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I am staggered at this; for if these bodies are to be resurrected and come back and people the earth again, the question of food and raiment will likewise come back, and it is the old strife over again. (23) John 19, v. 34. (24) The spear, while on the cross, had not injured Jesus' stomach; for we see here that he could eat. (25) John 20, v. 26. A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 299 finger and behold my hands; thrust thy hand into my side, and be not faithless, but believing." (26) The reader will notice that even after eight days the nail holes zvere there, and that wound in the side was still there, for doubting Thomas was told to thrust his hand into it. Moreover, as the soldiers at the crucifixion had di- vided Jesus' garments among themselves, wherewith was Jesiis clothed while wandering about the country from Jerusalem to Galilee? It may be that those "men in shining garments" who were seen at the tomb, furnished him with proper raiment ; but the record here makes no mention of his having on any apparel whatever. (26) John 20, v. 24 to 30. CHAPTER XXVI. Death — or Syncope? Section i. It is a marvelous story that Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us, but in some things, as we shall see directly, they do not quite agree. John (i) tells us of the thrust of the spear, but he stabs his own evidence when he adds that ''this was done" that not a bone should be broken (lest an old Mosaic law be violated) (2) John, however, contradicts himself, for he says Jesus was dead, even before the spear touched him. (3) Upon the very point wherein we would like to be fully informed, John fails us utterly. He thinks some blood and water came from the pierced side ; but of the severity of the wound he is discreetly silent. Jesus' death, as we have already said, after only three hours (1) Ch. 19, V. 34. (2) Exodus 12, V. 46, is an old rule concerning the Passover, and has nothing in common with the crucifixion. Neither has Numbers, ch. 9, v. 12. Psalms 34, v. 20, which is quoted to sus- tain the spear-thrust, says "many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him ov.t of them all. He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken." But they would have broken his legs if he had not swooned. A lawyer who would quote authorities so foreign to the point would be laughed out of court. Yet there is a great and interesting question, and a trick and cheat is offered to show why Jesus' legs were not broken. (3) John 19, V. 33. 300 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 301 on the cross, we may fairly doubt. (4) Suppose they had severed his head from his body, as the executioner did that of Charles I or Louis XVI ; would we believe that he could place his head back again, and on the same day take a walk with those men to Emmaus? Decapitated, his veins would be empty; how then? Nor is that other foolish story that he was born of a virgin, necessary to his greatness. He was born, no doubt, and nourished and grew the same as any other boy in Nazareth. His father, Joseph, was a carpenter, and Jesus as- sisted him. This boy, by reason of his wonderful genius, rose above his humble parentage ; and, after death, legends and fictions gathered thickly about his great name. John of the Fourth Gospel undertook to make him pre- existent. But in asserting that he came down from heaven, he only copies, in diluted form, an old Hindu superstition, that Gotama, nearly five hundred years before, likewise came down from heaven to save the world. Section 2. A copyist and imitator always goes be- yond his original, and it is so with John; he wrote down audaciously that this Galilean boy made the world, and he says : "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father" (5), "and without him was not anything made that was made." (6) (4) Luke 23, v. 44; Mark 15, v. 25. Jesus swooned about the ninth hour; Matt. 27, v. 46 to 51. (5) John 14, V. 9. (6) John 1, V. 1 to 10. 302 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES This surpasses by far what is said of Buddha; for he was not able to "make" a world. But we are told that when he left his Hindu heaven to descend and become incarnate in his mother's womb in order to found the sublime Kingdom of righteousness, "this earth was made to shake and tremble, and was shaken violently." (7) The Jews, it seems, honestly disbelieved that Jesus came down from Heaven. "We know Joseph, your father," said they, "and we know your mother; how is it then that you say 'I came down from heaven' ?" (8) Those Jews pushed him still farther. They said : "Is not this the carpenter, the brother of James, and Joses, and Juda, and Simon; and are not his sisters here with us? How is it then that you say T came down from heaven'?" (9) Moreover, Jesus never denied that Joseph was his father; and Luke (10) says "Joseph was his parent." Jesus never said that (7) Vol. XI, Sacred Books of the East, p. 46 to 48. Those extravagant happenings at Buddha's incarnation had no doubt penetrated Palestine before John or Luke -wrote, and they changed the programme somewhat. The Hindus were more advanced in ideas of this universe. For when Buddha became incarnate, we are told that ten tliousand world systems quaked and trembled; that great lights appeared in all of them ; that the blind received their sight and the deaf their hearing; the dumb spake and the lame walked; that in all the hells the fires were quenched. Of course I ought to state that John 's extravagance about Jesus creating the world is, as I believe, no more truthful than the quaking of ten thousand world systems when Buddha became in- carnate. Both are idle dreams ; the imaginations of poets, (8) John 6, V. .38. (9) Mark 6, v. 3. (10) Ch. 2, V. 41. A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 303 his mother was "overshadowed," and he never said a word about the angel Gabriel visiting her. Nor did he ever mention that flight into Egypt. (11) Poor IMar}'! She no doubt led an honest, virtuous life, and as we have seen, she became the mother of several other children. She followed Jesus with a mother's love, to the cross, and for more than one hundred years after that event her name dropped com- pletely from the memory of men. (12) In fact, no one up to this hour knows the time of her death or the place of her burial. Maya, Buddha's mother, we must remember, was also overshadowed, but in Maya's case, she dreamed a dream that the Holy Spirit (Shing-Shin) descended and entered her side ; and Maya's son was thence like- wise "born to save the world." (13) But Maya dreamed her dream herself, five hundred years before Joseph dreamed that curious one about Mary and the Holy Ghost. Here now are two great religions, and both of them start in the mysterious shadowland of dreams. But the Hindus did not dishonor the name of Maya as did the Hebrews the Nazarene Mary : they did not (11) Matt. 2, V. 13. (12) Acts 1, V. 14, is the last mention of Mary. (13) Luke 1, V. 26, Fo Sho, Varga 1; also Vol. 10, Sacred Books of the East, p. 123. Vol. 19, S. B. E., page 19. I wish to say before I forget it, that I do not believe that the angel Gabriel ■was actually sent to Mary. Nor do I believe that the Holy Spirit (Shing-Shin) came to Maya on a white elephant; nor is it prob- able that gods and angels danced for joy when Buddha was born. Vol. 10, p. 123, S. B. E. 304 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES wait two or three luindred years and then, in sub- stance, say that Buddha was an illegitimate. As to that matter, it is only necessary to add that the church of Rome, after a long waiting, proceeded to make Mary, the Nazarene mother of Jesus, a very great personage. But that church has never answered if "In Adam's fall, zvc sinned all," why that stain of sin did not follow the ancestral tree down to Mr. Joachim, and Anna, his wife, the father and mother of Mary, and from her to Jesus. Section 3. A great name is a great light, illuminat- ing and immortalizing the country and the age in which it appears. It was the unsurpassed genius of Jesus that made Galilee famous — nay, immortal — and res- cued the name of Mary from her unmarked grave. Who would know, or care to know, of Pilate and Caiphas and the bloody finger-marks of the Sanhedrin, if it were not for Jesus? We would know very much less about Athens and Greece if Demosthenes and Plato had never been born.