he time
assigned for the crucifixion of Jesus, wrote a _Jewish History_. Now, if
the miracles attributed to Christ Jesus, and his death and resurrection,
had taken place in the manner described by the Gospel narrators, he
could not have failed to allude to them. But Photius, Patriarch of
Constantinople, tells us that it contained "_no mention of the coming of
Christ, nor of the events concerning him, nor of the prodigies he
wrought_." As Theodore Parker has remarked: "The miracle is of a most
_fluctuating_ character. The miracle-worker of to-day is a
matter-of-fact juggler to-morrow. Science each year adds new wonders to
our store. The master of a locomotive steam-engine would have been
thought greater than Jupiter Tonans, or the Elohim, thirty centuries
ago."

In the words of Dr. Oort: "Our increased knowledge of nature has
gradually undermined the belief in the possibility of miracles, and the
time is not far distant when in the mind of every man, of any culture,
all accounts of miracles will be banished together to their proper
region--_that of legend_."

What had been said to have been done in _India_ was said by the "_half
Jew_"[277:1] writers of the Gospels to have been done in Palestine. The
change of names and places, with the mixing up of various sketches of
_Egyptian_, _Phenician_, _Greek_ and _Roman_ mythology, was all that was
necessary. They had an abundance of material, and with it they built. A
long-continued habit of imposing upon others would in time subdue the
minds of the impostors themselves, and cause them to become at length
the dupes of their own deception.

FOOTNOTES:

[252:1] Dr. Conyers Middleton: Free Enquiry, p. 177.

[252:2] Indian Antiquities, vol. iii. p. 46.

[253:1] Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p. 237.

[253:2] Hist. Hindostan, vol. ii. p. 331.

[253:3] Ibid. p. 319.

[254:1] Hist. Hindostan, vol. ii. p. 320. Vishnu Parana, bk. v. ch. xx.

[254:2] Prog. Relig. Ideas, vol. i. p. 68.

[254:3] Hist. Hindostan, vol. ii. p. 269.

[254:4] See Hardy's Buddhist Legends, and Eastern Monachism. Beal's
Romantic Hist. Buddha. Bunsen's Angel-Messiah, and Huc's Travels, &c.

[254:5] Hardy: Buddhist Legends, pp. xxi. xxii.

[254:6] The Science of Religion, p. 27.

[255:1] Beal: Hist. Buddha, pp. 246, 247.

[255:2] Dhammapada, pp. 47, 50 and 90. Bigandet, pp. 186 and 192.
Bournouf: Intro. p. 156. In Lillie's Buddhism, pp. 139, 140.

[256:1] Hardy: Manual of Buddhism.

[256:2] Se