RELIGION AND RATIONALISM 3I3 



spoke metaphorically and not literally ? " Without a 

 parable spake He not unto them." 



Haeckel's observation — that Jesus Christ knew noth- 

 ing beyond the Jewish traditions — is so remarkable that 

 it is difficult to conceive, not only how he came to make 

 it, but that he could believe any intelligent reader of the 

 New Testament could accept it. 



To take one point only. The religion of Judaism 

 was based on a ritual of outward forms and ceremonies 

 as well as traditions. Christ placed religion in the 

 heart within, on principles, abolishing the whole of the 

 Jewish ceremonial as well as the traditions of the elders 

 altogether. 



In alluding to St. Paul Haeckel says : " The remark- 

 able personality of Paul, who possessed much more 

 culture and practical sense than Christ, is extremely 

 interesting, from the anthropological point of view, 

 from the fact that the racial origin of the two great 

 religious founders is very much the same. Recent his- 

 torical investigation teaches that Paul's father was of 

 Greek ^ nationality and his mother of Jewish." 



" The statement of the apocryphal gospels, that the 

 Roman officer Pandera was the true father of Christ, 

 seems all the more credible when we make a careful 

 anthropological study of the personality of Christ." 

 Later on, Haeckel puts the supposition as a certainty — 

 " The name of Christ's real father, ' Pandera ' points 

 unequivocally to a Greek origin ". ^ 



Every reader of St Paul's epistles knows that what 

 Haeckel said of him was not his own estimate of him- 

 self, that his great ambition was " to apprehend Christ," 

 and feared lest he might be considered " reprobate ". 



1 Op. cit., p. 321. ^Op. cit., p. 337. 



