Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: m. THE MYTH OF THE EESUKEECTION OF JESUS. I call any story a myth which for good reasons is not to be taken historically, and yet is not a wilful fabrication with intent to deceive, but the natural growth of wonder and tradition, or a product of the Spirit uttering itself in a narrative form.?Kbv. Frederic H. IlKixiE, D.D. At this beautiful spring season the people of the Christian world very generally unite to celebrate the supposed resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Influenced by association and sympathy, and by the love of a festal occasion, many of our Unitarian congregations, including our own, are wont to mark the period with tokens of gladness and services of rejoicing. In most cases, I think, our people attempt to make some discriminations as to their motives in participating in the Easter occasion. They seek to give to it the significance of a celebration of An Easter Sermon.the revived life of nature in the spring, or the deeper sentiment of a festival of human immortality. It is, I fear, difficult to make such discriminations clear; and, as I have reason to think that, at present, belief in the resurrection of Jesus does not widely prevail among you, as I myself unqualifiedly disbelieve in the event, I feel it to be a duty to myself (and perhaps it is such to you) to state formally the dissenting view in regard to this crowning miracle of the traditional history of Jesus. I do not believe that Jesus rose from the dead, except by that spiritual resurrection by which all the children of men, on the dissolution of the body, pass into a new life beyond the grave. The story of his physical and earthly resurrection is, in my judgment, mythical, not historical. In this opinion in regard to the narrative I suppose that I am accompan...
