clothes genuine history in forms which at first sight appear to deserve no confidence at all. The task of the historian is first of all to understand the tradition. When it is correctly understood, he will not throw it away, but will make use of it in the proper sense and in the proper place. In this way tradition is transformed into history." 1 Nevertheless, the value of the legends of an ancient people is not in the accuracy of the narrative. Is it true that Alfred the Great had his ears boxed because he did not turn the scone when it was sufficiently baked? We do not know. But the story could not have arisen concerning Alfred the Great except in a community which had within itself the elements of that democratic character which has characterized the Anglo-Saxon people in all ages of the world. Did William Tell shoot the arrow from his son's head? Probably not. But the story could not have arisen except among a people loving independence and daring everything to win and maintain it. Did Pocahontas save the life of John Smith by throwing herself prostrate upon him? We cannot now tell. But there is in the story a precursor of that cosmopolitan character overrunning all lines of race and religion which has characterized the American people in its history from that time to this. These legends of an early date indicate the character of the people, and in this lies their value. It is in this that the value of

1 Religion of Israel to the Exile, by Professor Karl Budde, Lecture i. p. 2.

the Hebrew legends lies. They are not scientific records of an age so remote that no scientific investigation can give us trustworthy historical information concerning it; but they are indications that the spiritual temper of this people characterized their earliest consciousness as it is manifested in these stories of their prehistoric life.

The myth, on the other hand, is the attempt of a primitive people to state an abstract truth in a concrete form. For primitive people, like children, cannot conceive an abstract truth; they can conceive only in concrete illustration. Sometimes to express such truth they take a legend, pour the truth into it, and it becomes a mythical legend; sometimes they invent the story to interpret the truth it is then a mythical poem or fiction. The Greeks wished to express the truth that love is rich in itself, but poor in its possessions. Love, they said, has Resource for his father and Poverty for his mother.

"Love then, as being the child of Poverty and Resource, has a strange fate. He is always poor; and so far from being delicate and fair, as most people suppose, is rough and squalid, unsandaled and homeless, sleeping upon the bare earth beneath the open sky, and, according to his mother's nature, is always mated to want. But, on the other hand, as he takes after his father, he aims at the beautiful and the good, and is brave, vigorous, and energetic, clever in the pursuit of his object, skillful in invention, passionately fond of knowledge, and fertile in resource, unceasingly devoted to the search

after wisdom, and withal an inveterate trickster, charlatan, and sophist." 1

This is a myth. The philosophic moralist of today would say, Love has no promise of the outer world, but has resources within itself; the Greek said, Poverty and Resource married; Love was born to them, and inherited poverty from the one and resource from the other.

The

Three great problems have confronted men from the earliest ages: the origin of the cosmos; the cause of the differences in human character and condition, including the problem of sin and its consequences; and the future destiny of man. modern philosopher gives his answers to these questions in abstract form; the primitive peoples, in concrete narratives. Our answers are philosophy; theirs were myths. Such myths are generally unconscious growths; Plato furnishes an illustration of the method of their growth by his naïve and probably not serious plan for manufacturing one.

"All ye who are in the State, we will say to them following out our fiction, are brethren; but God when he moulded you, at the time of your birth, mixed gold in the substance of all you who were fit to rule, and therefore they are the most honored. He infused silver in the military caste, iron and bronze in the husbandmen and craftsmen generally. The offspring of these several classes will, as a general rule, preserve the character 1 From The Symposium of Plato as rendered by Bishop Westcott in The History of Religious Thought in the West, pp. 7, 8.

of their parents. But if the signs of silver or gold appear in the children of the bronze or iron castes, they must then be raised to their due places. And if bronze or iron appear where we look for gold, that too must be reduced to its proper rank."

"We shall not persuade the first generation that it is so, but it may be in time that their descendants will believe our tale. And the belief would contribute greatly to the good of the State and to the good of one another." 1

The early history of all peoples is in legends; the early philosophy of all peoples is in myths. There is no reason to believe that the Hebrew people are any exception to this otherwise universal rule. When the literary critic says that the Book of Genesis is a collection of legends and myths, he does not stigmatize it as valueless.2 He affirms

1 Ibid., pp. 9, 10.

2 Bishop Westcott points out the providential use of the myth, and indirectly indicates that it might well be used as a vehicle for the conveyance of divine truth in a divinely inspired writing. From his suggestive essay on The Myths of Plato, above referred to, which is well worthy of the student's careful reading, I quote a few sentences. "Thus there are two problems with which the Platonic myths deal, the origin and destiny of cosmos, and the origin and destiny of man. Both problems obviously transcend all experience and all logical processes of reason. But no less both are ever present to the student of life, though he may neglect them in the investigation of details or deliberately set them aside as hopelessly insoluble " (p. 11). "Whatever may be the prevailing fashion of an age, the Myths of Plato remain an unfailing testimony to the religious wants of man. They show not only that reason by its logical processes is unable to satisfy them, but also in what directions its weakness is most apparent and least support

that its value lies, not in the historical or scientific accuracy of its stories, but in the indications which they afford of the pre-natal character of this Hebrew people, and in the spiritual truths of which these stories are the vehicle. What these indications are, what that truth is, I have already indicated. The story of creation is not a scientific treatise on cosmogony. When neighboring peoples deified nature, worshiping the sun and moon and stars, the birds and beasts, the sacred river Nile, the cattle that browsed upon its shore, the crocodiles that swam in its waters, and the very beetles which crawled along its banks, the Hebrew myth of creation embodied the truth that God is Spirit, and Spirit is creative; that God has made man in his own image; that of created beings man alone is divine; and that nature, which by pagan religions men were taught abjectly to worship, is man's serf whom he is to tame, harness, and make do his bidding. The Hebrew myth of Eden embodied the truth that sin is willful disobedience of law; that conscience makes cowards of us all; that between sin and the human soul is to be eternal and undying hate; that sin will corrupt the able. They form, as it were, a natural scheme of the questions with which a revelation might be expected to deal, Creation, Providence, Immortality, which as they lie farthest from the reason, lie nearest to the heart. And in doing this, they are so far an unconscious prophecy of which the teaching of Christianity is the fulfillment. . . . But more than this: the Myths mark also the shape which a revelation for men might be expected to take. The doctrine is conveyed in an historic form: the ideas are offered as facts; the myth itself is the message" (ibid., pp. 48, 49).