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336 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES tofore stated, turns on its axis, and that it travels around the sun once every year, and that its orbit or patli is about five hundred and eighty or ninety mil- lions of miles? There are two brothers, James and John, both good men : James dies in the month of May ; you believe, do you, that he goes up at once to heaven? Answer. Yes, I believe that. Question. His brother John, also a good man, dies in the month of November; when the earth has trav- eled about two hundred and ninety millions of miles from where James ''went up," how are those two brothers ever to be united? (8) Answer. Well, I don't see, unless heaven travels around with the earth. Question. Now, Luke, as neither Matthew nor John makes any mention about Jesus' ascension, it turns out, therefore, that although your words contra- dict and set at defiance the law of gravitation in this ascension matter, yet notwithstanding all this the faitli of the world hangs suspended on your and Mark's un- supported words; is not that so? Answer. I reply again that I simply wrote down (8) A friend of mine, and a good man, too, when I put this question to him, had an easy way of its solution. "If it was I," he said, "I would just jump right back onto the earth and cling there until she swung around to May, and then I would hop off right where Jim went up. ' ' I told him he would have to be very quick hopping off, for he would be going forty times faster than a bullet. But even then he would be more than a hundred mil- lion miles from his brother. To be more nearly exact, he would be one hundred and fifty millions of miles from his brother Jim. A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 337 the belief of the Jewish Christians. I am answerable for no more than that. (9) Question. Suppose, Luke, that the stars, or at least some of them, which we see in the sky, are worlds like ours, with oceans and continents, and rivers and cli- mates and peoples: now, if Jesus is the only begotten son of the Most High, who is there to die for the sins of all those people; or are we of this earth the only wicked ones in all the universe? How is this? Answer. Your question amazes me; how could or can anyone live up there on those little bright things in the air? Of course the stars are not worlds; they are only beautiful bright specks in the sky. (10) Question. But, Luke, truly the stars are worlds; and some of them are larger than a thousand such globes as ours; and those worlds have mountains and rivers and lakes and oceans and continents and forests, and plains and atmospheres, and there is no doubt whatever but that they are inhabited the same as our globe. The moral law pervades the universe; sin is sin in those worlds, as well as here. To murder a man on Venus, or Mars, or Mercury is a crime as well as here. (11) Now, again I ask, if Jesus is the only son of (9) Mark says: "Jesus was received up into heaven and sat on the right hand of God." (Mark 16, v. 19.) But the reader should be cautioned that the last eight verses of Mark are said to be spurious: Vol. 10, Br. Ency., title "Gospels," p. 801, 9th edition. (10) The true and proper ending of Matthew is eh. 28, v. 8, and of Luke, ch. 24, v. 9; of Mark, ch. 16, v. 11. That was the belief of the early Christians. (11) I believe the time is coming when we will telegraph t Mars and Venus. Sixty years ago who would have said that w could telegraph across the Atlantic? 338 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES God, is there imposed on him the sorrowful task of making atonement for all the peoples of all the mil- lions of worlds about us? What think you? (12) Answer. Your question reaches deep down. Of course, if there are such a vast number of worlds, it would seem as if Jesus could hardly follow the busi- ness of dying for each and all of them. It would wear him out. Question. But philosophers and astronomers, after long and patient research, tell us that there are more than three hundred and fifty millions of stars or worlds (down to the twelfth magnitude), many of them vastly greater than this earth. Is it believable that this vast host are put there just for us to look at, when, as I have said, they have mountains and rivers and scenery and atmospheres similar to ours; what were they made for if not to be inhabited? Answer. Perhaps their people did not sin. Question. What is that? All that vast host of habitable worlds and not a sinner among them? Is this world of ours the only degenerate? What do you say, Mr. Luke? Answer. I know nothing of any other world than this one. If the stars are worlds, it is wonderful, won- derful. That is all. Luke. (12) The number of stars visible to the naked eye exceeds fifty- five hundred. But with telescopes, more than three hundred and fifty millions can be seen! Our earth is only a very small star and like every human life; philosophers tell us that the stars are as much alive as trees or plants, and that they, too, will die in the long hereafter. CHAPTER XXX Apocryphal Miracles as Recounted in the Apocryphal Gospels. Section i. No statement of religious teachings in the first and second centuries A. D., is complete with- out some mention of what are called apocryphal gos- pels and apocryphal miracles. Those books which have been branded for centuries as apocryphal, I pro- pose here and now to give a brief hearing, not only because it is just, but moreover they throw, as it were, ;side lights on many things stated in the preceding chapters. At the close of the first century A. D. and well on into the second, many persons were busily engaged in writing of the things which were believed by the new converts of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth. In his very first line Luke tells us that "many" before his day had undertaken to set forth the things most surely believed (i) by the followers of the new-born faith. The following named books are branded "apocry- phal" in the Protestant Bible, viz. : First Esdras, written probably about one hundred and fifty years B. C. (1) Notice that he only writes of the things "most surely be- lieved" (Luke 1, V. 1). It is very doubtful whether Luke used the words "most surely" in the above sentence. 339 340 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES Second Esdras, wriltcn about eighty to one hun- dred years B. C. Tlierc is nuich I'lnc writing in this last book, and Matthew and Luke must have been diH- gent students thereof. Jesus was hkewise famihar with Esdras. (2) Tobit, w-ritten long after the exile, has numerous angels (3), but only one devil, who has withal a sharp sense of smell. (4) Judith is the story of a beautiful Hebrew widow, who deceived Holofernes, the Assyrian General, and finally murdered him in his tent. Thus was Judea, through the wiles and wickedness of a woman, re- lieved from an invasion of the Assyrians. The chapters of Esther, in the apocryphal, are mostly made up of efforts of a Jewish queen to bene- fit her people. But The IVisdoni of Solomon, writ- ten in the second century B. C, in Egypt, is a work of a far different character. Serious speculation makes its appearance ; there is doubt and questioning. We are born, it tells us, at venture, and we shall be here- after as though we had never been. "Our life," it says, "is short and tedious, and in the death of man there is no remedy, neither was there any man known to have returned from the grave." Section 2. There is a dolorous train in The Wisdom of Solomon. "Our time," it says, "is a very shadow (2) Ch. 7 and 8, 2nd Esdras; Matt. 7, v. 13 and 14; Luke 13, V. 24. (3) Ch. 12. (4) Ch. 6, V. 17. A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 341 that passeth away, and our end is fast sealed; there is no returning-." (5) There is a touch of modern thought, however, in Solomon, for we are told that "no torment shall reach the souls of the righteous," and their hope is full of immortality. Here creeps in this abominable doctrine: "The Lord hath the care of His elect" (6), The devil also appears. Man, it is said, was created to be immortal, but through envy of the devil, death came into the world. (7) In truth whoever wrote The Wisdom of Solomon sounded the key-note of the New Testament. The righteous are said to be full of the hope of immor- tality, and shall judge the nations; but the ungodly shall be punished. (8) The book closes with a threat of wrath without mercy, to the ungodly.