(_c_) The gospels cannot be a mythical outgrowth of Jewish ideas and expectations, because, in their main features, they run directly counter to these ideas and expectations. The sullen and exclusive nationalism of the Jews could not have given rise to a gospel for all nations, nor could their expectations of a temporal monarch have led to the story of a suffering Messiah. The O. T. Apocrypha shows how narrow was the outlook of the Jews. 2 Esdras 6:55, 56 says the Almighty has made the world “for _our_ sakes”; other peoples, though they “also come from Adam,” to the Eternal “are nothing, but be like unto spittle.” The whole multitude of them are only, before him, “like a single foul drop that oozes out of a cask” (C. Geikie, in S. S. Times). Christ’s kingdom differed from that which the Jews expected, both in its _spirituality_ and its _universality_ (Bruce, Apologetics, 3). There was no missionary impulse in the heathen world; on the other hand, it was blasphemy for an ancient tribesman to make known his god to an outsider (Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 106). The Apocryphal gospels show what sort of myths the N. T. age would have elaborated: Out of a demoniac young woman Satan is said to depart in the form of a young man (Bernard, in Literature of the Second Century, 99-136). (_d_) The belief and propagation of such myths are inconsistent with what we know of the sober characters and self-sacrificing lives of the apostles. (_e_) The mythical theory cannot account for the acceptance of the gospels among the Gentiles, who had none of the Jewish ideas and expectations. (_f_) It cannot explain Christianity itself, with its belief in Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, and the ordinances which commemorate these facts.