The Silence of Jesus

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
--Isaiah 53:7

There is an account of Jesus' examination by Pontius Pilate in all four gospels, but only two of them, Matthew and Mark, make mention of the fact that Jesus stands silent before His accusers. He speaks with Pilate, and confirms that He is the King of the Jews, but "He did not answer him with regard to even a single charge, so the governor was quite amazed" (Mt 27:14). Why is this? Partially, I think, it is an identification with the oppressed and the voiceless. Jesus, our great High Priest, knows our sorrows. So He stands, just like some of us, without a voice to demand justice. The politically, racially, culturally, and ideologically downtrodden have in Jesus a Savior who can truly say, "I know what it is like to be you, and to have to bear the insults and false labels thrown onto you by those in power. And I have been righteous when you have not. Trust in Me." Jesus' silence is a silence of solidarity, a silence which bears the suffering of His sheep.

Christ and Caesar

19 The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people. 20 So they watched him and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor. 21 So they asked him, "Teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly, and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God. 22 Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?" 23 But he perceived their craftiness, and said to them, 24 "Show me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?" They said, "Caesar’s." 25 He said to them, "Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s."

I was listening to Michael Ramsden today and he had some nice analysis of this passage. What struck me, however, is the use of the word "likeness." I'm no Greek scholar, but could Jesus be reminding us that we are created in the likeness of God? Or in other words, demanding that just as the likenesses of Caesar must be given back to Caeasar, so the likenesses of God (ourselves) must be given back to God. He sees beyond the false sincerity of the Pharisees and Herodians and seeks to penetrate their heart with an appeal to give their lives to God. A simple point, but one worth considering.

The Idolatry of Biblical Criticism

It has often been stated that we project our desires onto the text. As is evident in the “carnivalesque” interpretations of Theodore Jennings and others, what we find is in large part dictated by what we look for. But what about, rather than conforming the Bible to our desires, conforming our desires to the Bible? This is of course a somewhat silly question in modern academia. But it is worth asking ourselves why that is. I believe that the Bible has been discounted as authoritative or normative in large part because higher biblical criticism and postmodernism have rendered the text’s plain sense untrustworthy in our eyes. But we continue to read and value it. So we must now make it trustworthy, by creating interpretations that we place (or in some cases, force) onto the text. And this is, essentially, the same as making ourselves trustworthy. But this of course means that it is no longer the Bible, but we who are responsible for the construction and propagation of moral and spiritual norms and/or truths. It is our interpretations of the text that become valid, meaningful, or normative, and so ultimately ourselves. We become our own Gods.

So by accepting the text as intrinsically untrustworthy, we come to a dilemma: either we continue to hold to a religion which we will call Christianity, but which is in reality self-worship, or we discard the Bible as anything other than a historical-cultural document, interesting as such but not spiritually significant. The problem with modern biblical criticism is this: we are dancing around an equivocation. Let us either be bold and discard the trappings of the community of faith which we continually attempt to redefine or undermine, or let us be courageous and hold to the trustworthiness and authority of the Bible, but most of all let us be honest, and not claim to be doing one when we are clearly doing the other.

Theocentrism, Ecology, and the Earth Bible Project

Much has been said and written regarding the methodology of the Earth Bible project and its three part framework for reading Biblical texts. Critics have often accused the project of distorting the text to fit the Earth Bible mold, either stuffing it into a framework that does not address the issues of the passage, or stretching minute detail into meaning-altering significance. However, Psalm 104 provides an opportunity to utilize the framework as a sort of guide, checking our response as in a mirror and bringing forth new insight as with a magnifying glass. It is not that we should find or force an anthropocentric or ecological reading, but that we should look for (and at) it. I depart from a “radical” ecological hermeneutic in that I have not attempted to find in nature a significance independent from humankind or God, but rather centered the reading on God and as a result found nature as a subject. I believe this to be the proper method. C. S. Lewis sums it up in his essay “First and Second Things”:

To sacrifice the greater good for the less and then not to get the lesser good after all--that is the surprising folly…Every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made. Apparently the world is made that way…You can't get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.

If we are to take the Bible seriously as a subject of study, we must therefore take its worldview seriously, and this worldview centers on God as the Creator and King of the Universe. Only atop this foundation can a faithful biblical interpretation commence. We cannot simply shunt God off to the side and place something else in the spotlight—it will always ring false. And this is why Earth-as-subject can never become an end in itself. But if we respect the text, placing God at the center, we discover that God then immediately invests Earth with significance and dignity. Psalm 104 is an example.

Human beings are mentioned only in verses 1, 14-15, 23, 26, and 34-35, a mere seven verses in a total of thirty-five. The majority of the psalm is devoted to God and His provision for nature. We should point out, though, that God acts, if not in a human-like, then at least in a personal, way. He wears clothes (v. 1-2), builds a tent and a house (v. 2-3), rides a chariot (v. 3), and hides His face (v. 20). The rest of God’s actions are more magisterial, appointing, commanding, and making. In verses 14-15 plants are said to grow in order to nourish humans and make them glad, which Habel and his associates would clearly see as anthropocentric, refusing to recognize the right of the plant world to exist independently of humankind. Verse 23 mentions humans but makes no comment on their priority over the Earth. The writer mentions “ships” in verse 26, but only to say that they sail on the waters which God has made. The writer inserts himself into the psalm at the beginning and end, in verses 1 and 34-35. He calls God “my God” and seeks to please Him. Overall, while anthropocentrism may indeed lie behind the text, or within the author’s mind, it does not emerge in any significant way in Psalm 104.

The psalm does present a quite robust picture of empathy with the Earth and recognition of our “deep ecological connections” (Habel 4). The psalmist paints a natural world completely dependent upon God, from the grass to the animals to the mountains. The humans play a role, not as dominators or rulers, but as simply another kind of creature for which He provides. We find our nourishment in the produce of the field, just like the livestock (v. 14). The psalm gives us no pride of place, but mentions us in between cattle and cedars. We are encouraged to think outside of our own anthropocentrism and praise the God who has made the Earth and filled it with more than mere humanity. Here, perhaps contra the Earth Bible project, it is God and not Earth which provides the ultimate nourishment for the living things of the world. “They all look to you to give them their food in due season,” writes the psalmist in verse 27. Verses 27-30 establish the inseparable link between the fertility of the Earth and God’s superintendence. God gives food, and the animals eat. When God departs, they are dismayed. He gives and takes their breath and life.

Psalm 104 reminds us, much as the Earth Bible project attempts to, that we humans are not the center of the universe. But Psalm 104 finds its center not in praise of nature, but of nature’s God. We are constantly reminded that this is a theocentric universe, and nature is the method through which this message is conveyed. As we respect nature’s grandeur and richness, so we should look beyond it to the God who created it and give Him glory. Nature is therefore, in the eyes of the psalmist, not an end in itself but a means to worship. If we attempt to make nature into a “first thing,” we do violence to the text and become deliberately manipulative of its meaning. But if we put God first, we find that nature becomes an object of deep respect, appreciation, and wonder.

The psalmist continually deals with non-human characters as subject in their own right. God is shown as providing for the specific needs of each creature. He gives His gifts directly to the animals and plants, and the psalm states explicitly that the gifts are intended for them, and not for humans. The springs give drink “to every beast of the field” (v. 10); grass grows “for the livestock” (v. 14); the stork’s “home” is in the fir trees (v. 17); the mountains are “for the goats” and the rocks are “a refuge for the rock badgers” (v. 18); the lions seek their prey and lie down in their dens (v. 22) (emphasis added). The proper owners of these things are animals, not people. God does not only cater to human interests, but to all of His creatures. Any ecologically-minded reader would be overjoyed to find that God has clearly created a world in which animals have a right to live their lives, and in which human activity plays little role. In fact, as verses 19-23 state, animals and humans seem to live in separate realms.

We are driven to respect the natural world, not simply because it nourishes us, or rather because God nourishes us through it, but because it is given the role of God’s kingly domain. Verse 1 proclaims that God is “clothed with splendor and majesty,” clearly setting forth a kingship metaphor, which is then extended in the following verses. His kingly robe is light, and His tent is the sky. He rides on the clouds in His chariot, and uses wind and fire as servants. All of the elements in this kingship metaphor are drawn from the natural world. It is therefore reasonable that the rest of the psalm, in its description of God’s control of and power over nature should also be read in the context of God’s kingship, and the Earth as His kingdom. Since we too are under God’s authority, we should not attempt to rebel against His established rule over nature, establishing our own despotic authority against His just and good rulership. Doing so would be treason, and would fall under the curse of verse 35.

As a whole, ecological hermeneutics is not nearly so far removed from the text as some other interpretations have been, but not as closely linked with the meaning as it should be. The Earth Bible project is simply one of the attempts to read the Bible from an ecological framework, and so we must not pass judgment on the whole field based solely on this group of scholars. There are a multitude of differing efforts to draw from the Bible some sort of word about ecology and our relationship to the natural world. Norman Habel and his fellows are, self-admittedly, “radical” in their approach. The critiques leveled against Habel’s approach are, in my opinion, valid. The method replaces the text as the well from which we draw meaning, and as such brings into question the purpose of doing ecological Biblical hermeneutics in the first place. Commitment to textual analysis is obviously only of secondary concern to the goal of presenting an ecological philosophy. And if this is the case, why not simply present the philosophy and be done with it?

The issue can be compacted to a single question: is the Bible authoritative or not? If it is, the plain sense of the text dictates that we do in fact live in an anthropocentric universe, in which human beings occupy a higher position than the animals, and enjoy a special relationship to the Lord in which the rest of the natural world in does not fully participate. It is an inescapable theme running through the entire corpus. This does not exclude non-human characters from participating in the narrative or having intrinsic worth, but it does mean that human beings are more important. And if the text is not authoritative, why are we reading it? I can only surmise that the Earth Bible project is simply using the text as a medium through which to present an alien message, harnessing the power of the Bible in our cultural imaginings in order to foist off an agenda upon its readership. There are many texts which capture environmentalist sentiments much more clearly and broadly than the Bible. Why is it significant that we find such a message in this particular text? I believe we will indeed find the message, but perhaps not in the way the Earth Bible project intends.

Works Cited

Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics. Ed. Norman G. Habel and Peter Trudinger. SBL, 2008.

The Documentary Hypothesis and Biblical Inerrancy

The idea of multiple authorship of the Pentateuch is a somewhat heated point of contention between conservative, usually evangelical, Christians and more liberal academics, some of whom do not adhere to the faith they study. As such, the debate is usually characterized as educated scholars and experts versus lay Church members and naïve pastors. As with all religious and doctrinal contentions, the issue is more complicated than it may first appear. While the idea of multiple authorship of separate “strands” within the first five books of the Old Testament began to go out of vogue among biblical scholars in around the 1970s (in favor of a more complex vision of redaction, editing, and gradual development), the most famous iteration of source criticism remains the Documentary Hypothesis associated with Julius Wellhausen. In it, Wellhausen (among several others) attempts to identify the voices of the separate authors of the Pentateuch, and to speculate on their reasons for writing, worldview, and time of composition. But what are the difficulties this presents for conservative views of biblical inerrancy, and why does it matter so much to so many people?

It is, admittedly, almost impossible to make a strong case for biblical inerrancy without assuming divine revelation. Without the doctrine of God’s superintendence of the writing, composition, and compilation of the Bible, passages such as Genesis 1-11 must become virtually entirely fictional or legendary. Even assuming the traditional account of the Pentateuch’s composition by Moses, hundreds to thousands of years pass between “Let there be light” and “Let My people go.” Without God’s revelation to Moses (or any author) there would seem to be no way to know what happened in the world’s infancy. A tantalizing hint of an antediluvian scroll or record is given in Genesis 5:1, “the scroll of the generations of Adam,” which, given new discoveries of writing appearing as early as 3400 BCE among the Sumerians (Kaiser 58), may mean that the author of Genesis compiled the book from other written material. This is, however, not conclusive.

But for evangelical Christians who hold to the doctrine of plenary inspiration and inerrancy, the revelation of Holy Scripture is a presupposition already made, and thus justification of accounts in the early chapters of Genesis is quite simple. God was there, and He narrated it to Moses. This is, of course, an easy solution, but one cannot justify the inerrancy of the Bible by saying that God wrote it, and that we know God wrote it because the Bible is inerrant. This is obvious, though pious, circular reasoning.

The true basis for the inerrancy of scripture rests in faith. Unless one assumes the absolute truth of the Bible, one cannot trust it completely, and if one cannot trust it completely, one cannot trust its account of the perfect life, propitiatory death, and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. If the Bible is not completely errorless, then there are (necessarily) errors in some of it. If there are errors in some of it, for example, the numerous claims of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, then there is no way to know that the account of the resurrection of Jesus is not also in error. It is an all or nothing game. The basis of all Christian belief is called into question the moment the Bible descends from Logos to literature. Admittedly, the claims of God’s work in the lives of believers would remain were the Bible to fall, but the knowledge of the nature and demands of that God would be gone.

It is because one must trust the Bible completely that evangelical Christians resist the theory of multiple authorship of the Pentateuch. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, and from the mouth of Jesus Himself, Moses is called the author of the Torah. For example: Ex 17:14, 24:4, 34:27; Nm 33:1,2; Dt 31:9,11 within the Pentateuch itself, Jos 1:8, 8:31,32; 1 Kg 2:3; 2 Kg 14:6; Ezr 6:18; Neh 13:1; Dn 9:11-13; Mal 4:4 in the rest of the Old Testament, and Mt 19:8; Jn 5:46,47; Ac 3:22; Rm 10:5 in the New Testament (Block 158). If Christians are to take the Bible as truth, they must reckon with this mountain of claims to Mosaic authorship. Only through a sort of lexical gymnastics, going against the plain meaning of the text, can a view of multiple authorship be supported by one claiming biblical inerrancy. However, the text does record that Joshua added somewhat to the Mosaic corpus, presumably after Moses’ death, which would explain statements such as that recording Moses’ humility (Numbers 12:3), and the account of his death.

While it may be argued whether biblical inerrancy is a “modern” development, it certainly has a basis, at least for evangelical Christians, in theological necessity. Without a completely trustworthy account of God’s work, Christianity is severely crippled, if not killed. It has been shown that the Bible makes a myriad of claims to Mosaic authorship, which entails the exclusion of claims to multiple authorship. No other person besides Joshua is said to have added anything (Joshua 24:26). This especially excludes the Documentary Hypothesis, which would not match up with Biblical claims in authorship or even date of composition. Thus, the concepts of biblical inerrancy and multiple authorship seem to be mutually exclusive. Evidence for multiple authors, such as that provided above, would need to be accounted for, but it should be the policy of Christianity to take the authority of the Bible as absolute, and to hold to it even in the face of contradictory scholarship, in sure and certain faith that the Bible will be justified in the end. So while the doctrine of biblical inerrancy may be disagreed with due to source critical scholarship, it should not be dismissed or labeled as simple ignorance.


Works Cited

Block, Daniel J. "Who Wrote the Pentateuch and When Was It Written?." Apologetics Study Bible. Ed. Ted Cabal, Chad Owen Brand, E. Ray Clendenen, Paul Copan, J.P. Moreland. Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2007. Print.

Kaiser, Jr., Walter C . The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable and Relevant? Downer's Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2001. Print.

G.K. Chesterton--Science and the Savages

This short essay from Chesterton's book Heretics deals with the fallacies of scientific anthropology and the likelihood of myth becoming fact. One can see a clear influence on C.S. Lewis' argument about Jesus Christ as the "true myth." I've been challenged quite a bit recently on the veracity of ancient Israelite stories in the Bible as similar to other Mesopotamian myths. The conclusion is, of course, that the Biblical narratives are therefore untrue. Chesterton masterfully demonstrates the falsity of such a line of reasoning, with his customary wit and humor.

A permanent disadvantage of the study of folk-lore and kindred subjects is that the man of science can hardly be in the nature of things very frequently a man of the world. He is a student of nature; he is scarcely ever a student of human nature. And even where this difficulty is overcome, and he is in some sense a student of human nature, this is only a very faint beginning of the painful progress towards being human. For the study of primitive race and religion stands apart in one important respect from all, or nearly all, the ordinary scientific studies. A man can understand astronomy only by being an astronomer; he can understand entomology only by being an entomologist (or, perhaps, an insect); but he can understand a great deal of anthropology merely by being a man. He is himself the animal which he studies. Hence arises the fact which strikes the eye everywhere in the records of ethnology and folk-lore — the fact that the same frigid and detached spirit which leads to success in the study of astronomy or botany leads to disaster in the study of mythology or human origins. It is necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to a microbe; it is not necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to men. That same suppression of sympathies, that same waving away of intuitions or guess-work which make a man preternaturally clever in dealing with the stomach of a spider, will make him preternaturally stupid in dealing with the heart of man. He is making himself inhuman in order to understand humanity. An ignorance of the other world is boasted by many men of science; but in this matter their defect arises, not from ignorance of the other world, but from ignorance of this world. For the secrets about which anthropologists concern themselves can be best learnt, not from books or voyages, but from the ordinary commerce of man with man. The secret of why some savage tribe worships monkeys or the moon is not to be found even by travelling among those savages and taking down their answers in a note-book, although the cleverest man may pursue this course. The answer to the riddle is in England; it is in London; nay, it is in his own heart. When a man has discovered why men in Bond Street wear black hats he will at the same moment have discovered why men in Timbuctoo wear red feathers. The mystery in the heart of some savage war-dance should not be studied in books of scientific travel; it should be studied at a subscription ball. If a man desires to find out the origins of religions, let him not go to the Sandwich Islands; let him go to church. If a man wishes to know the origin of human society, to know what society, philosophically speaking, really is, let him not go into the British Museum; let him go into society.

This total misunderstanding of the real nature of ceremonial gives rise to the most awkward and dehumanized versions of the conduct of men in rude lands or ages. The man of science, not realizing that ceremonial is essentially a thing which is done without a reason, has to find a reason for every sort of ceremonial, and, as might be supposed, the reason is generally a very absurd one — absurd because it originates not in the simple mind of the barbarian, but in the sophisticated mind of the professor. The learned man will say, for instance, “The natives of Mumbojumbo Land believe that the dead man can eat and will require food upon his journey to the other world. This is attested by the fact that they place food in the grave, and that any family not complying with this rite is the object of the anger of the priests and the tribe.” To any one acquainted with humanity this way of talking is topsy-turvy. It is like saying, “The English in the twentieth century believed that a dead man could smell. This is attested by the fact that they always covered his grave with lilies, violets, or other flowers. Some priestly and tribal terrors were evidently attached to the neglect of this action, as we have records of several old ladies who were very much disturbed in mind because their wreaths had not arrived in time for the funeral.” It may be of course that savages put food with a dead man because they think that a dead man can eat, or weapons with a dead man because they think that a dead man can fight. But personally I do not believe that they think anything of the kind. I believe they put food or weapons on the dead for the same reason that we put flowers, because it is an exceedingly natural and obvious thing to do. We do not understand, it is true, the emotion which makes us think it obvious and natural; but that is because, like all the important emotions of human existence it is essentially irrational. We do not understand the savage for the same reason that the savage does not understand himself. And the savage does not understand himself for the same reason that we do not understand ourselves either.

The obvious truth is that the moment any matter has passed through the human mind it is finally and for ever spoilt for all purposes of science. It has become a thing incurably mysterious and infinite; this mortal has put on immortality. Even what we call our material desires are spiritual, because they are human. Science can analyse a pork-chop, and say how much of it is phosphorus and how much is protein; but science cannot analyse any man’s wish for a pork-chop, and say how much of it is hunger, how much custom, how much nervous fancy, how much a haunting love of the beautiful. The man’s desire for the pork-chop remains literally as mystical and ethereal as his desire for heaven. All attempts, therefore, at a science of any human things, at a science of history, a science of folk-lore, a science of sociology, are by their nature not merely hopeless, but crazy. You can no more be certain in economic history that a man’s desire for money was merely a desire for money than you can be certain in hagiology that a saint’s desire for God was merely a desire for God. And this kind of vagueness in the primary phenomena of the study is an absolutely final blow to anything in the nature of a science. Men can construct a science with very few instruments, or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could construct a science with unreliable instruments. A man might work out the whole of mathematics with a handful of pebbles, but not with a handful of clay which was always falling apart into new fragments, and falling together into new combinations. A man might measure heaven and earth with a reed, but not with a growing reed.

As one of the enormous follies of folk-lore, let us take the case of the transmigration of stories, and the alleged unity of their source. Story after story the scientific mythologists have cut out of its place in history, and pinned side by side with similar stories in their museum of fables. The process is industrious, it is fascinating, and the whole of it rests on one of the plainest fallacies in the world. That a story has been told all over the place at some time or other, not only does not prove that it never really happened; it does not even faintly indicate or make slightly more probable that it never happened. That a large number of fishermen have falsely asserted that they have caught a pike two feet long, does not in the least affect the question of whether any one ever really did so. That numberless journalists announce a Franco-German war merely for money is no evidence one way or the other upon the dark question of whether such a war ever occurred. Doubtless in a few hundred years the innumerable Franco-German wars that did not happen will have cleared the scientific mind of any belief in the legendary war of ‘70 which did. But that will be because if folk-lore students remain at all, their nature win be unchanged; and their services to folk-lore will be still as they are at present, greater than they know. For in truth these men do something far more godlike than studying legends; they create them.

There are two kinds of stories which the scientists say cannot be true, because everybody tells them. The first class consists of the stories which are told everywhere, because they are somewhat odd or clever; there is nothing in the world to prevent their having happened to somebody as an adventure any more than there is anything to prevent their having occurred, as they certainly did occur, to somebody as an idea. But they are not likely to have happened to many people. The second class of their “myths” consist of the stories that are told everywhere for the simple reason that they happen everywhere. Of the first class, for instance, we might take such an example as the story of William Tell, now generally ranked among legends upon the sole ground that it is found in the tales of other peoples. Now, it is obvious that this was told everywhere because whether true or fictitious it is what is called “a good story;” it is odd, exciting, and it has a climax. But to suggest that some such eccentric incident can never have happened in the whole history of archery, or that it did not happen to any particular person of whom it is told, is stark impudence. The idea of shooting at a mark attached to some valuable or beloved person is an idea doubtless that might easily have occurred to any inventive poet. But it is also an idea that might easily occur to any boastful archer. It might be one of the fantastic caprices of some story-teller. It might equally well be one of the fantastic caprices of some tyrant. It might occur first in real life and afterwards occur in legends. Or it might just as well occur first in legends and afterwards occur in real life. If no apple has ever been shot off a boy’s head from the beginning of the world, it may be done tomorrow morning, and by somebody who has never heard of William Tell.

This type of tale, indeed, may be pretty fairly paralleled with the ordinary anecdote terminating in a repartee or an Irish bull. Such a retort as the famous “je ne vois pas la necessité” we have all seen attributed to Talleyrand, to Voltaire, to Henri Quatre, to an anonymous judge, and so on. But this variety does not in anyway make it more likely that the thing was never said at all. It is highly likely that it was really said by somebody unknown. It is highly likely that it was really said by Talleyrand. In any case, it is not any more difficult to believe that the mot might have occurred to a man in conversation than to a man writing memoirs. It might have occurred to any of the men I have mentioned. But there is this point of distinction about it, that it is not likely to have occurred to all of them. And this is where the first class of so-called myth differs from the second to which I have previously referred. For there is a second class of incident found to be common to the stories of five or six heroes, say to Sigurd, to Hercules, to Rustem, to the Cid, and so on. And the peculiarity of this myth is that not only is it highly reasonable to imagine that it really happened to one hero, but it is highly reasonable to imagine that it really happened to all of them. Such a story, for instance, is that of a great man having his strength swayed or thwarted by the mysterious weakness of a woman. The anecdotal story, the story of William Tell, is as I have said, popular, because it is peculiar. But this kind of story, the story of Samson and Delilah of Arthur and Guinevere, is obviously popular because it is not peculiar. It is popular as good, quiet fiction is popular, because it tells the truth about people. If the ruin of Samson by a woman, and the ruin of Hercules by a woman, have a common legendary origin, it is gratifying to know that we can also explain, as a fable, the ruin of Nelson by a woman and the ruin of Parnell by a woman. And, indeed, I have no doubt whatever that, some centuries hence, the students of folk-lore will refuse altogether to believe that Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning, and will prove their point up to the hilt by the, unquestionable fact that the whole fiction of the period was full of such elopements from end to end.

Possibly the most pathetic of all the delusions of the modern students of primitive belief is the notion they have about the thing they call anthropomorphism. They believe that primitive men attributed phenomena to a god in human form in order to explain them, because his mind in its sullen limitation could not reach any further than his own clownish existence. The thunder was called the voice of a man, the lightning the eyes of a man, because by this explanation they were made more reasonable and comfortable. The final cure for all this kind of philosophy is to walk down a lane at night. Any one who does so will discover very quickly that men pictured something semi-human at the back of all things, not because such a thought was natural, but because it was supernatural; not because it made things more comprehensible, but because it made them a hundred times more incomprehensible and mysterious. For a man walking down a lane at night can see the conspicuous fact that as long as nature keeps to her own course, she has no power with us at all. As long as a tree is a tree, it is a top-heavy monster with a hundred arms, a thousand tongues, and only one leg. But so long as a tree is a tree, it does not frighten us at all. It begins to be something alien, to be something strange, only when it looks like ourselves. When a tree really looks like a man our knees knock under us. And when the whole universe looks like a man we fall on our faces.