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REDEMPTION.
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objections ; but as it is not the object here to point out the contradictions but to see what Jesus taught, we must leave the reader to find them out for himself.
In interpreting the gospels, it is important to bear in mind that the evangelists, who chronicled the events of the life of Jesus and recorded his sayings, all, more or less, introduced their own personalities and ideas into their records. In many places it would be seen that the narratives are not the records of facts as they occurred, but of events as they should have happened. For instance, John records that Jesus carried his own cross (John, XIX. 17), while the remaining three evangelists unanimously declare that one Simon, a Cyrenian, carried it for him (Luke, XXIII. 26; Mark, XV. 21 ; Matthew, XXVII. 32). Assuming the crucifixion to be an historical fact, the only possible explanation of this contradiction seems to lie in the fact that John, who is the most philosophically inclined of the gospel-writers, departed from the truth under the belief that it behoved the Christ to bear his cross himself, while the others merely recorded the event as it had occurred, uninfluenced by his belief.
Matthew and Luke, it seems, were given to mythology which they both tried to incorporate in their writings.
The student of comparative mythology is aware that the * Virgin Birth,' the Eucharist,' the 'rending of the Veil,' and other such ideas prevailed in the older religions of the world, long before the appearance of Jesus in the Holy Land. These matters are not to be taken as historical facts, but as allegories and metaphors under which lie the most valuable doctrines of faith hidden
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