of the legend may not have been in existence at the early date named, but whether those sculptures show us that those parts of the legend which exhibit the close agreement with the story of Christ were certainly in existence at a date earlier than the Christian era. Of this we find nowhere any proof. Professor Beal, in the notes to the Romantic Legend, calls attention in all to twenty-four instances in which he thinks that incidents in the story of the Buddha are to be identified on various sculptures in India. Of all these there are only two incidents the incarnation scene and the old sage Asita holding the infant Buddha in his arms—which have even any apparent similarity with anything in the gospel narrative. But the representation of an old man holding a child in his arms can hardly be held as proof conclusive that the artist must have known the story of the blessing of Simeon as it appears in our Gospel of Luke. And as for the incarnation scene, wherein, as Professor Beal tells us, the Buddha is "generally represented as descending in the form of a white elephant," — surely there is nothing in this to remind one of the gospel story of the incarnation of our Lord, and show that it had a pre-Christian origin. And that the monuments do really bring no proof to this effect, we may safely conclude from the fact that even so eminent a scholar as this same Professor Beal, after all this argument, is compelled to admit that "in our present state of knowledge there is no complete explanation of the coincidences to offer." 2

In view, then, of the total absence of proof that the legend of the Buddha in its pre-Christian form contained details coincident with the story of the life of Christ; regarding also the weighty testimony of the most direct and positive sort to the actual occurrence of the incidents in question in the case of Christ; and finally, in view of the positive proof that all the authorities which contain the legend in the full modern form, must be dated, at the earliest, several centuries after Christ, we may justly infer that such details of the 1 Romantic Legend, p. 36, note 2. 2 Ibid., p. ix.

legend as are really coincident with the facts of Christ's life were derived from the gospel story at a period considerably subsequent to the Christian era. And the case is even stronger than this. For it can be shown conclusively that within the limits of time and place required by the facts such opportunity for the transfer of incidents from the gospel to the legend of the Buddha did beyond doubt occur.

In the first place, it is a familiar fact that a body of Christians in fellowship with the Syrian church has existed on the southwest coast of India from a very remote antiquity. They themselves have an uncontradicted tradition that their church was originally founded by the apostle Thomas. But, whether we accept this tradition, or, with some modern critics, suppose this ancient Indian church to have been established by a Syrian Thomas in the third century, it matters not for our present argument. In any case, we have positive and independent testimony to the existence of Christian churches on the Malabar coast by the middle of the fourth century, a date earlier than that of any of the existing authorities for the now existing legend of the Buddha. It is also matter of undisputed history that among the Nestorian Christians there was a great quickening of missionary zeal in the sixth and seventh centuries, and that they had already before A.D. 500 sent forth "multitudes of missionaries" into Eastern, and perhaps also Southern, Asia.2 We have, in particular, testimony of a Syriac inscription in China, accepted by scholars like Huc, Abel Remusat, and others, that the gospel was preached in China in A.D. 636 by a Nestorian Christian Olopen. In the century following, we read of the appointment by the Nestorian patriarch Salibazach of metropolitans of Samarkand and of China, a fact which shows that there must have been at that time a considerable number of churches in the regions indicated.4

1 Kurtz, Kirchengeschichte, s. 190.

2 Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History, p. 421; Smith, Mediaeval Missions, pp. 203, 204; Kurtz, Kirchengeschichte, ss. 190, 191.

3 Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History, p. 421, note (1); Smith, Mediaeval Missions, pp. 205-209.

* Mediaeval Missions, p. 210.

Not to enlarge further, it is the significant fact that nearly all of the existing original authorities for the legend of the Buddha were written about the time of that great missionary activity of the Nestorian church in Southern and Eastern Asia, and none whatever antedate the known existence of Christian churches in India. Here, then, was the opportunity required for a transfer of details from the story of the Christ to a pre-existing legend of the Buddha. Of the existence of any real agreements between the two stories before the establishment of Christian churches in India we have no evidence at all. Only subsequent to that were all the works written in which the alleged coincidences appear. We maintain, then, that whatever may be the residuum of agreement between the story of the Buddha and of Christ, more or less, which cannot be fairly accounted for by considerations we have previously mentioned, it may be with the highest reason ascribed to the influence of Christian teaching in China and in India between the first and the seventh centuries of our era.1

In conclusion, we may sum up our argument as follows: Against the theory that the features in the legend of the Buddha which are said to be coincident with similar details in the recorded life of our Lord are to be explained either by a common origin of such parts of the two stories, or else a derivation of such details in the story of Christ from the story of the Buddha, lies the most weighty presumption, for the reasons following, namely,

1. Negatively, we have no evidence that the legend of the Buddha was known in Palestine at so early a date as is required by the hypothesis.

2. Positively, we have such proof of the apostolic origin of the gospel histories as utterly forbids us to believe that there was opportunity for any such confusion of the facts of the life of Christ with pre-existing myths of the Buddha.

1 With this conclusion Dr. Eitel agrees, but is even more definite as to the precise date of the transfer of the Christian elements to the legend of Buddha. Buddhism, pp. 31, 32. See also J. Talboys Wheeler's History of India, Vol. iii. p. 146, note 48.

3. Negatively, again, it is impossible to prove that the legend of the Buddha, in the form under discussion, was in existence until some centuries after Christ.

4. The full and complete explanation of the facts concerned, whenever such explanation shall be possible, will in all probability be complex, and will include at least the following particulars: Some of the coincident features are, either in part or wholly, superficial and apparent; others, merely accidental. Others, again, may be reasonably ascribed to the influence of a tradition of the promise of a Redeemer; and a remainder, more or less numerous, may be with good reason attributed to an actual transference to the original legend of the Buddha of certain elements in the story of Christ, as preached through the East in the early centuries of our era. In what precise proportion, indeed, these various elements should enter into the solution of the problem, no man yet knows enough to be able to say with confidence. We have, however, for all this, a sufficiency of ascertained facts before us to vindicate the gospel record fully from all suspicions which have been of late so freely cast upon it from this quarter.1

1 Since the above was written, we have received Vol. ix of the Sacred Books of the East, containing the Buddhist Suttas, as translated by T. W. Rhys Davids, in which we find that the learned author expresses himself fully and decisively against the theory that the New Testament has borrowed anything from Buddhist sources. As regards the alleged similarities of the two literatures, he says (p. 164), "there does not seem to me to be the slightest evidence of any historical connection between them."

ARTICLE IV.

THE HISTORY OF RESEARCH CONCERNING THE STRUCTURE OF THE O. T. HISTORICAL BOOKS.

BY PROF. ARCHIBALD DUFF, M.A., LL.D., AIREDALE COLLEGE, ENGLAND.

No. II.

THE intense interest now widely felt in Hebrew religious history is to theologians a profoundly important phenomenon.1 That importance seems, indeed, to multiply itself while we reflect upon it. It is really only one of the superficial facts of the case that a great body of Christian churches, so cultured in pulpit and pew as are the many units of the Free church of Scotland, have for the last four years spent a large share of the time which they usually devote to internal ecclesiastical conference in discussing that Hebrew history. They have been almost equally divided on the question whether one of the ablest and most devout Old Testament scholars of the day should be condemned as a heretic because he has taught that the traditional views of the origin of the Old Testament are seriously incorrect. The scholar has been authoritatively freed from the charge of heresy; yet the church which acquitted him has forbidden him to teach any longer in her theological schools. His supporters within the Free Church have nevertheless met in public assembly, and presented to him important books and manuscripts, amounting in value to one thousand pounds sterling, as means wherewith he may still continue his Old Testament researches. These friends have also announced that they have collected and invested a fund which shall yield to the

1 In America as well as in Europe, publications on the subject are rapidly appearing. A valuable work from the pen of Prof. R. P. Stebbins, D D., of Newton, has just come to hand as this Ms. goes to the printer. Let us here invite attention to the work, which shall be noticed hereafter, although only a brief reference to it could be made in the following pages. (See I. 1, b. infra.)