nguage
in a literal sense, so is he also by regarding as figurative what should
be understood literally. A favorite expedient with those who deny the
supernatural character of revelation is to explain the miraculous
transactions recorded in the Bible as _figurative_ or _mythical_. When
David says that in answer to his prayer "the earth shook and trembled,
the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was
wroth;" that God "bowed the heavens also and came down, and darkness was
under his feet;" that "the Lord thundered in the heavens, and the
Highest gave his voice, hailstones and coals of fire;" that "he sent out
his arrows and scattered them, and he shot out lightnings and
discomfited them," all acknowledge that the language is to be
figuratively taken. Why then, an objector might ask, not understand the
account of the giving of the law on Sinai amid thunderings and
lightnings as figurative also? The answer of every plain reader would
be--and it is the answer of unsophisticated common sense--that the
former passage occurs in a lyric poem, where such figurative
descriptions are entirely in place; the latter in a plain narrative,
which professes to give throughout historic facts with names and dates;
that no reader, who had not a preconceived opinion to maintain, ever did
or could think of interpreting the passage in Exodus in any other than a
literal way, while every reader understands at once that the poetic
description in the eighteenth psalm is to be taken figuratively. The
attempt has been made to interpret the gospel history as a _myth_--the
embodiment of a system of pure ideas in the garb of history. It is
difficult to refute an assumption which has no foundation to rest upon.
This mythical theory may, nevertheless, be disposed of in a very short
and simple way. The great central truth of the gospel history is the
death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. If any one would know how
the apostle Paul regarded this, let him read the fifteenth chapter of
the first epistle to the Corinthians, where he pledges his veracity as a
witness on its historic reality (ver. 15). If, now, Paul so regarded it,
Luke, his companion in travel and labor, cannot have taken a different
view of it, nor any other of the evangelists. But if the death and
resurrection of Jesus are recorded as true historic events, the whole
mythical theory vanishes at once into thin air.

(4.) In regard to those prophecies which relat