Note 33 — Chapter III · THE DESTRUCTIVE CHARACTER OF MODERN BIBLE CRITICISM

We are often asked to consider the yearnings of man as a proof that the thing yearned for is a reality. His yearnings, therefore, are not a negligible quantity. Do not, then, the yearnings of millions of Christians in the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches for miraculous proofs of God’s residence once upon earth count for something? Are not all the “miraculous” relics and “wonder-working” ikons a proof that man feels that God’s revelation ought to be assured to us by the continuance of miracles? In our own Church, Holman Hunt’s painting of “The Light of the World” is being sent round our colonies, to strengthen people’s belief in Jesus Christ. Why, oh why, have we not the real picture of our Saviour, bringing our God nearer to us, and enabling us to focus our thoughts on Him? I once mentioned my feeling on this subject to a clergyman, a doctor of divinity, well versed in Church history. He replied by suggesting that there was a tradition which indicated that the true likeness of our Lord had been miraculously transmitted, and that from this the great Italian painters had caught their inspiration.33 It seems hardly necessary to have recourse to the supernatural when there were natural sources available in the shape of representations of pagan gods. Thus Mercury, attired as a shepherd, with a lamb upon his shoulders, was no infrequent object in ancient art, and this has, in some cases, led to a difficulty in distinguishing between Mercury and Jesus Christ. Similarly we know that the pictures and sculptures wherein Isis is represented in the act of suckling her child Horus formed the foundation for the Christian figures and paintings of the Madonna and child.