There is no exemption to be won from suffering, none from fear. Pain, weakness, bereavement, death,—these things must come, and we must sometimes tremble before them,—no divine hand will pluck them away. But in our fear we learn a deeper strength.
These are the gifts with which Life answers our faithful service. The brave, the gentle, the peace-makers, the pure in heart, the forgiving, the patient, the heroic, are blessed,—incomparably enriched.
This is what we know of the relation of the One Power to ourselves,—that it asks the very highest and best we can give, and returns our service with the best and highest we can receive. This is what that power we name God is to us.
This is the same reality which has been apprehended under the figure of a personal God, a Heavenly Father, or a Christ. To many, those figures still express it. But those to whom the Deity is not thus personified may no less fully and vividly apprehend the divine Reality.
And further, this whole conception stands no less in stead the persons and the hours when the conscious sense of Deity fails altogether. This conception makes the essence of religion to be conformity to the homely facts about us, in the relations of fidelity, sympathy, and service. When one has no conscious thought of God, or cannot reach such thought if he tries, he can always exercise love, sympathy, admiration, self-control,—and that is enough.
The limitations of our knowledge imply everywhere a background of mystery. But that mystery is at once a stimulus to our inquiry and a prize set before our longing. In some respects it is only a challenge to search, and the horizons of knowledge forever widen before the explorer. At other points the veil never lifts, but all longing, aspiration, unsatisfied hunger, inarticulate yearning, "groanings which cannot be uttered," reach out to and lay hold on this realm of mystery. It is not an adamantine wall that encircles us, it is the tender mystery of the sunset or the starry heavens.
So of the mystery of death. The veil is not lifted, but it stirs before the breath of our prayers and hopes. The deepest fear in man is the fear of death, and that fear is conquered in him by something greater than itself. Even on the natural plane man is seldom afraid of death when it comes; it is rather the distant image that appalls him. Before the reality some instinct seems to bid him not to fear. Every noble sentiment lifts men above the dread of death. For their country on the battlefield, for other men in sudden accidents and perils, men give their lives instinctively or deliberately.
It is personal love to which death seems to menace irretrievable and final disaster. But it is personal love to which comes the divinest presage. Some voice says to our yearning heart, "Fear nothing, doubt nothing, onlylive!"
From our birth to our death we are encompassed by mystery, but it is a mystery which may, if we will have it so, grow warm, luminous, divine.
So, by simple fidelity, man may find within himself harmony, victory, and peace. When now, from this standpoint, he looks out on the universe,—and from no other standpoint can he hope for any clear vision,—what does he most clearly discern? These three aspects,—Order, Beauty, Life.
As he opens himself to these three aspects and actively conforms himself to them,—as he studies, obeys, and reveres the Order, as he perceives and rejoices in the Beauty, as in sympathy and service he merges his personal life in the multiform Life,—so he grows in the impression of a divine harmony and unity pervading all things. So he becomes aware of a Cosmos,—a universal order of beauty and of love. He becomes aware of it only as he becomes voluntarily and consciously a part of it. Only through the fidelity of his moral life does he feel beneath his feet a sure foundation. Only as his soul glows a spark of love does it recognize the celestial ether in which it is an atom.
At every moment and on every side we are in touch with the realities of being.
We live and move in a world of orderly procedure, to which we may adapt ourselves with growing intelligence and purpose.
Both the animate and inanimate creation is clothed in forms which minister to the sense of beauty; and the more that sense is cultivated in us, the more universally do we recognize beauty, and the more profound is its appeal to our consciousness.
In our social existence we come in touch with other souls, each with its actual or potential wealth of being, and each inviting our sympathetic response.
These—order, beauty, conscious existence—are the impact on us of the universe. The right apprehension of these and the active response to them constitute the true exercise of our own nature; and it is through that exercise that we know Life,—the one Life,—and know it to be divine.
These three aspects,—order, beauty, our fellow-lives,—let us dwell for a moment on each in turn.
An amazing stimulus to man's powers has come in the discovery that he may penetrate and follow to an indefinite extent the actual procedure of the Universe. We are only on the threshold of our discoveries. We are just beginning to see where they have their highest application. We have been harnessing the steeds of power to the service of our physical wants. We are just beginning to understand that they are to be made the ministers of building up a complete manhood. The theologian has sought to demonstrate that all natural processes work in the service of a divine righteousness. In place of any such demonstration, we are finding the true exercise of knowledge in applying for ourselves the processes of nature to the fulfillment of our noblest purposes.
We are just now at the transition point between the old and the new conception of divine Power. The old conception was: "The Almighty is a merciful father. If his children ask anything, he will give it: the weapon of desire is prayer." The new perception is: "The Almighty moves in lines which we can partly discern. By putting ourselves in line with that Power, we make it helpful: the weapon of desire is intelligent effort. Through our wills works the divine Will."
"With the great girdle of God, go and encompass the earth!"
It is moral fidelity which apprehends the true application and significance for man of that regular procedure of nature which environs and conditions him. And this Natural Order, in turn, requires the moral sense to humbly and obediently go to school to it. "You want to be good?" says Nature. "You dare to believe that even I in my mightiness am set to help you to be good? Then study my processes, and conform to them!" A new set of commandments is being written in the sight of men,—commandments learned but slowly and often transgressed, even by those whose wills are pure and whose hearts are loving.Thou shalt sufficiently rest! How perpetually in these days is that commandment broken, and with what woeful penalty! The practical basis of all religion is the religion of the body. The body politic, too, the social organism, has its code of natural laws, intelligible, imperative. And every new discovery yields guidance and utters command. "Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened!"
Only through moral fidelity is the higher meaning of Beauty won. It is the pure in heart who see God. The beauty of the human form is, on the one side, uplifting to the soul, sacramental, as if it were the shrine of a divinity. On the other side, it blends with the instincts which when unchecked in their play degrade humanity. Plato pictures the two mingled elements as two steeds yoked together, the one black, unruly, down-plunging, the other white, celestial, up-mounting, while Reason, the charioteer, strives to rule them. The nobler interpretation is slowly acquired by mankind. There are great, sometimes catastrophic, lapses; there are periods when art and literature become the servants of the earthly instead of the heavenly Venus. We still look far forward to
"The world's great bridals, chaste and calm."
Yet, little by little, the ennobling aspect of human beauty becomes a familiar perception, is wrought into a habit, is transmitted as an inheritance. Whoever achieves in himself the victory of personal purity is helping to open the eyes of mankind.
The material world becomes instinct with majesty and with sweetness to the eyes that can see. It is a revelation of which Wordsworth and Emerson are the prophets in literature, but which is written no less in many a heart quite untaught of books. The face of Mother Earth is the book in which many a man and woman and child read lessons of delight, spelled in letters of rock and fern, of brook and cowslip, of maple leaf and goldenrod. Such lessons mean little save to the pure and humble.
The distinctive voice of nature's gospel is a voice of joy. Mixing freely with humanity, we encounter the almost perpetual presence of trouble. But turning to forest and mountain and sea and sky, we are confronted with gladness ineffable. Still "the morning stars sing together and the sons of God shout for joy." Can our religion find no other emblem than the cross,—the instrument of torture? Mankind has pondered long the lesson of sorrow: dare it enter the whole inheritance of sonship, and taste the fullness of joy? Reality which thought and word cannot convey is bodied forth to us in music and in natural beauty. Music is the deepest voice of humanity, and beauty is the answering smile of God. When the poet-philosopher has crowded into verse all that he can express of life's meaning,—of the subservience of evil to good, the "deep love lying under these pictures of time,"—he invokes at the last the very look of earth and sea and sky as the best answer:—
"Uprose the merry Sphinx,And crouched no more in stone;She melted, into purple cloud,She silvered in the moon;She spired into a yellow flame;She flowered in blossoms red;She flowed into a foaming wave;She stood Monadnoc's head.
"Thorough a thousand voicesSpoke the universal dame,'Who telleth one of my meaningsIs master of all I am.'"
Yet is the chief exercise of our life through relation with our fellow-lives. If the sublime joy of nature's companionship could be made constant, at the price of isolation from our kind, the price were a thousand-fold too great. And it is through true and sympathetic relation with other lives that we chiefly come into conscious harmony with the universe. It is in a right interplay with mankind that we get closest to the heart of things.
"God is love." So I am told: how shall I interpret it in my experience? Is it a proposition to be believed about some being throned above my sight? If I exercise my mind in that direction, if I weigh and balance and sift the intellectual evidence, I may toil to a doubtful conclusion. But let me, issuing forth from my ponderings, put myself into kindly relations with my fellow beings,—let me so much as pat affectionately the head of the honest dog who meets me on the street,—and a thrill like the warmth of spring touches my chilled intellect. Let me, for a day only, make each human contact, though but of a passing moment, a true recognition of some other soul, and I feel myself somehow in right relation with the world. "He that loveth knoweth God, and is born of God."
At the heart of all love is an instinct of reciprocity. It may or may not get a return from its immediate object, but somehow it opens the fountains of the universe. The heart that loves finds itself, it scarce knows how, beloved.
Such, then, is the process, and such the revelation. The first step, the constant requirement, the unsparing hourly need, is obedience to the known right. The sequence is an ever-widening sense of a sweet and celestial encompassment.
The man rightly practiced in all noble exercises of life—in moral fidelity, in reverence and sympathy, in observation and conformity to the actual conditions of the world about him—will find pouring in upon him a beauty, a love, a divinity, which fill the soul with a heavenly vision. And that soul, in whatever of extremity may come to it, has under its feet the eternal rock.
Through the serious literature of to-day runs a bitter wail,—the cry that life is sad and dark and cruel. Sad and dark and cruel it is, until one meets it sword in hand. The great Mother will have her children to be heroes. She tests them, frightens them, masks herself sometimes in terror. Face the terror, drive straight at the danger, and the mask dissolves to show the celestial smile, the "all-repaying eyes."
The road is an arduous one. The aged philosopher, you remember, was asked by a youthful monarch, "Tell me if you please in a few words what is the final fruit and outcome of philosophy?" The philosopher answered him, "Cultivate yourself diligently in all virtue and wisdom for thirty years, and then you may be able to partly understand the answer to your question."
It is an arduous road, but it leads to reality. All short and easy answers to the supreme question dissatisfy after the first flush. The confidence of the dogmatic answer, we soon discover, has no sufficient authority to back it. The glib theoretical answer leads us, after all, to a Balance of Probabilities. That is the best God that theoretic philosophy can give us. It may be better than nothing. But who can love a Balance of Probabilities? Who can feel the hand of such a deity as that when his hand gropes for support in face of temptation, disaster, heartbreak?
We are told, "It may suffice for the strong and saintly to bid them 'Prove for yourself that the universe is good;' but what kind of gospel is this for the weak, for the child, for the average man and woman?" The answer is: The vast majority of mankind always have lived and always will live largely by reliance on some person or some body of persons or some social atmosphere of opinion. That authority of the church which has availed so much is just the confidence of a crowd in the leadership of certain men to whom they are accustomed to look up. In the order of nature, always the leaders will lead. What the strong and saintly receive with vivid impression and profound assurance, the mass who feel their influence will accept a good deal on their authority. The child will catch the faith of its father and mother. But, further, in its very nature, that method of approach to the highest reality which requires only goodness and open-heartedness and love is available to the little child and to the simplest mind. When Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek, the merciful, the peace-makers, the pure in heart, they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness," every one understood him.
But it may be asked, Does this attitude bring man face to face with a personal God? Personal he will be to some: to many the only solid and adequate expression of a real being is a personal being. Nay, to many only a human personality means anything. A great preacher and poet of our day once said that he never thought of God except under the figure of Christ,—a human figure in some human occupation and attitude. Let Divinity body itself as Christ to minds so constituted. Let others invoke "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." But impose no constraint and lay no ban on those to whom, as Carlyle says, "the Highest cannot be spoken of in words. Personal! Impersonal! One! Three! What meaning can any mortal, after all, attach to them in reference to such an object?" It is not these forms of thought that are essential. What is essential is a way of living access to the Highest.
The adequate conception—the keynote—must be one that is sufficient alike for the every-day mood, for the exalted hours, and for the emergencies. That keynote is given in this truth: that there is no moment so dull or so hard but one can ask himself, What is the best the situation allows? and conform to that; can open his eyes to some beauty close at hand; can enter sympathetically into some neighboring life.
We prescribe to ourselves certain attitudes, and strive toward certain ideals. But the supreme hours are those in which there flow in upon our consciousness the inshinings and the upholdings of some unfathomed Power. We are led, we are carried. We feel, we know not whence nor how, a peace that passeth understanding and a love that casteth out fear.
This is the substance of that religious experience in which throughout the ages the heart of man has found its deepest support and encouragement. The experience has clothed itself to the imagination in the garb of this or that creed or climate. It is liable to debasements and counterfeits, but no more liable than all other noble emotions and experiences. Sometimes there is the culmination of a moral struggle, and the whole course of life receives a new direction. Sometimes there is an illumination and joy and peace. It is an exaltation of the soul in which gladness blends with moral energy. No chapter of human life is written in deeper letters than those which tell of victory over temptation, strength out of weakness, radiance beside the grave, through this divine uplift.
There is another experience, more common, less dependent on individual constitution, which bears an inward message of soberer tone but of like import. It is the peace which attends the consciousness of right-doing. Wordsworth personifies it as the approval of Duty, "stern daughter of the voice of God:"—
"Stern Lawgiver! Yet thou dost wearThe Godhead's most benignant grace;Nor know we anything more fairThan is the smile upon thy face."
The faithful child of duty, whatever his creed, whatever his temperament, is naturally the possessor of a steady, calm assurance. Somehow, he feels, it is well.
Reasonings about immortality lead to little result. Convinced or unconvinced, we profit little by a mere opinion. We speculate, doubt, reject, or hope; and in either case the moral conduct of life is, perhaps, not much affected. But there come hours when to love and aspiration the heavenly vision opens, and the sense of its own eternity thrills the soul.
The crying need of the heart is always a present need. No promise of a far-away satisfaction is sufficient for it. And answering to just that need is the experience, sometimes given, that the human love once ours is ours still in its fullness,—some richer fullness even than that of days gone by. There are hours in which the heart's voice is,
"Though mixed with God and Nature thou,I seem to love thee more and more."
The highest state of consciousness to which we attain is expressed by the old phrase that man feels himself a child of God. His energy feels back of it an infinite energy. His desires rest peacefully in some all-sufficing good. All that is highest and purest in him mingles with its divine source. He sees new and higher interpretations of his own life and other lives. All the human love he has ever experienced he holds as an abiding possession. There comes to him not so much the premonition of a future state as the consciousness of some state in which past, present, and future blend. He is free from illusions, and serene. It does not disturb him even to know that the vision will pass, and he will return to earth's level. He sees the truth, he feels the divine reality; and the certainty and the gladness are such that not even the prevision of his own relapse into dimmer perception can depress him. The hour speaks with command to the hours that are to follow; it bids them to fidelity, to love, to highest courage.
When turning from contemplation we throw ourselves into the work and the battle, a pulse of divine energy blends with our noblest effort, touches our joy with an ineffable sweetness, and hushes our sorrow like a child folded in its mother's arms.
The key of the world is given into our hands when we throw ourselves unreservedly into the service of the highest truth we know, "with fidelity to the right as God gives us to see the right." So it is that we may find ourselves
"Wedded to this goodly universeIn love and holy passion."
A tourist who roams for a brief while through some great country like England or Russia may jot down a few of the impressions which come home to him, making no pretense at completeness or symmetry of description. So, one who has journeyed like a hasty traveler over some passages in that vast tract of years which we describe as the classic and Christian civilizations, notes down in the following pages a few of the salient features that have impressed him. He has already prefaced this with a sort of outline map, drawn largely from familiar authorities, under the title "Our Spiritual Ancestry;" and has further ventured to interpret some phases of our own time, as "The Ideal of To-Day." Now he goes on to group a few observations on some special phases of the historical survey, disclaiming any attempt at exact proportion and perspective, but lingering where the prospect has pleased his fancy, or at points which seemed to yield some necessary clew or fruitful suggestion.
When, in the poems bearing the name of Homer, the curtain rises on the drama of man as it was acted in Greece, after the immeasurable prehistoric space, we are amazed at the sudden brilliance. The men and deeds brought before us are various in character and worth,—savage, heroic, repulsive, beautiful, by turns. But the ever-present charm is man seeing the world about him. It is the vividness with which every object is seen in its distinctive form and spirit, and conveyed by the fit word and phrase. So seen and spoken, the commonest object becomes a thing of delight. The high-roofed house, the brazen threshold, the polished chest, the silver-studded sword, the purple robes,—the tawny oxen, the hollow ships, the tapering oars,—the wine-dark sea, the rosy-fingered dawn, the gold-throned morning,—Hector of the nodding plume, the white-armed Nausicaa,—so in long procession moves the spectacle. A like distinctness invests all the actions and emotions of the story with charm. To us, as to the poet, the world becomes enchanted simply in being seen.
And presently we discover a strange transfiguration that is being wrought. Experiences which were painful or grievous to the actors and sufferers become in the representation the source of keen pleasure to the hearers or readers. The Iliad is mainly a story of men destroying one another. The Odyssey depicts a long strife with hardship and danger. The men who heard those songs were themselves familiar with the fight, with the wounds and terrors mixed with its energies and elations; they had tasted the perils of shipwreck and of pirates. But as they listened, the rehearsal of trials the counterpart of their own filled them with exhilaration. We who read in modern days, if less experienced in bloodshed and bodily peril, yet in some fashion have had our share of battle and storm; and we, too, like the first listeners, drink in the tale with delight. The poet, in other words, has the secret not only of seeing but of idealizing the actual world. We catch from him some subtle art by which, standing a little aloof from the pressure and turmoil around us, often felt as painful or degrading, we see it through an atmosphere in which it becomes a splendid and heart-stirring scene. At a later stage we may perhaps in a degree analyze the change of view; we may partly understand how through the struggle with evil man is strengthened and ennobled; how in such strife courage and sympathy and tenderness are engendered. But long before we can thus philosophize, and to a degree which our philosophy can hardly explain, we are affected by this beauty and elevation imparted to the spectacle of human life by the true poets.
We moderns read Homer with delight in the roll of the music, the vividness of the pictures, the humanity so near us in its essence and so unlike in its dress. When we inquire what are the moral ideals, we are often uncertain how far the impressions made on us may differ from those of the original audience, or the intention of the singer. But often his work is like the painting of great Nature herself. We pass upon it as we pass upon the facts of life.
The supernal features in the story are not here discussed. The deities, judged by our standards, have little of divinity. Beyond the grave lies a dim and dreamy realm. All this, with its great significance, we here omit, to linger a little on the essential and permanent humanity.
Achilles, the embodiment of power and passion, just touched with human ruth; Hector, the selfless, brave and gentle champion; Odysseus, victor in the long pilgrimage by fortitude and by wisdom,—these are the three ideal types of the early world, portrayed by its noblest genius.
The Iliad culminates in the triumph of pity. The heart of Zeus is melted, the harder heart of Achilles is melted, before the sorrows of bereaved old age. An exquisite gentleness breathes through the closing scenes. All the wrath and terror and savagery of the story have led up to this height of pure compassion. A new light falls on all that has gone before. Achilles, the fierce hero of the earlier story, is outshone by his victim, Hector of the great and gentle heart. The crowning word of praise, after father, mother, wife have uttered their lament, is spoken by the frail woman whose sin had brought ruin on Hector and his people: "If any other haply upbraided me in the palace halls, then wouldst thou soothe such with words, and refrain them by the gentleness of thy spirit and by thy gentle words. Therefore bewail I thee with pain at heart, and my hapless self with thee, for no more is any left in wide Troy-land to be my friend and kind to me, but all men shudder at me."
We see the sin of man and woman wrecking nations and leaving the sinner in dreary isolation. We see unrelenting wrath, even when provoked by wrong, spreading woe upon the innocent, and at last smiting the wrathful man through his dearest affections. We see the heroism which meets death in defense of the beloved, yet has only tender pity for her who has wrought the ruin.
The Iliad is mostly war,—men acting hell on earth, as Goethe said. But in the Odyssey the goal of the hero is his home. The magnet is not Helen's beauty, but Penelope's faithfulness. Odysseus, mighty warrior, crafty leader,—who with his sword has smitten the Trojans, by his wiles destroyed their city,—Odysseus is driven for ten years through hostile seas and men and gods by the compelling passion of home-sickness!
In the Odyssey, it is the battle with the sea which does most to toughen and supple and make indomitable. The soldier and sailor are the pioneers of the race. These and the tiller of the earth are the strong roots out of which are to grow the flower and fruit.
In the Iliad, woman appears in Helen as the tempting prize and the gage of battle, and in Andromeda as the tender wife foredoomed to bereavement and captivity. In the Odyssey, woman plays a higher part—as Penelope, faithful and prudent and patient wife, fit spouse for Odysseus; as Eurydice, the devoted old nurse; and as Nausicaa, loveliest of pristine maidens.
"The story of her worth shall never die; but for all humankind immortal ones shall make a gladsome song in praise of steadfast Penelope." It is a noble story: the fidelity of a wife, the undaunted courage of a man; a long battle with adversity, crowned with the joy of love's reunion; the meeting with servant, nurse, dog, son, wife, father.
Odysseus fights his battle as every hero must,—against hostile nature and man,—by courage and patience and craft, and a confidence that the heavenly power will somehow bring him through.
So at the heart of the Iliad and the Odyssey is an austere and sweet message. The singers who embodied it in tales which stir every pulse with delight were among the supreme teachers of mankind. The inner meaning of humanity's story which their songs display is still the lesson set us,—out of adversity man may win fortitude; through battle, shipwreck, and overthrow he scales the heights of manhood; and the faithful pilgrimage ends in a home which is dearer for all troubles past.
The Homeric poems show man in his first full awaking to beauty and to music. They show more. The fashioning of the supernal world in man's mind varies with people and with time. Here it is Zeus and Hades, again it will be Jehovah and Satan, and then Heaven and Hell. But in the Iliad and Odyssey the human heart recognizes its rightful lords as long as it shall endure,—Courage and Pity, Fortitude and Fidelity.
Socrates is the man who has actually achieved goodness, and tries to make a science and art of goodness, to find a way in which it can be clearly known and rationally and effectively taught. "Can virtue be taught?" is his characteristic question. The chief result of his keen scrutiny is to bring to light how little men really know of the higher life,—how little he knows of it himself. The effect of this revelation of ignorance is not a despair of truth, but a humility which is the beginning of wisdom. The deepest thing in Socrates is his knowledge of the good life as a reality, and of the joy and peace which it brings. Secure in this, he can go on in the most fearless temper, and even with light-hearted jesting, to sift the questions. Intellectually, his main achievement is to bring out clearly the problems to be faced, and to give an immense stimulus to the higher class of minds.
In the picture of Socrates by Xenophon in the Memorabilia, which bears all the marks of true portraiture, goodness goes with happiness and knowledge. It is a most winning combination—beautiful as a Greek statue. Xenophon lays stress on his happiness, but the basis is self-command. Among a people where even religion and philosophy were tolerant of sensuality, he was pure. He was hardy, trained to bear heat and cold, temperate, simple, faithful to civic duty, a reverent worshiper of the gods, watchful for the divine leading.
Xenophon shows him absorbed in teaching, imparting the best he has found, never so happy as when he can win a young man to virtue. His ideal society is the union of those who together are seeking goodness and knowledge.
His patience is shown under the worst of domestic annoyances, a scolding wife,—he says he thus learns to bear all other crosses. His admonition to his son to bear with her shows genuine tenderness.
He has the heroic quality. He resists the raging people, and refuses the part assigned him in voting the death sentence on the generals whose defeat had been a misfortune and not a fault. He calmly disobeys the Thirty Tyrants, at the risk of his life. He dies at last, a tranquil martyr to fearless truth-speaking.
He teaches nobly of Providence, the Supreme, the guidance from above. He conforms to the religion of his people, while planting a higher truth. When Athens, faithfully warned by him in vain, was sinking toward ruin and decay, he was sowing the seeds of spiritual harvests for future generations, like Jesus when Judea was tottering to its fall. In the intellectual development of man's higher life he holds a place not unlike that of Jesus in the emotional development.
Socrates, as Xenophon describes him, goes no farther as a teacher than to impress the principles of conduct as they were generally accepted by good men of the time, with peculiar persuasiveness. But Plato shows him as an original investigator of the human mind and the universe. In this there is an undoubted trait of true portraiture, but its limit is very difficult to trace, because in Plato's dialogues the master is made the mouthpiece of all the pupil's philosophy. The most distinctive feature which can be identified as that of Socrates himself is the cross-examination. Under this process, high-sounding generalities,—put in the mouths of speakers in the dialogues, the whole word-play set forth with exquisite grace and charm,—are shown by a rigid sifting to resolve themselves into nebulous and baseless figments,—the mere simulacra of true knowledge.
The conversations glide from this destructive analysis into a constructive philosophy, and then we soon feel that it is Plato rather than Socrates whom we are getting. The great contribution of Socrates himself to philosophy is the attitude he impressed—of inquiry which is serious because seeking the foundations of virtue and happiness, and is inexorable in its insistence on nothing less than solid reality. Against all allurements of indolence, comfort, and social convention he presses the question, What istrue? His characteristic word is:
"Some things, Meno, I have said of which I am not altogether confident. But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to inquire than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in searching after what we know not; that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power."
Plato took from Socrates not method but inspiration, and soared into speculation. He wrote over the door of the Academy, "Let no one enter here who does not know geometry." That is, you are first to acquire absolute confidence, by familiarity with the demonstrations of mathematics, that real and certain knowledge is accessible to the human mind. Thus planting his foot on firmest certainty, Plato leaps off into a glorious sea of clouds. Flashes of insight and sublime allegory mix with fantastic theory and word-play.
The vast range of his thought we will touch only at two points. In the Symposium and the Phaedrus he discusses in his most brilliant vein the problem of love. To the reader who has inherited the ethical ideal of Christianity, Plato's love will seem like the image in Nebuchadnezzar's vision,—the head of gold, the feet of miry clay. He has a toleration for some aspects of sensuality of which Paul said, "it is a shame even to speak;" and this tolerance, in the greatest of the classic philosophers, is the most pregnant suggestion of the cleansing work which it was left for Christianity to undertake. Yet Plato teaches most impressively the subordination of sense to spirit in love, and the struggle of the two in man has seldom been set forth more powerfully than in his figure of the two yoked horses: the white, celestial steed struggling upward; the black, unruly one plunging down, while Reason, the charioteer, strives to guide. In the description of Love which Socrates professes to quote from the wise woman of Mantineia, there is the very height of the Platonic philosophy,—the gradual sublimation of human passion to the recognition of all noble forms and ideas, and at last to the vision of the Divine Beauty which is one with Wisdom and with Love.
"The true order of going or being led by another to the things of love is to use the beauties of earth as steps along which he mounts upwards for the sake of that other beauty, going from one to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.
"What if man had eyes to see the true beauty—the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollution of mortality, and all the colors and vanities of human life—thither looking and holding converse with the true beauty divine and simple, and bringing into being and educating true creations of virtue, and not idols only? Do you not see that in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities; for he has hold not of an image but of a reality,—and will be enabled, bringing forth and educating true virtue, to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may." [1]
It is largely to Plato that we owe the idea of immortality as it exists in the mind of the civilized world to-day. The belief in a continued existence beyond death is much older; it is seen in the Iliad, where the appearance of the dead Patroclus to Achilles in a dream is accepted as the assurance of a shadowy and forlorn hereafter; and in the Odyssey the visit of the hero to the land of shades is portrayed with a free and gloomy imagination. It was a belief which among the earlier Greeks had little power either to console or to guide. In the age of Socrates, it seems to have signified little in the minds of the orthodox and pious. The great tragedians, who sublimate the popular mythology, for the most part regard the after-life as only a sad inevitable sequel; and to be snatched back from it for even a brief reprieve, like Alkestis, is miraculous good fortune. The greatest of the tragedians in his highest reach, Sophocles in Oedipus at Colonus, invests the departure of the hero, who has been purified by suffering, with a mystic radiance, a "light that never was on sea or land," the promise as it were of some future too sublime for mortal words. But the philosophy of Socrates was directed rather to the clear penetration of the method and secret of earthly life, than to any vision of the hereafter. It is noticeable that Xenophon, the loyal disciple and biographer of Socrates, himself of the best type of orthodox piety, and zealous to vindicate his master from the charge of irreligion,—Xenophon, in all the story of the master's life and death, gives not a hint of any future hope. But Plato developed the idea that in man there resides an essential, indestructible principle, superior to the physical frame which is its home and may be either its servant or master—a principle which manifests itself in thought, aspiration, virtue; which has existed before the body and will exist after it; which chooses for itself an upward or downward path; and which rightly tends to a celestial and immortal destiny. The thought never won universal acceptance even among philosophers; it had only an indirect and slight effect on the Stoicism which was the best religious product of ancient philosophy. But it wrought by degrees all effect on the thinking of mankind. While the lofty faith of the Egyptian passed away leaving no visible fruit, the idea of Plato slowly suffused with its light and warmth the current of human aspirations. Meantime, the later Jewish belief in a hereafter—in its form a much cruder conception of a physical revival from the grave—flamed up in a passionate ardor, as the sequence of the life and teaching of Jesus. The Platonic and the Christian belief sprang from a like source. Each was born from the death of a man so great and so beloved as to give the impression of some imperishable quality.
Socrates, with his noble character and aim, was put to death as a criminal. Was that the end of it all? Impossible—monstrous—never, if this world be indeed a cosmos. The one firm certainty which Socrates seems to have held, "No evil can happen to a good man in life or death,"—flashes in Plato's mind into a glorious hope of immortality, embodied in his loftiest passage, the picture of the dying Socrates.
The soul when withdrawn from all outward objects and rapt in contemplation is nearest to the divine,—this is the central thought of the Phaedo. It is pursued with much subtle argumentation, of which the essential residuum is this: the soul's action is purest and most intense when farthest withdrawn from the visible and tangible world,—and hence we guess that her true and eternal home is in that invisible realm of which all this material universe is but the veil and symbol.
But more impressive than the argument, more moving to the human heart, is the picture which is given of Socrates himself as the hour of death comes on,—the exaltation of all his familiar traits, the playfulness so exquisitely blent with seriousness, the searching thought, the frank human desire to be convinced by his own argument,—the charm of his friendly ways, the hand playing with Phaedo's hair, the taking of the cup "in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of color, looking at the man with all his eyes as his manner was,"—the last word, of calm reminder of a trivial obligation,—the whole scene of majestic and tender peace, like a sunset. It is a scene which reconciles us to life, and makes us no longer impatient even of our uncertainties. It speaks with a voice like that of Landor's verse:—
"Death stands above me, whispering low,I know not what into my ear,Of his strange language all I knowIs,—there is not a word of fear."
To the modern reader there is a singular contradiction between the doctrine of Lucretius and his temper. The denial of any divine supervision of human life, or any hereafter for man; the dominion over all existence of purely material law,—this seems to us to destroy man's dearest faith and hope. This is the teaching of Lucretius, yet on this road he marches with a step so firm and buoyant, an eye so awake to all beauty and grandeur, a spirit so elate, that as we read we catch the energy and elation. The reading of the riddle is this: the religion against which Lucretius made his attack was not the soaring idealism of Plato, nor the inspiring and consolatory faith of Christianity, but an outworn mythology in which this world was ruled by capricious and unworthy despots, and the next world was gloomy with terrors and almost unlighted by hopes. Such had become the popular mythology in its later day, and as contrasted with this the view and temper of Lucretius are rational and manly. His message went far beyond a negation; he announced one of the greatest discoveries of the human spirit—the uniformity of nature. Well might the genius of poetry and the vigor of manhood unite to make the message impressive and splendid. Not caprice, but order,—not conflict, but harmony,—not deified partialities and spites and lusts, but exalted and unchanging law, rules the universe!
When Lucretius essayed to define in what this law consists, he fell hopelessly short of the mark. In his revulsion from the chaos and pettiness of man-like divinities, he fixed on material forces,—clearly to be seen and permanent in their operation,—as the only and sufficient cause and order. Those forces, by a brilliant guess, he resolved into an interplay of atoms. From this basis he projected a physical theory, which we know now was quite inadequate even for material phenomena, while the application of it to human thought and will was hopelessly insufficient. Viewed from this standpoint, the spectacle of human life takes on a sadness which the poet's genius cannot dispel, and sometimes intensifies. To man's inner world Lucretius has no serviceable key. But he is to be judged not by what he missed but by what he gained. He above all others stands as the discoverer of one of the few cardinal truths by which to-day we interpret the universe,—the constancy of nature.
The genius of Lucretius did for the realm of thought what Roman statesmanship did for the nations,—it brought peace and order among warring elements, by the imposition of a rule which was often narrow and harsh, but which was firm, stable, and the foundation for fairer and freer growths.
Already in Lucretius, and now again in Epictetus, we have passed from the Greek into the Roman world. It is a change partly of race, partly of time, and it is in close analogy with the successive phases of the human spirit. The mythology which satisfied the youth of the world had grown unlovely and unreal. Plato's splendid imaginings had yielded neither a secure basis to the thinker nor a moral guidance to the common man. Lucretius's interpretation of all events as the product of material law had small power to sustain or cheer when the intellectual glow of the bold innovator had subsided. Thoughtful men sought as their one supreme necessity an adequate and worthy rule of life. So there was wrought out, or grew, the Stoic philosophy. Based on an intellectual theory, its working strength lay in its consonance with the best habits and aptitudes engendered in the world's actual experience. The Greek type was beauty, pleasure, thought, freedom; the Roman type was law, obedience, self-mastery. The legion was the school of discipline and fidelity. The forum was the theatre where classes and parties, through rude jostling, worked out an efficient political order. A Greek thinker gave the mould, and Roman virtue gave the metal, of the Stoic type.
We may best study that type in Epictetus,—once a slave, afterward a teacher; so careless of fame that he left no written work, and we have only the priceless notes taken down by a faithful scholar, making a book whose stamp of heroic manhood twenty centuries have not dimmed.
"Man is master of his fate." The true aim of life is goodness, and goodness is within the command of the will. The lawgiver is Nature, and Nature bids us to be just, strong, pure, and to seek the good of our fellows. Such was the essence of Stoicism. As to deity, providence, or a hereafter,—belief and hope varied, according to the individual; but to the true Stoic the all-important matter was, Act well your part, here and now.
In Epictetus is always the note of reality and of victory. While actually a slave, he has learned the secret of inward freedom. His essential doctrine is that good and evil reside wholly in the will, and the will is free. As we choose, so we are. And by the right choice we find ourselves in harmony with the universe.
Though Epictetus continually appeals to reason, his basal word is to the will. Be constant to duty—accept the order of things as good, and be true to the highest law—revere "nature," the established order; obey "nature," the ideal law. Take all for the best, and you make all for the best.
Most practical and inspiring are his counsels. The war must be waged in the inmost thoughts. The images that rise to seduce, the images that rise to dismay, are to be fought down and driven away. "Be not hurried away by the rapidity of the appearance, but say, Appearances, wait for me a little; let me see who you are and what you are about; let me put you to the test. And then do not allow the appearance to lead you on and draw lively pictures of the things which will follow, for if you do, it will carry you off wherever it pleases. But rather bring to oppose it some other beautiful and noble appearance, and cast out this base appearance. And if you are accustomed to be exercised in this way, you will see what shoulders, what sinews, what strength you have." [2]
"Be willing at length to be approved by yourself, be willing to appear beautiful to God, desire to be in purity with your own pure self and with God. Then, when any such appearance visits you, Plato says, Have recourse to expiations, go a suppliant to the temples of the averting Deities. It is even sufficient if you resort to the society of noble and just men, and compare yourself with them, whether you find one who is living or dead."
"This is the true athlete, the man who exercises himself against such appearances. Stay, wretch, do not be carried away. Great is the combat, divine is the work; it is for kingship, for freedom, for happiness, for freedom from perturbation. Remember God, call on him as a helper and protector, as men at sea call on the Dioscuri in a storm. For what is a greater storm than that which comes from appearances which are violent and drive away the reason?"
Epictetus, compared with Plato, is the warrior philosopher beside the seeing philosopher. He is in closest grip with the foe, and his calm is the calm of the victor holding down his enemy.
His apparent unconcern as to the hereafter is in keeping with his whole attitude, which is that of cheerful acquiescence in the divine order, whatever it be. "To be free, not hindered, not compelled, conforming yourself to the administration of Zeus, obeying it, well satisfied with this, blaming no one, charging no one with fault, able from your whole soul to utter these verses:—
"Lead me, O Zeus, and thou, too, Destiny."
He vindicates Providence against injustice. "The unjust man has the advantage,—in what? In money. But the just man has the advantage in that he is faithful and modest."
"We ought to have these two principles in readiness, that except the will nothing is good nor bad; and that we ought not to lead events, but to follow them. My brother ought not to have behaved thus to me. No, but he will see to that; and, however he may behave, I will conduct myself toward him as I ought."
"As a mark is not set up for the purpose of missing the aim, so neither does the nature of evil exist in the world."
That is, it is inconceivable that the universe is a blunder. This is one of the fundamental ideas of Epictetus. The inference is, that man has only to define his true end and pursue it, which is the right action of the will, or as we should say, right character. Pursuing this, he never finds himself thwarted or unfriended, never rebels or mistrusts the gods.
The substance of his message is: "On the occasion of every accident (event) that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use."
"God has delivered yourself to your own care, and says, 'I had no fitter one to intrust him to than yourself; keep him for me such as he is by nature, modest, faithful, erect, unterrified, free from passion and perturbation.'"
God, says Epictetus, has made me his witness to men. "For this purpose he leads me at one time hither, at another time sends me thither; shows me to men as poor, without authority and sick; sends me to Gyara, leads me into prison, not because he hates me,—far from him be such a meaning, for who hates the best of his servants? nor yet because he cares not for me, for he does not neglect any, even of the smallest things; but he does this for the purpose of exercising me and making use of me as a witness to others. Being appointed to such a service, do I still care about the place in which I am, or with whom I am, or what men say about me? and do I not entirely direct my thoughts to God, and to his instructions and commands?"
Thus he falls back on the life of the spirit,—simple, sure, victorious.To place all good in character is the secret. From virtue grows piety.It is desire set on externals, and so disappointed, that bringsdiscontent, repining, impiety.
Yet Epictetus has distinct and serious limitations. He assumes that to avoid all perturbation is the aim of the wise man. This can be accomplished only by the sacrifice of all objects of desire which lie outside of the control of the will, and he advises this sacrifice. "If you love an earthen vessel, say it is an earthen vessel which you love; for when it has been broken you will not be disturbed. If you are kissing your child or wife, say that it is a human being whom you are kissing, for when the wife or child dies you will not be disturbed."
All joys but the purely moral are to be despised. In going to the theatre one should be indifferent to who gains the prize. This attempted indifference to all the great and little pleasures of life which have no distinct moral character, if successful, makes an ascetic, and of most men is liable to make prigs. It is the vice of Puritanism.
The modern world is riper and richer than the Roman world. We say now, the ideal man is not "unperturbed." Perturbations are inevitable to the man normally and highly developed, with sensibilities and sympathies keenly alive. The true aim is to include composure, but not as sole and supreme. This is a more complex development than the Stoic, less capable perhaps of symmetrical completeness, but grander, as a Gothic church is grander than a Greek temple.
Again, the assumption of Epictetus and of all the Stoics that the will is wholly free, that man has only to choose and seek goodness and he can perfectly achieve it, misses the familiar and bitter experience of humanity, that too often man carries his prison and fetters within himself. A Roman poet voiced it:Meliora video proboque, deteriora sequor. Paul spoke it: "The good that I would, I do not; and the evil I would not, that I do."
But Epictetus himself is one of the great souls who are not to be described by the label of any creed. He has in himself the secret of spiritual victory, and he has a peculiar power to impart it. The limitations of Stoicism as a creed are more plainly seen in Marcus Aurelius. His character, revealed in the "fierce light that beats upon a throne," is of rare nobility and beauty. To a man's strength he unites a woman's tenderness. Just because of that tenderness, and the deep heart of which it is the flower, the philosophy he so bravely practices gives him but a bleak and chill abiding-place. Through his Meditations—manly, wise, and gracious—there runs a deep note of sadness. For this man's nature cried out for love, and not even faithfulest duty can take the place of love.
Stoicism was the most distinct embodiment of the virtues of the classic world. Those virtues shone in many who did not profess themselves to be of the Stoic school. Plutarch's gallery of portraits is a part of the world's best possession. His heroes belong not to their own time alone. They may be distinguished in some broad respects from the saints and sages of other lands and times; some advance of type may be traced in the highest products of the successive ages; but while one turns the pages of Plutarch, he scarcely asks for better company.
Why, then, did Stoic philosophy fail of more wide or lasting success among mankind? Because—we may perhaps answer—its chief weapon was the reasoning intellect, in which only a few could be proficient. Because, fixing its ideal in imperturbability, it denied sensibilities of affection, joy, and hope, which are a large part of normal humanity. Because, in its lack of natural science, and its revulsion from the mythologic deities, it isolated man in the universe, claiming for the individual will a sovereignty which ignored the ensphering play of natural forces, and denying to the heart any outreach beyond the earthly and finite. If we may venture to summarize the defects of ancient philosophy in two words—it lacked womanliness and it lacked knowledge.
We are now to study the building up of another side of the ideal man.Philosophy had essayed a religion of the intellect and the will; now fromJudaism sprang Christianity, a religion of the imagination and the heart.
The highest outcome of the classic civilization was the clear conception and strenuous practice of right for its own sake. The outcome of Judaism in Christianity was essentially the belief and feeling of an intimate union between man and a higher power, with love and obedience on the one side, love and providence on the other.
In the vast tract of Greek-Roman history, we have looked at only a few of the highest mountain peaks—the noblest contributions. But since the Christian church still treats the Old Testament as one of its charter documents, we need to enlarge a little upon the general outline and color of Jewish history, and we must recognize the shadows as well as the lights.
The traditional interpretation of the Old Testament which is still current is based on successive misconceptions, overlaying and blending with each other like close-piled geologic strata. Pious intent of the original writers, shaping their facts to suit their theories—later assumptions of inspiration and infallibility in the records—theologic systems quarried and built out of these materials—the supposed dependence of the most precious faiths of mankind upon these misreadings of history,—all these influences, with the lapse of time, have buried so deeply the original facts, that the exhuming and revivifying of the true story, or at least a tolerable similitude of its main lines, has imposed a gigantic task upon modern scholarship. Of the results of this scholarship, we may give here only a kind of shorthand memorandum.
The Old Testament as a whole, with precious exceptions, can only by a great stretch of imagination be claimed as an integral part of "thebook of religion"—the title which Matthew Arnold asserts for the entire Bible. The phrase can scarcely be applied to the Old Testament, unless it be read through a medium surcharged with association and prepossession. Much of its morality has been outgrown; many of its early stories are revolting to us: much, of which the inner meaning is at one with our deepest life, is disguised under phraseology wholly alien to our modern thought and speech. As a manual of devotion, or as a textbook for the young, the Old Testament can never again fill such a place as it filled to our fathers. But we can still trace in it many of the upward steps of the race, and there are portions which still hold a deep place in the affections of the truly religious.
The mind at certain stages personifies the Deity with the greatest ease and naturalness. The primitive man interprets the whole world about him by the analogy of his own activity. He sees in all the phenomena of nature the presence of personal beings,—beings who act and suffer and enjoy and love and hate as he does himself. The sky, the sun, the wind, the ocean, represent each a separate deity. Next, each clan, or city, or nation, comes to regard itself as under the patronage of one of these deities. The national god of the Israelites, at the earliest time we know them, bore the name of Yahveh,—a name more familiar to us under the form Jehovah. Originally he was probably the god of the sun and fire. His acts were seen everywhere, his motives guessed. The heat and light of the sun—now illumining, now fructifying, now blasting—were his immediate manifestations.
Later, he was conceived to favor certain kinds of human action. He was at first appeased under the influences of analogies from the lower side of human nature,—Give him a present, something to eat, or to smell, or to see. Then came the idea that he was the friend and favorer of the righteous,—of the merciful and just. The turning-point in the history of Judaism—the birth-hour of religion as it has come down to us—is marked by that great dimly-seen personality, Moses, who taught that the worship of Yahveh forbade murder, adultery, theft, false witness, covetousness.
The Jews had neither science nor logic; they had no intelligent induction as to nature,—hence they never got beyond the idea of supernatural intervention.[3] Apparently they never challenged and sifted their fundamental ideas,—never raised the question as to the actual existence of Yahveh. They saw and felt the incongruities of the world as a moral administration, and sometimes pressed the inquiry, as in Job,Whydoes Yahveh thus? But the denial of any ruling personal Will, as by Lucretius, was impossible to them. They were imaginative, intense, and their imagination got the saving ethical impress especially from the prophets.
Judaism as a religion grew from "the Law and the Prophets." From almost the earliest historic time there existed some brief code of precepts,—probably an abbreviated form of what we know as the Ten Commandments. Later came the impassioned preaching of the prophets. Still later, there was formulated that elaborate statute-book for which by a pious fiction was claimed the authority of Moses.
The prophets spoke out of an exaltation of which no other account was given than it was the inspiration of Yahveh,—"Thus saith the Lord!" They did not argue, they asserted—with a passion that bred conviction, or at least fear and respect.
It is here that the distinction between the Greek and the Hebrew method is most marked. Socrates, for example, called himself the midwife of men's thoughts. His maxim was, "Know thyself." His cross-examination was designed to make men see for themselves. That is, he taught by reason. But the prophet's claim was, "Thus saith the Lord!" He spoke out of his personal and passionate conviction, for which he believed he had the highest supernatural sanction.
The heart of the typical prophetic message was that the Ruler of the world is a righteous ruler, and that the service he desires is righteousness. The early prophets—such as Micah, Hosea, Amos—speak with scorn of the worship by sacrifices,—whether the fruits of the earth, or slaughtered beasts, or the ghastly offering of human life. Hosea cries: "I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings." So Micah speaks: "Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with yearling calves? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"
Further, the prophets assumed to know and declare Yahveh's will on public affairs, especially on the government of the nation. They tried to dictate the attitude of Judea toward other kingdoms—an attitude generally of proud defiance. Often their counsel ignored the actualities, and helped to precipitate Judah and Israel into hopeless conflicts with their mighty neighbors. When in these conflicts they were worsted, the prophets laid the disaster to the idolatry or other wickedness of the people. Finally came utter defeat and dispersal, and an exile for generations in a foreign land. Then the prophets rose to an intenser faith,—purer, tenderer, more spiritual. Some time and somehow the Lord would surely be gracious to his people!
But when the captives, or a part of them, were restored to their own land,—with lowered fortunes and humbled pride, half dependent still on a foreign master,—the prophetic enthusiasm no longer availed to give a fresh message from the Lord. Instead, the leaders and founders of the restoration—Ezra, Nehemiah, and their associates and followers—built up a well-organized, well-enforced system of discipline. They reshaped the old traditions, enlarged and codified them; they shaped the Pentateuch and book of Joshua, as we know them now; they purified and beautified the Temple service; they instituted synagogues in every town, where religious teaching should be regular and constant; they developed a class of "Scribes," or expositors of the Law; they multiplied ceremonial observances; they rewrote the national history, and invested their laws with the sacredness of divine oracles, under the august name of Moses; they imposed deadly penalties and bitter hatred on all who deviated from the established religion. All this was the work of centuries, and its important result was that by a manifold and perpetual drill certain religious ideas were stamped upon the minds of the people, until beliefs and usages and sentiments ran in their very blood and were transmitted from father to son.
As types of the Hebrew religion in its advancing stages we may note: first, Jacob, winning his way by craft and subtlety, gaining the favor of his god by a fidelity which expresses itself by vows and sacrifices and scarcely at all by morality; and hardly attractive except in the tenderness of his family relations. A mythical figure, he is a marvelous embodiment of the persistent race-traits of the Jew—tenacity, craft, devoutness—in the early phase. It is a very earthly phase, but with the germs of a marvelous development. Later, we have David, the warrior king. Still later comes Elijah, the prophet of a Deity who now stands for chastity and justice against gods of sensuality and cruelty, and defying wicked kings in the name of that God. Then in the line of prophets we may pass to their greatest, Isaiah,—both first and second of the name,—each of whom in the deepest adversity of the people is inspired by a hope, vague in its expectation, but so deep, so fervid, so sweet, that to this day it lends its language to hearts which in darkness look for the morning. Next we may take Ezra, rebuilding the shattered nationality, not on a political basis, but by a law of personal conduct in which a genuine morality is mixed with a ceremonial code. And here really belongs the legislation ascribed to Moses and given in the Pentateuch; the law-giver having an original in some great, dim, historic figure, long treasured in the popular imagination, but rehabilitated by priestly art as the author of a great volume of minute legislation, to which dignity is lent by the legends of a personality sublime yet meek. We have then the flowering of the inner life, in the book of Psalms,—the single name of the Psalmist covering the products of many minds and successive generations. In the course of affairs, the hero's place belongs next to Judas Maccabaeus, the patriot leader against the heathen Greek; and we may take the books of the Maccabees and the book of Daniel as giving the ideal thought of the period,—the matrix of belief and hope from which was to spring the crowning flower of Judaism.
It will suffice for our purpose if from this series we touch upon David, the Psalms, the book of Job, Isaiah, and the literature of the Maccabean time.
The real place of David is that of the warrior-king who gave independence, unity, and victory to the people of Israel. It was he who broke the yoke of the Philistines which Saul had weakened, and slew in fight their gigantic champion. He conquered and subjected the neighboring tribes; he put down the rebellions headed by his own sons; he made and kept Israel for a brief term a proud and victorious military monarchy. Within a single generation after his death it was divided into two hostile fragments, and both of these gradually fell under foreign conquerors. Very short was the period of Israel's warlike glory, and for a thousand years afterward the national heart turned in love and reverence to the hero of that time. As the Saxons remembered Alfred, as Americans remember Washington, so the Israelites remembered David. It was in his image and under his name that they pictured a future which should outshine their past. Israel throughout the period when she is most distinctly before us was a subject people. It was largely the presence of a foreign oppressor which gave to the national voice that tone of intense entreaty toward a divine friend and deliverer which runs its pathos through psalm and history and prophecy. There had been a better day for Israel, before Assyrian and Egyptian trampled her. There had been a day when Philistia and Edom quailed and fell before her, and the Lord wrought victory by the hand of David. So it is David's history that stands out fullest and clearest in the whole record, from Abraham onward. How much is true history and how much is imaginative addition must be largely guesswork. But we see in David the ideal hero and type of that period of Jewish history as we see in Achilles and Odysseus the ideal types of primitive Greece.
And the story of David is as deeply colored with the primal passions of humanity as are the songs of Homer. There is the picture of the shepherd-boy, to which must be added the exquisite psalm which later traditions put in his mouth; the victory over the giant; the most pathetic story of the moody and wayward Saul—the power of music over his melancholy, the alternations of jealous rage and compunction; the friendship with Jonathan, more tender and pure than the friendships Plato pictures; the dramatic fortunes of the outlaw; the family tragedies full of crime and horror; the dark story of Amnon, Tamar, and Absalom; the passion of fatherhood in fullest intensity, with the agonized prayers for the sick child and the heartbroken lament over Absalom; the group of valiant captains and their chivalrous exploits; the risk of life to bring to their homesick chief a drink from the well of Bethlehem; the story of Bathsheba and Uriah—lust, treachery, and murder; the prophet's rebuke; the years declining under heavy shadows. How full of lifeblood it all is! Every chapter is an idyl, an epic, or a tragedy.
It is largely this picturesque dramatic quality which made the English Bible in its early days the favorite book of the English people, and has kept for it always so high a place. But the attempt to reduce a story like David's to terms of spiritual edification has been difficult above measure, ever since mankind advanced beyond the half-barbaric age in which the story was told. Judged by our standards, the ethics of the story are often low, and its religion is largely a superstition. What brings the Almighty on the scene is most frequently some great calamity, which priest or soothsayer interprets as a divine judgment. Often there is attributed to him the quality of a jealous Oriental despot. The justice he enforces is often injustice and savagery. Take the story of the Gibeonites. A three years' famine in Israel was explained by Yahveh's oracle as a retribution for the breach of faith by Saul, many years before, with the Gibeonites, whom he had persecuted in defiance of ancient compact. David thereupon invited the Gibeonites to name the requital which would appease them, and they asked for the death of seven sons of Saul. So David delivered the seven innocent men into their hands, "and they hanged them before the Lord."
The Zeus of Homer is offensive to religious feeling because he fully shares the sensuality which we account one of the great defects of humanity. From that blemish the Hebrew idea of God is always free. The hostility between Yahveh and the heathen gods has its deep ethical significance in the struggle of chastity against licentiousness, to which the religious sanction brings reinforcement. But the Hebrew God has a savage and vindictive quality, which only slowly and partially disappears. Originally, it is probable, the God of the sun and fire, beneficent to illumine, malevolent to burn, he remains always in some degree a God of wrath.
It was by one of the strange growths of the advancing popular thought that David, the valiant, passionate soldier-king, came to be conceived of as the writer of the book of Psalms. Historically a misconception, it yet lent a continuity and ideal unity to the nation's self-interpretation.
The book of Psalms, says Dean Stanley, is the selected hymns of the Jewish people, for a period as long as from Chaucer to Tennyson. The service-book of the Second Temple is Kuenen's description. Beyond any other single book, it shows us the heart of Judaism in its ripest, most characteristic development. Its language has become saturated with the associations of many centuries. In these intense, direct, and fervid utterances we can see the form and lineaments of a faith which was the ancestor of our own, yet is not the same.
The religion of the Psalms has different phases. We have here the experiences of many souls, with a certain kinship, yet with wide differences. In many of these hymns one recognizes the religion in which Jesus was cradled. Imagination and feeling have full scope. The constant idea is of Yahveh, ruler of the world and its inhabitants, the judge of the wicked and friend of the good. "Mark the perfect man and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace." "How excellent is thy loving-kindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings." "Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments as a great deep." "The Lord redeemeth the soul of his servants, and none of them that trust in him shall be desolate." "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man that trusteth in him."
The depth and passion of the struggle against sin is shown in the fifty-first Psalm. "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions." "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned." "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." "Make me to hear joy and gladness." "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." "Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise."