Note 1 — Chapter XVI · The Mythological Mantle of Solomon Fallen on Jesus.

But at the root of the unnatural miracles is the natural miracle—the heart of man. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, as the miracle-working poet reminds us; our little life is surrounded with a sleep, a realm of dreams,—visions that give poetic fulfilment to hopes born of hard experience. No biblical miracle in its literal form is so beautiful and impressive as the history of its origin and development as traced by the student of mythology. The growth, for example, of a simple proverb ascribed to Solomon “He that trusteth in his riches shall fall, but the just shall flourish as a green leaf” into a hymn (Ps. lii.); the association of this Psalm, by its Hebrew caption, with hungry David eating the shewbread of the temple, and the king’s slaying the priests who permitted it; the use of this legend by Jesus when his disciples were censured for plucking the corn on the Sabbath (with perhaps some humorous picture of a great king in Heaven angry because hungry men ate a few grains of corn, crumbs from his royal table) pointed with advice that the censors should learn that God desires charity and not sacrifice; the development of this into an early Christian burden against the rich, which took the form of an old Oriental fable,1 to which a Jewish connotation was given by giving the poor man in Paradise the name of Lazarus (i.e. Eleazar, who risked his life to obtain water for famished David, a story that may have been referred to by Jesus along with that of the shewbread); the transformation of this parable into a quasi-historical narrative representing the return of Lazarus from Abraham’s bosom, his poverty omitted; the European combination of the parable and the history by creating a St. Lazarus (“one helped by God”), yet appointing him the helper of beggars (lazzaroni): these items together represent a continuity of the human spirit through thousands of years, surmounting obstructive superstitions, holding still the guiding thread of humanity through long labyrinths of legend.