through long labyrinths of legend. To fix on any one stage in such an evolution, detach it, affirm it, is to wrest a true scripture to its destruction. Few can really be interested in Abimelech and the shewbread; no one now believes that a rich man must go to hell because he is rich, nor a pauper to Paradise because of his pauperism; and none can intelligently believe the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus without believing that in Jesus miraculous power was associated with the unveracity and vanity ascribed to him in that narrative. But take the legends all together, and in them is visible the supersacred heart of humanity steadily developing through manifold symbols and fables the religion of human helpfulness and happiness. The study of mythology is the study of nature. The theory already stated (ante I), that illegitimacy or irregularity of birth was a sign of authentication for "the God-anointed," finds some corroboration in the claim of the Epistle to the Hebrews that Jesus, like Melchizedek, was without father, mother, or genealogy. His double nature is suggested: "Our Lord sprung out of Judah" (vii. 14), yet (verse 16), as priest, he has arisen "not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an indissoluble life." The writer admits that what he writes about Melchizedek is "hard of interpretation," and perhaps it so proved to the genealogist (Matt, i.) who apparently was animated by a desire to make out a carnal-law inheritance of the throne, yet not so legitimate as to exclude divine interference at various stages. In the forty-two generations only five mothers are named,--all associated either with sexual immorality or some kind of irregularity in their matrimonial relations. Tamar, through whose adultery with her father-in-law, Judah, his almost extinct line was preserved, is already a holy woman in the book of Ruth (iv. 12), and the association there of Ruth's name with this particular one of the many female ancestors of her son, and her mention in Matthew, look as if some editor of Ruth as well as the genealogist desired to cast suspicion on her midnight visit to Boaz. "The Lord gave Tamar conception, and she bore a son"--grandfather of David. It is also doubtful whether Rahab, who comes next to Tamar in Matthew's list, is called a harlot in the book of Joshua: Zuneh is said to mean "hostess" or "tavern-keeper." But in the Epistle to the Hebrews and in that of James she becomes a glorified harlot. The next female ancestor of Jesus mentioned is "her of Uriah." The name of the woman is not given,--the important fact being apparently that she was somebody's wife. Our translators have supplied no fewer than five words to save this text from signifying that Bathsheba was still Uriah's wife when Solomon was born.