He daguerreotypes these three great facts in the proverb: "Where there is no vision the people perish; but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." Oh, says the Rationalist, the world is wiser now than it was in Solomon's days.

He lived in the old mythological period, when men attributed everything extraordinary to the gods.

But the world is too wise now to believe in any supernatural revelation.

"The Hebrew and Christian religions like all others have their myths." "The fact is, the pure historic idea was never developed among the Hebrews during the whole of their political existence." "When, therefore, we meet with an account of certain phenomena, or events of which it is expressly stated or implied that they were produced immediately by God himself (such as divine apparitions, voices from heaven, and the like), or by human beings possessed of supernatural powers (miracles, prophecies, etc.), such an account is so far to be considered not historical." "Indeed, no just notion of the true nature of history is possible without a perception of the inviolability of the chain of finite causes, and of the impossibility of miracles."[38] A narrative is to be deemed mythical, 1st.

"When it proceeds from an age in which there were no written records, but events were transmitted by tradition; 2d.