was the Son of God and King of Israel because, according to the narrative, he revealed some clairvoyant power; and the woman of Samaria accepted him as Christ because he read a little chapter of her corrupt life. These ae typical instances revealing the fact that here the way of faith that leads to eternal life is vastly different from the straight and narrow way of the earlier gospel tradition.

And finally we note that the most tragic thing about the Jesus of this gospel is that there is slight trace of humanitarianism. Not once. is there any allusion to his compassion. He is tender only among his few disciples near the close of his life; and here it seems to be the thought of his unfinished work which is to burden them and their weakness that moves him. Throughout the narrative he appears as one uninterested in the poor. But once is he made to speak of them and then his allusion is in the story of the anointing in words, taken from another anointing, that the author appeared to think admirably suited to his general neglect of such: "The poor ye have always with you; but me ye have not always." As the only allusion. to his poor in this gospel this is terrific; but it is not so in Matthew from which gospel it is literally taken. And it is noteworthy that the clause found in Mark was not used: "And whenever ye may do them good," an omission that but adds to the terrificness of this as the only mention of the poor by the Christ in this gospel, enough of itself to discredit this as a picture of the lowly and pitifully disposed Nazarene. Jesus is made to allude to sin but never to sinners. The poor woman who was a sinner, mentioned in Luke's gospel, finds no mention here; Jesus does not go to be a guest of a man who was a sinner; there is no trace of the poor publican who prayed: "God be merciful to me a sinner"; and the heaven which Jesus knows is not one which thrills with joy over the repentance of one solitary sinner. The narrative of the woman taken in adultery is not now recognized as belonging to this gospel, for as a late and questionable story it seems to have been inserted long after the author's time.

And his miracles of which we have eight here recorded with allusions to "many signs" as narrated were wrought to manifest his power, not as deeds of mercy. They are spectacular and the stories. of them bear marks of conscious purpose, even when it is not directly asserted that they were wrought by him to reveal his supernatural power. The only slight humanitarian touch is in the case of the supposed resurrection of Lazarus where Jesus is said to have groaned and wept, apparently with the thought on the part of the author that he realized that his calling forth of this friend from his

tomb would turn these weeping Jews from a state of indifference to him into one of hostile enmity and so would lead to the tragic close of his earthly career. In the narrative of the turning of water into wine at Cana, too often alluded to in these days as revealing the Master's love of conviviality, there is no evidence of concern for his embarrassed host. The feeding of the five thousand as narrated was prefaced by questions, not found in other accounts, designed to make evident to his disciples the stupendous character of this miracle. The restoration of the impotent man and the man blind from his birth are represented as wrought in such a way as to astound his enemies. They are unemotionally wrought with no least hint of compassion on the part of Jesus. All these narratives of miracles are, as here narrated, on an entirely different plane than the stories of such marvels in the other gospels. Those are so tenderly and lovingly humane, so manifestly wrought under the stress of deep feeling, that a disbeliever in Jesus as a great thaumaturgist would like to be able to accept the stories of them as narratives of fact in keeping with the humanitarian character of his life.

There can be no question as to the serious way in which this gospel is taken by many. They regard it as the Heart of Christ, to quote the title of a volume upon it by a Unitarian of the last generation, or the Cream of the Gospels, to quote the characterization of a recent biblical lecture. It would seem that because of its mystical nature it especially appeals to cultured people who are disinclined to exercise their critical faculties. Nevertheless, it must be admitted in accord with the data brought to light in this paper that its conception of the person, life, and work of the Mighty Galilean, as the writer prefers to designate him whom he conceives to have been born of humble peasants in Nazareth and to have devoted his public ministry almost wholly to the people of his loved hills and vales, is utterly misleading and that if it had not been for the pictures of a tenderly human and altogether sane and uplifting Jesus found in the Synoptic Gospels there would be far less of that much to be desired commodity in the world, known as "Christianity pure and undefiled,” than there now is. If we are to push back of Paulinism and get to the Christ who actually lived in these days when the cry is heard: "Christ not Paul," we must break away from the mystical influence of this gospel; for despite the artificiality which many feel is characteristic of Paul's dominant thought there was on the part of this greatest of all the apostles a loving thoughtfulness and genuine humanitarianism. Instead then of resting in this Alexandrian Neo

Platonic conception of the Christ we should go back to the Jesus of early gospel tradition; and surely the need of the recovery of this thought of the Nazarene is bound to be increasingly felt as the sad and burdened life of our time presses along its darkened path.

It has been remarked that Neo-Platonism while seeking to perfect ancient philosophy really extinguished it and while attempting to reconstruct the ancient religions really destroyed them. Is this to be the fate of Christianity because of the efforts of a Neo-Platonist to rewrite the story of its beginnings? If we must accept the Fourth Gospel as the authoritative and final word concerning the life, work, and teaching of Jesus we must conclude that its writer is fated to be the destroyer of Christianity. If the inspiring message of the Jesus of the Synoptist Gospels finds its choicest flower and fruitage here then sooner or later Christianity must become a bankrupt faith and in consequence must join other faiths which have passed into limbo as discredited and neglected. The fact that this gospel appeals particularly to cultured people who delight to quote it has little significance. Its mysticism rather than its thought attracts them. Nor need mention of the fact that it has survived the Christian centuries and has seemed to grow in popularity be made; for ours is a searchingly critical age and we who hitherto have been slow to use our critical methods, long employed in Old Testament study, in our handling of the New Testament must now use them in this field or lose our reputation for honesty. It would be a singular commentary on the statement that Neo-Platonism was vanquished by Christianity if it should go down because a second century writer injected his Neo-Platonic thought into his narrative of the life and work of Jesus. That there is a real danger here we must believe, though few of us are likely to take seriously its doctrine of the pre-existence of the human soul that seems to have rendered it easy for the writer to conceive of Jesus' supposed pre-existence, few its dualistic opposition of the divine and the earthly and its failure to put a true evaluation upon the latter. We cannot share its contempt for the world of sense; nor can we on the other hand see the necessity for a Logos to reveal the Supreme Being. While we reverence the Great Teacher we believe we have the same ways of approach to the Infinite Spirit which he had. But that there are not a few who cherish this gospel as the very "heart of Christ" we know. Hence modern critics owe it to the Christian world that the real character of its narratives be made widely known.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAMS

BY S. TAYLOR WEDGE, A. M.

O YOU believe in dreams? If you do, you are no different

from millions of others and your credulity is quite natural; for dreams have been a never-ending source of wonder and doubt, philosophical speculation and ignorant superstition from the very earliest ages of which we have any knowledge. No one, apparently, escapes the experience of this phenomenon. It visits the rudest savages as well as the most cultured of the world of civilization and shows no distinction of color or race. The society matron feels its influence as does the old colored "mammy" with her dream-book, and, perhaps, understands it not a whit more. Powerful kings, in ancient times, kept constantly in their service men who were skilled in dream interpretation-even as the wealthy of today have their psychoanalysts-and the fate of mighty empires often depended upon no more momentous a thing then the nocturnal vision of the sovereign.

What are dreams? From whence do they come? Whither do they go? Of what stuff are they made?

In order to answer these questions intelligently, it will first be necessary to understand something of the nature of the mind and of the manner in which it seems to function. The age-old problem of how to bridge the chasm which perpetually yawns between the physical world of matter on one side and the immaterial, spiritual world of mind on the other is still as knotty as ever. The solution is still unfound. There must be some connecting means whereby the world of matter is transferred and transformed into the world of spirit, but how that change takes place or what means and objects are used in its operation will probably always remain more or less of a mystery. Science, striding with seven-league boots ever onward toward the goal of perfect knowledge, has added considerably to our

understanding of many things; but the human mind, ever a wonder even to itself, still beats its wings impotently against the darkened glass that obscures its view in other directions and but faintly comprehends the mode of operation of its own faculties.

The concensus of opinion at the present day seems to point unmistakably to the conclusion that the mind of man possesses three distinct characteristics-consciousness, unconsciousness, and subconsciousness. It is evident that these are not separate entities but belong to the same entity functioning under different states of being. The ego, the distinctive personality is a unified principle; it remains the same whether in one state or another and its faculties are unchanged. An individual retains his memory, his will, and all his personal characteristics whether conscious or unconscious. He is the same man this morning that he was last night, although in the time intervening he has passed from consciousness to unconsciousness and back again to the former, experiencing all the natural phenomena of both states without in the least suffering any change in his fundamental, essential nature or acquiring any additions to his peculiarly individual personality. In one state of being he experiences realities; in the other state he experiences-dreams.

Now dreams are purely mental phenomena; their habitat is the mind. `But their concrete expression-if so it may be termed-is in the unconscious. In this they differ from ideas, judgments, and propositions because the latter have their seat of expression in the conscious. The origin is the same for both forms of mental activity, that is, in things entirely outside the mind, but their internal manifestation takes place in different states of being and appears under different forms.

For all knowledge comes to the mind from without. There is nothing in the mind which is not first either directly or indirectly in the senses. The senses are the media of communication between the two worlds of matter and spirit and may be compared to the carriers bringing various commodities into a great city by wagon, truck, railroad, etc., through its artery-like system of highways. Impressions by the thousands pour into the mind through the senses every day of our lives. Every moment of consciousness is filled. with impressions of sight, sound, taste, smell and touch, all of which the mind automatically gathers and stores, co-relates and co-ordinates, properly fitting this impression with that one and otherwise bringing order out of chaos until, by separating and placing these various impressions in their correct relationship with one another,