. In the story of Joseph, making one element of all eleven brothers, and three of all the dreams since they figured on three occasions, we still have only five to three in favor of the natural. In the Iliad and the Odessey we have the whole Olympian family so placed in juxtaposition to Trojans and Greeks that their mutual contacts furnish practically the entire machinery of the story.

So the proportion stands until after the collapse of Greek culture, when story making suffered an eclipse for several centuries. It did not rise again until the commonality had provided itself with a complete new set of Supernaturals, saints, angels, the whole Heavenly Host. Within the next five or six centuries the body of European fiction was increased by the addition of the Scandinavian, the Gaelic and British story cycles, each with its appropriate cast of superhuman characters. Apparently there were no important fictional inventions for some twelve or fifteen centuries except where Supernaturals could be found upon which to hang them.

It was the Greeks, however, who gave us the clue to the inevitableness of the not-man elements in every really treasured man story. They had to be there to satisfy man's invincible desire to see the wheels of the universe go round.

That is an academic and wholly unreliable bias which explains the long life of the Joseph and Aladdin and Ulysses tales on the ground that they were literature. It would be far truer to say that they became literature as a result of being liked: for whatever the ethnologists say of the origin of these stories, there is no doubt whatever that they have been popular.

Tales of Troy existed generations before Homer enclosed them in the clear amber of his verse. It is the best stories of any age that get the attention of the best stylists of that age. Few people read the original Mallory nowadays, but any one who will take the trouble to compare that version of the King Arthur legends with a modern Tennysonian rendition, will see the process of decanting a popular story from the "literature" of one age to another visibly going on. The test of a really popular story is the number of times it will survive such rebottling. The point at which these metamorphoses inevitably stop is the point at which the Supernaturals are turned out of it. Because, as the Greeks discovered, the Supernaturals are necessary to make the story hang together.

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I do not suppose that, at the time Greek literature was at its best, the Greek authors believed in their Olympians any more than Will Shakespeare believed in the ghost of Hamlet's father. But the Greeks, like ourselves, had a hankering to have the Universe explained. They must know why, as well as how, things happened. And, as knowledge then stood, without the intervention of the gods the story would not hang together.

Precisely as we moderns go peering and poking under the dramatic and spectacular phases of the European war, to put our finger on the forces that would make it seem less of a delirious nightmare, so the Greeks and Trojans must have sought for some sort of reasonableness under the monstrous folly of a ten years' struggle. Clearly, something bigger than Greeks or Trojans had been at work here. Otherwise there was no logic or dignity in human living. Why should an Achilles sulk or Ulysses waste himself at the court of Circe? Happily there were the Olympians with a known propensity for meddling in human affairs.

Unfortunately for Greece, however, the shoving of responsibility back upon the gods reached a point just a little beyond the capacity of the average intelligence to follow. As soon as the gods began to stand for abstractions, in the mind of the Greek writers, they ceased to be interesting to Greek audiences.

No sort of literature can go on for very long, produced outside the popular concept. When there were no more credible Olympians, and the laws of social evolution had not been offered in their places, there was nothing left but an unrelated jumble of incident. The end of the Greek gods was also the end of Greek fiction.

A few centuries later, the rise of Christianity with its collocation of Blessed Personages gave a new lease of life to the story-telling instinct. By the introduction of St. Anthony, the Virgin, or, saving their presence, the Devil, any sort of a story could be rendered logical and sound. For nearly ten centuries longer the world was a place about equally inhabited by humans and non-humans, who got on fairly well together.

But with the spread of modern education the number of Supernaturals who could be credibly introduced into adult fiction, shrunk to the few who still gathered under the wing of Romanism. After the Reformation the Devil himself lost dignity.

Dante and Milton, each in his way did what the Greek Dramatists had done for popular story making, and put an end to the use of the Christian Supernaturals as protagonists in fiction, by taking them out of the region of popular concept. From that time there was nothing left but your honest ghost to loose the springs of human action.

Though he has changed his character, the ghost is still so popular in story that even our remote and sophisticated Henry James could not forbear his own particular Turn of the Screw, and I have always believed that if Mr. Ibsen could have named the deus ex machina of his masterpiece, The Ghost of Oswald's Father, instead of the Law of Heredity, he would have made a much more popular business of it.

I have omitted the Christs out of their historic location in the cycle of Supernaturals, because, curiously, the Christs seem to have no sequence in time. Always there have been Christ stories, but whether they occur B. C. ten thousand or A. D. one, they differ only in details. All the other Supernaturals shape their behavior to the time in which they appear, but the Saviors of men have one story and one common behavior.

Considered as literary phenomona this is very interesting. All the god and devil stories appear to be efforts to explain the gaps and inconsistencies of human destiny. All the Christ stories are designed to close the gap between the Great God and Man.

We seem to have thought of as many ways of accounting for drouth, disease, sudden wealth and even death as there are tribes of men to think of these things. But in no land have we been able to think of more than one way of being reconciled to the Heart of the Universe. There have been as many Saviors as there have been people to need saving; but there has never been but one Christ plot. The only way we are able to imagine the world being saved is for a man to pay down himself on behalf of a protesting and unappreciative people.

Consider our own supreme achievement in this line, the story of Jesus. Could any fictionist who ever lived have invented anything with so wide an appeal and so long a hold on time? Its humans are so very human and its Supernaturals so far beyond the tarnish of "natural" evidence. We think sometimes that modern psychology has disposed of the "voices" and "visions" that very sparely characterize this story. But who will undertake to set a date at which we shall positively prove that there are no such things as angels, and that men may not return from the dead?

Actually, as a very little inquiry among your neighbors will convince you, the number of people who believe that there are no other sorts of personalities than ours within the range of our environment, is small. And when you think of the democratic spiritual significance of the Jesus story, who, even at the present rapid progress of democracy, can set a term to its sufficiency?

So it appears that, for the most precious things we have our relation to the Infinite and to one another, as these are expressed in story form, we are still tied up to the Supernatural, at any rate for another thousand years or so.

There is something diverting in all this, and something infinitely consoling. It goes to show that at bottom the human mind is absolutely convinced that life is not the haphazard affair it seems. There is an answer to the riddle, a string somewhere that if properly grasped will pull the whole business into order and beauty. The varied company of Supernaturals that have figured in our fiction are but the masks of a reality felt and appreciated but not known. And because these Supernaturals stood for the really vital things in human story, the rise of the modern novel, constructed wholly within the scope of things recognized as "natural," could not occur until we had developed a philosophy of social evolution.

The beginning of the movement to turn the Supernaturals out of fiction was noticeable almost as soon as the Anglo-Saxon strain began to make itself felt in European literature. It showed itself as a disposition to invest the supernatural element in powers more than in personages. Magic came to take the place left vacant by the gods, the genii and the saints. In place of Hermes and St. Anthony there were Merlin and Morgan le Fay.

We had Faust, who acquired his super-normal powers in exchange for his soul, and Cagliostro who got his from nobody was quite certain where. Later we have Svengali and Sherlock Holmes as the most popular figures of current fiction.

Examine any "six best sellers," and the compelling characteristic of half their heroes, you will find, is the ability to make the unusual happen unaccountably. The explanation of just how it did happen is the obliging author's effort to save our face. It is the marvel which really interests. And if you doubt that the Supernatural has, though disguised, a hold upon our best literature, ask yourself what you will find in modern English fiction which for chances of longevity can be set beside The Brushwood Boy and They.

The modern problem novel at which every earnest fictionist tries his hand, is the Homeric Epic with its undashed attempt to explain the incidental in man's life by means of the fundamental.

And by just as much as the modern Homer is obliged to refrain from personifying his fundamentals, making laws and abstractions of them instead of Olympians, he restricts his audience to those who are as familiar with laws and abstractions as the ancient Greeks were with their gods.

If you doubt that the non-human elements, which we no longer call supernatural, but agree on as superusual, are still formative in our written fiction, you may easily discover how large a part they play in the tales we tell informally to one another.

I do not refer to the healthy appetite for horror among the unlettered, with its train of "hants" and Walkers of the Night, but to the sort of incidents that any of your acquaintance might easily tell you out of their own lives, or their friends'. Ask, for example, for what the next ten persons you meet honestly believe to be genuine stories of any of the following:

The "hunch."

The presentiment. The message from the dead.

The "psychic" communication.

You will probably find that the hunch is more widely believed in than any saint or genii ever was, is much more of a factor in private behavior than any social precept ever succeeded in being.

The hunch is no doubt a universal experience, the core of all the guardian angels, saints and "familiars" known to story. Having outlived all these avatars, it remains in possession of the field.

Remains also the fact that we do not know any better than we did before, what a hunch really is.

A hunch is something that seems to tap you on the shoulder of your sub-conscious being and advise you that a certain line of conduct is the most advantageous for you to take. If it pleases you to call it St. Joseph or the spirit of your dead grandmother there is no proved reason why you shouldn't.

The presentiment probably belongs to the same class of experiences as the hunch. It needs only to be accompanied by a strong faculty for vizualization, or for auto-suggested sense perception of any sort, to become "clairvoyance," "audition" or "vision." As such it might take the place of the Voices, Annunciations and Spirit Warnings of the past. But still we do not know how we happen to have presentiments.

It also seems likely, from what we know of psychology at present, that communications from the dead or from living people at a distance, have common psychic elements. Most people have, or think they have, experiences that come under one or the other of these two classes. Although all the great spiritual leaders of the past attributed these experiences to Beings — Jesus spoke of them as Spirits, Joan of Arc believed them to be Saints and Angels, and Luther reports conversations with the Devil — it is not the fashion to do so now except in very limited circles.

What has happened, however, is that as we have discarded one personal hypothesis after another, there is a growing disposition to treat the experiences which gave rise to the ideas of gods and devils as veridical, worthy of serious attention.

The mind of man is, as I have remarked, a curious place. Shadows of all the great inventions, telegraphy, telephony, wireless, airships, submarines, have flitted through its dim regions since the beginning of time. Always they have come in the guise of imagined persons or powers. Hypnotism, auto-suggestion and thought transference figured in fiction long before they put on mortar board and gown.

When you come to think of these things, fiction seems the truest science in the world, the truest knowing. Once men told stories of amulets and magic formulas. Then there was a period when amulets and formulas were despised as childish and incredible. Now we understand that the powers did not reside in the charm but in the user, the power of auto-suggestion. Now educators use both medal and formula as aids to the self-residing power.

In regard to all these experiences are we going through similar phases which give rise to the assumption of beings not ourselves? Shall we come to a realization of these experiences as extensions of ourselves and our own powers far beyond our former limited conceptions of ourselves? Is the hunch not so much the advice of a friendly and communicable outsider, as an accidental use of a poorly developed faculty? Do the dead really send us messages, or have we some rudimentary sense by which we become faintly aware of a world filled, as we have always believed it, with other Beings.

Then there are the Christ stories: all the saviors of mankind, Buddha, Prometheus, Quetzacoatl. Why do we never change the pattern in all these reincarnations? Is it because there is something about the pattern as inevitable as the sum of the other two angles in a right angled triangle? Is it possibly, because there isn't any other pattern whereby men may be saved?

I have been thinking of these things rather frequently since the war, seeing men on all sides seeking for a new expression of reality.

I have asked what a fictionist might have to contribute, and I am struck as never before with the prophetic power of fiction in the realm of things that matter most to people at large. I have seen it point the direction of man's exploration of the material universe, the lands under the rim of the sea, the flying carpet through the air. I do not know any reason why fiction should prove any less the prophet in the realm of the spirit. Could we, indeed, have such an appetite for fiction if it were not the first course of the final truth?

It gives at least, a new zest to reading, to think that this might prove to be the case.

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Ancient Jewish Superstitions by James Grant 1880

Ancient Jewish Superstitions by James Grant 1880

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Jews, who professed to work wonders by enchantments, gave directions how to select and combine passages and proper names of Scripture that would render supernatural beings visible, and bring about many surprising results. The sacred word Jehovah, they said, when read with points, multiplied by or added to a given number of letters, and composed into certain words, produced miraculous effects. By that sacred name and strange arrangements, their prophets, they thought, performed miracles. The devil was supposed to have the power of accusing mortal man at the great day of propitiation, so the Jews endeavoured to appease him with presents. They believed that on that day only he had the power to bring a charge against them, and therefore, to deceive him, they had recourse to a singular stratagem. In reading the accustomed portion of the law, they left out the beginning and the end,—an omission which was expected to cause Satan to overlook the important time. Those versed in magic could tell that the five Hebrew letters of which the devil's name was composed constituted the number 364, during which number of days he could not accuse them; and in some way or other unknown to us, in addition to the plan of mutilating the law, they kept his mouth shut year after year.

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We find from the Holy Scriptures, that a witch was not permitted to live,—that there should not be found among the Hebrews any that used divination, an enchanter, a charmer, a consulter with familiar spirits, nor a necromancer, because the abominations of these mischievous people proved a snare to the nations that were driven out before the Israelites. Various opinions have been expressed regarding the witch of Endor. Parties are not agreed as to whether she did or did not bring up Samuel before Saul; but into their disputes it is unnecessary for us to enter. All that we mean to draw from the narrative is, that if the King of Israel had recourse to a witch in his hour of perplexity, superstition must have been general in the nation.

Religiously disposed Jews wore upon their arms and foreheads two pieces of parchment containing the ten commandments. These charms, or emblems of sanctity, or whatever they were called, were not allowed to be worn by women or by men when they went to a funeral or approached a dead body.

The Jews confessed their sins to their rabbis, and the penance or punishment was commensurate with their guilt. It was not uncommon for Jewish devotees to lash themselves, but the number of stripes did not at any time exceed thirty-nine. During the flagellation the penitent lay on the ground with his head to the north and his feet to the south, and it would have been considered profane to look to the east or west while the chastisement was being inflicted. A Jew would as soon have eaten swine's flesh as look to the east or west while he was in a bath. Offenders were sometimes cursed in addition to their other punishments; hence, it is presumed, the more modern recourse to curses or denunciations. A doomed or cursed individual was consigned to the power of evil angels, and prayers were offered up that he might be tormented in life with every disease, and afterwards cast into eternal darkness.

At the commencement of the Jewish Sabbath, half an hour before sunset on Friday, every Jew was bound to have his lamp lighted, though he should beg the oil. The women were required to light the lamps in memory of Eve, who by her disobedience extinguished the light of the world. Every Hebrew was obliged to pare his nails on Friday, beginning with the little finger of the left hand, and then going to the middle finger, after which he returned to the fourth finger, and then to the thumb and fore finger. In cutting the nails of the fingers of the right hand, he began with the middle finger, then proceeded to the thumb, and after that took the fore finger, the middle and fourth fingers, in the order stated. The parings were either buried or burned. The Hebrews believed that the sounding of a consecrated horn drove away the devil.

A curious custom prevailed among them in early times. The father of a family took a white cock, and each of his wives selected a hen, but such of them as were expectant mothers took both a cock and a hen. With these fowls they struck their heads twice, and at every blow the head of the family said, "Let this cock stand in my room; he shall die, but I shall live." Having said this, the neck of the fowl was drawn and its throat cut; and either the dead fowl, or its value in money, was given to the poor. In the evening previous to the feast of expiation, a man wishing to pry into futurity carried a lighted candle to the synagogue, and from particular appearances of the flame he prognosticated whether good was to follow him and his, or whether he and his family were to be overtaken by evil.

At their great feasts of tents or tabernacles (observed in memory of their living in tents in the wilderness) the Israelites went from their tents to the synagogue every day during the feast, bearing in their right hands branches of palms, myrtle, and willows, and in their left hands branches of citron. When they reached the synagogue, they turned the branches first to the east, then to the south, next to the west, and lastly to the north. These ceremonies were allegorical: the palm was an emblem of hypocrisy, the myrtle pointed to good works, the willow represented the wicked, and the citron the righteous. At marriages, while the young persons present held torches in their hands and sang the marriage song, the bride walked three times round the bridegroom, and he in turn walked thrice round her. In some countries—Germany and Holland, for instance—the guests threw handfuls of corn at the young wedded pair, telling them to "increase and multiply." The newly married people drank a little wine, and then emptied the cup on the floor. At the wedding repast a roasted hen and an egg were presented to the bride, who, after partaking of them, distributed the remainder to the guests. The hen had reference to the fruitfulness of the bride, and her delivery in childbirth.

The thumbs of a dead Jew were tied down close to the palms of his hands, to preserve the deceased from the devil's clutches. While the body was being washed, an egg was put into a glass of wine, and the deceased's head anointed with the mixture. Those who were not reconciled to the departed, before his death, kissed his great toe and asked pardon, lest he should accuse them at the great tribunal before the Most High. When the body was carried away for interment, a person, who remained behind, threw a brick after it, as a sign that all sorrow was past. The nearest friends or relations walked seven times round the grave, after each of them had driven a nail into the coffin. Hence the saying in our own time, when one signifies his willingness to do a friend a favour or kindness, "I will drive a nail into your coffin." When the body was put into the grave, every person present threw a handful of earth in after it.

On important occasions the Hebrews, like Pagans, consulted diviners, who had recourse to various ways of divination. In the days of Joseph there was divination by cups, one particular manner of proceeding being to observe how their wine sparkled when poured out. Casting or drawing of lots was a favourite method of divination, not only among the Jews, but among all nations. Mention is made of divination by means of household gods or images in human shape, prepared by astrologers under particular constellations, and made capable of the heavenly influences. The rabbis, in making some of these images, killed a man who was a first-born son, wrung off his head, seasoned it with salt, spices, etc., and then put a gold plate, bearing the name of an unclean spirit, under the head, which was fixed to a wall, and had candles burning beside it. The images were consulted as oracles concerning things accomplished but unknown, and regarding events in the future.

Among the Jews there were observers of times who laid great stress on certain seasons and critical moments, which they supposed depended on particular positions of the heavenly bodies. A learned rabbi expressed the opinion that the celestial bodies rewarded persons who put confidence in them, and that consequently men acted wisely to reverence the stars and implore their assistance. Guesses at futurities were made from the falling of a crumb of bread out of one's mouth or a staff from a man's hand, from a person sneezing, or the breaking of a shoe-latchet.

The Hebrew witches were supposed to possess the power of doing mischief to man and beast by their occult science, and of changing the form of things. Witches used their wicked skill to allure maidens. Through magical operations, a Jew endeavoured long ago to procure the love of a Christian woman, but she was preserved from the power of his craft by sealing herself with the sign of the cross. It was an ancient way of enchantment, to bring, by the power of magic, various kinds of beasts together into one place, which were designated as the "great congregation" and the "little congregation." The great congregation consisted of many of the larger animals, and the lesser was made up of numerous smaller creatures, such as serpents, scorpions, and the like. Wizards were famous fortune tellers; they pretended to be the interpreters of all the most important occurrences of the world. According to the Hebrew laws, the deceivers, and those who consulted them, were liable to be stoned. Necromancers obtained a footing among the Jews. Such wicked people were accustomed to fast, go to burying-places, and there lie down, fall asleep, and pretend that the dead appeared to them in dreams or otherwise, and told them what was desired. They also pretended to call up the dead by means of certain fumes and particular words. In cases where the spirits of dead men were obstinate and refused to appear or answer when summoned in the more simple form, recourse was had to the burning of portions of black cats, or the still more cruel method of cutting up young boys and virgins.

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The Romance of Commerce By Harry Selfridge 1918

The Romance of Commerce By Harry Gordon Selfridge 1918

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To write on Commerce or Trade and do the subject justice would require more volumes than any library could hold, and involve more detail than any mind could grasp. It would be a history in extense of the world's people from the beginning of time. For we are all merchants, and all races of men have been merchants in some form or another. The desire to trade seems to be inherent in man, as natural to him as the instinct of self-preservation, and from earliest recorded history we see trade and barter entering into and becoming part of the lives of men of all nations, and further, we see it as one of the most desirable objectives of the nations themselves. Ever since that moment when two individuals first lived upon this earth, one has had what the other wanted, and has been willing for a consideration to part with his possession. This is the principle underlying all trade however primitive, and all men, except the idlers, are merchants.

We give this title exclusively to the man who buys and sells merchandise, but the artist sells the work of his brush and in this he is a merchant. The writer sells to any who will buy, let his ideas be what they will. The teacher sells his knowledge of books—often in too low a market—to those who would have this knowledge passed on to the young.

The doctor must make an income to support himself and his family. He too is a merchant. His stock-intrade is his intimate knowledge of the physical man and his skill to prevent or remove disabilities. He sells a part of his experience for a given sum to whomsoever seeks his advice. The lawyer sometimes knows the laws of the land and sometimes does not, but he sells his legal language, often accompanied by common sense, to the multitude who have not yet learned that a contentious nature may squander quite as successfully as the spendthrift. The statesman sells his knowledge of men and affairs, and the spoken or written exposition of his principles of Government; and he receives in return the satisfaction of doing what he can for his nation, and occasionally wins as well a niche in its temple of fame.

The man possessing many lands, he especially would be a merchant in fact, and sell, but his is a merchandise which too often nowadays waits in vain for the buyer. The preacher, the lecturer, the actor, the estate agent, the farmer, the employee, all, all are merchants, all have something to dispose of at a profit to themselves, and the dignity of the business is decided by the manner in which they conduct the sale.

To work is elevating. To accomplish is superb. To fill one's time with profitable enterprise is to leap forward in the world's race and to place beside one's name the credit mark of effort. It has always been so since civilization began, and all effort has always had for its object a gain of some kind, while the amount of effort is usually determined by the value of the hoped-for gain, plus the temperament, ambitions and inclinations of the doer.

The first efforts were made in the direction of bodily protection. Food, clothing and shelter, these, in some degree, must be possessed by every individual. And the steps from these crudest beginnings of trade up to the science of Commerce of the twentieth century are as interesting to study as the pages of the wildest romance. Wealth with its accompanying power has been since earliest time the goal that no honest effort can be too great to reach; and the goal it must always remain for peoples who have the red blood of progress in their veins. And without Commerce there is no wealth. Adam Smith wrote one hundred and fifty years ago: "All original wealth comes from the soil; but while the soil so amply repays labour expended upon it, the owner of the crops looks to the alchemist, Commerce, to turn his golden harvests into golden coin.

Commerce creates wealth, and is the foundation of the great state. Armies are raised and paid for to win, or to protect the countries' trade, or commerce. Ships are constructed, colonies established, inventions encouraged, governments built up, or pulled down, for Commerce. Commerce cuts the way, and all professions, all arts follow. If Commerce is necessary to wealth, no Commerce means no wealth, and our statesman soon finds himself out of employment. Where wealth again is greatest, everything else being fairly equal, arts thrive the most.

A thousand departments of mental and physical activity foster and in turn are fostered by its achievement. People must be governed, and there must be those who govern. Laws must be made, and there must be those who study, and those who execute these laws. People must be taught, and there must be teachers. All these and the Church, the newspaper, the theatre, the fine arts are essential to the completeness of the State, to the happiness and safety of its people; but Commerce is the main stem, or trunk, where they are all branches, supplied with the sap of its far-reaching wealth. It is as necessary to the existence of any nation as blood to the physical man. That country in which trade flourishes is accounted happy, while that in which Commerce droops provokes shaking of heads and prophecies of downfall.

Just as in a beautiful tapestry there must be the groundwork, the foundation upon which the design is woven, so has Commerce acted as the underlying warp and woof in the development of civilization. It gives both strength and substance, and more than this, for it gives colour as well. Its threads are so closely interwoven with the rest as to be almost indistinguishable from them. Or to change the simile, Commerce is the foundation upon which nations are built; but it is also the superstructure, and provides the bands of steel which support every part of the national edifice.

Commerce is the mother of the arts, the sciences, the professions, and in this twentieth century has itself become an art, a science, a profession. As it plays with a fine touch on the strings of human nature the world over, and makes happier by its fairness the youth of to-day and the man of to-morrow, it is an art.

As it strives for the new and discards the old, when the old has been superseded by the better, as it invents and thinks out methods, ideas, even fundamental principles, and as its laboratory is always occupied by men who are searching for the causes of its depression and experimenting upon its possibilities of progress, so it becomes a very catholic science.

And as it studies and digs deeper into the wishes and wants of the people; as it urges and proclaims its determination to force a higher and better standard of living throughout the realm of its activity; as it hates the wrong, the deceitful, and holds up the fair and straightforward; as it stands for greater accomplishment, greater power, greater happiness to its own workers and to the entire community as well, then it may truly be ranked as a profession, and one whose sphere of work is broader, whose almost uncountable ramifications are infinitely more far-reaching than those of any other profession.

Great is Commerce, and great is its field of work, of thought, of development.

It is to the writer an almost incredible thing that any Government could ever be so suicidally short-sighted as to discourage trade; yet history is full of the restrictions placed upon it by the very men who would have profited by making its path easier. Commerce has developed too often in spite of legislation rather than by its help. This has almost always been so, and is very true to-day, for as far as we can see there has been very little progress made by law-makers towards encouraging Commerce. How rarely indeed are laws passed to encourage anything. They restrict, they limit, they prohibit from this and that; and as regards the man of Commerce their whole purpose seems to be too often to hamper and annoy.

However, it is folly to waste ink on this subject. It has always been so, and, for all that we can see, always will be. Some day, perhaps, some Solomon may rise and create a form of government which will please everyone; and if this new Solomon comes from the same race as his distinguished predecessor we may be sure he will see to it that in his government business shall find a true friend.

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The Symbology of the Easter Egg by Jennie Croft 1906

THE SYMBOLOGY OF THE EASTER EGG BY JENNIE H. CROFT 1906

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AS far back as one can trace the observance of Easter, the day has been associated with eggs. The date of the introduction of the egg as a symbol of renewed life is unknown, but it dates back much farther than the early church.

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In pagan tradition the egg was a symbol of reincarnation. With the Egyptians it was held sacred as an emblem of the human race after the deluge. The Jews accepted the egg as a symbol of their departure from Egypt, and at the feast of the Passover it was placed upon the table with the Paschal Lamb. So it was natural for the early Christians to adopt the egg as an emblem of the resurrection and future life.

The egg is typical of birth, and St. Augustine recognized it as a symbol of hope. The custom of blessing the Easter egg began in the third century.

It is to the German people, with their folk-lore and legends, that we trace the origin of hiding eggs at Easter, saying the rabbit laid them, and setting the children hunting for them. We can readily picture the staid little German boys and girls in their quaint costumes, rising early on Easter morning to hunt the colored eggs, and we may know that their shouts were no less gleeful than those of our own dear American children of today, when the coveted treasure is found.

But, we would know how the rabbit came to be associated with Easter. The date upon which Easter falls each year is regulated by the moon, it being the first Sunday after the first full moon upon or after the vernal equinox, and this shows us the relation of the moon with Easter. Now, in Ancient Symbology we find the mythical hare as typical of the moon. The Hindoo and Japanese artists painted him across the disc of the moon, and the Chinese representing him as pounding rice in a mortar. The Hindoos have a tradition which especially identifies the hare with the moon. They say that Buddha once took the shape of the hare that he might feed a hungry fellow creature, and that he was translated to the moon in that form, where he still abides.

Thus we see how the hare, the moon and Easter are related, and as the rabbit and the hare are very nearly identical, it was easy to substitute the rabbit for the traditional hare. It was also an easy matter to include the egg, as symbolical of Easter, to this group, and this was done some time in the distant past.

But, to come back to our subject, "The Symbology of the Easter Egg." The egg as a symbol of life and immortality will always remain the chief idea for Easter gifts for two reasons. First, because it is nearly round or spherical in shape, and the circle is the emblem of immortality, having neither beginning nor ending. Second, when the chicken within the shell acquires sufficient life and power, it bursts its bonds and comes forth a living being, full of vigor and activity. Human life on this earth is compared to that of the chicken within the shell, showing that humanity will be delivered from the bondage of earth and know life as free and glorious, as did Jesus the Christ.

The egg is symbolical of this glorious resurrection into new life because it is an illustration of the activity of Divine life and power within the soul of man, which will cause him to break the bonds of the sense life, and rise into the perfect life of the Christ-man. As the life-germ within the egg develops and unfolds into the perfect chicken, which then bursts the shell and comes forth into new life with greater possibilities, so the Christ breaks the bonds of all limitation in the consciousness of man and comes forth as master, leader and guide to the soul of man in its more glorious life. Easter should carry to each of us the consciousness of coming into a new life of light and gladness, because of the dropping off of habits, thoughts and tendencies that held us to a dead self.

Pagan Origin of Easter, article in the Century Path 1906

WE have been again reminded by some of the newspapers that Easter is largely a pagan festival. The Christians who first came to England adopted the Teutonic and the Scandinavian rites and the
festivals which they found established already, grafting on them the Christian symbology. Thus the feast of the resurrection of Christ was made to coincide with the ancient celebration of Eostre, Goddess of the eastern quarter, held in April when the sun is in Aries and the year is reborn.  The egg is one  of the symbols of rebirth used on those occasions. Another symbol was the hare, which is so well known to students of ancient symbology as an emblem of the moon; now it has degenerated into the rabbit.

To some this tracing of Christian rites to "pagan" origins may seem disparaging; but not so to one who properly appreciates ancient mythology. It is not to the mere traditional customs of riotous Teutonic barbarians that we are to look for the origin of these ceremonies and symbols, but to the ancient Wisdom-Religion of which they were survivals. There can be nothing disparaging to Christianity in showing it to be connected with the wisdom of the ages, though perhaps some of the early ecclesiasts did not show much intelligence in the way in which they mixed up the various elements which go to make up the doctrines of the churches.

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Sherlock Holmes and Victorian Detective Fiction By Harry Peck 1901

Sherlock Holmes and Victorian Detective Fiction By Harry Thurston Peck 1901
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IT is, or ought to be, a truism that professional critics of literature are generally the very last persons in the world to recognize new literature when they see it. This is partly because such standards as they have are purely conventional, and partly because they themselves are timorous and mistrustful and afraid of making mistakes. Hence they hesitate to commit themselves to a definite opinion until they are pretty sure that they are on the side of the majority. The result is that they follow where they ought to lead, and are apt to come in at the tail of the procession when they ought to come in at its head. Just as the venerable Austrian commanders in Italy were convinced that Napoleon knew nothing about the art of war because he was defeating them in reckless defiance of the rules laid down in the military textbooks, so our literary critics would not admit that Kipling's first five books had any value, for these were brilliant in an utterly new way, and not in a thoroughly approved old way. Originality is terribly disconcerting to unoriginal people. They think it frivolous or "unsound" or "queer." They never quite approve of it. This is why they glorify Robert Louis Stevenson for those productions of his that are good in a conventional way, but ignore his one extraordinary tour de force which is unique in literature. Yet a century hence "Treasure Island" and "The Master of Ballantrae" will be only names to the reading public, while "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" will stand as the most striking allegory ever written on the curious duality of man's moral nature.

The case of Dr. Conan Doyle is almost as interesting as the case of Kipling, in kind tho not in degree. Dr. Doyle does not take himself and his writings very seriously. Neither did Plautus nor Shakespeare for that matter. Dr Doyle is a genial, wholesome, sensible Anglo-Celt who turns off his work in a comfortable sort of way. He is not a genius, but he has a leaven of genius in his make-up, and he is a born story-teller as truly as was Herodotus. Most of his books are just admirable examples of the story-telling quality which in some mysterious fashion renders its possessor able to give real interest to even a common-place narrative. In fact, the least important of Dr. Doyle's stories—as for instance some of those in "Round the Red Lamp" —are readable. They may be as improbable as the one about the resuscitated Egyptian mummy or the electrocution at Los Amigos; but all the same you will be glad to read them and you will wish for more. In "The White Company" and "Micah Clark," this story-telling quality is of a very high order, yet still not going beyond the limits of great cleverness. The critics, however, would select these books as containing the best of which Dr. Doyle is capable. The one thing of his that is really indicative of creative genius they merely smile upon indulgently and pass by with as little notice as they would give to a dime-novel, and with much less notice than they often give to some schoolgirl's machine-made historical romance. It never occurs to them that English fiction was permanently enriched when Dr. Doyle began his cycle of stories whose protagonist is Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

It is likely that most literary critics, if asked to give an opinion about these remarkable stories, would at once compare them with those of Gaboriau and feel that there was nothing more to say. But, as a matter of fact, the Sherlock Holmes stories are not only immensely superior to anything of Gaboriau's, but in some respects the best of them are better than those tales of Poe which treat of crime and its detection. Gaboriau is an excellent literary mechanic. His mysteries are very neatly constructed. The parts all dovetail perfectly. But they have no artistic value whatsoever, and the unraveling of their complicated plots is like the dissection of a Chinese puzzle which interests by its ingenuity, but appeals neither to the intellect nor to the imagination. Poe, on the other hand, is highly intellectual, and in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," for instance, he stirs the imagination very powerfully. He can rouse the sense of horror and make his mystery deepen into ghastliness and terror.

Dr. Doyle, however, can do these things and give us still another ingredient—the human element. In the very best of the Sherlock Holmes stories he is as ingenious as Gaboriau, as imaginative as Poe, and in addition he creates for us characters that are broadly human and that interest us wholly apart from their relation to the plot. Take the personages in Gaboriau's "Monsieur Lecoq," for example, and compare them with those of Conan Doyle. There is Monsieur Lecoq himself, the aspiring young detective. We are curious about what he does in the story, but we are not made to care at all for what he is. He is a puppet-figure, a factor in a mathematical problem. There is Gevrol, the established detective, commonplace, devoid of the detecting instinct, and jealous of Lecoq's very evident superiority. There is May, the remarkable and mysterious criminal, who outwits the whole detective force and finally escapes. Now these are not human beings at all. They are merely counters in an exciting game. Apart from the game they have no tangible existence. The same is just as true of Poe's M. Dupin. But Sherlock Holmes himself would interest us simply as a man. His curiously varied tastes, his fondness for good music and rare books, his disorderly rooms, his utter boredom when not absorbed in disentangling mysteries, his prodigious consumption of shag tobacco when working out his problems, his addiction to the cocaine habit—a curious touch—all these things amuse or interest or pique us until we grow fond of him and get at last to know him almost as well as tho we, too, shared his rooms in Baker Street. Watson is another creation. Like all true artists, who do their best work by instinct rather than self-consciously, it is probable that Dr. Doyle had no idea of how supremely clever a thing it was to make Watson the companion and chronicler and also the foil of Sherlock Holmes. Watson, the matter-of-fact, sensible, and friendly surgeon, always planting both his broad feet squarely on the earth, is a typically British character, and his lack of insight makes Holmes's wonderful intuition appear twice as wonderful by the force of contrast. Moreover, by making Watson the narrator of the stories, they are made to seem always plausible to the reader, because of their sober, unemotional manner. Lestrange and Gregson, of the regular detective force, are also types drawn adequately with a few broad strokes. Beside them Gaboriau's Gevrol is shadowy and unreal. The creation of Mycroft Holmes was a stroke of genius. That Sherlock Holmes should have a brother superior in inductive reasoning even to Sherlock himself is interesting; that he should be fat and luxurious and far too lazy to use his gifts in any practical way is delicious. The likeness of mind and the utter unlikeness of temperament between the indolent Mycroft and the keen, nervous, high-strung Sherlock is fascinating. That Mycroft Holmes is introduced in but a single story—that of the Greek interpreter—shows a remarkable artistic self-control on the part of Dr. Doyle. The glimpse that is given of him is tantalizing. One longs to know more about him, but his creator has very wisely stayed his hand.

The very best of all these stories are not the long ones—"The Study in Scarlet" and "The Sign of the Four"—tho each of these contains many very striking things, and the first of them (which Dr. Doyle himself is said to have thought so little of that he sold the manuscript outright for $125), introduces us to Sherlock at the outset of his career. There is no doubt that the most finished and most effective tale is that of "The Speckled Band." This is a marvel of construction and of execution worthy of Poe, and better than Poe's best. From the very first page the reader's interest is riveted upon a mystery which, as it develops, is utterly inscrutable and fascinates one-by its undefined yet very evident horror. The inexplicable death of the elder sister, the warnings given to the surviving girl, the peculiar whistle in the night, the clanging sound of metal, the strange discoveries made by Holmes, and then that nerve-racking vigil in the blackness of midnight with the hideous revelation at the end of it—I know of nothing in this sort of fiction which possesses an interest so absorbingly intense. Of a different character is "The Naval Treaty," which I place next to "The Speckled Band" in merit as a story. This tale affords a good example of the method by which the circumstances of a mysterious event are set forth quite frankly and yet in such a way that the perfectly simple and obvious explanation never once occurs to you. The draft of a secret naval treaty between France and Italy is to be copied by young Phelps, of the British Foreign Office, who is a near relative of Lord Holdhurst, the Foreign Minister. No one but Phelps and Lord Holdhurst know of it. The reputation of both these men is at stake if the terms of the treaty shall be discovered, and, moreover, serious diplomatic complications will ensue. Phelps remains at his desk in the Foreign Office after every one but the janitor has left, and then he begins to make the required draft. Finding that it will keep him later than he had expected, he goes down stairs to ask the doorkeeper to get him a cup of coffee. While he is giving this order he hears the bell in his room ring, and, rushing back again, he finds the room empty and the treaty gone. Now, in the first place, as no human being knew that the treaty was there, and as in the second place, the thief, instead of stealing it and sneaking quietly away, rang the bell to announce his presence, the problem seems on the face of it insoluble; yet the explanation of it is really the simplest and most natural thing in the world. Herein Dr. Doyle's plots differ so utterly from Gaboriau's. Those of the French writer are complex to a degree; those of Dr. Doyle are simplicity itself. The reader is just as hopelessly puzzled by them, but the solution, when it comes, comes not as a mathematical demonstration, but as a flash of light in a dark place—illumining, surprising, delighting all at once.

After the two stories just mentioned, I should place, without attempting to assign them a definite order of merit, " Silver. Blaze," "The Resident Patient," "The Engineer's Thumb," "The Boscombe Valley Mystery," and "The Five Orange Pips." Three stories make too strong a demand upon the reader's credulity. These are, "The Red Headed League," "A Case of Identity," and "The Man with the Twisted Lip," yet the first of them is none the less one of the most absorbing interest. There is, indeed, not one story in the whole cycle which does not contain many touches that positively fascinate one by their ingenuity and unexpectedness.

Dr. Doyle will sooner or later get the recognition from the critics which he has already won from the reading public. His hold upon that public is an extraordinary one. Many books of the day sell by the hundreds of thousands, yet thev are not talked about and no one clamors for more from their authors' pens. But in the case of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, the public not only buys and reads, but discusses them continually; and it has so strenuously insisted upon having more that Dr. Doyle has been obliged to yield to the demand, and in the story which is now appearing as a serial ("The Hound of the Baskervilles") he seems to have attained the perfection of his method. The first number of this tale disappointed many readers because it seemed to introduce the incongruous element of the supernatural, but it has already become clear that there is really nothing supernatural at all about it, and that instead we are to have what will probably be the most remarkable story of them all.
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Jesus and the Book of Enoch 1893

The Book of Enoch and the New Testament 1893, and, Jesus and the Testament of Solomon by Edward Baldwin 1920 (see below)

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The Book of Enoch is of special interest to the student of the life of Christ, inasmuch as in this book the expected Messiah is described under the title, Son of Man,-the term used by Jesus of himself as the Messiah. Hence, several questions present themselves. Was Jesus familiar with the Book of Enoch? Did he borrow the title from this book? Did the conception of the Messiah in Enoch influence at all his conception of himself as the Messiah? How is the term used in Enoch, and how in the New Testament?

The Rev. R. H. Charles, M.A., Oxford, considers briefly this general subject in the April Expository Times under the heading, "Messianic Doctrine of the Book of Enoch and its Influence on the New Testament." We first consider certain opinions concerning the origin and meaning of the term as used by Jesus, as that of Meyer, who holds to its origin in Daniel, and its meaning as given there; Schleiermacher, who considered it to be equivalent to "the ideal man;" Bartlet in his recent article in The Expositor (Dec. '92), who would subsume under it the conception of the Servant of Jehovah in Isaiah. According to Mr. Charles, the meaning of the term as used by Jesus is a synthesis of the conception of the supernatural Messiah as found in Enoch, and of the conceptions of the Servant of Jehovah, as found in Isaiah. Jesus borrowed the title from Enoch, where were attached to it the supernatural attributes of superhuman glory, and universal dominion, and supreme judicial power. "Whilst therefore in adopting the title, the Son of Man, from Enoch, Jesus made from the outset supernatural claims, yet the supernatural claims were to be vindicated not after the external Judaistic conceptions of the Book of Enoch, but in a revelation of the Father in a sinless and redemptive life, death, and resurrection. Thus in the life of the actual Son of Man, the Father was revealed in the Son, and supernatural greatness in universal service. He that was greatest was likewise Servant of all." Mr. Charles, as is thus seen, holds with the best criticism to the pre-Christian origin of Enoch. He agrees with Meyer in taking John 12:34 to indicate that the term Son of Man was generally understood as a title for the Messiah. Dan. 7 is regarded as the ultimate source of the designation.

We, ourselves, are inclined to think that the use of the title Son of Man by Jesus, was suggested by Daniel rather than by Enoch, and that sufficient weight has not yet been given to the influence of the Daniel passage. It is not clear that the term was in the days of Jesus a generally understood title for the Messiah. In considering the subject, two questions must be kept in some measure distinct, viz: What was Jesus' conception of himself? What was his use of this term? T. H. R.

Jesus and the Testament of Solomon by Edward Baldwin 1920 ( Professor Edward Chauncey Baldwin, Ph.D., University of Illinois,)

A Perplexing passage in Luke (10: 17-18) becomes clear in the light of the extra-canonical work called The Testament of Solomon. The seventy "returned with joy," we are told in the gospel, "saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. And he said unto them I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven." The obscurity of the phrase "from heaven" as well as the apparent in consequence of Jesus' reference in this connection to Satan's fall, has puzzled commentators not a little. The more ancient expositors, like Gregory the Great (Moral XXIII. 6) understood the words "from heaven" literally, and maintained that Jesus referred to the fall of the angels alluded to in Jude 6. Modern exegetes have generally preferred the symbolic interpretation. Thus Rev. Alfred Plummer in The International Critical Commentary interprets the phrase "from heaven" as meaning from the height of his prosperity and power, and regards the whole vision as a "symbol and earnest of the complete overthrow of Satan."

Of these two, the earlier exegesis is more nearly correct. Jesus' assertion is to be taken literally, not symbolically. He unquestionably stated what he thought was a literal fact; and in so doing he was quite in accord with the current belief of his time. The most authoritative source of our knowledge of current belief regarding demons in the first century A.d. is the pseudepigraphic Testament of Solomon, the work of a Jewish-Christian, written in Greek. This book contains a long list of malignant spirits who are summoned by King Solomon by means of a magic ring provided him by the archangel Michael. Each in turn gives his name, mentions his particular activity, and the means by which he may be exorcised. Among them Ornias, the fierce spirit tells the king how the demons fly about among the stars and overhear the divine decrees which determine men's fate upon the earth. Upon hearing this, Solomon continues:

"I praised the Lord, and again questioned the demon saying: Tell me how you, being demons, are able to ascend into the heaven, and to mingle with the holy angels even in the midst of the stars. And he said: Just as things are brought to perfection in heaven, even so on earth are the types of all of them, for there are principalities, powers, world-rulers, and we demons-fly about in the air, and hear the voices of the celestial ones, and we look upon all the powers. And having no place of rest we become exhausted, and fall as do leaves from the trees. And men, seeing us, think the stars are falling from heaven. But it is not so, O King; but we fall through our weakness, and because we have nothing anywhere to lay hold upon. And we fall as lightnings in the depth of night, and suddenly. And we set cities aflame, and lay waste the fields with fire. For the stars are firmly fixt in heaven, as also the sun and the moon."

In this passage, persistently ignored by commentators, we unquestionably possess the key to the understanding of Jesus' assertion. The popular notion that a flash of lightning or a shooting star was really a falling demon Jesus seems to have shared with his contemporaries. Upon such natural phenomena he appears to have based his belief in the approaching downfall of the kingdom of Satan—a belief which the new power of his followers to cast out demons seemed to him miraculously to confirm.

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