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(1) We have already noticed the miracles at Zoroaster's birth. See section 3, ch. 5, ante. (2) Luke 2:41 to 48. Mary here calls Joseph the father of Jesus, and she ought to know. 76 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 77 Buddha lived in luxury in his father's palace until nineteen, when he married the beautiful Yasodhara, who bore him a son. Jesus never married, and, no doubt, lived in "neces- sity's hard pinch" all his life, for he was later on heard to say, "the son of man hath not where to lay his head." (3) Section 2. We have already seen the snares and allurements that were strewn in Buddha's path to en- tice him from a religious life and make him an earthly king. (4) His royal father spared no pains to win him to the luxuries of an oriental kingship. In a chariot bespangled with jewels and drawn by prancing steeds, the streets scattered with flowers, hung with canopies and silken banners, the people all re- ceiving the Prince with gladness, and whispering ad- miration of him, ministers of state attending him; the Prince rode through it all, silent, respectful, thoughtful. His rooms were filled with fragrant buds and flow- ers; and at night, with music and dancing, beautiful women, some lavishly clad, were urged upon him, to entrap him, and win his heart to wickedness. In all this earth, for three thousand years, this scene no- (3) Matt. 8, V. 20. (4) Ch. 1, sec. 3 and 4, ante. We are told that when Buddha was about to depart from his father's castle, the Hindu devil promptly appeared and offered to make him sovereign over four continents and two thousand adjacent isles in seven days if he would just remain. Buddha's answer was, "I will make ten thousand world systems shout for joy." Birth stories, p. 84. 78 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES where has had its counterpart. There have been many old men who have abdicated thrones, and many, both old and young, have been forced to such an act. But here is a prince, in the early flush of manhood, hardly twenty-nine years old, his kingly father loving him, fairly doting on him as his successor, the people loving him and glad to salute him as their future king; but his mind is not on the carnival ; he is looking be- yond the present ; he sees the impermanence of all earthly things. He turns a deaf ear about getting an illustrious name. Great thoughts have taken pos- session of his soul. Fortunes, palaces, empires, a life of ease and luxury, are in the balance against religion ; and they all fly up in the scale as though they were only a feather. He is going in search of a pearl of matchless price, to the swarming millions of India, and he is firm. "I am resolved," he said, "if I obtain not my quest, that my body shall perish in the wilderness." He is now, as we have said, twenty-nine years old, and he has renounced the world and is homeless in the forests with the ascetics. Here he remained six years in a great struggle, wrestling with the flesh that he might reach perfect purity of heart and establish here on earth the kingdom of Righteousness. (5) We leave him here and turn back to the man of Galilee. Section 3. After Jesus was found in the temple he (5) Vol. 13, Sacred Books of the East, p. 96, and Vol. 11, pp. 146 and 243. St. Paul had a similar experience: Romans, eh. 7, V. 20 to L'5. A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 79 returned to Nazareth, and was thereafter "subject to his parents." Immediately after this episode, he drops out of sight utterly for eighteen years. (6) No mir- acles, no signs, no portents of a remarkable and un- surpassed future follow him. The world moves on the same as if he were not in existence. His daily life was probably that of many other young men in Nazareth, who have now slept for nineteen centuries in unmarked graves. Joseph was a carpenter, and Jesus, no doubt, assisted him in building houses. We wonder if he ever caught a vision of the mighty future before him. Did Geth- semane and Golgotha, grim specters, never stalk across his pathway? Did he ever read Isaiah (11, v. i to 6), or suspect that He was the rod (7) that should come out of the stem of Jesse, or that he was the Lord's anointed, the Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Coun- selor, the Redeemer (8) ? Was his strange paternity ever mentioned to him ? Did he know anything about the "overshadowing" of his mother? Did any one in Nazareth ever talk to him about the Holy Ghost? Was the slaughter of the Bethlehem children a house- hold shudder? Did his brothers and sisters ever men- tion his escape from it ? Did Mary ever tell him about wrapping swaddling clothes about him and hiding him (6) Luke, ch. 2, v. 45 to 52. Did he visit India in those eighteen years? (7) Isaiah 61:1, 2, 44 and 24. (8) Matt. 1:22, says, save his people (meaning the Jews) from their sins. Matthew was a Jew and liis vision is limited to Jewry. 8o A QUESTION OF MIRACLES irom Herod's wrath, in a manger? As he grew to manhood, was he all unconscious that he was to save his people from their sins? About all these matters he is silent, and nowhere makes any mention of his birth and his lowly couch in the manger; nor of his enemy, Herod, nor of Bethlehem as his birthplace. (9) While assisting Joseph, the carpenter, did he ever suspect that he was to be the Saviour of the world? (10) He was undoubtedly of such steady, even deport- ment that mothers with marriageable daughters looked upon him with favor. Did those Nazarene girls never ogle him? Did they never try to get up a flirtation with him ? Such a thing is not improbable, but we have no record whatever that those Nazarene people saw in Jesus anything different from any other sober, modest, quiet, orderly young man. Why, therefore, should he not receive the same attention as others of his age, habits and sex? Both Mary and Martha seem to have thought much of him. (11) Those Nazarenes saw him, probably daily, in his carpenter's apron. (9) I have seen it published that Jesus visited India, and there learned his creed; that he was there from the time he was twenty until near thirty years of age; but the proof, so far, is not absolutely convincing, although it is a mystery as to where he spent those intervening years. With all due respect to his memory, it would seem that if Jesus was all-wise he would not have chosen such a lot of wicked men for his apostles; Judas be- trayed him; Peter thrice denied him (Matt. 26, v. 70); all of them forsook him. (10) Luke 2, V. 11. (11) John 12, V. 1 to 3. A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 8i toiling at the bench with Joseph. They did not know, as John, in his wild extravagance, after- ward said, that this Nazarene boy had made the world (12), and they would not have believed John if he had gone there and told them so. Section 4. John would probably have been jeered at and scoffed at for his absurd and silly assertion (13). Those Nazarenes were not unfamiliar with Genesis, which says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," They would have pointed John to the very first line of Genesis, which impales him on a barbed point. Concerning Jesus' education we know but little. But if at twelve years of age he was able to discuss the Thor (the law) with the doctors in the temple, he must have given it much attention. Books were not then, as now, on every hand ; they were few ; they were cost- ly ; and his poverty precludes the idea that he possess- ed anything more than a copy of the law of Moses; but with that law, his subsequent sermons show him to be thoroughly conversant, Jesus could write, yet he never wrote a line in the New Testament, but we are told that when a certain woman, charged with a serious (12) John, ch, 1, v. 10, contains one of the most wild and wicked statements that I ever read. How can any sane man be- lieve such stuff? Nothing that the ignorant Hindus ever put forth equals it in exaggeration, and they very frequently excel belief. (13) Where did John get this special information about the creation of the world? Who told him? Jesus himself never made such a foolish claim; and that silly stuff was not written until about one hundred years after Jesus escaped from that Sepulcher. It is even possible that John did not write it. 82 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES offense by the scribes and Pharisees, was brought be- fore him, they cited him to the law of Moses, which condemned her to death. And they said, "Master, what sayest thou?