a thing is not common,
but in the present instance, many circumstances combined to produce an
unusual state of mind. The exciting causes were, _first_, the
long-cherished desire to have a posterity; _second_, the exalted
vocation of administering in the Holy Place and offering up with the
incense the prayers of the people to the throne of Jehovah, which seemed
to Zacharias to foretoken the acceptance of his own prayer; and _third_,
perhaps an exhortation from his wife as he left his house, similar to
that of Rachel to Jacob. Gen. xxx. 1. In this highly excited state of
mind, as he prays in the dimly-lighted sanctuary, he thinks of his most
ardent wish, and expecting that now or never his prayer shall be heard,
he is prepared to discern a sign of its acceptance in the slightest
occurrence. As the glimmer of the lamp falls upon the ascending cloud
of incense, and shapes it into varying forms, the priest imagines that
he perceives the figure of an angel. The apparition at first alarms him,
but he soon regards it as an assurance from God that his prayer is
heard. No sooner does a transient doubt cross his mind, than the
sensitively pious priest looks upon himself as sinful and believes
himself reproved by the angel. Now, either an apoplectic seizure
actually deprives him of speech, which he receives as the just
punishment of his incredulity, until the excessive joy he experiences at
the circumcision of his son restores the power of utterance--so that
dumbness is retained as an external, physical, though not miraculous
occurrence--or the proceeding is psychologically understood; namely,
that Zacharias, in accordance with a Jewish superstition, for a time
denied himself the use of the offending member. Reanimated in other
respects by the extraordinary event, the priest returns home to his
wife, and she becomes a second Sarah.[63]

The original histories are adduced, and the parallels fully drawn
between them and the gospel narratives in order to show the mythical
character of the latter. The birth of John the Baptist is the mongrel
product of the Old Testament stories of the birth of Isaac, of Samson,
and of Samuel. Every event related by the evangelists is so strained as
to make it analogous to other occurrences in Jewish history. The murder
of the innocents by Herod is only a poetic plagiarism of the cruelty of
Nimrod and Pharaoh; the star which guided the shepherds, a memory of the
star promised in the prophecy of Balaam;