still to exist; one’s entire business was properly with penitence and the amendment of one’s conduct, in order not to be devoured by fire at the day of judgment and excluded from the kingdom to be founded on the new-created earth. Moreover, Jesus preached neglect of the state, of the administration of justice, of the family, of labour and of property; in effect, of all the essential elements of social life. Evangelical morality itself presents to the critics of this school little more than a disorderly mixture of the precepts of Moses on disinterested love with the doctrine of Hillel more or less well founded on enlightened self-interest. The original element in the New Testament consisted less in the logical coherence of its teachings than in a certain unction in the language employed, in a persuasive eloquence which often took the place of reasoning. All that Christ said others had said before him, but not with the same accent. In effect, German historical criticism at once professes the greatest admiration for the numerous founders of Christianity and leads its followers a long way from the ideal man conceived by the Neo-Christians as being the man-God whom primitive Christians adored. There exists accordingly no more reason to attribute an element of revelation or of sacred authority to the New Testament than to the Vedas or to any other religious book. If Christianity is a symbolic faith, the myths of India may quite as well be adopted as a basis of symbolism as the myths of the Bible. And contemporary Brahmaists with their eclecticism, confused and mystic as it often is, must be regarded as even nearer to the truth than the liberal Protestants who still look for shelter and salvation nowhere but under the diminishing shadow of the cross. [60] See the author’s work on _la Morale d’Épicure et ses rapports avec les doctrines contemporaines_, p. 186. * * * * * Abandoning, then, all effort to attribute a sacred authority to the sacred books and to the Christian tradition, may one ascribe to them at least a superior moral authority? Do they lend themselves in any especial degree to such a purely æsthetic and moral symbolism as that suggested by Mr. Arnold? [Sidenote: Futility of Mr. Arnold’s method considered as an instrument of historical criticism.]