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POEMS, ADDRESSES 
 
 AND 
 
 BSSAYS 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS, D.D., LLD. 
 
 Twenty Nine Years Professor in Lane Seminary. 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT. 
 
 New York : 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE CO. 
 
 1893. 
 
Copyright, 1893, ^'^ 
 The Christian Literature Co. 
 
TO 
 
 Mrs. Sarah E. Evans, 
 
 WHOSE NAME, ABOVE EVERY OTHER, 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF THESE PAPERS WOULD WISH TO HAVE 
 
 ASSOCIATED WITH HIS OWN, 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY 
 
 DEDICATED. 
 
 The Editor. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 POEMS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 To My Departed Sister i 
 
 The Loss of Childhood 5 
 
 Sorrow 9 
 
 Quietly, Quietly 12 
 
 A Valentine 14 
 
 A Fantasy of Ifs 15 
 
 To Laura 16 
 
 To Anna 17 
 
 The Old Year 18 
 
 Anno Domini 21 
 
 The Shadows 23 
 
 Sonnet 25 
 
 Song 26 
 
 Parting Song 29 
 
 In Memoriam 31 
 
 ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 I. Providence in the Greek Drama 33 
 
 n. Christian Chivalry 51 
 
 in. The Influence of Civilization on Dogmatic Theology.... 60 
 
 IV. Fiske on the Destiny of Man 84 
 
 V. The Scholar as an Ethical Force 106 
 
 VI. Arthur Hugh Clough 131 
 
 VII. A Sketch of Greek Poetry 146 
 
 VIII. Anthropophagy 177 
 
 IX. Apologia pro Vita Sua 193 
 
 X. John Milton, the Patriot 204 
 
 XI. The Gentleman 261 
 
 XII. The Welsh Pulpit 310 
 
 XIII. The Scripture Doctrine of the Remnant and of Num- 
 
 bers 360 
 
 XIV. Personal Christianity 375 
 
 XV. Farewell Address 397 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 This selection of Poems, Addresses and Essays, by Dr. 
 LI. I. Evans, is published in accordance with the announcement 
 in the previous volume (Preaching Christ, Christian Literature 
 Company, 1893), and at the request of many friends. The selec- 
 tion is made on the principle of showing the manysidedness of 
 his scholarship, and the variety of his interest in history and hter- 
 ature. The papers bear witness, no less than the sermons already 
 published, to the manner in which he subordinated all his acqui- 
 sitions to the Gospel of Christ, 
 
 In preparing the papers for the press the editor had a delicate 
 duty to perform. Many of the addresses had been delivered more 
 than once, and in these, frequent alterations and corrections ap- 
 peared. These were in such shape that it could not always be 
 told whether they were made at once, or whether they represented 
 different stages of revision. The only way in which we could be 
 sure that we had a homogeneous work, was in all cases to go back 
 to the earhest manuscript, disregarding the supplementary inser- 
 tions and corrections. The reader (and critic) will therefore 
 kindly bear in mind that the papers are quite certainly not in the 
 form which Dr. Evans would have given them had he lived to see 
 them through the press. There is some compensation for this dis- 
 advantage in the fact that, presented in their original form, they 
 have a certain freshness that might otherwise have been lost. If 
 we are today strangers to the warmth and glow of patriotism which 
 are reflected in the lecture on John Milton (for example) it may be 
 well for us to realize these emotions afresh. 
 
 Mr. J. J. Loux, a student in Lane Seminary, the Rev. R. F. 
 Souter and the Rev. J. L. Taylor have kindly assisted in the prep- 
 aration of the copy for the press. Mr. Taylor has also kindly 
 read the proof of a considerable part of the volume. 
 
 Through a misunderstanding of the printer, the portrait in- 
 tended for the other volume was not inserted there, and is there- 
 fore given with this. 
 
 It is my hope that others may have as much pleasure in read- 
 ing these memorials as I have had in preparing them for the press. 
 
 H. P. S. 
 Cincinnati, Nov. i, 1893. 
 
POEMS. 
 
 TO MY DEPARTED SISTER.* 
 
 My Sister ! Summers four have come and gone, 
 Bidding the grass grow green upon thy grave ; 
 And winters four have withered all again, 
 Then lightly spread their sheeted robes of snow 
 To hide the blight which they and Death had made. 
 Spring comes again as erst she came to thee, 
 And, fondly stealing o'er the drooping scene. 
 Whispers the earth and all things into life. 
 
 The earth is glad. 
 For on her bosom bloom once more the flowers. 
 
 And man is glad, 
 For birds once more sing gladly in his bowers. 
 
 But I am sad. 
 For her I loved I can no more behold ; 
 
 My heart is sad, 
 For one that loved me now in death lies cold. 
 Oh, why should earth renew her living hue of green, 
 But those we loved no more — when life is o'er — be seen? 
 
 I turn from nature, who restores 
 Life to her dead, but not to thee ; 
 Who open flings her choicest stores 
 Of joy to all,' but not to me — 
 
 * Written in the Album which had belonged to his sister, dated 
 April 21, 1855, and signed ''Thy Brother, Llewelyn." 
 
LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 I turn to view these pages, where 
 The tokens of thy friendships are 
 Embalmed in words, o'er which thine eye 
 Once wandered, Hngering tearfully, 
 While many a sob broke from thy heart 
 For friends from whom thou hadst to part. 
 Alas ! that I should mourn to be 
 Parted, ah ! not from them, but thee ! 
 That their farewells should mind me most 
 That thou to me art — lost ! 
 
 I see that name on every leaf — 
 
 That name that once was wont to thrill 
 
 My soul with joy, but now with grief! 
 
 'Twas music to my heart, until 
 
 Death spoke it. Ah ! that speaking gave 
 
 A knelling sadness to its sound. 
 
 As though 'twere whispered from the grave, 
 
 Or told me by thy lowly mound. 
 
 Here thine own hand has swept the page 
 
 And left the traces of thy soul ; 
 
 The thoughts that filled thy tender age, 
 
 The piety that graced the whole 
 
 Of thy brief life ; the grace that shone 
 
 Through all thy actions, look and speech ; 
 
 That purity around them thrown 
 
 Which the pure heart alone can teach. 
 
 Companion of my early days ! 
 
 And is it true that thou art gone ? 
 Must I plod on through life's rough ways 
 
 Without thy cheering smile' — alone ? 
 Ah, little I thought when, hand in hand, 
 We walked our own sweet native land. 
 
POEMS. 3 
 
 Climbing its hills and rugged rocks, 
 Whose mountain breeze played in thy locks, 
 Or wandered by the ocean shore, 
 Gathering the choicest shells it bore, 
 That but a few short years more, 
 And far beyond that playful wave 
 That did our careless footsteps lave, 
 Thou there wouldst find — ah, me — a grave. 
 
 Like flowers in a garden, we 
 
 Together did begin to bloom, 
 Together drank the heavenly ray, 
 
 Together mingled love's perfume ; 
 But thee the Heavenly Gardener took 
 
 To grace his paradise above. 
 While I am left, 
 Of all bereft, 
 To tremble in the blast, and look 
 
 Upon the loss of all I love. 
 
 But, unlike me, thou wert too delicate 
 For earth, and for the chilling storms of fate ; 
 Thy soul and passions were too finely strung. 
 In life's rough howling tempests to be hung ; 
 Thy strings ethereal would have broke beneath 
 Their rage, or sighed and sobbed themselves to 
 death. 
 
 Is there a land where none but spirit-breezes blow. 
 Where breathings of a God through souls aeolian flow ; 
 Where love grows back to love, where souls responsive 
 
 meet, 
 Where friendship knows no death, but holds communion 
 
 sweet ; 
 
4 LLEWELYN 10 AN EVANS. 
 
 Where all the good and beautiful for evermore unite, 
 Where a fairer form than e'er I dreamed seems beckoning 
 
 to invite ; 
 Where the weary are at rest from suffering and care ? 
 Then, Sister, thou art blest, for thou I know art there. 
 
POEMS. 
 
 THE LOSS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 Oh ! why, when childhood's dawn 
 
 Fades into hfe's full noon, 
 Do the glories auroral where it is born, 
 Vanish away like the tints of morn, 
 So soon, so soon ? 
 
 And childhood's rosy dreanis, 
 
 So beautiful and fair. 
 Like cherubs smiling from the sky 
 Whither, ah, whither do they fly 
 
 Like air, like air ? 
 
 Those dreams of Paradise, 
 
 And blissful scenes above ; 
 Gardens and groves and bowers of light, 
 And angel forms and faces bright 
 With love, with love. 
 
 And dreams of purity, 
 
 Purer than the light of day ; 
 Of beauty untainted and divine. 
 Of love that will the brighter shine 
 
 For aye, for aye. 
 
 And the gay bright hopes of youth. 
 That with their beckoning calls, 
 Lead us to follow with eager chase. 
 Why do they mock our fond embrace, 
 So false, so false ? 
 
LLEWELYN lOAN EVA:NS. 
 
 And why, when these are fled 
 
 With vanished days of yore, 
 Does the heart of man in sadness yearn. 
 As though Hke those they would return 
 No more, no more? 
 
 Is it they are but dreams, 
 
 Never to come again, 
 Which neither Fancy's wizard spell. 
 Nor Will's strong fiat can compel 
 
 Here to remain? 
 
 Oh! what a change has come, 
 
 When that which charmed me most 
 When I was fresh from the bosom of God, 
 And when beauty sprung wherever I trod. 
 Is lost, is lost ! 
 
 When the heaven -reflecting purity, 
 The soul-revealing simplicity, 
 The heart-born laugh of innocence. 
 The sun-lit look of confidence. 
 Trusting, enjoying, loving all. 
 Beautifying and brightening all, 
 And the delightful unconsciousness 
 Of life from its very blessedness 
 Are lost, are lost. 
 
 And when instead of these 
 
 Comes Apathy's dead mould, 
 Unfeeling, blunt indifference. 
 The torpor of the spirit's sense, 
 The unbelieving mocking jeer, 
 The scorning pride, the frigid sneer. 
 Scoffing, mistrusting, doubting all. 
 Spurning, rejecting, scouting all. 
 
POEMS. 
 
 Feeling by rule, living by art, 
 And living for self, until the heart 
 Is cold, is cold ! 
 
 Is this to be a man. 
 
 To be unhappier, worse ? 
 Are these the fruits of his Life-tree, 
 The promised gifts of Destiny ? 
 Apples of Sodom ! Ah ! these be 
 
 The curse, the curse ! 
 
 The curse of the faithlessness 
 
 To the high intents of youth, 
 
 And of the decay of loyalty 
 To the majesty of truth. 
 
 The curse of the restlessness 
 
 Which snatches at the bloom, 
 
 And misses the eternal fruit 
 
 For a moment's short perfume. 
 
 The curse of the waywardness 
 
 Which bursts from Eden's bounds, 
 
 And quits its angel-guarded walks 
 For Time's enchanted grounds. 
 
 The curse of the selfishness 
 
 Whose inturned Gorgon-eye 
 
 Freezes the heart into a stone. 
 Hard, barren, dreary. 
 
 The curse of the sordidness 
 
 Which crawls like any beast. 
 
 Feeding on weeds, and husks of swine, 
 
 • Disdaining Heaven's high feast. 
 
LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 The curse of the unbelief 
 
 In instinct's heavenly call, 
 
 Refusing to hear and believe 
 
 The voice of God in the soul. 
 
 Oh ! would we see again 
 
 Our Paradise on earth, 
 We must the hearts of youth renew, 
 We must in lowliness go through 
 
 The Second Birth. 
 
 And the guards of Eden's gates, 
 
 Who watch with flaming swords, 
 Will wave us in, and there we may 
 Among unfading glories stray, 
 And quaff the nectar-drops alway 
 Which in the Fount of Youth do play ; 
 For children and the childlike, they 
 Are Eden's lords. 
 
POEMS. 
 
 SORROW. 
 
 Oft have I sat and watched the day's last gleam, 
 
 And seen the brightness fade from out the sky, 
 
 Seen darksome clouds upon my vision heave 
 Where fire and darkness mingled gloomily : 
 
 And I have turned myself unto the night 
 
 Like the sad, light-forsaken Earth and prayed — 
 
 "Come, Mother! visit thou my spirit's blight 
 And bathe me with thy darkest dewy shade, 
 
 Come, holy Sorrow ! Hang thy gloomy pall 
 
 Around my soul, for its bright sun is gone. 
 
 The light which beautified and haloed all 
 
 Is vanished — vanished ! why should I look on 
 
 Those dim gray walls, where late a living glory shone? " 
 
 And gracious night has come and wrapped me round 
 
 In her thick shadows where my soul did creep 
 To utter low her wail of mournful sound 
 
 And o'er her lonely desolation weep. 
 Then have I seen those shadows melt away 
 
 And Heaven begin t' appear, though high and far, 
 Wherein the glory of my departed day, 
 
 Shone beautifuller in each happy star : 
 Ay, Night and sorrow ! ye are both divine, 
 
 Ye both reveal to man the Infinite. 
 
 Ye teach me that the Infinite is mine 
 
 With all it doth contain that's pure and bright; 
 
 For ere ye came, I fluttered in the light 
 Like a vain insect, living its short hour 
 And thinking only of its honeyed flower; 
 
 But ye beneath, my soul like the deep moaning sea 
 
 Yearneth the night long to her own eternity. 
 
lO LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 *Tis for Eternity I yearn, for there 
 
 Is garnered all my beautiness and bliss : 
 
 All, whereof my full being was a share ; 
 
 All which my widowed spirit now doth miss ; 
 
 Those beautiful we loved, did they not come. 
 
 Singing sweet music through our souls, like some, 
 
 Stray snatches of a heavenly symphony, 
 
 Aye swelling out in richer harmony, 
 
 Until, become too pure for mortal ears. 
 
 They passed and blended v/ith the music of the spheres. 
 
 Though they are gone, their tender strains yet sleep 
 
 Within our heartstrings ; and when memory 
 Like some strong breeze our bosom-chords doth sv/eep 
 
 They wake again in sweet though sad reply. 
 What then is gone ? 'tis but the outward form ! 
 
 The spirit — all that we did hold most dear — 
 The melody that did each tone inform — 
 
 The grace — the loveliness — they still are here. 
 They still are ours, and ours will be ever : 
 For Thou, our heavenly Father ! Thou wouldst never 
 
 Give man the beautiful and to him say, 
 *'This shall be thine to love and to adore ;" 
 
 Then snatch it from his grov/ing love away, 
 And leave him mourning it for evermore. 
 The good whom we did love in happier hours 
 
 Were given to prove that Goodness is our own. 
 The beautiful — they were, are, will be ours ; 
 
 The fragrance tarries, though the flower be flown. 
 Thou, Father ! gavest them to teach us love ; 
 
 Thou tookest them that we might love still more 
 Than them, their truth and purity, 
 Their loving soul of piety, 
 That more than them we might love Thee ! 
 And thus their loss, by drawing us above. 
 
 Will make us holier, heavenlier than before. 
 
POEMS. 1 1 
 
 Ah ! truest sorrow is not wretchedness ! — 
 
 To be cut loose from all that is divine — 
 To be denied the lasting blessedness 
 
 Of saying to the godlike — ''Thou art mine ! " 
 This — this is misery, and blank despair ! 
 
 But tender longings, tears of sad regret 
 Are pledges sweet that we but parted are, 
 
 And that our souls and lives shall mingle yet. 
 For pain is but the straining of the tie 
 
 That doth our hearts to their fond idols bind ; 
 
 That broken — we were without sense or mind 
 Of love or life to all eternity. 
 But no ! it lives, and by it we do live. 
 
 And with their spirits hold communion dear 
 And still like drooping flowers our hearts revive 
 
 Trembling in their own fragrance when they near, 
 And when they think of us we drop a tear. 
 
 And when they hover round us heave the sigh, 
 
 Yet dream not 'tis because they are so nigh 
 And that it is their light makes heaven appear 
 
 More bright, the earth more sweet, and us more pure, 
 
 Nor that it is their love that doth allure 
 Us to their Father, whence the beautiful doth come, 
 And where the beautiful is gathered to its home. 
 
12 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 QUIETLY, QUIETLY. 
 
 March 28, 1858. 
 
 Quietly, quietly shines the moon, 
 
 In the dreamy, dreamy sky, 
 And beautiful is the silent noon 
 Of her midnight reign on high. 
 Shedding her silvery 
 Wonderful witchery 
 Over the scenery 
 Sleeping below, 
 And to the wandering 
 Spirit low whispering 
 Of the yet lingering 
 Long, long ago. 
 
 Dreamily, dreamily smiles the moon 
 
 In the silent, silent sky. 
 And beautiful is the quiet noon 
 Of her midnight reign on high. 
 In her soft beams of white 
 Fairy like dreams all bright 
 Floating on streams of light 
 
 Passing me go ; 
 Fairest and clearest, 
 Hovers me nearest 
 Dream of the dearest 
 Loved long ago. 
 
 Silently, silent rides the moon, 
 In the quiet, quiet sky. 
 
 And beautiful is the dreamy noon 
 Of her midnight reign on high. 
 
POEMS. 1 3 
 
 Chimes of the distant bell 
 As on my ear they swell 
 To my lone spirit tell 
 
 Murmuring low, 
 Of the last farewell drear 
 Of the last kiss so dear 
 Of the last parting tear 
 
 Long, long ago. 
 
24 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 A VALENTINE. 
 
 Feb. 12, 1855. 
 
 Oh ! Why should this wide Universe 
 
 Through heaven and earth be full 
 Of all that may delight the eye 
 
 Of all that's beautiful ? 
 Why should the sky and starry heaven 
 
 With radiant beauty glow ? 
 And why should beauty shine through all 
 
 This loveliness below — 
 And why should man lay down his heart 
 
 The Beautiful before — 
 If beauty was not made to love 
 
 To worship and adore ? 
 
 And why has nature made thee like 
 
 Herself so passing fair 
 And decked thee with her beauties all 
 
 Most charming and most rare ? 
 Why has she ta'en her brightest hues 
 
 Thy countenance to grace 
 Stolen her heaven itself and placed 
 
 It beaming in thy face, 
 If not that I should yield myself 
 
 To worship and adore 
 Thy beauty and thy gracefulness 
 
 And love thee evermore ? 
 
 I love, oh yes ! the beauteous earth 
 
 I love the glorious sky, 
 Then blame me not for loving more 
 
 Thy still more glorious eye. 
 
POEMS. 1 5 
 
 My heart with rapture glows whene'er 
 
 Fair nature's face I see 
 Why blame its rapture when it sees 
 
 That fairer nature— Thee ? 
 So long as beauty must be loved 
 
 So long as beauty's thine 
 So long shall I love thee and be 
 
 Thine own true valentine. 
 
 A FANTASY OF IFS. 
 
 If ever I am free to place 
 
 My heart where love's prelusions trace 
 
 Fond dreams of what may be — 
 If then thou still art free to say 
 To one who for thy grace will pray 
 
 " Dear soul, I pity thee ! " — 
 If when that prayer from me shall rise 
 Sweet pity droppeth from thine eyes, 
 
 What bliss will fall to me ! 
 
1 6 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 TO LAURA. 
 
 Like a golden sunbeam from the sky- 
 Sparkling with living light; 
 
 Born out of heaven's own purity, 
 Glowing with beauty bright ; 
 
 Dancing upon the crystal stream 
 Beautifying the flower 
 
 Making the earth with smiles to beam 
 And joy in beauty's power — 
 
 Thus, Laura, may thy whole life be 
 A beam of heavenly purity ; 
 Thus, where it shall its radiance bring, 
 May good and beauty ever spring. 
 
 And as that beam, when comes the night. 
 
 Is gathered up on high 
 And shines with a diviner light 
 
 Upon the saddened eye 
 Gleaming in some bright distant star 
 
 That smiles in heaven above 
 Stealing into the soul from far 
 
 A messenger of love — 
 
 Thus, Laura, when the last dark night 
 Has hidden thee from human sight, 
 Mayst thou still shine a radiant gem 
 In heaven a starry diadem. 
 
POEMS. 1 7 
 
 TO ANNA. 
 
 Like a dewdrop glistening goldenly 
 
 In the chalice of the rose, 
 Born of the sapphire-golden sea 
 
 Whose brightness in it glows, 
 Causing the rose to lift its head 
 
 In fresher, fairer bloom, 
 Bathing it with a deeper red 
 
 And sweetening its perfume ; 
 
 Thus, Anna, may thy whole life be 
 A mirror of heaven's purity ; 
 Thus may its truth and noble worth 
 With goodness' fragrance gladden earth. 
 
 And as the drop mounts up at dawn 
 
 Leaving the rose forlorn. 
 Heavenward by the sunbeams drawn 
 
 On fairy fingers borne. 
 And melts into the halo round 
 
 The sun's all-glorious brow. 
 Or in still fairer hues is found 
 
 In heaven's seven-tinted bow. 
 
 Thus, Anna, when the dawn of day 
 Eternal calls thy soul away. 
 May it into that halo rise 
 Which crowns the Sun of Paradise. 
 
1 8 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 THE OLD YEAR. 
 
 1867. 
 
 Old Year ! They tell me thou art dead ; 
 Yestreen was heard thy dying groan 
 In the wailing of the blast, 
 And thy dying shudders passed 
 Through the forest's shivering moan. 
 Thy visage was wan and worn they say, 
 And bent with its burden of toils and tears 
 Thy trembling form, as it passed away 
 
 At the toll of the midnight bell 
 
 To the shadowy land where dwell 
 The ghosts of the vanished years. 
 
 Not so. Old Year! Full well I know 
 
 Thou art not dead. 
 Thou didst but leave thy throne — and not with slow 
 And tottering footsteps, but v/ith stately tread 
 And kingly part, and mien of conscious strength. 
 With joy that thou hadst done thy work at length, 
 
 Hadst finished all according to the plan 
 
 Delivered to thee ere thy course began. 
 Thou didst but yield thy crown — 
 
 The twelve-gemmed crown the monarch wears. 
 Which from of old hath glided down 
 
 From head to head of the Royal Line of years. 
 
 A line of kings ! I see them now. 
 
 Uncrowned but bright, immortal, strong, 
 
 An awful, mighty throng, 
 Eternity's dread light upon each brow. 
 
 Years of thunder and might, 
 
 Years of silence and night; 
 
POEMS. 1^ 
 
 Years of dreary toil 
 
 When the seed slept in the soil ; 
 
 Years of mighty birth 
 
 When life sprang forth from earth 
 
 Years of reaping and rest, 
 
 Called of the nations ''Blest;" 
 
 Years of vengeance and war; 
 
 Years of peaceful cheer ; 
 
 Years when heaven seemed far ; 
 
 Years when God was near ; — 
 I see them all in glorious array. 
 Ah, no! The years ne'er die, they ne'er grow old; 
 They live with God, they live alway. 
 
 They have no ''dim plutonian shore" — behold ! 
 They live with us from day to day, 
 
 They brood above our busy life. 
 
 Into our cups they crush their wine, 
 Their glittering swords and armor shine 
 
 As still they mingle in the strife. 
 
 Lo! here they strike, and one doth fall: 
 
 Lo ! here they aid, and one doth win : 
 
 Their potency is felt in all 
 
 That moves without or stirs within. 
 
 Noiselessly, swiftly, to and fro, they move, 
 
 Angels of Justice, ministers of Love. 
 
 And so. Old Year, I bid thee not farewell, 
 
 Too soon, too soon it were to part. 
 I learned but little of what thou hadst to tell, 
 
 Much hast thou yet, I know, to teach my heart, 
 Thy lessons were too many and too deep. 
 And oft, alas ! my soul was sunk in sleep ; 
 Then come again, thy lesson to repeat, 
 And tell it p'er, thy tale so sad and sweet. 
 
20 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Tell of the joy and grief, 
 The doubt and the relief. 
 The fear and the release 
 The tempest and the peace, 
 The song I tried to sing in vain. 
 The cross I could nor bear nor throw, 
 The truth I sought in vain to know. 
 The beauty I dreamed, but could not gain, 
 The loss I could but feel, nor feel aright, 
 The good I could but see, nor see in light. 
 
 Come, tell it all to me once more. 
 The vanished vision to mine eye restore. 
 The buried good cause from its grave to rise 
 With light immortal in its eyes. 
 With strength celestial in its heart. 
 Or if this can not be. 
 Still be thou at my side to help me see 
 The way of life, to choose the better part, 
 And of the coming years much more to learn. 
 In benedictions let thy prayers return. 
 In wisdom let thy counsels reappear. 
 And in a nobler life thy gifts to me. 
 And so I will not say farewell, Old Year, 
 One hand I give to the coming bright New Year, 
 But the other hand, Old Year, is still for thee. 
 
POEMS. 2 1 
 
 ANNO DOMINI. 
 
 Lord of the years, O Christ, art Thou ; 
 Thou art their source, their Hfe, their end 
 Each with Thy message Thou dost send ; 
 
 Each wears Thy signet on his brow. 
 
 II. 
 
 The years upon Thy service came 
 
 Ere Thou in servant-form wast found ; 
 Each wrought Thy will, although uncrowned 
 
 As yet with Thine all-hallowing Name. 
 
 III. 
 
 Each bore its prophecy of Thee, 
 And sang it to the morning-star ; 
 They saw with gladness, from afar, 
 
 Thy day, Annorum Domine t 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Star shines forth in Bethlehem's sky ; 
 The Song comes back in Peace on Earth 
 And with the day of Jesus' birth 
 
 Is born the ANNUS DOMINI. 
 
 V. 
 
 Henceforth on every year shall shine 
 This lordly diadem, Thy Name: 
 And by this title Thou shalt claim 
 
 The fulness of the times as Thine. 
 
22 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 VI. 
 
 So shall earth's history for aye 
 
 Bear witness to the King of Kings, 
 Who by His Incarnation brings 
 
 The New Creation's endless day. 
 
 vn. 
 
 Each time of sorrow, and of joy, 
 
 The birth, the death, the bridal hour, 
 Each wondrous change, each deed of power, 
 
 Shall be In Anno Domini. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The truth, which thrills with life divine 
 The growth of ages, is Thy thought ; 
 The love, which miracles hath wrought, 
 
 Which conquers life and death, is Thine. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Alpha and Omega Thou ! 
 Of all life's mysteries the key : 
 Our years shall find their rest in Thee ; 
 
 Thou leadest us, we know not how. 
 
 X. 
 
 Domine Anni ! Let Thine eye 
 
 Beam love on this New Year, we pray; 
 Thy holy touch upon it lay. 
 
 And seal our annus Domini. 
 
POEMS. 
 
 23 
 
 THE SHADOWS. 
 
 The moon was rising yellow and round 
 
 And pouring her golden flood ; 
 The shadows lay long and still on the ground, 
 
 And stretched far into the wood: 
 When the King of the Fairies awoke as he lay 
 
 On a rose of damask red 
 Where he had been dreaming the livelong day 
 
 And he peeped from out of his bed ; 
 No breeze was stirring in bush or tree 
 
 No shadow was moving in sight ; 
 And— ''Surely the shadows are sleeping," quoth he, 
 
 ''The shadows are sleeping to-night." 
 
 But a shadow ere long did gently creep 
 
 Between the rose and the moon 
 ''So-ho," quoth he, '♦ they're not all asleep,'* 
 
 And another came gliding soon, 
 And quickly the shadows were side by side, 
 
 And face did lean to face, 
 Till each in the other itself did hide. 
 
 And they met in one embrace. 
 Amazed was the Fairy-King to see 
 
 Two shadows in one unite ; 
 And— '' Surely the shadows are meeting," quoth he, 
 
 ''The shadows are meeting to-night." 
 
 And from the one Shadow two Voices were heard 
 
 In close and loving commune ; 
 And the heart of the rose was sweetly stirred 
 
 And trembled beneath the moon. 
 
24 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 The one was deep in its murmurous flow 
 
 Like waters falling afar, 
 The other was soft and gentle and low 
 
 Like the cadence of a star : 
 And the magic web of their harmony 
 
 Held the King in a trance of delight, 
 And — " Surely the shadows are talking," quoth he, 
 
 **The shadows are talking to-night." 
 
 But anon the murmur of voices was stilled 
 
 To a holy secresy, 
 When the heart of the rose was suddenly thrilled 
 
 With a shock of ecstasy ; 
 It quivered with joy, and at once a gush 
 
 Of perfume swam in the air. 
 And it burned and glowed with a deeper blush, 
 
 As THE SHADOW left it there. 
 The Fairy-King clapped his hands in glee, 
 
 And laughing he took his flight: 
 " Ha-ha! the Shadows are kissing," quoth he, 
 
 ''The Shadows are kissing to-night." 
 
POEMS. 25 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 In yon high heaven there reigns a queenly star, 
 
 I cannot pluck it hence and make it mine 
 
 Nor claim the beauteous grace which there doth shine ; 
 
 I can but gaze and worship from afar, 
 
 Yet by its beams what thrills magnetic are 
 
 Within me stirred. The radiance divine 
 
 Finds in my deepest self a loving shrine 
 
 For its fair image, which no change can mar. 
 
 And so the twain — my Star upon her throne, 
 
 Her image in my heart — their vigils keep, 
 
 So far apart yet mystically near. 
 
 Speechless yet ever in communion deep 
 
 Loyal to all that Duty holds most dear. 
 
 Nought asking save what Heaven may give and own. 
 
26 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 SONG. 
 1854. 
 
 "Thy tempting lip and roguish een, 
 By heaven and earth, I love thee." — Burns. 
 
 Oh ! a tempting lip and a roguish eye 
 
 Give me, give me ; 
 You need not ask, I can't tell why, 
 
 Yet give them me. 
 A tempting lip makes my bosom smart, 
 And a roguish eye steals away my heart. 
 
 Yet give them me — 
 
 Oh ! give them me. 
 
 Oh ! a tempting lip on a bright, sweet face 
 
 Give me, give me ; 
 An eye alive with a roguish grace 
 
 Give me, give me; 
 A lip like summer's burning glow, 
 An eye like morning's beaming brow, 
 
 Give me, give me — 
 
 Oh I give, give me. 
 
 Two lips through which the soft sigh steals 
 
 Give me, give me; 
 And merry music-laughter peals, 
 
 Give me, give me; 
 Two eyes like stars in heaven above, 
 Twin stars that look undying love, 
 
 Give me, give me — 
 
 Oh ! give, give me. 
 
 Lips tempting for the eye to see 
 Give me, give me; 
 
POEMS. 27 
 
 Rich fruit hanging on the sweet Love-tree 
 
 Give me, give me; 
 Red and warm with the glowing wine 
 Of passion which through them doth shine, 
 Lips bewitching and tempting mine, 
 
 Give me, give me — 
 
 Oh ! give, give me. 
 
 A roguish Hp and a laughing eye 
 
 Give me, give me ; 
 A merry, sparkhng, loving eye 
 
 Give me, give me ; 
 An eye through which the soft soul peeps, 
 An eye in which the blue heaven sleeps, 
 
 Give me, give me — 
 
 Oh! give, give me. 
 
 Says one: '*Two cheeks like roses seen 
 
 Give me, give me." 
 But a pair of rosy lips between 
 
 Give me, give me. 
 Give some a pale and saintly brow; 
 But a cunning, wicked eye below. 
 
 Give me, give me — 
 
 Oh ! give, give me. 
 
 Oh ! a roguish eye is brightness* self — 
 
 Oh ! give it me ; 
 And a tempting lip is sweetness' self — 
 
 Oh ! give it me. 
 Sweet eyes that shower heavenly blisses. 
 Sweet lips that grow ambrosial kisses. 
 
 Give me, give me — 
 
 Oh! give, give me. 
 
28 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Ah ! those full lips so tempting sweet 
 
 I see, I see ; 
 Those eyes where love and beauty meet 
 
 I see, I see. 
 Eliza, those sweet eyes are thine; 
 Through them in pity on me shine. 
 Those tempting lips, oh ! join to mine ; 
 
 Kiss me, kiss me — 
 
 Oh! kiss, kiss me. 
 
POEMS. 29 
 
 PARTING SONG. 
 
 Once again 
 
 Breathe the strain ! 
 Sisters ! 'tis the Parting Song, 
 
 On each heart 
 
 As we part 
 Rests the tender, moving spell. 
 
 In each soul 
 
 As they roll 
 Will the echoes linger long. 
 
 Deeper still, 
 
 Longer will 
 Love's sweet benedictions dwell. 
 
 Sweet, sisters, are the ties which in golden union 
 bind us; 
 Sweetly bitter is the pain 
 Of the parting's cruel strain. 
 Dear to memory the scenes which to-day we leave 
 behind us. 
 Tears of grief the eyes bedew 
 As we sob our last adieu. 
 
 Yet, although the ties be strained, are they not by 
 absence broken : 
 Parting doth affection try, 
 Trial love doth purify ; 
 Pensive thoughts and yearnings all too sacred to be 
 spoken, 
 These are friendship's guarantee 
 Of its immortality. 
 
30 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Wide is the realm of love, yet 'tis one and here 
 forever : 
 God's throne is everywhere ; 
 All are near who meet in prayer. 
 Them who love and toil and pray for each other 
 nought can sever. 
 Love knows no near and far, 
 Prayer knows no inter-bar. 
 Then when the tear doth flow, let the smile-beam 
 make it brighter; 
 And when the parting word 
 From faltering lips is heard. 
 Let the tones of faith and hope sounding in it make 
 it lighter. 
 
 Life, sisters, is God's school; living well is ever 
 learning, 
 Ever climbing nobler heights, 
 Ever storing new delights ; 
 Finding in each cross a crown, and a heaven in 
 every yearning, 
 Wisdom here, and courage there, 
 And a blessing everywhere. 
 Life is growth by work and rest, gaining wealth by 
 joy and sorrow. 
 
 'Tis to lose, and find yet more 
 In God than e'er we had before ; 
 Tis to part to-day, and then to meet yet closer on 
 the morrow. 
 Welcome Duty, rest and strife ; 
 God is calling us to life. 
 
POEMS. i I 
 
 IN MEMORIAM.* 
 
 Earth needs the strong. 
 This poor weak earth — it needs the arm of might, 
 To hold aloft God's standard in the fight, 
 The shield of faith, the sword of truth to wield, 
 To smite the foe and drive him from the field. 
 It needs the nerve of iron for the wear 
 Of toil and tears ; the back of steel, to bear 
 For many a stumbhng, falling one, his load. 
 And help the pilgrim on his weary road. 
 
 To do God's work, earth needs the strong. 
 
 Earth needs the wise. 
 This poor dark world, it needs the soul of light 
 To bring some gleam of heaven into its night. 
 The loving learner — from the Master's feet 
 To bear to erring men His wisdom sweet : 
 To make the crooked straight; the clouded clear; 
 The narrow broad ; to bring the far-off near, 
 To master nature, and to build the mind 
 And for a world gone wrong the best to find. 
 
 To teach God's thought, earth needs the wise. 
 
 Earth needs the true. 
 The soul whose loyal purpose is its king, 
 Whose every thought like solid gold doth ring, 
 Whose diamond purity shows not a flaw, 
 Whose liberty exults in serving law, 
 Which knows no yoke of servile hope or fear, 
 In which no sordid greed doth e'er appear, 
 Which is not warped by vanity or pride 
 Which loving God, seeks no reward beside. 
 
 To show God's mind, earth needs the true. 
 
 * Read after the' death of a friend, Col. S. S. Fisher. 
 
32 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Earth needs the brave. 
 The soul which pities cowards [danger scorns], 
 Whose crown of glory is the crown of thorns, 
 Which dares to do for Right what seems but vain, 
 Which dares to lose for self that Truth may gain, 
 The chivalry which knows nor high nor low. 
 With equal gladness to each task doth go ; 
 The heart which ever sings in love's employ, 
 The courage which makes life one smile of joy. 
 
 To bring God's day, earth needs the brave. 
 
 And such was he 
 The shadow of whose loss doth on us rest, 
 In courage, knowledge, truth and strength, confessed 
 A leader among men. Did not our earth 
 Have need of all that gave his life such worth? 
 That helpful power, that genial grace, that skill 
 Of hand and tongue and brain ; that self-poised will 
 That heart so broad it knew no far or near, 
 Strong as the oak, yet gentle as the tear; 
 
 Strong, gentle, wise and true — yes, such was he. 
 
 And such is he. 
 In sphere of wider action, broader scope 
 Of thought and vision, loftier flights of hope. 
 Of fuller-souled endeavor, mightier faith, 
 Of love which has outsoared the chill of death. 
 Heaven, too, needs strength and wisdom, truth and love: 
 Nothing is lost that God doth call above ; 
 No grace or power of soul but there hath birth 
 To larger use and glory than on earth. 
 Yes — ever strong, wise, loving, true, is he 
 Ever more strong, wise, loving, true, shall be. 
 
 Gloria tibi Doniinel 
 
ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. 
 
 I. 
 
 PROVIDENCE IN THE GREEK DRAMA. 
 
 The most important speculative and practical ques- 
 tion of the day is undoubtedly that which concerns the 
 active relations of God to the world which he has cre- 
 ated. What is it that rules the world ? Is it law ? Is 
 it fate? Is it God? I have thought it might not be 
 without interest or profit to hear what one of the most 
 eloquent voices of the past has to say on this great 
 theme — the voice of the Greek Drama. 
 
 Nowhere in the absence of Divine Revelation has the 
 mind grappled so successfully with the material prob- 
 lems of existence ; nowhere has it given birth to such 
 sublime thoughts and such marvelous systems of spec- 
 ulation ; nowhere has it invested its conceptions of spir- 
 itual facts and superhuman personalities with such noble 
 and beautiful forms; nowhere has it given such elo- 
 quent and feeling utterance to the profounder experi- 
 ences of humanity yearning after life and truth and 
 God, as in the philosophy, the poetry, the art, the re- 
 ligion of Ancient Greece. And nothing is more char- 
 acteristic of Greece, nothing is more expressive of its 
 best and its highest, than its drama. 
 
 That we may 'the better understand what the Greek 
 
 (33) 
 
34 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Drama has to say on the theme before us, let us take 
 a rapid survey of Greek thought concerning it before 
 the drama began to preach. Recent researches have 
 brought to Hght such analogies between the first inhab- 
 itants of Greece and the Aryan nationalities which set- 
 tled on the banks of the Ganges and of the Euphrates, 
 as justify us in assuming their common origin, and the 
 original identity of their religion. The primitive wor- 
 ship of the Pelasgians, the original Hellenic population 
 of Greece was, like that of the early Indians and Per- 
 sians, the simple deification of nature. Zeus is the 
 Greek Indra, the deified sky, armed with the thunder 
 and lightning, dwelling on the mountain top3, driving 
 the clouds, gathering the rain, filling the fountains in the 
 valleys. He is opposed by the Titans, the spirits of 
 darkness, the primitive deities, ''the first-born of all 
 shaped and palpable gods," as Keats calls them, whose 
 rule succeeded that of absolute darkness, and who are 
 ever struggling to regain their ascendency. Apollo, the 
 bright luminous god (^o?/9oc, became after a time the 
 favorite divinity of the Greeks, who were pre-eminently 
 in a physical sense " children of the light." " It is a 
 characteristic of the Greek temper," says Bulwer, ''that 
 the personages of Greek poetry ever bid a last lingering 
 and half reluctant farewell to the sun. There is a mag- 
 nificent fullness in those children of beautiful Hellas ; 
 the sun is to them as a familiar friend. The affliction or 
 the terror of Hades is in the thought that its fields are 
 sunless. " And so we find that when Anaxagoras declared 
 that the sun is a mass of red-hot iron, his doctrine was 
 rejected with horror and he was reprobated as an athe- 
 ist (Mr. Procter would not have found it pleasant lect- 
 uring to the Athenians on the sun). Other personifica- 
 tions of nature worshipped by the Greeks we find in 
 Demeter, representing with her daughter Persephone, 
 
PROVIDENCE IN THE GREEK DRAMA. 35 
 
 the fructifying power of the earth ; Poseidon, the fertil- 
 izing power of water ; Dionysos, the productive, over- 
 flowing, and intoxicating power of nature ; Hephaestos, 
 the volcanic forces of the earth, and fire as an indus- 
 trial element. And so the process went on until in the 
 end this poetical faith had peopled every kingdom and 
 province and nook of nature with divinities, with 
 
 " The intelligible forms of ancient poets 
 The fair humanities of old religion 
 The power, the beauty, and the majesty 
 That had their haunts in dale or piney mountain, 
 Or forest, by slow stream or pebbly spring. 
 Spirits or gods that used to share this earth 
 With man as with their friend." 
 
 It was inevitable, however, that In Greece this sim- 
 ple nature-worship should undergo a development. In 
 the Orient, in India especially with its tropical heat, 
 its overpowering vastn esses, its lazy monotony, its un- 
 changeable uniformity it had become Pantheism — 
 "sometimes monstrous, sometimes grand, but always 
 fatalistic." Not so, however, in Greece. In India 
 nature triumphs over man. Man is crushed into help- 
 lessness before her tremendous energies. In Greece 
 ''men had learned of their fathers;" in the language 
 of Thucydides, "that they must pay the price of labor 
 and effort in order to obtain any advantages ; " and there 
 they became victorious over nature. In the East was 
 seclusion and changelessness. Greece was situated at 
 the confluence of East and West, "a small many- 
 toothed peninsula (as Dr. Schaff describes it), inserted 
 by Providence in the midst of the three divisions of the 
 Old World, to educate and refine them." In the im- 
 mense plains of Asia, vast monarchies sprang up. In 
 which the individual is lost, and there Unity reigned 
 supreme. Greece was filled with states, commercial 
 
36 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 communities, republics, and oligarchies, and there we 
 find variety, movement, strife, liberty, individuality. 
 "Even the fabulous world of Grecian divinities," says 
 Schlegel, ' ' has a republican cast, for there everything 
 is in a state of change, of successive renovation and of 
 mutual collision, in the war of nature's elements, in the 
 hostilities of old and new deities, of the superior and 
 inferior gods, of giants and of heroes — presenting, as it 
 does, a sort of poetical anarchy." 
 
 Hence, as we have seen, in the East, Pantheism; in 
 the West, Humanism ; and in Persia, by the way, in- 
 termediate between the two, Dualism. In India we 
 see Fatalism, the reign of absolute inexorable law, by 
 which man is enslaved. In Persia we see an at- 
 tempt, although finally unsuccessful, to escape from 
 Fatalism by the recognition of two antagonistic prin- 
 ciples. In Greece, as De Pressense says, "man, for 
 the first time in Paganism, arrived at the consciousness 
 of his individuality, of his moral value as a free being." 
 The character of the religious development of Greece 
 accordingly defines itself thus : it was essentially hu- 
 manistic, resulting, on the one hand, in the humanizing 
 of the Deity, and on the other hand in the apotheosis 
 of humanity. The foundations of this humanism were 
 laid in the Heroic Age of Greece, embracing: (i) The 
 period of legendary heroism, when the struggle between 
 the primitive barbarism and the nascent civilization of 
 Greece was carried on, and (2) The period of historical 
 heroism, culminating in the grand triumph of the 
 Western over the Oriental types of civiHzation — "that 
 historical Iliad almost as grand as the other, which, as 
 it has been said, Miltiades and Themistocles inscribed 
 with their swords." 
 
 The features of this humanism are given us in the 
 poetry of Greece especially in that of Homer, that in- 
 
PROVIDENCE IN THE GREEK DRAMA. 37 
 
 imitable poet who, as some one has said, ''created in 
 the same breath the poetry and the rehgion of his 
 country." Olympus becomes now an ideal Greece. 
 Zeus is no longer the sun-god but a great king, the 
 father of gods and men. Apollo is the personification 
 of the national spirit and genius, the god of song, music, 
 inspiration, and retribution ; Athena, of state policy ; 
 Hermes, ^of eloquence, commerce, invention ; besides 
 Aphrodite, Poseidon, Ares, Artemis and the rest, on 
 which I need not enlarge. The genuinely anthropomor- 
 phic character of this theology, which it behoves us 
 here to note, may be seen in the family relations of 
 Zeus. His wife Hera, as is well known, made things 
 lively enough for him. Their family jars shook all 
 Olympus, and often embroiled the other gods. Her 
 temper was far from being the sweetest, although to be 
 sure she had cause enough to complain, and the Thun- 
 derer himself did not feel altogether comfortable when 
 her tongue began to go. Sometimes he was brute 
 enough to beat his wife, and one day he went so far as 
 to hang her up in the clouds, her hands chained and 
 two anvils suspended from her feet. Thus it was that, 
 in poetry at least, these old Greeks would conceive of 
 their gods as being altogether such as themselves. The 
 gods of the Homeric pantheon are simply men of larger 
 mould, of mightier energies whether for good or for 
 evil, of intenser passions. Their history is the projec- 
 tion on an earthly background, and in magnified pro- 
 portions, of human history. They are not wanting in 
 divine grandeur, for on the one side man touches God : 
 but they have also much earthly weakness and gross- 
 ness, for on the other side man touches the beast. 
 
 Besides this Homeric Pantheon, by far the most pop- 
 ular and potent, we find the Hesiodic Pantheon, and 
 the Orphic. We cannot stop to consider them. Hesiod 
 
38 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 loved the old nature-gods. He sympathized with the 
 Titans. He mourns that he was born in the hard age of 
 iron. His theogony is a cosmogony, and he is thus 
 the poet of the philosophers, at the same time that he 
 is also the poet of the peasantry ; whereas Homer is the 
 poet of the soldier and politician. His poetry is also to 
 a considerable extent the protest of the moral nature 
 against the immoralities and weaknesses to which the 
 heartier humanism of the Homeric mythology con- 
 ducted. The wife of Zeus is not Hera, but first Metis, 
 or Mind, and then Themis, or Law, by whom he be- 
 comes the father of the Fates. Justice, he says, "al- 
 ways ends in being triumphant in human affairs, and if 
 her way is steep, if the gods have placed sweat and 
 pain in the path of virtue, the road grows easier along 
 the height." In Pindar — with considerable progress of 
 the moral idea — the heroic ideal looms upon us, in his 
 own language, "a divinity that the people should wor- 
 ship." Zeus is with him a just wise God. The misery 
 of human life comes from pride, but **a god," he says, 
 "is in all our joys. " 
 
 Of the Orphic Theogony, which is to me exceedingly 
 fascinating, I cannot now stop to speak, except to say 
 that it is distinguished from the others of which we 
 have spoken, by a greater infusion of mysticism and of 
 pantheism ; by the more definite recognition of a Divine 
 Creative or rather plastic power; by the reconciliation 
 of the gods ; by a more hopeful view of the future ; and 
 especially by the worship of Dionysos, the benefactor 
 of men, the suffering divinity, the liberator of souls. But 
 I cannot leave it without snatching this exquisite gem 
 of thought from an address to Eros: "Thy tears are 
 the hapless race of men ; by thy laugh thou hast raised 
 up the sacred race of the gods." 
 
 The gods that we have been thus far considering were 
 
PROVIDENCE IN THE GREEK DRAMA. 39 
 
 originally personifications of nature. But these per- 
 sonifications, as we have seen, were gradually invested 
 more and more with human attributes, until their orig- 
 inal significance was almost and in some cases entirely 
 lost sight of. The divine was more and more absorbed 
 in the heroic. From this point the transition was easy 
 and unavoidable-to the immediate deification of heroes — 
 which brings us to a third series of gods in Greek my- 
 thology. The first had consisted of personifications of 
 nature : the second of these same personifications hu- 
 manized : the third consisted of deified heroes. Of this 
 class the most distinguished example is Heracles — the 
 ideal of a generous suffering and victorious hero. "The 
 fundamental idea of all heroic mythology " says Miiller 
 (Ancient Dorians) may be pronounced to be a proud 
 consciousness of power innate in man, by which he en- 
 deavors to place himself on a level with the gods, not 
 through the influence of a mild and benign destiny, but 
 by labor, misery and combats. **The highest degree of 
 human suffering and courage is attributed to Heracles; 
 his character is as noble as could be conceived in those 
 rude and early times, but he is by no means represented 
 as free from the blemishes of human nature. On the 
 contrary, he is frequently subject to wild ungovernable 
 passions, when the noble indignation and anger of the 
 suffering hero degenerate into frenzy. Every crime how- 
 ever is atoned for by some new suffering, but nothing 
 breaks his invincible courage, until, purified from earth- 
 ly corruption he ascends Mt. Olympus, and there re- 
 ceives the beauteous Hebe for his bride, while his shade 
 threatens the frightened gods in Hades. As in the fable 
 of Apollo, the godhead descends into human life, so in 
 Heracles, a purely human power is elevated to the gods. 
 He is a deity representing the highest perfection of hu- 
 manity, and therefore the model and aim of human imi- 
 
40 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 tation. And the summit of heroic energy was seen 
 where the human passed into the divine nature. 
 
 Such then is the twofold result of the Greek human- 
 ism : the humanizing of the Deity, the apotheosis of 
 humanity. In the Pantheon of the Iliad and the Odys- 
 sey we recognize the gods brought down to men ; in 
 Heracles, ^sculapius and the later hero-gods we see 
 men raised up to gods. First, the gods come down to 
 Olympus and become human ; then men scale Olympus 
 and become divine. We are now prepared to consider 
 the teachings of the Greek Drama on the subject before 
 us. 
 
 The complete emancipation of man from the religion 
 of nature in Greece is seen in the development of the 
 drama. Dramatic poetry is possible only where there 
 is the consciousness of freedom, the interaction and 
 counteraction of moral forces and laws, the sense of 
 responsibility and guilt, the apprehension of a moral 
 government, of Providence and will, of conscience, of 
 Law, of Nemesis. It is just what we should expect, 
 therefore, that in Greece, where the triumph of man 
 over nature carried with it such a development of free- 
 dom and individuality, the drama should become a 
 most flourishing and popular institution. To be sure, 
 the consciousness of perfect moral liberty is not at- 
 tained even here. Indeed the fatalism which broods 
 over some of these dramas is painful ; but this is the 
 nearest approach to such a conception that we meet 
 with in heathendom. The pathos of these wonderful 
 poems results from the contrast which they set forth 
 between "the grandeur of man and the wretchedness 
 of his destiny." But that misery is ever the fruit of 
 crime. The Curse which haunts the family or the in- 
 dividual has sprung out of the blood of an injured di- 
 vinity, of violated law. To the Greek the drama was 
 
PROVIDENCE IN THE GREEK DRAMA. 4 1 
 
 a great preacher of righteousness. The stage was m 
 some sense a pulpit. In Tragedy especially did Greek 
 genius give conscience its grandest voice, and pour 
 forth its loftiest utterances while treating "of fate and 
 chance and change in human life." " Greek Tragedy/' 
 says Professor Tyler, ' ' is essentially didactic, ethical, 
 mythological, religious. It was the express office of 
 the chorus, which held the most prominent place in the 
 ancient drama, to interpret the mysteries of Providence, 
 to justify the ways of God to men, to plead the cause 
 of truth, virtue and piety. Hence it was composed usu- 
 ally of aged men whose wisdom was fitted to instruct 
 in the true and the right, or of young women whose 
 virgin purity would instinctively shrink from falsehood 
 
 and wrong The characters are heroes and 
 
 demigods ; monsters, it may be, in crime ; but their 
 punishment is equally prodigious. Sin and suffering 
 always go together. They illustrate by their lips and 
 in their lives the provident and retributive justice of 
 God." 
 
 It is evident at once that in the very act of putting 
 the gods upon the stage was involved the necessity of 
 investing them with those human passions, sympathies 
 and activities for which the stage was designed ; and 
 that the Greek Drama in this way strongly confirmed 
 the anthropomorphic tendencies of its theology. There 
 is indeed one prominent exception to this dramatic rep- 
 resentation of divinity. Zeus is never put on the stage. 
 He is always the unseen and invisible god. Indeed the 
 myth of Zeus and Semele teaches that no mortal could 
 behold Zeus and live. For as you remember, when 
 Semele, at the instigation of Hera, requested him to 
 appear to her as he did to Hera, and when he so far 
 gratified her wish as to appear to her as the god of 
 thunder, Semele. was instantly consumed by the fire of 
 
42 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 the lightning — the jewel of a noble truth in the head 
 of a toad, as is so often the case in these old myths. 
 And so with the dramatists, with ^schylus particu- 
 larly. Zeus is, as Max Miiller says, the only real God 
 in the higher sense of the word. The Chorus in the 
 Suppliants call him "King of kings, most blest of the 
 blest"; and again, "the Supreme, who by hoary law 
 directs fate." Again ^schylus (in Agamemnon) calls 
 him the universal cause — Tzavakcof;. "Woe! woe! 'tis 
 by the will of Jove, cause of all, doer of all ; for what 
 is accomplished among mortals without Zeus? What 
 of these things is not decreed by Heaven?" In the 
 Antigone of Sophocles the Chorus utters this subhme 
 strain: "O Jove! what daring pride of mortals can 
 control this power, which neither the sleep which leads 
 the universe to old age ever seizes, nor the unwearied 
 months of the gods? Through unwasting time en- 
 throned in might, thou dwellest I'n the glittering blaze 
 of heaven ! " 
 
 Closely connected with this supremacy of Zeus is the 
 doctrine of Providence and a Divine Government. 
 "There is a mighty Jove in heaven who overlooketh 
 and swayeth all things," says the Chorus in Electra. 
 "The tragedies of ^schylus " says K. O. Miiller, 
 "uniformly require faith in a Divine power which 
 with steady eye and firm hand, guides the course of 
 events to the best issue, though the paths through 
 which it leads may be dark and difficult and fraught 
 with distress and suffering. The poetry of yEschylus 
 is full of profound and enthusiastic glorifications of 
 Zeus as this power." The Greek genius indeed is not 
 insensible to the mystery which enwraps the Divine 
 decrees and which broods over their fulfillment. ' * The 
 counsel of Zeus," says the Chorus in the Suppliants," 
 is not easily traced out, yet ni all things it shines forth 
 
PROVIDENCE IN THE GREEK DRAMA. 43 
 
 even in darkness, with black calamity to articulate- 
 voiced man. But it falls firmly not upon its back (/. e. 
 is not thrown prostrate) if a thing be perfected by the 
 hand of Zeus, for the ways of the divine breast stretch 
 thick and shady, difficult to discover." Scarcely less 
 sublime than the description of Zeus on his throne are 
 the descriptions, in Sophocles especially, of the divine 
 and eternal laws which rule the operations of Providence. 
 Thus in the Oedipus Tyrannus the Chorus says: "■ Oh, 
 may it be my lot to support the all-sainted purity of 
 every word and action, regarding which are propounded 
 laws sublime engendered in the firmament of heaven, 
 whose only father is Olympus; nor did the perishable 
 nature of man give them being ; no, nor shall oblivion 
 ever drown them in sleep. Great is the diversity in 
 'these, none groweth old." And in Antigone the 
 Chorus speaks of * * the unwritten and immovable laws 
 of the gods. For not now, at least, or of yesterday, 
 but eternally they live, and no one knows from what 
 time they had their being." 
 
 In a more general way, all things are attributed to 
 the gods. Success is their gift. '' For mortals to 
 succeed is a boon of deity" (Eteocles; Seven against 
 Thebes). They protected him that fears them; *'A 
 dread adversary is he that reveres the gods." Occa- 
 sionally we find something like a recognition of special 
 providence. Thus we find in the Persians, the mes- 
 senger who announced the ruin of the Persian army 
 saying: '*In this night God called up Winter out 
 of his season and congealed the whole stream of 
 sacred Strymon." The Chorus in Agamemnon ex- 
 pressly teaches that the gods care for men, and says 
 of one who denied this — '^not holy was he." In har- 
 mony with this view of the deity, is the view given of 
 prayer, -'The dramas of iEschylus," says Professor 
 
44 LLEWELYN 10 AN EVANS. 
 
 Tyler, "are in their whole structure and contents a 
 standing witness to a belief in the efficacy of prayer, as 
 a general thing, notwithstanding the fixed decrees of 
 fate or providence. No Calvinist was ever a more 
 strenuous asserter of the ' doctrine of the decrees ' than 
 the Chorus in these dramas. At the same time, no 
 Methodist ever offered more frequent or more fervent 
 prayers." Here is a very remarkable passage from the 
 Chorephori: "That which is foredoomed abides from 
 the olden time, and to those that pray for it, it may 
 come." 
 
 The most prominent principle of the Divine Govern- 
 ment set forth in the Greek Tragedy is the law of 
 retribution. I cannot stop to describe the various 
 representations given of this law. Suffice it to say that 
 this indissoluble connection between sin and suffering, 
 through crime and punishment, is the grand argument 
 of every tragedy. I wish, however, to call attention 
 here to the personification of moral ideas that we meet 
 with in connection with this law. The Greek mind, as 
 has been remarked, was prone to personification. But 
 the fact that we find so many of these moral personifi- 
 cations in the Greek mythology, especially in that of 
 the drama, is of deep significance. For they prove to 
 my mind conclusively, that in their conceptions, the 
 gods did not sufficiently represent these moral forces, 
 and that there were points at which the gods and these 
 moral powers were more or less at variance. But in 
 themselves these personifications are highly interesting. 
 Let me mention a few. Here we have Order or Law 
 personified under the name Themis ; Justice under the 
 name Dike; the latter being the daughter of the former. 
 With what eloquence does the Chorus again and again 
 appeal to Themis as one of the most venerable divini- 
 ties of heaven ; or describe Dike, now driving the 
 
PROVIDENCE IN THE GREEK DRAMA. 45 
 
 sword, sharp and bitter, right through the lungs of the 
 evil-doer, now beaming in smoky cottages and honor- 
 ing the holy life (see Agamemnon). Here again we 
 meet with Ate — retribution personified ; and Nemesis, 
 the goddess of distributive justice, also surnamed Adra- 
 stera, the Inevitable, from whom there is no escape ; 
 and, most terrible of all, the Furies, the personification 
 of the curses pronounced on guilty criminals — "hell- 
 hounds," as Orestes calls them, who pursue the 
 wretched man to his doom. In the Prometheus Bound 
 these are joined with the Fates as the pilots of neces- 
 sity, mightier even than Zeus. And this leads us to 
 the darker side of our subject, on which I must dwell 
 a moment before I close. 
 
 The idea of Fate is sometimes presented in the Greek 
 Tragedy as an impersonal abstraction. ''I needs must 
 bear my doom as easily as may be," says Prometheus, 
 ** knowing, as I do, that the might of necessity can not 
 be resisted." And so the Chorus in Agamemnon: 
 *' Things are as they are and will be brought to the 
 issue doomed." But it is more in accord with the 
 habit of the Greeks to represent Fate or Destiny as a 
 person — Alaa or Mdcpa. Homer usually speaks of only 
 one Moira, who at the birth of man spins out the 
 thread of his future life, follows his steps and directs 
 the consequences of his actions, all according to the 
 counsels of the gods. Hesiod has three Fates, all 
 daughters of Zeus and Night. In Tragedy we have 
 sometimes one and sometimes three. The Homeric 
 Moira is not an inflexible fate ; it is the will of Zeus, or 
 at all events it is subject to his control, and is so far 
 conditional as to be influenced in a measure by man 
 himself In Tragedy, Fate is, generally speaking, the 
 mind of Zeus. "Whatever is fated," says the Chorus 
 in the Suppliants, "that will take place; the great im- 
 
46 Llewelyn ioan evans. 
 
 mense mind of Zeus is not to be transgressed." But 
 now and then we see emerging that more awful and 
 gloomy view of Fate, which conceives of it as mightier 
 than Zeus himself: "Who, then," asks the Chorus, 
 "is the pilot of necessity? Prom.: The triform Fates 
 and the remembering Furies. Cho.: Is Zeus, then, 
 less powerful than these ? Prom.: Most certainly ; he 
 can not, at any rate, escape his doom." Here we are 
 in the presence of an irresistible power. " Marvelous," 
 says the Chorus in Antigone, "is the power of Fate. 
 Neither tempest nor war, nor tower, nor black sea 
 beaten ships escape its control." 
 
 What, now, in the presence of this irresistible power, 
 these dread goddesses, daughters of Jove, scarcely, if at 
 all, inferior to their sire, becomes of the liberty of man ? 
 We can not say certainly that it is overlooked or de- 
 nied. Eteocles, in his address to the people of Thebes, 
 anticipates Cromwell's famous order: "Put your trust 
 in God and keep your powder dry." "On!" exclaims 
 Eteocles, "in full panoply throng the breastworks and 
 take your stations on the platforms of the towers ; and 
 making stand at the outlets of the gates, be of good 
 heart. God will give a happy issue." And in the 
 drama of the Persians the ghost of Darius says — "I 
 had expected that the gods would bring these things 
 to their complete fulfillment after a long issue. But 
 when a man is himself speeding onward, God also lends 
 a hand." This last expression embodies, as Professor 
 Tyler remarks, "the prevailing sentiment of the Great 
 Tragedians ; men go to destruction under the impulse 
 of their own folly and madness and an angry deity has 
 only to add the spur. " It would indeed have been the 
 strangest thing in the world, if in Greece, of all lands, 
 free, active, versatile, bright and joyous Greece, we had 
 failed to find any recognition of personal freedom. The 
 
i>ROVIDENCE IN THE CREEK DRAMA. 47 
 
 wonder to my mind is that there was not everywhere 
 the most distinct and emphatic recognition of the free- 
 dom of man's will, and that it did not err rather on 
 this side than on the other. And yet nothing is more 
 unquestionable than that when the Greek mind con- 
 fronted this question in its most religious moods, when 
 it meditated most profoundly on " fixed fate, free will, 
 foreknowledge absolute," and sought in the devoutest 
 spirit to explain the mysteries of Providence, it dis- 
 played the strongest fatalistic tendencies. And there 
 can be no proof more striking or satisfactory, of the 
 inability of any religion of nature or of humanity, to 
 develop a perfect sense of individual liberty and to free 
 the spirit from the bondage of fatalism, than the failure 
 of the Greek religion to accomplish this result. How 
 terrible the iron bondage of this destiny which drove 
 men even to madness, and crime, we see in almost every 
 drama. When Orestes is about to slay his mother for 
 the murder of his father, her plea is that she was im- 
 pelled by fate ; and Orestes is urged to the deed by his 
 friend because the gods required it. When Ajax com- 
 mits suicide, Tecmessa, his captive concubine, exults in 
 the thought that his suicide was from the gods, so that 
 his enemies could not boast that they had slain him. 
 '* By the gods he died, not by them — No ! " And what 
 does the startling frequency of suicide in the Greek 
 drama show but the desperation of souls oppressed with 
 the painful sense of an inevitable destiny dogging their 
 footsteps, from which there is no escape, but by plung- 
 ing into the darkness of death. 
 
 The old and ever-present mystery of suffering inno- 
 cence and of prospering wickedness only aggravated the 
 fatalistic gloom. In his endeavors to grope his way 
 out of the perplexing labyrinth of difficulties surround- 
 ing this question, the Greek plunged deeper and deeper 
 
48 LLEWELYN JOAN EVANS. 
 
 into doubt, error and despair. First he would try ap- 
 parently the theory that prosperity begets adversity. 
 Thus the Chorus in Agamemnon: "The great happi- 
 ness of man at its consummation begets an offspring, nor 
 childless dies ; and from good fortune there sprouts forth 
 for posterity insatiate calamity." Then he would con- 
 ceive of life as an endless round of changes, of alter- 
 nating joy and sorrow, success and failure, rising and 
 falling. "To the Gods alone," says Oedipus, " old age 
 belongs not, nor indeed ever to -die : but everything else 
 does all-powerful time confound. The vigor of the 
 earth indeed decays, and the vigor of the body decays ; 
 faith dies and falsehood springs up ; and the same gale 
 hath never at all blown, neither to friends among men — 
 for to some indeed already and to others in after time, 
 the things that are sweet become bitter, and again 
 friendly. And now if everything is prosperously tran- 
 quil to Thebes with you, infinite time will in his course 
 beget an infinite number of days and nights — then will 
 dissolve with the spear the present harmony." Again 
 the doctrine that God is jealous of his supremacy, his 
 sovereignty, had, in accordance with the degrading ten- 
 dency of Greek anthropomorphism, degenerated into 
 the conception that the gods are selfishly jealous of 
 their prerogatives, and thus become envious of human 
 prosperity. Thus Elcctra mourns that the race of the 
 children of Pelops has perished because that "-envy 
 from heaven has seized it." And the Chorus in Aga- 
 memnon utters the warning that for a man to have an 
 exceedingly high reputation is a sad thing; for the 
 thunderbolt from Zeus is launched against him. It is 
 easy to see how such a view of the Divine treatment 
 must tend on the one hand to rivet the chains of fatal- 
 ism, and on the other to loosen the bands of moral ob- 
 ligation, ^schylus, says President Woolsey, "makes 
 
PROVIDENCE IN THE GREEK DRAMA. 49 
 
 the Furies, so to speak, personifications of an impulse 
 which wreaks itself upon the violator of natural order, 
 whether he is engaged on the side of justice or not — 
 of a blind force which, Hke the fiery furnace in Scripture, 
 burns as the minister of the highest authority." It is 
 true that these sentiments have a dramatic significance, 
 and allowance should doubtless be made for the charac- 
 ters and the situation from which they proceed, and for 
 the dramatic purpose which they serve. It is none the 
 less true however, that they occur continually in every 
 drama ; that almost every character bears witness to their 
 influence ; and especially that they are in perfect har- 
 mony with the general tone and drift of the entire 
 drama — the great organ of the Greek Religion. 
 
 This then is the conclusion to which we come. The 
 Greek doctrine of the Divine Government possessed ele- 
 ments of wonderful grandeur. It contains a distinct em- 
 phatic recognition of an overruling Providence. Whether 
 it be Zeus, or the gods, or destiny, there is an irresisti- 
 ble Power impelling and directing all events — a power 
 nevertheless, which can be influenced' by prayer, the 
 agency of which may bring to pass the fulfillment of 
 the decree foreordained from the olden time. The Prov- 
 idence which this Power exercises, is not only general 
 but special. It rules the affairs not only of nations and 
 races, but of families and individuals. It administers 
 the laws not only of the natural but of the moral world. 
 The laws which govern the universe are exalted to the 
 very highest pinnacle of authoritative sublimity. They 
 are instinct with divine energy and life. 
 
 And yet, when we descend from the ethereal heights 
 where this Divine Providence bears sway, to the sphere 
 of human activity, and especially of human suffering 
 and crime, all is changed. We are surrounded by a 
 chilly gloom. 'We breathe a stifling atmosphere, A 
 
50 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 terrible fatality reigns. Man is bound by a chain of 
 iron. He is borne along on the dark current against 
 which it is vain to struggle as it sweeps him toward the 
 abyss. The gods are become his enemies. Envying his 
 prosperity, they laugh at his calamity, and exult over 
 the wreck of his happiness and his hopes. 
 
 It is a question of profound significance : how should 
 such a theology have arisen, and above all in Greece ? 
 How upon an intellect so keen and resolute as the 
 Greek, should a system so contradictory have forced 
 itself? How could a nature so airy and joyous, so pas- 
 sionately loving the flashing sunlight and the sparkling 
 wave, have evoked so dark and grim a shadow to haunt 
 and to dog its footsteps ? How could a life reveling in all 
 the luxuriant freedom of artistic beauty, and in all the ex- 
 citing whirl of political enthusiasm, have come to be so 
 painfully conscious in its thoughtful moods, of the gall- 
 ing yoke of irreversible Fate, and to hear amid life's 
 very paeans the clanking of the dungeon chains ? 
 The answer to these questions is not far to seek ; and 
 all will do well to heed and ponder it, who are tempted, 
 as Greece was, and as so many of us are, to identify 
 God with Fate, to confound the Divine and the human, 
 to deify man, to make nature all in all. If we had no 
 better teacher than Greece, all that would remain to us 
 would be to exclaim with Tecmessa — "Ah me! to 
 what a yoke of slavery we pass ! What taskmasters are 
 over us ! " 
 
II. 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHIVALRY.* 
 
 In the days of chivalry, when the candidate for knight- 
 hood had received his training and served his probation, 
 he was led to an altar, where, kneeling, he received 
 from the hand of his king or his feudal lord, or from 
 some fairer hand, representative of beauty rather than 
 of power, the accolade, the sword stroke which devoted 
 him to his vocation. 
 
 To-day, my brethren, marks a similar investiture in 
 your history. You have reached the end of your spe- 
 cial training for your calling. You are about to pass 
 forth out of the school of preparation into the world of 
 action. To-day you receive from your loving and be- 
 loved mother your accolade, administered, not like that 
 of old, with the sword, but with its milder yet mightier 
 successor. To-day she sends you forth invested with 
 her seal and signature, to join the glorious army of 
 Christian knights, who, here, there, yonder, every- 
 where in the broad world, are fighting grander battles 
 than any in which ever Paladin couched his lance or 
 drew his sword. 
 
 Or will it be said that this is a vain or fanciful anal- 
 ogy ; that chivalry and' its heroes, its forms and its 
 spirit, have alike passed away ? One singer of our time 
 
 ■••■ GraduatinfT address to the Class of 1874. 
 
 (SI) 
 
52 Llewelyn ioan evans. 
 
 has indeed told us that "earth is grown coward and 
 old." Another has sung that the "earth is all too 
 gray for chivalry." Others would perhaps choose to 
 say that our world is too mature for that caprice of its 
 childhood. 'Tis true "the whole round table is dis- 
 solved;" the occupation of its knights is gone; the dy- 
 ing Arthur has been borne away to the isle of Avalon. 
 But, according to the old legend, " Arthur is come 
 again, he can not die." The soul of true knighthood is 
 still marching on in the world. Yes, believe me, my 
 brethren, that glorious army of Christian knights, which 
 I said just now you are sent to-day to join, is no spec- 
 tral host. It was never more truly a reality than it is 
 to-day. A truer, nobler knighthood has arisen, trans- 
 figured, out of the grave of the old. Whatever was 
 best, purest, divinest in the older order, its unfaltering- 
 loyalty, its disinterested devotion, its chivalric enthusi- 
 asm, its jealous regard for a stainless honor, its heroic 
 championship of a sacred cause, its high ideal of purity, 
 unselfishness, consecration, fidelity unto death, all this 
 finds its glorified expression in the vocation of each one 
 whom God anoints to be a champion of His honor, a 
 defender of His cause. I, for one, believe that this 
 transfigured chivalry is more and more imbreathing 
 itself into every pursuit, beautifying every human call- 
 ing, redeeming it from the taint of mercenariness and 
 sordidness, and inspiring instead a spirit of unselfish 
 consecration to a high ideal. More and more is it felt 
 that the condition both of nobleness of character and 
 of excellence of achievement, is a loving absorption in 
 some worthy end, the ardent, chivalrous, enthusiastic 
 enlistment of the whole man in some glorious vocation 
 worthy to be pursued and to be loved for its own sake. 
 You may remember how, in Daniel Deronda, when 
 the fair heroine, at one crisis in her history, would em- 
 
CHRISTIAN CHIVALRY. 53 
 
 brace the vocation of an artist, from the stress of cir- 
 cumstances and not from the impulse of love, an earn- 
 est devotee of art dissuading her, says this of the life of 
 an artist: '* It is out of the reach of any but choice or- 
 ganizations, natures framed to love perfection and to 
 labor for it, ready, like all true lovers, to endure, to 
 wait, to say I am not yet worthy, but she, Art, my 
 mistress, is worthy, and I will live to merit her. An 
 honorable life? Yes; but the honor comes from the 
 inward vocation and the hard won achievement. There 
 is no honor in donning the life as a livery." 
 
 To this ideal of a life devoted to Art, let me add one 
 or two other ideals, which thoughtful minds have pict- 
 ured of some of the noblest and most alluring pursuits 
 which offer themselves to young men of culture to-day. 
 Not long ago a statesman, who bears one of the most 
 honored names in our history, and who has himself been 
 conspicuous for his abiHty and wisdom in places of pub- 
 he trust, thus expressed himself on the opportunities 
 of public life in the immediate future in our own land : 
 ' * I should feel myself to be very much belittling the 
 recommendation I venture to make to my young friends 
 to cultivate a taste for statesm.anship of the widest scope, 
 if I were to associate it in general with the hope of 
 getting into pov/er. * * ^ Never in any preceding 
 record of human history has there been a fairer opening 
 for the full development of the noblest aspirations for 
 good which the Divine Being has been pleased to im- 
 plant in the bosoms of His creatures. Here is ample 
 space and verge enough for the most farseeing states- 
 man, the most persuasive orator, the most profound 
 philosopher, the most exalted philanthropist. Answer 
 me, I pray you, shall it be indeed that this marvelous 
 scene will be occupied by actors worthy of their place, 
 who will strain 'their utmost powers to rise to every 
 
54 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 great emergency, and do for their fellow men all that 
 mortal power has been able to effect since the forfeiture 
 of paradise?" (Charles Francis Adams : Discourse be- 
 fore the Phi Beta Kappa, 1873.) 
 
 Turn to another liberal profession, that of medicine, 
 and what is the ideal of greatness which you find? It 
 is — I am quoting from a late address of an eminent phy- 
 sician before the Medical Society of the State of New 
 York — *' the spectacle of Vesalius, in his first dissection, 
 as illustrating the holy ardor, the nobility, the heroic 
 courage of the profession in his age, and in all ages. 
 In the path of investigation was toil, and dishonor, and 
 death itself; but it was the road of life for all the race 
 of man. He died a martyr to his zeal, but his work 
 survived." Another eminent representative of the pro- 
 fession declares, " the mission of the physician to be a 
 covenant with the Most High, and God will hold us 
 (physicians) responsible for the sacred discharge of duty. 
 The sacred ark of human life is intrusted to us ; we are 
 anointed priests in its service ; our hands must be clean, 
 our hearts pure, and our souls deeply reverent in its 
 ministrations." (Dr. Wood, of Philadelphia; annual 
 address before the Society of Alumni of the Medical 
 Department of the University of Pennsylvania, by Dr. 
 C. C. Comegys, 1875.) While still another has called 
 it **the most godlike function that can be exercised by 
 a human being — a function discharged in its ideal per- 
 fection only by the Son of Man." (Dr. Russell, of the 
 Royal College of Physicians, in London.) 
 
 So, in regard to the spirit in which the profession of 
 the law should be pursued, the following noble words 
 were spoken, hot long ago, in our own city, by one 
 whom I take pleasure in mentioning as one of our own 
 honored Trustees, and recently advanced to a conspicu- 
 ous place in the councils of the nation : * ' The days of 
 
CHRISTIAN CHIVALRY. 55 
 
 chivalry are not gone. There are still knights, armed 
 cap-a-pie, who are ready to-day to do battle for justice 
 and for right, who are to-day ready to accept the chal- 
 lenge of any comer in defense of the weak and oppressed 
 and the defenseless. There is nothing mercantile in our 
 profession. It is not a trade, and I make the contrast 
 not at all because I deprecate the character of the 
 merchant and the tradesman. But there is something 
 in the liberal and learned and honorable profession to 
 which you consider yourselves called, which is above 
 the exchange of equivalence, which puts away the idea 
 of bargains and barters, which professes to live for an 
 idea, which looks beyond the mere result of a particu- 
 lar case, and regards every professional effort as a con- 
 tribution to that ideal justice which grows up day by 
 day in the administration of the law in all its depart- 
 ments, and lies recorded in the judgments of the courts, 
 constituting the imperishable form and fabric of profes- 
 sional reputation, which advances day by day with the 
 history of civilization, incorporating everything good 
 and lofty and sublime in human conduct, and will never 
 be satisfied until it brings human justice and divine jus- 
 tice to coincide." (Address of Hon. Stanley Matthews 
 to graduating class of Cincinnati Law School, 1876.) 
 
 These are noble words, all of them. These are ex- 
 alted ideals of these influential vocations. And you 
 will observe how that in all these ideals, the central, 
 vital thought is consecration, self-renunciation, a chival- 
 rous self-surrender to a lofty and absorbing passion or 
 aim. Was it too much, to say then, just now, that the 
 spirit of true knighthood is not only still Hving in the 
 world, but is more and more possessing, inspiring, 
 transfiguring the various spheres of human endeavor? 
 But if this ideal is thus asserting its queenly sway over 
 these other calHngs, how much more, brethren, should 
 
56 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 it govern ours ? If the service of the art which makes 
 Hfe fair must come from the inward vocation, how 
 much more the service of the art which makes hfe holy 
 and godhke ? If the hfe of those who minister at the 
 shrine of beauty must not be donned as a Hvery, how 
 much less the hfe of those who 
 
 " Not for the meed of praise 
 Or earthly honor, or the chaff of swine, 
 Are as the priests who in the Temple wait 
 And do their service, choosing Wisdom fair 
 In her unearthly beauty ! " 
 
 If the service of an earthly commonv/ealth invites 
 the unselfish surrender of the noblest energies and the 
 highest attainments, how much more the service of that 
 heavenly commonwealth, whose citizenship is a priestly 
 kingship, crowned with a holy and blessed immortality ? 
 If the beneficent vocation of ministering to the disor- 
 ders of the body be consistent only with complete self- 
 abnegation, if its true spirit be that of a chivalrous alac- 
 rity in responding, at whatever risk or loss to self, to 
 every appeal for relief or deliverance, how much more 
 should the vocation of ministering to souls diseased, 
 vindicate itself as one holy, unfaltering, impassioned, 
 self-forgetting purpose to help, to heal, to rescue, where 
 the plague of sin is spreading wickedness and death ? If 
 he whose calling it is to defend personal or social right 
 to secure the triumph of justice should put av/ay every 
 idea of bargain and barter or equivalence, how much more 
 should you do this whose privilege it is to labor for the 
 most definite and at the same time the most complete 
 fulfillment of the petition, **Thy will be done on earth 
 as in Heaven?" If in any calling whatever the ruling 
 passion should be utter disregard of self, and the most 
 ardent ''enthusiasm of humanity," is not that calHng, 
 my brethren, yours? 
 
CHRISTIAN CHIVALRY. 
 
 5; 
 
 Let me beseech you then, to-day, to magnify your 
 caUing. Rejoice in the divineness which crowns it as 
 the chief of all human vocations. Give yourselves up 
 to it wholly. Make full proof of all its capabilities for 
 power, for growth, for blessing. Fight manfully the 
 good fight of faith. Test to the utmost every weapon 
 put in your hands. Let no blot fall on your escutch- 
 eon. Be anxious only to know and to do the will of 
 the Great Commander. I take joy in thinking that 
 more than one-half of your number belong to a band 
 of more than twenty young men whom our church is 
 to-day sending forth out of our theological seminaries 
 beyond the great central river of our continent, to fight 
 the battle of the cross. But whether on the hither or 
 the yonder side of the Father of Waters, you all belong 
 to the same army, you are fighting the same battles, 
 you are following the same Leader. Be inwardly 
 strengthened in Him and in the power of His might. 
 Put on the divine panoply, the inspired description of 
 which it has been your privilege, as a class, to study 
 so lately. Let nothing be lacking, neither sword, nor 
 shield, nor breastplate, nor girdle. You will need them 
 all. It is no easy task that awaits you. Dark days 
 will pass over you ; hours of faintness and weariness 
 will overtake you. 
 
 "Hast thou the sign 
 God gives His chosen warriors ? As of old, 
 Their joys and sorrows are not as the rest ; 
 Their fleece is wet when all around is dry. 
 The dew of heaven is theirs, to cheer and bless, 
 When others sink upon the arid sand ; 
 Their fleece is dry when all around is wet, 
 They have their sorrows which the world knows not, 
 Their conflicts in the midnight loneliness, 
 That others taste not." 
 
58 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 But be of good cheer. Remember the vevcxT^xa, the 
 *' I have overcome " of our Captain. Even to fail with 
 Christ were better than to win with the world. 
 
 " The solemn shadow of His cross 
 Is better than the sun." 
 
 That cross still has its knights, who are summoned to 
 the unquenchable ardor of a sublime enthusiam. Christ 
 still has His heroes who are invited to the undying de- 
 votion of an all-enfolding love. And my prayer for you 
 to-day, my brethren, is that you may receive in full 
 measure this sacramental chrism. Let your souls thrill 
 to the holy passion. Let your hearts leap up to your 
 celestial call. Go forth to your work to-day, not with 
 laggard feet, not with backward or drooping look, not 
 with listless heart, but having your feet shod with the 
 eager alacrity of the Gospel of peace, your eyes kin- 
 dling with the joyous radiance of the prize of your high 
 calling, your hearts burning with the sacred and purify- 
 ing fire from the altar of heaven. Go forth not as hire- 
 lings, not as conscripts forced to an unwelcome service, 
 but freely, joyously, as the elect of heaven, each one as 
 the son of a king, from strength to strength, from vic- 
 tory to victory. 
 
 Do you remember Tennyson's exquisite little poem 
 in which the Christian knight. Sir Galahad, sings the 
 song of his pilgrimage in quest of the Holy Grail, the 
 blessed cup of our Lord's blood ? As he rides on his 
 way he is sustained by divine helps and visions of which 
 grosser natures know nothing. Dark, tempest-swept for- 
 ests become to him as cathedrals filled with the noise 
 of hymns, the gleamings of tapers and silver vessels, 
 and the fragrance of sweet incense. On lonely mount- 
 ain ways he has visions in the dark, of the Holy Grail 
 
CHRISTIAN CHIVALRY. 59 
 
 borne by angel hands. Winter storms beat on his 
 head. 
 
 " But o'er the dark a glory spreads, 
 And gilds the driving hail." 
 
 As he muses in holy aspiration on "joy that will not 
 cease," his mortal armor, stricken by an angel's hand, 
 is ** turned to finest air." And he disappears from our 
 view, marching on to celestial music, and to the sound 
 of angel voices encouraging him with the assurance that 
 the prize he seeks is not far from him. 
 
 Brethren, as you go forth on your sublime quest, not 
 of the Holy Grail, but of the souls which Christ's blood 
 was shed to save, you may hope that the world will be- 
 come for you, too, a grand cathedral filled with worship 
 and with holy beauty and awe. Heavenly music will 
 at times steal on your souls' hearing with entrancing 
 sweetness. 
 
 Blessed visions of immortality will approach you, 
 causing your spirit to beat her mortal bars. A glory of 
 earth will overarch every cloud. The lilies of the heav- 
 enly Eden will waft their fragrance over the still hours 
 of contemplation and prayer, and the weight of your 
 arms will no longer be felt. 
 
 " The clouds are broken in the sky, 
 
 And thro' the outer walls 
 A rolling organ-harmony 
 
 Swells up and shakes and falls. 
 Then move the trees, the copses nod, 
 
 Wings flutter, voices hover clear. 
 O, just and faithful knight of God, 
 
 Ride on ! the prize is near." 
 
III. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF CIVILIZATION ON 
 DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 
 
 The influence of Dogmatic Theology on Civilization 
 of which we had last week so able and interesting a 
 discussion, naturally suggests the query whether there 
 may not be a reciprocal influence of Civilization on 
 Dogmatic Theology. The law of action and reaction 
 finds place in the mental as in the physical world. True, 
 in the one the reaction is always equal to the action. 
 Not so in the other. But the fact of reaction remains. 
 That there is an action of Theology on Civilization has 
 been sufficiently demonstrated. If there is a reaction 
 it behooves us to learn what it is, how far it extends, 
 and what we are to do about it. Civilization, it will be 
 granted, owes more to Dogmatic Theology, than 
 Theology to Civilization. It would be unphilosophical 
 and foolish however, for that reason, to disregard the 
 less because it does not equal the more. 
 
 In its broadest sense Civilization would mean the 
 complex total of social condition and development. 
 It would include the forces represented by the terms 
 science, literature and art. But to define the special 
 influence of these several factors would be impossible 
 within the limits of this paper. I shall therefore con- 
 fine the discussion to the influence of civilization in its 
 more external aspect, as exhibited in social agencies 
 (60) 
 
CIVILIZATION AND DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 6 1 
 
 and forms, race and national characteristics, political 
 and legal institutions, and in general the organic life 
 and movement of humanity. 
 
 By Dogmatic Theology I mean the formulated ex- 
 pression of religious thought as the same has found 
 currency in the Church Universal, or in the represent- 
 ative branches of the Church of Christ. 
 
 Let me first clear out of the way a few erroneous im- 
 plications in respect to the question. 
 
 1. The influence of Civilization on' Dogmatic Theol- 
 ogy does not imply the truth of Comte's view that the 
 human mind in its progress passes through three 
 stages — the theological, the metaphysical and the 
 scientific. Theology is not any more than metaphysics 
 a passing phase of the development of thought. Each 
 is a science as truly as what Positivism calls science. 
 Physics, the science of the material ; Metaphysics, the 
 science of the mental ; Theology, the science of the 
 supernatural — each is destined to share in the advance- 
 ment of scientific method and outlook through all the 
 coming generations of time. " And now there abideth 
 these three; and the greatest of these is Theology," 
 scientia scientiarum. 
 
 2. The influence of Civilization on Theology does 
 not imply that Theology is a product of Civilization in 
 any of its constituent forces, as Buckle and other ma- 
 terialists since have held. Christian Theology is no 
 evolution of material, mental or social phenomena. It 
 is throughout of supernatural origin. Its contents are 
 given by divine revelation. Theology comes out of 
 the Bible: the Bible does not come out of nature. 
 
 3. The Bible is divine. Theology is human. It is 
 the effort of the scientific intellect to construct the re- 
 vealed facts of the Bible into a system of thought and 
 belief As such 'it is imperfect, fallible, mutable, sus- 
 
62 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 ceptible to the modifying influences of its environment, 
 whatever these may be. 
 
 4. The modifying influences of Civilization as an 
 environment of Theology are of a mixed character, 
 partaking of the mixed character of civilization itself. 
 In part they are beneficial, in part injurious. Each 
 modification is to be judged independently on its own 
 merits. The fact that it proceeds from Civilization 
 does not require per se either its commendation or its 
 condemnation. Not only so, but the same modification 
 will at times exhibit this mixed character. In some 
 directions its operation may be advantageous, in others 
 disadvantageous. 
 
 5. As was hinted above, it is not implied that the in- 
 fluence of civilization on dogmatics is of necessity of the 
 same kind or degree with the influence of theology on 
 civilization. The latter influence is doubtless far the 
 more positive, the more direct, the more vital, the more 
 decisive, the more lasting. It has in it more of the 
 power of inspiration and organization. Largely indeed, 
 the influence of Civilization is the reflex influence of 
 Dogma on itself; as in some instances we see the action 
 of the mind on the body react on the mind itself. 
 
 Having premised thus much, I now assume the in- 
 fluence of Civilization on Dogmatic Theology as a fact 
 which no intelligent student of history will question. 
 Dr. Shedd has stated the law thus: **The relation be- 
 tween the two sciences of theology and history is not 
 that of mere cause and effect, in which the activity is 
 all on one side, and the passivity all on the other. It 
 is rather an organic relation of action and reaction in 
 which both are causes and both are effects, and both are 
 passive recipients. " (Philos. of Hist. p. 122.) 
 
 And again: **In some way or another each of the 
 historic sections sustains a relation of action and reac- 
 
eiVILl2AtlON AND DOGMATIC! THEOLOGY. 63 
 
 tioii ; and in and by this interagency the total process 
 of evolution goes forward." (Ibid, p. 102.) So again 
 in speaking of the influence of one important factor of 
 civilization, to-wit: philosophy on Theology, he says: 
 "In the history of man that which is human precedes, 
 chronologically, that which is divine. 'That was not 
 first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and 
 afterward that which is spiritual' Men are sinners 
 before they are made saints ; and they are philosophers 
 before they become theologians." And still more broad- 
 ly: ''Christianity comes down from heaven by a su- 
 pernatural revelation, but it finds an existing state of 
 human culture into which it enters and begins to exert 
 its transforming power. Usually it overmasters that 
 culture, but in some instances it is temporarily over- 
 mastered by it." (Hist, of Christian Doctrine I, 29, 30.) 
 It was remarked above that Theology is not the prod- 
 uct of Civilization. It might however be shown, and it 
 would be an interesting and profitable study in Biblical 
 Theology, to show that civilization has largely furnished 
 the moulds of theologic truth as originally presented in 
 the Word of God. Simply by way of illustration I will 
 give two instances, one from the Old Testament, and one 
 from the New. It is well known what an important 
 place the idea of the family fills in the Old Testament. 
 It lies at the basis of the whole doctrine of the Cove- 
 nants. It is an essential element in the conception of 
 the Church and of its sacraments. It is a conspicuous 
 feature of the doctrine of representative responsibility, 
 in the Old Testament representation of these great the- 
 ologic truths. Now the view of the family which un- 
 derlies this whole department of Theology is pre-emi- 
 nently a product of the ancient, and in particular of the 
 patriarchal civilization. Sir H. Maine says : "The unit 
 of ancient society was the Family, of modern socie- 
 
64 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 ty the Individual. We must be prepared to find in 
 Ancient Law all the consequences of this difference. . . 
 Above all, . . it takes a view of life wholly unlike any 
 which appears in developed jurisprudence. Corporations 
 never die, and accordingly primitive law considers the 
 entities with which it deals, that is, the patriarchal or 
 family groups, as perpetual and inextinguishable. This 
 view is closely allied to the peculiar aspect under which 
 in very ancient times, moral attributes present them- 
 selves. The moral elevation and moral debasement of 
 the individual appear to be confounded with the merits 
 and offenses of the group to which the individual be- 
 longs. If the community sins, its guilt is much more 
 than the sum of the offenses committed by its members ; 
 the crime is a corporate act, and extends in its conse- 
 quences to many more persons than have shared in its 
 actual perpetration. If on the other hand, the individ- 
 ual is conspicuously guilty, it is his children, his kins- 
 folk, his tribesmen, or his fellow-citizens who suffer with 
 him, and sometimes for him. It thus happens that the 
 ideas of moral responsibility and retribution often seem 
 to be more clearly reahzed at very ancient than at more 
 advanced periods, for as the family group is immortal, 
 amd its liability to punishment indefinite, the primitive 
 mind is not perplexed by the questions which become 
 troublesome as soon as the individual is conceived as 
 altogether separate from the group." (Ancient Law, 
 pp. 121-123.) 
 
 It may be said accordingly that the whole Old Tes- 
 tament Theology in the direction just now indicated 
 received its mould in the Patriarchal System, in the 
 thoughts, feelings, associations, and customs which in- 
 hered in that system, the Holy Ghost, as I believe, in- 
 spiring the use thus made of that mould. And this, 
 let me add, incidentally furnishes a strong and valid 
 
CIVILIZATION AND DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 65 
 
 argument for the antiquity of the Pentateuch as against 
 the theories of Kuenen and his school, which would 
 bring down these books, on which the patriarchal im- 
 press is so vivid, into a period when such an impress 
 would "have been impossible. A more stupendous anach- 
 ronism Kuenenism itself has never imagined. Another 
 instance out of the New Testament. We all know 
 what a significant and precious feature of the Pauline 
 Theology is the doctrine of Adoption. But this con- 
 ception, if so high an authority as the historian Merivale 
 be accepted, must have come to the Apostle out of the 
 Roman Civilization. "Once more," says Merivale, **I 
 would remark the interesting analogy St. Paul suggests 
 in describing our relation as believers to our heavenly 
 Father, as that of sons by adoption. The process of 
 legal adoption, by which the chosen heir became en- 
 titled through the performance of certain stated ce're- 
 monies, the execution of certain formulas, not only to 
 the reversion of the property, but to the civil status, to 
 the burdens as well as the rights of the adopted — be- 
 came, as it were, his other self, one with him, identified 
 with him : — this too is a Roman principle peculiar at 
 this time to the Romans, unknown I believe to the 
 Greeks, unknown to all appearance to the Jews, as it 
 certainly is not found in the legislation of Moses, nor 
 mentioned anywhere as a usage among the children of 
 the elder covenant. We have ourselves but a faint 
 conception of the force with which such an illustration 
 would speak to one familiar with the Roman practice; 
 how it would serve to impress upon him the assurance 
 that the adopted son of God becomes in a peculiar 
 and intimate sense, one with the heavenly Father, one 
 in essence and in spirit, though not in flesh and blood." 
 (See further Merivale, Civilization of the Roman Empire, 
 Lecture iv. pp. 98 seq.) 
 
66 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Here again the Roman Law furnishes the external 
 mould of the spiritual truth revealed to the Apostle 
 by the Holy Ghost. So of Heirship, Tutelage, Re- 
 demption, Testation and other important facts of 
 Revelation ; the formal element in these conceptions 
 was largely furnished by the civilization of the day. 
 
 But as we pass on to Theology proper as a human 
 development the influence of civilization becomes more 
 definite and decisive. Without attempting anything 
 like an exhaustive classification of the modifications in- 
 troduced by civilization, which would require a volume — 
 let me single out a few of the more significant illustra- 
 tions which have suggested themselves in a somewhat 
 hasty consideration of the subject. 
 
 On the very threshold of the question, we encounter 
 the fact of Race, so important in producing the varieties 
 of civilization. The influence of Race in the production 
 of various types of Theology is universally recognized. 
 Dr. Shedd, for example, in common with all historians 
 of doctrine, speaks of a Grecian anthropology, and of 
 a Latin anthropology. Milman, in the Introduction of 
 his great work et passim, makes mention of an Oriental 
 Christianity, a Greek Christianity, a Latin Christianity, 
 a Teutonic Christianity. 
 
 The following are some of the expressions he uses: 
 * ' Christianity was almost from the first a Greek religion. " 
 ** Oriental influences even from the remoter East, 
 worked into its doctrine, and into its system." ''Greek 
 Christianity could not but be affected both in its doc- 
 trinal progress, and in its polity, by its Greek origin." 
 ** Greek Christianity was insatiably inquisitive, spec- 
 ulative. Confident in the inexhaustible copiousness and 
 the fine precision of its language, it endured no limitation 
 to its curious investigations. As each great question 
 was settled or worn out, it was still ready to propose 
 
<:IVILIZATI0N AND DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. ^1 
 
 new one^.*' *'0n most speculative points this [Latin] 
 Theology had left to the Greek controversialists, to 
 argue out the endless transcendental questions of re- 
 ligion, and contented herself with resolutely embracing 
 the results, which she fixed in her inflexible theory of 
 doctrine. The only controversy which violently dis- 
 turbed the Western Church, was the practical one, on 
 which the East looked almost with indifference, the 
 origin and motive principle of human action, grace and 
 free will. This from Augustine to Luther and Janse- 
 nius, was the interminable, still reviving problem." 
 
 "The characteristic of Latin Christianity was that of 
 the old Latin world — a firm and even obstinate adhe- 
 rence to legal form, whether of traditionary usage or 
 written statute ; the strong assertion of, and the sworn 
 subordination to, authority. It was the Roman Empire 
 again extended over Europe by an universal code and 
 a provincial government ; by a hierarchy of religious 
 praetors, or proconsuls," etc. ''Latin Christianity 
 maintained its unshaken dominion until what I venture 
 to call Teutonic Christianity, aided by the invention of 
 paper and of printing, asserted its independence, threw 
 off the great mass of traditionary religion, and out of 
 the Bible summoned forth a more simple faith." 
 
 ** Christianity became a vast influence, working irregu- 
 larly on individual minds, rather than a great social 
 system, etc. Its multiplicity and variety rather than its 
 unity was the manifestation of its life," etc. And in a 
 note he calls attention to the fact on which Macaulay 
 had already animadverted, ''that wherever the Teutonic 
 is the groundwork of the language, the Reformation 
 either is, or has been dominant ; wherever Latin, Latin 
 Christianity has retained its ascendency." (Latin Chris- 
 tianity I., pp. 19 seq.) 
 
 Professor Kellogg anticipates important modifications 
 
68 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS, 
 
 of current theological systems from the Christianized 
 intellect of the Hindus and other Orientals. 
 
 When we pass on to the influence of Government and 
 Social Organization we find striking illustrations of this. 
 Who can fail to recognize the deep and lasting impres- 
 sion which has been made both on the reason and the 
 imagination of Christendom by the vast colossus of the 
 Roman Empire ? Take, as one trace of it, the Civitas 
 Dei, of Augustine, which Milman describes as ''the 
 first complete Christian Theology," (History of Christi- 
 anity, Book HI., Chap. lo,) and which, in Dr. Shedd's 
 judgment, "merits the study of the modern theologian 
 more than any other single treatise of the Ancient 
 Church." No one can read this "funeral oration of 
 the ancient society, and gratulatory panegyric on the 
 birth of the new" without feeling at once how pro- 
 foundly the vision of the Iron Empire had fascinated 
 the imagination of that extraordinary genius, who, more 
 than any other uninspired thinker, has shaped the theo- 
 logical thought of the centuries. Nor is it on the Cath- 
 olic Theology alone that Rome has left its trace. Ma- 
 theson, in his "Growth of the Spirit of Christianity," 
 describes its influence in another direction. "The 
 child-Hfe of Chistianity," he says, "had looked upon 
 the Roman Empire, and had seen in it a grand ideal of 
 earthly greatness. It beheld, in the Empire of Rome, 
 what the followers of Confucius had beheld in the Em- 
 pire of China — an image of changeless power, incapable 
 of increase, or of diminution, unable to advance with 
 ages, or to adapt itself to the exigencies of men — a 
 power which was weak through its very absoluteness. 
 
 Hence to the child-life of Christianity, the grandest thing 
 in the world became the thought of changelessness ; of 
 an existence so self-contained and so self-sufficient, that 
 it never desired to pass out of itself. Its conception of 
 
CIVILIZATION AND DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 69 
 
 God became the conception of a Roman Emperor in the 
 heavens, exalted above all his followers, as the master 
 is exalted above the servant, and only related to his 
 creatures as he who commands is related to those who 
 obey. The God in whom man lives, and moves, and 
 has his being, passed away from the heart of Christen- 
 dom, and in his room there was enthroned in that heart 
 the image of a God in the air, separate from His works, 
 isolated from His creatures, solitary by His very change- 
 lessness, and changeless by His perpetual solitude. 
 This is the creed which has come down to us by the 
 name of Sabellianism — the worship of a will that is above 
 every will, and of a power that can not bend." (Vol. 
 I., p. 208.) He finds a correspondent trace of the same 
 influence in Arianism. Speaking of the influence ex- 
 erted upon Christianity by the Pagan world, he remarks : 
 "Hitherto that influence had been chiefly ritual, and 
 this, as we have seen, was not of necessity demoraliz- 
 ing ; but it was now extending itself into the sphere of 
 theology. We have said that the creed of Sabellianism 
 was an exaggerated Roman Empire ; it was in strict 
 conformity with this, that the Christ of Arianism should 
 be an exaggerated Roman minister. Such is indeed 
 the thought which lies behind the system, — the idea 
 of a man who is the favorite of his sovereign, and who, 
 through the favor, has been exalted to the similitude of 
 a king ; who has been commissioned to act as his mas- 
 ter's deputy, to issue his laws, to receive his tribute, even 
 to punish and to pardon in his name. The prevalence 
 of such a belief demonstrates how completely the mind 
 of Christendom had been Romanized — how entirely the 
 pagan ideal had taken possession of the heart of Christi- 
 anity." (Ibid, pp. 210, 211, and cf p. 235.) 
 
 Most decisive of all is the influence of Roman Im- 
 perialism on the Papal development of Christianity. 
 
yO LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 This is seen most conspicuously of course in the orga- 
 nization of the Church. But it has also exerted an im- 
 portant modification on its doctrine. Caesarism disci- 
 plined itself in the Papacy. The Papacy is maintained 
 by the principle of authority. The logical sequel of 
 authority is scholasticism, and the entire structure of 
 Romish Theology. 
 
 In this connection I may refer to the influence of 
 Law, and in particular of the Roman Jurisprudence on 
 Theology. Merivale says of the ancient Roman Law: 
 ''The law of Rome was already a pedagogue, leading 
 the nations unto Christ, even before Christ Himself had 
 appeared in the world and held up to its admiration the 
 principles of His CathoHc Jurisprudence." (Conversion 
 of the Rom. Empire, Lect. IV. p. 94.) Sir Henry Maine 
 says: "Politics, Moral Philosophy, and even Theology, 
 found in the Roman Law not only a vehicle of expression, 
 but a nidus in which some of their profoundest inquiries 
 were nourished into maturity." " To the cultivated citi- 
 zen of Africa, of Spain, of Gaul, and of Northern Italy, 
 it was jurisprudence and jurisprudence only, which stood 
 in the place of poetry and history, of philosophy and 
 science. So far then from there being anything myste- 
 rious in the palpably legal complexions of the earliest 
 efforts of Western thought, it would rather be astonish- 
 ing if it had assumed any other hue. I can only express 
 my surprise at the scantiness of the attention which has 
 been given to the difference between Western ideas and 
 Eastern caused by the presence of a new ingredient. It 
 is precisely because the influence of jurisprudence be- 
 gins to be powerful, that the foundation of Constanti- 
 nople, and the subsequent separation of the Western 
 Empire from the Eastern are epochs in philosophical 
 history. Anybody who knows what Roman jurispru- 
 dence is as actually practiced by the Romans, and who 
 
CIVILIZATION AND DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. /I 
 
 will observe in what characteristics the earliest Western 
 philosophy and theology differ from the phases of that 
 which preceded them, may be safely left to pronounce 
 what was the new element which had begun to pervade 
 and govern speculation. The part of Roman Law which 
 has had most extensive influence on foreign subjects of 
 inquiry has been the Law of Obligation, or what comes 
 nearly to the same thing, of Contract and Delict." He 
 shows the influence of the Roman Law in this particu- 
 lar on political and moral philosophy, especially in the 
 Catholic Church. 
 
 Again he says : ' * Few things in the history of spec- 
 ulation are more impressive than the fact that no Greek- 
 speaking people has ever felt itself seriously perplexed 
 by the great question of Free-Will and Necessity. I do 
 not pretend to offer any summary explanation of this, 
 but it does not seem an irrelevant suggestion that nei- 
 ther the Greek, nor any society speaking and thinking 
 in their language ever showed the smallest capacity for 
 producing a philosophy of law. Legal science is a Ro- 
 man creation, and the problem of free-will arises when 
 we contemplate a metaphysical conception under a legal 
 aspect. . . . But the problem of Free-Will was theolog- 
 ical before it became philosophical, and if its terms 
 have been affected by jurisprudence, it will be because 
 jurisprudence has made itself felt in Theology. The 
 great point of inquiry which is here suggested has never 
 been satisfactorily elucidated. What has to be deter- 
 mined is whether jurisprudence has ever served as the 
 medium through which theological principles have been 
 viewed; whether by supplying a peculiar language, a 
 peculiar mode of reasoning, and a peculiar solution of 
 many of the problems of life, it has ever opened new 
 channels in which theological speculation could flow out 
 and expand itself." 
 
72 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 I can not now cite in full the answer given to this 
 question. Suffice it to say that in this eminent writer's 
 judgment the interest shown by the Western Church in 
 the doctrines of '^ the nature of Sin and its transmission 
 by inheritance — the debt owed by man to its vicarious 
 satisfaction — the necessity and sufficiency of the Atone- 
 ment — above all the apparent antagonism between Free- 
 Will and the Divine Providence " — is to be "accounted 
 for by the fact that in passing from the East to the 
 West theological speculation had passed from a climate 
 of Greek metaphysics to a climate of Roman law. For 
 some centuries before the controversies rose into over- 
 whelming importance, all the intellectual activity of the 
 Western Romans had been expended on jurisprudence 
 exclusively. It was impossible that they should not se- 
 lect from the questions indicated by the Christian rec- 
 ords those which had some affinity with the order of 
 speculations to which they were accustomed, and that 
 their manner of dealing with them should borrow some- 
 thing from their forensic habits. Almost any body who 
 has knowledge enough of Roman law to appreciate the 
 Roman penal system, the Roman theory of the obliga- 
 tions established by Contract or Delict, the Roman view 
 of Debts, and of the modes of incurring, extinguishing, 
 and transmitting them, the Roman notion of the con- 
 tinuance of individual existence by Universal Succession, 
 may be trusted to say whence arose the frame of mind 
 to which the problems of Western theology proved so 
 congenial, whence came the phraseology in which these 
 problems were stated, and whence the description of 
 reasoning employed in their solution." (Ancient Law, 
 Chap. IX.) 
 
 Note that here the influence of civilization has been 
 to emphasize, or, as Maine expresses it, to ** select" 
 those elements of theologic truth as set forth in Scripture 
 
CIVILIZATION AND DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 73 
 
 in which the conceptions of Justice, Penalty, Law, Gov- 
 ernment are most conspicuous. The same may be said 
 of the views of Hugo Grotius, no less distinguished as 
 a jurist than as a theologian, the influence of whose 
 discussions on modern theology it would be interesting 
 to consider. 
 
 Feudalism is another important institution of a former 
 civilization, the influence of which on Theology may 
 be traced in various directions. It had much to do 
 for example with consoHdating the Roman hierarchy, 
 confirming the principle of authority by enforcing the 
 vassalage of conscience and will to ecclesiastical lords. 
 Out of this again has grown the tendency, so charac- 
 teristic of a feudalistic Church organization to establish 
 in practice an esoteric theology for the ruling class, 
 and an exoteric theology, largely tinctured with super- 
 stition, for the masses. 
 
 A different influence of Feudalism works through the 
 complexity of social structure which it introduces, and 
 the consequent necessity of preserving the balance of 
 classes and interests. The most conspicuous example 
 of this tendency is England, which has been called the 
 Herculaneum of Feudalism. The English Constitution 
 is a growth, the result of a series of adjustments in the 
 effort to maintain the social equilibrium. In like man- 
 ner Anglicanism, the typical Anglican Theology, is 
 largely a structure of theological expedients and com- 
 promises. 
 
 The same causes which have given to the civil consti- 
 tution its agglomerative character have in consequence 
 of the union of Church and State, and of the character- 
 istics and habits of the English people, made the An- 
 glican Theology a dogmatic agglomeration. The hie- 
 rarchism of Laud, the Puritanism of Hooper, the Calvin- 
 ism of Cranmer, the Arminianism of Jackson, the Mod- 
 
74 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 eratism of Jewell, the Latitudlnarianlsm of Chilling- 
 worth, the Platonism of Cudworth, the Utilitarianism of 
 Paley — all have deposited their typ^al forms of thought 
 in this great Herculaneum. 
 
 But leaving the Past, let us come to the considera- 
 tion of theological influences which we may more distinct- 
 ly recognize in the civilization of the Present. And here 
 I shall be constrained to compress the discussion into a 
 mere outline of points. 
 
 One marked characteristic of civilization, as we know 
 it, is the stimulus which it gives to enterprise. This 
 produces a spirit of hopefulness. Men look forward to 
 the Future, and derive their inspiration largely from it. 
 In times of stagnation Christianity becomes largely a 
 Religion of the Past. The Golden Age has come and 
 gone. The Ideal of Christianity lies in the same tomb 
 wdth the Ages of Faith, Tradition rules the belief of 
 men, prescription stereotypes their worship. Not so 
 when civilization excites to activity and enterprise. The 
 Ideal of Christianity, as of humanity, lies in a glorified 
 future. This necessarily affects Theology. The pres- 
 tige of traditional dogma wanes. The effort is made, 
 consciously, or unconsciously, to bring the faith of the 
 intellect into harmony with the living interests and as- 
 pirations of the present. 
 
 Again, the commercial activities, the territorial dis- 
 coveries, the international intercourse, and the enlarged 
 acquaintance with various types of religion which civil- 
 ization develops, influence theology in more than one 
 direction. The most marked effect is seen in the in- 
 creased culture of a missionary theology, a theology, 
 to-wit, possessed of these characteristics: i. A heartier 
 and more practical recognition of the universalism of 
 Christianity; and 2. The effort to discover and make 
 prominent those characteristics of Christian Truth 
 
CIVILIZATION AND DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 75 
 
 which are needed to supply the vacua, and to meet 
 the aspirations of heathendom. The modern study of 
 Comparative Religion may be referred to as an out- 
 growth of the wider outlook afforded by the extension 
 of international intercourse. Closely associated with 
 this is the enlarged sense of humanity, the intensified 
 conception of the brotherhood of the race. Not long 
 ago Ecce Homo explained the secret of the Christ to be 
 the enthusiasm of humanity. Accepting this — not by 
 any means as the whole truth, but as a valuable frac- 
 tion of it — we may be prepared to find that any 
 revival of the enthusiasm of humanity will lead to a 
 more vivid appreciation of the Divine Humanity of 
 Christ. 
 
 A notable fraction of the theology of our day has 
 been the greater prominence given to Christology, and 
 the more loving emphasis placed on the mediation of 
 The Man Christ Jesus. 
 
 It is a striking remark of Matheson's that Art pre- 
 pared the way for the Reformation by ''bringing into 
 prominence that element which had been long neg- 
 lected, the vision of Christ's humanity: it was thus to 
 open from the heart of man a door of direct commun- 
 ion with the life of God." (Spirit of Christianity, 
 Chapter xxxvii.) Herein Art interprets the yearning 
 of a higher civihzation for One who shall realize the 
 perfect Idea of Humanity. 
 
 Civilization tends still further to increase the material 
 well-being of the race. It introduces prosperity and 
 luxury. It multiplies the means of enjoyment and 
 self-indulgence, and secures a large immunity from the 
 temporal hardships and ills of a less perfect social 
 organization. The effects of such prosperity on char- 
 acter are complex. One effect will be greater refine- 
 ment and delic'acy of sensibility. As Lecky says ; 
 
*j6 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 "Luxury is the parent of art, the pledge of peace, the 
 creation of those refined tastes and deHcate suscepti- 
 biHties that have done so much to soften the friction 
 of life." This temper will naturally tend to soften also 
 the rigors of those theologies in which the pressure of 
 an iron logic tends to crush out the voices of the heart. 
 No one can doubt that Calvinism grows sweeter and 
 gentler with the years. 
 
 On the other side luxury or even physical well-being 
 tends to the enervation of manhood, and the relaxation 
 of fibre both of intellect and will. It tends to effemi- 
 nacy, sentimentality, cowardice. As John Stuart Mill 
 says: ''There is in the more opulent classes of modern 
 civilized communities much more of the amiable and 
 humane, and much less of the heroic. . . . There has 
 crept over the refined classes, over the whole class of 
 gentlemen in England a moral effeminacy, an inapti- 
 tude -for every kind of struggle. . . . This torpidity 
 and cowardice, as a general characteristic, is new in the 
 world ; but (modified by the different temperaments of 
 different nations), it is a natural consequence of the 
 progress of civilization." (Dissertations and Discourses 
 I., pp. 206-7.) In Theology this process will natural- 
 ly show itself in an increase of sentimentality, an unman- 
 ly shrinking from the sterner fractions of Divine Truth. 
 Hence, in large measure the prevalence in modern times 
 of that emasculated Theology which flatters itself with 
 the name of Liberalism. 
 
 Not a few of the characteristic features of modern 
 CiviHzation are due to the growth of democratic in- 
 stitutions, and the prevalence of the spirit of equal- 
 ity and individualism. De Tocqueville has to some 
 extent endeavored to trace the influence of these 
 agencies, as represented in American Democracy, on 
 Religion and Faith. The following are some of his 
 
CIVILIZATION AND DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 'JJ 
 
 conclusions which I will give as briefly as possible, and 
 substantially in his own words. 
 
 a. In a democracy the public has a singular power, 
 for it does not persuade to certain opinions, but enforces 
 them by a sort of enormous pressure of the minds of all 
 upon the reason of each. Everybody in the United States 
 adopts great numbers of theories upon public trust; 
 and if we look to it very narrowly, it will be perceived 
 that religion herself holds sway there much less as a 
 doctrine of revelation then as a commonly received 
 opinion. Dem. in Amen ll., il. In other words 
 there is danger in a democracy, lest the tyranny of the 
 majority should surreptitiously substitute itself for the 
 authority of truth. 
 
 h. At times of general cultivation and equality, the 
 human mind consents only with reluctance to adopt 
 dogmatic opinions, and feels their necessity acutely 
 only in spiritual matters. Ibid. II., p. 25. The influ- 
 ence of democracy then will be to restrict dogmatic 
 Theology strictly to its own sphere, to exclude all ex- 
 traneous elements. 
 
 c. Democracy favors the idea of the unity of man- 
 kind, and this idea constantly leads men back to the 
 idea of the unity of the Creator, and the oneness of 
 the way to heaven (as opposed to the tracing of a thou- 
 sand private roads to heaven). Ibid,, p. 26. This 
 would seem to imply that in Theology, democracy tends 
 to emphasize the absolute impartiality of the Divine 
 dealings with men, and to assign fundamental signifi- 
 cance to this in its theodicy. 
 
 d. Nothing is more repugnant to the human mind, 
 in an age of equality, than the idea of subjection to 
 forms. Ibid., p. 28. It follows that so far forth, dem- 
 ocracy will prove favorable to simplicity, that type of 
 
7S LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 faith and worship which it is the spirit and aim at least 
 of Puritanism to reaHze and conserve. 
 
 e. De Tocqueville beheves that in democratic times 
 the human mind will feel attracted towards Pantheism. 
 Ibid., 35-36. His reasoning on this head is more subtle, 
 however, than satisfying. 
 
 /. In proportion as castes disappear, and the classes 
 of society approximate, as new facts arise, as new 
 truths are brought to light, as ancient opinions are 
 dissipated, and others take their place, the image of an 
 ideal but always fugitive perfection presents itself to 
 the human mind. Ibid., p. 37 seq. It follows that 
 that type of Theology will prove most acceptable to 
 democratic communities which most fully recognizes 
 the indefinite perfectibility of man. 
 
 g. One of the distinguishing characteristics of a dem- 
 ocratic period is the taste which all men then have for 
 easy success and present enjoyment. This occurs in 
 the pursuits of the intellect as well as in all others. 
 They would fain succeed brilliantly and at once, but 
 they would be dispensed from great efforts to obtain 
 success. Ibid., p. 19. On this side the theology of 
 democracies seems liable to be shallow, superficial, brill- 
 iant rather than solid, a pyrotechnic blaze of novelties, 
 rather than a constellation of eternal verities. 
 
 Again, Civilization as involving the growth of equality 
 and individualism, and the more general dissemination 
 of culture, enlarges the theological influence of the laity. 
 While education was mainly confined to the clergy, 
 laymen were content to accept with docility the The- 
 ological teachings of the priesthood. The clergy were 
 the experts, the professional exponents of Theology. 
 The cobblers of secular life must stick to their last. 
 Now all this is changed. Theology is no longer a 
 monopoly. One man is as good as another, and a 
 
CIVILIZATION AND DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 7^ 
 
 great deal better. All ways lead to Rome; all ques- 
 tions lead to Theology. 
 
 Tyndall discourses about the doctrine of Creation 
 Matthew Arnold writes on Literature and Dogma 
 Gladstone discusses the Course of Religious Thought 
 to say nothing of the hosts of lesser luminaries that 
 shed their lucubrations at every cross-roads. The effect 
 of all this will necessarily be two-fold. On the one 
 side Theology will be brought into closer contact wdth 
 the wider thought of the world. It will take cogni- 
 zance of the living issues of the day, the questions 
 which are burning in men's brains and hearts. It will 
 be lifted in a measure out of the ruts, liberated from 
 its conventional presentments, its stereotyped phrase- 
 ologies. Fresh combinations of truth will be effected ; 
 and in particular its practical adaptations will be more 
 fully developed. 
 
 On the other side we may look for an irruption of 
 crudities and superficialities. The caprices of individ- 
 ualism will set at defiance the solemn consensus of the 
 Church Catholic. The abandonment of forms and con- 
 fessions consecrated by the baptismal fire of a thousand 
 battles for God's truth, and fragrant with the faith and 
 devotion of centuries may occasion a drift into theolog- 
 ical communism and anarchy. Idiosyncrasies and ex- 
 travagancies will command a premium. The Athenian 
 appetite for novelties will enlarge the market for spices 
 from Arabys unblest in place of the Bread of Life. 
 
 Again — Civilization through its commercial and in- 
 dustrial activities begets a practical habit of mind. Its 
 temper, if not its philosophy, is utilitarian. It judges 
 everything by its values and results. It looks with con- 
 tempt on doctrinaires and theorists. It magnifies utili- 
 ties above principles, practical ethics above speculative 
 dogmatics. ''The industrial character," says Lecky, 
 
80 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 "is eminently practical. It leads men to care very lit- 
 tle about principles, and very much about results ; and 
 this habit has at least a tendency to act upon theolog- 
 ical judgments." (Hist, of Rat. II., p. 310.) In its 
 remoter issues the tendency would find expression in 
 the complete secularization of thought and life, which 
 of course would be the death of Theology. But when 
 Theology does not succumb to secularism it is still liable 
 to be affected by it. It is in danger of depreciating its 
 transcendental and supernatural factors. In the effort to 
 be practical it will be in danger of drawing more upon 
 the world of society for its material than on the Word 
 of God. In getting up a Theology for the market place 
 it may overlook the Theology of the closet. In the en- 
 deavor to fill itself with plenty of human nature and the 
 life that now is, it may leave out what is represented by 
 the terms God and Eternity. — ''The American Minis- 
 ters of the Gospel," says De Tocqueville, ''do not at- 
 tempt to draw or to fix all the thoughts of man upon 
 the life to come ; they are willing to surrender a portion 
 of his heart to the cares of the present ; seeming to con- 
 sider the cares of this world as important, though sec- 
 ondary objects." (II. p. 31.) 
 
 This practical tendency indeed is not necessarily or 
 wholly unfavorable. While Theology has mainly to do 
 with truth in its more general, and what I may call its 
 transcendental relations, it has also a most important 
 bearing on life and character. A Theology which did 
 not make men better would be a lie and a curse. On 
 the contrary the Theology which i7i the long rim pro- 
 duces the highest manhood has every presumption in 
 its favor as the best Theology. It is an advantage 
 therefore to be suitably animated by the practical motive. 
 The Theology which while holding to the transcendental 
 pursues the useful, which realizes its mission as a vital- 
 
CIVILIZATION AND DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 8l 
 
 izing and energizing power, quickening the conscience, 
 purifying the affections, ennobHng, beautifying and beat- 
 ifying Hfe, will gain proportionately in inward fullness, 
 depth and symmetry. 
 
 Once more, the spirit of Civilization Is irenlc. Its ten- 
 dency is to harmonize interests, unite activities, concili- 
 ate opposites. It bears fruit in leagues, alliances, fede- 
 rations, congresses, points forward possibly to a " par- 
 liament of man, a federation of the world." It thus be- 
 gets a tolerant temper. Lecky has pointed out that the 
 secular influences of Civilization, pohtlcal combinations 
 and enthusiasms, the enlargement of civil and political 
 rights, national alliances, are adverse to sectarianism and 
 bigotry. (Hist, of Rationalism II, p. 143.) 
 
 So with commercial intercourse between members of 
 different creeds. **When men have once realized the 
 truth that no single sect possesses a monopoly, either 
 of virtues or abilities — when they have watched the 
 supporters of the most various opinions dogmatizing 
 with the same profound convictions, defending their be- 
 lief with the same energy and irradiating It with the 
 same spotless purity — when they have learned in some 
 degree to assume the standing point of different sects, 
 to perceive the aspect from which what they had once 
 deemed incongruous and absurd, seems harmonious and 
 coherent, and to observe how all the features of the 
 Intellectual landscape take their color from the prejudice 
 of education, and shift and vary according to the point 
 of view from which they are regarded — when, above 
 all, they have begun to revere and love for their moral 
 qualities those from whom they are separated by their 
 creed, their sense, both of the certainty and Importance 
 of their destructive tenets, will usually be Impaired, 
 and their intolerance towards others proportionately 
 diminished." (Lecky, Hist, of Rat. II., 296.) 
 
82 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Under such influences Theology must of necessity 
 become irenic. It will tend towards Catholicism, rather 
 than sectarianism ; it will become cosmopolitan rather 
 than insular. Per contra, there is a liability on this side 
 to indefiniteness. Like a political platform it may be- 
 come so comprehensive as to be meaningless. The great 
 doctrinal discriminations on which so much often de- 
 pends may be obscured ; a hazy, poetic sentimentality 
 may be encouraged; the "vague Theology," which a 
 Chicago pulpit glorifies, may prevail, in whose thin 
 nebulosity Christianity itself may disappear. 
 
 There are other points which might be noted, but I 
 must stop. I will close with the bare mention of a few 
 inferences. 
 
 1. Theology like the world, is moving. It can not 
 stand still. The forces which are ever acting on it 
 make this impossible. As Dr. Shedd says: ''Unceas- 
 ing motion from a given point through several stadia 
 to a final terminus, is a characteristic, belonging as in- 
 separably to the history of Man, or the history of 
 Doctrine, as to that of any physical evolution what- 
 ever." (Hist, of Doctrine I., p. 8.) 
 
 2. This onward movement is not one of uniform 
 progress. On the whole the movement is an advance, 
 but in its particular stages we shall find deflection, or 
 even retrogression. The influences of an advancing 
 civilization, as we have seen, are complex, generally 
 favorable to true progress, but not seldom unfavorable. 
 
 3. It is the part of Christian Teachers to know the 
 signs of the times, to watch the tendencies which are 
 at work, to counteract such as are injurious, to en- 
 courage those which are beneficial, and in harmony 
 with the normal development of Christian doctrine. 
 
 4. It behooves them to cultivate that wise conserva- 
 tism which will protect Doctrine against unauthorized 
 
CIVILIZATION AND DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 83 
 
 innovation, together with that wise progressivism which 
 will save it from stagnation. The communism which 
 respects nothing, and the Bourbonism which learns 
 nothing, are alike to be eschewed. 
 
 5. It becomes necessary to inquire into the theolog- 
 ical legacies of former civilizations that we may see 
 how truly they represent the Scripture proportion of 
 faith, and how far they are suited to the peculiar re- 
 quirements of the present 
 
 6. The only sure criterion of doctrinal Truth amidst 
 the fluctuations of History is the Word of God. 
 The nearer Theology keeps to the Bible as its base 
 line, the more it centers itself in Christ, the personal 
 Logos, the sounder will be its contents, the truer will 
 be its form, the healthier will be its growth, and the 
 better prepared will it be to meet, and to be suitably 
 affected by whatever influences may operate upon it. 
 
 November 8. 1880. 
 
IV. 
 
 FISKE ON THE DESTINY OF MAN. 
 
 We do not regard it as the function of this Friday 
 evening Lectureship to pass the universe under review. 
 There will appear however, from time to time, move- 
 ments, facts, utterances, so notable and significant, 
 especially in their bearings on religious and theological 
 thought, that we shall do well to consider them. 
 
 The other day I chanced to pick up a little book, 
 just out, to which I have concluded to call your 
 attention. The author is John Fiske, a gentleman of 
 some hterary and scientific fame, of whom you have 
 all heard. The title is "The Destiny of Man, viewed 
 in the Light of His Origin." It grew out of an ad- 
 dress, the past summer, before the Concord School of 
 Philosophy. 
 
 As Christian thinkers, we cannot help being con- 
 cerned with the subject under discussion. For several 
 years past the theory of evolution has been a question 
 of living interest. We have been asking : is there any 
 truth in it? If so, how much? Where does it he? 
 How does it affect our theology? 
 
 During the past few weeks we have seen the South- 
 ern Presbyterian Church agitated by the question, in 
 connection with the instruction in one of their theolo- 
 gical seminaries. We know not how soon, in one form 
 (84) 
 
FISKE ON THE DESTINY OF MAN. 85 
 
 or another, the issue may be upon us. The Higher 
 Criticism excitement has pretty well died out. Our 
 ecclesiastical Don Quixotes, who started out so valiantly 
 on their somewhat spavined but fire-breathing Rosinan- 
 tes, have discovered nothing more formidable in that 
 part of the field than one or two windmills, rather long 
 in the arms, perhaps, but comparatively harmless. 
 They may find more exciting game in some Dr. Wood- 
 row, north of Mason and Dixon's line. Indeed, I 
 find that a brother professor in a [certain] seminary, 
 has found it prudent to put the notes of his theological 
 lectures at the service of one of the editorial watch- 
 dogs of orthodoxy. 
 
 This little book has some special points of interest. 
 The author, without being a great man, or a profound 
 thinker, is an accomplished scholar, and an able writer. 
 He is an ardent admirer of Darwin, and an enthusiastic 
 disciple of Herbert Spencer. He has come to be the 
 recognized exponent of Spencer's philosophy, in our 
 country. And it must be said of him, that he is not 
 a mere echo of his master. While his forte is expo- 
 sition, he is still an independent expositor. Mr. Darwin 
 has complimented him by saying, * * I never in my life 
 read ,so lucid an exposition" (and therefore, so lucid a 
 thinker). 
 
 The Saturday Review characterizes his work on Cos- 
 mic Philosophy as the most important contribution, 
 made by America, to the evolutionary philosophy. 
 The London Academy goes further, designating it as 
 the most important contribution yet made by America 
 to philosophical literature." The New York Graphic 
 puts him on the same plane of philosophical eminence 
 with Jonathan Edwards. While we may not concur 
 in the very high estimate of him which these com- 
 mendations imply ; we may at least assume that Mr, 
 
86 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Fiske is a competent witness to the positions of Dar- 
 winism and Spencerianism. 
 
 On evolution, he is an authority. He has made his 
 own contribution to the theory, especially in the de- 
 partment of sociology. 
 
 His position is in some respects unique and interest- 
 ing. While a radical and thorough-going evolutionist, 
 he refuses to be a materialist. How far he is con- 
 sistent will be seen presently. The fact remains that 
 he rejects the materialistic view of man as to his origin, 
 his nature, and his destiny. 
 
 His position is also peculiar, in that, while as a 
 Spencerian, he is constrained to be theoretically an 
 Agnostic, yet, he holds steadfastly to the Kantian 
 trilogy : God, Conscience and Immortality. 
 
 This little book may be viewed, accordingly, as in 
 some respects the last word of the best evolution. It 
 represents the nearest approach which a naturahstic 
 evolution has made as yet to the theistic position. It 
 almost reads like an overture of peace to the party of 
 faith, and the adherents of a spiritualistic philosophy. 
 As such it challenges our scrutiny, and it certainly 
 merits a fair, respectful, discriminating examination. 
 
 As regards the evolutionary teachings of the book, 
 they are as thorough and radical as the most extreme 
 evolutionists could desire. "As we examine the rec- 
 ords of past life upon our globe," says Mr. Fiske, 
 "and study the mutual relations of the living things 
 that still remain, it appears that the higher forms of 
 life — including man himself — are the modified descend- 
 ants of lower forms. Zoologically speaking, man can 
 no longer be regarded as a creature apart by himself. 
 We cannot erect an order on purpose to contain him, 
 as Cuvier tried to do ; we cannot even make a separate 
 family for him. Man is not only a vertebrate, a mam-* 
 
FISKE ON THE DESTINY OF MAN. 87 
 
 mal, and a primate, but he belongs, as a genus, to the 
 catarrhine family of apes. And just as lions, leopards, 
 and lynxes — different genera of the cat family — are 
 descended from a common stock of carnivora, back to 
 which we may also trace the pedigrees of dogs, hyenas, 
 bears and seals ; so the various genera of platyrrhine 
 and catarrhine apes, including man, are doubtless de- 
 scended from a common stock of primates, back to 
 which we may also trace the converging pedigrees of 
 monkeys and lemurs, until their ancestry becomes in- 
 distinguishable from that of rabbits and squirrels. Such 
 is the conclusion to which the scientific world has come 
 within a quarter of a century from the pubHcation of 
 Mr. Darwin's 'Origin of Species,' and there is no 
 more reason for supposing that this conclusion will ever 
 be gainsaid than for supposing that the Copernican 
 Astronomy will sometimes be overthrown, and the 
 concentric spheres of Dante's heaven re-instated in the 
 minds of men." (p. 20/".) Again, on the argument 
 from design, he says, (p. 22/), ''Those countless 
 adaptations of means to ends in nature, which since 
 the time of Voltaire and Paley we have been accus- 
 tomed to cite as evidences of creative design, have 
 received at. the hands of Mr. Darwin a very different 
 interpretation. The lobster's powerful claw, the butter- 
 fly's gorgeous tints, the rose's delicious fragrance, the 
 architectural instinct of the bee, the astonishing struc- 
 ture of . the orchid, are no longer explained as the 
 results of contrivance. That simple but wasteful pro- 
 cess of survival of the fittest, through which such mar- 
 vellous things have come into being, has little about it 
 that is analogous to the ingenuity of human art. The 
 infinite and eternal Power which is thus revealed in the 
 physical life of the universe seems in no wise akin to 
 the human soul, ' The idea of beneficent purpose seems 
 
88 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 for the moment to be excluded from nature, and a 
 blind process, known as Natural Selection, is the deity 
 that slumbers not nor sleeps. Reckless of good and 
 evil, it brings forth at once the mother's tender love 
 for her infant, and the horrible teeth of the ravenine 
 shark, and to its creative indifference the one is as good 
 as the other. In spite of these appalling arguments, 
 the man of science, urged by the single-hearted pur- 
 pose to ascertain the truth, be the consequences what 
 they may, goes quietly on and finds that the terrible 
 theory must be adopted ; the fact of man's consanguin- 
 ity with dumb beasts must be admitted." 
 
 It will be noted that in the citation just given, "the 
 creative indifference " of the power of Natural Selec- 
 tion is spoken of. So throughout ' creation ' seems to 
 be with our author another word for * evolution,' the 
 production by secondary causes of new forms or results. 
 The difference between man and other animals, resolves 
 itself ultimately, we are taught, into a difference of 
 degree. His language is: "Not only in the world of 
 organic life, but throughout the known universe, the 
 doctrine of evolution regards differences in kind as due 
 to the gradual accumulation of differences in degree," 
 p. 35. And again, p. 53: "In the direct line of our 
 ancestry it only needed that the period of infancy 
 should be sufficiently prolonged, in order that a crea- 
 ture should at length appear, endowed with the teach- 
 ableness, the individuality, and the capacity for progress 
 which are the peculiar prerogatives of fully-developed 
 man." In the career of the mastodon, hipparion, sabre- 
 toothed lion, dryopithecus, and other phenomena of 
 the Miocene age we find "the germ of all that is pres- 
 ent in humanity." We have, somewhere, half-way 
 between .brute and man, a "half-human man." 
 
FISKE ON THE DESTINY OF MAN. 89 
 
 One chapter is devoted to physiological and psycho- 
 logical explanations of the dawning of consciousness ; and 
 in one passage (p. 96,) "the universal struggle for exist- 
 ence" is accredited with ''having succeeded in bringing 
 forth that consummate product of creative energy, the 
 Human Soul." 
 
 Elsewhere (p. 6^) we are told that "rudimentary 
 iuoral sentiments are clearly discernible in the highest 
 members of various Mammalian orders, and in all but 
 the lowest members of our own order." "The genesis 
 of the altruistic emotions " (p. 75) is referred to the 
 processes of "natural selection operating through the 
 lengthening of childhood." So far it might seem that 
 the most uncompromising evolutionist could ask for no 
 stronger or more positive statements of the character- 
 istic features of that philosophy. 
 
 On the other side, however, we note a number of 
 very significant modifications and concessions. P'or 
 one thing, we have the constant and reverent recog- 
 nition of the existence and agency of God. Again and 
 again, is God referred to as the First Cause — He is 
 recognized as Creator. 
 
 The question is asked (p. 114) "Are we to regard 
 the Creator's work as like that of a child, who builds 
 houses out of blocks, just for the pleasure of knocking 
 them down?" "The slow and subtle process of 
 evolution" is described as "the way in which God 
 makes things come to pass;" (p. 32.) Man is "the 
 chief among God's creatures " (p. 12). Mr. Fiske em- 
 phatically repudiates atheism and materialism. "Once 
 dethrone humanity," he says (p. 12/), "regard it as 
 a mere local incident in an endless and aimless series 
 of cosmical changes, and you arrive at a doctrine which, 
 under whatever specious name it may be veiled, is at 
 bottom neither more nor less than Atheism, On its 
 
go LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 metaphysical side, Atheism is the denial of anything 
 psychical in the universe outside of human conscious- 
 ness ; and it is almost inseparably associated with the 
 materialistic interpretation of human consciousness as 
 the ephemeral result of a fleeting collocation of par- 
 ticles of matter. Viewed upon this side, it is easy to 
 show that Atheism is very bad metaphysics, while the 
 materialism which goes with it is utterly condemned by 
 modern science. But our feeling toward Atheism goes 
 much deeper than the mere recognition of it as philosoph- 
 ically untrue. The mood in which we condemn it 
 is not at all like the mood in which we reject the cor- 
 puscular theory of light, or Sir G. C. Lewis's vagaries 
 on the subject of Egyptian hieroglyphics. We are 
 wont to look upon Atheism with unspeakable horror 
 and loathing. Our moral sense revolts against it no 
 less than our intelligence." As respects the argument 
 from design, he tells us; (p. 113) ''The Darwinian 
 theory, properly understood, replaces as much theology 
 as it destroys." More than once he draws a deep, de- 
 cided line of demarcation between the soul, the psychic, 
 spiritual life on the one side, and the material universe 
 on the other. He calls the soul * * that last consummate 
 specimen of God's handiwork" (p. 32). ''That divine 
 spark, the Soul" (p. 171). "That consummate product 
 of creative energy, the Human Soul " (p. 96). ' ' Whence 
 came the soul?" (he says, p. 42) " We no more know 
 than we know whence came the universe. The primal 
 origin of consciousness is hidden in the depths of the 
 bygone eternity. That it cannot possibly be the product 
 of any cunning arrangement of material particles, is 
 demonstrated beyond peradventure by what we now 
 know of the correlation of physical forces. The Pla- 
 tonic view of the soul, as a spiritual substance ; an efflu- 
 ence from Godhood, which under certain conditions 
 
FISKE ON THE DESTINY OF MAN. 9 1 
 
 becomes incarnated in perishable forms of matter, is 
 doubtless the view most consonant with the present state 
 of our knowledge." He is evidently anxious to main- 
 tain that man is " a creature essentially different from 
 all others" (p. 56). *'Itis not too much to say" (he 
 tells us, p. 57) "that the difference between man and 
 all other creatures, in respect of teachableness, progress- 
 iveness, and individuality of character, surpasses all 
 other differences of kind that are known to exist in the 
 universe." He claims still further that in the Darwinian 
 hypothesis (p. 25) ''we rise to a higher view of the 
 workings of God and of the nature of man, than was 
 ever attainable before. So far from degrading Human- 
 ity, or putting it on a level with the animal world in 
 general, the Darwinian theory shows us distinctly for 
 the first time how the creation and the perfecting of 
 man is the goal toward which nature's work has all the 
 while been tending. It enlarges tenfold the significance 
 of human life, places it upon even a loftier eminence 
 than poets or prophets have imagined, and makes it 
 seem more than ever the chief object of that creative 
 activity which is manifested in the physical universe." 
 He claims also that on the Darwinian theory (p. 31) "it 
 is impossible that any creature zoologically distinct 
 from Man and superior to him, should ever at any future 
 time exist upon the earth." 
 
 According to Darwinism the creation of man is still 
 the goal toward which Nature tended from the begin- 
 ning. Not the production of any higher creature, but 
 the perfecting of humanity is to be the glorious con- 
 summation of Nature's long and tedious work. Thus 
 we suddenly arrive at the conclusion that Man seems 
 now, much more clearly than ever, the chief among 
 God's creatures. 
 
 He forcibly and eloquently affirms his belief in a per- 
 
92 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 sonal immortality. He thinks indeed (p. io8) that *'it 
 is not Hkely that we shall ever succeed in making the 
 immortality of the soul a matter of scientific demonstra- 
 tion, for we lack the requisite data. It must ever re- 
 main an affair of religion rather than of science." "In 
 the domain of cerebral physiology the question might 
 be debated forever without a result. The only thing 
 which cerebral physiology tells us, when studied with 
 the aid of molecular physics, is against the materialist, 
 so far as it goes. It tells us that, during the present 
 life, although thought and feeling are always manifested 
 in connection with a peculiar form of matter, yet by no 
 possibility can thought and feeling be in any sense the 
 products of matter. Nothing can be more grossly un- 
 scientific than the famous remark of Cabanis, that the 
 brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. It is not 
 even correct to say that thought goes on in the brain. 
 What goes on in the brain is an amazingly complex 
 series of molecular movements, with which thought and 
 feeling are in some unknown way correlated, not as 
 effects or as causes, but as concomitants. So much is 
 clear, but cerebral physiology says nothing about an- 
 other life. Indeed, why should it ? The last place in 
 the world to which I should go for information about a 
 state of things in which thought and feeling can exist 
 in the absence of a cerebrum would be cerebral physi- 
 ology ! The materialistic assumption that there is no 
 such state of things, and that the life of the soul ac- 
 cordingly ends with the life of the body, is perhaps the 
 most colossal instance of baseless assumption that is 
 known to the history of philosophy." 
 
 But Mr- Fiske goes further than this, and grounds 
 his belief in the permanence of the spiritual part of man 
 on the " broad grounds of moral probability" (p. m), 
 and indeed ultimately on a postulate of faith. He com- 
 
FISKE ON THE DESTINY OF MAN. 93 
 
 pares it to ''our irresistible belief that like causes must 
 always be followed by like effects" (p. 115), which he 
 agrees with the authors of the "Unseen Universe" in 
 calling * * a supreme act of faith, the expression of a trust 
 in God, that He will not put us to permanent intellect- 
 ual confusion." '^ Now the more thoroughly we com- 
 prehend (he goes on to say) that process of evolution by 
 which things have come to be what they are, the more 
 we are likely to feel that to deny the everlasting persist- 
 ence of the spiritual element in Man is to rob the whole 
 process of its meaning. It goes far toward putting us 
 to permanent intellectual confusion, and I do not see 
 that anyone has as yet alleged, or is ever likely to al- 
 lege, a sufficient reason for our accepting so dire an al- 
 ternative. For my own part, therefore, I beHeve in the 
 immortality of the soul, not in the sense in which I ac- 
 cept the demonstrable truths of science, but as a su- 
 preme act of faith in the reasonableness of God's work." 
 (A very remarkable declaration surely from an agnostic.) 
 ' * The Materialist holds that wlien you have described 
 the whole universe of phenomena of which we can be- 
 come cognizant under the conditions of the present life, 
 then the whole story is told. It seems to me, on the 
 contrary, that the whole story is not thus told. I feel 
 the omnipresence of mystery in such wise as to make it 
 far easier for me to adopt the view of Euripides, that 
 what we call death may be but the dawning of true 
 knowledge and of true life. The greatest philosopher 
 of modern times, the master and teacher of all who 
 shall study the process of evolution for many a day to 
 come, holds that the conscious soul is not the product 
 of a collocation of material particles, but is in the deep- 
 est sense a divine effluence. According to Mr. Spencer, 
 the divine energy which is manifested throughout the 
 knowable universe is the same energy that wells up in 
 
94 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 US as consciousness. Speaking for myself, I can see no 
 insuperable difficulty in the notion that at some period 
 in the evolution of Humanity this divine spark may have 
 acquired sufficient concentration and steadiness to sur- 
 vive the wreck of material forms and endure forever. 
 Such a crowning wonder seems to me no more than the 
 fit climax to a creative work that has been ineffably 
 beautiful and marvellous in all its myriad stages." 
 
 Towards Christianity our author's attitude is at least 
 reverent. In his opening Chapter he conciliates favor 
 for the Darwinian theory by showing that the Coperni- 
 can astronomy has not shaken the foundations of Chris- 
 tian theology. "The speculative necessity for man's 
 occupying the largest and most central spot in the uni- 
 verse is no longer felt. It is recognized as a primitive 
 and childish notion. With our larger knowledge we see 
 that these vast and fiery suns are after all but the Titan- 
 like servants of the little planets which they bear with 
 them in their flight through the abysses of space. And 
 as when God revealed himself to his ancient prophet, He 
 came not in the earthquake or the tempest, but in a 
 voice that was still and small, so that divine spark, the 
 Soul, as it takes up its brief abode in this realm of fleet- 
 ting phenomena, chooses not the central sun where ele- 
 mental forces forever blaze and clash, but selects an 
 outlying terrestrial nook where seeds may germinate in 
 silence, and where through slow friction the mysterious 
 forms of organic life may come to take shape and thrive. " 
 (p. 16-17.) 
 
 With Christianity as a Gospel of Peace and Goodwill 
 he is in hearty accord. He takes pleasure in identifying 
 the ethical drift of Darwinian development with the 
 ethical teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. He rev- 
 erently calls Christ *'the Master." The closing words 
 of his httle book give us the vision of a ** future lighted 
 
PISKE ON THE DESTINY OF MAN. 95 
 
 for US with the radiant colours of hope. Strife and sor- 
 row shall disappear. Peace and love shall reign supreme. 
 The dream of poets, the lesson of priest and prophet, 
 the inspiration of the great musician, is confirmed in the 
 light of modern knowledge ; and as we gird ourselves up 
 for the work of Hfe, we may look forward to the time 
 when in truest sense the kingdoms of this world shall 
 become the kingdom of Christ, and he shall reign for- 
 ever and ever, king of kings and lord of lords." 
 
 In all this there is much that is highly significant. It 
 indicates that evolution is itself undergoing an evolution 
 for the better. It is in a different strain from that to 
 which we have been accustomed from the evolutionary 
 school. It betrays a secret consciousness on the part of 
 the more thoughtful, candid, and spiritualistic of its re- 
 presentatives that a bald, blind, purposeless evolution 
 based on material, molecular, mechanical conditions, and 
 nothing else, is felt to be unsatisfying and untenable. It 
 indicates that such thinkers are seeking a modus vivcndi 
 with Christianity. It exhibits a decided rappivche7nent 
 of modern science towards faith. It shows a healthy 
 recoil from the stark animalism of the earlier and cruder 
 Darwinian biology. It is a sign that the baseless as- 
 sumptions and one-sided theorizings of the earlier evolu- 
 tionists are beginning to be challenged by their fol- 
 lowers. ***** 
 
 It suggests a hope that evolution is feeling its way to 
 surer foundations, and that we may yet see a type of the 
 doctrine which will at once satisfy the requirements of 
 science, and command the assent of a Christian theism 
 and theology. 
 
 For one I welcome these indications. I would 
 gladly encourage the upward movement of which these 
 would seem to be the tokens, and to promote a better 
 adjustment of 'the relations between this powerful 
 
96 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 tendency of modern physical science and Christian 
 science. 
 
 Could I get Mr. Fiske's ear for a short time, I should 
 be pleased to show what remains to be done, in order 
 to perfect such an entente cordiale. I would drop upon 
 him one or two remarks of this sort : * ' I have attended 
 with great interest, Mr. Fiske, to the exposition you 
 have given of your views respecting 'The Destiny of 
 Man, in the light of his origin.' I sincerely congrat- 
 ulate you on the earnestness of your endeavor to relieve 
 your favorite hypothesis of some of the deadening 
 weights with which an atheistic materialism has sought 
 to load it. Believing that further advance in this direc- 
 tion is possible as well as desirable and necessary, 
 allow me respectfully to suggest a few defects, obscuri- 
 ties and contradictions which still remain to be cleared 
 up, before a satisfactory conclusion can be reached. It 
 is gratifying to hear from one of your school so dis- 
 tinct a recognition in terms, of creation and of a Creator. 
 We have been accustomed to more or less evolutionary 
 ridicule of what these terms imply, as antiquated and 
 unscientific superstitions. Let me insist, however, in 
 the interest of clearness, that creation must not be con- 
 founded with evolution. I am sorry to say that there 
 is too much of this confusion in your little book. I 
 would not say that in the broader sense of the word, 
 creation may not include evolution. But evolution 
 certainly is not creation. Christian Theology, the sci- 
 ence of revealed truth, a science, let me remind you, 
 which is nothing if not exact, recognizes the essence 
 of the creative act to be the power of bringing into 
 existence that which had no existence, that which had 
 no antecedent condition of existence, outside of the 
 power and will of the Creator. This absolute origina- 
 tion of existence is the central fundamental thing in 
 
FISKE ON THE DESTINY OF MAN. 
 
 97 
 
 creation. To leave this out of a discussion of the 
 origin of things, as I am afraid you have done, is to 
 leave Hamlet out of the play. It is to formulate a 
 circle without a centre, a process without a beginning, 
 an origin which does not originate. It is most gratify- 
 ing still further to hear from you so emphatic a repu- 
 diation of Atheism, and so unequivocal a recognition 
 of the presence and activity of God. It still remains, 
 however, for you to make of this presence and activity 
 a still more vital and important reality by recognizing 
 its interpositions, at those points where the facts of 
 development absolutely require them. 
 
 Now let me remind you that science presents to us 
 no unbroken line of evolutionary development. There 
 are several missing links in the chain — links too, of 
 vast importance. There are chasms in the line of 
 march which no evolution can leap, and really it would 
 seem a little strange that your book has not even a 
 passing mention of these chasms. There is the chasm 
 between the inorganic and the organic — between inani- 
 mate matter and life. Science establishes no evolution 
 of an organism out of an inorganic mass. There is no 
 spontaneous generation of life — no evolution of life out 
 of death. There is but one explanation of the origin 
 of life — the direct interposition of the creative energy 
 of God. You find another chasm between the irrational 
 and the rational. It is just as impossible that death 
 should evolve life, as that irrational life should evolve 
 rational life. There is nothing below reason that can 
 develop into reason. Reason, the organ of necessary 
 truth, of ethical relations, of immutable laws, of infi- 
 nite valuations, of absolute being, can come into being 
 and activity only as the direct effluence and influence 
 of God. 
 
 Another chasn^ no less impassable lies between the 
 
9^ LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 non-moral and the moral. That which is irrevocably 
 subject to a fixed absolute necessity ; that which in 
 every part and particle of its constitution never was, 
 never is, never will be, never can be anything more 
 than an effect — that which can by no possibility be any- 
 thing but what its environment determines that it must 
 be — that which has absolutely no causal, self-determin- 
 ing power in itself, can by no concei\able possibility 
 evolve itself, or be evolved into a free, responsible, 
 moral agent. The record of science presents no such 
 metamorphosis. Sensation can no more turn into the 
 sense of obligation, than galvanism can turn into life. 
 There is only one power that can make a conscience — 
 that power is God. 
 
 Another chasm, as wide and deep as either of the 
 others, lies between the self-regarding habits of the 
 animal and the altruistic affections of the man. I do 
 not hesitate to affirm that evolution has as yet utterly 
 failed to account for the altruism of the brute, much 
 less of man. You, Mr. Fiske, have done much for the 
 evolutionary theory just at this point. You have shown 
 what an important influence is exerted by the lengthen- 
 ing of the period of dependence in infancy and child- 
 hood. The suggestion is a valuable one ; but neither 
 you nor any one else has successfully shown how the 
 altruism for the exercise of which a lengthened infancy 
 or childhood furnished the occasion was originally pro- 
 duced. And what is more, I venture to say, that no 
 philosophy the pivot of which is self can provide for the 
 suppression of self. It cannot account for the self-for- 
 getfulness of the mother bird, or mother bear, much 
 less for the self-sacrifice of the martyr, or the devotion 
 of the saint. Now in adjusting your philosophy to the 
 demands of faith, these gaps, these chasms cannot be, 
 ought not to be ignored. Nor will it do to cover them 
 
FISKE ON THE DESTINY OF MAN. 9^ 
 
 Up with the fogs and darkness of primeval antiquity, or 
 to fill them with the accumulated modifications of a long 
 stretch of dim aeonian periods. No number of modifi- 
 cations, no amount of time will bridge those chasms. 
 An infinite and eternal series of modifications in dead 
 matter will never bring forth life. And so of the rest. 
 There is but one bridge over the chasm, and that is God. 
 And this brings me to another weak point of your phi- 
 losophical method. I refer to the confusion of catego- 
 ries. Let me remind you that Theology has had a long 
 training in the matter of categories. It is at home in 
 all the quiddities: essence, mode, substance, quality, 
 form, reality — it has been to school with these terms 
 and the like for centuries. It behooves you to mind 
 your p's and q's here accordingly with the utmost 
 closeness. 
 
 Now when you say that * * not only in the world of 
 organic life, but throughout the known universe, the 
 doctrine of evolution regards differences in kind as due 
 to the gradual accumulations of differences in degree," 
 let me gently assure you that the doctrine of evolution 
 is attempting the very absurd feat of butting its head 
 against a stone wall. Such a sponging out of one of 
 the fundamental categories of thought, the category of 
 kind as contrasted with the category of degree is simply 
 impossible. Philosophy can only laugh at the absurdity. 
 Your illustrations are altogether at fault. 
 
 Nebula, sun, planet, moon, differences in kind? 
 
 Steam, water, ice, differences in kind? 
 
 A horse's hoof, a cat's paw, different in kind ? 
 
 Assuredly not. Widely different no doubt in form, 
 different in incidental minor qualities and uses ; but one 
 in kind, who can doubt ? 
 
 The difference between a corpse and a living body 
 only a difference in degree? The difference between 
 
100 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Moses on the Mount and the stone tables in his hands 
 only a difference in degree? The difference between the 
 lion clutching his prey, and the martyr dying at the 
 stake, only a difference in degree ? Thus to categorize 
 would be to put everything to intellectual confusion. 
 The same may be said of the difference between sub- 
 stance and its modifications. Substance is one thing : 
 modifications, properties, activities are another thing. 
 The conscious ego is one thing : consciousness is another. 
 Do you, Mr. Fiske, not sometimes confound these ? Do 
 you not identify the evolution of consciousness with the 
 evolution of the conscious substance ? In accounting for 
 the dawning of consciousness, for the beginning of mem- 
 ory, emotion, reason and volition, as occasioned by the 
 retention of a surplus of molecular motion in the high- 
 est centres, do you not ignore the subject, the substance 
 which remembers, feels, reasons and wills? The soul 
 you call a mystery — a spiritual substance, an effluence 
 from Godhood, which has become incarnated in per- 
 ishable forms of matter, and which cannot possibly be 
 the product of any cunning arrangement of material 
 particles. Most excellently said. But the activities of 
 the soul ; memory, reason, volition and even conscious- 
 ness itself, you explain as due to the gradual accumula- 
 tion of differences in degree, not of differences in kind. 
 Is this logical ? Is there not here a fearful confusion of 
 categories and ideas? You say that the rudiments of 
 memory, reason, emotion, volition, are discernible in the 
 lives of the lower animals. What is the substance in 
 which these predicates inhere ? Is it soul ? Is it a spirit- 
 ual substance? Is it an effluence of Godhood? If so, 
 what becomes of the ineffable superiority of man ? If 
 not — what are the predicates of soul — what distin- 
 guishes it so fundamentally from matter? The same 
 confusion reigns in the representation of man. Is man 
 
FISKE ON THE DESTINY OF MAN. lOI 
 
 essentially different from the the rest of creation ? You 
 say yes. What is this essential difference? How is it 
 brought about? You answer, by the accumulation of 
 differences in degree. That you say is the answer of 
 evolution. That is to say a difference in essence is 
 brought about by an accumulation of differences in non- 
 essence. Or, again, the accidents condition the essence, 
 and not the essence the accidents. Philosophy can tol- 
 erate no such confusion as this. If man is different in 
 essence, where does the 'one-half human man ' stand — 
 of which you somewhere speak ? Has he only the half 
 of the human essence ? Is it a figurative expression ? It 
 hardly reads so. At all events science should deal spar- 
 ingly in metaphors. The Australian savage, you say, is 
 nearer to the ape than to the highest type of civilized 
 man. Where does the essence of manhood stand in 
 this case? Above the AustraHan, or below him? 
 
 If the former, the comparison you make is irrelevant. 
 If the latter, the essence is again subordinated to the ac- 
 cidence. 
 
 You very confidently assure us that * on the earth there 
 will never be a higher creature than man.' On your 
 premises can you justify that confidence? If as you say 
 the accumulation of physical variations in degree has re- 
 sulted in a higher kind of existence, the human, why 
 may not the accumulation of physical variations in de- 
 gree result in a still higher kind of existence than the 
 human ? Indeed do not you yourself say : '* From what 
 has already gone on during the historical period of 
 man's existence, we can safely predict a change that 
 will by and by distinguish him from all other creatures, 
 even more widely and more fundamentally than he is 
 distinguished to-day " ? 
 
 And, speaking of the accumulation of psychical vari- 
 ations as a factor of evolution, let me ask — have you 
 
102 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 seriously weighed the perils to the theory of evolution 
 of the admission of this factor? The accumulation of 
 physical variations is, as you know, already a tremen- 
 dous strain on the theory in the matter of time. 
 
 Astronomy is already protesting vigorously against 
 your demand for a hundred or more millions of years. 
 
 But as your own discussion shows, the accumulation 
 of psychical variations — these being infinitely more 
 complex, more subtle and delicate, more rapid and ev- 
 anescent, would require a vastly longer period for the 
 production of a definite permanent result. And is it in 
 any case conceivable that these infinitely varied, deeply 
 rooted, far-reaching, subtilely-working variations which 
 characterize the psychical life — can be accounted for by 
 so crude an agency as the principle of natural selection 
 working on the lines of a low material utility ? 
 
 You must confess that evolution is sorely put to it to 
 account for the structure of the body on that principle. 
 The eye, the ear, the heart, the lungs, the brain — or- 
 ganized by an aeonian process of natural selection? 
 That is a tremendous strain on our credulity. But when 
 you add to this, the structure of the soul: sensibility, 
 memory, imagination, fancy, wit, humor, analysis, syn- 
 thesis, induction, deduction, intuition, aspiration, grati- 
 tude, sympathy, faith, hope, love — when you under- 
 take to account for the building up of these and kindred 
 powers, by simple natural selection, operating through 
 the struggle for existence — operating almost exclusive- 
 ly thus far, mind you, on the plane of the physical life — 
 you undertake surely what might well appal the world's 
 most transcendent intellect. 
 
 Let me for a moment call your attention to one diffi- 
 culty, which so far as I know has received very little, if 
 any consideration. We ask you, whence come the pres- 
 ent faculties, aptitudes, instincts, habits, of man and 
 
FISKE ON THE DESTINY OF MAN. IO3 
 
 Other creatures? You tell us they are the results of a 
 long, long history of efforts and failures, and efforts and 
 successes, in sustaining life. For example, you tell us in 
 your book that "all the visceral actions which keep us 
 alive from moment to moment, the movements of the 
 heart and lungs, the contractions of arteries, the secre- 
 tions of glands, the digestive operations of the stomach 
 and liver, belong to the class of reflex actions." That 
 is to say — actions which have been "completely or- 
 ganized in the nervous system before birth." 
 
 But how did these actions become "organized " (mark 
 the word) ? To become organized is a process : how was 
 it carried on? They are now automatic; that is, the ac- 
 tion of the brain, through long habit, takes place so rap- 
 idly as to escape consciousness. But how did they be- 
 come automatic ? They were not always such — they 
 could not always have been such. Before they became 
 automatic, according to your own showing, there must 
 have been consciousness : — and, as you say, ' conscious- 
 ness implies perpetual discrimination, or the recognition 
 of likeness and differences.' (p. 45.) 
 
 Now what was there to be conscious, to discriminate, 
 to recognize likeness and differences ? 
 
 What was there to build up all these organs and their 
 activities, before their automatic action was established? 
 Was there soul there ? Was there consciousness there? 
 
 There must have been, according to cerebral physiolo- 
 gy, and yet according to evolution, there could not have 
 been, for soul, consciousness, psychical discriminations 
 and variations, appear only much further on, and much 
 higher up in the line. And so evolution resolves itself 
 into a see-saw process. 
 
 First consciousness works up an automaton, and then 
 the automaton evolves consciousness. 
 
104 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 The conclusion to which we come all along the line 
 is that Darwin's evolution, evolution by natural selec- 
 tion simply, is a totally inadequate solution of the 
 facts. 
 
 It fills the past with perplexity, the present with 
 confusion, the future with doubt. There is no personal 
 immortality on the line of evolution by natural selec- 
 tion. Darwin felt that, and he knew his own theory if 
 any man did. You yourself, Mr. Fiske, ground your 
 faith in immortality on a postulate of faith, faith in the 
 reasonableness of God's work. That is a reasonable 
 principle, it is a large principle, a principle that will 
 justify faith in very much besides the immortality of 
 the soul. 
 
 Apply that principle all along the line, and it will 
 introduce a good many other factors into the process 
 of evolution besides Natural Selection. 
 
 Natural Selection unquestionably has its place in sci- 
 ence. Evolutionary Natural Selection is doubtless a 
 true fact so far as it goes. 
 
 It is doubtless a useful and fruitful ''working hypo- 
 thesis " in the hands of the physical investigator. But 
 it is far from being exhaustive. It is very far from 
 accounting for all the facts. We need a broader 
 "working hypothesis," and one with diviner factors 
 embodied in it. 
 
 We need a " working hypothesis " which will account 
 for the origin of life, will account for the origin of soul, 
 will account for the origin of the' spiritual life. We 
 need a ''working hypothesis" which will take into 
 account the Fact of Sin, and which will provide a 
 Remedy. 
 
 We need that Divine Philosophy which will provide 
 a Teacher who brings life and immortality to light in 
 
FISKE ON THE DESTINY OF MAN. 105 
 
 the Gospel. With this we are sure of the Soul — we are 
 sure of Duty — we are sure of Life — we are sure of 
 God. 
 
 * * This is life eternal that they may know Thee, the 
 only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even 
 Jesus Christ." 
 
V. 
 
 THE SCHOLAR AS AN ETHICAL FORCE.* 
 
 Half a century ago, on an occasion similar to the 
 present, R. W. Emerson spoke as follows: ''Neither 
 years, nor books, have yet availed to extirpate a pre- 
 judice then [when a boy in college] rooted in me, that 
 a scholar is the favorite of heaven and earth, the excel- 
 lency of his country, the happiest of men. His duties 
 lead him directly into the holy ground where other 
 men's aspirations only point. His successes are occa- 
 sions of purest joy to all men. Eyes is he to the blind ; 
 feet is he to the lame. His failures, if he is worthy, 
 are inlets to higher advantages. And because the 
 scholar by every thought he thinks, extends his domin- 
 ion into the general mind of men, he is not one, but 
 many. 
 
 On a like occasion, half a decade ago, George Will- 
 iam Curtis thus expressed himself: ''Take from the 
 country at this moment the educated power which is 
 condemned as romantic and sentimental, and you would 
 take from the army its general, from the ship its com- 
 pass, from the national action its moral main spring. 
 It is not the demagogue and the shouting rabble, it is 
 the people, heeding the word of the thinker and the 
 lesson of experience, which secures the welfare of the 
 American Republic, and enlarges human liberty." 
 
 * Address at Adelbert College, Cleveland, O., 1883. 
 (106) 
 
THE SCHOLAR AS AN ETHICAL FORCE. 10/ 
 
 " If American scholarship does not carry the election 
 to-day, it determines the policy of to-morrow." 
 
 *'Calm, patient, confident, heroic in our busy and 
 material life, it perpetually vindicates the truth that the 
 things which are unseen are eternal." **So in the 
 cloudless midsummer sky serenely shines the moon, 
 while the tumultuous ocean rolls and murmurs beneath, 
 the type of illimitable and unbridled power." 
 
 *' But, resistlessly marshaled by celestial laws, all the 
 wild waters, heaving from pole to pole, rise and recede, 
 obedient to that mild queen of heaven." 
 
 I have cited these utterances of these two distin- 
 guished American thinkers because of the consentane- 
 ous appreciation which they exhibit, of the moral sig- 
 nificance which attaches to the life and influence of the 
 scholar. According to Emerson, the scholar is the 
 light of his age, the eyes and feet of men, to bring 
 them into the holy ground to which their aspirations 
 point, or as he elsewhere expresses the same idea : 
 "The scholars are the priests of that thought which 
 establishes the foundation of the earth. No matter 
 what is their special work or profession, they stand for 
 the spiritual interest of the world ; and it is a common 
 calamity if they neglect their post in a country where 
 the material interest is so predominant as it is in Amer- 
 ica." According to Curtis, the Scholar is the moral 
 mainspring of his generation, swaying like the moon, 
 the tidal forces which move and uplift the world. 
 
 With these noble and significant utterances, let me 
 introduce to you the theme of the hour: The Scholar 
 as an Ethical Force. 
 
 You will understand at once, that in discoursing on 
 this theme, I assume that ethical power is an integral 
 element of all true culture. The training which slights 
 the conscience and' the will, which does not clarify the 
 
I08 LLEWEYLYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 moral vision, which does not help to self-mastery, 
 which does not put man in intelligent accord with the 
 spiritual legislation of the universe, is radically defective. 
 
 The moral pigmy, though a giant in intellect, de- 
 serves not the name "Scholar." For the scholar is the 
 well-rounded, symmetrical man, trained to grapple with 
 every question which comes before him. And most 
 assuredly the culture which does not fit a man to grapple 
 with the ethical problems of the day, is superficial, if 
 not spurious. 
 
 I am not unaware that in to-day's culture there are 
 tendencies which seem unfavorable to the ethical sym- 
 metry of a well-rounded development. 
 
 There are forces at work in literature, in science, in 
 art, in politics, which tend to the depreciation, if not 
 to the elimination, of the ethical factor in those de- 
 partments. This is true, in a measure, of the growing 
 tendency towards specialties. In an age when the 
 study of a beetle is the occupation of a lifetime, when 
 the philology of a particle is a lien on immortality, 
 symmetry is not likely to be the spontaneous product 
 of the soil. 
 
 In magnifying the power of your microscope, you 
 contract the scope of your horizon. Nor is the peril 
 alone of intellectual onesidedness. There is danger 
 also of moral narrowness. 
 
 The specialist runs the risk of losing clearness and 
 fairness of vision, not only in the realm of truth, but 
 also in the realm of duty. The vivisectionist, for ex- 
 ample, may have something to say for himself as an 
 investigator of certain facts, but it is at least a grave 
 question whether the gain to the scientist does not 
 mean some loss to the man. There are other influ- 
 ences in science besides specialism which tend to mini- 
 mize the ethical interest. Take the search after unity, 
 
THE SCHOLAR AS AN ETHICAL FORCK 100 
 
 which so powerfully dominates scientific thought. 
 Whatever the line of his investigation, the naturalist 
 seeks to discover at the far-off end of it, the primordial 
 unit, the atom, the force, the law, the invisible One, 
 out of which the visible Many have been evolved. But 
 in the press and throng of material phenomena and 
 interests which crowd upon his observation, it is not 
 strange if he is more and more tempted to resolve all 
 into a unit of matter, and so far at least to subordinate 
 the spiritual and ethical to the physical, as to find in 
 the former only a modification of the latter. Thus he 
 is less concerned as to what ought to be, than what must 
 be. Gravitation is to him a larger term than obligation. 
 Afifinity is a more important phenomenon than sym- 
 pathy or love. In the literature of the day again, 
 there are certain drifts noticable which give us pause. 
 
 Take the drift towards realism, and ask yourself what 
 is its ethical significance? You have heard it said that 
 Hterature is the photography of life. 
 
 The question which we hear the essayist, the poet, 
 the historian of the day ask is : What about the men 
 and women of real life? 
 
 * Let us have done with the ideal, the imaginary, the 
 impossible. 
 
 * Away with the airy nothings of dreamland ! 
 *'Down with the gods and goddesses! 
 
 *No more Utopias! 
 
 * No more fooling fancies of a millennial mirage ! 
 ' Give us facts ! 
 
 ' Give us life— its comedy, its farce, its tragedy ! 
 'Nay, give us death! give us sin, folly, vice, crime! 
 'Give us reality, ghastly, hideous, if so be. 
 
 * Immoral, you say — what of that ? 
 
 ' Let the picture be true to nature, and let nature be 
 responsible for the effect. 
 
tlO LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 'Let US have vivisection on a grand scale. 
 
 'Let this diseased leper of our common humanity be 
 laid out on the dissecting table, and as its flesh quivers 
 under the scalpel, let us see just what is the matter 
 with it.' 
 
 Similarly in art. 
 
 Here, too, we behold "realism" asserting itself, at 
 the expense again of the moral. 
 
 ' Art, ' we are told, must not preach. 
 
 *The more the picture or the statue is a sermon, the 
 less is it a work of art. 
 
 'Art is the exponent of beauty, not of duty. 
 
 * It has nothing to do with morality as such. 
 
 'In its own nature and language — it is not indeed 
 immoral, but certainly unmoral. 
 
 'Let the artist draw or hew the line of beauty as 
 the spirit of grace may guide his hand, and let the 
 straight line of right take care of itself.' 
 
 To some extent we note a kindred drift in public and 
 political life. The growth of civilization has caused an 
 immense expansion of the material interests of society. 
 The business of civilized communities has assumed a vast 
 complexity of forms and relations. The adjustment of 
 these complex interests §nd claims is one of the most 
 intricate problems of modern statesmanship. The effect 
 of all this has been to give especial prominence to the 
 material side of politics. The successful statesman of 
 to-day is the large-eyed, long-headed, strong-handed 
 man of business. 
 
 He is financier, commerce-opener, budget-maker, tar- 
 iff-monger. Having to deal with the conditions of ma- 
 terial prosperity and growth, it is not strange if he finds 
 himself driven by the logic of his position to regard all 
 social interests as predominatingly secular. And so the 
 atmosphere of our public life tends to become more and 
 
THE SCHOLAR AS AN ETHICAL FORCE. I I I 
 
 more materialistic and utilitarian. Moral issues are sent 
 to the rear, and kept there until they force themselves 
 to the front. Their first solution is attempted by the 
 rule of Profit and Loss. 
 
 Whisky — an article of revenue ; 
 
 The Indian question — a question of land; 
 
 Monopoly — a matter of percentage ; 
 
 The Public Service — private spoils and vcb victis ; 
 
 Political Organization — the party machine ; 
 
 Principle — policy, and the devil take the hindmost. 
 
 These tendencies must be arrested, if a healthy social 
 life is to be preserved. And if Mr. Curtis is right in 
 claiming for the educated class, ''the leadership of mod- 
 ern civilization," then surely the scholar has something 
 to do in the correction of these evils. The loud call for 
 ''the Scholar in PoHtics" which from time to time goes 
 forth, shows the conviction which is entertained in some 
 quarters at least, that culture has its special responsibil- 
 ities in the advancement of social improvement. It is 
 but fair to notice however, that there are those who 
 challenge the competency of scholarship for this social 
 leadership. 
 
 Mr. Frederic Harrison in England and Mr. Wendell 
 Phillips, lately deceased in our own country, have made 
 the charge that Culture is timid, cowardly, ease-loving, 
 time-serving, recreant to its responsibilities. It may be 
 worth our while briefly to examine this charge. The 
 scholar, it is said, is by virtue of his scholarship disquali- 
 fied for some, at least, of the functions of an ethical 
 force. The moral leader, the reformer, is likely to be 
 handicapped by his scholastic accomplishments, or at 
 least by the temper, or the tone of thought, feeling and 
 purpose, which is breathed into him by the schools. 
 Thoreau said of John Brown that he was "less con- 
 cerned to right ^ Greek accent, than to lift up a fallen 
 
112 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 man." It may be said — Mr. Phillips was wont to say 
 it — that those who understood the slope of the accent 
 cared but little for the posture of a man, and that John 
 Brown made more thorough work of it, for knowing 
 more about Sharpe's rifle than about an oxytone, or a 
 barytone. 
 
 Then again we hear it charged that scholarship tends 
 to abstractions, to the neglect of concrete realities. It 
 lingers in the past more than in the present. It culti- 
 vates a taste for fossils, rather than for living organisms. 
 It produces doctrinaires, instead of practical men. It 
 makes men romantic, visionary, the ready dupes of 
 Utopian phantasies, or of patent Millennium-incubators. 
 Or perchance it runs into over-refinement, a squeam- 
 ish aestheticism, an impracticable, fastidious dilettanteism, 
 better suited for a cabinet of bric-a-brac, or the Sultan's 
 garden of spices, or the cloth of gold, than for the 
 dusty arena of competition, or the battle-field of thoughts 
 and passions. 
 
 Let us frankly admit whatever of truth there may 
 be in all this. Let these charges and insinuations serve 
 at least to indicate some of the liabilities which beset 
 scholarship when it gets out of the school, and against 
 which it must sedulously guard, if it would realize its 
 sublime mission. But the question still remains: Do 
 these besetments set aside that mission ? Is the scholar 
 a failure as an ethical force? By no means. What- 
 ever may be true of particular instances, it is assuredly 
 not true that, as a class, educated men have been 
 found wanting in the assertion of their moral person- 
 ality as leaders both in the world of thought and in the 
 world of action. Mr. Curtis has conclusively shown 
 this, in the address already quoted, by abundant his- 
 torical examples. Not to go over the same ground, 
 
THE SCHOLAR AS AN ETHICAL FORCE. II3 
 
 let me invite you to the consideration of the subject by 
 a somewhat different hne of approach. 
 
 Note then at the outset that the very logic of the 
 scholar's discipline arrays him on the side of moral 
 order and progress. I need not remind you that ethics 
 is itself a branch of liberal culture. Ever since the 
 days of Aristotle it has been recognized as a distinct 
 science, and as an essential part of the academic curric- 
 ulum. Its fundamental principles, axioms, definitions, 
 its generalizations and laws, its inductions and deduc- 
 tions are carefully studied and discussed. The scholar's 
 mind is trained to interest itself in ethical questions and 
 considerations, to examine the foundations of conduct, 
 to define the conditions and to formulate rules of right 
 living, to forecast the tendencies of moral opinions and 
 developments. Is it reasonable to expect that all this 
 shall count for nothing? To be sure it is a long cry 
 from theory to practice. But here again the value of 
 scholastic training asserts itself. If liberal culture ac- 
 compHshes anything for a man, it supplies the mental 
 endowment for the conversion of theory into use. 
 
 The discipline which leaves a man a helpless theorist, 
 is of little value. Moreover, the temper of a genuine 
 culture is calculated to strengthen the moral instinct, 
 in that it fosters the love of the real. The scholar is 
 bound by the highest law of his being to reject all 
 falsehood, affectation, sham, and to render allegiance 
 only to the real, the substantial, the true. The ethical 
 power of this obligation it is easy to see. 
 
 Then again, the general contents and resources of a 
 wise, liberal culture have distinct ethical affiliations. 
 Mathematics, Physics, History, Logic, Law, all strike 
 hands with Ethics. All combine in the upbuilding of 
 the personaHty, and in the development of moral, no less 
 than mental capacity. A broad true culture is a unit. 
 
114 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 All its branches re-enforce each other, and form a vital 
 synthesis in the development, just as the universe to 
 which a large culture correlates the mind, is a unit, and 
 all its laws and kingdoms flow together and enrich each 
 other. The processes of being run on parallel lines, 
 largely indeed on converging lines. There is a unity of 
 movement and purpose discernible in the entire scheme. 
 One law of nature says Amen to the other. 
 
 The facts and principles of the moral universe have their 
 echoes in the physical. The song of the planet, silently 
 revolving in its orbit around its central sun murmurs 
 itself in the still small voice of conscience. Hence in 
 the line: ''An undevout astronomer is mad," there is 
 true logic no less than poetry ; for whether seen through 
 the telescope or from the shepherd's hilltop, the stars 
 teach worship. 
 
 No less logical would it be to say — "A lying math- 
 ematician is mad," seeing that nature's figures never lie ; 
 or that — "A dishonest chemist is deranged," seeing 
 that in nature's compositions the law of quid pro quo 
 rules with invariable and infinitesimal exactness. "The 
 principles of right living," says John Fiske, "are really 
 connected with the constitution of the universe." And 
 so in proportion as the scholar realizes his prerogative 
 and gets near the heart of nature, he gathers into his 
 own heart the ethical inspiration of her order, and the 
 strength of her laws. 
 
 Then, still further, the scholar's discipline puts him 
 en rapp07i: with the loftiest thinkers of the ages, en rap- 
 port first of all, with the men. His scholarship intro- 
 duces him to the confraternity of earth's great ones. 
 Through his association with the choice spirits of the 
 race, he catches somewhat of their tone and temper, he 
 is brought out of his limitations, he is hfted above all 
 personal and provincial narrowness, he acquires the 
 
THE SCHOLAR AS AN ETHICAL FORCE. 115 
 
 larger way of looking at things. Living on the lofty table- 
 lands where Olympian souls hold high festival, he quaffs 
 the elixir of true greatness : for as has been truly said : 
 " He who keeps company with the great and the good, 
 learns to love what they love and to despise what they 
 despise." Nor is this all. Through the same compan- 
 ionship he becomes habituated not only to the tone and 
 the temper of the great and the good, but also to their 
 perceptions and conclusions : 
 
 His, the crystalization of the purest processes of 
 thought ; 
 
 His, the distillation of the clearest ideas ; 
 
 His, the blossoming and fruitage of the ripest and 
 sweetest juices of the world's growth. On the virgin 
 soil of his mind fall the seed-thoughts of the ages, at the 
 moment of their highest germinative potency. His ear 
 catches the resurrection-trumpet-tones of the centuries — 
 those mighty affirmations of truth and duty, which ever 
 and anon startle the nations out of their slumbers and 
 arouse them to a nobler manhood. 
 
 And more yet. His the teachings not only of this 
 man and of that man, but of the ages. Revelation is a 
 growth. Truth is communicated by instalments. Each 
 age receives its portion. Each takes up the thread 
 where the last dropped it, and carries on the weaving of 
 the web to greater completeness. There are conclusions 
 which traverse the ages. There are syllogisms, which 
 more than one mind, which more than one generation 
 are required to formulate and conclude. A Plato or an 
 Epictetus furnishes the major premise, a Descartes or a 
 Kant the minor. 
 
 So there are sorites — logical chains which run on 
 through the centuries. The first century contributes 
 the first link in the chain ; the fourth century contributes 
 the second hnk;- the eleventh century contributes the 
 
Il6 LLEWELYN iOAN EVAKS. 
 
 third link; the sixteenth century contributes the fourth 
 link, and so down. It is the scholar's mission to com- 
 bine the premises, to complete the series, and thus to 
 make the vast amplitude of the past the base of his pyr- 
 amid. So even in morals: although here certainly we 
 are constrained to recognize a large intuitional element. 
 But the processes of the ages do much nevertheless to 
 clarify the intuitions of the individual soul, and to organ- 
 ize moral convictions into social forces. The life of hu- 
 manity is pre-eminently a moral drama. The world's 
 history, says Schiller, is the world's nemesis. It is the 
 justification of the ways of the Supreme Ruler, the vin- 
 dication of His eternal statutes, the Hving development 
 of the Decalogue. 
 
 The Almighty Finger which wrote the Ten Words of 
 Sinai on tablets of stone, has again and again written 
 them in letters of flame on the destinies of Nations. The 
 story of man is thus the story of a divine law. History 
 is the record of progress under this law. Its represen- 
 tative personalities are the incarnations of eternal prin- 
 ciples. Its revolutions are the protests of what Carlyle 
 has called the Everlasting No. Its advances are the 
 avatars of conscience. 
 
 "All political revolutions," says John Stuart Mill, 
 **not effected by foreign conquest, originate in moral 
 revolutions. The subversion of established institutions 
 is merely one consequence of the previous subversion 
 of established opinions. The political revolutions of 
 the last three centuries, were but a few outward mani- 
 festations of a moral revolution which dates from the 
 great breaking-loose of human faculties, commonly 
 described as the revival of letters, and of which the 
 main instrument and agent was the invention of print- 
 ing. How much of the course of that moral revolu- 
 tion yet remains to be run, or how many political 
 
THE SCHOLAR AS AN ETHICAL FORCE. II7 
 
 revolutions it will yet generate before it be exhausted, 
 no one can tell." Who, then, if not the scholar, will 
 interpret for us the unfolding of this wondrous Drama? 
 
 Who, if not he, will read the Divine hand-writing on 
 the wall, and teach us the lesson of the hour? 
 
 Let us note at this point one more special endow- 
 ment of the scholar for his ethical vocation, that, to- 
 wit, which lies in the power of expression. 
 
 One important advantage of complete culture is that 
 it endows man with the gift of discourse. It changes 
 the tongue of iron or lead into the tongue of silver or 
 gold. The scholar is trained to be a Voice, to articulate 
 men's thoughts and convictions, to define for them the 
 truths, the sentiments, the impressions, the persuasions, 
 which they imperfectly apprehend, so that they may 
 become palpable, vocal, vivid realities. This is no 
 mean function. It is one of the highest prerogatives 
 of culture. In the exercise of it the scholar rises to 
 the dignity of the prophet. 
 
 He is the advocate of the universal conscience. He 
 voices the better self of the race. He pleads with each 
 man for the supremacy of the God-like within him. 
 He who does this has power, for he has God for his 
 ally. This is what made Luther's words *' half-battles." 
 When conscience sends forth its lightnings, the words 
 are thunder. 
 
 Such being some of the advantages with which the 
 scholar is endowed for his mission as an ethical force, 
 let us now consider — somewhat hastily — the task which 
 lies before him. 
 
 *'You believe" — says Frederic Denison Maurice, 
 speaking through one of his characters in Eustace Con- 
 way — ''that the university is to prepare youths for a 
 successful career in society : I believe the sole object is 
 to give them that manly character which will enable 
 
115 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 them to resist the influences of society." Before a 
 man can do what he ought to do, he must be what he 
 ought to be. In every career in which he may engage, 
 the scholar must be a pattern of every manly virtue 
 and greatness of soul. 
 
 That ideal scholar, John Milton, thus describes the 
 heroic aspiration with which in early youth he conse- 
 crated himself to his intellectual vocation: "I was 
 confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be 
 frustrated of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable 
 things, ought himself to be a true poem, . . . not pre- 
 suming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous 
 cities, unless he have in himself the experience and 
 practice of all that is praiseworthy." "Before he can 
 make a poem,'' says Mark Pattison, ''Milton will make 
 himself.'' 
 
 So in Tennyson's charming In Memoriam portrait of 
 his scholar-friend, Henry Hallam, we can but feel how 
 essential are those traits of ethical excellence which 
 mark the picture; that ''high nature amorous of the 
 good," that "soul on highest mission sent," that 
 "growth" which was 
 
 " Not alone in power 
 "And knowledge, but by year and hour 
 "Jn reverence and in charity." 
 
 When Michael Angelo lost by death the support of 
 Cardinal Ippolito, on whom all his best hopes had been 
 placed, he resolved (in his own language) ' ' to confide 
 in himself and to become something of worth and 
 value." 
 
 To produce a divine result, one must realize the 
 divine in himself 
 
 " Be noble! and the nobleness that lies 
 " In other men, sleeping, but never dead, 
 "Will rise in majesty to meet thine own," 
 
THE SCHOLAR AS AN ETHICAL FORCE. II9 
 
 Being himself thus the exemplar of worth, the 
 scholar becomes the commissioned advocate of justice, 
 honor, truth. His scholarship is heaven's retainer, en- 
 gaging his services in. behalf of the celestial order, 
 which should rule on earth as in heaven. It becomes 
 his privilege to vindicate at all times the supreme^ sov- 
 ereignty of conscience, the sweet reasonableness of 
 right living, the sterling worth of honest thinking, of 
 sincere feeling, of straight-forward action — to prove, 
 not that honesty is the best policy, but that where it is 
 a question of honesty, policy is not to be even thought 
 of; and that duty, like the sun, shuts out all light save 
 its own. 
 
 It becomes his sacred office to win the world's in- 
 tellect to the support of the purest principles, of the 
 noblest standards, of the most heroic enterprises, to 
 bring about a loving concord between the sense of 
 truth, the sense of right, and the sense of beauty, until 
 the soul in all its powers becomes one harmonious com- 
 monwealth, realizing in itself the strength, the order, 
 and the Hberty of the republic of God. 
 
 Seeing again that the scholar is dowered with the 
 gift of discourse, it becomes a part of his special mis- 
 sion, to vivify the expression of moral and spiritual 
 truths which are current in the world. 
 
 We are all aware of the strong tendency which pre- 
 vails to conventional modes of thought and speech. 
 Our truths dry up into truisms. Our principles become 
 petrified in propositions. Our moralities shrivel into 
 mummies. The decalogue dwindles into a thing of 
 rote. Our very religion hollows out into cant, and 
 becomxcs as sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. 
 There is need of the tongue of fire, to ignite these 
 cold and lifeless forms, and to transform them into 
 ** thoughts that breathe and words that burn." 
 
I20 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Who, if not the scholar, will rub off the rust? 
 
 Who will polish the steel so that it will shine ? 
 
 Who will point it so that it will strike home? 
 
 Who, if not the scholar, will interpret to the age its 
 own conscience, its own ethical enigmas and aspira- 
 tions ? 
 
 Who, if not he, will irradiate the law written on the 
 heart, with the light of the present need, and of the 
 present opportunity? 
 
 Who, if not he, will breathe fresh life into the skel- 
 eton, the abstraction, the generalization of duty, and 
 change it into the living impersonation of godlike 
 power and beauty? 
 
 We have heard that Webster's statement of his case 
 was an argument. How often is a Webster needed to- 
 day to state the case in the court of conscience ! 
 
 Again — as we watch the development of society, we 
 observe that it is not one of uniform advance. 
 
 All up and down our civilization we see survivals of 
 barbarism, lapses into savagery, the re-assertion of 
 brutal instinct, of the sensual thought, of the unregu- 
 lated impulse, of the unreasoning will. 
 
 We see these barbarisms in our social customs, even 
 in the family sanctities. 
 
 Note as one alarming indication of it, the growing 
 laxity of our divorce legislation, the spreading impa- 
 tience of all restraint on self-indulgence and self-will. 
 
 Is not the scholar engaged by all the instincts of a 
 nature made fine by culture, and made strong by self- 
 discipline, and by all the sympathies of his order with 
 whatever is sacred, pure, sweet, and loving in life, to 
 do all in his power to arrest these reactionary move- 
 ments, and to put down these revolts of an insurgent 
 animahsm? 
 
 Or, if we look at our civilization itself, we find that 
 
THE SCHOLAR AS AN ETHICAL FORCE. 121 
 
 it is not without its drawbacks. There are losses and 
 evils incidental to the very conditions of our social 
 progress. In his interesting and suggestive little essay 
 on civilization, John Stuart Mill has pointed out some 
 of these incidental disadvantages. 
 
 One of these is that in a civilized condition ''the 
 importance of the masses becomes constantly greater, 
 that of individuals less." "All combination is com- 
 promise." In the crowd the angles of individuality are 
 rubbed smooth. In a state of organization men become 
 machines. Personal independence is sacrificed. Mob 
 law is too often the despot of the hour. The regulative 
 and corrective value of public opinion, as an ethical in- 
 fluence, is largely weakened. 
 
 As Mill says : " It is not solely on the private vir- 
 tues that this growing insignificance of the individual 
 in the mass is productive of mischief. It corrupts the 
 very fountain of the improvement of pubHc opinion 
 itself; it corrupts pubHc teaching; it weakens the influ- 
 ence of the more cultivated few over the many." 
 
 Civilization, again, induces ''the relaxation of indi- 
 vidual energy, or rather the concentration of it within 
 the narrow sphere of the individual's money-getting 
 pursuits." "The consequence is that, compared with 
 former times, there is in the more opulent classes of 
 modern civilized communities much more of the ami- 
 able and humane, and much less of the heroic. There 
 has crept over the refined classes, over the whole class 
 of gentlemen in England, a moral effeminacy, an inap- 
 titude for every kind of struggle. They shrink from 
 all effort, from everything which is troublesome and 
 disagreeable. The same causes which render them 
 sluggish and unenterprising, make them, it is true, for 
 the most part stoical under inevitable evils." 
 
 " But heroism -is an active, not a passive quaHty, and 
 
122 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS, 
 
 when it is necessary not to bear pain but to seek it, 
 little need be expected from the men of the present 
 day. They cannot undergo labor, they cannot brook 
 ridicule, they cannot brave evil tongues." 
 
 Still further, in the heat and stress of competition 
 which civilization engenders, immoral standards of con- 
 duct slip into use. In the rush of the street men do 
 not pause upon moral niceties. There is no time for 
 reflection. No encouragement is given to delicacy of 
 conscience. The one motto is, success. Men play 
 high to win ; they throw for all or nothing, and so they 
 become reckless. Gambling is a temptation. Decep- 
 tion is easy. Meretricious wares flood the market. 
 Quackery and puffery abound, for the reason that any 
 voice not pitched in an exaggerated key is lost in the 
 hubbub." Insincerities adulterate the social currency. 
 MateriaHstic aims predominate. In the strife for per- 
 sonal advantage men become hard, narrow, and selfish, 
 while charity, considerateness, delicacy, and sympathy 
 go to the wall. 
 
 Can any one doubt that in supplying these deficien- 
 cies, and in counteracting these evils of civilization a 
 special responsibility falls upon the scholar? To him 
 above all others comes the call, in the language of 
 Maurice, with '' manly cheer to resist the influences of 
 society." His vocation typically represents the excel- 
 lencies of which these evils are the negative. He is 
 the champion of individual worth. He stands for the 
 one, who, with God, makes a majority. In contrast 
 with the amputations and mutilations which the social 
 machine inflicts, he speaks for a symmetrical, full-orbed 
 manhood. 
 
 He represents, as Emerson says: **The spiritual 
 interests of the world." He is the Elijah of his age, 
 lifting up his voice against its Baals and Mammons. 
 
THE SCHOLAR AS AN ETHICAL FORCE. 1 23 
 
 In him survives the soul of chivalry, of knighthood, 
 without fear and without reproach, devoting itself to 
 the quest of Ideal Loveliness and Goodness. 
 
 He is the Sir Galahad of his age, whose * * strength 
 is as the strength of ten, because his soul is pure," and 
 whom angel voices and visions cheer with the call, 
 " O just and faithful knight of God, 
 Ride on, the prize is near." 
 
 To this knight of God comes the summons to ride 
 forth to do battle for the soul and her rights, to smite 
 down her foes, Giant Greed, Giant Waste, Giant Sham, 
 Giant Flesh, to deliver mind from the thraldom of 
 sense, to rescue conscience from the heels of the mob, 
 to save faith from the clutch of despair. 
 
 ''There can be no scholar," says Emerson, " without 
 the heroic mind." 
 
 ''Calm, patient, confident, heroic in our busy and ma- 
 terial life," says Curtis, "it [American Scholaship], 
 vindicates the truth that the things which are unseen 
 are eternal." 
 
 "Culture," (says Matthew Arnold) "is a study of 
 perfection, and of harmonious perfection, general per- 
 fection, and perfection which consists in becoming some- 
 thing rather than in having something, in an inward 
 condition of mind and spirit, not in an outward set of 
 circumstances." 
 
 To the scholar comes the call accordingly to labor for 
 the "prevalence of reason and the will of God," for the 
 spiritualization of life and the ennobling of its condi- 
 tions ; for its liberation from the cramp and pinch of a 
 mechanical social organization ; for the rule of earnest 
 conviction, high .aspiration and the sway of unselfish love. 
 In an age of cant, let his every word have the ring of 
 gold. In an age of form, let his every step have the 
 ring of purpose. ' In an age whose ' * vices fester in de- 
 
124 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 spairs " let his voice thrill the air with the clarion note 
 of purity and hope. 
 
 In closing, let me simply indicate a few of the special 
 directions in which our age calls for the exercise on the 
 part of the scholar of a distinct moral energy of pur- 
 pose. 
 
 I. This is required of him as an intellectual producer. 
 In the various fields of activity in which thought is pro- 
 duced and embodied, let him think and work on God's 
 lines. Let his influence in literature be on the side of 
 purity, elevation, healthy thinking, sane living, noble 
 feeling and striving. Let it be his aim to produce works 
 which shall have in them (as Milton said), **the life- 
 blood of a master spirit," and which *'the world will 
 not wiUingly let die" — books "which will awe men to 
 their knees as if they stood in presence of a king." In 
 Art, while being true to nature, let him be true also to 
 himself, to the higher, truer self in him and in others. 
 Let him paint life as faithfully as he pleases, but let him 
 so paint it that it will breathe life and not death. Let 
 him emulate the painter Giotto, of whom it has been said 
 that he ''renewed art, because he put more goodness 
 into his heads." So in Science: Here most assuredly 
 the scholar is concerned with facts. But he above all 
 others is concerned to demand that hypotheses shall not 
 figure as facts, that assumptions shall not parade them- 
 selves as discoveries. He above all others must insist 
 that a part shall not stand for the whole, that Geology 
 shall not give the He to Astronomy ; that Physiology 
 shall not gag Psychology ; that Physics shall not swal- 
 low up Philosophy ; above all, that matter shall not post- 
 ure as mind, that the facts of sense shall give the law to 
 Conscience, that animal development shall not furnish 
 the logarithm for the arcs and cycles of the soul. The 
 scholar as the representative of the complete orb of the 
 
THE SCHOLAR AS AN ETHICAL FORCE. 1 25 
 
 sciences and of a symmetrical manhood, must take his 
 stand against all immoral belittling partialities of any 
 onesided specialty, speaking in the name of science. 
 
 2. To the scholar of our day comes again the oppor- 
 tunity of exerting definite moral purpose as a social 
 factor, and especially as a solvent of social antagonisms. 
 The scholar, so far as culture has had in him her perfect 
 work, is an emancipated person. He belongs to the 
 race, not to any class or set. The yoke of social bond- 
 age, of class prejudice and factiousness sits lightly on 
 him. As Guizot and Hallam have shown, none have 
 done more than the world's scholars to break down 
 the barriers of an artificial society, to articulate the 
 aspirations of a universal brotherhood, to indicate the 
 claims of manly worth — whether clad in homespun or 
 in purple. And it is the spirit and the mission of a 
 live scholarship to reduce, more and more, the artificial 
 inequalities of society, to reconcile the antagonisms 
 of classes, by leveling up the race and by enlarging 
 the facilities for worth and ability to come to the top. 
 Take the antagonism (so called) of Capital and Labor. 
 The scholar knows that there is no antagonism be- 
 tween these two necessary factors of the social organism. 
 It is impossible for him to take a partizan position in the 
 struggle between them. His natural position is that of 
 a mediator, and to this task of reconciliation he should 
 address himself in earnest — not as a dilettante but as a 
 workman that needetli not to be ashamed ; risking per- 
 sonal ease and popularity in the endeavor to remove 
 mutual misconceptions, to resist arrogant and selfish 
 pretensions on either side, to emphasize the harmony of 
 interests, to inspire fair and generous dealing based on 
 genial sagacity and an intelligent sympathy. Culture, 
 says Matthew Arnold, "has but one great passion, the 
 
126 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 passion for sweetness and light. Yes, it has one yet 
 greater, the passion for making them prevail. It is not 
 satisfied till we all come to a perfect man. It knows that 
 the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect, until 
 the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched 
 with sweetness and light. Culture seeks to do away 
 with classes, to make all live in an atmosphere of sweet- 
 ness and light, and use ideas as it uses them itself, free- 
 ly; to be nourished and not bound by them. This is 
 the social idea; and the men of culture are the true 
 apostles of equality. The great men of culture are 
 those who have had the passion for diffusing, for mak- 
 ing prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the 
 other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time." 
 3. In many other ways is the scholar called upon to 
 mediate between extremes, in the solution of social and 
 pubHc problems. Thus we note to-day in one direction 
 a strong tendency towards license and anarchy — in the 
 opposite direction a strong tendency towards centraliza- 
 tion and despotism. It is for the scholar to uphold, on 
 the one side the sanctity of law and social order, on the 
 other the claims of liberty and individual right. Here 
 we see the spirit of bigotry ; there the spirit of latitudi- 
 narian negation. It is for the scholar to maintain at once 
 the supreme value and right of conviction, and the sacred 
 right of denial and protest — to co-ordinate the Everlast- 
 ing Yea with the Everlasting Nay. In public life, in 
 politics there are problems of peculiar perplexity await- 
 ing a satisfactory solution. The question respecting leg- 
 islation on moral interests, respecting the grounds, ex- 
 tent, limitations of such legislation, demands earnest at- 
 tention. The adjustment of legal requirements and per- 
 sonal rights, of statutory restrictions and individual lib- 
 erties, challenges our thoughtful consideration. The 
 
THE SCHOLAR AS AN ETHICAL FORCE. 12/ 
 
 balancing of the relative claims of the Ideal and the 
 Possible, of the Perfect and the Practicable, requires pa- 
 tient and considerate treatment. The determination of 
 the spheres respectively of social authority and of the 
 individual conscience has its practical embarrassments. 
 What are the ethical rights of majorities ? What are the 
 ethical rights of minorities? What place shall be ac- 
 corded to moral instruction in our schools ? What shall 
 be the standard, the text, of such instruction ? These 
 are questions not to be decided hastily. They are to be 
 settled, not on abstract grounds alone, not by impulse, 
 by sentiment, by theory. But, on the other hand, nei- 
 ther are they to be settled capriciously, empirically, 
 without reference to fundamental principles, and to the 
 permanent authority of ethical obligations and interests. 
 And what I would strenuously insist on now, is that in 
 the scholar's personal action on these questions, the eth- 
 ical motive, the ethical interest, should be supreme. He 
 cannot afford, it is true, to be an impracticable idealist, 
 to be a transgressor against personal right, an aggressor 
 on private conviction, a suppressor of free thought, a 
 contemner of social and political equality. He cannot 
 afford to rely on legal proscriptions and physical penal- 
 ties, on mere numerical majorities and verbal pronun- 
 ciamentos, apart from enlightened reasons and quickened 
 consciences. But just as little can he afford to occupy a 
 position of ethical indifference — to be a Gallio caring 
 for none of these things ; to be a Pilate shrugging his 
 shoulders, asking ' what is truth ? ' and sending the Truth 
 to the Cross ; to be an Epicurean fatalistically acquies- 
 cing in the necessary reign of folly ; a dilettante sybarite 
 squeamishly shunning the foul odors of a world gone 
 wrong, with no principle, no ideal, no faith, no chivalry, 
 no mission of help and blessing. The scholar can be a 
 
128 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 leader only as he proves himself to be a man of men, a 
 thinker of honest thoughts, a speaker of living words, a 
 doer of needed and earnest deeds. 
 
 At the helm of state in England to-day, stands one 
 of the first scholars of the century. An admiring Con- 
 temporary Reviewer has said of him : *' We "may cut a 
 scholar able to adorn a university out of Mr. Gladstone, 
 and then carve from him a fine student and reverencer 
 of art ; next mark off a reviewer and general litterateur 
 whom professed authors will respectfully make room 
 for in their ranks ; and not only is there still left, solid 
 and firm, the great Parliamentary minister, but out of 
 the scattered fragments a couple of bishops could easily 
 be made, with, if nothing at all is to be wasted, several 
 preachers for the denominations." For fifty years this 
 multiplex man has been a conspicuous figure in the 
 public life of England. For twenty-five years he has 
 been the greatest power in that life. His name is 
 identified with every important national measure and 
 movement in the leading nation of the globe for the 
 last quarter of a century. His the insight which dis- 
 covers the need of the hour, his the voice which inter- 
 prets it in words of imperishable eloquence, his the 
 wisdom which devises the suitable and practicable rem- 
 edy, his the courage, persistence, energy, magnetism, 
 which conquer success. What is the secret of Glad- 
 stone's greatness ? 
 
 First, his intellect. Make all due recognition of that. 
 **The world," says some one, "lies at the feet of its 
 first-class men ; " and Gladstone is unquestionably of 
 the first order of mental capacity and power. What 
 next? His scholarship. Make full recognition of that 
 too. A double-first of Oxford, he has brought to the 
 public service the discipline of the university, the grace 
 
THE SCHOLAR AS AN ETHICAL FORCE. I2g 
 
 of the classic page, the inspirations of the genius of 
 antiquity, the lessons of the past, the exactness of math- 
 ematics and logic, the wisdom, completeness, mastery 
 and pose of a wide and varied culture. 
 
 But genius, talent, eloquence and scholarship com- 
 bined would not give you Gladstone. The crown of 
 his greatness lies in neither of these. It is his moral 
 earnestness, his fidelity to conviction, his enthronement 
 of principle above the makeshifts of the hour, his idea 
 of government as (to use his own words), a ''moral 
 trusteeship." A mole-eyed generation has sneered at 
 these qualities. Jingoism has had its flings at him. 
 Philistinism has had its flings at him. London society 
 has honored him with its silly gibes. But in lofty dis- 
 dain of all the petty shafts of malice he has kept on 
 his course, ever following the commands of duty, until 
 to-day he finds 
 
 "the stubborn thistle bursting 
 Into glossy purples which outredden 
 All voluptuous garden-roses." 
 
 A short time ago in advocating the Affirmation Bill 
 in Parliament, while admitting that the Government 
 was probably damaging itself with the community in 
 trying to pass it, he nevertheless took the lofty posi- 
 tion that it was none the less their duty to pass it — 
 thus taking ground, as an eminent journal remarks, 
 "on which few politicians in any age have stood." 
 To-day again we see him undertaking the championship 
 of a political measure which presages a revolution in 
 the parliarnentary government of Great Britain, which 
 is dividing his own party, costing him the support of 
 many of his most distinguished and loyal adherents, 
 and which threatens the loss of his own premiership — 
 simply as an act of justice to a people long ground 
 
150 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 down by oppression. All honor to William Ewart 
 Gladstone. Such a man gives us hope for our age, 
 hope for scholarship, hope for humanity. 
 
 " Victor he must ever be ; 
 For though the Giant Ages heave the hill 
 And break the shore, and evermore 
 Make and break and work their will ; 
 Though worlds on worlds in myriad myriads roll 
 Round us, each with different powers 
 And other forms of life than ours. 
 What know we greater than the soul ? 
 On God and Godlike men we put our trust," 
 
VI. 
 
 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 
 
 I HAVE selected for the subject of our interview this 
 evening a poet not very widely known, but I believe I 
 may say best appreciated by those who know him best. 
 I have selected him, rather than some more familiar 
 name for two reasons. First, because in treating of 
 him it will be easier to avoid beaten paths : and next, 
 because in literature, as elsewhere, a new friendship, 
 if a worthy one, is a priceless treasure both for mind 
 and for heart. 
 
 The time allotted to me is too short for an elaborate 
 critique. Much which I should wish to say, I must 
 leave unsaid. Much on which I should be glad to en- 
 large, I can only touch upon. As to that whereof I 
 may have most to say, I can only give a hint or two 
 where it would be easy to give an essay. 
 
 I can only speak briefly of the poet, although the 
 man was perhaps even more interesting. Arthur Hugh 
 Clough was born in Liverpool, January i, 1819. His 
 father's business engagements led him to America, and 
 Arthur passed some years of his earlier boyhood in this 
 country, a fact not without its influence on his views 
 and sympathies as a man. He was educated first at 
 Rugby, during the first years of Arnold's headmaster- 
 ship. He proved to be one of the most brilliant of that 
 famous teacher's scholars. Dean Hawley writes of him : 
 
 (131) 
 
132 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 **0f all the scholars at Rugby School in the time 
 when Arnold's influence was at its height, there was 
 none who so completely represented the place in all its 
 phases as Clough." *' Over the career of none of his 
 pupils did Arnold watch with a livelier interest or a 
 more sanguine hope." From Rugby he went to Ox- 
 ford. It was a time when in the language of Thomas 
 Hughes, ''the whole university was in a ferment." 
 The Tractarian controversy was at its height. The ques- 
 tions stirred by it were occupying the most earnest and 
 profound intellects in the university. Clough, as one of 
 these, became deeply absorbed in philosophic and relig- 
 ious inquiries, and in the pursuit of a broader culture 
 than that involved in the university course. The result 
 was that although he came to be recognized as a man 
 of marked personality and power, his Oxford career was 
 less brilliant in its academic successes than had been 
 anticipated. He won a fellowship indeed, but did not 
 retain it long, on account of the growing divergence of 
 his religious convictions from those dominant in the 
 university. In 1848-49, Clough was on the continent, 
 and witnessed some of the revolutionary struggles of 
 those memorable years both in Paris and in Rome. 
 He witnessed the siege of Rome by the French, and 
 the overthrow of the Roman Republic, and has recorded 
 his impressions of the same in his poem, Amours de 
 Voyage.. Upon his return he was appointed to a Pro- 
 fessorship in the London University, but resigned it in 
 1852, and came to America. He settled in Cambridge, 
 Mass., where he engaged in private instruction. With- 
 in less than two years he returned to England, having 
 been appointed to a place in the Educational Depart- 
 ment of the Privy Council. His arduous labors in office 
 undermined his strength. He again visited the conti- 
 nent for his health, but in vain. In November 1861, 
 
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. I 33 
 
 he died in Florence, where he was buried in the Prot- 
 estant Cemetery. 
 
 Looking first at Clough's poetry on its outer side, or 
 the side next to nature, I find it to be characterized by 
 a robust and blithe vitality, a healthy responsiveness of 
 soul to all brieht and tonic influences from without. 
 There is in it a peculiar freshness and crispness of im- 
 pression, a wonderful buoyancy, exhilaration, and glow, 
 as from one of his own early morning plunges into the 
 basin of a mountain stream. His heart beats joyously 
 to the pulse of earth and sky, sun and sea. His pic- 
 tures are full of life and movement. They are per- 
 vaded by a decided, though not excessive realism. 
 He never indeed wearies or bewilders us with a multi- 
 plicity of minute and unimportant details, after the 
 fashion of the pre-Raphaelites. His sketches are broad 
 and massive rather than complex and microscopic. 
 Such details as he gives are those of most subtle sug- 
 gestion. For the rest, his art abides in the most ex- 
 pressive features of the scene he describes, those which 
 embody its Hfe, its soul, its atmosphere. Two or three 
 of his pictures will serve to illustrate these characteristics. 
 
 The first is of a *' favorite spot," near Venice : 
 
 *' Where by masses blue 
 And white cloud-folds I follow true, 
 The great Alps rounding grandly o'er. 
 Huge arc, to the Dalmatian shore." 
 
 The next a sea-scape on the coast of Scotland : 
 
 "As at return of tide, the total weight of ocean 
 Drawn by moon and sun from Labrador and Greenland, 
 Sets-in amain, the open space betwixt Mull and Scarba 
 Heaving, swelling, spreading the might of the mighty Atlantic ; 
 There into cranny and slit of the rocky cavernous bottom 
 Settles down, and with dimples huge the smooth sea-surface 
 Eddies, coils, and whirls; by dangerous Corryvreckan." 
 
134 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Once more the early morning in a large city : 
 
 " All the great empty streets are flooded with broadening clearness, 
 
 Which, withal, by inscrutable simultaneous access 
 
 Permeates far and pierces to the very cellars lying in 
 
 Narrow high back-lane, and court, and alley of alleys ; 
 
 He that goes forth to his walk, while speeding to the suburb 
 
 Sees sights only peaceful and pure ; as labourers setthng 
 
 Slowly to work, in their limbs the lingering sweetness of slumbers, 
 
 Humble market-carts, coming-in, bringing-in, not only 
 
 Flower, fruit, farm-store, but the sounds and sights of the country 
 
 Dwelling yet on the sense of the dreaming drivers ; soon after 
 
 Half-awake servant-maids unfastening drowsy shutters 
 
 Up at the windows, or down, letting in the air by the door-way ; 
 
 School-boys, school-girls soon, with slate, portfolio, satchel, 
 
 Hampered as they haste, those running, these others maidenly 
 
 tripping ; 
 Early clerk anon turning out to stroll, or it may be 
 Meet his sweet-heart waiting behind the garden-gate there ; 
 Merchant on his grass-plat, haply bare-headed ; and now by this 
 
 time 
 Little child bringing breakfast to father that sits on the timber 
 There by the scaffolding ; see she waits for the can beside him ; 
 Meantime above purer air untarnished of new-lit fires, 
 So that the whole great wicked artificial civilized fabric — 
 AIL its unfinished houses, lots for sale and railway outworks — 
 Seems reaccepted, resumed to Primal Nature and Beauty." 
 
 In connection with this last extract I may note in 
 passing that, after the blind Milton, Clough is beyond 
 any modern poet of my acquaintance the priest of Day, 
 of Light. This, I take it, is but one phase of his pas- 
 sion for reality of which still another phase shows itself 
 in his Greek love for definiteness and absoluteness, and 
 his contempt for Gothic vagueness and obscurity. 
 
 "Come, leave your Gothic worn-out story, 
 San Giorgio and the Redentore : 
 I from no building gay or solemn, 
 Can spare the shapely Grecian column. 
 
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. I 35 
 
 Maturer optics don't delight 
 In childish dim religious light. 
 In evanescent vague effects 
 That shirk, not face one's intellects ; 
 They love not fancies just betrayed, 
 And artful tricks of light and shade. 
 But pure form nakedly displayed, 
 And all things absolutely made." 
 
 So in style he exacts above all else clearness. 
 " Writing's golden word what is it 
 But the three syllables — ex-pli-cit ? " 
 Say, if you cannot help it, less. 
 But what you do put, put express. 
 I fear that rule won't meet your feeling ; 
 "You think half showing, half concealing, 
 Is God's own method of revealing." 
 
 That this decided realism is with him a principle, the 
 outgrowth of strong conviction, that it does not proceed 
 from insensibility to the charms of sentiment, or the fas- 
 cinations of the ideal, is abundantly evident. Indeed 
 his poetry derives a large measure of its significance 
 from the attraction which on the one hand sentiment 
 and ideality exercise over him, and the vigor with which 
 on the other hand he resists or at least controls that at- 
 traction. 
 
 The ** vague desires," which come and go, which with 
 their fleeting beauty so often woo men and women to 
 their own undoing, he would question them, bid them 
 say whence and what they are ? 
 
 " A message from the blest 
 Or bodily unrest ; 
 A call to heavenly good, 
 A fever in the blood ; 
 What are ye, vague desires, 
 What are ye?" 
 
 Can anything be more dreamy, more mystical than 
 the following? 
 
136 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 "Is it impossible, say you, these passionate fervent impulsions, 
 These projections of spirit to spirit, these inward embraces, 
 Should in strange ways, in her dreams, should visit her, strengthen 
 
 her, shield her ? 
 Is it possible rather that these great floods of feeling 
 Setting-in daily from me towards her should, impotent wholly. 
 Bring neither sound nor motion to that sweet shore they heave to ? 
 Efflux here, and there no stir nor pulse of influx ? " 
 
 But Clough's healthy love of simplicity, his resolute 
 demand for definiteness and reality, leads him to shun 
 all mere sentiments as unsatisfactory, all pure idealism 
 as untrustworthy. For himself at least he will have no 
 illusion. Steadfastly and sternly, as Elijah to Baal, does 
 he refuse to bow the knee to any idol, whether of the 
 cave, or of the market, or of the temple. 
 
 " I will look straight out, see things, not try to evade them ; 
 Fact shall be fact for me ; and the truth, the truth as ever, 
 Flexible, changeable, vague, and multiform, and doubtful." 
 
 Even in the blaze of victory he is not blind to the 
 fact, to the base alloy which lies in the residuum. 
 
 "Victory ! Victory ! Victory ! — Ah, but it is, believe me, 
 Easier, easier far to intone the chant of the martyr. 
 Than to indite any paean of any victory. Death may 
 Sometimes be noble ; but life, at best, will appear an illusion, 
 While the great pain is upon us, it is great ; when it is over 
 Why it is over. The smoke of the sacrifice rises to heaven 
 Of a sweet savor, no doubt, to Somebody ; but on the altar 
 Lo, there is nothing remaining but ashes and dirt and ill odor." 
 
 In close connection with this realistic simplicity, is 
 his earnest love for naturalness, his strong recoil from 
 all conventionalism. He would lead us away from the 
 *' great wicked, artificial, civilized fabric" of modern 
 society, with its restrictions and repressions, its affecta- 
 tions and shams, its restless fevers and moody paroxysms, 
 its morbid excitements and petrifying apathies, back 
 to *' Primal Nature and Beauty." His poetry is one 
 
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 1 37 
 
 continual protest against the dwarfing and warping 
 influences from which man and woman are suffering. 
 Especially does he feel ** the old knightly religion, the 
 chivalry semi-quixotic, stir in his veins," and prompt 
 him to sally forth like another Amadis to release 
 woman from the enchanted castle of convention. With 
 amusing extravagance the radical and utilitarian hero 
 of his Long Vacation Pastoral invokes the Millennium 
 of the Emancipation of Women through their restora- 
 tion to naturalness and trueness of life, abandoning 
 
 " Boudoir, toilette, carriages, drawing-room, and ball-room. 
 
 * -jfr * * 
 
 Bending with blue cotton gown, skirted up over striped linsey- 
 woolsey. 
 
 Milking the kine in the field like Rachel watering cattle. 
 
 ¥r ¥r * ^ 
 
 Or with pail upon head, like Dora beloved of Alexis. 
 •X- * ^ * 
 
 Home from the river or pump moving stately and calm to the 
 
 laundry. 
 
 * -x- * ^ 
 
 Or if you please with the fork in the garden uprooting potatoes. 
 So feel women, not dolls," 
 
 And so realize in their life the architectural law of 
 Christian Cathedrals, that ''use be suggestive of beau- 
 ty." 
 
 But this revolt of our poet against the artificial ex- 
 ternalism of Modern Life, with its conventional lip- 
 moralisms, and its actual heart-immoralities finds a still 
 more earnest, and at times, bitter expression. With 
 what keen satire he expounds the fashionable Law of 
 Duty. 
 
 " Duty — that's to say, complying 
 With whate'er's expected here; 
 On your unknown cousin's dying, 
 Straight be ready with the tear, 
 
138 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Upon etiquette relying, 
 
 Unto usage naught denying, 
 Blush not even, never fear. 
 
 * -x- •}«• * 
 
 With the form conforming duly. 
 Senseless what it meaneth truly. 
 
 -;t ^ * * 
 
 Duty, 'tis to take on trust, 
 
 What things are good, and right, and just, 
 And whether indeed they be or be not, 
 
 Try not, test not, feel not, see not. 
 ■X- -x- -Jt * 
 
 Stout, sturdy limbs that Nature gave, 
 
 And be drawn in a bath chair along to the grave. 
 
 'Tis the stern and prompt suppressing 
 As an obvious deadly sin. 
 
 All the questioning and the guessing 
 Of the soul's own soul within. 
 
 ^ -Jf -X- * 
 
 'Tis the blind non-recognition. 
 
 Or of goodness, truth, or beauty. 
 Save by precept and submission ; 
 
 Moral blank and moral void. 
 Life at very birth destroyed. 
 
 Atrophy, exinanition ! 
 Duty ! yea, by duty's prime condition, 
 
 Pure nonentity of duty." 
 
 With what terrible irony he preaches the conven- 
 tional gospel of submission : 
 
 " This stern necessity of things 
 On every side our being rings ; 
 Our eagle aims still questioning round. 
 
 Find exit none from that great bound. 
 When once her law dictates the way, 
 
 The wise thinks only to obey, 
 Take life as she has ordered it, 
 And come what may of it, submit, 
 Submit, submit. 
 
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 1 39 
 
 We must, we must : 
 
 Howe'er we turn, and pause, and tremble, 
 Howe'er we shrink, deceive, dissemble, 
 Whate'er our doubting, grief, disgust. 
 The hand-is on us and we must ; 
 
 We must, we must. 
 *Tis common sense and human wit, 
 Can find no better name than it. 
 Submit, submit." 
 
 These lines suggest another feature of Clough's poetic 
 temperament, which I may be allowed to call its other- 
 sidedness. He is never satisfied with holding up one 
 side only of a question, even although that side be his 
 own. Thus while his predominant habit of thought 
 and expression is^ as we have seen, that of a hearty 
 realism, we stumble occasionally upon an idealism 
 which seems wafted from some old Hindu Purana, or 
 some SibyUine leaf of Emersonian Transcendentalism. 
 In Amours de Voyage he gives expression to the 
 Hamlet-like irresolution of the speculative spirit, its 
 hesitancy to conclude on any definite course of action, 
 lest some fallacy should lurk in the premises, lest some 
 fatal weakness, or as fatal perversity of will should 
 occasion our drifting into some current which might 
 sweep us we know not whither. 
 
 " I do not like to be moved ; for the will is excited, and action 
 Is a most dangerous thing ; I tremble for something factitious, 
 Some malpractice of heart and illegitimate process ; 
 We are so prone to these things with our terrible notions of duty." 
 
 Yet when has the clarion-call of duty been more 
 bravely or cheerily sounded than in the following lines: 
 
 " Go from the east to the west as the sun and the stars direct thee, 
 Go with the girdle of man, go and encompass the earth, 
 
 Not for the gain of the gold, for the getting, the hoarding, the 
 having. 
 But for the joy of the deed, but for the duty to do ; 
 
140 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Go with the spiritual life, the higher vohtion and action, 
 
 With the great girdle of God, go and encompass the earth." 
 
 It must be confessed however, that the predominant 
 mood of the poet is not this mood of resolute ag^grcss- 
 iveness. It is rather one of hesitancy, suspense, longing 
 for action paralyzed by doubt, or by disgust with the 
 conditions of it. When the tutor, the ** grave man 
 Adam" remarks: 
 
 "There is a great Field-Marshal, my friend, who arrays our bat- 
 talions ; 
 Let us to Providence trust, and abide and work in our stations." 
 
 The eager, impetuous Philip retorts : 
 
 "I am sorry to say your Providence puzzles me sadly: 
 
 Children of Circumstance are we to be ? You answer, On no 
 wise! 
 Where does Circumstance end, and Providence where begins it? 
 
 What are we to resist, and what are we to be friends with? 
 If there is battle, 'tis battle by night : I stand in the darkness, 
 
 Here in the melee of men, Ionian and Dorian on both sides, 
 Signal and password known; which is friend and which foeman? 
 
 Is it a friend ? I doubt, tho' he speak with the voice of a brother. 
 Still you are right, I suppose ; you always are and will be. 
 
 Tho' I mistrust the Field-Marshal, I bow to the duty of order. 
 Yet is my feeling rather to ask, where is the battle ? 
 
 Yes, I could find in my heart to cry, notwithstanding my Elspie, 
 O that the armies indeed were arrayed ! O joy of the onset! 
 
 Sound, then, Trumpet of God, come forth, Great Cause, to 
 array us. 
 King and Leader appear, thy soldiers sorrowing seek thee. 
 
 Would that the armies indeed were arrayed, O where is the 
 battle ! 
 Neither battle I see nor arraying, nor King in Israel, 
 
 Only infinite jumble and mess and dislocation. 
 Backed by a solemn appeal, ' For God's sake do not stir there.' " 
 
 The poem which gives us the deepest insight into 
 Clough's inner intellectual life, with its questings, and 
 struggles, its divided purposes and baffled aims, as well 
 as into the peculiar phases of his personality and experi- 
 
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. I4I 
 
 ence, is the posthumous poem called Dipsychus. It is 
 at the same time one of the most significant exponents 
 of that peculiar result of our Nineteenth Century cul- 
 ture which Clough so well represents; that almost 
 morbid othersideness which induces a sort of indefinite 
 intellectual suspense, which shrinks from making a pos- 
 itive decision between rival creeds or tendencies, or 
 from committing itself to any definite line of sympathy 
 or action. 
 
 In form the poem is a dialogue carried on indirectly 
 for the most part between a young man named Dipsy- 
 chus and a spirit who speaks from behind the scenes 
 rather than from the stage. As the name suggests, 
 Dipsychus represents that double-mindedness, that 
 quality of thought, inclination and purpose, which the 
 mental and ethical conditions of our age tend to foster. 
 He is haunted by the Ideal, but hemmed in by the 
 Actual. His dreams are ever stranding themselves on 
 the stern and rock-bound coast of Fact. He would fain 
 beheve, but Truth and man seem to be forever playing 
 hide-and-seek with each other, and faith seems little 
 better than a conventional decency. He would fain 
 worship, but the Supreme Power in the heavens, seems 
 either unable or unwilling to mend matters here, and the 
 policy of non-interference between man and Him will 
 probably v/ork as well as any. He would fain act, but 
 action is full of risks, even betraying men into prema- 
 ture folly. 
 
 There is another quality in the poem represented by 
 Dipsychus and the Spirit. The latter is nameless, but 
 evidently personifies the mocking, lying, debasing Power, 
 which is ever luring man from the path of earnest faith 
 and high endeavor. Rather an interesting Devil, of 
 Goethe's line rather than Milton's. Indeed the poet 
 comes near identifying him v/ith Mephistopheles, but he 
 
1^2 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 has some original traits of his own. The English Mephis- 
 topheles does not, like the German, represent the abso- 
 lute negation of truth and goodness. There is more 
 flesh and blood in his composition. He breakfasts on 
 the London Times, and dines on roast beef, and evidently 
 has no taste for sauer-kraut or metaphysics. He is emi- 
 nently respectable — none the less *' devilish" however, 
 as Mrs, Browning would say, for that. He is, to be sure, 
 a high-bred gentleman, believes in the code of honor, 
 hates the May-meetings, and the angel whine, 
 
 *' That snuffle human, yet divine ;" 
 
 but then, although *'reHgion may not be his forte," 
 he will have **no infidelity, that's flat." He does not 
 approve the * 'strong Strauss smell" of some of Dipsy- 
 chus' verses, and advises him : 
 
 "Take larger views, (and quit your Germans ;) 
 From the Analogy and Sermons, 
 I fancied — you must doubtless know — 
 Butler had proved an age ago 
 That in religious, as profane things, 
 'Twas useless trying to explain things. 
 ^ * * * 
 
 Like a good subject, and wise man, 
 Believe whatever things you can, 
 Take your religion, as 'twas found you, 
 And say no more of it, confound you." 
 
 In a word, he is the devil of what Matthew Arnold 
 calls Philistinism, of imperviousness to spiritual grace 
 and power, of a conventional faith-no-faith, sincere only 
 in the service of insincerities, valuing religion only for 
 its material utilities, knowing no higher trinity than 
 the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride 
 of life. Hear him : 
 
 What we all love is good touched up with evil, 
 Religion's self must have a touch of devil." 
 
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. I43 
 
 " This world is very odd, we see. 
 We do not comprehend it, 
 But in one fact we all agree, 
 God won't, and we can't, mend it." 
 
 " Being common sense it can't be sin, 
 To take it as I find it, 
 The pleasure to take pleasure in, 
 The pain, try not to mind it." 
 
 Day by day he weaves his withes around Dipsychus, 
 who struggles in the toils, but in vain. The iron 
 enters deeper and deeper into his soul, and he submits: 
 
 " Therefore, farewell ! a long and last farewell. 
 Ye pious sweet simplicities of life. 
 Good books, good friends, and holy moods and all 
 That lent rough life sweet Sunday-seeming rest, 
 Making earth heaven-like ; welcome, wicked world. 
 The hardening heart, the calculating brain. 
 Narrowing its doors to thought, the lying lips. 
 The calm dissembling eyes, the greedy flesh, 
 The world, the devil. Welcome ! Welcome ! Welcome ! " 
 
 In religion Clough represents those, and they are not 
 a few in number or importance, who are drawn to 
 Christianity as a Divine supernatural religion by the 
 infinite satisfaction which it ministers to our higher 
 spiritual wants, who realize what an infinite loss would 
 be its disappearance from the universe of moral ideas 
 and forces, who, in a word, recognize in it the Ideal 
 Religion, but who are so far influenced by the Nega- 
 tive Criticism of the age, that they fail to find adequate 
 support for its external reality as a religion of Fact. 
 In the Easter Poem, to which the Spirit in Dipsychus 
 attributes that strong Strauss smell, there is a tone of 
 inexpressible sadness over the lost, unrisen Christ : 
 
 " Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. 
 As of the unjust also of the just. 
 Yea of that Just One too ! 
 
144 LLEWELYN 10 AN EVANS. 
 
 This is the one sad Gospel that is true, 
 
 Christ is not risen ! 
 Eat, drink, and die, for we are souls bereaved ; 
 Of all the creatures under heaven's wide cope, 
 We are most hopeless who had once most hope, 
 And most beliefless that had most beheved." 
 ■3t -Jt * -x- * 
 
 " Here on our Easter Day, 
 We rise, we come, and lo ! we find him not, 
 Gardener nor other on the sacred spot ; 
 Where they have laid him there is none to say, 
 No sound, nor in, nor out, — no word 
 Of where to seek the dead, or meet the living Lord, 
 There is no glistering of an angel's wing, 
 There is no voice of heavenly clear behest ; 
 Let us go hence and think upon these things. 
 
 In silence, which is best, 
 
 Is He not risen ? No ! 
 
 But lies and moulders low, 
 
 Christ is not risen ! " 
 
 And not seldom does Clough give utterance to that 
 sense of orphanage, of homelessness, of a soul adrift, 
 which so many in our day have felt when robbed of 
 their Lord and their faith. 
 
 V Come home, come home ! and where a home hath he. 
 Whose ship is driving o'er the driving sea ? 
 Through clouds that mutter, and o'er waves that roar. 
 Say shall we find or shall we not. a shore. 
 That is, as is not ship or ocean foam, 
 Indeed, our home ! " 
 
 In a flippant scepticism or a godless materialism at 
 least Clough's spirit finds no anchorage. 
 
 " As of old from Sinai's top, 
 
 God said that God is one, 
 By science strict so speaks He now, 
 
 To tell us, there is none ! 
 Earth goes by chemic forces ; Heaven's 
 
 A Mechanique Celeste ! 
 
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. I45 
 
 And heart and mind of human kind, 
 A watch-work as the rest ! 
 
 Is this a voice, as was the voice 
 
 Whose speaking told abroad, 
 When thunder pealed, and mountain reeled, 
 
 The ancient Truth of God ? 
 Ah, not the voice, 'tis but the cloud, 
 
 The outer darkness dense, 
 Where image none, nor e'er was seen, 
 
 Similitude of sense." 
 
 " It may be true 
 That while we walk the troublous tossing sea, 
 That when we see the o'er-topping waves advance, 
 And when we feel our feet beneath us sink, 
 There are who walk beside us ; and the cry- 
 That rises so spontaneous to the lips, 
 The ' Help us or we perish ' is not nought, 
 An evanescent spectrum of disease ; 
 It may be that in deed, and not in fancy, 
 A hand that is not ours upstays our steps, 
 A voice that is not ours commands the waves, 
 Commands the waves and whispers in our ear, 
 O thou of little faith, why didst thou doubt? " 
 
VII. 
 A SKETCH OF GREEK POETRY. 
 
 In undertaking at your request to deliver a Lecture 
 auxiliary to your study of Classic Literature in this 
 year's course, I have been somewhat troubled with 
 what the French call an embarrassment of riches. After 
 taking several outlooks over the field I have at last con- 
 cluded to give you a hasty sketch of Greek Poetry. 
 Greek Poetry rather than Latin for the reason that beau- 
 tiful as the latter may be and not without originality, 
 the former was its inspiration and its model. Greek 
 Poetry for the reason that the whole domain of Greek 
 Literature is too vast for a single survey, and that Poet- 
 ry rather than History, Oratory, or Philosophy, gives 
 us the truest and fullest expression of the Greek mind 
 in Literature. But Greek Poetry again is a boundless 
 study, which in all its wealth of detail could no more be 
 crowded into a single lecture than the Alps into a cab- 
 inet picture. I can only point out to you a few of the 
 salient peaks in that wonder-land. 
 
 I have asked myself — wherein does the chief signifi- 
 cance and value of Greek Poetry consist? The answer 
 to this question, I believe to be : — In its function as 
 the expression of the character, the tendencies, the deep- 
 est thought, the inmost spiritual life and development 
 of a people, the most interesting, versatile, exuberant, 
 beauty-loving, symmetrical, and in some respects the 
 (146) 
 
SKETCH OF GREEK POETRY. 1 47 
 
 most highly cultivated which the world has ever seen. 
 My chief endeavor to-night accordingly will be to give 
 you through Greek song something of an insight into 
 the Greek soul, — that soul which not only in its own 
 records, not only in ancient Roman Literature, but in 
 all the best Modern Literature is still marching on. 
 
 The literary development of the Greeks has five peri- 
 ods, or stages. The first in Pre-Historic. We are as yet 
 in the morning twilight of legend and myth. The 
 world's rulers are the demi-gods. The literary voice of 
 the period is the Epic, the poetry of heroes and gods. 
 Through the gray gloom the colossal image of Homer 
 looms above the Greek world like the shadow of the 
 Brocken, a vague and wierd mystery. This period reaches 
 down to the first Olympiad, B. C. 'j']^. 
 
 The second period is transitional. We are in the light 
 of the morning dawn. History is forming, Political 
 changes are taking place. The demi-gods are followed 
 by men, tyrants, oligarchies, democracies. The super- 
 abundant Hfe of a young civihzation shoots out into 
 colonies. The growing order of society crystallizes into 
 the laws of Solon, Lycurgus, and others. Ionian Athens 
 and Doric Sparta are getting ready for their grand duel. 
 Philosophy is syllabling its first thoughts, mainly in hex- 
 ameters. Poetry sings in plaintive elegiacs, stirring lyr- 
 ics, ethical and political apothegms, trumpet-tongued 
 battle-songs. This period runs through 300 years, end- 
 ing with the overthrow of the Persians at Marathon, 
 Thermopylae, Salamis, B. C. 490-480. 
 
 The third period is climactic, ushered in by Pindar's 
 immortal lyre. 'Tis the golden noon-tide of Greece. 
 Athens is the eye, the brain and soul, the queen of 
 Hellas. Socrates teaches Plato, Greece, the ages, to 
 think. Thucydides shows how History should be writ- 
 ten. Pericles rules the state as the inspired administra- 
 
148 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 tor of the goddesses of wisdom and beauty. Art in Phid- 
 ias reahzes a perfection which is still the world's despair. 
 The master-pieces of the drama burst into being as the 
 constellations burst on the eye when the sun goes down. 
 This meridian hour is brief as it is glorious. It covers 
 about four-score years, ending with the departure of the 
 sceptre from Athens to Sparta, about B. C. 404. 
 
 The fourth period is an age of transition, this time 
 along the downward arc. Greece has passed her zenith, 
 although the noontide glory still irradiates the brows 
 of her Plato, Aristotle, and Demosthenes. Her genius 
 produces less but diffuses itself further. Athens is a 
 slave, but the winged words of her poets and think- 
 ers still bring the world to her feet. A new Greece 
 springs up in Macedonia, heretofore scorned as barba- 
 rian. Alexander the pupil of Aristotle, with Homer 
 for his pillow, goes forth as a new incarnation of Achil- 
 les to conquer and to Hellenize the Old World of his 
 day. Rhetoric is the rage of the schools. Painting is 
 the prevailing mode in Art. In the New Comedy of 
 Menander, Poetry comes down from Olympus, parts 
 company with demi-gods and heroes, to interpret the 
 prose of every-day life. This period ages like the for- 
 mer, lasts about fourscore years, ending with the death 
 of Alexander, B. C. 323. 
 
 The fifth and last period is the age of decay, reach- 
 ing down through six centuries to the final extinction of 
 Greek civilization, 300 years after Christ. Athens 
 shares her literary supremacy with Alexandria, and a 
 little later Rome and then Byzantium are taken into the 
 co-partnership. Great and splendid names indeed are not 
 wanting in this period — Euclid in geometry, Ptolemy 
 in physical science, Plutarch in biography, Lucian in po- 
 lemics and irony, Epictetus in philosophy, Longinus in 
 criticism ; Neo-Platonists, Plotinus, Porphyry and Proclus, 
 
SKETCH OF GREEK POETRY. 149 
 
 besides Romans like Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius in 
 whom Greek thought talks Latin. Poetry warbles sweet 
 idyls among the olives of Sicily. But look at the period 
 as a whole. The blight of decay is only too evident. 
 (I am speaking, you will remember, of the Greek Liter- 
 ature now — it was otherwise in the Latin. ) It was the 
 period of poetasters rather than of poets ; of sophists 
 rather than of philosophers ; of rhetoricians rather than 
 orators; of dilettanteism rather than art; of butterflies 
 rather than Titans. The old World in fact was dying. 
 As has been said: ''While Hypatia was lecturing on 
 Homer, the Christians were converting the world." 
 
 With this preliminary outline of the more general 
 development of Greek Literature, let us retrace our steps 
 to consider more closely the leading developments of 
 Poetry. 
 
 In the discussion of a subject it is not always easy to 
 know where to begin. Fortunately no such embarrass- 
 ment besets us in the consideration of our present theme. 
 Greek Poetry has its rise in the ocean. That ocean is 
 Homer. Without Homer, Greek Poetry would have 
 been impossible. With such a beginning any other 
 sequel is inconceivable. Since the discovery of the 
 inland seas of equatorial Africa, the Nile has ceased to 
 be a mystery. Postulate Homer, and Greece follows as 
 a necessity, with Athens and Sparta, the Parthenon and 
 the Areopagus, Pindar and ^schylus, Solon and 
 Socrates, Themistocles and Alexander. No doubt, as 
 there were kings before Agamemnon, so there must 
 have been poets before Homer. Such a magnificent 
 Nile of song did not leap out of the barren rock at the 
 touch of any wand, be it of inspiration itself. For even 
 inspiration must have its conditions, its environment, its 
 antecedents. And in Homer there is something besides 
 inspiration, something besides genius ; there is art, high, 
 
150 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 consummate art. But art, like Rome, is not built in a 
 day. 
 
 As regards the personality of Homer, I will assume 
 that your study of the subject has at least put you in 
 possession of the present status of that much-vexed 
 problem of criticism. It may not have been given to 
 you, any more than to others, to learn just how many 
 there were of him, how many times, or in what places 
 he was born. We may probably assume that, like the 
 demon in the gospels, who, when asked his name, 
 answered: ** My name is legion," Homer is a noun 
 both of the singular and the plural number. Criticism 
 of details has established his plurality ; criticism of the 
 whole has no less convincingly proved his singularity. 
 Some of you saw not many days ago the sun with his 
 parhelia in our western sky. The parhelia were many, 
 the sun is one. Homer had his parhelia, how many we 
 know not; but Homer is one. Absorbing into himself 
 the culture and the art of pre-historic Greece, of which 
 we know naught except as it is reflected in his undying 
 lines, the man Homer becomes the school Homer; the 
 man the author (I take it) of the original Iliad, the 
 school the manifold author of our present Iliad, and of 
 the Odyssey, together with certain other Homeric frag- 
 ments, some of which are more or less doubtful. 
 
 But what of the poetry of Homer? What is its place 
 and function in the history of literature? Here let us 
 turn aside to glance for a moment at that which consti- 
 tutes the material, the substratum of the Homeric, as 
 indeed of nearly all the Greek poetry. I refer to the 
 Greek mythology. 
 
 We cannot pause now to consider the philosophy 
 either of mythology in general, or of the Greek myth- 
 ology in particular. How did these Greek myths orig- 
 inate? How far did they grow out of the histories 
 
SKETCH OF GREEK POETRY. I5I 
 
 of actual personalities? How far did they represent 
 external facts, e. g. solar or meteorological phenomena ? 
 How far were they the products of imagination and 
 fancy? How far were they beheved? What precise 
 place did they occupy in the creeds and lives of the 
 ancients ? These and like questions have a fascinating 
 interest for the student of history, but their considera- 
 tion would lead us too far from the work before us at 
 this time. Fortunately their significance in Greek poetry 
 is almost wholly independent of the conclusions at 
 which we might arrive in regard to these points. 
 Suffice it here to say that mythology represents what 
 was most vital in the religion of the Greeks, what was 
 deepest and most comprehensive in their philosophy, 
 what was most graceful in their imaginings, most symmet- 
 rical in the portraiture of character, most sublime in the 
 achievements of heroism, most tremendous in the issues 
 of destiny. 
 
 By way of introduction let us observe that recent 
 ethnographical and philological researches have brought 
 to light such analogies between the first inhabitants of 
 Greece and the Aryan nationalities which settled on the 
 banks of the Ganges and of the Euphrates, as justify 
 us in assuming their common origin and the identity of 
 their primitive beUefs. The worship of the Pelasgians, 
 the original Hellenic population of Greece, was like 
 that of the early Indians and Persians, the simple deifi- 
 cation of nature. Zeus, for example, like the Hindu 
 Indra represents the sky at v/ar with the Titans, the 
 "first-born of all shaped and palpable gods," as Keats 
 calls them, the immediate successors of the primeval 
 Darkness. Apollo represents the sun, Demeter the 
 earth, Poseidon the fertihzing power of water, Hephaes- 
 tus the volcanic forces and then fire as an industrial 
 element, Dionysus (Bacchus) the productive, overflow- 
 
152 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 ing, intoxicating power of nature. And so for the rest. 
 But this natural worship was not long in undergoing 
 a transformation, when transplanted from the dreamy 
 banks of the Ganges, or the starry plain of the Euphra- 
 tes, to the sunny isles and coasts of the Mediterranean. 
 To come at once to the Greeks, note to begin with the 
 influence of these physical surroundings. The temper- 
 ature, character of climate, and the susceptibility to 
 cultivation of a soil not excessively fertile, favored an 
 active temperament and industrious habits among the 
 people. **The Greeks," says Thucydides, "have 
 learned from their fathers that they must pay the price 
 of labor and effort in order to obtain any advantage." 
 Note again the geographical position of Greece at the 
 confluence of east and west, near the junction of the 
 great division of the world. ''This small, many-toothed 
 peninsula," says Dr. Schafif, *'was inserted by Provi- 
 dence in the midst of the three divisions of the Old 
 World to educate and refine them. And here the im- 
 portance of the maritime facilities of Greece becomes 
 apparent, bounded as it is by an infinitely undulating 
 line of sea-coast, forming fine natural harbors, separated 
 by the sea from Italy, Africa, (and yet) linked to them 
 by its islands." ''Whilst in the vast monarchies," 
 writes De Pressense, "framed in the image of sur- 
 rounding nature, that sprung up in those immense 
 plains of Asia, which are intersected by lofty mountains, 
 and where none but the king rose above the level, 
 religion never got beyond pantheism, sometimes mons- 
 trous, sometimes grand, but always fatalistic because 
 affirming nature's triumph over man, the latter vindi- 
 cated himself in a less favored land, in one in which 
 being nearly encircled by the sea, man was constantly 
 solicited to movement and action, and brought into the 
 great current of ideas and civilization," 
 
SKETCH OF GREEK POETRY. 1 53 
 
 Not less important were the social and political influ- 
 ences which moulded the Greek development. It would 
 be difficult," says Schlegel, ** to point out a more strik- 
 ing difference, a more decided opposition in the whole 
 circle of the intellectual and moral character and habits 
 of nations, as far at least as the sphere of known his- 
 tory extends, between the seclusive and monotonous 
 character of Asiatic intellect, the generally unchange- 
 able uniformity of Oriental manners and Oriental society, 
 and thp manifold activity and the varied Hfe of the 
 Greeks in the first flourishing ages of their history. 
 This amazing diversity in the moral and intellectual 
 habits of the Greeks appears not only in their legisla- 
 tion, their forms of government, their manners, occu- 
 pation and usages of life, but in their various and widely 
 dispersed settlements and colonies, in their descent 
 which was composed of so many heterogeneous ele- 
 ments, in the first seeds of their civilization, as well 
 as their distribution into hostile tribes, and great and 
 petty states, and even in their traditions, their history, 
 and the arts and forms of arts to which these gave rise ; 
 finally in a science engaged in incessant strife, and 
 marching from system to system amid the noise and 
 tumult of opposition. In Asia the prevalent feeling 
 was monarchical, proceeding from and returning again 
 to unchangeable unity. On the other hand, science 
 like life itself was thoroughly republican; and if we 
 meet with particular thinkers who leaned toward this 
 Asiatic doctrine of unity, we must regard this as only 
 an exception, a system adopted from a love of change, 
 or out of a spirit of opposition to the vulgar and gen- 
 erally received opinion that all in nature, that the world 
 as well as man, was in a state of perpetual movement, 
 constant change, and freedom of life. Even the fabu- 
 lous world of Grecian divinities, as it has been painted 
 
(54 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 by their poets, has a repubHcan cast ; for there every- 
 thing is in a state of change, of successive renovation, 
 and of mutual colHsion in the war of natural elements, 
 in the hostility of old and new deities, of the superior 
 and inferior gods, of giants and of heroes, presenting as 
 it does a state of poetical anarchy." 
 
 The three typical developments of Aryan mythology 
 are found in India, Persia, and Greece.- In the East 
 the predominance of nature and her energies over man 
 and his energies produced Pantheism. In the West the 
 triumph of man over nature resulted in Humanism. 
 Persia, intermediate between the two, where the con- 
 tending forces were nearly balanced, stopped at Dual- 
 ism. In India we see Fatalism, the reign of absolute, 
 inexorable law, by which man is hopelessly enslaved. 
 In Dualism we see an attempt, not very successful, to 
 escape from Fatalism by the recognition of two antag- 
 onistic principles. In Greece accordingly we find the 
 most emphatic recognition given anywhere by the an- 
 cient or the heathen world, of individual freedom, and 
 the superiority of m.an to nature, of mind to matter. 
 **It was in and through the Greeks,'* says Dr. Schaff, 
 *'that the human mind first awoke to a consciousness 
 of itself, bursting away from the dark powers of nature, 
 rising above the misty original broodings, and begin- 
 ning to inquire with clear head and keen eye into the 
 causes, laws, and ends of all existence." 
 
 The mythology of Greece became in this way essen- 
 tially humanistic, resulting on the one hand in the 
 humanizatlon of the Deity, on the other in the apoth- 
 eosis of humanity. 
 
 The foundations of this Humanism were laid in the 
 heroic age of Greece, which may be sub-divided into 
 two periods, the pre-historic, or legendary, when the 
 struggle between the primeval barbarism and the nas- 
 
SKETCH OF GREEK FOETRY. 1 55 
 
 cent civilization of Greece was carried on, and the his- 
 toric, culminating in the triumph of Greece over Per- 
 sia, ''that historical Iliad," as it has been called, 
 ''almost as grand as the other, which Miltiades and 
 Themistocles inscribed with their sword. " " Heroism, " 
 says De Pressense, "laid the foundation of that bold 
 apotheosis of humanity which was so long celebrated 
 on the radiant summits of Olympus. . . . The ancient 
 religion of nature was to be effaced by the worship of 
 deified heroes. . . . There was no longer that sterile 
 bewilderment inspired by the spectacle of the irresist- 
 ible forces of nature. They had caught a glimpse of 
 a higher force, the power of intelligence and freedom 
 which had been so often exhibited in the struggles that 
 attended the formation of the different states. This 
 power concentrated on a narrower field, bore a deeper 
 impress of the individual character than it did in the 
 revolutions of the vast empires of Asia. It matters 
 little that the victories of Hercules and Perseus belong 
 to fable ; the sentiment revealed by these myths is not 
 the less an historical fact, surpassing in importance all 
 others, since it was this sentiment that moulded Greece, 
 its history as well as its religion. The ideal of a hero, 
 that is to say the consciousness of a human ideal, was 
 the landmark dividing the east from the west, the land 
 of light, the enchanting land of Hellas, from that vast 
 empire prostrate under the inflexible law of nature." 
 
 And here we come upon the immense significance of 
 Homer, in the literature of Greece. He is the first, as 
 he is the greatest voice of this Humanism. He is the 
 high-priest of the new Faith, as well as the builder of 
 the temple in which its "fair humanities" were to be 
 forever enshrined. He interpreted Greece to herself, 
 creating in the same breath, as has been said, her 
 poetry and her religion. His "Olympus is an ideal 
 
156 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Greece, the gods form a council of Hellenic kings." 
 (De Pressense.) The gods of his Pantheon are men of 
 larger mould, of mightier energies, of intenser passions. 
 They are not mere dramatizations of natural powers or 
 processes, bound up with nature and incapable of trans- 
 cending the limits of her operations. They live in an 
 ideal realm of free, independent personality. Homer is 
 the poet of anthromorphism. In profane literature he 
 is the first on the one hand to interpret the Divine 
 through the human, on the other to find in the human 
 the reflection of the Divine. His poetry is the eter- 
 nal protest of art as well as of religion, of the imagi- 
 nation as well as the conscience against the obliteration 
 of a Personal Life and Will out of Nature, and against 
 Fatalism which settles down upon the blank. His tales 
 of the wrath of Achilles and the woes of Ilium, of the 
 wanderings of Ulysses, and the trials of Penelope are 
 the assertion of the mental and spiritual freedom of 
 humanity, and of the affinity of its life to that of God. 
 It will readily be seen what an immense gain to the 
 resources of the poetic art must have accrued from this 
 new departure. Not only is Poetry made the organ of 
 the human heart, the voice of its passions, its loves 
 and its hates, its hopes and fears, but the introduction 
 of gods and demi-gods on the theatre of human activity, 
 their association with mortals in the experiences of life 
 and the bonds of doom, gives a larger outline to char- 
 acter, a vaster scope to action, a wider horizon to life, 
 and withal a profounder meaning to destiny. Of 
 especial significance is the glorification of manhood 
 through the advent of the Homeric hero, the man of god- 
 like lineage, mien and powers. Homer is the world's 
 prophet of Heroism. Granted that the legendary 
 heroism of the pre-Homeric age made ready for Homer, 
 it was Homer nevertheless who enthroned Heroism as 
 
SKETCH OF GREEK POETRY. I 57 
 
 the Greek ideal, and as a permanent power in history. 
 *' Achilles," says Symonds, "more than any character 
 of fiction reflects the qualities of the Greek race in its 
 heroic age. His vices of passion and ungovernable 
 pride, his virtue of splendid human heroism, his free 
 individuality, asserted in the scorn of fate, are repre- 
 sentative of that Hellas, which afterwards at Marathon 
 and Salamis was destined to inaugurate a new era of 
 spiritual freedom for mankind." This is why the Iliad 
 became, as is been so often called, the Bible of the 
 Greeks. Alexander was a later avatar of Achilles. 
 He "expressed in real life," says Mr. Symonds, "that 
 ideal which in Homer's poetry had been displayed by 
 Achilles. He set himself to imitate Achilles. . . . 
 On all his expeditions he carried v/ith him a copy of 
 the Iliad, calling it a perfect, portable treasure of mili- 
 tary virtue. It was in the spirit of the Homeric age 
 that he went forth to conquer Asia. And when he 
 reached the plain of Troy, it was to the tomb of 
 Achilles that he paid special homage." And all the 
 way through the ages from Alexander down to Carlyle, 
 the nineteenth century Apostle of Hero-Worship, who 
 died the other day lamenting the death of heroes. Homer 
 is the great father of heroic thought and inspiration in 
 the education of the race. For me I doubt very much 
 whether Mr. Huxley's crayfish would prove an adequate 
 substitute for old Homer in this particular. Give us 
 the crayfish, but by all means leave us the Iliad. 
 
 The next great name in Greek poetry is that of 
 Hesiod. Here again I must pass by for want of time, 
 the critical questions connected with his person 
 and poetry, and limit myself to the question : What 
 is the significance of Hesiod in the development of 
 Greek poetry, and of the thought of which that poetry 
 is the exponent ? -The story which Hesiod tells us of 
 
158 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 his own call to the poetic office will help us to answer 
 this question. One night the Muses appeared to him 
 as he was watching his flocks on Mt. Helicon, and be- 
 stowed on him the gift of poetry, having first addressed 
 him in these words: "Ye country shepherds, worthless 
 wretches, slaves of the belly! although we often tell 
 falsehoods and pretend that they are true, yet we can 
 tell the truth when it pleases us." Here, as Ottfried 
 Miiller says, two things are noticeable: *' Poetical ge- 
 nius is represented as a free gift of the Muses, imparted 
 to a rough unlettered man, and awakening him from his 
 brutish condition to a better life. Secondly, this gift of 
 the Muses is to be dedicated to the diffusion of truth, 
 the poet thus indicating the serious character of his po- 
 etry, not without an implied censure of other poems 
 which admitted of an easier and freer play of fancy." 
 
 Thus we find Hesiod introducing a new element into 
 Literature, the element of reflection, self-observation, 
 meditation on life and destiny, an earnest questioning 
 after realities. Homer represents the idealism of 
 Greece, Hesiod its realism. There is a basis of truth 
 for the remark of the old Spartan king, quoted by 
 Plutarch, that while Homer was the bard of warriors 
 and noblemen, Hesiod was the singer of the Helots. 
 We may, at least, say, that Hesiod was not in sympa- 
 thy with the development represented by Homer. He 
 was a conservative. He believed in the old gods, the 
 Titans, the natural deities, rather than the upstart Olym- 
 pians, glorified Dy Homer. He shrank from the new 
 Homeric anthropomorphism. He loved to commune 
 with the divinities of heaven and air and earth and sea, 
 and to contemplate them in their cosmogonic, rather 
 than their historic relations. " He looked at life with a 
 melancholy eye." History to him was not progress, 
 but degeneration — from the Age of Gold to that of 
 
SKETCH OF GREEK POETRY. 1 59 
 
 Silver, then to Bronze and then to Iron. "Would that 
 I had not been born in the hard age of iron !" is his 
 lament. He sings the praises of labor (one of his po- 
 ems is named Works, or, as it was called later. Works 
 and Days), of frugality, simplicity and integrity. In 
 Atlas he deifies the virtue of endurance. In Prome- 
 theus and Epimetheus he personifies mental activities, 
 which Mr. Beecher (I believe) anglicizes as Foresight 
 and Hindsight. ''Justice," he sings in noble strains, 
 ''always ends in being triumphant in human affairs; 
 and if her way is steep, if the gods placed sweat and 
 pain in the path of virtue, the road grows easier along 
 the heights." 
 
 Hesiod has a still further significance as the progeni- 
 tor of the philosophic poetry of Greece. Two charac- 
 teristics of his poetry gave him this position. The one 
 was the theogonic and cosmogonic element. (One of 
 his poems was named "The Theogony. ") This fur- 
 nished the material for those semi-poetic, semi-philo- 
 sophical speculations about the origin of the universe, 
 the history of matter and mind, the relations and ac- 
 tivities of the atoms, elements, forces by which the 
 world has been built up, which constituted the Didactic 
 Epic of Greece. The other characteristics of his po- 
 etry which formed a foundation for the Didactic Epic 
 was its shrewd, homely, practical wisdom. His own 
 poetry is full of a proverbial wisdom, and becomes a re- 
 ceptacle into which a large mass of the gnomic poetry 
 of the Greeks drifted. From the combination of these 
 two elements in Hesiod, the theology and cosmology 
 of his Theogony, and the practical wisdom of his 
 Works (and Days) grew up the philosophic schools of 
 Greek poetry. 
 
 It will not be necessary to dwell long on this school. 
 For the most part' the poetic form in which its founders 
 
l60 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 clothed their speculations was an accident. Verse was 
 the literary medium of the day and they adopted it ac- 
 cordingly. It is a fact which is perhaps not generally 
 appreciated that literary Prose marks an advanced stage 
 of culture. The world scribbles its way through poor 
 or mediocre verse into tolerable prose. Philosophy her- 
 self, Metaphysics even, lisps its numbers during her 
 teens. So the earliest school of Greek philosophy, the 
 Eleatic, sought to solve the riddle of existence, and to 
 formulate the abstractions of geometry and the antino- 
 mies of Being and Not-Being in lumbering hexameters. 
 
 Undoubtedly these philosophic verses showed at 
 times a marked poetic flavor, as in Xenophon's Par- 
 menides, and especially in Empedocles, that strange, 
 romantic figure, who stalked through the streets of 
 Agrigentum, robed with Tyrian purple, crowned with 
 laurel, shod with golden sandals, a self-deluded mystic, 
 who fancied himself to be a god, and imposed his delu- 
 sion on others, staying plagues, working enchantments, 
 and yet who (as has been said) ''made himself a poet 
 among philosophers and a philosopher among poets, 
 without thereby impairing his claims to rank highly, 
 both as a poet and as a thinker among the most distin- 
 guished men of Greece." Symonds finds both in the 
 quality of his imagination and in many of his utter- 
 ances a striking resemblance to Shelley. In view of his 
 accounts of animal organisms he has also been called 
 *'the oldest Greek forerunner of Darwin." His death 
 by leaping into the crater of Etna (celebrated by many 
 poets, among them Matthew Arnold) is probably a legend, 
 although ben trovato, as the Italians say, as a fitting 
 close to his sensational career. 
 
 The philosophic poetry signalized itself still further by 
 carrying out the hostility of Hesiod to the anthropo- 
 morphic tendencies of the Homeric-heroic develop- 
 
SKETCH OF GREEK POETRY. l6l 
 
 ment of Greek thought and life. The latter develop- 
 ment indeed, was largely in the ascendency, reaching 
 its culmination in the deification of Hercules, but the 
 other tendency as it survived in the later and nobler 
 philosophy of Greece, notably the Socratic and Platonic, 
 was a valuable counterpoise to the onesided humanism 
 of the former. 
 
 The poetry which we have thus far considered was 
 mainly that of the hexameter (the metre I need scarcely 
 say somewhat imperfectly represented in English by 
 Longfellow's Evangeline). A modification of this metre 
 took place in the elegy, in which the hexameter (line of 
 six feet) alternates with the pentameter (Hne of five feet), 
 which has a feeble, hesitating movement. The elegy 
 probably originated in Asia Minor, and was adopted 
 exclusively by poets of the Ionian race for the expres- 
 sion of emotional and reflective sentiments. The word 
 was first applied to funeral dirges, and then to plaintive 
 laments in general, with a flute accompaniment, and 
 was afterwards enlarged so as to include martial, senti- 
 mental (amatory), and gnomic poetry. In Tyrtaeus 
 martial poetry is a clarion, stirring the Spartan youth 
 to deeds of imperishable renown. It is the lion soul of 
 Leonidas marching in verse. In Mimnermus the sen- 
 timental elegy glorifies youth and love, breathes the 
 languor of unmitigated ennui, and chants the alphabet 
 of an infant epicureanism. The Gnomic poetry is the 
 poetry of the proverb-mongers, of common sense, of 
 prudence, of the state, of the civic virtues, of social 
 ethics, of justice. Some of this class of poets were men 
 "inside of politics," as we sometimes say. Hear how 
 one of them sings: ''The citizens seek to overthrow 
 the state by love of money, by following indulgent and 
 self-seeking demagogues, who neglect religion and per- 
 vert the riches of the temples. Yet justice, silent but 
 
l62 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 all-seeing, will in time bring vengeance on them for these 
 things. War, want, civil discord, slavery, are at our 
 gates; and all these evils threaten Athens because of her 
 lawlessness. Whereas good laws and government set 
 all the state in order, chain the hands of evildoers, make 
 rough places plain, subdue insolence, and blast the bud- 
 ding flowers of crime, set straight the crooked ways of 
 tortuous law, root out sedition, quell the rage of strife ; 
 under their good influence all things are fair and wise 
 with men." That was Solon, and he actually believed 
 and practiced all that, heathen as he was. It would be 
 curious to see the beliefs and practices of our modern 
 Solons verified by themselves. I fancy that beside that 
 old Greek they would cut rather a sorry figure. 
 
 In the later Gnomic poets we find along with much 
 that is tender and true a sceptical and pessimistic 
 spirit — a questioning of the equity of Heaven's dealings 
 with men, a gloomy and even despairing view of the 
 future. "One hideous Charybdis," says Simonides, 
 "swallows all things — wealth and mighty virtue." "It 
 is the best of all things," says Thespius, "for the sons 
 of earth not to be born, nor to see the bright rays of 
 the sun, or else after birth to pass as soon as possible 
 the gates of death, and to lie deep down beneath a 
 weight of earth." A sentiment whose echoes we hear 
 again and again in the later poetry of Greece. 
 
 Symonds truly observes that to modern readers the 
 philosophy of these poets may seem trite, their inspira- 
 tion tame, their style pedestrian. It should be remem- 
 bered however, that to the Greeks, even to the educated 
 among them, to Socrates and his friends, the orators 
 and the tragedians, their authority in morals was absolute, 
 and their maxims which the progress of the centuries 
 has made common-place, were oracles of superhuman 
 wisdom. 
 
SKETCH OF GREEK POETRY. 1 63 
 
 The poetry thus far considered was based on the 
 heroic metre, the feet of which were dactyls and spon- 
 dees. We now come to a species of poetry based on 
 the iambus and the trochee. Special import attaches to 
 the introduction into poetry of the iambus, as "nearest 
 in cadence to the language of common Hfe," and as 
 being ''the fit vehicle for dialogue, and for all poetry 
 that deals with common and domestic topics." 
 
 This metre had long been popular among the Greeks 
 at their banquets, and especially at certain festivals for 
 the purpose of raillery. But the first to capture the 
 Iambus (the origin of the name is unknown) for the 
 more serious purposes of poetry was Archilochus, the 
 founder of the school of the Satirists, and a very con- 
 spicuous name among the Greeks, ranking next to 
 Homer himself A genuine Bohemian, as he would be 
 called if living to-day, he had a strange and checkered 
 career. "He seems to have been formed by the facts 
 of his biography," says one critic, "for the creator of 
 satire." "In conciseness, terseness and bitterness," 
 says another, "he may justly be called the Swift of 
 Greek Literature." The most distinguished of his fol- 
 lowers in the school of satire was Simonides of Amor- 
 gos, whose libels on women have furnished the gall for 
 the women-haters ever since. 
 
 A still more important development of Song is the 
 lyric, or as the German critics prefer calling it, Melic 
 poetry. "This was characterized," says K. O. Miiller, 
 "by the expression of deeper and more impassioned 
 feeling, and a more swelling and impetuous tone than 
 the elegy or iambus; and at the same time the effect 
 was heightened by appropriate vocal and instrumental 
 music, and often by the movements and figures of the 
 dance." 
 
 More than any other form of poetry among the 
 
164 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Greeks the lyric was intertwined with actual life. 
 "Every town," we are told, **had its professional 
 poets and choruses, just as every church in Europe now 
 has its organist." (Sym. I, 291.) Of the enormous 
 mass of lyric poetry thus produced there remain only a 
 few fragments scattered here and there, mainly in the 
 literature of Pedants and Dry-as-Dusts, fragments of 
 extinguished stars, as one calls them. 
 
 Of this lyric, or Melic Poetry, there are two principal 
 schools — the ^Eolian and the Dorian. ''The simple 
 song of the ^olic school was sung by one person, and 
 was never compHcated in structure, as it was merely 
 intended to reveal personal and private emotion ; the 
 choral melic poetry of the Greeks was, on the contrary, 
 grand and elaborate .... devoted to state interests 
 and pubHc affairs." 
 
 The center of the ^Eolian school was Lesbos, **the 
 island of overmastering passions," passions which ere 
 long bore their bitter fruit in a corruption which branded 
 with shame the very name of their home. This devel- 
 opment of lyric poetry in Lesbos was promoted by the 
 social and domestic life of its people, the personal free- 
 dom accorded to the individual, and especially to 
 woman. Nowhere in the ancient world did woman's 
 social position approximate so nearly her place in mod- 
 ern society as in Lesbos. It is not strange accordingly, 
 that the most distinguished of her poets is a woman, Sap- 
 pho — "the woman poet," as Mrs. Browning calls her. 
 In her verse the passion of nature becomes the perfec- 
 tion of art. As Homer was The Poet of the Greeks, so 
 Sappho is The Poetess. Plato calls her the Tenth Muse. 
 Longinus says of one of her Odes that it is *^ not a pas- 
 sion, but a congress of passions." Solon, on hearing 
 one of her poems, prayed that he might not see death 
 till he had learned it. The well-known legend of her 
 
SKETCH OF GREEK POETRY. 1 65 
 
 fatal leap from the Leucadian cliff is now declared to be 
 a myth ; but the sweetness of her poetry bespeaks the 
 possibility of a despair sufficient for a thousand suicides. 
 But little of it remains, and criticism declares that liter- 
 ature has suffered no greater loss. On the ethical side 
 it must be confessed that her poetry suffers from serious 
 limitations, which should not indeed be exaggerated, 
 belonging as they did largely to her surroundings, but 
 which can not be overlooked. 
 
 Simply mentioning the name of Alcaeus, the rival and 
 friend of Sappho, we may pause a moment with Anac- 
 reon, who belongs to the ^olian school, though not 
 himself an ^olian. In him we see "the idle singer of 
 an empty day." We no longer find the earnest passion 
 of the Lesbian singers. He is a courtier in verse; his 
 muse delights in trifles and tippHng. His verse, it Is 
 true, is remarkable for its elegance and rich coloring. 
 Horace is largely a copy on the one side of Alcaeus, 
 and on the other of Anacreon. The Anacreonic Odes, 
 so called, with which you are familiar through the grace- 
 ful versions of Tom Moore, are (it should be noted) a 
 literary imposture of the fourth century. 
 
 So much for the ^olian School. The other develop- 
 ment of Lyric poetry, it will be remembered, was the 
 Dorian. As the ^olian Lyric was personal, the 
 Dorian was choral. The yEolian singer told the story 
 of his own heart, the Dorian chanted the praises of 
 some god, demi-god, or hero. The ^olian accompa- 
 nied his song with the flute or the lyre, the Dorian 
 with a chorus of singers and dancers, among whom the 
 various parts of the ode were distributed, epode answer- 
 ing to epode, strophe to antistrophe, thus developing a 
 most elaborate and complex structure, suitable for the 
 most varied, graceful, stately, eloquent movements of 
 sentiment, metre, voice and person. Madame de Stael 
 
1 66 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 called architecture frozen music. The Dorian Ode may- 
 be called a frozen cathedral. The Dorian habits of liv- 
 ing were favorable to this development. More than 
 any other Greeks they lived in common and in public. 
 Their children were educated in companies by the State 
 and for the State. They lived a large civic and social 
 life. Their poetry accordingly became imbued with a 
 grand public spirit, although singularly enough it was 
 written mainly by strangers (i. e., non-Dorians) and 
 mostly for money. 
 
 The originator of this Choral Ode was named Ale- 
 man. It owed its elaboration, however, to Arion, the 
 hero of the well known legend which tells of his being 
 thrown overboard like Jonah, on a voyage to Corinth, 
 and being carried ashore by a dolphin, which had been 
 enamored of his music. His most important move- 
 ment is the dithyramb, a peculiar choral dance in 
 honor of Dionysus (Bacchus). Other important im- 
 provements were introduced by Stesichorus, in particu- 
 lar, the strophe, antistrophe and epode, called the Triad 
 of Stesichorus. 
 
 There are two names which stand conspicuous above 
 all others as the masters of what the Germans call the 
 *' Universal Melic." The first of these is Simonides. 
 He was pre-eminent for the sweetness and tenderness 
 of his poetry. In pathos he has never been excelled. 
 "Sadder than the tears of Simonides," says Catullus. 
 
 Still more significant and brilliant is the name of 
 Pindar, the Theban Eagle. He excelled in all the 
 known varieties of choral poetry ; but the Epinikia, 
 celebrating the victories of his patrons in the sacred 
 games at Olympia, or Pytho, are the poems on which 
 his fame mainly rests. 
 
 It may strike us as remarkable in a Greek poet that 
 Pindar, although writing in one of the most stirring 
 
SKETCH OF GREEK POETRY. 16/ 
 
 periods of Greek history, shows no political, almost 
 one may say, no patriotic bias. Like Michael Angelo 
 who kept on modeling and chiseling through the sack 
 of Rome, and Goethe who buried himself in his art 
 while Napoleon was thundering around Germany, so 
 Pindar through the stormy days of Salamis and Platea, 
 kept on writing his magnificent Odes. Those wonder- 
 ful compositions — who can describe? "He," says 
 Symonds, "taught posterity what sort of a thing an 
 ode should be. The grand pre-eminence of Pindar as 
 an artist, was due in a great measure to his personality. 
 Frigid, austere, and splendid; not genial Hke that of 
 Simonides, not passionate like that of Sappho, not acrid 
 like that of Archilochus ; hard as adamant, rigid in 
 moral firmness, glittering with the strong, keen light 
 of snow ; haughty, aristocratic, magnificent ; the unique 
 personality of the man Pindar, so irresistible in its influ- 
 ence, so hard to characterize, is felt in every strophe of his 
 odes. . . . The splendor-loving Pindar is his name and 
 title for all time. . . . He who has watched a sunset, 
 a sunset attended by the passing of a thunderstorm in 
 the outskirts of the Alps ; who has seen the distant 
 ranges of the mountains alternately obscured by cloud 
 and blazing with the concentrated brightness of the 
 sinking sun, while drifting scuds of hail and rain, tawny 
 with sunlight, glistening with broken rainbows, clothe 
 peak and precipice and forest in the golden veil of 
 flame-irradiated vapors ; who has heard the thunder 
 bellow in the thwarting folds of hills, and watched the 
 lightning like a snake's tongue flicker at intervals amid 
 gloom and glory — knows in nature's language what 
 Pindar teaches with the voice of art. . . , Pindar as an 
 artist combines the strong flight of the eagle, the irre- 
 sistible force of the torrent, the richness of Greek wine, 
 
1 68 T.LEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 the majestic pageantry of nature in one of her sublime 
 moods." 
 
 Doubtless this splendor of Pindar is open to criticism. 
 His grandeur at times becomes grandiloquence ; his 
 stateliness has a strut ; his Titanesque power of expres- 
 sion becomes a splutter. It is, however, the splutter 
 of a Titan and not of a Bombastes. 
 
 Pindar, it should be noted further, still preaches the 
 Homeric Faith of the heroic humanism. The heroic 
 ideal he holds up as a *^ divinity that the people should 
 worship." He is in advance of Homer, however, in 
 the lofty moral tone with which he accomplishes the 
 exaltation of his heroes, and the earnestness with which 
 he enforces the standard of moral obligation in the 
 government of the world and in human conduct. He 
 attributes the misery of human life to pride, its fleeting 
 joy to the benevolence of the gods. *'A god," he 
 says, ''is in all our joys." 
 
 No less important is the advance in Pindar's repre- 
 sentations of the state of man after death. Thus while 
 Homer describes his heroes as living a shadowy life in 
 Hades, pursuing, though without thought or under- 
 standing, the same occupation as on earth, Pindar says 
 that all misdeeds of this world are severely judged in 
 the infernal regions, but that a happy Hfe in eternal 
 sunshine, without care for subsistence, is the portion 
 of the good; " while those who have kept their souls 
 pure from all sin ascend the paths of Zeus to the citadel 
 of Crowns, where the Islands of the Blest are refreshed 
 by the breezes of Ocean, and golden flowers glitter." 
 
 But passing by other developments of Greek poetry 
 we come to consider, all too briefly, the most interest- 
 ing if not the most important of all, the Greek Drama. 
 
 The Drama in its origin, like the Lyric, stands in 
 close connection with the worship of Dionysus. First 
 
SKETCH OF GREEK POETRY. I 69 
 
 came the chorus, chanting the dithyrambic Ode in praise 
 of the god, attired Hke satyrs in goat-skin to represent 
 the woodland comrades of Dionysus. Hence the name 
 Tragedy, or ''goat song." This dithyrambic ode, 
 acquired partly from the character, the life, the adven- 
 tures of the god celebrated, and partly from the enthu- 
 siasm which characterized his worship, a strongly dra- 
 matic character. This led to the addition to the Chorus 
 of an interlocutor, *'who not only recited passages of 
 narrative, but also exchanged speech with the Chorus, 
 and who in course of time came to personate " Diony- 
 sus or whatever other god or hero was celebrated. 
 Then came the improvements in the conduct of the 
 action introduced by Thespis (hence "Thespian," as 
 an epithet,) the introduction of a second actor by ^s- 
 chylus, and of a third by Sophocles. Comedy was in 
 like manner a development, xcofjto^, or revelsong, also a 
 feature of the worship of Bacchus. 
 
 It should be noted also that the Attic theatre *'was 
 designed" (to use the language of Symonds,) *'as 
 though its architects were prescient that the Attic drama 
 would become the wonder of the world. The specta- 
 tors were seated on semi-circular tiers scooped out of 
 the rock of the Acropolis. Their faces turned toward 
 Hymettus and the sea. The stage fronted the Acrop- 
 olis ; the actors had in view the cliffs upon which 
 stood the Parthenon and the gleaming statue of Pro- 
 tective Pallas. The whole was open to the air." In 
 accordance with its size and situation, '' everything in 
 the Greek theatre had to be colossal, statuesque, almost 
 statuary. The actors were raised on thick-soled, high- 
 heeled boots ; they wore masks and used peculiar 
 mouth-pieces, by means of which their voices were 
 made more resonant. . . . All their movements par- 
 took of the dignity befitting demi-gods and heroes." 
 
170 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 But we cannot stop to consider further the external 
 features of the Greek drama. More important is its 
 interior sphere and significance. And here we must 
 satisfy ourselves with a few general considerations. 
 
 Note then first of all that the Greek Drama became 
 the great religious teacher of the people. The theater 
 was the school in which the philosopher, the artist, the 
 politician, the orator, and the common citizen were 
 alike trained. 
 
 On the one side it has been appropriately termed the 
 "consummate flower of Greek poetry; the epic and the 
 lyric, the objective and the subjective united in one 
 perfect blossom ; " on the other hand it was ''the open- 
 ing bud of ethical philosophy and theology." 
 
 "The Greek stage," says Prof. Tyler,'* was more 
 nearly than anything else the Greek pulpit. With a 
 priesthood that sacrificed but did not preach, with few 
 books of any kind, and no Bible, the people were in a 
 great measure dependent on oral instruction for knowl- 
 edge ; and as they learned their rights and duties as 
 citizens from their orators, so they hung on the lips of 
 the lofty, grave tragedians for instruction concerning 
 their origin, duty and destiny as immortal beings. As 
 the Pnyx was their legislative hall, and the Bema the 
 source of their deliberative eloquence, the eloquence of 
 the pulpit proceeded from the stage and resounded 
 through the theater." 
 
 The Greek Comedy had in no small measure this pre- 
 ceptive moral value. "Comedy," says De Pressense, 
 "is the result of the contrast existing between man as 
 he is in reality and man as he ought to be and might 
 be. It presupposes his liberty ; take away his liberty 
 and there is naught shocking or ridiculous in avarice 
 or cowardice. Nobody mocks the hare, but we all 
 laugh at the coward," 
 
SKETCH OF GREEK POETRY. I7I 
 
 The great representative of Greek Comedy is of 
 course Aristophanes, a genuine poet, a briUiant wit, 
 a master of language, the audacious caricaturist, the 
 unsparing censor of folly, the unrelenting foe of dema- 
 gogues, the champion of the conservative party, and the 
 uncompromising opponent of all innovations in politics, 
 philosophy, poetry, or art : — 
 
 " Who took 
 The world with mirth and laughter — struck 
 The hollow caves of Thought and woke 
 The infinite echoes hid in each." 
 
 There is much indeed in Aristophanes with which we 
 cannot sympathize. We are revolted by his grossness. 
 We are pained, by his vulture-like irreverence in the 
 treatment of what the best of the Greeks must have 
 held most sacred. We protest against his abuse of 
 Socrates and of his immortal (Ppovrtazrjptov "or Think- 
 ing-shop," notwithstanding the oddities of the man and 
 of his ways w^hich provoke our smiles. Yet after all we 
 wonder at the exuberance of his genius and power of 
 his imagination, the grace of his fancy, the beauty of 
 his pictures, the delicacy of his touch, and we wander 
 with inextinguishable laughter through his "transcen- 
 dental bardlands," and cloudlands and frog-ponds. We 
 are captivated by his studies of the Athenian life 
 [Symonds says that with Plato and Aristophanes for 
 our guides we can reconstruct the life of Athens.] 
 And through all his reckless wit and laughter we are 
 constrained to recognize a staunch and honest purpose to 
 puncture the shams, absurdities and stupidities of his 
 day, and to aid the triumph of solid worth, honest 
 thinking, and manly living. 
 
 But it is in the tragedy of Greece that its dramatic 
 genius shone most conspicuously, and poured forth its 
 loftiest utterances, while discoursing of "fate and chance 
 
172 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 and change in human life." "Greek Tragedy," says 
 Prof. Tyler, *'is essentially didactic, ethical, mytholog- 
 ical, and religious. It was the express office of the 
 Chorus, which held the most prominent place in the 
 ancient drama, to interpret the mysteries of Providence, 
 to justify the ways of God to men, to plead the cause 
 of truth, virtue and piety. Hence it was composed 
 usually of aged men, whose wisdom was fitted to 
 instruct in the true and the right, or of young women 
 whose virgin purity would instinctively shrink from false- 
 hood and wrong Tragedy in its very nature as 
 
 conceived by the Greeks transported the hearer out of 
 himself and away from the present. It carried him 
 back towards the origin of our race, up nearer to the 
 providence and presence of the gods, and on toward 
 the retribution of another world. With few exceptions 
 the subjects are mythological. The characters are 
 heroes and demi-gods, monsters it may be in crime, 
 but their punishment is equally prodigious. Sin and 
 suffering always go together. They illustrate by their 
 lives and in their lives the providential and retributive 
 justice of the gods." 
 
 ^schylus represents the transition from the Epic and 
 Lyric to the Dramatic Age of Poetry. At heart he 
 really belongs to the former. He has been well called 
 " the great lyrist of tragedy." He himself used to say 
 of his tragedies that they were fragments of the great 
 banquet of Homer's table. He "is pre-eminently the 
 theological poet of Greece." Especially may he be 
 called the poet of Destiny, the '*iron power" of which 
 filled his mind. "He was essentially" (says Symonds) 
 "the demiurge of ancient art. The purely creative 
 faculty has never been exhibited upon a greater scale, 
 or applied to material more utterly beyond the range of 
 feebler poets. He possessed in the highest degree the 
 
SKETCH OF GREEK POETRY. I 73 
 
 power of giving life and form to the vast, the incorporeal, 
 the ideal." **As befits a demiurgic nature, ^schylus 
 conceived and executed upon a tremendous scale. His 
 outlines are huge, his figures colossal ; his style is broad 
 and sweeping, like a river in its fullness and its might. 
 Few dramatists have been able like him to wield the 
 chisel of a Titan, or to knead whole mountains into 
 statues corresponding to the stupendous grandeur of 
 their thought." 
 
 He is the only dramatist who has left us a complete 
 Trilogy — or three connected dramas, acted together and 
 developing one great theme. These are the Agamem- 
 non, the Choephori and the Eumenides. It is in this 
 Trilogy that the massiveness and energy of his genius 
 especially appears. The Agamemnon is in the judg- 
 ment of Prof. Mahaffy and others the greatest of the 
 Greek tragedies. The parallel between it and Macbeth 
 has often been drawn, and is a most interesting study. 
 The Prometheus Bound was doubtless one drama (the 
 second probably) of a Trilogy. ''No other play of 
 ^schylus," says Mahaffy, ''has produced a greater im- 
 pression, and few remnants of Greek Literature are to 
 be compared with it in its eternal freshness and its eter- 
 nal mystery." Mrs. Browning has given a spirited trans- 
 lation of it. 
 
 But I must hasten on, simply reminding you that 
 ^schylus was one of the heroes of Marathon, and the 
 best actor of his own plays. 
 
 Sophocles was a typical Greek in body, mind and 
 character. It has been said of him that "he is perhaps 
 the only distinguished Athenian who lived and died 
 without a single enemy." (Mahaffy.) "We can not 
 but think of him," says Symonds, "as especially cre- 
 ated to represent Greek art in its most refined and ex- 
 quisitely balanced perfection." He represents more 
 
1^4 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 completely than ^schylus the Greece of the age of 
 Pericles. The humanistic development attains in him 
 its most adequate expression. His ethical creed is 
 summed up in these two noble passages ; the one from 
 the CEdipus translated by Matthew Arnold : 
 
 "Oh that my lot may lead me in the path of holy 
 innocence of word and deed, the path which august laws 
 ordain, laws that in the highest empyrean had their 
 birth, of which heaven is the father alone; neither did 
 the race of mortal man beget them, nor shall oblivion 
 ever put them to sleep. The power of God is mighty 
 in them, and groweth not old." The other from the 
 Antigone, versified as follows by Mr. Symonds: (An- 
 tigone is speaking of certain human edicts, relative to 
 the burial of the dead, which she had violated.) 
 
 " It was no Zeus who thus commanded me, 
 
 Nor Justice, dread mate of the nether powers — 
 Nor did I fondly dream their proclamation 
 
 Were so infallible that any mortal 
 Might overleap the sure unwritten laws 
 
 Of gods. These neither now nor yesterday, 
 Nay, but from everlasting without end 
 
 Live on, and no man knows whence they were issued." 
 
 Antigone, the speaker of these words, is probably the 
 finest female character in the whole realm of Greek 
 poetry. The question, which of the seven surviving 
 plays of Sophocles bears the palm, has been much dis- 
 cussed. Almost every play has its champions. The 
 majority of critics have declared for the CEdipus, al- 
 though some of the profoundest prefer the CEdipus 
 Coloneus. 
 
 The last of the three Greek Tragedians is Euripides. 
 He was naturally a serious character with a bias towards 
 nice and speculative inquiries into the nature of things 
 
SKETCH OF GREEK POETRY. 1 75 
 
 human and divine. He is in fact a philosopher in bus- 
 kins. That which interests him, that which he takes 
 most pains to elaborate is the psychological element in 
 his characters. There is more of character-painting in 
 his dramas than in either of his two great predecessors. 
 He is the poet pre-eminently of Passion. His Medea 
 is grand, terrible in her passion. As we might expect 
 there is more of the sensational in his poetry than in 
 that of his rivals. He deals more largely in the spec- 
 tacular. In picturesque effects he is unrivalled. He 
 concentrates his power on particular scenes, rather than 
 on the course of the drama. His lyrics are superb. 
 His democratic sympathies, not concealed in his poems, 
 brought down on him the lash of Aristophanes. Some 
 one has said that there could be no surer proof of his 
 real genius than the failure of Aristophanes to laugh 
 him down. Yet after all Euripides is the mouth-piece 
 of the first age of Athenian decay. 
 
 Prof. Tyler thus compares the three Tragedians, and 
 with this extract I close, ''^schylus, like some an- 
 cient prophet, or oracle-declaring priest, ascended the 
 tripod and in strains of awful sublimity proclaimed the 
 laws of God and the destiny of men, pointed crimi- 
 nals to the everlasting Erinnys that were sure to 
 overtake them, and arraigned heroes and demi-gods 
 before divine justice. Euripides seated himself in the 
 chair of the philosopher, and interspersing his dia- 
 logues with discussions, reasoned, refined, doubted, 
 sometimes almost scoffed, and perpetually mingled 
 the myths of the ancients with the declamations of 
 the sophists and the speculations of the schools. 
 Sophocles walked the stage as if it were emphatically 
 his own, sang in the orchestra as if music and verse 
 were the language of his birth, and represented the 
 
176 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 past, the present and the future, the providence and 
 the government of God, and the character and des- 
 tiny of men, not distorted or discolored, just as they 
 were mirrored in the tranquil depths of his own har- 
 monious nature." 
 
VIIL 
 ANTHROPOPHAGY. * 
 
 THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF THE RACE ; OR 
 THE COMING CANNIBAL. 
 
 The anthropophagic origin of the human race will be 
 admitted at once by the well regulated radical mind. 
 The first man was beyond all reasonable question a 
 cannibal. This to be sure is a paradox; but all the more 
 true for that, and like every other paradox its esoteric 
 significance is luminous to the initiated, so that I need 
 not dwell on it in this enlightened circle. And this 
 paradox, I need not say, is true, whether the first man 
 was one or many. It is more of a paradox perhaps if 
 he was one ; but it is none the less true if he was many. 
 For, as will abundantly appear as we proceed, the an- 
 thropophagic instinct is one of the primal instincts of 
 man's nature ; primal, I say, and therefore congenital, 
 universal, invariable, inalienable, indestructible. It in- 
 hered in the first man (whether singular or plural) as 
 the generic germ of every variety of the genus homo. 
 
 * A number of essays and poems '* in lighter vein," were selected 
 to form a division by themselves in this volume. On examination it 
 was found that their full enjoyment depended so largely on local allu- 
 sions, or on the circumstances of their production that it would not 
 be best to publish them all. This and the following are given simply 
 as specimens. 
 
 (177) 
 
178 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 From him as seminal center, as primum mobile and 
 punctum salic7is, has radiated in endless undulation, in 
 anaritJinion gelasma, all that is anthropophagous in 
 human history. There was still further an anterior 
 necessity for this characteristic development. Modern 
 science, which, as Prof. Tyndall truly observes, is no 
 longer the servile follower of pure reason, which is just 
 as much, if not even more the product of imagination, 
 has discovered, by lofty imaginative processes, the great 
 law of evolution, in accordance with which man may 
 be traced back through simious and reptilian genealo- 
 gies to the primary molecule in which existence had 
 its beginning. This genealogical line runs, I need not 
 say, through numberless strata of allelophagous races. 
 The ichthyosauri, plesiosauri, megalosauri and ptero- 
 dactyli, after the most approved fashion, devoured one 
 another, or, at any rate, creatures but little, if any, 
 below themselves in organization. Their victims, in 
 accordance with the eternal law of conquest, were, we 
 may suppose, their inferiors in size, but probably in 
 very little else. Subjectively considered, with reference 
 to their controlling instinct, and their practical views 
 on the questions of securing the means of support, 
 they were, to all intents and purposes, cannibals. They 
 lacked, to be sure, the enlarged views, the enlightened 
 processes, the enterprising audacity, the artistic execu- 
 tion which belong to the highest representative of car- 
 nivorism or cannibalism, man ; but we must remember 
 that they lived in a comparatively benighted period. 
 They lived up to the light that was in them. If their 
 cannibalism was imperfect, so was everything at that 
 time. Indeed, if they had been perfect cannibals, what 
 need of man? Their attainments in this line were but 
 ** hints and previsions," which, as Browning tells us : 
 
ANTHROPOPHAGY. 1 79 
 
 "Are strewn confusedly everywhere about 
 The inferior natures, and all lead up higher ; 
 All shape out dimly the superior race — 
 The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false, 
 And man appears at last. So far the seal 
 Is put on life ; one stage of being complete, 
 One scheme wound up ; and from the grand result 
 A supplementary reflux of light 
 - Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains 
 Each back step in the circle." 
 
 \_Paracelsus.'] 
 
 Standing thus at the culminating point of the series, 
 man inherits in their utmost perfection the carnivorous 
 propensities of his entire ancestral hneage, and in him 
 we behold the ideal cannibal, exercising his gastro- 
 nomic faculty on all forms of animal Hfe, from the 
 invisible animalculi which swarm in his ice-water, up 
 through cheese-maggots, frogs, Bolognese dogs, buffa- 
 loes, bears, up to his own race. He thus becomes a 
 cannibal ex vi nattircE. There is an inexorable necessity 
 laid upon him by that long antecedent chain of causa- 
 tion. The forces which have worked their way upward 
 through saurian and silurian developments, and of 
 which he is the consummate product, make it impossi- 
 ble for him to be true to his genesis and to himself, 
 without being a cannibal. 
 
 The positive indications of the cannibalism of the 
 first man are, I regret to say, fewer than we could 
 desire. Perhaps the strongest proof has already been 
 given in the necessity resulting from his genealogical 
 antecedents, from his position as son and heir of all 
 the carnivorous races of the pre-historic period, as well 
 as the necessity inherent in his position as progenitor 
 of all succeeding cannibals. There is, however, a little 
 more of that *' supplementary reflux of light," of 
 which Browning -speaks, from which we may learn 
 
l80 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 something. For example, a very suggestive inference 
 may be drawn from matrimonial phenomena. In man's 
 uxorial relations we find two distinct historical tenden- 
 cies, two antithetic ideas asserting themselves. One 
 of these ideas is represented by the term monogamy, 
 the other by the term polygamy. In contemplating 
 the various races, ages, and creeds of the globe, we 
 find some that are monogamous, others which are polyg- 
 amous. This line of division has always existed ; the 
 philosophic mind affirms that it always will. But how 
 is this to be accounted for ? The origin of it is lost in 
 the morning twilight of human history. We are logic- 
 ally constrained, however, to seek the angle from 
 which these great lines of divergence proceed in the 
 first man. If, as we can not doubt, he was the germ 
 of all the tendencies and developments which have sub- 
 sequently appeared in the race, he must have embod- 
 ied in some way in his own life the contradiction of 
 monogamy and polygamy. The only satisfactory solu- 
 tion of this contradiction is to be found in the fact that 
 he was a cannibal. Endowed at the beginning with a 
 plurality of wives, he ate them all up save one. Much 
 as it may be regretted that he did not also eat her, in- 
 scrutable as his conduct may seem in not eating her, 
 we must accept the situation. The past is irrevocable, 
 but the future is ours. The first man, then, cannibal- 
 ized himself out of polygamy into monogamy. And 
 this hypothesis, besides furnishing the angle of diver- 
 gence for the great historical tendences already men- 
 tioned, also furnishes us with one reason why canni- 
 balism is so important a factor in the progress of the 
 race. Had it not been for the cannibalism of the first 
 man, the entire race would have been polygamous, a 
 state the bare possibility of which it is appalling to 
 contemplate, and the existence of which would have 
 
ANTHROPOPHAGY. 1 8 I 
 
 kept humanity down in a state of permanent degrada- 
 dation. Monogamy being thus indispensable to prog- 
 ress, and cannibalism to monogamy, it follows that 
 progress would have been impossible without cannibal- 
 ism. 
 
 It would have been exceedingly interesting, had the 
 limits of the present discussion allowed, to present in 
 detail the history of anthropophagy in all ages and 
 lands and under every variety of manifestation. We are 
 mainly concerned, however, at this time with anthro- 
 pophagy in \\\Q future development of the race. In the 
 To-Be we find the resumption, under advanced condi- 
 tions, of the Hath- Been. ''Being," says Goethe, "is 
 ever a birth into higher Being." The New is the per- 
 petual metamorphosis of the Old. In advancing along 
 the spiral line of progress, we mount higher and higher, 
 it is true, but the circumference of our course lies 
 within the same Ideal Cylinder ; at every new point we 
 are recurring to the same old position ; the line of our 
 present movement is strictly parallel to the line of a 
 former movement, except that it is on a higher (inclined) 
 plane, or in the profound words of the Koheleth, 
 Mahsh-shehayah, hu shey-yi-he-yeh, umashshen-nasah 
 hu shey-ye-a-seh, veyn kol chadhash tahath hash sha- 
 mesh, to which may be added the well known majesti- 
 cal, liturgical formula, owsper ien en arche esti nun kai 
 estai eis tojis aioivnas town aiowneon. Of nothing can 
 these words be more truly said than of anthropophagy. 
 So vitally incorporated is it with the organic life of 
 humanity that nothing is more certain than that it will 
 continue to perpetuate and reproduce itself Cannibal- 
 ism having inwrought itself into the elemental structure 
 of the subjective consciousness, and having established 
 itself as a dominant force in the objective phenome- 
 nality of appetency, mastication and digestive assimilation, 
 
1 82 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 can not fail to assert itself as a permanent factor of 
 human history. It may lie dormant here and there ; it 
 may slumber now and then, for even bo7ius dormitat 
 Hoj/icruSj and according to the sublime teachings of the 
 Vedas, the life of Brahm itself is an alternation of sleep- 
 ing and waking. But when the tongue of the centu- 
 ries strikes the hour of destiny then will the Man-Can- 
 nibal awake out of his sleep, like a giant refreshed, and 
 then will begin one of those eventful aeons which make 
 history. 
 
 For a considerable period past it may be said that 
 the anthropophagic Brahm has been slumbering — at 
 least, as regards some of his functions. Neither as a 
 profession, nor as a fine art, nor as a system of philos- 
 ophy, nor as a problem of Malthusian political economy, 
 nor as a patriarchal domestic institution, can cannibal- 
 ism be said to have flourished latterly, except in isolated 
 instances and in remote and unpopular localities. 
 With us it is in a dormant, or perhaps, I should 
 say, in a transitional state. It is true that a certain 
 modified imperfect anthropophagism has prevailed in 
 some highly civilized communities. There have been 
 those known as landsharks, vultures, leeches, vampires, 
 and the like, persons whose distinguishing characteris- 
 tic has been their epicurean fondness for certain choice 
 tit-bits of their fellow-men, such as their reputation, 
 their happiness, their virtue, their money. This partial 
 cannibalism is indeed a most hopeful indication of the 
 future possibilities of humanity in this direction. For 
 as we shall see immediately, the coming cannibal will 
 distinguish himself from his naked and tattooed New Zea- 
 land prototype by his success in making a more complete 
 disposition of his brother man, dispatching not only his 
 body, but also his mind and estate ; not only his fat, but 
 also his effects and affections ; not only what he has in 
 
ANTHROPOPHAGY. 1 83 
 
 common with the porpoise, but his purposes and his 
 purse as well. Herein will he vindicate the great law 
 of progress in himself. Our sleeping Brahm, not alto- 
 gether asleep, seems even now to dream in a confused 
 way of this ideal perfection of cannibalism, as appears 
 from that significant and melodious sonnet of our great 
 poet laureate: 
 
 "If I were a cassowary, 
 
 On the shores of Timbuctoo, 
 I would eat a missionary, 
 Flesh and bones and hymn book too." 
 
 Observe that masterly stroke, not only of rhyme, but 
 also of reason, with which the stanza concludes — ^^ and 
 hymn hook too " — indicating that as a cannibal our poet 
 would make thorough work of his brother, the mission- 
 ary, and of all his effects and appurtenances. But the 
 great and fatal defect of our modern civilized anthro- 
 pophagism, is that it limits itself, so to speak, to the 
 hymn book, lacking either the taste or the courage, or 
 both, to eat up the flesh and bones of its subjects. It 
 is the sublime mission of radicalism to introduce the 
 complete cannibalism of the future, by serving up the 
 entire man in all that he is, and in all that he has, as a 
 dainty dish to set before a king. 
 
 You have all read Charles Lamb's charming essay 
 on Roast Pig. To the superficial reader it is probably 
 nothing more than an exquisite extravaganza of literary 
 sybaritism, the Puck-like reveling of wit and genius in 
 the aromatic lusciousness and ravishing deliciousness of 
 what is indeed one of the most royal dishes before 
 which an epicure can sit. To the philosophic mind, 
 however, it is above and beyond all this a parable of 
 profound significance. You find in it doubtless, as I 
 do, a subtle suggestion of a banquet worthy of Plato 
 
184 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 and his friends, a truly Olympian symposium. It can 
 not be doubted that the roast pig of which the gentle 
 Elia discourses here so dehghtfully, is emblematic of a 
 human being prepared by the most approved culinary 
 processes for alimentary uses. Can we doubt this when 
 we remember that his own name was Lamb, and that 
 the analogy between roast pig and roast lamb is almost 
 perfect ? Does not probability become certainty, when 
 we read in Sir John Lubbock's Prehistoric times (p. 
 449) that among the Feegeans '* human flesh is known 
 as ^ ptiaka balava,' or 'long pig?'" Only thus, more- 
 over, do we obtain a satisfactory clue to that entertain- 
 ing Oriental fiction with which Lamb introduces his de- 
 scription. I refer, of course, to his account of the dis- 
 covery of the first roast pig among the ruins of a burnt 
 house, and the Chinese custom, thence derived, of burn- 
 ing down a house whenever this dainty is to be pro- 
 duced. Literally understood, this is but a piece of de- 
 lightful absurdity, of clever humorous extravagance. 
 But, philosophically understood, it has a world of sug- 
 gestions in it, pointing as it does most unmistakably to 
 the proper culinary process by which the coming canni- 
 bal's chef d'oeuvre de cuisirie is to be produced. In a 
 word, beneath the mystic symbol of a pig roasted whole 
 in a burned down house, the philosophic Elia teaches 
 us that in order properly to cook a human being he 
 must be roasted or baked whole in a composite bon- 
 fire or furnace constituted of his house, library, clothes, 
 correspondence, papers, and everything belonging to 
 him, all his properties and accidents, relations and cor- 
 relations, collaterals and contemporalities. A holocaust 
 must be made of him and his. The coming cannibal 
 will be satisfied with nothing less. 
 
 But let us pause for a. moment here to enforce the 
 necessity of making the physical man a part of the 
 
ANTHROPOPHAGY. 1 85 
 
 holocaust. The error of the South Sea Island cannibal 
 is that he has restricted himself too exclusively to the 
 corporeal element in his dietetics ; the error of the civ- 
 ilized Caucasian is that he has totally abstained from 
 the corporeal element. The savage cannibal is satisfied 
 with the flesh of his human roast or fricassee ; the civ- 
 ilized cannibal devours all but the flesh. The former 
 type of cannibalism is too gross and earthy ; the latter is 
 too refined and volatile. The king of the Cannibal Isl- 
 ands, like Tony Weller with his alleybye, thinks there 
 is nothing like habeas corpus \ the Sachem of Tammany, 
 or the Prince of the Power of Aery, applies to every- 
 thing the process known as abstraction. 
 
 These two types of cannibalism must be combined, 
 married together into one higher type, forming in the 
 coming cannibal, like Tennyson's Man and Woman, 
 
 The single pure and perfect animal, 
 The two-celled heart beating with one full stroke, 
 The two-celled stomach, filled with one square meal, 
 A Man! 
 
 ''The proper study of mankind is man," says a poet, 
 whose very name is the guaranty of his infallibility. 
 A fortiori WLd^y it be said, ''the proper diet of mankind 
 is man; " man, I say, considered as an integer, one and 
 indivisible. It was all very well for our unscientific 
 ancestors to make a distinction between the corporeal 
 and the incorporeal in man, and to make their diet of 
 the one or the other, as fancy or taste might incline. 
 It is all very well for our cousin, the King of Dahomey, 
 to eat up his missionaries, and to think, after swallow- 
 ing all save their boots and buttons, that he has dis- 
 posed of all there was of them, for he is ignorant of 
 the existence and value of ideas. It was all very well 
 for Dr. Watts to say, "The mind's the measure of the 
 
1 86 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 man," for Dr. Holmes had not taught him that mind 
 and body are one and the same machine ; and further- 
 more, as Sydney Smith ^aid of another, he had scarcely 
 body enough to cover his soul; his intellect was improp- 
 erly exposed. But we nineteenth century radicals, who 
 liave condescended to favor a benighted world with the 
 discovery of protoplasm, nous avons change tout cela. 
 It behooves us to rise above the partial views alike of 
 an untutored barbarism, and of an imperfect civilization, 
 and to advance intelligently and courageously to the 
 higher synthesis which includes both. The doctrine of 
 protoplasm furnishes us with one "physical basis of 
 life" for the entire man. Huxley's exposition of it is 
 famihar to us all. This profound radical discovery 
 renders obsolescent the old notions of an essential dis- 
 tinction between the material and immaterial constitu- 
 ents of human nature. Matter and spirit are practically 
 at least resolved into one original force. 
 
 Those who talk of mind and matter, 
 Just a senseless jargon patter. 
 What are we, or you, or he ? 
 Dissolving views, not mind or matter. 
 
 Even admitting a theoretical or ideal distinction 
 between matter and mind, their concrete synthesis in 
 the individual man results in a single entity. Each man 
 is an eris individuum, possessing one, and that a physical 
 basis of life. Now hear what Mr. Huxley says of the 
 appropriation of his physical basis, or protoplasm, as he 
 calls it. "Mutton," he says, "was once the living 
 protoplasm of a sheep. As I shall eat it, it is the 
 same matter, altered not only by death, but by expo- 
 sure to sundry artificial operations in the process of 
 cooking. But these changes, whatever be their extent, 
 have not rendered it incompetent to resume its old func- 
 
ANTHROPOPHAGY. 18/ 
 
 tions as a matter of life. A singular inward laboratory 
 which I possess will dissolve a certain portion of the 
 modified protoplasm. The solution so formed will pass 
 into my veins, and the subtle influences to which it will 
 then be subjected will convert the dead protoplasm into 
 living protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into man." 
 Here is the principle, but how shall we reach its highest 
 application? Obviously by substituting for the sheep 
 the highest organic form in which protoplasm is found. 
 Here e. g. is Mr. Huxley. I wish to possess myself of 
 his vis vivida vitce, to have his protoplastic force trans- 
 fused through my system. How shall it be done? I 
 read his writings, his essay on the Physical Basis of Life, 
 his lay sermons, and the rest ; but how little of the true 
 Mr. Huxley do I get into me by this? But I obtain 
 Mr. Huxley's consent to figure on my bill of fare; I 
 constitute him my principal dish ; I provide for myself 
 and family a few courses of Huxley, Huxley soup, 
 roast Huxley, corned Huxley, Y{.\yx\&y ragout a la mode^ 
 cold Huxley, Huxley pie, Huxley hash; and what is 
 the result? Why, a singular, inward laboratory which 
 I possess will dissolve a certain portion of the modified 
 Huxley-protoplasm ; the solution so formed will pass 
 into my veins, and the subtle influences to which it will 
 then be subjected will convert the dead protoplasm into 
 living protoplasm, and transubstantiate Huxley into 
 Jones. And when it becomes my turn to be served up 
 in the same way, then Huxley in me passes into others, 
 and so on ad infinitum, and so, as Ariel sings, 
 
 " Nothing of him that doth fade, 
 But doth suffer a sea change, 
 Into something rich and strange." 
 
 What is true of Mr. Huxley could be true of all 
 great men. By eating them we would assimilate, as 
 we could in no other way, their thought, genius, wit, 
 
1 88 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 imagination, knowledge, heroism, all in them that is 
 worth appropriating. A dim apprehension of this ex- 
 alted function of anthropophagy seems to have dawned 
 even on the savage mind. ** The cannibalism of the 
 New Zealander," says Sir John Lubbock, "though 
 often a mere meal, was also sometimes a ceremony ; in 
 these cases the object was something very different 
 from mere sensual gratification ; it must be regarded as 
 a part of his rehgion, as a sort of unholy sacrament. 
 This is proved by the fact that after a battle the bodies 
 which they preferred were not those of plump young 
 men or tender damsels, but of the most celebrated 
 chiefs, however old and dry they might be." In fact, 
 they believed that it was not only the material sub- 
 stance which they thus appropriated, but also the spirit, 
 the ability and glory of him whom they had devoured. 
 The greater the number of corpses they had eaten, 
 the higher they thought would be their position in the 
 world to come. " Under such a creed," adds Sir John, 
 " there is a certain diabolical nobility about the habit, 
 which is at any rate far removed from the groveling 
 sensuality of a Fejee." (Prehistoric Times, p. 457-) 
 But why diabolical ? Who ever heard of cannibaHsm 
 among the devils ? But how singeth the great Poet of 
 Transcendentalism ? 
 
 " The Past in me doth live again : 
 
 In me each great and thoughtful brain 
 
 Hath left some legacy behind ; 
 
 Of each some living trace I find: 
 
 Of Plato's soul I find a part, 
 
 Of Homer's muse, of Sappho's heart." 
 
 But how much more true would this be were such 
 as Plato, Homer and Sappho, Caesar, Alfred and 
 Shakespeare, to undergo that assimilation and trans- 
 fusion which is the result of a thorough process of 
 
ANTHROPOPHAGY. I 89 
 
 digestion? Precisely herein is it that anthropophagy 
 is to play so important a part in the future develop- 
 ment of the race. By means of it, the protoplastic 
 essence of all true greatness will communicate and dif- 
 fuse itself through the entire organism of humanity. 
 The feast of reason and the flow of soul will become 
 literal facts of human development. Humanity will 
 dietize itself into greatness. Platonic philosophies will 
 disseminate themselves through the alimentary canal. 
 The genius of the future Shakespeare will mingle with 
 the gastric juice. Progress will be a secretion of the 
 digestive apparatus. The cabalistic motto of our uni- 
 versities, the abracadabra of culture will be, *' Fee, fi, 
 fo, fum ! " The coming cannibal, whether he smells the 
 blood of an Enghshman, or of any other man, will be 
 recognized as the ultimate metamorphosis of the uni- 
 versal protoplasm, of which every sage and hero is the 
 more perfect exponent. Thus it is that protoplasm 
 begins by revolutionizing our philosophy, next revolu- 
 tionizes our cuisine, and achieves its final apotheosis in 
 the grand Vou-dou, or Man-Eater of the future. 
 
 How simple, and at the same time how beautiful the 
 answer thus furnished to the all-absorbing questions of 
 life and destiny ! Here we have the process by which 
 the human organism is to be refined, elevated, enriched 
 with all the constituents needful for its most perfect 
 nutriment. 
 
 All nature widens upward evermore : 
 The simpler essence lower lies, 
 More complex is more perfect. 
 
 Man, as the most complex and refined organism, de- 
 mands the most complex and refined alimentation. 
 The lowest forms of organic life in the vegetable king- 
 dom find their alimentation in inorganic matter. The 
 paw-paw bush is' nourished by the soil ; the animal 
 
IgO LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 kingdom, possessed of a higher organization, finds its 
 ahmentation in some form of organic matter. The 
 lamb eats grass. The noble horse eats and feels his 
 oats. The dog, man's fidiis Achates, has an organism 
 equal to the proper appreciation of a bone. The lion, 
 king of the forest, the eagle, monarch of the air, de- 
 mand for food matter in its highest organic form of 
 fibrine and gelatine. Lamb and roast pig, symbol, as 
 we have seen, of a still higher roast, puts all nature 
 under tribute, eats and assimilates everything. Man, 
 the crown of organic life, must seek and find his ali- 
 mentation in the plane of his own organization. He 
 can be satisfied with nothing below the highest form of 
 organic matter, the highest development possible of 
 fibrine and gelatine, that which is produced by that 
 "singular inward laboratory" of which Mr. Huxley 
 is so justly proud, that which is distilled out of this 
 wonderful alembic of his own vital apparatus. When 
 this principle comes to be universally recognized and 
 applied, may we not expect to see a development of 
 humanity, an advance in refinement, ethereality, and 
 purity of organization which must be seen to be be- 
 lieved in ? 
 
 There is one application of our subject which should 
 not be passed by, although I can do no more than hint 
 at it here. I refer to anthropophagy as a development 
 of love. In that mysterious complexity of phenomena 
 to which the name love is given, there is nothing which 
 the philosophic observer contemplates with greater in- 
 terest than the uncontrollable propensity which those 
 who are under the influence of the tender passion evince 
 to eat one another up. In one form or another, this 
 propensity finds continual expression. The language 
 of love is full of it. The poetry of love derives very 
 much of its tenderness from it. For the most part 
 
ANTHROPOPHAGY. 1 9 1 
 
 suggested, it is sometimes explicitly avowed. It is 
 quaintly assumed in the following instructive little 
 legend, from the Siamese, translated by a fair friend, 
 from whose manuscript I am kindly permitted to copy 
 it: 
 
 A youth was once joined to the girl he loved best, 
 But before a year sped to his friends thus confest : 
 For a very short time of my new married Hfe, 
 My love was so great, I 'most ate up my wife, 
 And — ah me ! I've been sorry I didn't since then ; 
 For alas ! I am now the most wretched of men. 
 
 The frequent tributes which lovers make to one an- 
 other's sweetness are to be explained on the same prin- 
 ciple. 
 
 The rose is red, the violet's blue, 
 Sugar is sweet, and so are you. 
 
 Thus does St. Valentine sing, and his song echoes 
 itself from year to year through all generations. The 
 instinct of absolute possession, so strong in love, points 
 in the same general direction. Its great soul-agonizing 
 question is, Wilt thou be mine ? Its sweet, soul-en- 
 trancing confession is, I am thine. It would possess 
 its object wholly, solely, and absolutely, individually, 
 undividedly, and eternally. You would appropriate, 
 assimilate, make part of yourself, the object of your 
 love. And how can this be perfectly done except by 
 eating the object? Kissing is a still more significant 
 indication. Through leaving out its anthropophagic 
 origin philosophers have utterly failed in their explana- 
 tions of this singular phenomenon. Nothing, indeed, 
 could well be more absurd than the application of one 
 person's lips to the face or hands of another accom- 
 panied by a noise resembling a small explosion, if that 
 were the whole of it. Why the lips? Why not the 
 nose, accompanied, say, by a delicate, finely modulated 
 
192 
 
 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 sneeze ? The latter demonstration, as all will admit, 
 would be just as convenient, no less graceful, and far 
 more useful than the former. But eating is done not 
 with the nose, but with the mouth, and the law of 
 kissing /a//ozvs tJie law of eating. The whole philosophy 
 of osculation lies in the anthropophagic quality of the 
 tender passion. Cupid in a word is a cannibal, and 
 kissing can be understood only as a modified process 
 of manducation, a suppressed bite. It is the anticipa- 
 tion in typical form of the New Evangel, of which the 
 coming cannibal is to be the apostle. The bearing of 
 this on some of the great social questions of the day, 
 such as divorce, Mormonism, early marriages, old 
 bachelorism and the hke, I leave to your reflection. 
 
IX. 
 
 APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA; 
 
 OR A WORD FOR LOAFERS — BY ONE OF THEM. 
 
 In the department of criticism, this Age is perhaps 
 Hable to the reproach of being the Age of Whitewash. 
 So many characters which the eyes, or at least the im- 
 agination, of our forefathers painted black, now look so 
 much like a board fence newly touched by the hand of 
 Spring, or like Roman candidates for office, as to sug- 
 gest that criticism, historical criticism especially, has 
 come to be an Art of Whitewashing in all colors. The 
 Nero who fiddled while Rome v/as burninp- has become 
 transformed into an amiable amateur violinist, whose ir- 
 repressible enthusiasm for art made him at times a lit- 
 tle absent-minded. Catiline, the wretch who so outra- 
 geously abused the patience of the Roman Senate, and 
 against whom in undergraduate days we thundered our 
 Ciceronian wrath, is painted as the able, patriotic, highly 
 misunderstood prototype of Mazzini or Garibaldi. 
 Henry Vlll, Frederic the Great, the Duke of Alva, 
 and other interesting ** monsters" of a morbid and un- 
 philosophical past, have been made to look as white as 
 the sepulchres of assassinated prophets. Some fine 
 touches have been put on Judas Iscariot; we are be- 
 ginning to ask whether Cain was not afflicted with 
 
 (193) 
 
194 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 "moral insanity;" and one is almost tempted to say 
 that there is hope even for General Butler. 
 
 It is not my present purpose to justify, nor yet to 
 condemn this particular tendency or our age. It may 
 possibly indicate a deeper love of truth, a sincerer de- 
 sire for justice, a wider knowledge of fact, than obtained 
 under the old, critical regime. Or it may be the sym- 
 tom of a looser ethical code, of a more reckless disre- 
 gard of verity, of a stronger fancy for sensational effect. 
 There is one advantage, however, connected with it. It 
 shows that conventional opinions, and the prejudices 
 which are rooted in them, have a less tenacious hold 
 on men's minds than of old. It is easier to obtain a 
 hearing in behalf of a persecuted being, or a maligned 
 class, than it used to be. We are more ready to hear 
 Themistocles, however it may be about striking him. 
 And so I feel encouraged to say a word or two in be- 
 half of my brethren the Loafers. 
 
 What's in a name ? Much every way. I am sure 
 that the Loafer has suffered from his name. Not that 
 it lacks altogether in euphony, for it begins and ends 
 with a liquid, and its principal vowel is round and mu- 
 sical. But the Average Man is an indifferent etymolo- 
 gist ; and I am persuaded that nineteen out of twenty 
 of those whose noses curl upward at the mention of the 
 name Loafer, are secretly persuaded that it has some- 
 thing to do with a loaf of bread, and thrill with inward 
 horror at the thought that the First Loafer got his name 
 from stealing a loaf, or begging for one, or being a dis- 
 ciple of loaves and fishes. In point of fact, however, 
 bread is no more a staff of life to the Loafer than to 
 anybody else ; and there is no reason whatever in his 
 pedigree why he should not face a loaf of bread as 
 boldly as any one of his detractors might look a sheep 
 in the face. Loafer is laitfcr, or lofer, from laufen, or 
 
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA. 1 95 
 
 lofen, to run, and means properly runner, racer, courier, 
 post, either of whicli definitions suggests for the Loafer 
 a respectable, if not an honorable parentage. Not im- 
 possibly it was first applied to the swift footed Achilles, 
 in which case the world owes to him its Iliad. At all 
 events it should not be forgotten that a Loafer was the 
 hero, the inspiration, the fmal cause of the greatest of 
 all the world's Epics ; as perchance the father of the 
 family was a noted runner in the Olympian games, 
 whose laurel crown made him at once the pride and the 
 envy of assembled Greece. And as the racer among 
 horses is the purest representative of the thoroughbred, 
 it is not too much to assume that the First Loafer was 
 the most thoroughbred man of his time. Or, perad- 
 venture, he was a swift messenger, a bearer of news, a 
 human Mercury, the precursor of the Able Editor of 
 to-day — a supposition, let me add, which is favored by 
 the fact that Mercury, the runner or loafer of the gods, 
 was their advertising agent and their commercial re- 
 porter. Or not improbably he was the post, the letter- 
 carrier of his day, the first attempt made in the world 
 of running, or loafing, a Post Office. The Loafer ac- 
 cordingly has, as you see, a very fine choice of pedi- 
 grees, and whichever paternity he adopts, whether the 
 hero of the Iliad, or the first thoroughbred man, or the 
 first newspaper, or the first Post Office Department, it 
 must be admitted that he has a species of origin which 
 Darwin himself might envy. 
 
 These remarks are intended simply to relieve the 
 origin of the Loafer from unworthy suspicion, and are 
 descriptive only of the First of the species. It does not 
 follow that the Loafer of to-day is literally a runner, 
 any more than that the Baker of to-day knows any- 
 thing about making a loaf. If the Loafer had kept on 
 running allthe Way "down the corridor of time," his 
 
196 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 fate would doubtless ere this have reminded us of the 
 famous Mynheer von Hamm, with his cork leg, and I 
 should be now reading his L. E. G. But it is an impor- 
 tant point in his favor that the vulgar prejudice against 
 him as being descended from some one who once upon 
 a time was involved in some questionable transaction 
 touching a loaf, can be shown to have no foundation 
 whatever, and we are now prepared to consider what 
 further may be said in his behalf. 
 
 Disregarding the Dictionary, which on this point, as 
 on others, is simply the organ of popular prejudice, let 
 me begin by defining the Loafer to be the man of 
 infinite leisure, who refuses to recognize the conventional 
 code of activity prescribed by an antiquated system, 
 established not only before he was born, but what is far 
 more, without his consent; who, moreover, having 
 strong absorbent qualities, appropriates to himself what- 
 ever he finds suitable to his need or comfort, of which 
 he becomes the vehicle, conveying it with himself as a 
 part of himself and thus becoming a disseminator of the 
 more subtle and intangible elements of social existence, 
 his social circulation being determined by no material or 
 economical laws, but by an inward spontaneity and in 
 obedience to undefinable attractions, wandering like 
 Wordsworth's river, ' ' at his own sweet will. " This same 
 spontaneity making him a most important solvent of the 
 more rigid, mechanical elements of society through 
 the infusion into our civilization of that freedom, ease, 
 abandon, grace, which it so greatly needs. This defi- 
 nition is, I admit, somewhat long and lingering — but so, 
 to be candid, is the Loafer. 
 
 In calling the Loafer a man of infinite leisure, I do 
 not mean to insinuate that he never issues a business 
 card, never advertises in the papers, never frequents at 
 mysterious seasons a mythical locality which he meta- 
 
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA. igy 
 
 phorically calls his "office." He has the good fortune 
 however, to be practically independent of the drudgery 
 and tyranny of what the common run of men call "busi- 
 ness." He is too considerate of his nose to keep it for 
 any length of time down to the grindstone. On the con- 
 trary he keeps it well up in the air. He looks like one 
 who is consciously monarch of all he surveys, and what 
 he surveys is evidently no pent-up Utica. He com- 
 mands his timiC. The seasons are his own. He is never 
 in a hurry, however much others might wish that he 
 were. There is something approaching the sublime 
 about the glacier-like repose which he maintains amid 
 the rushing avalanches about him. His calm inertia is 
 an invaluable phenomenon in this world of whirl and 
 worry, froth and fret, push and passion. As Mrs. Stowe 
 says of the Yankee variety: " Every New England vil- 
 lage, if you think of it, must have its do-nothing as 
 regularly as its school-house or meeting-house. Work, 
 thrift, industry, are such an incessant steam-power in Yan- 
 kee life, that society would burn itself out with intense 
 friction, were there not interposed here and there the 
 lubricating power of a decided do-nothing, a man who 
 won't be hurried, and won't work, and will take his 
 ease in his own way, in spite of the protest of his 
 whole neighborhood to the contrary." 
 
 The Loafer is thus your grand social sedative. The 
 very sight of him is, or ought to be, sufficient to call the 
 bulls and bears of the gold-room into the repose of the 
 cradle. His whole life is an echo of Earl Russell's 
 famous motto: "Rest, and be thankful!" No matter 
 what is to be done — be it to declare war, to elect a 
 President, to resume specie payment, to reform the civil 
 service, to put down the Athanasian creed, to annihilate 
 the nebular hypothesis — it is all one — he loafs and still 
 he is happy. Wise man ! Tell the sluggard to go to 
 
198 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 the ant — but tell the rest of the world to go to the 
 Loafer, and to believe that, in more senses than one, half 
 a loaf is better than none, and very often is just as good 
 as a whole loaf. 
 
 The-Dictionary calls the Loafer a "sponge." This is 
 a feeble attempt at satire; in fact, it is a compliment. 
 The Loafer has, I repeat, strong absorbent faculties, 
 and to be a sponge is one of his rarest and most beau- 
 tiful uses. He takes into himself much that is floating 
 and flowing in the air and sea of life about him, which 
 would otherwise be lost. The men in active life are all 
 the time throwing off a vast amount of electric energy 
 which if left loose would run riot, or return back whence 
 it came and where there is too much of it already. 
 This passes over into the Loafers, by whom it is 
 absorbed, and in whom it remains latent until it is 
 wanted. When the time comes for them to discharge, 
 then look out for live thunder ! 
 
 Not only that, but they carry off considerable else 
 which needs to be disposed of. The Loafer is the waste- 
 pipe of the social machine. A sponge is he? Well, he 
 sponges up a vast deal of other people's nonsense for one 
 thing, which they are well rid of, and which doesn't seem 
 to hurt him. And yet we squeeze him and blame him for 
 the nonsense that comes out of him. Men say much to 
 the Loafer which it is well they should get off their 
 minds, but which they would hardly care to say to any- 
 body else. A business man does not care to show his 
 weak side to another business man, but to the first 
 Loafer that comes along, ten to one he'll show it. And 
 this is one way it comes to pass that he knows so much 
 about everybody. And then he is so good-natured he 
 disarms everybody^ he draws out everybody, takes in 
 everybody, he is the same to everybody, he takes an 
 interest in everybody, and he takes everything from 
 
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA. 
 
 199 
 
 everybody. Others vent their humors of all sorts on 
 him ; these drop serenely on him hke rain-drops on a 
 duck's back ; the duck is happy, the sky gets clear and 
 the world wags on. 
 
 As one happy result of this power of absorption, he 
 is to some extent, at least, a valuable social disinfect- 
 ant. Noxious gases, absorbed by him, pass over into 
 an insensible state, and so become, for the time being, 
 at least, harmless. In revolutionary times, to be sure, 
 he becomes for this reason, a dangerous element, but so 
 are all magazines liable to explosion. They are neces- 
 sary nevertheless. And it is worthy of note that if the 
 agitator, the anarchist, the agrarian, the petroleanist, the 
 communist, is often the metamorphosis of the Loafer, 
 just as often the Man for the Crisis is the Loafer, too. 
 ** Beware of that young trifler!" said the Dictator Sulla 
 of Julius Caesar. The greatest empire which the world 
 has yet seen was founded by a Loafer. Rienzi was a 
 Loafer and a buffoon until his hour came. In our own 
 civil war, which the Loafer had much to do doubtless in 
 bringing on, who, nevertheless, was more successful 
 than he in putting an end to it? 
 
 One chief value of the Loafer resides in the free 
 spontaneity of his movements. Like Wordsworth's river, 
 he " wanders at his own sweet will." Other men move 
 in grooves and beaten paths. Business necessarily 
 means routine, and routine means ruts. If it were 
 not for the Loafer, life would be one dull routine. 
 The world would run on a straight T rail instead 
 of swinging gracefully and majestically in its ever ad- 
 vancing spiral curves. He breaks up its dead uniform- 
 ities and angularities and monotonies. His path is the 
 waving line of beauty. Because he lives in it, the world 
 no longer looks like a gridiron. He makes its lines 
 picturesque. And by his freedom of movement he 
 
200 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 distributes abroad the social elements and forces of 
 which he is the reservoir. He is thus useful as well as 
 ornamental. He is like the cloud, which instead of 
 moving in uniform lines drifts in every direction and 
 thus bears its sweet influences wherever they are wanted. 
 Roaming where he will, he carries and deposits the pol- 
 len necessary for the fertilization of human orchids. 
 
 This element of grace in the Loafer belongs not sim- 
 ply to his movements, but to the man himself The 
 man of routine can not help being angular and stiff 
 His mechanical life makes a machine of him. He is a 
 pair of tongs, a pump-handle, a walking wax figure. 
 The Loafer on the contrary, being free from this mech- 
 anism, strapped up in no strait-jacket, displays the free- 
 dom and ease of nature in every line. There is a care- 
 less misstudied grace about him which is quite refresh- 
 ing in a world of cast-iron. He is a natural professor 
 of Deportment, a poet laureate of the Picturesque; if 
 not the glass of fashion, he is the mould of form. The 
 Italian lazzarone, for instance, what an embodiment of 
 grace ! The models from whom our artists get their 
 Apollos and Adonises, who are they? Loafers to a 
 man ! 
 
 There are other noble uses of the Loafer which I can 
 only mention. Besides being a thing of beauty, he is 
 a joy forever. In a world of worry his life is a carol. 
 He is a living piece of sunshine. He relieves the world 
 of its lonesomeness. How many spots now haunted 
 by his Genial Presence, would be bleak and solitary as 
 Juan Fernandez, if he should become extinct. How 
 many sharp corners of which he is the tutelary divinity, 
 would become positively dangerous ! How many rough 
 angles would our knee-pans strike against which are 
 now rounded smooth and harmless by the friction of 
 his benevolent back ! How many hours in Hfe would 
 
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA. 20I 
 
 be vacant blanks if he were not thrown in, Hke whisky 
 at a wake ! How many lectures, operas, plays, or even 
 sermons would present a beggarly account of empty 
 boxes, or pews, if he should retire from the world, 
 and take his place among the fossils ! How many im- 
 portant transactions would be born to blush unseen, if 
 he did not always happen to be around in the very 
 nick of time. How dreary and barren would the His- 
 tory of the Witness-box be but for his timely contribu- 
 tions ! What has ever taken place in the world worth 
 seeing or hearing which the Loafer was not there to 
 see or hear? What would have become of the Daily 
 Press, that mighty engine of progress, but for him with 
 his valuable nose for news? And that palladium of 
 our liberties, that bulwark of justice, that climax of 
 civilization, the Jury-box, where, oh ! where would that 
 have been, had the evolution of the heterogeneous out 
 of the homogeneous never produced the Loafer ! 
 
 Again, how many of the most valuable inventions, 
 especially in the economics of life, have originated with 
 the Loafer? Noah Webster sneers at him as one 
 who seeks his living by expedients. Truly, and why 
 not ? What is life at the best but a series of shifts 
 and expedients, dodging nature's constables, paying off 
 your old debts with new promises to pay, learning by 
 one scrape how to get out of the next, making the 
 best out of a bad bargain, keeping up appearances, 
 making a part equal to the whole, and all that ? The 
 loafer honestly accepts the situation, and beats you at 
 the same,' that is all. 
 
 My present limits will not allow me to dwell on the 
 varieties of the genus, interesting as many of them are ; 
 such as the Loafer Genteel, the Loafer Out-at-Elbow, 
 the Hotel Loafer, the Church Loafer, the Police Court 
 Loafer, the Loafer of the Corner, the Loafer of the 
 
202 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Pit, the Loafer of the Lobby, the MoonHght Loafer, 
 the Sea-Side Loafer, the Loafer in PoHtics, the PhiHs- 
 tine Loafer, the Dilettante Loafer, the Country-Store 
 Loafer, the Book - Store Loafer, the Philosophical 
 Loafer, and many more too numerous to mention. 
 
 I regret also being unable to do justice to many of 
 the Loafer's most remarkable accomplishments, espe- 
 cially his mastery of the jack-knife. What the sword is 
 to the hero, what the pen is to the author, that the 
 knife is to the Loafer. It may be true that the pen is 
 mightier than the sword, but I have no hesitation in 
 saying, that the jack-knife is mightier than either, and 
 the Loafer is pre-eminently the Hero of the jack-knife. 
 Who can doubt that the steam-engine, the cotton-gin, 
 the ocean frigate, the organ, and all the inventive tri- 
 umphs of civilization, owe their rudimentary begin- 
 nings and their completed development to the jack- 
 knife? How much we owe to this most modest, and 
 yet most mighty of all weapons, let the Patent Office 
 tell. The world whittles its way to the Millennium. 
 That Good Time Coming would be nowhere without 
 the jack-knife, and the jack - knife, I need not say, 
 would be a failure without the Loafer. Walt Whitman 
 says, that the forte of Americans is confessedly loaf- 
 ing and writing poems. Judging by Walt's poetry we 
 might doubt our poetic calling, but judging by our 
 whittling and inventions, we may say that loafing is our 
 forte. 
 
 I cannot close without one word of deprecation. I 
 protest against holding the Loafer responsible for all 
 that is objectionable in every member of the class. For 
 instance, because now and then a Loafer is a Bore, it 
 is egregiously unfair to regard every Loafer as a Bore. 
 I venture to say that some of the most delightful fel- 
 lows who have ever lived were Loafers, as, to mention 
 
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA. 203 
 
 no Other one except William Shakespeare. So again, 
 because loafers are sometimes ne'er-do-wells, it is unjust 
 to charge all with being such. Sam Lawson, to be 
 sure, was a do-nothing as well as a Loafer — but as a 
 Loafer his career was brilliant and sans reproche. Mr. 
 Micawber's creditors had a serious time of it, I admit, 
 but Wilkins Micawber is one of earth's immortals never- 
 theless. What we condemn in these men is accidental, 
 what we admire belongs essentially to them as Loafers. 
 But if you would know what a Loafer can be, let me 
 point you to Old Socrates, the Ideal Loafer of the 
 centuries, who, lounging around Athens, barefooted 
 and shirtless (as we should say), wearing the same old 
 coat summer and winter, dropping in here and there 
 and everywhere, dropped questions, and hints, and 
 syllogisms, and parables, which may be almost said to 
 have created philosophy, as it won for him the fame of 
 the one martyrdom which the world will remember out- 
 side of the Christian Church. The next time you see 
 a Loafer, remember Socrates, and take off your hat. 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 
 
 "A GRATEFUL recollection of the Divine Goodness is 
 the first of human obligations ; and extraordinary favors 
 demand more solemn and devout acknowledgments: 
 with such acknowledgments I feel it my duty to begin 
 this work. First, because I was born at a time when 
 the virtue of my fellow-citizens, far exceeding that of 
 their progenitors in greatness of soul, and vigor of enter- 
 prise, having invoked heaven to witness the justice of 
 their cause, and been clearly governed by its directions, 
 has succeeded in delivering the commonwealth from 
 most grievous tyranny, and religion from the most 
 ignominious degradation." 
 
 So begins the famous " Defensio Secunda pro Populo 
 Anglicano, " written by one whose Prose has proved 
 him no less worthy to vindicate the People of England, 
 than his Poetry to undertake the vindication of the ways* 
 of God to man. 
 
 Believing that we also have the same cause of grati- 
 tude, that we also live in a time, when the virtue of 
 our fellow-citizens, if it does not far exceed that of 
 their progenitors in greatness of soul and vigor of enter- 
 prise, does not fall far short of it, when the great con- 
 test of the Seventeenth Century is under new conditions 
 (204) 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 205 
 
 waged over again, when the essential principles, advo- 
 cated and established by the pen of him whose tongue 
 dictated Paradise Lost, are again struggling for the 
 mastery, when Puritan Demoracy again invokes heaven 
 to witness the justice of its cause, as against a perfidious, 
 arrogant, jure divino tyranny, I invite you to spend a 
 brief hour in communing with the spirit of the great, 
 good, and wise man, whose words you have just 
 Hstened to, the Advocate of Freedom, the Defender of 
 the Commonwealth of England, Joh^sT Milton, the 
 Patriot. 
 
 The Patriot to-day, rather than the Poet: although 
 in Milton, more than in any other, more even than in 
 Dante, Patriot and Poet are inseparable. While his 
 poetry is absolutely free from every vestige of political 
 passion or prejudice, such as glares in Dante's Inferno, 
 it is controlled throughout by those clearly defined and 
 firmly held principles of Government, Justice, Law, 
 Liberty, which guided his conduct as a citizen. In 
 every book of Paradise Lost, we feel the pulsations of 
 that mighty revolution, wherein he bore so prominent a 
 part. Still more vividly do we discern in his enthu- 
 siasm for all that was chivalrous, in his homage to all 
 that was heroic, in his magnificent rage against tyranny, 
 in his burning pleas for Truth, Right and Liberty, the 
 true God-sent Poet, the Vates of olden time, his lips 
 touched with fire from off the altar of heaven, his heart 
 kindUng with the ardors of Eternity. Goethe has said, 
 that the poet must hold himself aloof from the polemics 
 of his generation. The remark is unquestionably true, 
 when these polemics are nothing more than the personal 
 strife of factions, the conflict of partisan prejudices, the 
 antagonism of ephemeral issues, whose interest is tran- 
 sient, whose results are perishable. But when the 
 controversies of an age are the life-or-death struggles of 
 
206 LLEWELYN lOAM EVANS. 
 
 Principles of world-wide interest and timelong results, 
 when, as to Milton's poet-vision, the angels and the 
 demons marshal their hosts for strife, then no true Poet, 
 no devout worshipper of the Beautiful, to whom the 
 goddess reveals herself not less in the gleaming flash of 
 Truth's sword, and in the waving plumes of warring 
 Duty, than in the glittering spears of the dawn or the 
 swaying crest of the forest-pines, can hold himself aloof 
 Whether here or there, whether on the red field, where 
 ''principles are rained in blood," or in the senate-hall 
 and council chamber, where wise and brave measures 
 are matured, or on the forum, whence winged words 
 may take their flight to enlighten, to arouse, to calm, 
 to strengthen, or yet in the meditative retreat, where 
 his low-toned lyre sounds the keynote of the clashing 
 and crashing discords of the storm, somewhere he will 
 be found aiding and hastening the victorious result. 
 But whatever his words, and with whatsoever weapon it 
 is done, the poet's chaplet ever crowns his head, the 
 prophetic fire ever burns in his heart. He, with whom 
 we are now about to commune, will stand before us A 
 Poet, confessed and undisguisable. You will see the 
 light of Apollo's kiss on his brow, even when it is knit 
 in beautiful wrath against the wrong. His words will 
 drip with the honey-dews of Helicon, while they come 
 to us winged with the wisdom of the sage. The poet 
 will make himself known, while I seek to show you 
 The Citizen, The Man. 
 
 In a season of National Trial, like that in the midst 
 of which To-day finds us, it is well that we should give 
 heed to the Voices of the Past, especially to those 
 which come to us out of those stirring, heroic times, 
 when humanity was agitated to its depths, when men's 
 intuitions of truth and duty were quickened into al- 
 most supernatural clearness and power, when the world 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT, 20/ 
 
 throbbed with the pulsations of a grander Hfe, and when 
 marvelous and blessed Results sprang Minerva-like, full- 
 grown and full-armed out of the spiritual throes of the 
 Age. I desire, therefore, on this occasion, to let Mil- 
 ton himself be heard, to be the simple mouth-piece of 
 his wisdom. Much as we may know, wise as no doubt 
 we are, I think that there are yet a few things which 
 this Patriot of the olden time can teach us. 
 
 To the end, however, that we may understand his 
 words, it will be necessary for us to glance at a few of 
 the more prominent facts of his life and times, such in 
 particular as are related to his public career and patri- 
 otic utterances. 
 
 John Milton was born in the heart of the city of 
 London, on the 9th of December, 1608. His father, 
 also named John Milton, was a scrivener, or writer of 
 legal documents. The poet was of a stern and sturdy 
 stock, for we are told that John Milton, the elder, on 
 becoming a convert to Protestanism, was disinherited 
 by his father, who was a substantial farmer of Oxford- 
 shire. The sternness of the old Romanist, or bigotry 
 as our age would call it, casting off his own son for 
 embracing what he conceived to be an error, and the 
 inflexible conscientiousness of the son, submitting to 
 the loss of his patrimony, rather than betray his con- 
 victions, are noteworthy antecedents of the resolute 
 character of their descendant. By his diligence and 
 prudence, however, Milton's father had acquired an in- 
 dependent livelihood, and become able to make suit- 
 able provision for the education and comfort of his 
 family. He himself was a man of liberal taste and va- 
 ried accomplishments. His grandson Philip, Milton's 
 nephew, says of him: " He did not so far quit his gen- 
 erous and ingenious inclinations, as to make himself 
 wholly a slave tp the world ;" a trait of character which 
 
208 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 some, whom we know, would do well to imitate. He 
 was an especial admirer of music, owned a parlor organ, 
 bass-viol and other musical instruments, and brought up 
 his family in the love and exercise of that Divine Art. 
 With a natural talent for music, aided by such an edu- 
 cation, his son John became a passionate lover of the 
 art, and an earnest advocate of its cultivation. Thus in 
 his Tractate of Education he recommends, with a 
 manifest recollection of his own early home education, 
 that the intervals of rest, which occur in the education 
 of young men, "be taken up in recreating and com- 
 posing their travailed spirits with the solemn and di- 
 vine harmonies of music, heard or learned ; . • . which 
 if wise men and prophets be not extremely out, have 
 a great power over dispositions and manners, to 
 smooth and make them gentle from rustic hardships 
 and distempered passions." 
 
 But better than all other charms, which rested on 
 the London scrivener's home, were the high moral and 
 religious influences which prevailed there. It was in- 
 deed a genuine Puritan home, not sombre, gloomy, 
 forbidding, as the common idea would make it, but 
 grave, serious, quiet, yet withal cheerful and cozy, 
 abounding in innocent delights, intelligent conversation, 
 pleasant recreations, useful occupations, lofty Christian 
 meditations and pursuits. Milton's mother also deserves 
 particular mention (as the mother of what great man 
 does not?) for he speaks of her as "a most excellent 
 mother, and particularly known for her charities in the 
 neighborhood." With grateful and noble pride does 
 Milton in after life refer to the home of his youth, and 
 to the pure and Christian training which he there re- 
 ceived. 
 
 We have a portrait of Milton taken at the age 'of 
 ten by Cornelius Jansen, a young Dutch painter of that 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 2O9 
 
 day, regarded as second only to Vandyck, and which is 
 no doubt an exceedingly truthful likeness. You have 
 probably seen in shop-windows and elsewhere, what 
 purports to be a portrait of Milton in his boyhood, in 
 which he is represented as a young cherub, or rather a 
 young something between a cherub and a seraph, with 
 a celestial cast of countenance with features of the most 
 orthodox classical mould, with long golden ringlets 
 clustering around his shoulders, the whole gotten up 
 after the most approved style of the seraphic-cherubi- 
 fication of boys. Why people will persist in painting 
 angels as nice boys, or nice boys as angels, is, I confess, 
 to me a mystery. If you have seen such an angelifica- 
 tion of the young Milton, let me beseech you to dis- 
 miss it from your memory at once. It is no more like 
 Milton than it is Hke a real angel. Jansen's portrait is 
 that of a charming little English boy, in a black-braided 
 tightly-fitting coat, with a wide lace frill around the 
 neck, of a delicate red and white complexion, light 
 auburn hair cropped close, disclosing a massive, prac- 
 tical cast of head, a grave countenance, the predomi- 
 nant expression of which is a mild, loving, and lovable 
 earnestness, less removed, one would think, from tears 
 than smiles, although when it changes into smiles, one 
 sees they must be of rare winningness. Altogether it 
 is the picture of a "sweet little Roundhead," differing 
 from an angel's in this, that you do not tire of it ; but 
 the more you look at it, the more you like it. 
 
 This serious little Roundhead, who, as his father 
 played the organ at evening, would stand by his side, 
 lost in rapture, and as soon almost as he could reach 
 the keyboard, learned to play himself, who if he did 
 not, Hke Pope, "lisp in numbers," did certainly scrib- 
 ble boyish rhymes, and was in consequence installed 
 poet-laureate of the family, was according to his own 
 
210 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 account "destined by his parents and friends from 
 childhood to the service of the Church." It was re- 
 solved accordingly to give him a liberal education. He 
 gives himself the following account of his early youth 
 and studies. ** I was born at London, of an honest 
 family. My father was distinguished by the undeviat- 
 ing integrity of his life, my mother by the esteem in 
 which she was held, and the alms which she bestowed. 
 My father destined me while yet a boy for the study 
 of humane letters, which I seized with such eagerness, 
 that from the twelfth year of my age I scarcely ever 
 went from my lessons to bed before midnight ; which 
 indeed was the first cause of injury to my eyes, to 
 whose natural weakness there were also added frequent 
 headaches. All which not retarding my impetuosity 
 in learning, he caused me to be daily instructed both 
 at grammar school and under other masters at home ; 
 and then when I had acquired various tongues, and 
 also some not insignificant taste for the sweetness of 
 philosophy, he sent me to Cambridge, one of our two 
 national universities." The only teacher of Milton of 
 whom we have any account was Thomas Young, a 
 Scotch Puritan, " who cut his hair short." The gram- 
 mar school of which Milton speaks, was St. Paul's 
 School, taught at this time by Dr. Gill, who was as- 
 sisted by his son, Alexander Gill, and who is described 
 as " a very ingenious person, who notwithstanding had 
 his moods and humors, as particularly his whipping 
 fits," which Milton had occasion to remember. 
 
 Milton entered Cambridge in the year 1625, when he 
 was a little over sixteen years of age. There he pur- 
 sued his studies with indefatigable assiduity for seven 
 years. Dr. Johnson, in his life of Milton, has given 
 publicity to a silly and ungrounded rumor that 
 Milton was one of the last students in either uni- 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 2ll 
 
 versity that suffered the public indignity of corporal 
 correction. The rough old Tory's prejudice against 
 the Republican champion has led him too easily in this 
 as in other matters, to fear something to be true which 
 was not. The only circumstance which can give color 
 to the tradition is, that a quarrel between Milton and 
 his tutor, which may have amounted to a personal scuffle, 
 and in which possibly Milton not being a Heenan, came 
 off second best, led to a brief rustication of the young 
 man at his father's home, the ** oiimn cum di^nitate'' of 
 which ' ' exile ' ' (as he calls it) he seems to have appreciated 
 and enjoyed not less than others after him have done. 
 
 It is indeed quite possible that he was not as great a 
 favorite with the College authorities as he might have 
 made himself by greater ductility and tractability, by 
 showing less independence and less disdain for the time- 
 sanctioned routine of University discipline. He might 
 also have acquired greater popularity among his fellow- 
 coUegiates had he exhibited less of that proud and sen- 
 sitive reserve, less of that womanly delicacy of soul 
 which shrank from the coarseness, the boisterousness 
 and recklessness of university life. There is, however, 
 sufficient evidence to show that by his attainments, his 
 culture, and the purity and nobleness of his character, 
 he compelled the admiration of his instructors, secured 
 the esteem of his fellows and won the passionate idoli- 
 zation of his friends. 
 
 We have another portrait of Milton while a student 
 at Cambridge, in which he appears to us as a fresh, fair 
 complexioned, frank looking English youth, of slender 
 but graceful form, with oval face, dark gray eye, long 
 light brown hair falling to his ruff, with the same gen- 
 tle seriousness brooding over the face, which is, how- 
 ever, now lighted up by the pride of conscious power 
 and the cheerfulness of resolution and hope. * ' His de- 
 
212 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 portment at this time," says one, "was affable, his gait 
 erect and manly, bespeaking courage and undaunted- 
 ness. " He tells us himself that he practiced daily with 
 his sword, and that "armed with it, as he generally 
 was, he was in the habit of thinking himself quite a 
 match for any one, even were he much more robust, 
 and of being perfectly at ease as to any injury that any 
 one could offer him, man to man." Notwithstanding, 
 so fair and delicate was he in appearance and so serious 
 and pure in manners, that he was known as "The 
 Lady of Christ's College." In one of his College Ora- 
 tions we find him alluding to the matter thus: " Why 
 seem I then too little of a man ? ... Is it because I 
 never was able to quaff huge tankards lustily? or be- 
 cause my hands never grew hard by holding the plough, 
 or because I never, like a seven years' herdsman, laid my- 
 self down and snored at midday ; in fine, perchance, be- 
 cause I never proved my manhood in the same way as these 
 debauched blackguards ? I would they could as easily 
 doff the ass, as I can whatever of the woman is in me." 
 And here is the place perhaps to make a remark which 
 is indispensable to a correct view of Milton's life and 
 character ; to-wit, that having in very early youth 
 formed the conviction that "by labor and intense 
 study, which," he says, "I take to be my portion in 
 this life, joined with the strong propensity of nature, I 
 might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, 
 as they should not willingly let it die," he seems to 
 have realized almost as early that in order to accomplish 
 this end he must develop in himself a perfect and he- 
 roic character. "Long it was not after," he tells us, 
 ''when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who 
 would not be frustrated of his hope to write well here- 
 after in laudable things, ought himself to be a true 
 poeiUy that is, a composition and pattern of the best and 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 213 
 
 honorablest things." Noble words! He who would write 
 a poem must be a true poem ; he who would fitly rep- 
 resent whatever is noble and honorable must be a com- 
 position and pattern of the best and honorablest things ; 
 he who would accomplish a great and Divine work in 
 the world must above all things keep himself pure. 
 Without high moral integrity there can be no real suc- 
 cess. No virtue, no victory. With this fixed princi- 
 ple did Milton begin life, and it was the key of his 
 success. Spurning away from him all Devil's Wild 
 Oats fallacies, and planting himself on God's truth, 
 ''Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," — 
 that, and nothing else, he sought from early springtime 
 to make his mind a garden of all which might be fair 
 and fruitful, to implant therein the purest and heavenli- 
 est germs, to weed out all which was rank and nox- 
 ious ; to build therein bowers for heavenly contempla- 
 tion ; to open fountains of divinest joy, to make it, in 
 a word, an Eden, the spiritual counterpart oi that 
 earthly one of which he was sanctioned to sing. And 
 so, at the age of twenty-three, he says: 
 
 "All is, if I have grace to use it so, 
 
 As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye." 
 
 One can easily see how such a youth might be rid- 
 iculed by the gay young wits of Cambridge; look- 
 ing forward through the Centuries and into Eternity, 
 one can also see how well he could afford it. 
 
 Milton left the University in his 24th year. As has 
 been already remarked, he was educated for the 
 Church. It would seem, however, that while in the 
 University his views underwent a change. He himself 
 tells us that he had been "destined to the service of 
 the Church by the intentions of his parents and friends, 
 and in his own resplutions ; till coming to some matur- 
 
214 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 ity of years, and pcrccivlnc^ that tyranny had invaded 
 the Church, that he who would take orders must sub- 
 scribe slave, and take an oath withal which he must 
 either straight perjure or split his faith," he thought it 
 * * better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred 
 office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude 
 and forswearing." In other words, we are to under- 
 stand that such were the corruptions which had intro- 
 duced themselves into the Church, such the restraints 
 imposed on the freedom which a man like Milton must 
 claim for himself, so offensive the pretensions and as- 
 sumptions of Laudism, then a growing power in the 
 Church, that Milton, with his nice sense of honor, his 
 independence and integrity, as well as his strong Puri- 
 tanic sympathies, could not compromise his manhood 
 and self-respect by such servility as the Prelacy w^ould 
 require of him. "For me," he writes a few years 
 later, ** I have determined to lay up as the best treas- 
 ure and solace of a good old age, if God vouchsafe it 
 me, the honest liberty of free speech from my youth, 
 where I shall think it available in so dear a concern- 
 ment as the Church's good." Let me give you here 
 one or two examples of the "Free speech," which 
 Milton claimed he exercised. "What would ye say 
 now, grave fathers, if you should wake and see un- 
 worthy Bishops, or rather no Bishops, but Egyptian 
 taskmasters of ceremonies thrust purposely upon the 
 groaning Church, to the affliction and vexation of God's 
 people? " "He that will mould a modern Bishop into 
 a primitive, must yield him to be elected by the popu- 
 lar voice, undiocesed, unrevenued, unlorded, and leave 
 him nothing but brotherly equality, matchless temper- 
 ance, frequent fasting, incessant prayer and preaching, 
 continual watchings and labors in his ministry ; which, 
 what a rich booty it would be, what a plump endow- 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 21$ 
 
 ment to the many-benefice-gaping mouth of a prel- 
 ate, what a relish it would give to his canary-sucking 
 and swan-eating palate, let old Bishop Mountain judge 
 for me." "They have been in England^ to our souls 
 a sad and doleful succession of illiterate and blind 
 guides , to our purses and goods a wasteful band of 
 robbers, a perpetual havoc and rapine ; to our State a 
 continual hydra of mischief and molestation, a forge of 
 discord and rebellion." A man who would thus think 
 and speak would have made rather a singular figure in 
 the English Church of that day. Such a Bishop or 
 Dean as he would have made, one is rather amused in 
 trying to imagine. With a Charles Stuart at the head 
 of the Nation, and a William Laud at the head of the 
 Church, the situation of a Rev. or Right Rev. John 
 Milton, would have been a peculiar one. On the whole 
 perhaps Milton did wisely to hesitate about taking 
 orders, at least to postpone the matter. 
 
 Having graduated at the University, and being 
 " Church-outed (as he calls it,) by the prelates," he 
 went home to his father, who had retired from business 
 on an ample competency, and had taken up his abode 
 at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, not quite twenty miles 
 due west from London. To use his own account : " I 
 retired to my father's house, whither I was accompa- 
 nied by the regrets of most of the fellows of the College, 
 who showed me no common marks of friendship and 
 esteem. At my father's country residence, whither he 
 had retired to pass his old age, I, with every advan- 
 tage of leisure, spent a complete holiday in turning 
 over the Greek and Latin writers, not but that some- 
 times I exchanged the country for the town, either for 
 the purpose of buying books, or for that of learning 
 something new in Mathematics, or in Music, in which 
 sciences I then delighted. I then became anxious to 
 
2l6 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 visit foreign parts, and particularly Italy." These five 
 years we must hastily pass over with the remark that 
 the masques Comus and Arcades, and several of his 
 minor poems, such as Lycidas, L' Allegro, II Penseroso, 
 were then composed. There is, however, one glimpse 
 of his inner life at this time which I must give you. 
 It is contained in a letter to his friend Diodati. ''You 
 make many anxious inquiries," he writes, ''even as to 
 what I am thinking of Hearken, Theodotus, lest I 
 blush, and allow me for a little to speak big words to 
 you. You ask me what I ^m thinking of? So may 
 the Good Deity help me, of Immortality ! But what am 
 I doing? I am pluming my wings, and meditating 
 flight, but as yet our Pegasus raises himself on very 
 tender pinions. Let us be lowly wise." Out of low- 
 liness, wisdom, and aspiration like that, Diodati may 
 reasonably expect that something would come, as in- 
 deed the world knows that there did come "things un- 
 attempted yet in prose or rhyme." 
 
 In the month of April, 1638, Milton, being in his 30th 
 year, set out for the continent, which was at that time 
 the theater of the Thirty Years War. It was not, how- 
 ever, an irrepressible curiosity to see a big Battle, such 
 as History informs us, carried distinguished Members 
 of Congress and others to the plains of Manassas, and 
 some of them a little further, in the Year of Grace, 
 1861, that induced Milton to visit the Continent, for he 
 avoided the seat of war entirely. Neither was it that he 
 might write a Book of Travels. His literary ambition does 
 not seem to have aspired so high. Neither was it for 
 recreation. It was work, serious business, a part of that 
 discipHnary "pluming" process by which he hoped to 
 prepare himself for that flight into Immortality, to which 
 he looked forward. At Paris he visited the renowned 
 Grotius, who ' ' took his visit kindly, and gave him 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 217 
 
 entertainment suitable to his worth and the high commen- 
 dations he had heard of him. At Florence he stopped 
 about two months, where he "contracted an intimacy 
 with many persons of rank and learning, and was a 
 constant attendant on their literary parties." "There 
 it was," he writes, "that I found and visited the famous 
 Galileo, grown old a prisoner to the Inquisition, for 
 thinking in Astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan 
 and Dominican licensers thought." A memorable in- 
 terview that, between the blind old Martyr of Science, 
 and England's coming Poet, now bright with the beau- 
 tiful morn of manhood, but ere he has fairly passed its 
 noon, himself to be, Hke the sage before him, 
 
 " from the cheerful ways of men 
 Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair, 
 Presented with a universal blank 
 Of nature's works to him expunged and rased. 
 And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out." 
 
 At Rome he "spent two months in viewing the antiqui- 
 ties of that renowned city." At Naples he formed the 
 acquaintance of Manso, the friend of the illustrious poet 
 Tasso. "When I was about to return to Rome," he 
 says, "the merchants [at Naples] warned me that they 
 learnt by letters that snares were being laid for me by 
 the English Jesuits, if I should return to Rome, on the 
 ground that I had spoken too freely concerning religion. 
 For I had made this resolution v/ith myself — not indeed 
 of my own accord to introduce in those places conv'er- 
 sation about religion, but if interrogated respecting the 
 faith, then, whatsoever I should suffer, to dissemble 
 nothing. To Rome therefore I did return, notwithstand- 
 ing what I had been told ; what I was, if any one asked, 
 I concealed from no one ; if any one in the very city of 
 the Pope attacked the orthodox religion, I as before, 
 
2l8 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 for a second space of nearly two months, defended it 
 most freely.'' A man evidently who knew no fear, who 
 did not dare to lie ; who like most of those old Puri- 
 tans, like poor Prynne, for example, whose ears were 
 sawed off, feared the fire of hell, that is the pain of 
 God's displeasure and of a guilty conscience, more than 
 the Pope, or all the fires of the Inquisition ; a man who, 
 had he lived in our day, would be much safer out of the 
 * * Southern Confederacy, " than in it. ' ' By the favor of 
 God," he continues, "I got safe back to Florence, 
 where I was received with as much affection as if I had 
 returned to my native country." Then a month in sur- 
 veying the curiosities of Venice. ''At Geneva I held 
 daily conferences with John Diodati, the learned Pro- 
 fessor of Theology. Then pursuing my former route 
 through France, I returned to my native country, after 
 an absence of about one year and three months." 
 At the close of his journey he was able to make this 
 proud declaration : * ' I again take God to witness, that 
 in all those places, where so many things are considered 
 lawful, I lived sound and untouched from all profligacy 
 and vice, having this thought perpetually with me, that 
 though I might escape the eyes of men, I certainly 
 could not the eyes of God." A man, we should say, 
 to be trusted, one of an old tribe of whom it has been 
 said that they walked with God, and lived as seeing the 
 Invisible. It might be worth our while to inquire, 
 how much this fact had to do with m.aking those men 
 just what they were, and whether really if we wish *'to 
 make our lives sublime," we had not better begin where 
 they did. 
 
 Milton's return to England was hastened by a cause 
 which he describes as follows : * * When I was preparing 
 to push over into Sicily and Greece, the melancholy 
 intelligence which I received of the civil commotions in 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 2I9 
 
 England made me alter my purpose ; for I thought it 
 base to be travelling for amusement abroad, while my 
 fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at home." In 
 the midst of the excitements of travel, the amenities of 
 refined social intercourse, the thousand objects of inter- 
 est which greeted his scholarly tastes, and poetic 
 instincts on the classic soil of Italy, the trumpet of con- 
 flict, sounding from his Northern island home, roused 
 the Hero-spirit of the man, and summoned him to the 
 battle. That great contest, one of the grandest which 
 the world has yet known, merits here a brief consider- 
 ation. 
 
 The grand Puritanic Revolution, which we are now 
 about to contemplate, was the culmination of a struggle 
 which had been going on in England for more than a 
 century. The conflict between the Old and the New in 
 religion, between formalism and a living faith, between 
 ceremonialism and simplicity in worship, between 
 priestcraft and individual liberty, spiritual tyranny and 
 free inquiry, known as the Protestant Reformation, 
 differed in various important respects in England from 
 the same movement elsewhere. On the continent, the 
 contest was waged distinctly and definitely between the 
 Church of Rome on one hand, panoplied in the tradi- 
 tions, canons, and decretals of Ages, and the Protest- 
 ants on the other, at first a devout and zealous party 
 within the Church, desiring the reformation of its prac- 
 tices, and the purification of its doctrines, but after- 
 wards by the excommunication and voluntary with- 
 drawal of its members consolidated into a new and 
 reformed Church. In England, where the contest 
 assumed at first the same form, the insubordination of 
 Henry VIII. to the Pope, which resulted in detaching 
 the nation at one blow from Rome, made the Church, 
 so far as its foreign relations were concerned, independ- 
 
220 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 ent, but left the contending parties, exclusive of those 
 who still adhered to the Pope, nearly on the same foot- 
 ing as before, excepting that each party found itself 
 more or less restricted in the exercise of its liberty, and 
 constrained to abate somewhat of its claims. The conse- 
 quence was that in the very heart of the English 
 Church were two powerful opposite tendencies, the one 
 gravitating toward Rome, the other toward Geneva. 
 The former, having triumphed in the ritual and worship 
 of the Church, sought also to Romanize its doctrines; 
 the latter having triumphed in its articles and homilies, 
 sought also to simplify its forms. The one retained 
 its reverence for an imposing hierarchy, endowed with 
 plenary powers in all ecclesiastical and religious matters; 
 the other, rejecting the rank-distinctions of prelacy as 
 unscrlptural, inclined to a more democratic theory of the 
 constitution of the Church, and of the rights and liber- 
 ties of its members. The prelatical party, having 
 transferred to the English Monarch the allegiance 
 which had formerly been yielded to the Pope, easily 
 glided into the most servile theories of the Divine Right 
 of Kings, and the duty of non-resistant submission; the 
 Presbyterian party, having always resisted the usurpa- 
 tion of ecclesiastical authority by the civil power, were 
 exceedingly jealous of all royal encroachments on their 
 political, as well as religious liberties. Under the 
 Tudors this controversy, although at times it raged vio- 
 lently, was nevertheless working toward a harmonious 
 solution. Henry and Elizabeth were, it is true, inflex- 
 ible, and often arbitrary, in the assertion of the royal 
 prerogative, but they had wisdom also to foresee the 
 point beyond which it might not be safe to wage their 
 claims. The Stuarts were not gifted with the same dis- 
 cretion. James I. insulted his Parliament by remind- 
 ing them that they held their privileges only during his 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 221 
 
 good pleasure, and that they had no more right to 
 examine his prerogatives than those of the Deity. 
 Fortunately however, he possessed neither the courage, 
 nor the ability to maintain his extravagant pretensions 
 against their opposition. His son, Charles!., who suc- 
 ceeded him, had far more strength of will. He was a 
 despot by nature, by education and by conviction. No 
 obligation into which he entered toward his subjects 
 could bind him. He violated without compunction the 
 most solemn pledges given to the nation. Finding Par- 
 liament intractable, he dissolved it once and again, and 
 at last sought to govern the nation without it. He lev- 
 ied by his own authority taxes which were without a 
 shadow of legal right. The Star Chamber and High 
 Commission Courts exercised the most tyrannical inqui- 
 sitional functions, and fined, imprisoned, pilloried and 
 mutilated their victims with malignant ferocity, His 
 political counselor, Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, a man 
 of consummate ability and imperious resolution, sought 
 to convert the monarchy into an absolute despotism, 
 and to make the crown the unchallenged arbiter of the 
 property and liberty of the subject. His religious coun- 
 sellor. Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, a man of nar- 
 row but decided views, of an irritable but unyielding 
 temper, sought by cruel oppressions and persecutions, 
 to crush out Puritanism, in the Church, and out of it. 
 Many fled for refuge to the wilds of New England, there 
 to lay the foundations of a free Commonwealth. Those 
 who remained were filled with dismal forebodings for 
 the future. But at this juncture the Primate, in the 
 very insanity of bigotry, determined to subjugate 
 Scotland to his Anglo-Romanism : Scotland, the land 
 of Knox, the hotbed of Puritanism, where Rome was 
 hated as the gate of perdition, and where the choice 
 between the Pope and the Devil might not have been 
 
222 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 the most flattering to his Holiness. On this country- 
 Laud resolved to impose two abominations, as the Scotch 
 considered them, Bishops and a Liturgy. The country 
 rose in mass against them. In St. Giles* Kirk, Edin- 
 burg, as the Bishop was proceeding to read the Collect 
 of the day, Jenny Geddes, a market-woman, hurled her 
 stool at his head. Some cried out — *'A Pape ! a 
 Pape!" Others,— "Stane him! Stane him!" The 
 riot grew into a general rebellion. The King, unsuc- 
 cessful in his attemps to subdue it, and being without 
 means to carry on the war, was compelled to call Parlia- 
 ment, which had not met for eleven years, the longest 
 interval between two Parliaments ever known in the his- 
 tory of England. That which now met however, made 
 up for it perhaps, by continuing in power thirteen 
 years, whence it is called the ''Long Parliament." 
 
 These were the ''civil commotions," the "melan- 
 choly intelligence " of which caused Milton to abandon 
 his plan of visiting Greece, and to return immediately 
 to his native land. The decision must have cost him 
 no small struggle. Flushed with the tribute of admi- 
 ration and praise which he everywhere received, revel- 
 ling in the contemplation of scenes crowned with his- 
 toric interest, drinking into his soul the inspirations of 
 the past and the present, storing his mind with rare 
 and glorious images wherewith to adorn the future cre- 
 ations of his genius, and exulting in the prospect of the 
 increase of such delights amid other and still more 
 venerable scenes, it must have required no ordinary 
 resolution to resist such fascinations, or to deny him- 
 self such enjoyments. But Milton was no intellectual 
 voluptuary, no self-pampering virtuoso, to whom the 
 gratification of his own desires, and the culture of his 
 own powers were objects of infinitely higher conse- 
 quence than the rights and interests of his fellow-men. 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 22^ 
 
 Like every true man he felt that his hfe and powers 
 were not his own, and that it was, as he said, * ' a base 
 thing to be seeking his own amusement, while his fel- 
 low-citizens were fighting for liberty at home." This 
 was his first great victory ; others and greater ones were 
 soon to follow. 
 
 *' As soon as I was able," he informs us, ''I hired a 
 spacious house for myself and my books, where I again 
 with rapture renewed my literary pursuits, and where I 
 calmly awaited the issue of the contest, which I trusted 
 to the wise conduct of Providence, and to the courage 
 of the people." This curious statement, which seems 
 at first sight to be at variance with the avowed object 
 of his return, to take an active part in the struggle 
 then going on, is to be explained as follows. He found 
 on his arrival in England, that the commotions which 
 had been reported to him in Italy, and which perhaps, 
 as usual, had been magnified by rumor, had sensibly 
 subsided at the reassembling of Parliament in 1640. 
 He therefore wisely deemed it best to await the issue 
 now being tried between the King and Parliament. 
 *' With raptiwe,'' he tells us, ''he renewed his literary 
 pursuits," an expression which shows us how much it 
 had cost him to give them up. In the ''spacious 
 house " hired by him, he taught a number of boys after 
 a system of education very different from that pursued 
 in all the public institutions of that day, and much 
 more nearly resembling our modern systems. I am 
 probably safe also in saying, incredible as the state- 
 ment may appear to an American, whose first business 
 in life it is to get born, and whose second it is to set 
 up for himself, that Milton, now a bachelor of thirty- 
 two, had never earned a penny in the world, until he 
 began to teach this select school in London. 
 
 But not long did Milton indulge in the favorite liter- 
 
224 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 ary occupations, to which he so rapturously returned. 
 The battle began to be too hot all about him for such 
 as him to remain quiet; but on which side should he 
 fight ? To which of the great parties should he attach 
 himself? On the one side was royalty, surrounded by 
 the romance of "Right Divine," and by the base ac- 
 tualities of perfidy, cruelty, and tyranny : there was 
 Prelacy with its semi-popery of genuflections and sur- 
 plices, its ''piebald frippery, and ostentation of cere- 
 monies;" there, for the most part, was the nobility, 
 priding itself on its pedigrees, its gentle blood, its aris- 
 tocratic privileges ; with a loose crowd of base fellows 
 of the lewder sort ''bringing up the rear." On the 
 other side, led by a few noblemen, of heaven's line as 
 well as of earth's, were the people of England, its stout 
 and sturdy yeomanry ; its middle classes, its farmers, 
 artisans, "greasy mechanics," as in the refined voca- 
 bulary of a modern chivalry they would be called, 
 above all, the Puritanism, of England, that is to say, 
 its faith in God, its zeal for reformation, its yearnings 
 after spiritual progress, its Divine scorn of shams in 
 Church and State, its Hell - Devil- defying earnest- 
 ness, its martyr-spirit, as Milton so gratefully describes 
 it, "with the unresistible might of weakness shaking 
 the powers of darkness, and scorning the fiery rage of 
 the old red dragon." For this is what the Puritanism 
 of the Seventeenth Century meant. It was not the 
 canting, sniffling, drawling, bigoted, morose deformity, 
 which the stage buffoons of that day caricatured, and 
 which godless satirists of later days have travestied. 
 Neither was it exclusively that bundle of rigidities, ex- 
 aggerations, and Hcbrewisms, which Macaulay, with 
 his fondness for brilliant colorings and pointed aphor- 
 isms, has grouped together. Charles Kingsley says 
 truly of the "average Puritan, nobleman, gentleman. 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 22$ 
 
 merchant, or farmer," that he was *'a picturesque and 
 poetical man, a man of higher imagination and deeper 
 feehng than the average of Court poets, and a man of 
 sound taste also:" and that ''we, if v/e met such a 
 ruffed and ruffled worthy as used to swagger by hun- 
 dreds up and down Paul's Walk, not knowing how to 
 get a dinner, much less to pay his tailor, should look 
 on him as firstly a fool, and secondly, a swindler: 
 while, if we met an old Puritan, we should consider 
 him a man gracefully and picturesquely dressed, but 
 withal in the most perfect sobriety of good taste ; and 
 when we discovered, (as we probably should,) over and 
 above, that the harlequin cavalier had a box of salve 
 and a pair of dice in one pocket, a pack of cards and a 
 few pawnbroker's duplicates in the other, that his 
 thoughts were altogether of citizen's wives, and their 
 too easy virtue, and that he could not open his mouth 
 without a dozen oaths, we should consider the Puritan, 
 (even though he did quote Scripture somewhat through 
 his nose), as the gentleman, and the courtier as a most 
 offensive specimen of the ' snob triumphant, glorying 
 in his shame.' " 
 
 It is always well when we can, to give modern illus- 
 trations of ancient facts ; I may, therefore, be allowed 
 to introduce in this connection a short extract from the 
 Special Correspondence of the London Times, a for- 
 eign newspaper. The writer informs the world that the 
 inhabitants of a well known Southern State, whose 
 *' admiration for monarchical institutions, privileged 
 classes and a landed aristocracy is undisguised and 
 apparently genuine," naturally "regard with an aver- 
 sion of which it is impossible to give an idea to one 
 who has not seen its manifestations, the people of New 
 England and the populations of the Northern States, 
 whom they regard as tainted beyond cure by the venom 
 
226 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 of 'Puritanism.' Whatever may be the cause, this is 
 the fact and the effect. * The State of South CaroHna 
 was,' I am told, 'founded by gentlemen.' It was not 
 established by witch-burning Puritans, by cruel perse- 
 cuting fanatics, etc. It is absolutely astounding to a 
 stranger who aims at the preservation of a decent neu- 
 trality to mark the violence of these opinions. ' If 
 that confounded ship had sunk with those — Pilgrim 
 Fathers on board,' says one, 'we never should have 
 been driven to these extremities. We could have got 
 on with these fanatics if they had been either Christians 
 or gentlemen,' says another, 'for in the first case they 
 would have acted with common charity and in the sec- 
 ond they would have fought when they insulted us ; 
 but there are neither Christians nor gentlemen among 
 them.' (It is encouraging to see that there is a ghm- 
 mering consciousness of a difference between a Chris- 
 tian and what is known as a gentleman, even in South 
 Carolina.) ' Anything on the earth,' exclaims a third, 
 * any form of government, any tyranny or despotism 
 you will ; but ' — and here is an appeal more terrible 
 than the adjuration of all the gods — nothing on earth 
 shall ever induce us to submit to any union with the 
 brutal, bigoted blackguards of the New England 
 States, who neither comprehend nor regard the feeling 
 of gentlemen! Man, woman and child, we^ll die first.'" 
 The present contest between the Puritan's Democracy 
 of the North and the aristocratic, self-styled ' ' Chiv- 
 alry " of the South, is indeed in many respects the 
 same old Seventeenth Century conflict repeating itself 
 under new forms — with this iinportant exception^ that 
 whereas Puritanism seems to have lost very little in 
 dropping the nasal twang and Old Testament dialect of 
 the Fathers and in working itself out into Free Schools, 
 Free Speech, a Free Press, benevolent institutions and 
 
John milton, the patriot. 227 
 
 Christian Churches, assimilating to itself all the new 
 elements which it has received from without, and 
 adapting itself to the requirements of progress — Chiv- 
 alry, reduced at first to the fewest possible drops of 
 * gentle blood,' and these for the most part the aristo- 
 cratic dregs of the Old World, diluted in rivers of base 
 plebeian blood, and pampered for nearly two centuries 
 with the vitiating influences of a rotten system of so- 
 ciety, can not be said to have very much improved. 
 While accordingly, I have no doubt at all, that Crom- 
 well, Hampden, Pym and Milton, if raised from the dead, 
 would find very little difficulty in soon making them- 
 selves at home among the Yankees of the North (which 
 indeed would be the less to be wondered at, seeing that 
 some of them came very near being Yankees, and would 
 have been, had not Charles I. put an embargo on their 
 expatriation, a piece of folly of which he afterwards 
 repented with his head) — I do think, on the other hand, 
 that Hamilton, Holland, Newcastle, or any old-fashioned 
 genuine cavalier, would have looked with something 
 more than astonishment if any one of the half-a-million 
 aspirants to the name in Rebeldom had approached 
 him with anything like the familiarity with which a 
 cur might approach its master. 
 
 So much for our modern illustration. Returning to 
 Milton, you are already prepared to hear that the ques- 
 tion, which side he should take ? did not admit of long 
 hesitation on his part. "Already," says Carlyle, 
 ** either in conscious act, or clear tendency, the far 
 greater part of the serious thought and manhood of 
 England had asserted itself Puritan." Milton is proof 
 of this. He was by birth, education, instinct and 
 choice, a Puritan. He was no compromise, or half-way 
 man, as some have sought to delineate him. No one 
 who reads his works can doubt this for a moment. He 
 
228 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 was indeed the Ideal Puritan of his age, of all time ; 
 far more truly than Rupert, or the ' ' wandering 
 Charlie" could be called the Ideal Cavalier, for the 
 simple reason that an Ideal is something toward which 
 there is an upivard tendency. . A class which is ever 
 tending downward can not properly be said to have an 
 Ideal. It is far juster, therefore, to judge the Puri- 
 tans by their representative men than to judge the 
 Chivalry by theirs. For such a man as Milton was, 
 such did each humbler Puritan, each Sword-of the-Lord 
 and-Gideon Heartwell or Smite-them-hip-and-thigh 
 Armsteady strive, in some dumb or stammering fashion, 
 to be. Each one sought in his rough way to make 
 his life a poem, and had more or less success in the 
 same. If not very musical, it was at least a genuine 
 poem. It may be said indeed that Cromwell is the true 
 exponent of Puritanism, and so he is of Puritanism 
 considered as an active, combative, conquering and reg- 
 nant force in History ; but of the Puritan character, re- 
 garded in itself, in its seriousness, purity, conscientious- 
 ness and earnest sympathy with beauty and truth, John 
 Milton is the noblest Model we have. 
 
 This representative Puritan then, being at that time 
 a humble schoolmaster in London, saw, in looking 
 around him, that the Church, as then managed and 
 ruled, was ''the grand engine of oppression in the 
 hands of the King." When, therefore, the Parliament 
 began ''to humble the pride of the Bishops," all his 
 attention and zeal was awakened. *' I saw," to use 
 his own language, "that a way was opening for the 
 establishment of real liberty ; that the foundation was 
 laying for the deliverance of man from the yoke of 
 slavery and superstition ; that the principles of religion 
 which were the first objects of my care, would exert a 
 salutary influence on the manners and constitution of 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 229 
 
 the Republic ; and as I had from my youth studied the 
 distinctions between religious and civil rights, I per- 
 ceived that if I ever wished to be of use, I ought at 
 least not to be wanting to my country, to the Church 
 and to so many of my fellow-Christians, in a crisis of 
 so much danger. I therefore determined to relinquish 
 the other pursuits in which I was engaged, and to trans- 
 fer the whole force of my talents and my industry to 
 this one important object." 
 
 To this end Milton wrote and published his first 
 book. It was not, like the first book of many Miltons 
 of our day, a volume of Juvenile Poems, published in 
 deference to the urgent solicitations of numerous friends 
 of the Author, although, as we know, the charming lit- 
 tle Roundhead of ten was even then a poet. Milton's 
 first formal appearance before the public was not in the 
 character of a poet, although anybody could see that 
 he was a poet. Indeed, to an age so prolific in poets 
 and poetesses, whose first volumes antedate by months 
 the period of life when according to our overdiscreet 
 ancestors a young man or a young woman might, in ex- 
 treme cases, legally dispense with the guardianship of 
 their elders, it m.ay well be an astounding fact, that the 
 Author of Paradise Lost, although he had already 
 written some of the finest poetry in the English lan- 
 guage, had not at the age of thirty-two deliberately 
 printed a single volume. A few of his poems had, it 
 is true, crept into print; some, as Lycidas, hiding them- 
 selves modestly in collections of poems by various 
 authors; others, as the Masques Arcades and Comus, 
 printed for the accommodation of the musical public; 
 none, so far as I can discover, of malice aforethought 
 on the part of Milton. Verily times change and poets 
 change with them. But then! the brilliant discovery 
 had not yet been made, that Modesty is scarcely com- 
 
230 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 patible with the self-conscious greatness of Genius ; and 
 the spirit of modern enterprise had hardly begun to 
 show itself, which, as it would not shrink from con- 
 tracting to build Rome in a day, would as little hesitate 
 to supply the New York Ledger with one book of the 
 Iliad per week. It is a fact then, not without its les- 
 son to aftertimes, that the greatest poet of his age, 
 and one of the greatest of all time, did not print a 
 book until he saw that the time had come when he 
 might strike a telling blow for the truth. 
 
 Dr. Johnson has insinuated that Milton's cowardice 
 led him to use the pen instead of the sword. Had Mil- 
 ton been a Tory, the good Doctor would have spurned 
 such a suspicion with scorn. Is a man necessarily a 
 coward, who believes that he can better serve his coun- 
 try otherwise than as a soldier ? There are times when 
 a soldier's calling and a soldier's work seem transfig- 
 ured with rare and radiant glory. Honor, immortal 
 honor, to those who at their country's call gird them- 
 selves for the battle, step into the serried ranks, march 
 to the stirring strains of liberty, follow the good old 
 flag of their nation's honor, gather around it with un- 
 daunted hearts where the battle-storm is loudest, charge 
 on the foe with exultant shout where the sulphur clouds 
 are thickest, disdaining danger, braving death for God 
 and their right. Blessed are they when their Country 
 crowns their triumphant return with the laurel wreaths 
 of victory. Blessed are they when Peace, restored by 
 their stout arms and valorous hearts, sweetens their cup 
 of joy with the proud memories of self-sacrificing de- 
 votion. Thrice blessed are they when their poured 
 out blood is a part of the price by which their country's 
 deliverance is purchased, and when, mourning their loss, 
 she hallows with her tears the sod beneath which moul- 
 der the hearts of her fallen brave. But are there no 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 23 1 
 
 battles except at the cannon's mouth ? Is there no 
 courage but that which can face without quailing the 
 thunder of artillery ? Are there not other sacrifices no 
 less hard, no less costly than that of life ? Was Milton 
 the less a hero because he conquered himself, and 
 gained a victory over the ruling passion, the daring 
 ambition of his soul, than if he had shot down a royal- 
 ist ? Consider a moment what is implied in the modest 
 declaration before quoted : * * I therefore determined to 
 relinquish the other pursuits in which I was engaged and 
 to transfer the whole force of my talents and my in- 
 dustry to this one important object." Remember that 
 for years he had cherished in his inmost soul the de- 
 sign of producing a poem such as that '*aftertimes 
 should not willingly let it die ; " that it was his fond 
 hope, "that what the greatest and choicest wits of 
 Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those Hebrews 
 of old did for their country, (I quote his own words,) 
 I, in my proportion, with this over and above of being 
 a Christian, might do for mine ; " that it was the dream 
 of his waking and sleeping hours to write " a work not 
 to be raised from the heat of youth, as the vapors of 
 wine; Hke that which flows at waste from the pen of 
 some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhym- 
 ing parasite ; nor to be obtained by the invocation of 
 dame memory and her siren daughters, but by devout 
 prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all 
 utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, 
 with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify 
 the lips of whom he pleases ; " that to accomplish this 
 work, he had from earliest youth bestowed on all his 
 powers the deepest culture, that he had sought to keep 
 his soul pure from every contamination of vice, that 
 he had traveled abroad, visiting the ruins of antiquity, 
 communing at once with the glories of the Past, and 
 
232 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 with the life of the Present, that he had in a word so 
 labored and lived that those who knew him best re- 
 garded him with wondering awe, as a magnificent 
 promise, heralding its own fulfillment. Was it nothing 
 to tear himself from those beloved occupations, to turn 
 his back on that glowing hope, which had been to him 
 the morning star of Immortality ; to resign for years, 
 it might be forever, the possibility of giving birth to 
 those transcendent creations, which even then awaited 
 the fiat of his genius? Was it no sacrifice " to inter- 
 rupt (as he says), the pursuit of no less hopes than 
 these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed 
 with cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a 
 troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put from 
 beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet 
 and still air of delightful studies, to come into the dim 
 reflection of antiquities sold by the seeming bulk, and 
 there be fain to club quotations with jmen whose learn- 
 ing and belief lies in marginal stuffings?" Ah! Dr. 
 Johnson, you too were a hero, I admit, and no common 
 one either, albeit a very surly one ; but I must say that 
 I can find nothing in your life quite as heroic as this 
 one act of Milton's, this resolution to lay aside that 
 lyre of exquisite sound which God had given him, to 
 lock up within him those "thoughts that moved har- 
 monious numbers ;" to bid adieu to those fair ideals of 
 beauty, harmony, and truth, which thronged his path, 
 and beckoned him to their high abodes, and to beat 
 about among the stupidities and inanities of frog-and- 
 mice controversies, to open the *' packsaddles "of pom- 
 pous pedants, and to fight the '* inquisitorious and 
 tyrannical duncery " of the heroes of unsung Dunciads. 
 ** But were it the meanest underservice, if God, by his 
 secretary Conscience enjoin it, it were sad for me if I 
 should draw back." Who but a hero could have said 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT, 233 
 
 that? But hear his own vindication: "Though I did 
 not participate in the toils or dangers of the war, yet 
 I was at the same time engaged in a service not less 
 hazardous to myself, and more beneficial to my fellow- 
 citizens ; nor in the adverse turns of our affairs did I 
 ever betray any symptoms of pusillanimity and dejec- 
 tion, or show myself more afraid than became me, of 
 malice or of death ; for since from my youth I was de- 
 voted to the pursuits of literature, and my mind had 
 always been stronger than my body, I did not court 
 the labors, of a camp, in which any common person 
 would have been of more service than myself, but re- 
 sorted to that employment in which my exertions were 
 likely to be of most avail. Thus with the better part 
 of my frame, I contributed as much as possible to the 
 good of my country, and to the success of the glorious 
 cause in which we were engaged. . , . Hence, while 
 I applaud those who were victorious in the field, I will 
 not complain of the province which was assigned me ; 
 but rather congratulate myself upon it, and thank the 
 author of all good for having placed me in a station, 
 which may be an object of envy to others, rather than 
 of regret to myself." 
 
 Milton's first book was entitled, ''Of Reformation in 
 England, and the causes that hitherto have hindered it." 
 Its object is to prove that prelacy is essentially hostile 
 to civil liberty. It is written with vigor, acuteness, and 
 eloquence; it is rich in illustration, ponderous in argu- 
 ment, severe in its satire, and often majestic in style, 
 as well as thought. His picture of modern politics 
 would hardly be suspected of being 220 years old. 
 ''This is the masterpiece of a modern politician; how 
 to qualify and mould the sufferance and subjection of 
 the people to the length of that foot that is to tread on 
 their necks ; how rapine may serve itself with the fair 
 
234 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 and honorable pretenses of public good ; how the puny 
 law may be brought under the wardship and control of 
 lust and will, in which attempt if they fall short then 
 must a superficial cola of reputation by all means, direct 
 or indirect, be gotten to wash over the unsightly bruise 
 of honor. . . . To be plainer, sir, how to sodder, how 
 to stop a leak, how to keep up the floating carcass of 
 a crazy and diseased monarchy or state, betwixt wind 
 and water, swimming still upon her own dead lees, that 
 now is the deep design of a politician. Alas, sir ! a 
 commonwealth ought to be but as one hug^ Christian 
 personage, one mighty growth and stature of an honest 
 man, as big and compact in virtue as in body." 
 
 One of the fashionable cant phrases of Milton's time 
 was, that extremes must be avoided. It would seem 
 that there then existed a class of nice respectable citi- 
 zens, who prided themselves greatly on their modera- 
 tion, and who had an especial horror of everything like 
 ultraism. ** We must not run, " they said, * ' into sudden 
 extremes." Milton boldly challenged this dictum. 
 * * This is a fallacious rule, unless understood only of the 
 actions of virtue about things indifferent ; for if it be 
 found that those two extremes be vice and virtue, false- 
 hood and truth, the greater extremity of virtue and 
 superlative truth we run into, the more virtuous and 
 the more wise we become ; and he that, flying from 
 degenerate and traditional corruption, fears to shoot 
 himself too far into the meeting embraces of a divinely 
 warranted reformation had better not have run at all. . . 
 Certainly we ought to hie us from evil like a torrent, 
 and rid ourselves of corrupt discipline, as we would 
 shake fire out of our bosoms." 
 
 That same respectable class seems moreover to have 
 been exceedingly hostile to the idea of a " Higher Law." 
 Prelacy, they said, must not be touched because it was 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 235 
 
 now SO "weaved into the common law." ''In God's 
 name" then, says Milton, "let it weave out again; let 
 not human quillets keep back divine authority. It is 
 not the common law, nor the civil, but piety and justice 
 that are our foundresses ; they stoop not, neither change 
 color for aristocracy, democracy, or monarchy, nor yet 
 at all interrupt their just courses, but far above the tak- 
 ing notice of these inferior niceties, with perfect sym- 
 pathy, wherever they meet, kiss each other." 
 
 The book closes with one of the sublimest prayers 
 ever breathed to heaven ; and so appropriate are its 
 petitions to our present national condition, that I cannot 
 refrain from rehearsing a portion of it, as specimen of 
 an old-time patriotic prayer: "And now we know, O 
 Thou our most certain hope and defense, that thine 
 enemies have been consulting all the sorceries of the 
 great whore, and have joined their plots with that sad 
 intelligencing tyrant that mischiefs the world with his 
 mines of Ophir, and lies thirsting to revenge his naval 
 ruins that have larded our seas; but let them all take 
 counsel together, and let it come to naught; let them 
 decree, and do thou cancel it; let them gather them- 
 selves, and be scattered ; let them embattle themselves, 
 and be broken, for thou art with us. Then amidst the 
 hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may perhaps 
 be heard offering at high strains, in new and lofty meas- 
 ures, to sing and celebrate Thy Divine mercies and 
 marvellous judgments in this land throughout all ages; 
 whereby this great and warlike nation, instructed and 
 inured to the fervent and continual practice of truth 
 and righteousness and casting far from her the rays of 
 her old vices, may press on hard to that high and happy 
 emulation, to be found the soberest, wisest and most 
 Christian people at that day, when Thou, the eternal 
 and shortly-expected King, shalt open the clouds to 
 
236 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 judge the several kingdoms of the world, and distributing 
 national honors and rewards to religious and just com- 
 monwealths, shalt put an end to all earthly tyrannies, 
 proclaiming thy universal and mild monarchy through 
 heaven and earth; where they undoubtedly, that by 
 their labors, counsels and prayers, have been earnest for 
 the common good of religion and their country, shall 
 receive above the inferior orders of the blessed, the regal 
 additions of principalities, legions and thrones into their 
 glorious titles, and in supereminence of beatific vision, 
 progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle of eter- 
 nity, shall clasp inseparable hands with joy and bliss, in 
 overmeasure for ever ! " 
 
 Milton, having thus thrown himself into the conflict, 
 carried it on with invincible earnestness. Pamphlet 
 after pamphlet issued from his hand, abounding in 
 learning, argument, eloquence and wisdom, confirming 
 what Cowper says, that — 
 
 " A terrible sagacity informs 
 The poet's heart." 
 
 How beautifully does he discourse of the necessity of 
 discipHne, or, as we may call it, government. ''He that 
 hath read with judgment of nations and common- 
 v/ealths, of cities and camps, of peace and war, sea 
 and land, will readily agree that the flourishing and de- 
 caying of all civil societies, all the moments and turn- 
 ings of human occasions are moved to and fro, as 
 upon the axle of discipline. So that whatsoever power 
 or sway in mortal things, weaker men have attributed 
 to fortune, I durst, with more confidence (the honor of 
 Divine Providence ever saved), ascribe either to the 
 vigor or to the slackness of discipline. Nor is there 
 any social perfection in this life, civil or sacred, that 
 can be above discipline ; but she is that which with her 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 237 
 
 musical cords preserves and holds all the parts thereof 
 together. . . . And certainly discipline is not only the 
 removal of disorder ; but if any visible shape can be 
 given to divine things, the very visible shape and image 
 of virtue, whereby she is not only seen in the regular 
 gestures and motions of her heavenly paces as she 
 walks, but also makes the harmony of her voice audible 
 to mortal ears. Yea, the angels themselves, in whom 
 no disorder is feared, as the apostle that saw them in 
 his rapture describes, are distinguished and quaterni- 
 oned into the celestial princedoms and satrapies, accord- 
 ing as God himself has writ his imperial decrees through 
 the great provinces of heaven. The state also of the 
 blessed in Paradise, though never so perfect, is not 
 therefore left without discipline, whose golden survey- 
 ing reed, marks out and measures every quarter and 
 circuit of New Jerusalem." 
 
 Under a Republican government no question can be 
 more important than — What should be the qualifications 
 of its rulers ? Hear what Milton says : A ruler must 
 be "such a one as is a true knower of himself, and 
 in whom contemplation and practice, wit, prudence, for- 
 titude and eloquence, must be rarely met, both to com- 
 prehend the hidden causes of things and span in his 
 thoughts all the various effects that passion or complex- 
 ion can work in man's nature; and hereto must his 
 hand be at defiance with gain, and his heart in all vir- 
 tues heroic." 
 
 In the tract entitled '' An Apology forSmectymnus," 
 he has an eulogy on the Long Parliament, which I 
 think it would be well for some Tract Society to re- 
 publish and to put into the hands of every Member of 
 Congress and Legislator, both as a specimen of splendid 
 English prose, the study of which might greatly im- 
 prove the style, of some of our Honorable Representa- 
 
23B Llewelyn ioan evans, 
 
 tives, and also as a description of what a legislature 
 ought to be. I can not forbear, however, reproducing 
 one trait which Milton ascribes to that Parliament, 
 which may God grant it to be true of ours. 
 
 '* Having by a solemn protestation vowed themselves 
 and the kingdom anew to God and his service, and by 
 a prudent foresight above what their fathers dreamed 
 on, prevented the dissolution and frustrating of their 
 designs by an untimely breaking up ; notwithstanding 
 all the treasonous plots against them, all the rumors 
 either of rebellion or of invasion, they have not been 
 yet brought to change their constant resolution, ever 
 to think fearlessly of their own safeties, and hopefully 
 of the commonwealth, which hath gained them such an 
 admiration from all good men, that now they hear it 
 as their ordinary surname, to be saluted the fathers of 
 their country, and sit as gods among daily petitions 
 and public thanks flowing in upon them. . . . The 
 more they seek to humble themselves, the more does 
 God by manifest signs and testimonies visibly honor 
 their proceedings. . . . Wicked men daily conspire 
 their hurt, and it comes to nothing ; rebellion rages in 
 our Irish province, but with miraculous and lossless 
 victories of few against many, is daily discomfited and 
 broken. . . . And whereas at other times we count 
 it ample honor when God vouchsafes to make man the 
 instrument and subordinate worker of his gracious will, 
 such acceptation have their prayers found with him, 
 that to them he hath been pleased to make himself the 
 agent and immediate performer of their desires ; dis- 
 solving their difficulties when they are thought inex- 
 plicable, cutting out ways when no passage could be 
 seen; as who is there so . regardless of Divine Provi- 
 dence that from late occurrences will not confess? . . . 
 Which I leave with them as the greatest praise that 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 239 
 
 can belong to human nature; not that we should think 
 that they are at the end of their glorious progress, but 
 that they will go on to follow his Almighty leading, who 
 seems to have thus covenanted with them ; that if the 
 will and the endeavor shall be theirs, the performance 
 and the perfecting shall be his." It were something, 
 were it not, to have a Congress like that in Washington 
 just now ? 
 
 Perhaps the most finished, certainly the best known 
 of Milton's prose Treatises is the " Areopagitica ; a 
 Speech for the Hberty of unlicensed Printing." The de- 
 sign of it he himself gives as follows : " Lastly, I wrote 
 my Areopagitica, in order to deliver the press from the 
 restraints with which it was encumbered ; that the 
 power of determining what was true and what was 
 false, what ought to be published and what to be sup- 
 pressed, might no longer be entrusted to a few illiterate 
 and illiberal individuals, who refused their sanction to 
 any work, which contained views or sentiments at all 
 above the level of the vulgar superstition." 
 
 The question is often asked, what constitutes a Free 
 State? Milton answers as follows: ''This is not the 
 liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever should 
 arise in the commonwealth; that let no man in this 
 v/orld expect ; but when complaints are freely heard, 
 deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the 
 utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men 
 look for." 
 
 The treatise abounds in evidences that Milton would 
 have made a very unfit vassal of Jefferson Davis. How 
 passionately he loved liberty ! Speaking of the cause of 
 ''the flowery crop of knowledge and new light sprung 
 up and yet springing daily" in the land, he says: "It 
 is the liberty, lords and commons, which your own val- 
 orous and happy counsels have purchased us; liberty, 
 
240 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 which is the nurse of all great wits; this is that which 
 hath rarified and enlightened our spirits like the influ- 
 ence of heaven ; this is that which hath enfranchised, 
 enlarged, and lifted up our apprehensions degrees above 
 themselves. . . Give me the liberty to know, to utter, 
 and to argue freely according to conscience, above all 
 liberties." 
 
 How noble the confidence which he puts in the power 
 of Truth! **Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever 
 knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encoun- 
 ter?" What is secession but cowardice — want of faith 
 in the might of the right, or rather perhaps, the con- 
 sciousness of falsehood and wrong? If the rebel States 
 are in the right, if their cause be just, if it be such as 
 will ultimately triumph, why secede? Why skulk out 
 of the field ? Why decline the gage of battle with the 
 weapons of Truth? "When a man," says Milton, 
 " has been laboring the hardest labor in the deep mines 
 of knowledge, hath furnished out his findings in all their 
 equipage, drawn forth his reasons as it were a battle 
 ranged, scattered and defeated all objections in his way, 
 calls out his adversary into the plain, offers him the 
 advantage of wind and sun if he please, only that he 
 may try the matter by dint of argument ; for his oppo- 
 nents then to skulk, to lay ambushments, though it be 
 valor enough in soldiership, is but weakness and cowar- 
 dice in the wars of Truth. For who knows not that 
 Truth is strong, next to the Almighty?" 
 
 In view of the evidences of activity, thrift, progress 
 throughout the North, notwithstanding our difficulties, 
 the following sentiments are highly inspiriting. "When 
 the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up, as 
 that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own 
 freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon 
 the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 24 1 
 
 invention, it betokens us not degenerated, nor droopin<j 
 to a fatal decay, by casting off the wrinkled skin of 
 corruption to outlive these pangs, and v^ax young again, 
 entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous 
 virtue, destined to become great and honorable in these 
 latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and 
 puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after 
 sleep, and shaking her invincible locks ; methinks I see 
 her as an eagle" — and by the blessing of Heaven these 
 words shall yet be prophetic not only of the nation to 
 which they were first appHed, but of its offspring, not 
 then born, whose emblem is that very eagle which 
 Milton proceeds so magnificently to describe — "me- 
 thinks I seek her as an eagle sunning her mighty youth, 
 and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday 
 beam ; purging and unsealing her long abused sight at 
 the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the 
 whole noise of the timorous and flocking birds, with 
 those also that love the twilight, flutter about amazed 
 at what she means, and in their envious gabble would 
 prognosticate a year of sects and schisms." 
 
 But while Milton was thus deahng sturdy blows upon 
 the bulwarks of oppression, Cromwell and his Ironsides 
 were fighting against them with another kind of weapons. 
 The rupture between the King and Parliament had by 
 this time resulted in war. The history of that war we 
 cannot now follow in detail. Suffice it to say, that the 
 historian might without difficulty trace various interest- 
 ing analogies between it and the Civil War now raging 
 in this land. Substituting the Slave Oligarchy of the 
 South for King Charles, and the U. S. Government for 
 the Parliament, the points in the parallel will be seen 
 without difficulty, as for instance : Charles was infat- 
 uated with the delusion that he held his throne under 
 the seal of God; He sought to make himself absolute 
 
242 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Lord of the realm, to consolidate all power in his own 
 hands. While negotiations were pending between him- 
 self and Parliament, he was all the time engaged in 
 preparations for war. When he found that he could 
 not make the Parliament his slave, he seceded from 
 London, and took up arms against the nation. When 
 it was palpable to the world that he was the aggressor, 
 he mendaciously charged the Parliament and People 
 with making war on him. His arms were at first vic- 
 torious. He boasted of his invincibility. He sneered 
 at the armies of the Commonwealth as mercenaries and 
 hirelings. The Parliamentary army was composed 
 mainly of raw recruits, and its generalship was at first 
 very indifferent. It had its panics and disgraceful routs. 
 London was hastily fortified. There were Peacemen in 
 those days, who groaned over the unnatural war, and who 
 cared more for purse than principle. But it was not long 
 before the Leader whom God had raised made his 
 appearance. Victory after victory blazed in his path- 
 way, for his troopers had the fear of God, and "truly," 
 says he, "they were never beaten at all." After the 
 war had lasted nearly seven years, the King was taken. 
 He was put on trial as a criminal, a traitor to the nation. 
 Being found guilty, he was sentenced to die. On the 
 30th of January, 1648-9, he was beheaded in the open 
 street before Whitehall for having "traitorously and 
 maliciously imagined and contrived the enslaving or 
 destroying of the nation." "Perhaps the most daring 
 action any body of Men to be met with in history ever 
 with clear conscientiousness deliberately set themselves 
 to do," says one. Let our King Charles beware of the 
 doom which the hand of Divine Justice has written 
 against it, and which sooner or later on Pleaven's 
 appointed day, will fall on its neck, fatal, it may be 
 swift, as the stroke of the Thunder's lightning-arm. 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 243 
 
 Hitherto Milton had not taken a direct part in the 
 discussions concerning civil liberty, because, as he tells 
 us, "I saw that sufficient attention was paid to it by 
 the magistrates ; nor did I write anything on the pre- 
 rogative of the crown, till the king, voted an enemy by 
 the parliament, and vanquished in the field, was sum- 
 moned before the tribunal which condemned him to 
 lose his head. But when at length some Presbyterian 
 ministers, who had formerly been the most bitter ene- 
 mies to Charles, became jealous of the growth of the 
 Independents, and of their ascendancy in the parlia- 
 ment, most tumultuously clamored against the sentence, 
 and did all in their power to prevent the execution, 
 though they v/ere not angry so much on account of the 
 act itself, as because it was not the act of their party ; 
 and when they dared to affirm, that the doctrine of the 
 Protestants, and of all the reformed churches, was ab- 
 horrent to such an atrocious proceeding against kings, 
 I thought that it became me to oppose such a glaring 
 falsehood ; and accordingly without any immediate or 
 personal application to Charles, I showed in an ab- 
 stract consideration of the question, what might lawfully 
 be done against tyrants, and in support of what I ad- 
 vanced, produced the opinions of the most celebrated 
 divines, while I vehemently inveighed against the egre- 
 gious ignorance or effrontery of men, who professed 
 better things, and from whom better things might have 
 been expected." That book did not make its appear- 
 ance till after the death of Charles, and was written 
 rather to reconcile the minds of the people to the event, 
 than to discuss the legitimacy of that particular sen- 
 tence, which concerned the magistrates, and which was 
 already executed. 
 
 In this Treatise, called ''The Tenure of Kings and 
 Magistrates," Mi-lton showed that he had no patience 
 
244 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 with those men who were afraid to carry out their 
 poHtical convictions to their legitimate results, and to 
 punish the royal traitor with merited death. *' Others, 
 who have been fiercest against their prince, under the 
 notion of a tyrant, and no mean incendiaries of the 
 war against them, when God, out of his providence 
 and high disposal hath delivered him into the hand of 
 their brethren, on a sudden and in a new garb of alle- 
 giance, which their doings have long since cancelled, 
 they plead for him, pity him, extol him, protest against 
 those that talk of bringing him to the trial of justice, 
 which is the sword of God, superior to all mortal 
 things, in whose hand soever by apparent signs his 
 testified will is to put it." It is to be hoped that our 
 Government will sometime learn that truth, and act on 
 it. 
 
 I would respectfully recommend the following to 
 those among ourselves who shiver at the ring of every 
 vigorous blow, and whine about the unconstitutionality 
 of those bold decisive measures which can alone save 
 the Constitution, and leave us a?tything which is consti- 
 tutional. ''Another sort there is, who coming in the 
 course of these aftairs, to have their share in great 
 actions above the form of law or custom, at least to 
 give their voice and approbation, begin to swerve and 
 almost shiver at the majesty and grandeur of some 
 noble deed, as if they were newly entered into a great 
 sin, disputing precedents, forms and circumstances, 
 when the commonwealth nigh perishes for want of 
 deeds in substance, done with just and faithful expedi- 
 tion." 
 
 There were not a few Englishmen who kept up a 
 continual whimper about the horrors of a fratricidal 
 war, and who demanded that such a war should in- 
 stantly cease, or at least be prosecuted with the most 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 245 
 
 tender brotherly consideration and love. How little 
 sympathy Milton had with such maundering sentimen- 
 taHsts may be judged from the following. "When fel- 
 low-subjects, neighbors, and friends do one to another 
 so as hostility could do no worse, what doth the law 
 decree less against them than open enemies and invad- 
 ers ? Or if the law be not present, or too weak, what 
 doth it warrant us to less than single defence or civil 
 war ? And from that time forward the law of civil 
 defensive war differs nothing from the law of foreign 
 hostility. Nor is it distance of place that makes en- 
 mity, but enmity that makes distance. He, therefore, 
 that keeps peace with me, near or remote, of whatso- 
 ever nation, is to me, as far as all civil and human 
 offices, an Englishm.an and a neighbor ; but if an Eng- 
 lishman, forgetting all laws human, civil, and religious, 
 offend against life and liberty, to him offended and to 
 the law in his behalf, though born in the same womb, 
 he is no better than a Turk, a Saracen, a heathen." 
 " Lawful war," he tells us again, "is but the execution 
 of justice against them who refuse law." 
 
 In the month of March, 1649, within less than two 
 months after the execution of Charles, Milton was 
 appointed Latin Secretary to the Council of State. 
 This appointment was a tribute at once to his thorough 
 mastery of the Latin language, his incomparable liter- 
 ary ability, and the signal services which he had 
 already rendered to his country. A fitter choice could 
 not have been made. He brought to the discharge 
 of his duty wisdom, integrity, genius of the highest 
 order. His State papers have never been surpassed. 
 Neither was his pen limited to these. 
 
 Soon after the King's death a book was published 
 called ' * Eikon Basilike, Portraiture of his Sacred Ma- 
 jesty in his Solitudes and Sufferings." It purported to 
 
246 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 have been written by the Royal Martyr himself, al- 
 though it is now known that the use of the King's 
 name was a fraud. *'I was ordered to answer it," 
 says Milton, "and opposed the Ikonoklast [Image- 
 breaker] to his Ikon [Image]. I did not insult over 
 fallen majesty, as is pretended. I only preferred 
 Queen Truth to King Charles." The arguments of 
 this book are irresistible ; its invective is tremendous. 
 No sooner had he laid down his lance after this en- 
 counter than he was summoned again to enter the lists 
 ae^ainst one of the most learned and eminent scholars 
 of the age, Claudius Salmasius, Professor in the Uni- 
 versity of Leyden, who had been employed by Charles 
 II., then a fugitive in Holland, to advocate the cause 
 of monarchy in general, and of Charles I. in particular. 
 The Council forthwith ordered : ''That Mr. Milton does 
 prepare something in answer to the book of Salmasius, 
 and when he hath done it, bring it to the Council." 
 And now we come upon one of the most touching and 
 noble incidents to be found in the annals of Heroism. 
 As we have already seen, Milton's eyes were naturally 
 weak, and had been greatly injured in early youth by 
 his protracted midnight studies. At the age of 42, his 
 sight was so much impaired and his health so poor, 
 that his physicians forewarned him that the labors to 
 which he devoted himself would inevitably bring on 
 blindness. Without a moment's hesitation the intrepid 
 Patriot answered. Let blindness come, but let me serve 
 my country. Years afterwards, when his enemies in- 
 humanly exulted in his bhndness as a Divine judgment 
 for his sins against royalty, he wrote the following 
 beautiful and touching words. "Since my enemies 
 boast that this affliction is only a retribution for the 
 transgressions of my pen, I again invoke the Almighty 
 to witness, that I never, at any time, v^^rote anything 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 24/ 
 
 which I did not think agreeable to truth, to justice and 
 to piety. [How many, I wonder, of our modern poHti- 
 cians and editors can make that declaration ?] This was 
 my persuasion then, and I feel the same persuasion 
 now. Nor was I ever prompted to such exertions by 
 the influence of ambition, by the lust of lucre or of 
 praise ; it was only by the conviction of duty, and the 
 feeling of Patriotism, a disinterested passion for the 
 extension of civil and religious liberty. Thus therefore 
 when I was publicly solicited to write a reply to the 
 defense of the royal cause, when I had to contend with 
 the pressure of sickness, and with the apprehension of 
 soon losing the sight of my remaining eye, and when 
 my medical attendants clearly announced that if I did 
 engage in the work, it would be irreparably lost ; their 
 premonitions caused no hesitation, and inspired no dis- 
 may. I would not have listened even to the voice of 
 Esculapius himself from the shrine of Epidauris, in pre- 
 ference to the suggestions of the heavenly monitor 
 within my breast ; my resolution was unshaken, though 
 the alternative was either the loss of my sight, or the 
 desertion of my duty." 
 
 The next year Milton was totally blind. He had 
 sacrificed his sight to his country. Ah ! to be fasci- 
 nated by the '* pomp and circumstance of war," to be 
 aroused by the trumpet voice of Battle, to yield to the 
 inspirations of a great national enthusiasm that surges 
 through the land like a mighty tide, to surrender one- 
 self to the wild intoxication of glory, to have the lion 
 in man waked up by the fierce roar of the cannon, to 
 rush undaunted 
 
 " Into the jaws of death, 
 Into the mouth of hell," 
 
 when the heart is fire, and the blood is flame; that I 
 
248 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 take it is not the hardest thing in the world, although 
 I am far from saying that there is nothing laudable or 
 grand about it. But calmly and deHberately to choose 
 blindness as one's portion, to turn one's back on a 
 future of light, brightness, and gladness, and instead to 
 enter on a long black vista of darkness, to undergo 
 voluntary banishment from all the joys, the truths, the 
 labors which sight makes sweet, to render still more 
 doubtful than ever the possibility of fulfilling the cher- 
 ished hope of a life, the opportunity to ''rise to the 
 height of some great argument," which "the mind at 
 home in the spacious circuits of her musing proposed 
 to herself, though of highest hope and hardest attemp- 
 ting," to do this solely at the behest of '' God's secre- 
 tary, Conscience," sustained by no power other than 
 that which springs up evermore in the pure and faith- 
 ful heart, stimulated by no reward other than the ap- 
 probation of God, the gratitude of one's country, and 
 the consciousness of doing right, which are indeed the 
 only reward a true man will care about, there is some- 
 thing Divine about that ! 
 
 Twenty-four years was Milton blind. Not once, I 
 venture to say, during all that period, did he mur- 
 mur against his lot. Of many things he doubtless did 
 complain ; and who can blame him ? Who with a 
 nature so sensitive, so lofty, so honorable as his, could 
 brook the indignities and cruelties practiced on him by 
 those whose privilege it was to respect him, whose duty 
 it was to love him ? But his blindness he cheerfully 
 accepted as the inevitable condition of serving his gen- 
 eration, and how even then he might best honor God, 
 this was for the blind hero the great question of life. 
 On the third anniversary of his blindness he addressed 
 the following lines to his friend Cyriack Skinner: 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 249 
 
 " Cyriack, this three years' day, these eyes, though clear, 
 
 To outward view of blemish or of spot, 
 
 Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot , 
 Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear 
 Of Sim, or moon, or star, throughout the year, 
 
 Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not 
 
 Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot 
 Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer 
 Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask ? 
 
 The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied, 
 
 In liberty's defence, my noble task." 
 
 Well might he rejoice in the thought that ''Europe 
 rings from side to side " with his work, for the world 
 will ring with it forever. 
 
 This last work, which cost Milton his sight, was 
 written in Latin, and was entitled " Defensio pro Pop- 
 ulo Anglicano Contra Claudii Salmasii Defensionem 
 Regiam. " It was a most triumphant vindication of the 
 People of England. Its trenchant sarcasm, slashing 
 logic, withering vituperation and the burning eloquence of 
 words " winged with red lightning and impetuous rage, " 
 procured for it a wide circulation abroad as well as at home. 
 
 On the 1 6th of December, 1653, OHver Cromwell 
 was installed Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of 
 England. Much has been said for and against the as- 
 sumption of this dignity by Cromwell, especially 
 against it. There are two facts, which are to my mind 
 a conclusive justification of it. The principal fact is 
 the condition into which England was plunged after 
 Cromwell's death, and in which it remained for thirty 
 years, a period which has been truly described as the 
 darkest and most disgraceful period in the annals of 
 England. The other fact is, that Milton, of the purity 
 of whose patriotism, of the sternness of whose repub- 
 licanism, of whose thorough acquaintance with the con- 
 dition of the country and of the exigency of the times. 
 
250 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 there can be no question whatever, was throughout a 
 most ardent friend and supporter of Cromwell. In his 
 "Second Defense of the People of England," pub- 
 lished in a year after Cromwell's elevation, he thus 
 loftily addresses him: ''We all willingly yield the 
 palm of sovereignty to your unrivalled ability and vir- 
 tue, except the few among us, who are either ambi- 
 tious of honors which they have not capacity to sus- 
 tain, or who envy those which are conferred on one 
 more worthy than themselves, or else who do not know 
 that nothing in the world is more pleasing to God, 
 more agreeable to reason, more politically just, or more 
 generally useful, than that the supreme power should 
 be vested in the best and wisest men. Such, O Crom- 
 well, all acknowledge you to be ; such are the services 
 which you have rendered as the leader of our councils, 
 the general of our armies and the father of your 
 country. For this is the tender appellation by which 
 all the good among us salute you from the very soul. 
 Other names you neither have nor could endure, and 
 you deservedly reject that pomp of title which attracts 
 the gaze and admiration of the multitude. For what is 
 a title but a certain definite mode of dignity? But ac- 
 tions such as yours surpass, not only the bounds of our 
 admiration, but our titles ; and like the points of pyra- 
 mids, which are lost in the clouds, they soar above the 
 possibilities of titular commendations. . . . Do you 
 then, sir, continue your course with the same un- 
 rivalled magnanimity ; it sits well upon you : to 
 you our country owes its liberties, nor can you 
 sustain a character at once more momentous and 
 more august than that of the author, the guardian and 
 the preserver of our liberties. . . . Revere the 
 fond expectations which we cherish, the solicitudes 
 of your anxious country; revere the looks and the 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 25 1 
 
 wounds of your brave companions in arms, who, under 
 your banners, have so strenuously fought for Hberty; 
 revere the shades of those who perished in the contest ; 
 revere also the opinions and the hopes which foreign 
 States entertain concerning us, who promise to them- 
 selves so many advantages from that liberty which we 
 have so bravely acquired, from the establishment of 
 that new government, which has begun to shed its 
 splendor on the world, which, if it be suffered to vanish 
 like a dream, would involve us in the deepest abyss of 
 shame ; and lastly, revere yourself; and after having 
 endured so many sufferings and encountered so many 
 perils for the sake of Hberty, do not suffer it, now it is 
 obtained, either to be violated by yourself, or in any 
 one instance impaired by others. You can not be 
 truly free, unless we are free too ; for such is the na- 
 ture of things, that he who intrenches on the liberty of 
 others is the first to lose his own and become a slave." 
 This advice, we .may suppose, was not lost on Crom- 
 well, who retained the blind Patriot as his Latin Secre- 
 tary and entered into cordial, personal relations with 
 him. Undoubtedly, the most interesting fact in this 
 period of Milton's life, is the part which he took as 
 Cromwell's Secretary in protesting against the persecu- 
 tion of the Waldenses in the valleys of Piedmont by 
 the Duke of Savoy. Milton wrote letters in the Pro- 
 tector's name first to the Duke, demanding a cessation 
 of the persecution, and restitution for his poor and op- 
 pressed subjects, then to the Potentates of Europe, 
 bringing the facts to their notice, and calling on them 
 to unite with England in demanding justice. These are 
 the most celebrated of Milton's State Papers, and they 
 are truly masterpieces of their kind. No one can read 
 them without feeling that then the English government 
 was actuated by< other than selfish considerations, and 
 
252 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 believed that in contests between those principles of 
 human liberty which were dear to the hearts of English- 
 men and those principles which make tyrants, there 
 was something better than a cold, heartless neutrality. 
 As for example witness this in the Letter to the 
 Evangelic Cities of Switzerland: '* As for our part be 
 assured that we are no less anxious and solicitous for 
 your welfare and prosperity than if this conflagration 
 had broken forth in our republic, or as if the axes of 
 the Schwitz Canton had been sharpened for our necks, 
 or that their swords had been drawn against our 
 breasts." Or this in the Letter to the United Prov- 
 inces. After rehearsing the cruelties exercised toward 
 the Piedmontese, he says: "These things, with what 
 commotion of mind you heard related, what a fellow- 
 feeling of the calamities of brethren pierced your 
 breasts, we readily conjectured from the depths of our 
 sorrow, which certainly is most heavy and afflictive. For 
 being engaged together by the same tie of religion, no 
 wonder we should be so deeply moved with the same 
 affections upon the dreadful and undeserved sufferings 
 of our brethren." Thus did England two centuries ago, 
 recognizing the obligations of Christian sympathy on 
 Governments, as well as individuals, speak in the name 
 of her Protector, 
 
 "Great in council, great in war, 
 The foremost captain of his age," 
 
 And in the words of her great Poet, Patriot and States- 
 man, glorious John Milton. Verily, two centuries make 
 quite a difference in International Law, Foreign Policies, 
 and State Correspondence of Governments. I do not 
 wonder that sixty years ago Wordsworth sang : 
 
 "Milton ! thou shouldstbe living at this hour; 
 England hath need of thee ; she is a fen 
 Of stagnant waters; altar, sword, and pen, 
 Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 2^3 
 
 Have forfeited their ancient English dower 
 
 Of inward happiness. We are selfish men. 
 
 Oh ! raise us up, return to us again, 
 
 And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. 
 
 Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart ; 
 
 Thouhadst a voice whose sound was like the sea; 
 
 Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, 
 
 So didst thou travel on life's common way 
 
 In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart 
 
 The lowhest duties on herself did lay." 
 
 **The Genius of England," says Thomas Carlyle, 
 *'no longer soars sun- ward, v/orld-defiant, like an Eagle 
 through the storms, 'mewing her mighty youth,' as 
 John Milton saw her do ; the Genius of England, much 
 hke a greedy Ostrich intent on provender and a whole 
 skin mainly, stands with its ^///rr extremity sun-ward." 
 I am not sure, to be honest about it, that our Eagle has 
 not on the whole behaved very much like an Ostrich. 
 Let us hope that both the Eagle of Albion, and the 
 Eagle of Columbia, pulling their heads as quickly as 
 possible out of the provender bags, will rise once more 
 in harmonious concert, and see in friendly emulation, 
 which can soar nearest the sun. 
 
 But dark and evil days were about to fall on England. 
 In the month of September, 1658, Cromwell died. 
 The stormy elements which his strong hand had held 
 in check soon burst out, and Richard tjie Protector, 
 proved himself unable to control them. The Royalist 
 party raised its head defiantly. The Army and Parlia- 
 ment were at strife. From Anarchy to Military Despo- 
 tism, such seemed to be the inevitable drift of events. 
 At this juncture Milton exerted all his efforts to secure 
 the establishment of a moderate Republican Common- 
 wealth. To this end he wrote first a letter to General 
 Monk, commander of the army in Scotland, entitled, 
 *'The present m.eans and brief delineation of a Free 
 
254 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Commonwealth," and then a Tract called "A ready and 
 easy way to establish a Free Commonwealth." The 
 Republicanism which is advocated in these Essays is 
 not, to be sure, of the modern radical type. It is how- 
 ever sufficiently pronounced to identify the author with 
 the cause of popular liberty, as opposed to the domina- 
 tion, either of a tyrannical person, or a tyrannical class, 
 as the following extracts will show : * ' * Go to the ant, 
 thou sluggard,' saith Solomon, 'consider her ways and 
 be wise; which having no prince, ruler or lord, pro- 
 vides her meat in the summer, and gathers her food in 
 the harvest ; ' which evidently shows us that they who 
 think the nation undone without a king, though they 
 look grave or haughty, have not so much true spirit 
 and understanding in them as a pismire; neither are 
 these diligent creatures hence concluded to live in law- 
 less anarchy, or that commended, but are set the 
 example to imprudent and ungoverned men, of a frugal 
 and selfgoverning democracy or commonwealth, safer 
 and more thriving in the joint providence and counsel 
 of many industrious equals, than under the single dom- 
 ination of one imperious lord." '^l doubt not but all 
 ingenuous and knowing men will easily agree with 
 me that a free commonwealth without single person 
 or house of lords, is by far the best government, 
 if it can be had." **Now is the opportunity, now 
 the very season, wherein we may obtain a free com- 
 monwealth, and establish it forever in the land, without 
 difficulty or much delay. Writs are sent out for elec- 
 tions, and which is worth observing, in the name, not 
 of any king, but of the keepers of our liberty, to 
 summon a free parliament; which then only will indeed 
 be free, and deserve the true honor of that supreme 
 title, if they preserve us a free people." "Liberty of 
 conscience, which above all other things ought to be to 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 255 
 
 all men dearest and most precious, no government more 
 inclinable not to favor only but to protect them a free 
 commonwealth, as being most magnanimous, most fear- 
 less and confident of its own fair proceedings." ''The 
 other part of our freedom consists in the civil rights 
 and advancements- of every person according to his 
 merit ; the enjoyment of those never more certain, and 
 the access to these never more open, than in a free 
 commonwealth. " ** Of all governments a free common- 
 wealth aims most to make the people flourishing, vir- 
 tuous, noble and highspirited. " " Free commonwealths 
 have been ever counted fittest and properest for civil, vir- 
 tuous, and industrious nations abounding with prudent 
 men worthy to govern ; monarchy fittest to curb degener- 
 ate, corrupt, idle, proud, luxurious people. If we desire 
 to be of the former, nothing better for us, nothing nobler 
 than a free commonwealth." These, be it observed, are 
 not the crude speculations of Milton's youth, they are the 
 mature convictions of his later years, the results of his long 
 public experience, embodied in the last of his political 
 writings, and intended as a final appeal to the nation 
 against the anti-republican reaction which was now set- 
 ting in. But his counsels did not prevail. The Royalist 
 party triumphed. Charles II. was proclaimed King, 
 and ascended his father's throne. Milton was forced to 
 conceal himself A price was set on his head. His 
 Iconoclastes and Defence of the People of England had 
 the honor to be burned by the common hangman, by 
 vote of the House of Commons. After remaining four 
 months in concealment he was, through the interces- 
 sion of friends, released by the Act of Oblivion, and 
 spent the rest of his days in literary retirement. 
 
 There is something at once sad and sublime about 
 the closing days of John Milton. Blind, persecuted by 
 his enemies, neglected and wronged by '' unkind chil- 
 
256 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 dren," as he touchingly called them, fallen, as he tells 
 us, 
 
 " On evil days . . . and evil tongues, 
 
 In darkness and with dangers compassed round, 
 
 And solitude," 
 
 Bereft of old friends, the labors of a score of years, 
 the best part of his lifetime, apparently lost, the com- 
 monwealth which he had labored to build, to sustain, 
 and to preserve, swept away ; the monarchy, which he 
 both detested and dreaded, restored ; the errors and 
 vices, which with the eye of an Uriel he had detected, 
 which with the constancy of an Abdiel he had resisted, 
 and which with the energy of a Michael he had com- 
 bated, invading the land, and darkening it with the 
 banners of hell, the England he so loved maddened 
 with the Circean cup, and abandoning herself to a life 
 that was worse than death ; his sight gone, his life-plan 
 marred, and the sacrifice which he had made of each, 
 so far as one could judge, wasted — shall we not pity him ? 
 Yes, but only while the tear of pity remains, for he tells 
 us himself, that now, in his darkness, as he ** stands 
 and waits," "bearing God's mild yoke," 
 
 " His state 
 Is kingly, thousands at his bidding speed, 
 And post o'er land and ocean without rest." 
 
 Still, as years before, he might say to his enemies : 
 "Let the calumniators of the divine goodness cease to 
 revile, or to make me the object of their superstitious 
 imaginations. Let them consider that my situation, 
 such as it is, is neither an object of my shame, or my 
 regret, that my resolutions are too firm to be shaken, 
 that I am not depressed by any sense of the divine 
 displeasure ; that on the other hand, in the most mo- 
 mentous periods, I have had full experience of the 
 Divine favor and protection ; and that in the solace 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 257 
 
 and the strength which have been infused into me from 
 above, I have been enabled to do the will of God ; 
 that I may oftener think on what he has withheld ; that 
 in short, I am unwilling to exchange my consciousness 
 and rectitude with that of any other person, and that I 
 feel the recollection a treasured store of tranquillity and 
 delight. . . . My blindness keeps from my view only 
 the colored surfaces of things, while it leaves me at 
 liberty to contemplate the beauty and stability of vir- 
 tue and of truth. How many things are there besides 
 which I would not willingly see ; how many which I 
 must see against my will ; and how few which I feel 
 any anxiety to see. There is, as the apostle has re- 
 marked, a way to strength through weakness. Let me 
 then be the most feeble creature alive, as long as that 
 feebleness serves to invigorate the energies of my ra- 
 tional and immortal spirit ; as long as in that obscurity 
 in which I am enveloped, the light of the divine pres- 
 ence more clearly shines ; then, in the proportion as I 
 am weak, I shall be invincibly strong, and in propor- 
 tion as I am blind, I shall more clearly see. Oh ! that 
 I may thus be perfected by feebleness, and irradiated 
 by obscurity ! And indeed, in my bhndness I enjoy 
 in no inconsiderable degree, the favor of the Deity, 
 who regards me with more tenderness and compassion, 
 in proportion as I am to behold nothing but himself. 
 Alas ! for him who insults me, who maligns, and mer- 
 its public execration. For the divine law not only 
 shields me from injury, but almost renders me too 
 sacred to attack, not indeed so much from the privation 
 of my sight, as from the overshadowing of those heav- 
 enly wings which seem to have occasioned this obscur- 
 ity, and which, when occasioned, he is wont to illumi- 
 nate with an interior light, more precious, and more 
 pure." 
 
258 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Nay indeed, the blind Patriot is to be envied rather 
 than pitied. His state is far kinglier than that of the 
 reigning Monarch, surrounded by the miserable vani- 
 ties of his dissolute court. "The great Taskmaster," 
 in whose sight he has ever sought to live, does not 
 forget his faithful servant in the darkness of his old age. 
 For now, as he resumes the lyre, which years ago he 
 laid aside, he finds to his joy that its strings are neither 
 broken nor tuneless, nay rather, that during the long 
 years of its neglect and forgottenness, God has kept it 
 in his hand, and now restores it to the sightless Bard, 
 purified in temper by every fire through which it has 
 been carried, etherealized in tone by every storm in 
 which it has been strained. At their Lord's bidding 
 the fair Ideals of Grace and Truth, of which he had 
 erewhile taken a long if not a last farewell, troop once 
 more around him, clothed- in heavenlier loveliness, 
 bearing larger gifts, and uttering diviner messages than 
 before. He prays: 
 
 " Celestial Light ! 
 Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers 
 Irradiate : there plant eyes, all mist from thence 
 Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell 
 Of things invisible to mortal sight ! " 
 
 And ere the prayer is made, it has been answered. 
 Truly does he find of virtue as he sang in his youth : 
 
 " She can teach thee how to climb 
 Higher than the sphery chime, 
 Or if virtue feeble were, 
 Heaven itself would stoop to her." 
 
 Truly might Tennyson, mourning the death of the 
 *' Great Duke," with the examples of Milton, Crom- 
 well, and the heroes of the Commonwealth before him, 
 sing: 
 
JOHN MILTON, THE PATRIOT. 259 
 
 " Not once or twice in our rough island story, 
 The path of duty was the way to glory ; 
 He that walks it, only thirsting 
 For the right, and learns to deaden 
 Love of self, before his journey closes, 
 He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting 
 Into glossy purples, which outredden 
 All voluptuous garden roses. 
 Not once or twice in our fair island story, 
 The path of duty was the way to glory. 
 He that ever following her commands 
 On with toil of heart, and knees, and hands, 
 Through the long gorge to the far light, has won 
 His path upward, and prevailed, 
 Shall find the topphng crags of Duty scaled. 
 Are close upon the shining table-lands 
 To which our God Himself is morn and sun. 
 Such was he ; his work is done." 
 
 On the 1 0th of November, 1674, within one month 
 of his 66th birthday, John Milton entered on his ever- 
 lasting reward : Here, ImmortaHty, a name embalmed 
 in a Poem which the world will not willingly let die ; 
 in good books, which fulfill his own encomium, which 
 are "the precious life-blood of a master-spirit," em- 
 balmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond 
 life; and better than all in a life, which was as he 
 sought to make it, ''A True Poem:" Yonder — a still 
 brighter Immortality, darkness exchanged for light, 
 blindness for sight, an earthly for a heavenly Common- 
 wealth, a lost Paradise for a Paradise regained. Look- 
 ing back over his glorious career, who will not say with 
 Macaulay in the closing words of his celebrated essay on 
 Milton : *' Nor do we envy the man who can study 
 either the life or the writings of the great Poet and 
 Patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sub- 
 lime works with which his genius has enriched our lit- 
 erature, but the zeal with which he labored for the 
 
26o LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 public good, the fortitude with which he endured every 
 private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked 
 down on temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred 
 which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith 
 which he so sternly kept with his country and with his 
 fame." 
 
XI. 
 
 THE GENTLEMAN. 
 
 Before discoursing of a theme like that which I desire 
 to present to you to-night, it would be advantageous to 
 ascertain if possible how great a homogeneousness pre- 
 vails in regard to it. Looking at any subject through 
 the atmosphere of social opinion by which it is sur- 
 rounded, it is difficult either to form a correct idea of it, 
 or to come to any clear mutual understanding in regard 
 to it. For this atmosphere is made up of layers of 
 different quality and density. A lives in one stratum, 
 B in another ; both look at the same object ; to the one 
 it looms through a mist, to the other it shines through 
 a halo. The air is full of mirasfes. Where one sees a 
 city with glittering spires and domes, another sees — a 
 sandbank ! Things present different associations to 
 different minds. Names awaken not the same reminis- 
 cences in all, nor touch the same chords. Language 
 has many more words than you will find in the lexicon, 
 and the words which we all speak have definitions in 
 the minds of many which neither Johnson or Webster 
 dreamed of. Johnson himself had his own private 
 definitions which he did not always think best to put in 
 his dictionary, although hehasdonesohalf-maliciously in 
 a few instances, as for example in his definition of Ex- 
 
 (261) 
 
262 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 cise: *'A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and 
 adjudged not by competent judges of property, but 
 by wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid" — 
 or his definition of Pension: "An allowance made to 
 anyone without an equivalent. In England [it is gen- 
 erally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling 
 for treason to his country" — or his definition of oats: 
 "A grain which in England is generally given to horses 
 but in Scotland supports people." A score of diction- 
 aries constructed on these Johnsonian principles would 
 be a rare curiosity. 
 
 Everybody, of course, has his own idea and defini- 
 tion of the Gentleman. Comparing this conception with 
 the generic idea of ''man," to one the Gentleman will 
 be something more than a man, to another something 
 less than a man, to another this or that modification of 
 man. Some would regard the qualification of the 
 Gentleman as accidental and external ; others as inherent 
 and internal. Some might look on him as a one-sided 
 development of manhood, others as its coronal develop- 
 ment. One perhaps would say: "The Gentleman is an 
 artificial growth, a hot-house plant, forced into exist- 
 ence by stimulating agencies and sustained only by 
 special culture and nutriment." Another would say: 
 "He is a rare and precious plant of a different and 
 higher species, as far superior to the ordinary race as a 
 century plant is to a thistle." Another would say: 
 " He is but a more cultivated specimen of mankind, as 
 a garden rose is a more cultivated specimen of the rose 
 that you will find in the wild woods, worthy of our 
 regard and honor as indicating what all may and should 
 become." 
 
 In attempting on this occasion, not oi course to fill 
 the place of him who was appointed to address you, 
 but to occupy the time set apart for these remarks, I 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 26} 
 
 shall take for my subject the character which is implied 
 in the form of address which I have just applied to the 
 members of this society. 
 
 I have addressed you as gentlemen ; my theme will 
 be t/ie Gentleman ; without pretending to investigate mi- 
 nutely his genealogy, or to analyze thoroughly his char- 
 acter, I shall simply mention a few facts of his history and 
 a few traits of his character, which it may not be un- 
 profitable for us to consider. 
 
 Even in republican America, I am inclined to think 
 we shall find as great varieties of opinion on this subject 
 as may be met with anywhere, although not perhaps 
 quite as exaggerated. We have our gentlemen-wor- 
 shippers no less than the Old World. We have our 
 aristocracy — have we not ? and wherever there is aris- 
 tocracy you will invariably find flunkey ism. It is hard 
 to say which precedes the other. At first blush, you 
 will say aristocracy, at the second flunkeyism. If it be 
 true that but for aristocracy there would be no flunkey- 
 ism, it is just as true that but for flunkeyism there 
 would be no aristocracy. To be sure the qualities, the 
 instincts which make aristocrats would exist, but these 
 would be held in check by universal manliness. Their 
 possessors would not dwell in a distinct sphere, — a Par- 
 adise guarded with flaming swords not to be entered 
 without its magic countersign of blood, caste, privilege, 
 — were it not for that groveling, self-abasing, self-be- 
 littling spirit, that whining, fawning, cringing disposi- 
 tion, ^which is pardonable in spaniels, but which is 
 despicable in men. Whether My Lord or the Valet was 
 first in the order of nature, certain it is, that neither 
 was long without finding the other. Pretense, Pomp, 
 Arrogance, were not slow to claim and to clothe with 
 their livery Obsequiousness, Stupidity, Servility, and to 
 put the brand ot bondage on them forever. Now it is 
 
264 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 sufficiently evident that there are any number of men 
 who are born lackeys. They come into the world with 
 collars round their necks and they run about wagging 
 their tails and asking, Who wants me ? Won't you take 
 me, sir? Won't you? The lackey's universe is not al- 
 together like yours or mine. He acknowledges, as we do, 
 a difference between man and the brutes. His conception 
 of the difference may not be very philosophical or dis- 
 tinct, still it would strike him as highly absurd to clas- 
 sify him with his master's horses and hounds. 
 
 But if there is a great difference between man and the 
 brute, the interval between a man and a gentleman is 
 immense. He himself is a man. Sir Lionel acknowl- 
 edges that when he says, my dog Rover, my horse 
 Comet, but my man William. Yes, but what of that 
 little possessive pronoun ? Oh ! that is — in fact it is 
 something to be proud of My man William, says Sir 
 Lionel, and " my man " expands several inches all around 
 with the sense of his importance ; for why ? Sir Lionel 
 is a gentleman, of a race of gentlemen, of gentle name, 
 of gentle blood, and William only — a man, and is it not 
 honor enough to have a gentleman say, " My man ?" 
 Ah ! but you say we have outgrown all that. We live 
 in a Republic. Our Constitution forbids. We have no 
 lackeys — no valets. Does a carriage go by with driver 
 and flunkey in full livery ? It is a foreign embassador. 
 My Lord Anonymous or Baron Blank. No ! but that 
 is Mr. Smith, an American citizen. Ah ! indeed, you 
 say, and your nostrils detect a very perceptible fragrance 
 of codfish in the air. You know something about Mr. 
 Smith. You have some acquaintance with his pedi- 
 gree. It is not like that of the Scotch Laird who was 
 "a penniless laird in a lang pedigree." Mr. Smith has 
 pennies, but his pedigree is very short. No ! we can 
 not abide any aping of aristocracy in this free demo- 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 265 
 
 cratic country. Every man is a king and the equal of 
 every other, — if he is of the orthodox color. Yet I 
 am not sure that because we have no liveries, we have 
 no lackeys. I am not sure that because the Constitu- 
 tution has put an end to the titled orders of nobility 
 that it has put an end to the fawning mood of syco- 
 phants, valets and vassals. I am not sure that because 
 his Royal Highness, Jefferson I., Lord Mason, Viscount 
 Slidell, Baron Breckenridge and Sir Robert Toombs 
 have not yet cared to assume the titles which they 
 covet, that their minions are any the less willing to 
 "let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp and crook 
 the pregnant hinges of the knee." The difference be- 
 tween us and the people of Europe is, that whereas 
 there they put their lackeys on their carriage boxes 
 when they ride out and behind their chairs when they 
 dine, here we give them seats in Congress and we have 
 been known to board them at great expense to the 
 public at the White House. Aristocracy and flunkey- 
 ism, I say, go together ; and Cotton lords, as well as 
 others, find their flunkeys ready made ; and further I 
 say, if it had not been for the contemptible meniahty 
 and servility of Northern flunkeys, slaves in everything 
 but name, this gigantic RebeUion of Southern gentle- 
 men would never have taken place. So much for the 
 lackey's estimate of the gentleman. The gentleman is 
 his divinity. As for himself, he is only a man and not 
 his own at that. 
 
 Again you will find a considerable number who look 
 on the gentleman as differently organized from them- 
 selves. He is not exactly above them, nor below them, 
 but different, unlike. He is of another disposition, 
 another temperament, another organization. He has 
 ways which they have not, manners which they cannot 
 acquire, a carriage which they cannot sustain, a demeanor 
 
266 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 which is foreign to them. His gentlemanHness is a 
 pecuHar gift, natural, or easily acquired by him. Every- 
 body cannot attain to it. Like a commanding form, a 
 handsome face, a musical voice, it is a fortunate inheri- 
 tance which falls to the lot of the favored few. It would 
 be a pretty sight if all possessed the graces and accom- 
 plishments of a gentleman, but there is no use repin- 
 ing — all were not made alike. Says one: "I was not 
 meant for a model gentleman, I am too clumsy — too 
 awkward — forever putting my foot into it. The fact is 
 it was never intended that I should pick my way among 
 eggs without breaking them. God has made me to be 
 pioneer — to push my way across untrodden deserts — 
 through unbroken forests, and over rocky mountains. 
 There I can tramp on fearlessly, heedless of eggshells and 
 soft toes." Says another: ** Mine is not the charming 
 elegance of a knight of the carpet, who can dance his min- 
 uet with the dainty tread of an Ariel and murmur his flat- 
 tering compliments with the persuasive voice of a Zephyr, 
 always saying the right thing at the right time, and do- 
 ing the right thing in the right place, submitting grace- 
 fully to the inflictions, crosses, and despotism of society. 
 I can't listen to old Dr. Bore as though he were the most 
 original and delightful fellow in the world and relieve 
 myself of him before he is half through with such grace 
 that he never suspects the truth, and goes away with a 
 better opinion of me than he ever had before, saying, 
 'That young Thompson is a most remarkable and prom- 
 ising youth.' I cannot conceal my weariness, and pres- 
 ently I begin to fidget and in sheer desperation break 
 away from him most unceremoniously, leaving him to say 
 ' That young fellow Thompson has very little brains ; he is 
 a shallow, conceited, empty pated fop, that is what he is! ' 
 I can't entertain Miss Viola Vapid until she begins to 
 think that she is really interesting, and that Mr. Thomp- 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 26/ 
 
 son is a very elegant gentleman. I can't toss the 
 shuttle of nonsense back and forth. After discussing 
 the weather, the last lecture, the last concert, the last 
 wedding and the last death, the case becomes very- 
 dreary. I begin to wriggle and squirm, to hum and 
 to haw, to look up and look down, and to look all 
 round, to find a thousand and one uses for my pocket- 
 handkerchief — invaluable consoler of the afflicted ; 
 delightful relief not only of catarrhs of the nose, blush- 
 ing cheeks and moist brows, but of mental blushes and 
 intellectual perspirations ! Blessed be the man who 
 invented sleep, said Sancho Panza. Blessed be the man 
 who invented pocket-handkerchiefs, say I. But even 
 this last refuge of the unfortunate fails with Miss Viola. 
 I cannot play the gentleman to her, and when I have 
 torn myself away she sets me down as a stupid bore, 
 or an ungentlemanly wretch. No sooner do I try to 
 launch myself out in anything powerful than down I 
 come with a ridiculous crash. If I attempt a compli- 
 ment, ten to one it is a perfect failure. If I attempt 
 a joke, everybody looks solemn and somebody looks 
 offended ; and if in my dismay I try to mend the mat- 
 ter, I invariably make it worse. No! no! my fate is 
 evidently not to play the gentleman, as according to the 
 great moral showman of the present century, the forte 
 of George Washington was not to have any of the public 
 men of our day resemble him to any alarming extent." 
 There are not wanting those who look down on the 
 gentleman as something beneath them, who would scorn 
 to bear the name. It is to their mind synonymous with 
 pride, disdain, affectation, insolence, indolence, effemi- 
 nacy, usurpation. I thank heaven, says one, that I am 
 not a gentleman, I am above that. I glory in being a 
 man. When God proceeded to form a being in his 
 own image, he. did not say, ''Let us make a gentle- 
 
268 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 man," but "Let us make a man." The gentleman is 
 the Devil's handiwork. He is the fruit of the fall. Had 
 man remained in Paradise the thing would have been 
 unknown. Man and Woman ! no other names would 
 have been needed. It was only after ages of degener- 
 acy that the Gentleman and the Lady were invented. 
 Who repeats with infinite gusto — 
 
 " When Adam delved and Eve span, 
 Who was then the gentleman ?" 
 
 '^For my part," continues our worthy friend, **I 
 am an original democrat of the Adam and Eve stripe. 
 I am in favor of going back to first principles. I think 
 we had better restore the old regime and banish these 
 modern shams to the primeval shades. Gentleman, 
 forsooth! An honest man's the noblest work of God." 
 
 " Ye see yon birkie ca'd a laird 
 
 Wha struts and stares and a' that, 
 Tho' hundreds worship at his feet 
 
 He's but a coof for a' that. 
 For a' that and a' that 
 
 His ribbon, star and a' that, 
 The man o' independent might 
 
 He looks and laughs at a' that. 
 A prince can make a titled knight, 
 
 A marquis, duke and a' that, 
 But an honest man's above his might 
 
 Guid faith he mauna fa' that. 
 For a' that and a' that 
 
 Their dignities and a' that, 
 The pith o' sense and pride o' worth 
 
 Are higher ranks than a' that." 
 
 " Now that's what I call good poetry, good philoso- 
 phy, good politics and good sense," says our enthusi- 
 astic democrat, and I don't know that we should quar- 
 rel with him on that score. 
 
 It seems at first a pity that the primitive simplicity of 
 thought and language should be so much broken up as 
 it is, that the pure ray of white passing through the 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 269 
 
 prism of human history should be refracted into so 
 many different colored rays. Our ideas and our words 
 have, in consequence, become partial, onesided. Very 
 many terms carry with them only a fraction of their 
 original significance, and we have been under the neces- 
 sity of borrowing, or inventing, or remaking other 
 words to represent that which has been lost. Language 
 abounds in half-words and quarter-words, which repre- 
 sent only one-half or one-quarter of their first value. 
 The intellectual currency of the world has expanded so 
 much and become so inflated, that the market value of 
 its notes is often very much below their face value. 
 There has been a great demand for small change to 
 represent our partial ideas of things and there has been 
 necessarily a largely increased issue to meet the demand. 
 We have been reduced even to such straits that we are 
 sometimes glad to pass an intellectual dollar for a dime. 
 Take the word Honor: "One of the most valuable 
 pieces of currenny ever coined in Truth's mint. Worth 
 all that is sacred in the soul." Yet what a bubble is 
 that which it often represents! Heroism! One of the 
 highest certificates ever issued on Heaven's treasury ! 
 A regular ^50,000 certificate! The equivalent of in- 
 vincible strength, heaven born enthusiasm. Divine self- 
 sacrificing love ! And who has not seen it pass for pot- 
 house valor, for the thick-hidedness and thick-headed- 
 ness which will stand an hour's vigorous pummeling, or 
 as I saw it elegantly expressed the other day in a hand 
 bill advertising a sparring exhibition — a Lecture on 
 heads. And yet how cheaply you can sometimes buy 
 it! But after all, has not this expansion of our intel- 
 lectual currency, this multiplication of terms to ex- 
 press ourincomplete conceptions, its advantages ? Does 
 not one supplement what is lacking in the other? Are 
 they not fragments of the dreams of a lost Paradise 
 
2/0 LLEWELYN 10 AN EVANS. 
 
 which haunts humanity, which we may to some extent 
 piece together into a vision of Paradise Regained? 
 Virtue, Manhood, Purity, Goodness, MoraHty, Integ- 
 rity, Honor, Nobleness, Holiness, Love, they all mean 
 the same. The golden age of humanity, whether past 
 or future, lies bound up in each one of them ; to lay hold 
 upon either is to lay hold upon all : each is a gate 
 opening into the Palace of the Beautiful, and if we look 
 attentively, first at this and then at the other, we shall 
 find it the same. Yet do we not need them all and a 
 great many more ? Coming up out of the wilderness, 
 as we do, by devious paths, now from this side and 
 now from that, is it not well that there should be en- 
 trances on all sides, lest in blundering around to find the 
 one gate we should miss our way and be lost ? Of these 
 which I have named and of others which I might name, 
 Manhood means all the rest. But if we had no other 
 goal presented to us, or rather if the goal was presented 
 to us in no other form than Manhood, how many of you 
 would reach it ? What is manhood ? 
 
 Now let us take the three following terms and 
 consider their relative claims: Man, Democrat, Gentle- 
 man. In their primary, unperverted sense all three 
 mean the same. Precisely. They are exactly co-or- 
 dinate and co-extensive. Each includes the others. 
 Neither excludes the rest. Man means Gentleman ; 
 Democrat. Democrat means Man ; Gentleman. Gentle- 
 man means Democrat; Man. Adam, taking him as 
 expressive of the original idea of humanity in its crea- 
 tion, was all three. We say, Adam was to be a man. 
 What do we mean ? That he was to be a revealer of 
 Divinity. God manifesting Himself in created, soul and 
 body. Infinity shining through the finites. Heaven 
 walking on Earth. He was also to be a Democrat. It 
 is needless to say that I use the word in its secondary 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. I'J \ 
 
 moral sense, not literally or politically. He was to be 
 a Democrat. What does that mean ? It means that he 
 was to assert the rights and prerogatives of his man- 
 hood against any and every effort to curtail them. He 
 was to maintain the dignity of the Divinity — of the 
 God within him — against any and every attempt to insult 
 it. And this I say whether Adam had a white or a 
 black skin, or whether, as some say, there was a black 
 as well as a white Adam ; altho', as Thomas Corwin 
 once said, it is very strange if the ethnological and 
 social theories of some politicians and divines are cor- 
 rect, that the Bible does not mention that when God 
 created Adam and Eve, He created a black Adam and 
 Eve to wait on them, to work for them, and to cook 
 for them, the black Adam to handle the spade lest 
 Gentleman Adam's lily-white fingers should be soiled, 
 and the black Eve to comb Lady Eve's hair — the most 
 important part, it may be presumed, of the toilet of 
 Eden — thus maintaining both in that dole e far niente, 
 that sweet do-nothingism, which is some folks' beau- 
 ideal of Paradise. Heaven save the mark ! But the 
 idea of Democracy is involved in the very idea of man- 
 hood. When God sent man into the world he sent him 
 with democratic ideas inwrought into his very being. 
 Whenever another should appear, and in the pride of a 
 fancied superiority, should say to him : By the right of the 
 stronger thou art mine ; thou must think, speak, work, 
 and live only as I bid or permit thee — God put in man 
 a sleeping thunderbolt of a No ! which at the first touch 
 of wrong offered to the God-like within was to wake up 
 and leap forth in living flame to strike down the 
 oppressor and make a free path for his manhood to God. 
 But we say still further, Adam was to be a gentle- 
 man. What was that ? Essentially the same as man 
 and democrat. To be a gentleman was to maintain, 
 
2/2 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 inviolate and unsullied, the prerogatives of his man- 
 hood ; to demean himself worthily of his high lineage ; 
 to keep the escutcheon of his nobility without a blot ; 
 especially to keep himself from self-degradation ; to 
 maintain at its height the inward standard of purity, honor, 
 courage, magnanimity, truth, benevolence, to betray 
 these never!— ^neither to temptation nor forces from 
 without, nor to weakness nor selfishness from within. 
 This was what God meant man to be in making him a 
 gentleman — to be gentle, noble, brave, true, guileless, 
 honorable, disinterested, pure, godlike, to be all this 
 as against the Devil, as against self You see accord- 
 ingly there is no essential difference between democrat 
 and gentleman. One is the obverse of the other. The 
 Democrat is man preaching against the limitations which 
 bar his freedom, flinging away the gyves which shackled 
 his progress. The Gentleman is man cultivating the 
 area of liberty which the democratic force has con- 
 quered, and filling it with order, sweetness, and beauty. 
 The Democrat is man declaring his independence. The 
 gentleman is man taking and fulfilling the oath of alle- 
 giance to the Divine Constitution and Laws. The 
 Democrat is man asserting his claims to himself. The 
 Gentleman is man vindicating his worthiness to be his 
 own master. The Democrat is a Gentleman protesting 
 against wrong. The Gentleman is the Democrat real- 
 izing his nobler aspirations. The former is man saying 
 to every false pretender, to every harsh oppressor, *'I 
 will not have thee to reign over me." The latter is 
 man saying to Right, Thou art my King ! and to 
 Beauty, Thou art my Queen ! and to Truth, Thou art 
 my I^iegc ! and to Honor, Thou art my Mistress ! and to 
 Duty, Thou art my Commander ! Obeying you I also 
 become a King. For to be a Gentleman is to be a 
 King. Is not the King the first Gentleman in the land? 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 273 
 
 So at least says Theory. So it has been in the pal- 
 mier days of royalty. So it was in the age of David 
 the Hebrew ; so in the age of Philip of Macedon ; so in 
 the days of Titus the Roman ; so in the times of Alfred 
 the Saxon ; so in the days of Charlemagne the Frank. 
 The converse is true yet in republic and in monarchy, 
 the first Gentleman of the land is King. Whether he 
 wears a crown or not, whether or no royal blood runs 
 in his veins, he is King. Yea ! every true gentleman is 
 King. What is his Kingdom ? Himself and the empire 
 of all that is noble, generous, true, angelic, godlike. 
 Here then we arrive at the paradox : the true Democrat 
 is the most Kingly of all personages. The motto of 
 democracy is not Down with Kings, but Up with 
 Kings ! Not Down with Noblemen, but Up with 
 Noblemen ! Let all be Noblemen ! Let every man be 
 King ! And no one accomplishes the true democratic 
 idea who does not work out his democracy into gentle- 
 manhood, noblemanhood, royalty, The Gentleman is 
 the accomplishment of the Democrat. One is not per- 
 fect without the other. Without freedom and inde- 
 pendence no one can be a Gentleman ; no one can be 
 free without gentility of soul. Manhood is the blend- 
 ing, the harmony of both, like perfect music set to 
 noble words. There is no incompatibihty whatever 
 between democracy and gentlemanhood, no more than 
 in a beautiful song, music and poetry are discordant. 
 To be a democrat is not to be a boor ; to be a gentle- 
 man is not to be a snob. The Chevalier Bayard would 
 have been none the less '* the flower of Europe for his 
 chivalry," the Knight without fear and without re- 
 proach, with the principles of a Jefferson. Tom Payne 
 would have been just as good a Democrat, had he the 
 manners and breeding of a Raleigh, which he had not. 
 What better proof of this than the character of George 
 
274 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Washington, the Gentleman-Democrat? "While the 
 army was encamped at Morristown," says Irving, ** he 
 one day attended a religious meeting, when Divine 
 service was to be held in the open air. A chair had 
 been set out for his use. Just before service com- 
 menced, a woman with a child in her arms approached. 
 Washington immediately arose, placed her in the chair 
 which had been assigned to him, and remained stand- 
 ing during the entire service." Don't you suppose 
 that the verdict of that woman was, General Washing- 
 ton is a Gentleman? "Is it possible. General, that 
 you take off your hat to a negro ? " "I will not let a 
 negro outdo me in politeness, sir." The answer was 
 hardly worthy of the deed, but it was good enough for 
 the question. Do you say these incidents prove that 
 he was a gentleman ? Certainly, and they prove also 
 that he was a democrat. Had he not been so thorough 
 a democrat, he would not have been so perfect a gen- 
 tleman. Down at the foundation of every true gen- 
 tleman's life, be he democrat in creed or not, you will 
 find this — a deep, holy, and indestructible reverence for 
 man, and for all which makes man sacred in the sight 
 of God, for all which constitutes in him the image of 
 his Maker. He who will despise, insult, outrage tJiat, 
 I care not what he may call himself, is at heart neither 
 democrat nor gentleman. He may be a Christian, 
 some say, — Credat Judaeus Appelles, non ego ! 
 
 The old Greeks were wont to call the Gentleman 
 xaXoxaya06(;y the man xalo^ xat dyadoi;, beautiful and 
 good. His exterior, so thought the Greeks, his looks, 
 words, performances, shine with a loveliness which wins 
 all ; his heart gushes forth with a tenderness, a good- 
 ness, a fullness of sympathy, truth and love which sat- 
 isfy all whom he draws to himself Among the Romans 
 the Gentleman was the vir Jioncstas, the honorable man, 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 275 
 
 worthy of reverence and trust ; vir nobiliSy the man well 
 known, conspicuous by his dignity, his power, his 
 virtues, his rank — Saul overtopping all others from his 
 shoulders upward. Ingemms or liberalise the well born, 
 free born, exempt from all taint of villainage or bondage, 
 whose right to himself no one can question ; one of the 
 opiimates, originally the best men in the state, the elite 
 of the land, its choice ones. Horace calls him, "homo 
 factus ad unguem, " the man polished with the nail, like 
 the model of clay, the last finishing touches to which 
 were given by the statuary's finger nail, hence the 
 polished, perfectly finished, exquisitely molded man, to 
 whom no other touch may be added. More commonly, 
 as with the English world, he is the vir generos7is, the 
 man of birth, of race, of family, the well born. Among 
 the old Germans, gentlemen were sometimes called ©iite 
 ^Rainier, good men, men of whom it is enough to say 
 they filled up the measure of the German adjective gut. 
 Among the old fashioned French, the gentleman was le 
 pnid' homme, the prudent, experienced man, who had 
 been tried, found true, approved. The modern gentle- 
 man of France is Vhonime de bon ton, the man of good 
 tone, pitched in the right key, the man of fashion; 
 Vhomme de bo7i societe, the man of good connections, 
 of genteel associations, of high caste; VJiomine comine 
 il faiit, the man as he should be, as he must be, the 
 man of respectability, of faultless propriety, who wor- 
 ships at the shrine of good society and whose oblations 
 are unblemished. ' The English word Gentleman, traces 
 its descent through the French gentil homme from the 
 Latin gentilis, whose qualities Cicero gives as follows: 
 I. That he should bear the family name. 2. That he 
 should be descended from ingenui, i. e., from free born 
 respectable parents. 3. That not one of his ancestors 
 should ever have been a slave. 4. That he should never 
 
2/6 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 have lost his head, i. e., never have been deprived of 
 his civil rights, which to the Roman citizen was just as 
 bad as having his head cut off. Thus we see that when the 
 world was young, gentleman was free-man. The word 
 was very nearly synonymous with citizen. The origin 
 of the term justifies me, if nothing else did, in insist- 
 ing so strenuously on the intimate alliance between 
 freedom under its more modern name of Democracy 
 and the condition of gentleman. Whenever you carry 
 the condition of the one, you carry also the condition 
 of the other. The old Roman idea, reduced to its 
 purity, is very near the truth, there is but one genuine 
 aristocracy, that of liberty. But this beautiful germ 
 was very soon crushed and buried under the accumulat- 
 ing heaps of corruption. With the increase of wealth, 
 luxury, power, military and political, concentrating 
 themselves first in the hands of the leaders of the state 
 and then in their families, came the formulation of the 
 narrower and impure aristocracies of Rome, which 
 merging into or assuming the names of the families 
 descended from the Patres — the Fathers — constituted 
 ere long the nobility, the patricians, while the rest of 
 the populace, massed together in one group, were con- 
 temptuously called the Plebs, the crowd, the multitude, 
 common folks, the vulgar. Feudalism did yet more to 
 confirm the separation and to widen the breach between 
 Patrician and Plebeian, between Gentleman and Churl, 
 until presently it became a universally accepted maxim 
 that the two orders had existed by Divine appointment 
 from the beginning, ever since the time of the sons of 
 Adam, as Dame Juliana Berners has quaintly expressed 
 it in her treatise on coat-armory: **Cain became a 
 Churl from the curse of God, and Seth a Gentleman 
 from his father's and mother's blessing." Another old 
 writer goes back one step even beyond the Dame: 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 277 
 
 "Moreover for that It might be knowen, that even anon 
 after the creation of Adam, there was gentleness and 
 ungentleness, you shall understand that the secod man 
 that was born, was a Getlema, whose name was Abell. 
 I saye a Gentleman both of vertue and lignage, with 
 wose sacrifice God was muche pleased. Hys brother 
 Cain was Ungentle, for he offered God the worst of his 
 fruites." 
 
 It redounds greatly to the honor of those who in by- 
 gone days were called ''gentle " that they so bore the 
 name as to give it a new and noble meaning. For the 
 word no longer suggests the fact of parentage and lin- 
 eage, but the nobler fact of character. Instead of stand- 
 ing for the physical accident of birth, it stands for a 
 moral quality of soul. It is no longer gentle blood, 
 but a gentle spirit. All honor to that glorious line of 
 men, who by their virtues, their affability, their mild- 
 ness, courtesy, urbanity, refinement, raised the attri- 
 butes of the class to which they belonged, and crowned 
 it with imperishable moral grandeur, making it no 
 longer express whence they were, but what they were. 
 All honor to the men whose characters converted the 
 words gentle and noble, so that the world has well nigh 
 forgotten that they ever meant anything else than sweet- 
 ness of disposition and grandeur of soul. There are 
 names which have been dragged down by the degrada- 
 dation of those who bore them. Savage once meant 
 nothing more than woodman — a dweller in the forests. 
 Villain was at first no worse than peasant. Churl, the 
 opposite of gentleman, was only a strong man. Be as- 
 sured that there was real worth in these gentles and no- 
 bles who raised those words up into the meaning which 
 they now have. 
 
 There can be no doubt but that this result was 
 greatly promote(J by the rise and growth of chivalry. 
 
278 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 The spirit of chivalry was essentially and wholly the 
 spirit of gentility. The Knight was the model gentle- 
 man of his age. His education was conducted expressly 
 with reference to the production of this character. First, 
 the boy became page to some baron or knight, with 
 whom he was instructed in the accomplishments of his 
 future vocation. As Ben Jonson tells us this was ac- 
 counted — 
 
 " The noblest way 
 Of breeding up our youth in letters, arms, 
 Fair mien, discourses, civil exercises, 
 And all the blazon of a gentleman. 
 Where can he learn to vault, to ride, to fence, 
 To bear his body gracefully, to speak 
 His language purer, or to turn his mind 
 Or manners more to the harmony of nature 
 Than in those nurseries of nobility?" 
 
 There the youth became a squire, perfecting his edu- 
 cation as an armed attendant on the knight or noble- 
 man to whom he was attached. Let Chaucer describe 
 for us a model squire : 
 
 " Singing he was or floating all the day, 
 He was as freshe as is the month of May. 
 Short was his gown with sleeves long and wide, 
 Wei coude he sitte an hors an fayre ride. 
 He coude songes make and well indite, 
 Juste, and eke dance, and wel pourtraie and write." 
 
 Having passed the due period of probation as squire, 
 he was admitted to the highest degree, that of knight. 
 On the eve of battle or on the field of war, the squire 
 was led to his prince or general, before whom he 
 kneeled down, while his two sponsors, who avouched 
 his worthiness of honor, buckled on his gilded spurs and 
 belted him with his sword. After this the person who 
 dubbed him gave him the accolade, a sHght blow on 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 279 
 
 the neck with the flat of the sword, pronouncing the 
 formula: "I dub thee knight in the name of God and 
 St. Michael (or in the name of the Trinity). Be faithful, 
 bold and fortunate." The new made knight, eager for 
 renown, would plunge into the fight, when, if he distin- 
 guished himself, he was said to win his spurs. But the 
 investiture of a knight at some great ecclesiastical or 
 royal festival was still more significant. The candidate 
 then watched all night in a church or chapel, preparing 
 for the honor which awaited him by vigils, fasting and 
 prayer. The squire's brown frock was laid aside and 
 after bathing the person, to typify the spiritual purifica- 
 tion which the true knight must undergo, he put on a 
 richer garb. He was then equipped and armed with 
 his knight's weapons ; and as each piece of honor was 
 put on, curious allegories v/ere recited and quaint paral- 
 lels drawn between the weapons of his temporal and 
 spiritual warfare. For remember that the ordinance of 
 knighthood was in its first institution a religious, semi- 
 monastic order, and the knight was a soldier of the 
 church as well as a soldier of his king. He was then 
 conducted in solemn procession to the church or chapel, 
 where the ceremony of his investiture was to be per- 
 formed, high mass was said, the king gave him the 
 accolade, the prelate of highest rank present, took from 
 the altar his sword, which had previously been laid 
 there, his spurs were fastened on by some high born 
 lady, he took the oath of loyalty to God, the King and 
 the Ladies, was led out of the church with music and 
 acclamations, mounted his horse, cavorted with him, 
 plying his spurs and couching his lance as if eager to 
 vindicate the prowess of his strong right arm, which he 
 generally had the opportunity of doing in a grand 
 tournament with which the festival closed. In the ex- 
 pulsion of a knight from the order, a very serious affair, 
 
28o LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 indeed, in those days, the same religious element ap- 
 peared. His spurs were cut off close to his heels with 
 a cook's cleaver. His arms were baffled and reversed 
 by the common hangman. His belt was cut to pieces 
 and his sword broken. He was placed on a hurdle and 
 covered with a pall, and amid the chanting of a funeral 
 service and the tolling of the death-bell, he was sent 
 either to his grave or back into the herd of serfs as a 
 man dead to knightly honor. And the man who has 
 lost his honor, is he any better than dead ? Would it 
 not be better if he were dead ? When now we remem- 
 ber that in the earHer and better days of chivalry these 
 ceremonies were not empty ecclesiastical pageants, but 
 solemn realities, that the founders and first representa- 
 tives of that chivalry, Gerard, Godfrey, Baldwin, Ray- 
 mond, Tancred, were men of deep and earnest piety, 
 according to the light they had, and fully consecrated 
 themselves to the ends of their orders, need we wonder 
 that the name and character of gentleman were ex- 
 alted to that pitch of veneration and affection with 
 which they were regarded. Gibbon can not deny him- 
 self a sneer at the religious character of the knightly or- 
 ders, yet he must have known that but for that, he could 
 not have said of the knight, that "he devoted himself 
 to speak the truth, to maintain the right, to protect the 
 distressed, to practice courtesy, a virtue less familiar to 
 the ancients, to pursue the infidels, to despise the allure- 
 ments of ease and safety, and to vindicate in every per- 
 ilous adventure the honor of his character." He still 
 further speaks of chivalry: "The benefits of this insti- 
 tution to refine the temper of barbarians and to infuse 
 some principles of faith, justice and humanity, were 
 strongly felt. The asperity of national prejudice was 
 softened, and the comDmnity of rcligio7i a7id arms spread 
 a similar color and generous emulation over the face of 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 28 1 
 
 Christendom." Undoubtedly chivalry underwent a sad 
 degeneracy in its later days; but as a higher develop- 
 ment of the ideal of gentlemanhood and as a potent in- 
 spiration to the culture of that ideal, its significance is 
 great and permanent. 
 
 The qualities of courtesy, truth, kindness, clung to 
 the ideal of the Knight, even in the decay of chivalry, 
 as we may see from the Morte d' Arthur in the eulogy 
 passed on Launcelot du Lake, by his brother. Sir Ector, 
 when after a seven years' search he found him dead. 
 "Ah! Sir Launcelot," said he, **thou were head of all 
 Christian Knights! And now I dare say," said Sir 
 Ector, "that. Sir Launcelot, there thou liest, thou 
 were never matched of none earthly Knight's hands; 
 and thou were the curtiest Knight that ever beare shield ; 
 and thou were the truest friend to thy lover that ever 
 bestrood horse ; and thou were the truest lover of a 
 sinful man, that ever loved woman ; and thou were the 
 kindest man that ever strooke with sword; and thou 
 were the goodliest person that ever came among presse 
 of knights; and thou were the meekest man and the 
 gentlest that ever eate in hall among ladies; and thou 
 were the sternest Knight to thy mortal foe that ever 
 put speare in rest." So Sir John Froissart describes 
 Gaston de Foix as one, who "loved that which ought 
 to be loved, and hated that which ought to be hated. 
 . . . He said many orisons every day ; he gave five 
 florins in small monies at his gate to poor folks for the 
 love of God ; he was large and courteous in gifts. He 
 could right well take when it parteyned to him and 
 deliver again when he ought. . . . He was of good 
 easy acquaintance with every man, and amorously 
 would speak to them." 
 
 " The spirit of chivalry," says Hallam, " left behind 
 it a more valuable successor." The character of Knight 
 
282 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 gradually subsided in that of Gentleman, and the one 
 distinguishes European society in the Sixteenth and 
 Seventeenth Centuries as much as the other did in the 
 preceding ages. A jealous sense of honor, less romantic 
 but equally elevated, a ceremonious gallantry and po- 
 Hteness, a strictness in devotional observances, and 
 feeling of independence upon a sovereign for the dig- 
 nity it gave, a sympathy for martial honor, the more 
 subdued by civil habits, are the lineaments which prove 
 an indisputable descent." The transition of which 
 Hallam here speaks is most pronounced in the age of 
 Elizabeth. That age may be appropriately denomi- 
 nated as, par e^niiience, the age of Gentlemen. This 
 fact was largely due to the character and influence of 
 England's Maiden Queen, the crowned gentlewoman 
 who then ruled, who having married her realm, refused 
 a husband. And so the gentlemen of England found 
 in her a mistress, to whom they might and did each 
 and all vow their knightly allegiance and dedicate their 
 trenchant swords and devote their purest chivalric 
 love. It was the age of the stately Leicester, the pru- 
 dent Burleigh, the dextrous Walsingham, the imperi- 
 ous Oxford, the elegant Sackville, the all accomplished 
 Sidney, of Essex, ''the ornament of the Court and of 
 the Camp," (I quote Macaulay) ''the model of chiv- 
 alry, the munificent patron of genius, whom great vir- 
 tues, great courage, great talents, the favor of his sov- 
 ereign, the love of his countrymen, all that seemed to 
 insure a happy and glorious life led to an early and an 
 ignominious death;" of Raleigh, "the soldier" — again 
 I quote Macaulay — "the sailor, the scholar, the cour- 
 tier, the orator, the poet, the historian, the philoso- 
 pher, sometimes reviewing the Queen's guards, some- 
 times giving chase to a Spanish galleon, then answering 
 the chiefs of the country party in the House of Com- 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 283 
 
 mons, then again murmuring one of his sweet love 
 songs too near the ears of one of the Queen's maids of 
 honor, and soon after, poring over the Talmud or col- 
 lating Polybius with Livy. " It was the age of rare 
 Ben Johnson, one of nature's noblemen, if he was once 
 a bricklayer, of Shakespeare the creator of so many 
 gentlemen, of Spencer, gentle Colin Clout, whom 
 everybody loved, the poet of chivalry, of gentleman- 
 hood, after its most exalted, most spiritual types. If 
 you would know what the True Gentleman is, read and 
 study the Faery Queen, its legends of Holinesse, Tem- 
 perance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, Courtesie. 
 
 The Gentleman of Elizabeth's era, the embodiment 
 of Spencerian virtues, is doubtless a noble improvement 
 on the Knight of Chivalry. For although the catalogue 
 of virtues of each is the same, these in the progress of 
 society, and especially in the grand moral illumination 
 which flooded the world through the Protestant Refor- 
 mation, had acquired a higher interpretation. The 
 Elizabethan Gentleman had been elevated into a loftier 
 sphere of manhood. He was a poet, not a framer of 
 love ditties and of martial lays simply, but a true seer of 
 the Beautiful, a worshiper of that Soul-Beauty, that 
 Heavenly Beauty, which revealed itself to Spencer. 
 
 "What time this world's great workmaister did cast 
 To make all things such as we now behold, 
 It seems that he before his eyes had plast 
 A goodly patterne, to whose perfect mould 
 He fashioned them as comely as he could, 
 That now so fair and seemely they appeare 
 As nought may be amended any wheare." 
 
 " The meanes therefore which unto us is lent 
 God to behold, is on his workes to looke. 
 Which he hath made in beauty excellent 
 And in the same, as in a trasen booke, 
 
284 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 To read enregistred in every nooke 
 
 His goodness, which his beauty doth declare, 
 
 For all that's good is beautifull and faire." 
 
 He was in sympathy with every movement toward 
 the emancipation of mind, and the elevation of science 
 and art. In philology a Bacon, in poetry a Spencer, in 
 manners a Sidney, in arms an Essex, in gentle culture 
 a Raleigh, each shows us degrees of attainment as far 
 above the old chivalry as that was above the older 
 barbarism. He was not a mere courtier, although in all 
 the annals of court exploits there is to be found noth- 
 ing more exquisite in its way than Raleigh stripping off 
 his rich cloak from his shoulders and laying it on the 
 ground, that the Queen might step over the mud with- 
 out soiling her feet. But the faultless courtier was that 
 and far more. He carried within him a soul filled with 
 loyalty to the Right and zeal for Truth. He was will- 
 ing to hazard his all for the honor of his Queen, the 
 integrity of his cause, the triumph of his faith. No 
 Knight of Malta ever rode forth more eagerly to fight 
 the infidel Paynim, than did he to fight the great 
 Trinity of Evil which Elizabeth's Knights must fight to 
 the death, the Pope, the Spaniard and the Devil. 
 Religion was not with him, as with the old Crusaders, 
 a blind semi-superstitious impulse, or a wild-fire enthu- 
 siasm, however noble and fervent ; it was an intelligent 
 belief, a glowing earnest conviction, commingling of 
 light with fire. Hear how a gentleman of that olden 
 time speaks: ''There is a foolish and a wretched pride 
 wherewith men being transported, can ill endure to 
 ascribe unto God the merit of those actions in which it 
 hath pleased him to use their own Industry, courage or 
 foresight. Therefore it is constantly seen that they 
 who entering into Battel are careful to pray for aid from 
 Heaven with due acknowledgment of his power who is 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 285 
 
 the giver of victory, when the field is won do vaunt 
 of their own exploits. . . . Every one striving to magnifie 
 himself while all forget God as one that had not been 
 present in the action. . . . Yet this is true that as he 
 that findeth better success than he did, or in seas not 
 expected, is deeply bound to acknowledge God the 
 author of his happiness, so He whose meer Wisdom 
 and Labor hath brought things to a prosperous issue, 
 is doubly bound to show himself thankful both for the 
 Victory and for those Vertues by which the Victory was 
 gotten. And indeed so far from weakness is the nature 
 of such thanksgiving, that it may well be called the 
 height of magnanimity, no Vertue being so truly Hero- 
 ical as that by which the spirit of Man advanceth itself 
 with confidence of acceptation into the love of God. 
 In which sense it is a brave speech that Evander in 
 Virgil useth, none but a Christian being capable of the 
 admonition : 
 
 "Aude hospes contemnere opes, et te quoque dignum 
 Finge Deo." 
 
 Do you know who spoke these noble words? It was 
 our Knight of Malta, the same Sir Walter Raleigh who 
 performed that act of inimitable courtesy to his Queen, 
 and he is a type, one of the highest sort, to be sure, but 
 still a type of the Gentleman of England, in the days 
 of good Queen Bess. 
 
 We pass now from the Golden Age of Gentleman- 
 hood to its Iron Age. Under the Stuarts the world wit- 
 nessed a chaotic confusion of names and things, of moral 
 principles and civil relations, from which it has scarcely 
 yet recovered. Ever since the accession of James I., 
 England had been ripening for revolution. On the one 
 side the people under the impetus given them by the 
 Sixteenth Century Reformation were moving toward 
 
2S6 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Freedom, Constitutional Right, Personal Independence, 
 Mental Enlightenment, Moral Power, toward the broad- 
 ening and brightening future. On the other hand the 
 Court clinging with all its might to the Old, binding 
 itself to the decaying pillars of Absolutism and Semi- 
 Popery, if not Popery itself, sought not only to resist, 
 but to stay the current which now seethed and foamed 
 angrily, the Rapids above the Falls. On the former 
 side was arrayed the Progressive Force of England, its 
 vital Protestantism, its latent and open Republicanism, 
 its sturdy independent Yeomanry. On the other side 
 was arrayed its Conservative Force, its half-dead Semi- 
 Papist Protestantism, its oligarchic Feudalism, its timid 
 Old Fogyism, its mean spirited Lackeyism, in a word 
 its Anti-Protestantism. It is one of the historical falla- 
 cies current in some circles, that in that great struggle 
 which culminated in a Puritan Commonwealth, the 
 gentry of England stood on one side and the Puritans 
 on the other. It was the Cavalier against the Round- 
 head, we are sometimes told in a tone which indicates 
 the Cavalier to be the embodiment of all that is noble, 
 chivalrous, gentlemanly, liberal, brave ; the Roundhead 
 to be the embodiment of whatever is narrow, bigoted, 
 vulgar, unwilling, mercenary, fanatical, hypocritical. 
 Any such affirmation or insinuation, (for there are those 
 who will insinuate all that, without daring openly to 
 assert it), has its origin either in unprincipled malignity 
 or in intense ignorance. In opposition to it I affirm, 
 and if time permitted, each affirmation could be sus- 
 tained by the most direct and abundant evidence : First, 
 that while it may be granted that counted by heads 
 simply, the greater number of the English gentry 
 belonged to the Cavalier party, a large and influential 
 minority, not much inferior in number either, belonged 
 to the Puritan party. Next, that the Puritan gentry 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 28/ 
 
 of England, Including those who sympathized and co- 
 operated with these Puritans in their general aims, with- 
 out being particularly identified with them, while they 
 were the equals of the Royalists, in good breeding, in 
 chivalry, In aristocratic privileges and accomplishments, 
 were, taken as a whole, greatly their superiors in Intelli- 
 gence, in character, in sympathy with whatsoever is 
 humane and progressive. To those who know anything 
 about history it will be enough to mention the names 
 of the Earl of Essex, the Earl of Manchester, Sir John 
 Elliot, Lord Fairfax, Sir Henry Vane, Algernon Syd- 
 ney, John Hampden. 
 
 Next, that while there was in the Cavalier ranks 
 much of true nobility, there was at the same time in 
 the aggregate more bigotry, more fanaticism, and that 
 of a far lower sort, more cant, if that word be used in 
 its proper sense, more ignorance, vastly more mer- 
 cinariness, and incomparably more immorality, than in 
 the Puritan ranks, and finally that, taking each of the 
 two parties in a body, turning our attention away from 
 local and transient peculiarities to that which was essen- 
 tial and permanent, looking at the centre of each and 
 not at its extremes ; comparing their leaders, their mov- 
 ing spirits, their ruling ideas, the brain power and heart 
 power enlisted on each side, weighing In the scales of 
 historical justice, the contribution made by each side to 
 the knowlege, the art, the intellectual, the political and 
 moral progress of the world, it will be found that three- 
 fourths of all that the world has gained from that Sev- 
 enteenth Century struggle was the gift of the Puritan, 
 not of the Cavalier. 
 
 " Great men have been among us ; hands that penned 
 And tongues that uttered wisdom, better none ; 
 The later Sidney, Marvel, Harrington, 
 Young Vane, and others who called Milton friend. 
 
288 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 These Moralists could act and comprehend, 
 They knew how genuine glory was put on : 
 Taught us how rightfully a nation shone 
 In splendor; what strength was that would not bend 
 But in magnanimous meekness." 
 
 Wordsworth, when he wrote that, was no Puritan in 
 the technical sense, but every one of the great names 
 he mentions as the glory of England, was according to 
 the spirit, if not according to the letter, a Puritan. 
 Every one of them was a pronounced Anti-Cavalier. 
 The great poet but echoes the sentiment of every in- 
 telligent and candid historian, Puritan or no Puritan, of 
 Carlisle, Arnold, Kingsley, Macaulay, Froude, Bancroft, 
 Guizot. Ask Carlyle the Iconoclast and Pantheist, the 
 worshipper of Goethe, who says that Literature is his 
 church. He surely is no Puritan, yet he will tell you : 
 " In conscious act or in clear tendency, the far greater 
 part of the serious Thought and Manhood of England, 
 has declared itself Puritan." And speaking of King 
 Charles' Parliaments he will say: ''All these Parlia- 
 ments grow strangely in Puritanism. . . . The nobility 
 and gentry of England were then a very strange body 
 of men. The English squire of the Seventeenth Cen- 
 tury clearly appears to have believed in God, not as a 
 figure of speech, but as a very fact, very awful to the 
 heart of the English squire. He wore his Bible Doc- 
 trine around him, says one, as an English Squire wears 
 his short belt ; went abroad with it nothing doubting." 
 Ask Dr. Arnold the scholar, the historian, the Father 
 of the Broad Church, so called ; he will tell you that, 
 while "in the government of the church the Puritans 
 had done nothing, changes of the greatest import had 
 been wrought in the state, not in its forms indeed, but 
 in its spirit." Among the changes, he enumerates the 
 most important civil reforms of the last two centuries. 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 
 
 :Sg 
 
 Ask Chas. Kingsley the disciple of Arnold, preacher, 
 poet, novelist, historian, and apostle of muscular Chris- 
 tianity. You may call him a Puritan or not, just as you 
 please. What does he say ? ' ' We hold the average 
 Puritan, nobleman, gentleman, merchant, or farmer, to 
 have been a picturesque and poetical man, a man of 
 higher imagination and deeper feeling than the average 
 Court poets, and a man of sound taste also." Ask 
 Macaulay, the brilliant essayist, the eloquent parlia- 
 mentarian, the cultivated scholar, the graphic historian, 
 the accomplished man of the world. What does he tell 
 us? "Those who roused the people to resist, who 
 directed their measures through a long series of event- 
 ful years, who formed out of the most unpromising 
 materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen, 
 who trampled down King, Church, and Aristocracy, 
 who in the short intervals of domestic sedition made 
 the name of England terrible to every nation on the 
 face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of 
 their absurdities were mere exterior badges like the 
 signs of free masonry or the dresses of friars. We re- 
 gret that these badges were not more attractive. We 
 regret that a body to whose courage and talents man- 
 kind has owed inestimable obligations, had not the lofty 
 elegance which distinguished some of the adherents of 
 Charles I., or the easy good breeding for which the 
 court of Charles II. was celebrated. But if we must 
 make our choice we shall, like Bassanio in the play, 
 turn from the specious caskets which contain only the 
 Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix our choice on 
 the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure." 
 Elsewhere, in speaking of the Puritans, he calls them 
 "the deliverers of England, the founders of the great 
 American Commonwealth." By what standard will 
 you judge the gentleman? By that of Dress? In this 
 
290 LLEWELYN 10 AN EVANS. 
 
 matter Mr. Kingsley will tell you: ''The Puritan tri- 
 umph has been complete. Even their worst enemies 
 have come over to their side, and the whirligig of Time 
 has brought in his revenges. Their canons of taste 
 have become those of all England, and High Churchmen 
 who still call them Roundheads and cropped ears, go 
 about rounder headed and closer cropt than they ever 
 went. They held it more rational to cut the hair to a 
 comfortable length than to wear effeminate curls down 
 the back. And we cut ours much shorter than they 
 ever did. They held with the Spaniards, then the finest 
 gentlemen in the world, that sad, i. e., dark colors, 
 above all black, were the fittest for stately and earnest 
 gentlemen. We all, from the Tractarian to the Any- 
 thingarian, are exactly of the same opinion. They held 
 that lace, perfumes and jewelry on a man were marks 
 of a womanly foppishness and vanity, and so hold the 
 finest gentlemen in Europe now. In applying the same 
 canon to the dress of woman they were wrong. As in 
 other matters they had hold of one pole of a double 
 truth and erred in applying it exclusively to all cases. 
 But there are two things to be said for them ; first, 
 that the dress of that day was palpably an incentive to 
 the profligacy of that day, and therefore had to be 
 protested against ; in these more moral times, ornaments 
 and fashions may be harmlessly used which then could 
 not be used without harm ; and next, it is undeniable 
 that sober dressing is more and more becoming the 
 fashion among well-bred women, and among them too 
 the Puritan's canons are gaining ground." 
 
 Shall we test the gentleman by his manners? Here 
 also the Puritan has conquered, so far at least, that if 
 you compare the manners of the self-styled gentleman 
 of that day with those of to-day, you will find that: 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 2gl 
 
 " the Puritan and not the Cavaher conception of what a 
 gentleman should be, is the one that prevails now." 
 
 Shall we make genius, the power of imagination and 
 the love of the beautiful the test ? Macaulay has said 
 that during the latter half of the seventeenth century 
 there were only two great creative minds in England. 
 One of these minds produced Paradise Lost, the other 
 the Pilgrim's Progress. Both, I need not say, were 
 Puritans. Even Cromwell, the barbarian, as Hume calls 
 him, patronized Waller, employed Milton and saved 
 Raphael's cartoons to the British Nation when Charles 
 I.'s pictures were sold. For every fraction of the old 
 cavalier which enters into the real gentleman of to-day, 
 you will find four fractions of the Puritan, when there 
 was any antagonism between the two. 1 am far from 
 saying or supposing that the Puritan is the highest type 
 of a gentleman which the world has seen or ever will 
 see. I do not think he is equal to the perfect gentle- 
 man of to-day. I hope we shall go on improving on 
 the type to the end of time. I desire simply to pro- 
 test, through the testimonies of competent authorities, 
 whom you must and do respect, against the shallow, 
 ignorant and silly sneers of flunkeyism in our own day 
 and in our own land, which exposes its shame by re- 
 flecting the ignorance and echoing the sneers of a spu- 
 rious cavalier aristocracy of which it is the slave, now, 
 it is to be hoped, in a fair v/ay to extinction. Spurious, 
 I say, for the chivalry of the Royalist party of England 
 was as much more respectable than the bastard negro 
 driving which steals its name, as that was surpassed by 
 the chivalry of Spencer's Knight of the Red Cross. I 
 do not call the Puritan a model man, but I do say that 
 but for him our model man of to-day would have been 
 a very sorry specimen of manhood. He was a good 
 way beneath .our beau ideal of the gentleman, but had 
 
292 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 it not been for him, our beau ideal might have been a 
 thing for earth to blush at, for heaven to weep over. 
 He may have lacked the outward graces and amenities 
 which harmoniously bespeak the inward gentleness and 
 grace, he may have lacked the right culture of some 
 of the aesthetic principles which constitute the spiritual 
 economy t)f the perfect gentleman, but he did not lack 
 those which were absolutely indispensable: honor, truth, 
 self-respect, self-control, loyalty, purity, love. Whenever 
 then, you hear some babbling demagogue prating about 
 the narrow-minded, canting, fanatical, mean, unchival- 
 rous, sniffling tribe of the Puritans, whether he mean the 
 Puritans of Old England in her grand Revolutionary 
 struggle, which secured her freedom forever, or the 
 Puritans of New England, worthy descendants of noble 
 sires, who brought here the manly independence, the 
 free principles, the moral worth and the true gentle- 
 manhood of their fathers and brethren beyond the seas, 
 and who by means of this laid the foundation of a no- 
 bler commonwealth than that which their sires estab- 
 lished, but failed to sustain, set him down for a con- 
 temptible flunkey, destitute of soul or of principle, or 
 of both, bestow on him your utter contempt and say 
 to him that which will burn down to the core of his 
 flunkey soul: ''Ape of the Dead Seas! peering 
 asquint into the Holy of Holies, let us have done with 
 thy babblings, thou canst not fathom it." 
 
 Isaac Barrow says that the properties of a gentle- 
 man, "which he that wanteth is not otherwise than 
 equivalcntly a gentleman as an Image or a Carkase is a 
 man," are especially two, Courage and Courtesy. With- 
 out these " gentility is no more than a vain show or an 
 empty name." Of gentlemanly courage he says: It 
 is not seen in a flaunting garb or in strutting deport- 
 ment, not in hectorly, ruffianlike swaggering or truss- 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 293 
 
 ing ; not in high looks or big words, but in stout and 
 gallant deeds, employing vigor of mind and heart to 
 achieve them." There are those who can not distin- 
 guish between the blusterer and the gentleman. Soft 
 words, courteous hints, gentle forbearance, silent mag- 
 nanimity, are lost on them as a child's caresses would be 
 lost on a hippopotamus. But give them blows, punches, 
 stripes, kicks and they at once adore your divinity. 
 Coleridge says that once he was riding in a coach ''op- 
 posite a Jew, a symbol of old clothes, an Isaac of Ho- 
 lywell street. " Coleridge opened a window, the Jew shut 
 it; Coleridge put it up, the Jew put it down; the author 
 of the "Ancient Mariner" again opened it, the mod- 
 ern Isaac again closed it. At length Coleridge, waxing 
 wroth, began to abuse him roundly and railed at the 
 son of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in a style which would 
 be strikingly appropriate if directed against a pork kill- 
 ing establishment in full blast, winding up as follows: 
 "See the Man in the Moon? He holds his nose at 
 thee at that distance. Dost thou think that I, sitting 
 here, can endure it any longer?" The Jew was aston- 
 ished, opened the window himself forthwith and said, 
 * ' I am sorry, sir, I did not know before, you was so 
 great a gentleman." Coleridge was a gentleman not- 
 withstanding the Jewish compliment. But as Barrow 
 says, the courage of the true gentleman is not of that 
 blustering and demonstrative type which forcibly im- 
 presses the senses, but of that silent, unseen type 
 which carries a man unfalteringly and triumphantly 
 through all that is to be endured and done. One of 
 the finest chapters in The Caxtons is that entitled, 
 "My Father's crotchet on the Hygienic Chemistry of 
 Books." Mr. Caxton, Sr. , perceiving that his brother, 
 the Captain, and his son Pisistratus both needed medi- 
 cines for certain ailments of mind with which they were 
 
294 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 respectively afflicted, prescribed for them an original 
 cure. * * ' Roland, you said you would try my prescrip- 
 tion, here it is,' and my father took up a book and 
 reached it to the captain. My uncle looked over it — 
 Life of Rev. Robert Hall — 'brother, he was a dissenter 
 and thank heaven I am a Church and State man to 
 the backbone.' 'Robert Hall was a brave man and a 
 true soldier under the Great Commander,* said my 
 father artfully. The captain mechanically carried his 
 forefinger to his forehead in military fashion and saluted 
 the book respectfully." A few days after the two in- 
 valids, or convalescents, as we may now call them, sit 
 together and begin to talk about the book. ' ' Well, 
 sir," said Roland, "has the prescription done you any 
 good?" "Yes Uncle, great." " And me too, by Ju- 
 piter. Sisty that same Hall was a fine fellow. I won- 
 der if the medicine has gone through the same chan- 
 nels in both? Tell me first how it has affected you." 
 Pisistratus is most struck with the earnest heavenly 
 purpose of the man, "A man intent upon a sublime 
 and spiritual duty, in short, living, as it were, in it, and 
 so filled with the consciousness of immortality and so 
 strong in the link between God and man, that without 
 any affected stoicism, without being insensible to pain, 
 rather perhaps from a nervous temperament acutely feel- 
 ing it, he yet has a happiness wholly independent of it. 
 It is impossible not to be thrilled with an admiration 
 that elevates while it awes you, in reading that solemn 
 'Dedication of himself to God,*" and so forth. "All 
 that is very well said," quoth the captain, "but it did 
 not strike me. What I have seen in this book is cour- 
 age. Here is a poor creature rolling on the carpet with 
 agony, from childhood to death tortured by a mysterious 
 and incurable malady, a malady that is described as an 
 internal apparatus of torture, and who does by his 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 295 
 
 heroism more than bear it, he puts it out of its power 
 to afflict him, and though (here is the passage) ' his 
 appointment by day and by night was incessant pain, 
 yet high enjoyment was notwithstanding the law of his 
 existence.' Robert Hall reads me a lesson, me, an old 
 soldier who thought myself above taking lessons in 
 courage at least. And as I came to that passage when 
 in the sharp paroxysms before death he says, * I have 
 not complained, have I, sir? And I won't complain.' 
 When I came to that passage, I started up and cried, 
 * Roland de Caxton, thou hast been a coward and, an 
 thou hadst thy deserts, thou hadst been cashiered, 
 broken and drummed out of the regiment long ago.'" 
 The old soldier was right. That was true heroism — true 
 gentlemanly courage, the courage of the Christian, 
 showing, as the Guesses at Truth says, that the Christian 
 is God Almighty's Gentleman. That courage which 
 will take up pain and by devotion to duty put it out of 
 the power of pain to affect the man, to disturb the 
 serenity of his inward peace, or imbitter the sweetness 
 of his soul's influences — there is no higher courage 
 known than that. Every Gentleman needs this courage 
 too, every day of his life, although he may not, like 
 Hall, lie on his back on the floor by the day and the 
 week, racked with agony intense. The thousand 
 petty annoyances and discouragements, which like 
 skirmishers beset and harass the soldier of duty every 
 day, which tempt him to parley with the enemy, to 
 betray his Leader's cause, to swerve from the right path 
 or to turn his back ignominously, these require the same 
 steadiness, the same enthusiasm, the same fearlessness, 
 the same devotion, which sustain him on the battlefield 
 when the storm of fire and death sweep round. He 
 who surrenders to the guerrillas of life, the sneers, the 
 taunts, the sarcasms of the superficial or the unprin- 
 
296 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 cipled, is a greater coward, a greater because a more 
 inexcusable coward, than he who flinches before the 
 tempest and hail of persecution and martyrdom, and 
 he deserves, as Roland dc Caxton expressed it, "to be 
 cashiered, broken and drummed out of the regiment" 
 of God's Gentlemen. 
 
 The other primary quality of a Gentleman, according 
 to Barrow, is Courtesy. Originally the word meant the 
 manners of one accustomed to court life, the affability, 
 condescension, gentleness and deferential urbanity of a 
 courtier. But now, as Milton says, it 
 
 " Oft is sooner found in lowly sheds 
 With smoaky rafters, than in tap'stry halls, 
 In courts of princes where it first was named. 
 And yet is most pretended." 
 
 Looking from its original to its present signification, 
 let us glance at some of its features. True courtesy shows 
 itself in a delicate appreciation of the feelings of others. 
 It exchanges positions and conditions with them, enters 
 into their symptoms; their needs, their preferences, their 
 antipathies, their prejudices, even their idolatries. It 
 does not demand instant and absolute conformity to its 
 own standard. It is not a stiff, unbending perpendicu- 
 lar to which everything must make itself parallel and 
 equal. The courteous man always interprets the words 
 and deeds of others according to the intent rather than 
 the form. He clothes the awkwardness, the untoward- 
 ness, it may be the impropriety of the expression, with 
 the beauty of the thought, which is the soul of it. Feel- 
 ing is sacred with him, except when it stands in the 
 way of duty. He would no more lay violent hands on 
 another's self-respect, than a devout Israelite would have 
 violated the Ark of the Covenant. His heart is stung 
 tenfold more by the wrong which he unwittingly inflicts 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 29/ 
 
 than by that which he receives. His air never says : 
 "I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my mouth, let no 
 dog bark. ' ' You never feel hke saying to him : * * Excuse 
 me, my Lord, for stepping on your shadow!" Nor 
 yet like saying : ' * Who has made thee better than me. " 
 His whole conduct testifies the profoundest reverence 
 for manhood. The affinities are more pronounced than 
 the antagonisms. The universal overshadows the par- 
 ticular. Without contracting his freedom, he does not in- 
 flate his individuality. There are some who spend most of 
 their time in cultivating wens and warts. They are proud 
 of their deformities and infirmities, and they meet with 
 a class of sympathizers who fully envy them the posses- 
 sions of their distinctions as marks of superiority. 
 '* I'm sure, sister, '^ says Mrs. Pallet of the Dodson fam- 
 ily, ''it's a nice sort o' man as Mrs. Sutton has left her 
 money to, for he's troubled with the asthmy, and goes 
 to bed every night at eight o'clock. He told me about 
 it himself one Sunday, as free as could be, when 
 he came to our church. He wears a hare-skin on his 
 chest and has a trembling in his talk, quite a gentleman 
 sort o' man." The Pallet idea of the Gentleman is more 
 common than many suppose, but it won't do. The 
 true gentleman is a healthy man. He does not parade 
 his defects as virtues. He does not thrust his distorted 
 or puffed out individualism on society as much as to 
 say: *'This is the kind of man I am, and this is the 
 kind I mean to be. If you don't like me, get out of 
 the way, I have the inalienable right to be myself and 
 nobody else." The true Gentleman makes you think 
 more of the man than of this or that part of him. 
 Thus most, if not all, are at home with him. He is 
 fundamentally impartial, equal in his courtesies. He is 
 not to one June, expanding in bloom, radiant with cheer, 
 and gushing wi.th sweetness, while to another just as 
 
298 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 good he Is a January, ice-bound, grim, freezing. Of 
 course he has his preferences and his antipathies. But he 
 is not their slave. Their tyranny never compels him to 
 be unfair, unkind, ungenerous. Like the poet he is 
 "dowered with hate of hate, with scorn of scorn, with 
 love of love." 
 
 He is true, simple, sine plica, without a fold. He 
 does not live a double life. His courtesies are not as- 
 sumed. They are not Saul's armor on the body of 
 David. They sit easy on him because they are a part 
 of himself They are the Hving language of a soul full 
 of all princely, generous and royal magnanimities, a soul 
 above the narowness and shallowness and littleness of a 
 shackled, servile condition, or of a false, artifical life, or 
 of a gross material career. They are the flowing de- 
 velopment of a free life. Yet he is not a bundle of 
 manners. His mores, manners, are not his inoivSy morals. 
 The two are not divorced. His manhood is not melted 
 into courtesies. The flowers outside are the bloom of 
 the granite-dust ; the rock still lies at their roots. Beauty 
 in his character is the bride of strength. Only if either 
 has not yet found its mate, it is strength. Is grace want- 
 ing? It is a pity. Is strength wanting? It is a s'hame. 
 Dr. Johnson was often harsh, inconsiderate, overbearing, 
 bearish, yet the world has always accepted him as, after 
 all, a gentleman. Why ? Because beneath that shaggy 
 outside, behind those rough words, beat a heart as ten- 
 der and loving as any woman's, yet withal as independ- 
 ent as a king's. He picked up the wretches whom he 
 found in the stree^, fed them out of his half empty 
 cupboard, clothed them out of his scanty wardrobe, gave 
 them money out of his purse in which, like Timon's, it 
 was "deepest winter, "and sympathy out of his heart 
 where brightest summer reigned. The model gentleman 
 of the mode in that day was Lord Chesterfield, whose 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 299 
 
 letters to his son were long the Code of Fashion, the 
 manual of the gentleman, made, not born, and perhaps 
 may be yet. Lord Chesterfield had always treated 
 Johnson with cold disdain and neglect. But when he 
 heard that Johnson was about to publish his Dictionary 
 he began to flatter and to compliment him, writing ar- 
 ticles in his praise, hoping in this way to secure the 
 Dedication of his great work to himself. Johnson wrote 
 him a letter in which he said : " Seven years, my Lord, 
 have now past since I waited in your outward rooms or 
 was repulsed from your door ; during which time I have 
 been pushing on my work through difficulties of which 
 it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to 
 the verge of publication without one act of assistance, 
 one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. 
 Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron 
 before. ■ . . Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks 
 with unconcern on a man struggling for Hfe in the wa- 
 ter, and when he has reached ground encumbers him 
 with help ? The notice which you have been pleased to 
 take of my labor, had it been early, had been kind, but 
 it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot en- 
 joy it ; till I am solitary and cannot impart it ; till I am 
 known and do not want it. I hope it is no cynical as- 
 perity not to confess obligation when no benefit has 
 been received, or to be unwilling that the public should 
 consider me as owing that to a patron which providence 
 has enabled me to do for myself." Who was the 
 greater gentleman — the courtly, polished, heartless man 
 of the world, ' ' the glass of Fashion and the mould of 
 form," whose word was law and whose favor would 
 have been a fortune, or the poor but grandly proud 
 Dictionary maker, who would not barter away his self- 
 respect and honor for the kingdom which lay in the 
 smile of a Chesterfield ? 
 
300 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 In close connection with the traits just described 
 stand self-reliance and presence of mind. The gentle- 
 man stands firm on his own foundations. This implies 
 that he has foundations to stand on. *^Well," said a 
 conceited fellow once to Dr. Emmons, ** every tub must 
 stand on its own bottom." "Yes, yes," said the Doctor, 
 "but what will those tubs do that have no bottom?" 
 The gentleman needs no crutches. He stands and moves 
 in the strength and dignity of his own manhood. He is 
 master of the situation. He is not in haste to "rush 
 in when angels fear to tread." He does not fall Into 
 the blunder of certain upstarts in the Apostle James' 
 day, who took a higher seat than was becoming to them 
 and were commanded to come down again. If he is bid- 
 den to take a lower seat "some one blundered," but 
 not he. His humility, which is an inahenable trait of 
 his character, teaches him his place and, his powers. It 
 causes moreover that he is not always thinking of him- 
 self and imagining that everybody else is thinking of 
 him. This is the important difference between him and 
 the snob. The latter has an intense consciousness of 
 his own importance. Most generally he enjoys the 
 monopoly of the conviction. Sometimes a more merito- 
 rious person than the snob, who has many of the ele- 
 ments of the true gentleman, is painfully lacking in the 
 power of self-forgetfulness. In consequence he is easily 
 embarrassed, unbalanced, thrown off his centre. He 
 curses daily his misfortune, his bad luck. His good 
 thoughts never come at the right nick of time. A hap- 
 py idea strikes him, but, alas ! it is five minutes too late. 
 He is lacking in the gentlemanly quality — presence of 
 mind. He is not exactly what is called absent-minded. 
 Many a gentleman is that. You have heard of the man 
 who, while out visiting a friend, was overtaken by a 
 storm which raged so furiously that his host insisted on 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 30I 
 
 his spending the night with him. During the evening, 
 the storm raging violently, he was found to be missing, 
 but presently he reappeared dripping from top to toe, 
 looking like a dog about the paws and like a weeping 
 willow about the head. On being asked, "where on 
 earth have you been?" he quietly answered, "I have 
 been home to tell my wife it was such a bad night I 
 should not return." That man, I say, was most indubi- 
 tably a perfect gentleman, the ladies being judges. But 
 he was a little absent-minded ! But by presence of 
 mind I mean that constant self-posession which prevents 
 a man's being taken by surprise and having the enemy 
 thundering through his camp while he is half asleep and 
 half-dressed. 
 
 Dr. Brown, in Spare Hours, calls it having the out- 
 posts always awake, and compares it to sleeping with 
 your pistol under your pillow and it on full cock. He 
 gives an instance which is worth quoting as an illustra- 
 tion of the dependence of this quahty on the fact of 
 gentlemanhood. I shall give the Doctor's own inimitable 
 version. " Dr. Reid of Peebles . . . a man of great force 
 of character and a true Philip, a lover of horses, saw 
 one fair day a black horse, entire thoroughbred. The 
 groom asked a low price and would answer no ques- • 
 tions. At the close of the Fair the Doctor bought 
 him amid the derision of his friends. Next morning he 
 rode him up the road, came home after a long round 
 and had never been better carried. This went on for 
 some weeks; this fine creature was without a fault. 
 One Sunday morning he was posting up by Neidpath at 
 a great pace, the country people trooping into town to 
 church. Opposite the fine old castle the thoroughbred 
 stood stock still, and it needed all the Doctor's horse- 
 manship to counteract the law of projectiles ; he did, 
 and sat still and not only gave no sign of urging the 
 
302 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 horse, but rather intimated that it was his particular 
 desire that he should stop. He sat still a full hour, his 
 friends making an excellent joke of it, and he declining 
 of course all interference. At the end of the hour, 
 Black Duke, as he was called, turned one ear forward, 
 then the other, looked aside, shook himself and moved 
 on, his master intimating that this was exactly what he 
 wished ; and from that day until his death some fifteen 
 years after, never did these two friends allude to this 
 little circumstance, and it was never repeated, though 
 it turned out that he had killed his two men previously." 
 This certainly shows, as Dr. B. says, great presence of 
 mind, but does it not show something else ? Would 
 any other than a perfect gentleman have treated his 
 horse that way, humoring his whims , entering so thor- 
 oughly into the horse's feelings, and deferring so cour- 
 teously to his good pleasure? Didn't the horse feel 
 that he was treated like a gentleman, and wasn't the 
 logical inference that he who bestrode him was a gen- 
 tleman ? And wasn't that a fine gentlemanly trait in 
 each that neither ever after alluded to the little circum- 
 stance? Suppose the brute in the case to have been a 
 biped and not a quadruped, would not the result have 
 been the same ? Is it not perfectly evident therefore, 
 that to be perfectly master of the situation, a man must 
 have that clear instantaneous perception of all the ne- 
 cessities of an emergency, which only true gentleman- 
 hood, that is, entire self-control and a delicate appre- 
 ciation of all the surrounding forces, and gentleness 
 combined with firmness in managing those forces, can 
 give? The perfect gentleman is then at once self-pos- 
 sessed, self-reliant, and self- forgetful. When Robert 
 Burns came to Edinburgh, fresh from the plow and 
 the sod, and was introduced as the lion of the season 
 to the most select circles of Auld Reekie, he took 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. ' 303 
 
 his place at once among the first gentlemen of Scotland. 
 He charmed all by* the nobility of his demeanor, the 
 purity of his speech, the exquisite propriety of his 
 manners. Whence had he learned it all ? Not in 
 school, not in fine society, for he had seen but little of 
 either. But his teachers had been diviner ones than 
 books, or school, or society. That gentle heart which 
 grieved over the "wee mousie" whose habitation had 
 been upturned and overthrown by the plough, the self- 
 respect and self-reliance which ring in every line of "A 
 man's a man for a that," his ''pith o' sense and pride 
 o' worth," his self-unconsciousness, his native courtesy 
 combined with intellect and genius, these they were 
 which gave the ploughboy of Ayrshire the mien and 
 bearing of a nobleman. 
 
 The gentleman must not be a drudge. By this I do 
 not mean that he should be a lazy good-for-nothing. 
 Neither rank, nor blood, nor office, nor money, nor 
 reputation, nor polish gives any man exemption from 
 the universal Law of Labor. The miserable fallacy 
 that to be a gentleman is to have nothing to do, has 
 too long been the curse of those who aspire to the 
 name. He of the Silver Spoon, whose sole business 
 in life is to be fed, to be waited on, to consume his 
 blank hundreds or blank thousands a year — the least 
 said of him the better. The Highest whom the world 
 has known came not to be ministered into, but to min- 
 ister. " All true work," says a well-known writer, *Ms 
 sacred. In all true work, were it but true hard labor, 
 there is something of divineness. Labor wide as the 
 earth has its summit in heaven. Sweat of the brow, 
 and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the 
 heart, which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton 
 meditations, all sciences, all spoken epics, all acted 
 Heroisms, Martyrdoms up to that ' agony of bloody 
 
304 LEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 sweat, which all men have called divine. . . . And who 
 art thou that braggcst of thy type of idleness, com- 
 placently showest thy bright equipages, sumptuous 
 cushions, apphances for the folding of the hands for 
 more sleep? Looking up, looking down, around, be- 
 hind, before, discernest thou if it be not in Mayfair 
 alone, any idle hero, saint, God, or even devil ? Not a 
 vestige of one. In the Heavens, in the Earth, in the 
 waters under the earth, is none like to thee. One 
 monster there is in the world — the idle man." *' Gen- 
 tlemen have to learn," says Ruskin, ''that it is no part 
 of their duty or privilege to live on other people's toil. 
 They have to learn that there is no degradation in the 
 hardest manual or the humblest servile labor when it is 
 honest; but that there is degradation, and that deep, in 
 extravagance, in bribery, in indolence, in pride, ia 
 taking places they are not fit for, or in coining places 
 for which there is no need. It does not disgrace a gen- 
 tleman to become an errand boy or a day laborer, but 
 it disgraces him to become a knave or a thief, and 
 knaving is not the less knaving because it involves 
 large interests, nor theft the less theft because it is 
 countenanced by usage or accompanied by failure in 
 undertaken duty. ... On the other hand, lower orders 
 and all orders have to learn, that every vicious habit 
 and chronic disease communicates itself by descent, 
 and that by purity of birth the entire system of the 
 human body and soul may be gradually elevated, or 
 by recklessness of birth degraded, until there shall be 
 as much difference between the well-bred and the ill- 
 bred human creature, whatever pains be taken in 
 their education, as between a wolf hound and the vilest 
 mongrel cur." If all work is noble, then* the workman 
 is to-day's nobleman. The chivalry of the Nineteenth 
 Century is the chivalry of Labor. Mrs. Browning has 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 30^ 
 
 said: ^'The earth is all too gray for chivalry." Yes! 
 for the chivalry of the Lance and the Tournament. 
 The world is too gray or rather too mature for that, 
 ''Being," says Goethe, ''is ever a glorious birth into 
 higher Being." 
 
 Chivalry has been transformed. A new and nobler 
 chivalry has dawned upon the world — the chivalry of 
 the Plough and the Loom, the chivalry of the Pen and 
 the Press, the chivalry of Books. Our Knights Tem- 
 plars are our Mechanics and Manufacturers ; our Grand 
 Masters are our Teachers and our Authors. The 
 Knighthood of the age is that of the strong arm and 
 the cunning hand and the vigorous brain. The ring of 
 the blacksmith's anvil has as much poetry in it as the 
 ring of the old crusader's shield. The sweat which 
 drops in the newly turned furrow is nobler than the 
 blood which stained the field of gold. Is your vocation 
 honorable? Is it useful? Be proud of it as any old 
 knight of his order. If you rightly and worthily 
 fulfill it, and faithfully cultivate the duties which grow 
 out of it, and all the graces which adorn it, you are 
 more truly a gentleman in the sight of God than if 
 every drop which rolls in your veins were the blood of 
 a Percy or a Plantagenet. This war has been called by 
 some, who instigated it, a gentleman's war, a war of 
 the gentlemen of the South against churls. Very well, so 
 be it! It is a gentleman's war, a war for God'sidtdi of a 
 gentleman, a free, self-owning, self-respecting, self-gov- 
 erning Workman, against the Devil's idea of a gentle- 
 man — the Do-nothing ! Chivalry ? Yes ! there is chiv- 
 alry on the one side or the other, chivalry of a certain 
 kind on both sides ; but on the one side it is the old 
 effete chivalry of the Past, on the other side the young 
 blooming chivalry of the Future, the chivalry of the 
 Millennium, when the highest title known on earth will 
 
306 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 be Worker. The gentleman, I say, is the worklngman. 
 But however hard and however faithfully he may labor 
 he is never the drudge. What do I mean ? I mean that 
 he does not carry into his work a menial spirit, the 
 spirit of the hack, of the galley-slave. He will never 
 allow himself to become a wheel whirhng around and 
 around, without ever advancing. He will never be con- 
 tent to work drearily, mechanically, like a horse in the 
 tread mill, without ever asking himself, ''What is to 
 become of all this work?" Labor will be to him a 
 means, not an end. He will not be satisfied until his 
 work becomes in some way a blessing. This is the es- 
 sential difference between the Drudge and the Gentle- 
 man. The former just works, the latter is a Doer. The 
 former goes through his work as the plow goes through 
 the sod — driven through it; the work of the latter 
 comes out of him like the song out of the bird, a joy 
 to the bird and to the universe of God. You have 
 seen a man sawing wood. Rather a curious machine 
 on the whole. Saw — saw — saw — all day long ; a saw 
 with a man behind it. Have you ever seen Ole Bull 
 playing the violin ? Holding it as tenderly, embracing 
 it as lovingly, leaning toward it as sweetly as though it 
 were his bosom bride, his tall form swaying gracefully 
 like one of the pines of his own doorway, his right 
 arm sweeping those mystic strings with the magnetic 
 bow, he draws out the deep impassioned tone, the 
 weird a^olian wail, the melting bird-like warble, the 
 thrilling strain and stirring chord — whence? Out of 
 the depths of his own musical soul. The violin? You 
 don't think of it. It is lost in the man. The magician 
 and his instrument are one in the enchantment of sense 
 and soul, which he throws around you. Like Ole 
 Bull's violin is work to a Godlike worker. It becomes 
 a part of himself and he draws his soul's harmonies out 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 307 
 
 of it. Saw — saw — saw — that is the drudge. Music — 
 enchantment — heaven — that is the artist; and every 
 true worker, every one who works for the soul and not 
 for the body, for spiritual ends and not for physical, for 
 the hereafter and not for the now, every such worker 
 is an artist, though his work be only the sawing of 
 wood. And the moment he ceases to be a drudge he 
 becomes a gentleman, although like God's first gentle- 
 man, his implement be a spade. The curse of Ameri- 
 can business, of American work, is that there is too 
 much drudgery in it. We dig and we delve, we 
 buy and we sell, we hammer and we plow, we scrib- 
 ble and we travel, we press heaven and earth and the 
 nethermost abyss into our service ; we toil like Hercu- 
 les, we kill hydras and human lions and pythons, we 
 level mountains and fill up the valleys and create States, 
 we would think nothing of contracting to build Rome 
 in a day or of constructing a Continent in a week. Old 
 World fogies and Old World geologists to the contrary 
 notwithstanding, but it is the most gigantic drudgery. 
 There is too little freedom, enjoyment, elevation, inspi- 
 ration, about it. It is time we rise above this slavery 
 to toil and learn the art of working. We need to learn 
 how to rest. The man who works the most is he who 
 rests the most. But the secret of rest escapes nine out 
 of ten. The art of Recreation is to many aTost or an 
 undiscovered art. They have not the slightest idea of 
 the way to recreate their wasted energies. These are arts 
 indispensable to the perfect gentleman, which we must 
 cultivate more diligently and successfully if, as I trust 
 we do, we aspire to become a nation of gentlemen. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to name in addition as traits of 
 the Gentleman, Magnanimity, Honor, Unselfishness. 
 In nothing were the benefits of Chivalry more manifest 
 than in the encouragement which it afforded to the 
 
3o8 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 development of these virtues. Compare the conduct of 
 the Black Prince toward a vanquished adversary, with 
 the wrath of a barbarian Achilles. Under the walls of 
 Calais, Edward fought hand to hand with a French 
 Knight and overcame him. Afterward he entertained 
 him as a guest, and when the supper was over, took the . 
 chaplet of pearls from his own brow and placed it upon 
 that of his adversary, saying: "Well hast thou fought, 
 Sir Eustace ! Wear these for my sake, and accept thy free- 
 dom as a token of my good-will." But there is a higher 
 magnanimity than that. It is not so hard to be mag- 
 nanimous to one you have vanquished. But can you be 
 rnagnanimous to one who has vanquished you ? If so, 
 then indeed you are a Gentleman. 
 
 Honor is no less indispensable ; superiority to all that 
 is mean, underhanded, tortuous in policy, to all double 
 dealing in speech or in practice, to all untruthfulness, 
 treachery, deceit. The Gentleman, like Arthur, is a 
 
 "King who iionors his own word 
 As if it were his God's." 
 
 Not only does he shrink from doing that which he 
 feels would be dishonorable when others are looking on, 
 but when he is alone, for he preserves his honor toward 
 God and not merely toward men. He lives "as ever 
 in his great Taskmaster's eye." 
 
 And to crown the whole, not a stain of selfishness is 
 allowed to rot on his soil. This indeed is the sum of 
 all that has been said. Love to all, pure, disinterested, 
 ever growing, will make the gentleman, whatever natural 
 aptitudes or acquired accomphshments he may be want- 
 ing ; whereas, he who thinks first and only of himself, 
 can never be a Gentleman, though he have the manners 
 of a Chesterfield, and though his pedigree go back to 
 the Flood. The dying Sidney passing the cup of water 
 
THE GENTLEMAN. 
 
 309 
 
 brought to himself to the wounded soldier at his side, 
 saying : ' ' Thy necessity is greater than mine, " will never 
 be forgotten while the world endures, and not unworthy 
 to go down with it to the remotest generations is the 
 memory of our own gallant Col. Fred. Jones, who in 
 his dying agonies sent away his physician, saying, 
 " Never mind me, look after my poor men." Heroes — 
 Gentlemen both ! Neither can we forget as higher and 
 diviner than all, one great Exemplar, who combined in 
 himself these and all the perfections of complete man- 
 hood, who sought not to please himself, in whom was no 
 guile, who forgave his enemies with his dying breath, who 
 did nothing out of season or out of place, who won all, 
 subdued all in reverence to him, who was and is meek 
 and lowly in heart. If to be a Christian is to be like 
 Christ, no one who aspires to be a Gentleman need blush 
 to be a Christian. 
 
XII. 
 
 THE WELSH PULPIT. 
 
 I. FROM HOWEL HARRIS TO ROBERT ROBERTS (cLYNOG). 
 
 A WRITER ill the London Christian Spectator has said : 
 * ' Welsh preaching is as great a mystery to an EngHsh- 
 man as the language ; he is not able to analyze it, nor 
 to put himself in the place of the hearer, and to judge 
 for himself of its power. Yet he is assured, on good 
 authority, that it is immeasurably superior to the best 
 English preaching ; and remembering that the English 
 pulpit can boast of a Hall, a Chalmers, and a Melville, 
 he begins to suppose that Welsh preaching must be 
 superhuman — something to which the angels would like 
 to listen, if Welsh were but the language of Paradise. 
 It can not be translated ; it can not be reproduced in an 
 English form ; the beauty, the inexplicable charm van- 
 ishes if you attempt to convey it through any other 
 medium." Struggling as best we may, then, with our 
 limitations, let us endeavor to reproduce as vividly as 
 possible some of the leading representatives of the 
 Welsh pulpit. Having done this, let us seek to enter, 
 in some measure, into the secret of its power, and to 
 describe some of its prominent characteristics. 
 
 The movement which gave to Welsh preaching its 
 distinctive shape and character, and which invested the 
 Welsh pulpit with its significance was Methodism. That 
 movement began in Oxford a little over a century and 
 a half ago, in a little circle of devout young men, who 
 (310) 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 3II 
 
 associated themselves together for religious improve- 
 ment : Wesley, and afterward Whitfield, being of the 
 number. At first a movement for the cultivation of 
 stricter methods of holy living, it assumed ere long the 
 character and the proportions of a deep and wide-spread 
 religious revival. About 1735 the movement spread 
 into Wales, through the agency of a young man named 
 Howell Harris, of Trevecca, South Wales, who had 
 gone to Oxford to prepare for orders in the Church of 
 England ; but soon becoming disgusted with the preva- 
 lent laxity and immorality, he left the university and re- 
 turned to Wales. He engaged in teaching a parish 
 school. He could not limit himself, however, to the 
 duties of the school-room. The Word was as fire burn- 
 ing in his bones, and he began to exhort his neighbors. 
 Presently he extended his visitation to the surrounding 
 villages and towns. His course being distasteful to the 
 parish authorities, he was put out of the school. He 
 now resolved to devote himself to the business of preach- 
 ing. Three times he sought for Episcopal ordination, 
 and three times he was refused. He felt that no course 
 was now open for him but to seek his commission from 
 God ; and thus invested to go forth as a preacher of re- 
 pentance. Like John the Baptist, he was "made with- 
 out fear." He had an iron frame, an eagle eye, and a 
 tongue of fire. He was, as John Wesley said of him, 
 "a powerful speaker both by nature and by grace." He 
 seized upon all available opportunities to address the 
 multitudes, preaching, wherever he could get a hearing, 
 to all sorts of gatherings, in church-yards, at fairs, in 
 highways and byways, and always with tremendous suc- 
 cess. His fame spread through the principality ; and he 
 traveled up and down the land preaching to numerous 
 multitudes, so that thousands were brought under con- 
 viction, He wa^ violently persecuted. Again and again 
 
312 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 he escaped, with his hfe as by a miracle. His autobiog- 
 raphy is a grand, thrilHng record of a noble, heroic, 
 consecrated life. Like John the Baptist again, he was 
 the morning star of the evangelical reformation in his 
 country, and he worthily heads the list of modern Welsh 
 preachers. 
 
 A still greater preacher of the same period was Daniel 
 Rowlands, of Llangeitho. He was a clergyman of the 
 Church of England, converted after ordination, at the 
 age of 22. At once he threw his whole soul into the 
 preaching of a living Gospel. He was ''the first of the 
 Welsh clergy to be called a Methodist." His fame as a 
 preacher spread far and wide ; and it was not long be- 
 fore the insignificant country village in which he preached 
 became the Mecca of the Principality. Thousands 
 thronged there from all parts of Wales, North as well 
 as South. His church was the scene of successive Pen- 
 tecostal outpourings of the Spirit of God ; and the mul- 
 titudes who took their pilgrimage to hear him, returned 
 singing the songs of Zion, which echoed and re-echoed 
 among the hills on their way home. His personal ap- 
 pearance was commanding— a broad, high, full forehead, 
 arching eyebrows, piercing eyes, a wide mouth, thin 
 lips, and resolute look. He would generally leave to 
 others the conduct of the preliminary services, although 
 his own conduct of them was deeply impressive. One 
 of the mightiest of the Llangeitho revivals is said to 
 have broken out during his reading of the Litany. 
 When the time for the sermon had come, he would en- 
 ter the church at a door in the rear, step into the pul- 
 pit with a wild and agitated look, give out one verse of 
 a psalm, read his text, and begin his sermon with a low 
 voice and rapid utterance, betraying strong feeling and 
 some degree of trepidation. Before long he begins to 
 gain more possession of himself; and here I quote the 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 313 
 
 graphic description of another:* '' He speaks more de- 
 hberately, and with more vigor. He warms up as he 
 proceeds, and the congregation shares in his glow, until 
 a thrill of tender emotion pervades the assembly. He 
 has finished his first observation ; he lowers his voice, 
 shakes himself on one side, and begins upon his second 
 observation. He begins this again somewhat slowly and 
 deliberately ; but very soon he speaks more rapidly, 
 with great fluency and extraordinary power; his eyes 
 flash through the church ; his voice is raised ; his feel- 
 ings are set on fire, the people catch the fire ; tears 
 course down their cheeks ; the warm ' Amens ' pour over 
 their lips, preacher and people are in happy possession 
 of each other. He finishes his second observation. He 
 descends gradually again to the quiet deliberative manner 
 which he seems to regard as fitting for each new begin- 
 ning. And we have heard it remarked more than once 
 by his old hearers, that he never appeared to better ad- 
 vantage as a speaker than when thus descending from 
 the emotional exaltation, to which he and his congrega- 
 tion had been raised, to that deliberateness which gave 
 him a better starting point for another ascent. He was 
 never seen to tumble down, but descended easily and 
 calmly, retaining all his energy for the next ascension. 
 And now he begins to rise again, and to carry up his 
 audience with him. Their feelings become more exalt- 
 ed, more intense, more ardent. The 'Amens' come 
 oftener and louder : shouts of ' DiolcJi ! ' ' Bendigedig ! ' 
 ^Gogoniant! ' ('Thanks ! ' ' Blessed ! ' 'Glory ! ') are heard 
 in every corner of the house, and the whole congrega- 
 tion, in a delightful frame, is tasting of the joy of sal- 
 vation. 
 
 "*Dr. Owen Thomas, in his Historical Sketch of the Welsh Pulpit, 
 published in his Life of Rev. John Jones, Tal y sarn, to which I am 
 especially indebted for valuable material respecting the early Welsh 
 Preachers. 
 
314 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 " But the preacher checks himself again ; he descends 
 once more, if anything more gently and beautifully than 
 before, and he gives his hearers a few seconds' respite 
 that they may come down with him. But the end is 
 not yet. He starts again, and mounts up higher, higher, 
 HIGHER. And now there is something awful about 
 his appearance. His eyes are aflame, his voice quivers, 
 his face shines ; his whole body seems to be inspired ; 
 that great soul pours itself forth, a torrent of living elo- 
 quence — thoughts of fire, setting on fire the whole con- 
 gregation, and kindling, strange experiences of rejoicing 
 and praise. His voice is now lost in the shoutings and 
 songs of the multitude, and in the tumult which follows 
 he ends his sermon, nobody knows just where or how, 
 and hastens away to rest, the throng remaining to shout 
 and sing for hours." 
 
 I have given this passage, not only as a description of 
 Mr. Rowlands, but as a vivid illustration of the law of 
 movement and climax in Welsh preaching, to which we 
 shall have frequent occasion to refer. 
 
 The description just given presents the preacher of 
 Llangeitho, of course, at his best; but the occasions 
 when he reaches that altitude were by no means unfre- 
 quent. The testimony to his pulpit power is strong 
 and universal. Howel Harris, who had often heard 
 Whitfield and Wesley, said of him: *'His powder and 
 gifts surpassed any one I have ever known. God is so 
 manifestly with him that I believe the old dragon trembles 
 wherever he goes." Another eminent minister, Rev. 
 D. Jones, Llangana, a correspondent of Lady Hunting- 
 ton, said in a letter: " Unquestionably he is the greatest 
 preacher in Europe." 
 
 One of Mr. Rowlands' contemporaries, and a man of 
 whom he himself entertained an extraordinary opinion, 
 was Dafydd Morris, Lledrod, He possessed a most 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 315 
 
 wonderful voice ; and he was, besides, a preacher of 
 great originality, and at times of tremendous power. 
 One of his noted sermons was called ''The Sermon of 
 the Great Loss" {Pregcth y Golled Fawj), the effects 
 accompanying which were most remarkable. 
 
 He was eclipsed, however, by the greater celebrity 
 of his son, Ebenezer Morris, Twrgwyn. He was by 
 no means as careful a composer as Mr. Rowlands; the 
 constant requisitions for his services made this impos- 
 sible. He preached, as a rule, three times every Sun- 
 day, and every day of the week except Monday and 
 Saturday. But such was the dignity of his presence, 
 the grandeur of his character, the loftiness of his per- 
 sonality, and the impressiveness with which he presented 
 the truth, that very few have ever surpassed him in 
 pulpit power. Rev. John Elias testified of him, that he 
 had never heard of any one to compare with him, and 
 that it would pay to hold an Association every week, so as 
 to get Ebenezer Morris to preach in it. Like his father, 
 he too had an incomparable voice. Dr. William Rees 
 once asked Dr. Owen Thomas if he remembered Eben- 
 ezer Morris. ''No," was the answer. "Then you 
 have never heard VOICE. " He had also a most wonder- 
 ful smile. He was preaching once at the Carnarvon- 
 shire Association from the words : "It is the blood 
 (Welsh version : this blood) that maketh an atonement 
 for the soul." When he came to speak of the salva- 
 tion through this blood, having reached the climax of 
 his argument, he began to shout the words, this blood, 
 in Welsh : y gwaed hwn, y givaed hwn, y gwaed hwn, 
 Y GWAED HWN, six or seven times, raising his 
 voice higher and higher with each repetition of the 
 phrase, while his face was lit up with an angelic smile, 
 the whole effect beincr indescribable and never to be 
 
 o 
 
 forgotten. ' ' That smile, " said an eminent minister who 
 
3l6 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 was there, Michael Roberts, Pwllheh, ''was what slew 
 men." 
 
 A remarkable constellation of preachers appeared in 
 Carnarvonshire, North Wales, during the latter half of 
 the eighteenth century. One of these was Mr. John 
 Jones (Edeyrn,) who had been converted under the 
 preaching of Dafydd Morris, and who came to be one 
 of the most eloquent and powerful preachers of the day. 
 Dr. Thomas states it as a probable fact that for twenty- 
 five years in succession he was one of the "Ten o'clock 
 preachers" at the Bala Association, the highest compli- 
 ment a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist preacher could en- 
 joy. He was noted for the combination, not uncommon 
 in the Welsh pulpit, of the most sparkling wit with the 
 most Impressive earnestness. 
 
 Evan Richardson, of Carnarvon, was a genuine 
 *' son of consolation. " His tongue dropped honey ; his 
 preaching was most tender, gracious and winning. 
 Once when John Elias was shaking his congregation 
 with the Sinai thunder of his eloquence, a man was 
 heard to cry aloud in the agony of his soul, "Oh, for 
 five minutes of Evan Richardson ! " He was a teacher 
 and a fair scholar ; and an interesting fact respecting him 
 is that on learning that some of his quondam pupils in 
 the ministry had learned Hebrew, he, when in his fifth 
 decade, applied himself to the study of that language, 
 and made no mean proficiency in it. 
 
 The most brilliant star of the group, however, and 
 one of the most remarkable speakers who have ever 
 appeared In the pulpit, was Robert Roberts, Clynog. 
 He died at the early age of forty, but the impression 
 he made was something marvelous. He was deformed 
 and sickly in his appearance; but his singular intensity, 
 his whole frame trembling with the passion of his 
 theme, his unrivaled power of expressing varied feel- 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 31/ 
 
 ings by look, voice, feature, and gesture, the preter- 
 natural lightning of his eye, his extraordinary skill in 
 word-painting, made him one of the most remarkable 
 orators of the Welsh pulpit. On one occasion, when, 
 to use the graphic language of an old deacon who heard 
 him, ' ' heaven was pouring itself down on his head and 
 the heads of his hearers," Mr. Roberts seemed unable 
 any longer to contain the fullness of the glory which 
 overwhelmed him, and suddenly turning his face to the 
 wall back of the pulpit, he exclaimed: "Hold, Lord! 
 remember that I am flesh ; remember that I can not hold 
 too much ! " and then, facing the congregation, he shout- 
 ed at the highest pitch of a voice of remarkable range, 
 " Gogoniant (Glory) for the hope of a morning when I 
 shall hold my full of Deity, without cracking forever ! " 
 
 Two school-boys once went to hear him preach, one 
 of whom, named Elias Parry, was familiar with Welsh 
 preaching, the - other not. When Mr. Roberts had 
 reached the climax of his discourse, the whole assembly 
 being electrified; some fainting, some crying out, and 
 the preacher, with a voice like God's trumpet, thrilling 
 the place through and through, the young, strange lad 
 turned to Elias Parry and asked him, his face pale as a 
 corpse, *'Is he a man or an angel?" ''Why," said 
 Parry, somewhat roguishly, ''an angel, didn't you 
 know ? " "No, indeed, I didn't know. Great Heaven ! 
 but how much better an angel preaches than a man, 
 doesn't he? " 
 
 On one occasion he was describing the perils to 
 which sinners are exposed, comparing their situations to 
 that of men amusing themselves on a bar on the sea- 
 shore during the ebbing of the tide. Absorbed in pleas- 
 ure, they forgot all about their position. In the mean- 
 time the tide has turned, the waters have well-nigh 
 surrounded them; there is but one way of escape — a 
 
3l8 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 narrow tongue of land in the distance, which grows 
 narrower every minute. Their danger has now become 
 apparent to those on shore, and some one shouts to 
 them with a loud voice, that they are in extreme peril, 
 that there is not a moment to lose, that in a few sec- 
 onds the sea will be upon them, and they will be lost 
 beyond redemption. "Flee, Flee, Flee," shouted the 
 preacher in clear, ringing tones. So vivid had been his 
 description of the scene, and so startling, so electric 
 Avas the voice in which he had called out the command 
 to flee, that the congregation in alarm sprung to their 
 feet and rushed out of the house, crying for their Hves. 
 The greater number presently returned, and were pre- 
 pared to listen in deep solemnity to the preacher's 
 appeal to "flee from the wrath to come." 
 
 Ebenezer Morris once said: " If I had died without 
 hearing Robert Roberts, of Clynog, preach, I should have 
 died without any such conception as I -now have of the 
 glory of the ministry of the Gospel." 
 
 IL CHRISTMAS EVANS. 
 
 Robert Roberts of Clynog, whom we last considered 
 as a representative of the Welsh pulpit, has a special 
 claim on our recognition, apart from his unique person- 
 ality and power. He it was who interpreted Christmas 
 Evans to himself. When the latter was asked, if he 
 could give an account of what led him into his peculiar 
 way of preaching, he replied: "Yes, I can, — partly 
 at least. I had the ideas before, but somehow I could 
 not get at them. When I was in Lleyn, the Methodists 
 had a man of the name of Robert Roberts, of Llanlly- 
 fni, who was very popular, and there was a great deal 
 of talk about him. Well, I went on one Sunday after- 
 noon to hear him. He was one of the most insignifi- 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 3I9 
 
 cant persons I ever saw ; a little hunch-backed man, 
 but he neither thought nor said anything like other 
 people ; there was something wonderful and uncommon 
 about him. TJiis Robert Robei'ts gave me the key.'' 
 
 Christmas Evans, the best known of Welsh preacher 
 outside of Wales, was born on Christmas day, 1766, in 
 the depths of poverty. His father, a shoemaker, dying 
 while Christmas was yet a child, he was hired out, at 
 the age of nine, as a farmer's boy. At the age of 
 eighteen he had never been to school, and did not 
 know one letter of the alphabet. About that time he 
 was converted and forthwith learned to read his Bible. 
 Soon he began to exhort, his talents at once shone 
 forth, and before long he entered the ministry. His 
 ministerial outfit consisted of a wife, who proved a no- 
 ble helpmate, a Bible, Burkitt on the New Testament, 
 and a Welsh and English Dictionary, which he bor- 
 rowed to help him through the hard words in Burkitt. 
 His study was his bed, over which he sprawled with 
 his huge form, with his books around him. At the 
 age of twenty-five he went to live in Anglesea to take 
 the oversight of the Baptist churches on that island, 
 which is also one of the counties of Wales. For twenty 
 years he labored on a salary of £1^ a year. It was 
 then advanced to ;^2i a year. He got in addition a few 
 pounds more for his books and from outside preaching. 
 The largest amount he ever received in one year was 
 about ^40, or ;^200. 
 
 He was a large man, about six feet high, with an 
 immense head, and one eye prominent, large, luminous ; 
 "an eye, sir," as Robert Hall said, " that might light 
 an army through the wilderness." He was a natural 
 orator, fluent and brilliant in speech, a master of met- 
 aphor, wit and sarcasm. A brother minister, Mr. Her- 
 ing by name, once met him on a summer day on top of 
 
320 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 a mountain which they were crossing in the opposite di- 
 rections. "Dear me," said Mr. Hering, "What a 
 strange thing to see Christmas in midsummer." *' Not 
 a bit more strange," was the reply, ''than to see a 
 living Hering on the top of a mountain." 
 
 As a preacher, his most remarkable characteristic was 
 his imaginative faculty, which was truly oriental in 
 luxuriance and range. Like John Bunyan, he was a 
 born speaker of parables. His conceptions spontane- 
 ously arranged themselves in allegories. Truth was a 
 drama, in constant living action before his mind. The 
 facts and forces of the gospel took the form in his 
 preaching of vivid personification. The most favorable 
 specimen of his genius is the well-known " Allegory of 
 the graveyard." It has often been published in English, 
 with more or less variation. The following version rep- 
 resents most faithfully, perhaps, its genuine form.* 
 
 "I imagined that I saw a vast, immense graveyard, 
 in which were lying the numberless hosts of Adam's 
 posterity. The place was full of deadly caverns, and a 
 dense cloud overhung it, so that no light of sun or of 
 moon, or of candle was to be seen there. The gates 
 were a thousand times stronger than castle" gates of 
 brass, and were locked up by Divine Justice with death- 
 less bars and locks, so that no hope remained of escape 
 from that dark enclosure." 'In Adam all die.'" 
 
 "With the breath of dawn, lo ! Mercy came down 
 from the heaven of heavens in the chariot of the early 
 morning promise, and with her a person like unto the 
 Son of Man, the Seed of the Woman. Mercy called 
 at the iron portal of death, saying: *0 Justice, my 
 brother ! thou art here keeping watch over this place of 
 
 *The version here given is translated directly from the Welsh ver- 
 sion in " Allegorian Christinas Evans," edited by the accurate Welsh 
 scholar, Rev. Robert Evans, ( Cynddelw. ) 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 321 
 
 burial, and thou hast sealed the gravestone with the seal 
 of God.' 'Yes, what wouldest thou, Mercy, my sister?' 
 * My request is that I may have leave to come in to the 
 inhabitants of this graveyard. If leave were granted I 
 would cause this accursed place to wear the look of life 
 instead of death.' * Understand me, my sister,' said 
 Justice: ' I know that by reason of thy love for Justice 
 thou canst not break these locks, neither can I open the 
 door ; not that I am wroth with the wretched inmates 
 of the place, but that I love the law of God. ' ' With- 
 out shedding of blood there is no remission.' " 
 
 "Then Mercy lifted up her bright countenance, one 
 sight of which had been enough to make hope alive 
 through the graveyard, and the Seed of the Woman 
 stood by her side. 'Justice, my brother! wilt thou ac- 
 cept a surety until the time comes for that blood to be 
 poured, that the gates of death may be opened to me, 
 and that I may have access to those imprisoned there? ' 
 ' I will,' said Justice, ' if only he be a near enough kins- 
 man both of the lawgiver, and of the inmates of the 
 graveyard, and be offered up on a tree within this in- 
 closure. ' " 
 
 ''Then the Seed of the Woman came forward and 
 said: 'Wilt thou accept me as surety?' Justice looked 
 closely at him and said: ' Yes, willingly ; and for myr- 
 iads more, if need be ; for thou hast been brought up 
 in the court of the Lawgiver from all eternity ; and 
 thou shalt be the Seed of the Woman, I see thy bloody 
 heel' 'Justice, what are thy demands?' 'Humiliation 
 for exaltation, life for life and death for death.' 'Be- 
 hold, ' said the Seed of the Woman, ' I strike my hand 
 in thy hand, and I write my name in the roll of the 
 book which I now give to thee, as a pledge that I will 
 pay thee on the tree a ransom greater than the world's 
 iniquity. And do thou give Mercy the key of the 
 
^22 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 graveyard. Tell me, O thou heaven's great Justice, 
 what time shall I specify in the bond which I give in 
 the name of all my churches ? when shall I appear as 
 one of the inmates of death's graveyard?' 'In four 
 thousand years from the time when its gates were 
 barred. ' * So be it, I am content ; here I give thee the 
 promise, written with my own hand : ' Lo, I come !' 
 Here is one copy for thee to keep in tl:e great hall of 
 Justice, and another copy for the patriarchs and the 
 prophets, and for Moses, supervisor-in-chief of the 
 wTit.' 'Behold I too,' said Justice, 'give Mercy the 
 key of the graveyard. ' ' And in order to show the 
 nature of the payment which I shall make, and the 
 need of the same, and in order to produce in my 
 Church faith and expectation for the year of redemption 
 to this graveyard, I set up the ceremonial law in my 
 name, to foreshadow me in its sacrifices and feasts of 
 the atonement, to make mention of sins, and to exhibit 
 the true sacrifice, and that my purpose shall know no 
 change.' " 
 
 " The fire which consumed the sacrifices of Israel 
 had fallen in the first instance from heaven, as a token 
 of God's avenging wrath against sin ; and the blood 
 that was offered was a token that nothing could quench 
 the curse of the law but the blood of Jesus Christ. 
 Great and long was the contest between the fire and 
 the blood on the altars of Israel; but the myriads of 
 dumb creatures, whose blood was poured into the flames 
 of the altar, had neither power nor virtue, nor worth 
 to extinguish their fire. It turned the heads that were 
 offered into a handful of worthless ashes under the rim 
 of the great altar." 
 
 "But in the fulness of the time the Messiah was born 
 of one of the daughters of the graveyard. He ap- 
 peared within its bounds as the Lamb of God, and the 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 323 
 
 fourteenth day came, on which he was to be caught, 
 and brought to the altar. He was caught in Gethse- 
 mane, he submitted to be led as a lamb to the slaughter. 
 The altar was set up, not in the precincts of the temple, 
 but without the gates of Jerusalem, on the hill of the 
 skulls of the dead. He himself was priest, and victim, 
 and altar. He was bound to the horns of the altar 
 about nine o'clock in the morning, a day to be remem- 
 bered forever. The fire took hold upon him as a 
 deadly plague, saying : * Justice am I ; I will spare no 
 one; justice will I have. I have burned myriads of 
 the lambs of Israel ; and unless I am extinguished in 
 burning the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin 
 of the world, I will burn the entire graveyard, souls 
 and bodies, down to the lowest hell.' " 
 
 ''The consuming flames of the curse continued to 
 devour and to swallow and to burn, and the blood 
 continued to drop into the midst of the flames, so that 
 some began to think that the fire would prevail. From 
 the sixth hour to the ninth the violence of the conflict 
 transcended all comparison ; and at the critical hour of 
 victory, all was silence upon the mount. But at three 
 in the afternoon, when the avenging fire had burned 
 its way through all the feelings of the humanity, // 
 touched the altar of deity, and then it expired. The sun 
 became black with astonishment, the rocks cleaved, 
 the earth trembled, the graves were opened, the dead 
 arose ; for they saw God in the nature of man dying on 
 a tree." 
 
 ''There had been in the old sacrifices only a re- 
 minder of sin, with nothing paid ; but Jesus appeared 
 according to the agreement. He was seen with the 
 bag of gold on his back walking from Gethsemane 
 through the streets of Jerusalem, to face the bond, the 
 handwriting which he, with his own signature, had en- 
 
3^4 LLEWELYN 10 AN EVANS. 
 
 gaged to pay. He cried out before the office of Jus- 
 tice : * My father, the hour is come ; here is the bag 
 of gold, and here I pour its contents on the great table 
 of account.' 'Enough, my son! I have received sat- 
 isfaction, and here is the handwriting that was against 
 thy people ; I give it up to thee. It shall no longer 
 remain in the office of Moses and Sinai ; take it, and 
 do what thou wilt with it.' " 
 
 "And what did he do with the handwriting? did he 
 tear it up, and cast it to the wind or bury it in the 
 earth ? Ah, no ! He put it in a place far more secure, 
 he nailed it to the cross ; when he left the cross, he 
 nailed the bond there in his place ; and he gave the 
 cross to his twelve apostles, and to all his true ministers 
 to carry it through the world, with the bond nailed to 
 it, and the debt all paid. It is no more Jesus that is 
 on the cross, but the old debt that was against us, and 
 written under it the words : * This debt was paid on 
 Golgotha.' " 
 
 In the same manner that the allegory of the grave- 
 yard exhibits the idealistic side of his imagination, his 
 description of the healing of the demoniac of Gadara 
 may be instanced as exhibiting its realistic side in the 
 vivid, graphic, often humorous, portraiture of human 
 events. Having detailed the preliminary facts of the 
 narrative, he goes on to say: 'Jesus commanded the 
 legion of unclean spirits to go forth out of the man. 
 They knew that they would have to go ; but they were 
 like some Irishmen, they were very unwilling to go 
 back to their own country, and for that reason Christ 
 suffered them to go into the herd of swine. T can 
 imagine one of the swine-herds, who kept a sharper 
 eye on the swine than the rest, saying : ' What's the 
 matter with the swine ? look sharp on that side, boys ! 
 keep them in ! make the best use of your whips ! why 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 325 
 
 do you stop running ? do you know what ? as true as 
 I'm alive one of them has got over the edge of the 
 rock. There ! there is another ! Morgan, run away off 
 there ! Drive them back, Tom ! ' There never was 
 such running; but down went the swine headlong, in 
 spite of themselves. One of them says : ' they are gone, 
 every head of them.' 'No! is it possible? every one 
 of them into the sea ? ' ' Yes, every single one of them. 
 If the devil ever was in anything in the world, he must 
 have got into those swine. ' * What ! ' says Jack, ' is 
 that splendid black pig gone too?' 'Yes, yes; I saw 
 him galloping down the hillside over yonder, as though 
 old Satan himself were riding him ; I saw the tip of his 
 tail sink out of sight for the last time among the angry 
 billows down below. ' 
 
 " 'What shall we say to our masters?' said Tom to 
 Morgan. ' What can we say ! we must tell the truth ; 
 that is all there is about it. We have done our best, 
 all that could be done ; what more could anybody do ? ' 
 and so they start for the city to tell their masters what 
 has happened. ' Jack ! where are you going ? ' shouts 
 one of the masters. ' Sir, did you know the demoniac 
 that used to live among the tombs ? ' ' Where did you 
 leave the swine ? ' ' That crazy man, sir, of whom 
 * missis ' used to be so much afraid. ' ' Crazy man ? 
 why are you coming home without the swine ? ' * He 
 used to rave and yell, and cut himself with stones.' 
 ' Pooh pooh ! I'm asking you a plain question. Jack, 
 and why don't you answer me? where are the swine ? ' 
 ' That man that was possessed with devils, sir ! ' ' Surely 
 you haven't lost the little sense you had, you look very 
 wild, tell your story if you can, be it what it may.' 
 'Jesus Christ, sir, has cast the unclean spirits out of 
 the demoniac, and they have gone into the swine, and 
 the swine are drowned every one in the sea, for I saw 
 
'326 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 the last one's tail as he disappeared. Now master, that 
 is the truth, you can depend on it.' " 
 
 ''The Gadarencs went out to see what had taken 
 place, and they came to Jesus, and found the man out 
 of whom the demons had been cast, sitting, clothed 
 and in his right mind, at the feet of Jesus ; and they 
 feared and besought Jesus to go away from them. 
 Who can tell how fearful is the condition of those who 
 love the things of this world above the Son of God! " 
 
 Having proceeded with the story he reaches the point 
 where the demoniac returns to his home. "As soon 
 as he comes within sight of the house, I imagine that 
 I see one of the children running in and saying : ' O 
 mother! father is coming; he will kill every one of us.* 
 ' Children, ' says the mother, * come into the house every 
 one of you, and let us fasten the doors. I do not be- 
 lieve that anybody ever had such sorrow as mine ;' and 
 she feels as though her heart would break. 'Are the 
 windows all safe, children ? ' ' Yes, mother.' ' Mary, 
 my dear child, come out of the window, do not stay 
 there. ' ' Why, mother ! I can scarcely believe that 
 that is father; that man has such nice clothes on him.' 
 ' O yes, my dear children, it is your father ; I knew 
 him by his walk the moment I saw him.' Another 
 child who had gone to the Avindow to look out, says : 
 " Do you know what, mother, I never saw father com- 
 ing back as he is doing to-day. He comes round the 
 turn of the hedge, and past the wall; he always used 
 to come on a straight line, over ditches and hedges and 
 walls, and I never saw him walk as slowly as to-day.' " 
 
 " In a few seconds he reaches the door of the house, 
 to the great consternation of all who are within. He 
 tries quietly and deliberately to open the door ; but he 
 can not. He pauses and thinks for a moment ; he goes 
 to the window, and he says in a low, firm, persuasive 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 32/ 
 
 voice : * My dear wife, if you will let me in, there is no 
 danger; I will do you no harm, but I will bring you glad 
 tidings of great joy.' The door is opened slowly, in part 
 willingly, and in part unwillingly, between fear and joy, 
 and having sat down, he begins to speak and says : ' I 
 want to tell you of the great things which God has done 
 for me. He has loved me with an everlasting love. He 
 has redeemed me from the curse of the law; he has 
 saved me from the power and dominion of sin ; he has 
 cast the unclean spirits out of my heart, and has made 
 the heart which was a den of thieves a temple of the 
 Holy Ghost. I cannot tell you how great is my love 
 for the Saviour. Jesus Christ is the foundation of my 
 hope, the object of my faith and the centre of my affec- 
 tions; I can venture my immortal soul on him ; he is my 
 best friend ; he is altogether lovely, and the chiefest 
 among ten thousand ; he is my wisdom, my righteous- 
 ness, my sanctification, and my redemption ; there is 
 enough in him to make a poor sinner rich, and a miser- 
 able sinner happy ; his flesh and blood are my food, his 
 righteousness is my marriage robe, his blood cleanseth 
 me from all my sins ; through him I can attain unto life 
 eternal, for he is the brightness of the Father's glory, 
 and the express image of his person, in whom all the 
 fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily ; he is worthy of 
 my highest reverence and of my warmest praise. To 
 him who loved me with an everlasting love, and has 
 washed me in his own blood, to him be the glory, the do- 
 minion and the might forever and ever.' Who can con- 
 ceive the happiness and rejoicing of the family ? The joy 
 of the mariner who has been saved from shipwreck, the 
 joy of one who has been rescued out of a burning habi- 
 tation, the joy of the prisoner in the court of justice 
 who has been acquitted and released, the joy of the con- 
 demned criminal who obtains pardon, the joy of the 
 
328 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 captured soldier, when he is set free — all such joy is as 
 nothing when compared with the joy of the man who 
 has been saved from going down into the pit of eternal 
 destruction, for it is a joy unspeakable and full of 
 glory." 
 
 While a rigid analysis would find in such representa- 
 tions many anachronisms and incongruities, their dra- 
 matic vividness and practical effectiveness are undeniable. 
 In the swift and easy transition from the wit and humor 
 of the introductory part of the description to the elo- 
 quence and pathos of the conclusion we have a distinct 
 characteristic of no small part of the preaching heard in 
 the Welsh pulpit. 
 
 in. WILLIAMS, OF WERN; JOHN ELIAS; HENRY REES. 
 
 Christmas Evans was one of a trio of contemporaries, 
 who, at the opening of this century, were the stars of 
 the Welsh pulpit. Another of the trio was William 
 WiUiams, of Wern, a minister of the Independent de- 
 nomination. He was of a very different type from 
 Christmas Evans. The cast of his mind was philo- 
 sophical. He, too, possessed imagination, but in 
 the language of Dr. O. Thomas, "it was the scientific 
 imagination, rather than the poetic, that of Bacon, 
 rather than of Milton." There was in his sermons a 
 remarkable combination of clear and vigorous thought, 
 with lucid and felicitous illustration. So perfect were 
 his illustrations, that it seemed as though they had 
 an existence in the order of things, on purpose to 
 set forth the truths with which they stood asso- 
 ciated. Reflection made his hearers feel that it was 
 the truth which glorified the emblem, and not the 
 reverse. He was unquestionably a worthy peer of his 
 brethren in the trio, and I take peculiar pleasure 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 
 
 329 
 
 In paying this brief tribute to his memory, remember- 
 ing that my revered grandfather, Rev. Robert Roberts, 
 of Rhos, was his nearest ministerial neighbor and dear- 
 est bosom friend. 
 
 The last and greatest of the trio was John Elias, of 
 Anglesea, all things considered, the most eminent rep- 
 resentative of the Welsh pulpit, and one of the half 
 dozen great preachers of the age. He began to preach 
 at the age of twenty, and at once began to draw upon 
 himself the attention of the public. He was a born 
 orator to begin with, and all through his life he made 
 preaching a matter of the most thorough and conscien- 
 tious culture. He Is a conspicuous example of the suc- 
 cess with which the art of preaching may be studied and 
 practiced, and a striking confirmation of the truth that 
 the best and truest art neither hides nor weakens, nor 
 Injures nature. The one fault which Intelligent criticism 
 has found with his preaching Is that, too often, in un- 
 folding the manifold contents of his text, his discourses 
 lacked the most complete and effective unity. 
 
 He had a tall, lithe, straight frame, made up of bone 
 and sinew, dark complexion, high cheek-bones, grayish- 
 blue eyes of intense and fiery expression, strong, reso- 
 lute mouth and jaw, and preeminently a look to threaten 
 or command. I have heard my good old father say 
 that his look, his aspect, mastered the congregation from 
 the very first, and held every man by a spell which he 
 could not resist. His voice was strong and penetrative, 
 ''the best speaking voice," It has been said, that has 
 perhaps ever been heard in the pulpit, although some- 
 what harsh when at its loudest pitch. His mastery of 
 it was perfect, although his power was greatest when he 
 thundered. 
 
 When under the full inspiration of his theme, he was 
 like a volcano, burning, flashing, thundering, pouring 
 
330 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 out lava-torrents of eloquence, while bolts and sparks of 
 fire shot far and wide. It was like standing at the foot 
 of Sinai to listen to him at such times. It was on such 
 an occasion, doubtless, that the cry of agony already re- 
 ferred to was wrung from one of his hearers — " Oh ! for 
 five minutes of Evan Richardson of Carnarvon." His 
 gestures, his intonations, his pauses even and his silences, 
 all were electric with soul. "Even his stammering," 
 says one of the many elegies upon him, *^was a chasm 
 of glorious eloquence." 
 
 *' 'Roedd hyd yn nod ei attal-d'wedyd 
 
 Yn gyfwng o hyawdledd cu.' — Ebe7i Fcardd. 
 
 Often would he stand for seconds struggling with the 
 thought to be uttered, the thought meanwhile working 
 in the muscles of his face, and in the quivering of his 
 hands and fingers, until at last it would burst forth like 
 a torrent, sweeping all before it. 
 
 His power to give reality to all that he said was ex- 
 traordinary. Two boys were talking together after an 
 association about the preachers. ''Which of them did 
 you like best?" said one. "John Elias, of course," 
 replied the other. " That's so ! " said the first, ''wasn't 
 he splendid? Didn't he tell it well about Peter? I could 
 just see Peter standing by that bridge there." Once as 
 he was preaching on Paul before Agrippa, he gave such 
 a graphic description of his words, his looks, his attitude, 
 the chains on his hands, that a sailor in the congrega- 
 tion, much excited, cried out: "Fie! Fie! take off 
 those chains at once from the man's hands!" He 
 talked, in fact, all over. The movement of his body, 
 now swaying back and forward, now swinging partially 
 as on a pivot, now writhing as with the travail of thought, 
 now standing firm and erect as a pillar of granite, while 
 launching out some terrific thunderbolt, then suddenly 
 hurling himself into a new position, all was tremendous- 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 33 I 
 
 ly effective. His gestures were infinite in variety and 
 expression. The action of his index-finger alone was a 
 study and a marvel ; now shaking it up and down, now 
 thrusting it forward, now poising or waving it aloft, now 
 describing effective arcs of thought or feeling. 
 
 Add to this the sweep, the rush, the thrust, the blow 
 of the sinewy arm, the authoritative stamp of the foot — 
 add a style of marvelous fitness for popular effect, home- 
 ly, plain, at the same time pure, strong, nervous Welsh 
 from the granite rock-bed of the language — add a won- 
 derful gift in fitting such words together, so that they 
 would strike home — add the perfect preaching temper- 
 ament with its instinctive preception of the tone, the 
 temper, the atmosphere of the congregation, and the 
 exact point at which to get the mastery of it — add a 
 holy audacity which shrank from no lawful expedient 
 to arouse and to hold the people — over and above all 
 add a burning passion for souls, an awful intense earn- 
 estness which had in it all the solemnities of all the 
 eternities, and you may faintly conceive the power of 
 the man. 
 
 His popularity was immense. Wherever he went the 
 multitude thronged to hear him. No matter where, no 
 matter when, in what season of the year, on what day 
 of the week, on what hour of the day, his audiences 
 were numbered by the hundreds, not seldom by the 
 thousands. The farms, the workshops, the mines, the 
 quarries, the warehouses, the kitchens, all were emptied 
 to hear John Elias. 
 
 In their written form his sermons had nothing very 
 remarkable about them. It was the man put into the 
 sermon which made it what it was. The following 
 sketch of an exhortation to good conduct during the 
 session of the Association at Holyhead, in 1824, from 
 the pen of Dr. Thomas, will illustrate some of his char- 
 
332 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 acteristics, and the irresistible power which he wielded 
 over the multitude: ** He spoke," says Dr. Thomas, 
 " with great force against drunkenness as a sin which always 
 and everywhere degrades man, more possibly than any 
 other sin, but he dwelt more especially on its heinous- 
 ness on occasions of a religious convocation, and he 
 hoped that there was no one there who could take ad- 
 vantage of such a gathering to bring disgrace on their 
 country, on themselves, and on religion. Are there 
 drunkards here ? I fear that there are. Let me entreat 
 you for this day, at least, to endeavor to exercise proper 
 self-control. If you have no regard for Almighty God, 
 no regard for your country and laws, no respect for 
 yourselves — I acknowledge that I am occupying a very 
 low plane in making this appeal — will you not for our 
 sakes behave soberly and decently to-day? When you 
 come to a meeting like this, and drink and get drunk, 
 and are disorderly, you break our character. All our 
 enemies are not yet dead in the land. They stand ready 
 to use everything which will serve their purpose to 
 injure us. And we have nothing but our character to 
 fall back upon. We are not rich — we are not learned — 
 we are not gifted — we have no titles — we have no one 
 among us high in authority. But we have our charac- 
 ter — we think a good deal about our character — we 
 mean to keep our character — we do not intend that any 
 one shall break our character. And these Association 
 drunkards do break our character. And yet, we poor 
 Methodists, are they who suffer from them. What shall 
 we do with them, brethren ? " Becoming excited, he 
 continued : '* I feel like putting them up at auction this 
 very moment to any one who will take them, so that 
 they need not give us any more trouble." Then, and 
 raising his voice to its highest pitch, and stretching out 
 his arm as though holding them in his hand, he cried 
 
l-HE WELSH PULPIT. 333 
 
 out: "Who will take them? Who will take them? 
 Churchmen, will you take them ? We ! we profess at 
 baptism to renounce the devil and all his works. No ! 
 we won't take them." Then a pause. "Independents, 
 will you take them ? What ? we ! we have for gen- 
 erations past left the church of England because of its 
 corruptness; we won't have them." Another pause. 
 Then, with outstretched arms, he cried out again : 
 "Baptists, will you take them? We! we plunge 
 our people all over in water, to show that we re- 
 ceive only those who want to be clean ; we won't have 
 them." Another pause. " Wesleyans, will you have 
 them? What? we! Good works are a matter of 
 life with us; we won't have them." At this, still hold- 
 ing out his hands, as though he were holding them in 
 it, he wheels around from side to side, facing the con- 
 gregation, and shouts at the height of his voice : " Who 
 will take them ? Who will take them ? Who will take 
 them? " In an instant his whole nature is aroused — his 
 eyes flash lightning — his frame is strongly agitated — he 
 turns his face to the left, and in a low voice, Vv^hich is 
 yet distinctly heard by the entire congregation, he says : 
 ' ' I almost fancy that I hear the devil here at my elbow 
 say : 'Kfiock thejn dow7i to 7ne, I zuill take them. ' ' ' There- 
 upon he lifts up his eyes, and with a look of terrible 
 earnestness he gazes around upon the congregation, and 
 for a full quarter of a minute he utters not a word. 
 Then facing again to the left, and showing the index 
 finger of the right hand in the direction of his (left) 
 elbow, once, twice, three times, he shouts with a mighty 
 voice which echoes through the town: "I was going to 
 say, Satan, that you might have them, but," lifting up 
 his eyes and stretching out his hand heavenward, and 
 exclaiming in a voice of tender exultation, " I hear Jesus 
 cry out : ' I will take them ! I will take them ! I will 
 
334 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 take them! just as they are; foul, to wash them; 
 drunkards, to make them sober; in all their filth, to 
 cleanse them in mine own blood.' " By this time the 
 scene was a strange one. The preachers on the plat- 
 form seemed to be beside themselves. The vast con- 
 gregation was in one great ferment. Nor did the ex- 
 citement subside until several hours after, when in the 
 evening of the same day Mr. Elias himself again took 
 the stand and preached from John iii: 1-5, one of the 
 most powerful sermons which he ever delivered. 
 
 After the death of John EHas, Henry Rees, of Liver- 
 pool, by common consent succeeded to the premiership 
 (if the term may be allowed) of the Welsh Calvinistic 
 Methodist pulpit. Him I often saw and heard when a 
 boy. He has been pronounced by so competent a 
 judge as Dr. Hall to be the most powerful sermonizer 
 known to him ; Dr. Hall's judgment being based on 
 sermons which had been translated especially for his 
 benefit, and on impressions received through frequently 
 hearing Mr. Rees in person, when the substance of the 
 sermon was communicated to him by an interpreter. Dr. 
 Owen Thomas gives the same judgment. His language 
 is: "In Henry Rees, the pulpit reached in our judg- 
 ment the highest perfection it has ever attained in our 
 country, and we know of no one in any country or in 
 any age, whose sermons, considered simply as compo- 
 sitions, we should be willing to acknowledge as being 
 superior to his." 
 
 His appearance in the pulpit was most impressive. 
 His person was tall and commanding; his forehead 
 broad and full; his eyes large and lustrous; a face of 
 seraphic beauty and purity ; his expression most delight- 
 ful, gentle and winning. He had a peculiar spiritual 
 wistfulness in his look as he stood before a congrega- 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 335 
 
 tion, the like of which I have never seen. It seemed to 
 convey an intense yearning for every soul present. 
 
 His voice had a certain plaintive pathos in it that was 
 unusually effective, whether in solemn remonstrance, or 
 in tender pleading. Mr. Williams, of Wern, once said 
 of it, ' ' that it was not a good voice by nature, it was 
 his piety that made it what it was." He was one of 
 the most conspicuous illustrations, both in the pulpit 
 and out of it, of the spiritualization of a man's person- 
 ality by grace. The secret of his pulpit power lay 
 here. The transfiguration of a soul whose abode was 
 in the secret place of the Most High, was visible alike 
 upon the man and upon the sermon. 
 
 His preaching was adapted to all classes. By its 
 fullness, depth and symmetry, it held the most culti- 
 vated ; while by its simplicity, tenderness and personal 
 directness, it impressed the most illiterate. His analysis 
 of the heart was most masterly; his dissection of mo- 
 tives, of subterfuges, of self-deceptions, most keen and 
 searching. Having laid bare the soul's inmost depths, 
 and brought his hearers to the verge of despair, he 
 would with inimitable persuasiveness bring forth the 
 consolations of the Gospel. How at such times would 
 his voice melt into the gentleness of tears, while his face 
 would shine like that of an ansrel. 
 
 ''Yea, Sinai, send forth thy thunders; Ebal, pour 
 down thy curses ; Throne of God, shoot forth thy light- 
 ning; Satan, put forth thy accusations; guilty con- 
 science, pass thy sentence of condemnation. But, in 
 the midst of the thunders of Sinai, within sound of the 
 curses of Ebal, face to face with the radiant brightness 
 of the throne, in spite of all the jeers of the enemy, 
 notwithstanding all the taunting of the heart, thou poor 
 lost sinner, take hope ! take hope ! It is Christ that died." 
 
 At the same time that Henry Rees stood at the head 
 
33^ LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 of the Calvinistic Methodist pulpit in Wales, his brother, 
 William Rees, stood and still stands at the head of the 
 Independent pulpit. A manysided man, of extraordi- 
 nary versatiHty and genius, one of the first poets of 
 Wales, an unrivaled platform orator and lecturer, an 
 effective political writer and speaker, he is also a 
 preacher of rare genius and power. 
 
 IV. JOHN JONES, TALSARN. 
 
 One of the most remarkable and original preachers in 
 Wales was John Jones, first known as John Jones, 
 Llanllyfni, and afterwards as John Jones, Talsarn, in 
 Carnarvonshire. Between the ages of twelve and six- 
 teen, it was my privilege to hear him several times in 
 the neighborhoods of Bangor and Bala, often walking to 
 points three to six miles distant, where he had been 
 announced to preach. I heard him preach on Bala 
 Green, in the Association of 1848, one of the great- 
 est sermons of his life, and one of the most powerful 
 ever preached on that consecrated field, from the words : 
 ''What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole 
 world, and lose his ov/n soul? or, what shall a man 
 give in exchange for his soul?" He had preached from 
 the same words a few days before in Liverpool, but 
 to use the Welsh phrase, there was "no go" [dim 
 myiid) in the sermon. Very different was the case 
 in Bala. To quote from Dr. Thomas, who heard him 
 on both occasions: "He preached this time with tre- 
 mendous power and effectiveness. The truth enlarged 
 in his hands, and expanded before his mind with such 
 clearness and such glory, that the sermon which the day 
 before scarcely filled three-quarters of an hour, now ex- 
 tended over an hour and a half The effects on the 
 vast congregation continued and increased to the end. 
 The importance and dnnrc- f Mosing the soul' took 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 
 
 
 such complete possession of all minds that no other 
 thought could find a place. Before the end hundreds 
 had broken out in shouts of rejoicing over God's plan 
 for 'saving the soul;' and the depth of feeling exhib- 
 ited by the millions who were present that morning on 
 the Green is something to be remembered forever." 
 
 It is simply impossible to convey by a pen-and-ink 
 description in EngHsh any adequate idea of the pecu- 
 liar power wielded by this remarkable representative of 
 the Welsh pulpit ; and yet I would fain convey a faint 
 glimmer of his preaching. 
 
 Imagine a man five feet ten in stature, of comely pro- 
 portions, head rather high and long, broad forehead, 
 very full over the eyes, of dark brown hair, and 
 dark blue eyes, with heavy over-arching eyebrows, 
 with thin red lips, and a beautifully expressive mouth, 
 long, oval face, fresh rosy cheeks, the whole ex- 
 pression of countenance combining in unusual meas- 
 ure sweetness and strength. A more perfect embodi- 
 ment of manly beauty never occupied the sacred desk. 
 He stands bolt upright looking straight before him, just 
 over the Bible, turning neither to the right nor to the 
 left, holding the corners or edges of the desk board or 
 the Bible, turning the leaves of the latter a little per- 
 haps, maintaining that posture nearly all the way 
 through, with scarce a movement of the body, except 
 as now and then he makes a sweeping gesture with his 
 arm, or leans forward on the Bible, or emphasizes a 
 thought by stamping the floor with his foot. Evidently 
 we have no John Elias here. But ah ! what a voice ! 
 who can describe it? Rich, deep, strong, sweet, reso- 
 nant, penetrative, with modulations and inflections, I 
 venture to say, never heard before in a pulpit voice. 
 He begins on a low key, too low indeed for the large 
 congregation which is listening to him, were it not for 
 
33^ LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 the breathless stillness which prevails. But he is soon 
 heard everywhere with ease, and you find that you are 
 listening not only to a wonderful voice, but to an ex- 
 traordinary mind ; a thinker of rare originality and dar- 
 ing. You are interested, startled and delighted. What 
 sinewy Welsh ! What bold conceptions ! What forci- 
 ble statements of leading truths ! What strange com- 
 binations of ideas ! What novel flights of fancy ! 
 What audacious hypotheses ! What quaint sequences of 
 thought ! What startling effective transitions ! 
 
 But note the movement of the sermon. See how every 
 stage in the discourse is not only an advance, but an 
 ascent.* Mark, meanwhile, how the voice enlarges its 
 range, its volume, its flexibility. Observe how new 
 inflections, modulations, and cadences come in, and how 
 musical and expressive they are. Did you notice that 
 change of key? Did you mark how effective it was, 
 how well suited to the transition of thought? Did you 
 notice that grand swell of tone, like the diapason of an 
 organ? Did you ever hear anything like it? Did you 
 notice that swell which followed the former, then another 
 and another, like wave following wave, all alike, yet 
 each different? And now do you notice, as the thoughts 
 come rushing along, as though struggling to overtake 
 each other, how those tone-swells come rolling onward, 
 each mounting on the back of the one just before it until 
 massing themselves together, and lifting their crest heav- 
 enward, they break on their shore in a long roll of thun- 
 der, which haunts you ever after like the music of the sea ? 
 
 He is preaching on Eternal Life. His text is — "Lay 
 hold on eternal life." (i Tim. vi: 12.) He begins with 
 a definition of his theme. Clearness of conception and 
 exactness of statement are at all times characteristic of 
 
 *Compare what was said above in Art. I, of the gradations in the 
 preaching of D. Rowlands, of Llangeitho. 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 339 
 
 this didactic discussion. Then all at once, abruptly, 
 solemnly he plunges into a description of the amazing 
 conduct of those who are indifferent to such a priceless 
 boon. Oh, the folly of it ! the cruelty of it ! the incon- 
 sistency of it ! What if men adopted in reference to 
 their religious interests the rule of this world's utilitari- 
 anism? What if they allowed eternal life to count in 
 their practical estimates according to its real worth and 
 importance? How would the proportion of things be 
 inverted ? How would the petty concerns of this world 
 be crowded out? 
 
 And now, with change of intonation, follows a bit of 
 calm, exquisite philosophic discussion of the threefold 
 life of the Christian : the natural life, the spiritual life, 
 and the eternal Hfe. He shows how the natural life 
 makes the man ; how the spiritual life makes the saint, 
 and how the eternal life makes the saint made perfect. 
 He shows how and why holiness is the law which rules 
 the development of life into Hfe eternal. And now the 
 transcendent glory of eternal life as the culmination of 
 holiness and communion with God challenges his con- 
 sideration. But how shall he describe it? How Httle 
 we know of it! 
 
 ' ' We have never seen that eternal world or the life 
 which is lived there. I have never been there, and I 
 have never seen anybody who had been there. I have 
 seen many go there; but I have never seen anybody 
 come back. The Bible does not say much about it. It 
 says what it knows, but that is only a very little. * I 
 know but in part, ' it says by the mouth of Paul. ' Eye 
 hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into 
 the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared 
 for them that love him.' 'It doth not yet appear what 
 we shall be.' It's very little we know of what we were; 
 it's very little we know of what we are ; it's still less we 
 
340 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 know of what we shall be. That great world of eternity 
 is a very dark world to us in the present. Well, as for 
 that matter, I suppose we have no language in this 
 world with which to describe the things of the other 
 world. The language of earth is far too feeble. This 
 is only something with which to toss the affairs and 
 interests of time from one to another. It was never 
 intended to take in all the greatness and the glory of 
 the blessedness of the saints in the world to come. It 
 is too small for that. Its streams are too shallow for 
 the leviathan vessels of eternity to float in them. Its 
 chambers are too narrow for eternal realities to turn 
 around in them. 
 
 "I know nothing of the Greek and the Hebrew. 
 Those who are acquainted with those tongues tell me 
 that they are languages of extraordinary power. They 
 have in them words strong beyond all comparison, some 
 words which are semi-infinite, they tell me. But the 
 Apostle Paul at all events knew both Hebrew and Greek 
 perfectly; and he was a rare master of language. He 
 could take the strongest words in those languages, and 
 stretch them to the utmost tension of which they were 
 capable. But when the Apostle Paul came down from 
 the third heaven, after he had been given there just a 
 glimpse of its glories, he could find no words, either in 
 Greek or in Hebrew, or in all the languages of earth 
 combined, that could convey the faintest idea of what 
 he had seen. All that he could say about those things 
 v/as : unspeakable,'" 
 
 A little further along in the discourse he is distin- 
 guishing between eternal life and eternal existence. 
 "Eternal life is something on which you are to lay hold. 
 You have no need to lay hold of eternal existence. 
 Eternity will one day come by thee, and it will lay hold 
 on thee. Eternal existence belongs to us already, and 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 34I 
 
 that Is something that appals me at times. I am in one 
 respect infinite in existence, in duration: my being- runs 
 parallel to that of the Infinite God himself in duration. 
 I am not like Him in any other respect — in power, or 
 in wisdom, or in knowledge ; but in duration I shall 
 exist while He exists; in duration I am on a parallel 
 with the Infinite God. I sink to nothingness in a sense, 
 when I compare myself with that great sun up there ; 
 but he too sinks to insignificance when compared with 
 me in duration. When he has ended his day's work 
 (^paii y bydd efe zvcdi cadw itoswyl)^ I shall be only 
 beginning to live. When he is laid to rest from his 
 labors, I shall just begin to be conscious that I am a 
 man. Let the little bird tune his song on the bough, 
 there is no eternity connected with his works; let that 
 little lamb gambol in the meadow, his day will soon be 
 over; let sea-monsters sport in the waters, their life 
 will soon come to an end — but Oh ! God, be merciful to 
 me and my hearers ; we are creatures before whom lies 
 eternity! Be pleased, O Lord! to incline our hearts to 
 answer the end of our existence ! Help us to use our 
 opportunities to prepare for an eternity of duration." 
 
 These short, ejaculatory prayers, which abounded in 
 his sermons when the '^ hwyV had come, were most 
 striking and effective, and generally met with a response 
 of Amens which shook the house. 
 
 He did not hesitate on occasions to stimulate the 
 responses of the congregation by special expedients and 
 appeals. The most striking example of this was in his 
 sermon on the words : " Why stand ye here all the day 
 idle?" The magnificent challenge of the suffrages of 
 his hearers for their chosen Lord and Master on which 
 he ventures in this discourse is perhaps without a paral- 
 lel for audacity and effectiveness in the annals of pulpit 
 eloquence. The style of the discourse was thoroughly 
 
342 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 popular, the language and images those of the serving 
 and laboring classes. "I am here to-day," he said, 
 "in behalf of my Master, to seek to hire you every 
 one for his service. You have been urged to this a 
 hundred times before, but I fear that many of you have 
 not done so yet, and are still in the service of Satan and 
 of sin. Well, let us know why you refuse to hire your- 
 selves? 'Why stand ye here all the day idle?' 
 
 1. '^W/iy? Have you anything against the Master?^* 
 Here he dwelt in servant-class phraseology, on the ex- 
 cellencies of the Master, whose cause he was pleading, 
 contrasting him with the devil, whom so many of them 
 were serving, with an eloquence which thrilled all 
 hearts. 
 
 2. " Why ? Have you anything against the service ? " 
 Here again in popular language he vividly contrasted 
 the reasonableness and pleasantness and dignity of 
 Christ's service, with the folly and wretchedness and 
 shamefulness of the service of Satan and sin. 
 
 3. ''Why? Have you anything against the wages f 
 Here he extolled the unspeakable preciousness of the 
 rewards promised by Christ, of which indeed only the 
 earnest is received in this life, although that is worth 
 infinitely more than the wages of sin, were nothing else 
 to follow. 
 
 4. ' ' Why ? Have you anything against the other serv- 
 ants ?" Here followed an elegant eulogy of all Christ's 
 servants, through the ages, as "the salt of the earth," 
 men "of whom the world was not worthy," contrast- 
 ing them with the "serpents," " generations of vipers, " 
 "fiends in human shape," who were engaged in the 
 devil's service. 
 
 5. " Why? Have you afiy thing against the table, and 
 the provision 7nade for your support?'' Here came a 
 glorious description of the feasting in Christ's house^ 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 343 
 
 the hidden manna, the new wine, the clusters of Canaan, 
 contrasted with the ashes, the wormwood, and the gall, 
 the apples of Sodom on the devil's table. By his argu- 
 ments of each of these points he had acquired the most 
 complete mastery over the congregation, and now he 
 felt ready to challenge their suffrages.* 
 
 " Well, my hearers, I have been trying thus far to 
 present the claims of the two Masters as fairly as I 
 could. I am very sure that I haven't wronged the 
 devil. If either of them has suffered wrong at my 
 hands it is Jesus Christ, for I have nothing like the 
 ability to do Him justice ; we must go to heaven to get 
 that, and we must have eternity to praise Him. But 
 you have heard enough, I presume, to enable you to 
 come to some decision of the question, and have made 
 up your minds whom you will serve. Let me then 
 ask you what you intend to do ? For whom will you 
 cast your vote ? What can we do better than put up 
 the one and the other for your choice, take the vote of 
 the house, and find out fairly who is for the one and 
 who is for the other. Let us pronounce our benedic- 
 tion on the two princes, and I will ask you to be 
 ready with your Amen, to second the benediction. 
 And lest anybody should charge me with the disposi- 
 tion to wrong the devil, I will give him the first chance ; 
 and I call upon you, his supporters, to be ready to give 
 him your vote, and to make public your acknowledg- 
 ment of him : 
 
 " Belzebub, thou prince of the powers of the air, 
 commander of the hosts of hell ! with pleasure we ac- 
 knowledge thy authority ; thy service is our delight, we 
 rejoice in the expectation of its rewards ; with all our 
 
 * I have followed in the main the version given by Dr. O. Thomas 
 in the text of his Memoir, with a few modifications from the version 
 given in the appendix. 
 
344 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 heart we desire thee to Hve forever, to rule over us to 
 all eternity, and to extend thy sceptre over the utter- 
 most ends of creation. If that sentiment pleases you, 
 say Anicii ! " [Startled silence.] 
 
 " Where is your Amen ? Why do you keep so still? 
 Where are Satan's servants ? Stand up like men for 
 your Master. Perhaps you did not understand the 
 proposition. I will give you another chance. Oh, 
 thou most illustrious Satan, emperor of hell, great 
 chieftain of all the devils of destruction, who didst not 
 dread the thunderbolts of the Omnipotent, but didst 
 challenge Him to arms, and didst so far succeed in the 
 rebellion against Him as to spread sorrow and lamen- 
 tation and woe over the most delightsome and paradisia- 
 cal provinces of his dominion ; we glory in being thy 
 followers ; we delight in thy sovereignty over us, and 
 we bind ourselves to be forever faithful to thee. Long 
 live the King ! and may he reign over us forever and 
 ever! Now for your Amen.'' — [Solemn and oppressive 
 silence.] 
 
 ' * What ! are there none of the devil's servants here ? 
 Surely you are not going to disown your master thus 
 publicly. Where are you who were so shamelessly 
 calling upon him in the fair the other day ? I am about 
 to give you one more opportunity. Now or never is 
 your only chance. Stand up for your master like men. 
 Own him in the monthly meeting as you do at the fair, 
 or in the tavern. Now then give your voice in his 
 favor. Blessed be thy name, O Prince of Gehenna and 
 Emperor of the Bottomless Pit, who dost build thy 
 throne on oppression ; who dost administer thy gov- 
 ernment by means of falsehood ; who dost write thy 
 laws with the blood of thy subjects ; on thy head be 
 an everlasting crown. Let thy dominion be established 
 forever ; let God be cast down from His throne and 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 345 
 
 deprived of all His rights. Let His authority be every- 
 where overthrown. Thine be the government through 
 all eternity, and hasten we pray thee, to bring us home 
 to thyself, where we may enjoy closer communion with 
 thy Satanic Majesty, and be in more complete subjec- 
 tion to thy will. And let all the people say Amen ! " 
 [Continued silence, accompanied by deep excitement.] 
 
 *' Well, the devil himself cannot say that I have not 
 given his friends, if any of them are here, every chance 
 to acknowledge him. It would seem, however, that 
 we have a very happy state of things here to-day. 
 Here is a chapel full of people, without as much as one 
 servant of the devil ; at least, if there are any here, 
 they are ashamed of him, and I hope that they have 
 made up their minds never to serve him more. 
 
 " But let us see who there are here, and how many 
 who are for Jesus Chris-t, and whether they are ashamed 
 to own Him. His old servants here in Montgomery- 
 shire — where are you ? Some of you have been in His 
 service now for over half a century. You have by this 
 time given Him a fair trial ; let us hear what you think 
 of Him. Now then for it : Oh, Thou blessed Jesus ! 
 Thou didst give thyself for us, and didst redeem us 
 with Thy precious blood ; in infinite mercy Thou didst 
 deliver us out of the hard servitude in which we were 
 bound, and didst receive us into Thine own delightful 
 service, and into Thine own dear house. With all our 
 heart we bless Thy name for Thine unspeakable kind- 
 ness. We are resolved to serve Thee henceforth while 
 we live, and we can wish for no better heaven than to 
 be freed from all that unfits us for Thy service and 
 praise, and to cast our crowns forever at Thy feet. 
 O precious Jesus, Son of the Blessed, Saviour of sinners, 
 accept our imperfect and unworthy service, and grant 
 that forever we may be somewhere trying to do some- 
 
346 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 thing for Thee! " [Hundreds of Amens In all parts of 
 the house.] 
 
 ** Oh, yes, that's it ! I am glad to hear that Amen, 
 the old Amen that I heard in Montgomeryshire nearly 
 twenty-four years ago. It proves to me, what I 
 thought all the time, that there are here many old serv- 
 ants of Jesus Christ, who are ready to commend Him, 
 and are not ashamed to own Him. Let us see if there 
 are any others here who are ready to enter upon His 
 service. Come with me now : Oh thou great Jesus, 
 Son of God, Saviour of sinners, who from eternity hast 
 been anointed to be our king, and who hast the best 
 right to our service, we mourn with heartfelt sorrow 
 that we have so long delayed giving ourselves wholly 
 to Thee. We come to Thee now, to offer ourselves to 
 Thee. Receive us, O Saviour of men, save us through 
 the merits of Thine infinite sacrifice, and receive us to 
 endeavor to do all in our power, henceforth, for Thy 
 name and glory. Live forever as our Saviour, and as 
 our King, and on Thy head be the crown, forever and 
 ever, Amen.'' [What seems to be a universal Amen 
 from all in the house.] 
 
 *' Yes, that sounds like it ; and I trust that this is not 
 the excitement of the moment; but that it signifies the 
 heart's earnest decision in favor of Jesus Christ. Sup- 
 pose we have one more trial, that we may see how 
 many are sincerely resolved to enthrone Him in their 
 hearts. Come now, let us hear : O Thou beloved Jesus, 
 who in our low estate didst remember us, for Thy 
 mercy is from everlastin<g to everlasting ; who in Thine 
 infinite, loving kindness, being rich, didst for our sake 
 become poor ; didst espouse our cause, and pour out 
 Thy soul to death in our stead, taking on Thyself the 
 chastisement of our peace ; take the rule over us for- 
 evermore; enthrone Thyself on our hearts as King 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 34/ 
 
 Everlasting, and let Thy kingdom embrace the utter- 
 most ends of the earth, and all the world's inhabitants. 
 Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, 
 and honor, and praise, and might, be unto Thy name, 
 forever and ever. Amen." 
 
 The effect of this last appeal was indescribable. Dr. 
 Thomas, who was present, and who has furnished the 
 above report, says : ' * We are not quite certain as re- 
 gards the religious character of the excitement which 
 was produced. There was a large multitude, doubtless, 
 whose feelings were sincere ; there were more, we fear, 
 who were carried away by something like the spirit of 
 a political contest. But we do not remember having 
 ever witnessed a more complete mastery of the con- 
 gregation by the preacher." 
 
 V. CONDITIONS OF ITS POWER. 
 
 In order to understand the peculiar power of the 
 Welsh pulpit, regard must be had to what modern sci- 
 ence would call its ''environment." It is what it is 
 largely in virtue of being where it is. The national, 
 social, ecclesiastical, and religious conditions v/hich sur- 
 round it are an important factor of its influence and 
 success. 
 
 I. In the first place it should be remembered that in 
 Wales religion is everything. It is the one great inter- 
 est of the people. It is the protoplasm of the national 
 life. It is the woof, whatever else be the warp of its in- 
 stitutions. It is the be-all-and end-all of its organizations. 
 If elsewhere men make a religion of art, of science, of 
 literature, in Wales religion itself furnishes the art, the 
 science, the literature. In Greece the theatre was the 
 nation's pulpit; in Wales the pulpit is the nation's 
 theatre. All power, intellectual and moral, gravitates 
 
348 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 to it. Its honors are the mother's prayer ; the boy's 
 young dream ; the aspiration of the student ; the destiny 
 of genius. 
 
 2. Reh'gion being, as I have said, the one great inter- 
 est of the nation, it becomes a mighty bond of union 
 between pulpit and people. The preacher has an im- 
 mense advantage in the hold which his theme has on 
 the sympathies, the thoughts, the life of his hearers. 
 Even the chimney-corners of the tavern re-echo with 
 discussions of preachers and preaching ; and ' ' Jack on 
 his ale-house bench," in his cups, it may be, criticises 
 the latest pulpit sensation. This, of course, has its 
 unfavorable side. It is a disadvantage that the Gospel 
 should so largely take the place of a diversion. The 
 number of Gospel-hardened sinners in Wales is doubt- 
 less very great. On the other hand the proportion to 
 the entire population of the country, of those who have 
 real living heart-interest in the Gospel, is probably no- 
 where larger than in Wales. 
 
 3. It is not surprising, as a result of the above facts, 
 that, in Wales, popularity is a test of real power. 
 The very best preachers are most popular. As in 
 Greece, the popular verdict on the orator, or the dra- 
 matist, was well-nigh an infallible one; so in Wales 
 the popular sentence passed on the preacher rarely, if 
 ever, errs. It is a significant fact that the most cele- 
 brated and successful preachers attained popularity early 
 in their career. The critical instinct of the populace 
 was not slow in deciding upon their worth. The ring 
 of the genuine metal is known at once. 
 
 4. The great popular preachers of Wales, again, are 
 men of the people. Largely, indeed, they are of the 
 poorer, lower classes. Christmas Evans, as we have 
 seen, was a farmer's bound boy. John Elias, in his 
 youth, was spoken of as the "weaver boy from An- 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 349 
 
 glesea. " Henry Rees was first a farm-hand, and after- 
 wards, a book-binder. His friend, and in many respects 
 his equal, John Hughes, was a^arpentcr. WiUiam Rob- 
 erts, of Amlwch, a genuine old Titan, was a miner's 
 boy. John Jones, Talsarn, was, at one time, a quarry- 
 man. The greatest living preachers of Wales were, for 
 the most part, brought up to manual labor. Not a few 
 of them were brought up on small peasant farms. Most 
 of them were engaged during the week in farming, shop- 
 keeping, or even in mining, quarrying, or kindred 
 occupations. These men understood the people, their 
 daily experiences, wants, and trials. The roots of their 
 life strike in the same soil with those of their hearers. 
 They know where to find and touch the springs of 
 thought and feeling. And the people have no difficulty 
 in understanding them. The speaker is one of them- 
 selves, bone of their bone; and as he stands before 
 them, he and they alike respond to the "touch of fellow- 
 feeling" which makes them all akin. 
 
 5. The training of these men is also worth noting. 
 Until a comparatively recent time, collegiate instruction 
 was a rare pulpit equipment. Many a preacher began 
 as a ''man of one book" — that book, possibly, Peter 
 Williams' Bible. By degrees a commentary (**Esbon- 
 iad Jas. Hughes," perhaps) and a Bible Dictionary 
 ("Geiriadur Charles," no doubt) were added, and the 
 preacher regarded himself as having a fair outfit. I well 
 remember with what mysterious awe, and reverence for 
 the preacher's attainments, I would listen to an occa- 
 sional allusion to Josephus — '' Y mae Josephiis yn dyweyd'' 
 (Josephus says.) Their preparation was of a decidedly 
 practical sort. As the Indian throws his papoose into 
 the water, that instinct may teach him to swim, so in 
 Wales, a young man of promise is put up on his feet 
 before a congregation, with just one thing before him to 
 
350 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 do. Speak he must, whether he can or not. If it is in 
 him, it will out. Failures are not unknown, 'mute, 
 inglorious' Chrysostom^t, doomed to remain mute and 
 inglorious, because their mouth, unfortunately, was not 
 gold. So, by a process of natural selection, the fittest 
 find their way into the pulpit, while the rest, usually, at 
 least, are left out. 
 
 6. The system of itineracy, at one time universal, and 
 still but partially modified by the settled pastorate, is 
 also a condition not to be overlooked. On the one side 
 it makes the hearers acquainted with every variety and 
 style of preaching. It thus helps to educate the criti- 
 cal faculty. The same is true also of the many special 
 preaching occasions which occur in connection with the 
 Associations, Monthly Meetings, etc. By these means 
 the young aspirant for the pulpit receives important 
 homiletic training. All the models of the Welsh pul- 
 pit are brought in their turn before him ; by composing 
 and studying their excellencies or their defects, he learns 
 much respecting pulpit methods, and conditions of suc- 
 cess. 
 
 The itineracy is important, also, in its relations to the 
 preacher. Formerly, no minister had to prepare more 
 than two or three dozen new discourses in one year; 
 very many not more than half a dozen. Even to-day, 
 when the best preachers are settled pastors, there is 
 rarely occasion for the preparation of more than three 
 or four dozen. Their pastoral engagements rarely call 
 for more than two Sabbaths a month in their own pul- 
 pit, and on these they are not seldom relieved by some 
 wandering star. The rest of the time they are engaged 
 in preaching elsewhere, while others take their places. 
 This, of course, is a great advantage in the matter of 
 preparation, and still more so in the matter of delivery. 
 Whitefield, as is well known, preached his best sermons 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 35 I 
 
 scores, possibly hundreds of times, improving both mat- 
 ter and manner, and especially the latter, with each 
 delivery. Henry Rees never took less than six weeks 
 for the preparation of his greatest sermons, and preached 
 them a score of times, or more. No wonder that such 
 sermons blazed their way through the principality. 
 
 7. The fact just now noted, that these men were large- 
 ly working men — men of business, thrown in contact 
 with their fellow-men in the pursuit of business, and in 
 the daily affairs of life, is not wathout its significance. 
 With all their unworldliness, there was in their preach- 
 ing a great deal of this wordliness. Their language and 
 illustrations were businesslike and popular, drawn from 
 the farm, the shop, and the way-side. Like the Great 
 Teacher, they spoke m^uch in " parables," made up of fa- 
 miliar scenes, incidents, and analogies. Their compari- 
 sons were often rude and homely ; but, for that very 
 reason, came home all the more readily to men's hearts. 
 
 8. The encouragement given to individuality in Welsh 
 preaching should be noted. Speaking generally, the 
 eloquence of the Welsh pulpit has been the eloquence 
 of untutored nature, exhibiting the faults no doubt, but 
 also the excellencies of that school. There has been 
 the very largest measure of spontaneity, simplicity, 
 naturalness, individuality, mother-wit, originality. Queer 
 idiosyncracies have abounded, but being accompanied 
 by elements of genuine power, they have generally 
 added to the effectiveness of the preaching. Of course 
 it is out of the question to give to the English reader 
 any but the faintest taste of the original flavor of the 
 wit, quaintness, humor, and pathos of men like Siencyn 
 Penhydd, Evan Harries, Aberhoudda, Robert Thomas, 
 or Dafydd Rowland Llidierdau. 
 
 Robert Thomas (or Tomos) was once in the predica- 
 ment of Father Taylor, of Boston, when he said : ''My 
 
352 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 verb has lost its nominative case, but I'm bound for the 
 land of glory." So when Robert Tomos once came to 
 his second head it wasn't there. '* Secondly," he said, 
 
 ''secondly, my people We come now to the second 
 
 point Yes, my people, there is a secondly here 
 
 Oh yes if there were no secondly here, my beloved 
 
 hearers, I would dismiss the congregation on the spot 
 
 but there is a secondly here and you must hear 
 
 what that is too Oh yes, if I had only had my first 
 
 head, I would let you go home right away but I am 
 
 coming to the second point now and that is a very 
 
 important point yes indeed, you see a very im- 
 portant point This second head is a great deal more 
 
 important than my first head and (catching it at last) 
 
 here it is," and then he went on under full sail. 
 
 I once heard him preach from the words, "And he 
 died for all" (2 Cor. v: 15). After giving two or three ex- 
 positions of the expression, he introduced the following 
 imaginary dialogue between a hearer and himself : ' * Well, 
 Robert Tomos, what is .your opinion? " ''Well, I am of 
 precisely the same opinion with Paul." "But what is 
 Paul's opinion?" "Well, Paul is exactly of the same 
 opinion with me." "Yes, but what is your opinion and 
 Paul's?" "Well, we are both just exactly of the same 
 opinion one with another." In almost anybody else 
 this would have sounded trivial and impertinent, but in 
 Robert Tomos it sounded natural and striking enough, 
 and stimulated attention to the original exegesis which 
 followed, which no doubt was what he aimed to do. 
 
 Such men would scatter smiles all along their course, 
 and even convulse the hearers with laughter; and yet, 
 except in very rare cases, there would be no sense of 
 incongruity or impropriety, the outbreaks being so 
 spontaneous, so irresistible, and so characteristic of men 
 whose piety and earnestness were far above all question, 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 353 
 
 that their solemn and pathetic utterances would be all 
 the more effective by contrast. It is as common in a 
 Welsh congregation to see men's faces glisten at one 
 and the same moment with smiles and tears, as it is to 
 see sunshine and shadow chasing each other over the 
 landscape on an April day. 
 
 9. I must not omit to mention as peculiarly charac- 
 teristic of Welsh preaching what is called the ''hwyl." 
 The word means strictly a sail, and it conveys peculiar- 
 ly the idea of a sermon under full sail. There is a Di- 
 vine Afflatus in the soul of the preacher. A breeze 
 from heaven sweeps over the congregation, and the ser- 
 mon, under full canvas, ** walks the waters like a thing 
 of life." When the preacher reaches this mental and 
 spiritual exaltation (for it is both), his voice rises to a 
 higher key, and moves along in measured and musical 
 intonations. The Welsh are pre-eminently a music- 
 loving people. Tone has strange power over the ear 
 and over the soul. Hence, in Wales, the pulpit tone 
 has reached its acme of perfection. It has undergone 
 decided modification with the change in pulpit style 
 and method. The greater, and to some extent, colder 
 intellectuality of the modern style tends toward a more 
 didactic delivery, and the discontinuance of the chant- 
 like modulations, which were at one time all but univer- 
 sal. No great pulpit master of to-day relies on the 
 tone, although, when combined with striking ideas, 
 strains of pathos, strokes of imagination, it is still very 
 effective with a thoroughly aroused Welsh congrega- 
 tion. 
 
 10. Finally, we must take into account the atmos- 
 phere of the service. I have already spoken of the 
 very intimate and living sympathy between the pulpit 
 and the congregation. There prevails a sort of confi- 
 dential love-language to which the pulpit has a conse- 
 
354 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 crated right, terms of affectionate address, and tender 
 appeal, which have a pccuhar charm in the old Welsh. 
 Bobl amuyl, (my dear people), Wrandawyr tirion, (my 
 affectionate hearers), cneidiau gwerthfawr, (precious 
 souls), Enaid anwyl, (beloved soul), and many like 
 them. 
 
 Then, again, there is the responsiveness of the con- 
 gregation, showing itself in the face, the eyes, the move- 
 ments of the head, the posture, some leaning forward, 
 others rising to their feet, and above them all, the loud 
 and earnest ejaculations, "Amen!" "Diolch!" '^ Moli- 
 ant ! " *' Bendigedig! " * * Gogoniant ! " the English 
 equivalents of which (Thanks ! Praise ! Blessed ! Glory !) 
 are, as will at once be noted, far less satisfactory to both 
 ear and heart. When the ''hwyl" has come, the 
 "Amen corner " spreads all over the house. This, of 
 course, reacts upon the speaker, and kindles his fervor to 
 a still higher pitch, until, at times, one can almost im- 
 agine himself at Patmos, listening, with John, to the 
 trumpet voice of the angel, and the apostolic responses 
 of the heavenly hosts. 
 
 VL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WELSH PULPIT. 
 
 Our sketch of the Welsh Pulpit may appropriately 
 close with a brief summary of those characteristics 
 which gave it its special and pre-eminent power. 
 
 I. To begin with, it was thoroughly scriptural. It 
 never entered an old-time Welsh preacher's head to 
 make the text a peg on which to hang an essay. With 
 every one of these men to preach was to proclaim the 
 Word of God. Every sermon was rooted in its text, 
 grew out of the text, and had the sap, the Hving truth 
 of the text running all the way through it. I have 
 seen John Elias's study Bible ; a large folio, with alter- 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 355 
 
 nate blank leaves, every page of which, from Genesis 
 to Revelation, was written all over with notes. They 
 were men who read the Bible, read it thoughtfully, read 
 it constantly, read it on their knees, digested its con- 
 tents, and got it into the marrow of their being. Their 
 delight was in the law of the Lord, and in His law 
 did they meditate day and night. 
 
 2. Their preaching was wonderfully authoritative. 
 No wonder. From beginning to end it was "Thus 
 saith the Lord." They had the advantage — the earlier 
 preachers especially — in that their congregations were 
 altogether strangers to the doubt and queries, the hy- 
 pothetical and critical processes, which are to-day rife 
 among us. The new atmosphere is diffusing itself in 
 Wales, as elsewhere, and is affecting somewhat the 
 quality of its preaching ; although it is still a note- 
 worthy fact that the men of power in the Welsh Pulpit 
 to-day, as of old, are the men who preach God's word 
 without a quaver of hesitation, or a tremor of doubt. 
 
 3. The large infusion of the scriptural and doctrinal 
 element has given to Welsh preaching a very definite 
 character of solidity and weight. The treatment of 
 this element has, of course, varied according as the 
 preacher's mind has been predominently logical, or im- 
 aginative, or practical. But the doctrinal substratum 
 is never wanting. The allegories of Christmas, are, 
 like the graveyard allegory, theological personifications. 
 Every link in the chain of Williams of Wern's logic 
 was a fundamental gospel truth. The Platonic reveries 
 of Henry Rees were genuine evolutions of Job, or Isa- 
 iah, or John. The Demosthenic appeals of John Elias 
 were doctrinal thunderbolts. A sermon which is not 
 full of thought, solid Bible thought, has ever been, 
 and still is, a non-entity in the Welsh pulpit. 
 
 4. The suffusion of solid thought with deep and 
 
35^ LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 tender feeling, is also characteristic of the most effec- 
 tive Welsh pulpit oratory. The* theology of the intel- 
 lect as preached in it, is at the same time the ** the- 
 ology of the heart. " Its logic is not only "logic on 
 fire," but logic in tears. Its poetry and precept melt 
 in pathos. While some of the sensibility excited may 
 be spurious or superficial, being generated by the skill- 
 ful and tearful vocal modulations of the speaker, it is 
 beyond question that no preaching has been more suc- 
 cessful in producing deep and genuine emotion. 
 
 5. There prevails a similar union of logic and imagi- 
 nation. Every great Welsh preacher is alike a master 
 of practical logic, and an artist in the use of illustration 
 and ornament. One rarely hears a sermon that is 
 nothing but dry bones, or a sermon that is nothing but 
 flowers. Argument may predominate in one, illustra- 
 tion in another. But the combination of both is the 
 rule rather than the exception, and even the exquisite 
 balance of both is by no means uncommon. 
 
 6. Every one of these preachers is still further a 
 preacher for the people, addressing himself to the 
 people, using plain popular language, which all may 
 understand. In no pulpit is there less shooting over 
 the heads of the people, less of abstruse speculation, 
 of unintelligible technicalities, of the airing of academic 
 lore, or more of the language and knowledge common 
 to all, used with dignity and tenderness. 
 
 7. The arrangement of thought and illustration is 
 also in general skillful and effective. The law of 
 climax is carefully studied ; the weightiest thoughts 
 and the most powerful illustrations being brought in 
 at that stage of the discussion where they will tell most 
 forcibly. The same climactic arrangement rules, also, 
 in the management of the voice ; its pitch, intonations, 
 energy of deHvery. Let me here refer the reader back 
 
THE WELSH PULPIT. 357 
 
 to the description given from Dr. Owen Thomas, of 
 the preaching of Rowlands, Llangeitho. 
 
 8. Very effective use is made of reiteration. Some 
 significant and telling phrase, generally taken from the 
 text, is repeated again and again, until it acquires tre- 
 mendous cumulative power. So in the great sermon 
 of Dafydd Morris, already referred to, the words, 
 '' Y Gollcd Fawr'' (The Great Loss) were repeated 
 with awful solemnity and effect, so that they rang for 
 months and years in the memories and consciences 
 of the hearers. So with the use of the words, '^F 
 Gwaed Hwn ("This blood") by his son Ebenezer 
 Morris in the sermon already described and of the 
 words '' Hyn Bcthati'' ("Which Things") in a ser- 
 mon on the text — " Which things the angels desire to 
 look into." A wonderful effect was similarly pro- 
 duced by the reiteration of " Gwr Rydd'' ("A Free 
 Man") in a noted sermon by Thomas Richards, Aber- 
 gwaun. A few years ago I heard Dr. Owen Thomas 
 develop his theory of the structure of an "Association 
 sermon " (Pregeth Gymanfa), and I remember that he 
 attaches great importance to this expedient. He also 
 values it for its influence in giving unity to the sermon. 
 
 9. I will just mention, without dwelling on it, the 
 distinctive individuality of every great Welsh preacher, 
 as an element of his power. To the Welsh hearer, 
 accustomed through the itinerancy to so many types of 
 pulpit eloquence, the separate individuality of each, 
 carries with it its own charm, and is a source of special 
 power. 
 
 10. Lastly, and chiefly is the terrible earnestness, 
 which is an unvarying characteristic of every master of 
 assemblies from Howel Harris down. A man who 
 heard Howell Harris preach, said of him — "That man 
 preaches about hell as though he had been there." John 
 
358 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Elias, when a young man, preached at a Monthly Meet- 
 ing in Merionethshire. An old minister, Dafydd Cad- 
 walader, was asked : * ' What sort of a Monthly Meeting 
 did you have ? " " Well," said he, "there was a young 
 weaver boy from Carnavonshire there ; he is just begin- 
 ning, and we put him to preach in |:he Monthly Meet- 
 ing. May the Good Lord keep him from error — the 
 people will have to believe ivhatever he tells tJierny So, 
 with Henry Rees, John Jones, William Roberts, Am- 
 lwch, and all the rest. The power of personal convic- 
 tion v/as in their preaching. They could say each one 
 of them, "I believe, and therefore do I speak." 
 
 11. This earnestness was fed by earnest and constant 
 prayer. They were men mighty in prayer, Israels, 
 princes with God. The daughter of Daniel Rowlands, 
 said of him: ''Hen weddiwr mawr oedd e" ('*He was 
 a great old man of prayer"). John Elias, when quite 
 young, was put to pray in an Association at the open- 
 ing of the services. There was more said about that 
 prayer than about all the preaching. He spent a Sat- 
 urday night at Liverpool in the house of Mr. Rees. 
 Between four and five o'clock Sunday morning, he 
 awoke, and overheard Mr. Rees wrestling in prayer, 
 with God for his help to preach that day. 
 
 12. Then, how they loved to preach! It was the 
 supreme joy of their being. Their feeHng, one and all, 
 was voiced by John Jones, Talsarn, in the following 
 sentiments which were frequently uttered by him : 
 "There is no occupation on the face of the earth to 
 compare with the preaching of Jesus Christ as the Sav- 
 iour of sinners. Old John Brown, of Haddington, used 
 to say, that he would have been content, if it had 
 been necessary, to beg his way, from door to door, all 
 through the week, that he might preach Jesus Christ 
 to sinners, on the Sabbath. Indeed, I can assure you 
 
THE WELSH PULPJT. 
 
 359 
 
 I should be willing to do the same. I often have such 
 pleasure in it that I have no idea how I could be happy 
 in heaven without preaching. As for that matter, I 
 don't believe I shall have to try that. I believe there 
 will be a great deal of preaching there. Oh ! we shall 
 have Associations without number there, such as we 
 never saw the Hke of them here. Enoch, the seventh 
 from Adam will be there, the first preacher of whom 
 we have heard : Isaiah, the greatest preacher of the Old 
 Testament ; Paul, the chief speaker among the Apos- 
 tles ; old Augustine, the greatest of the Fathers ; Mar- 
 tin Luther, the great Reformer; George Whitfield, 
 Daniel Rowlands, John Elias, and hosts of others — 
 they will all be there, and in ' hzvyliau ' [flights, ' sails,' 
 see above], infinitely higher than they ever enjoyed in 
 this world declaring the wonders of Grace, and praising 
 the merits of the Great Sacrifice. And, indeed, I hope 
 that I, too, shall be allowed to try it there sometimes. 
 But, blessed be his name for the honor of doing a 
 little at it here, and for the heartfelt joy which is granted 
 me in the work." 
 
 The Lord gave to Wales His Word ; great and glo- 
 rious has been the company of its preachers. 
 
XIII. 
 
 THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF THE REM- 
 NANT AND OF NUMBERS. 
 
 In the immortal protest which was adopted by the 
 Evangelical Members of the Imperial Diet at Spires in 
 1529, the Protestants gave as one reason for not con- 
 senting to the repeal of the decree of 1526: " Because 
 it concerns the glory of God and the salvation of our 
 souls, and that, in such matters, we ought to have re- 
 gard above all to the commandments of God, who is 
 King of Kings and Lord of Lords, each of us rendering 
 his account for himself, without caring the least in the 
 world about majority or minority." On the basis of 
 this heroic declaration we are justified in assuming it as 
 an essential characteristic of Protestantism that in all 
 questions of conviction and duty, it cares far more for 
 truth and right than for numbers. 
 
 It so happens that at this very time, just when we 
 are commemorating the activities of Protestantism in 
 connection with the Four Hundredth Anniversary of 
 the great Protestant Leader, a distinguished English 
 critic is visiting our shore and lecturing on Numbers, 
 Majorities and Minorities, declaring it as his conviction 
 that the Majority is unsaved and that our only salvation 
 lies in the Minority. In this lecture, as you will re- 
 member, Mr. Matthew Arnold bases his opinion on 
 certain expositions of Plato and Isaiah. He quotes 
 Plato as saying that ' ' there is but a very small remnant 
 of honest followers of wisdom" and that "they may 
 be compared to one, who has fallen among wild beasts, 
 who will not be one of them, but can make no head 
 (360) 
 
SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF THE REMNANT. 36 1 
 
 against them," and who must be content to "keep still 
 as it were, standing aside under a wall in a storm of 
 dust and hurricane of driving wind, to behold the rest 
 filled with iniquity, if only he himself may live his hfe 
 clear of injustice and impiety and depart when his time 
 comes, in mild and gracious mood, with fair hope." 
 
 Of his other great authority, he goes on to say: 
 ** Isaiah like Plato, with inspired insight, foresaw that 
 the world before his eyes, the world of actual life, the 
 state and city of the unsound majority, could not stand ; 
 and unlike Plato, Isaiah announced with faith and joy, 
 a leader and a remnant certain to supersede them." 
 Our Nineteenth Century critic, it is true, somewhat su- 
 perciliously condemns the Greek Philosopher's views as 
 ** visionary" and the Hebrew Prophet's expectations 
 as " fantastic," to-wit, for his time and country. 
 
 It would, perhaps, be not uncharitable to suggest nor 
 difficult to prove that the modern Apostle of Hellen- 
 ism understands Plato a little better than he understands 
 Isaiah. My main object, however, is to call attention" 
 to his conclusion, in which, after showing the perils con- 
 sequent upon the unsoundness of the majority, he says: 
 * ' From this hard doctrine we will betake ourselves to 
 the more comfortable doctrine of the remnant. ' The 
 remnant shall return ' (quoting Isaiah), shall convert 
 and be healed itself first, and shall then recover the un- 
 sound majorities." "And you are 50,000,000 and 
 growing annually," he says to us. "What a remnant 
 yours may be, surely! A remnant of how great num- 
 bers ; how mighty strength ; how irresistible efficacy ! " 
 Taking my cue from the declaration of our Protestant 
 Magna Charta, which I have already read, and from the 
 theme of Mr. Arnold's first lecture in America, I have 
 thought it might not be unreasonable to offer to- 
 night a few considerations on the Scripture Doctrine of 
 Numbers and the Remnant. Numbers acquire their 
 chief significance from contrast or opposition. The 
 "Remnant" is the result of war, destruction, exile. 
 "Majority" or "Minority" presupposes opposing par- 
 ties. 
 
 I. I find accordingly the first foundation stone of the 
 present discourse in the ProtevangeHum: " I will put 
 
362 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy 
 seed and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou 
 shalt bruise his heel." Sin produces the moral antago- 
 nism represented by the Serpent and the Seed of the 
 Woman. It is not a question as yet of numbers, but 
 of parties. The Serpent is the Tempter Satan, the 
 Personal head of the kingdom of evil. The Seed of the 
 Woman means Humanity : Humanity, however, in a 
 complex sense and relation, (i.) Even in its ruin hu- 
 manity has not lost all of its godliness. What remains 
 of the godlike in fallen humanity so long as it does re- 
 main in that humanity continues to make war on the 
 Serpent, on the Evil which has wrought its own ruin. 
 In the heart of the sinner, in the bosom of the race, in 
 society, the desperate duel goes on. It is a duel, how- 
 ever, in which advantage is all on one side. It is the 
 duel of the victim with his victor. But (2.) The Son 
 of God comes to the rescue of the victim, taking on 
 him his form and nature. As the Son of Man — as the 
 Seed of the Woman, he conquers the Serpent, bruising 
 his head. (3.) This victory of the Seed of the Woman 
 is the victory of humanity. In its Elder Brother, the 
 race. Universal or Total Humanity, overcomes Sin. 
 The history of the race is the development of this conflict. 
 II. After the Protevangelium, the first decisive step 
 in the advancement of the conflict is the Call of Abra- 
 ham. This call is significant of the Divine Method. 
 The special characteristic of this method may be de- 
 fined by the word Particularism. By this is meant par- 
 ticular selection for the accomplishment of a universal 
 result. In the selection of Abraham and his household, 
 note a twofold contrast, (i.) The contrast of the /^w 
 and the many. Thus, in David's Psalm, recorded in I 
 Chron. 16, we are told " of the covenant which He made 
 unto Abraham and of His oath unto Isaac and hath 
 confirmed the same to Jacob, . . . saying: Unto thee 
 will I give the land of Canaan . . . when ye were but 
 few, even a few, and strangers in it. And when they 
 went from Nation to Nation and from one Kingdom to 
 another people, He suffered no man to do them wrong." 
 (2.) Note the contrast of the " <?;^r, " and the **many," or 
 **all." Isa. 51: 2. " Look unto Abraham, your father. 
 
SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF THE REMNANT. 363 
 
 and unto Sarah that bare you ; for I called him alone (or as 
 one, nnx) and blessed him, and increased him." Gen. 
 12: 3. "In thee shall all the families of the earth be 
 blessed." Gen. 17: 5. "Thy name shall be Abraham, 
 for a father of many nations have I made thee." Gen. 
 22: 18. "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth 
 be blessed." Paul develops the idea of the Abrahamic 
 Covenant still further. Gal. 3 : 16. " He saith not, and 
 to seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed, 
 which is Christ." That is to say, God's promise in its 
 historic realization does not dissipate itself amongst a 
 loose, indefinite plurality of persons, like the grains of a 
 sand heap, but concentrates on a unit line, which line is 
 embodied, or culminates in Christ. 
 
 III. We find the particularistic method applied still 
 further in the selection of Isaac, and the rejection of 
 Ishmael, and in the selection of Jacob and the rejection 
 of Esau, each selection involving a relative diminution 
 of numbers by comparison with the outside world. 
 
 IV. The numerical contrasts become still more defi- 
 nite in connection with the Exodus, (i.) It is evident 
 that the Israelites, although they had greatly multiplied 
 in Egypt, were after all but a handful when compared 
 with the vast population of Egypt, or when compared 
 with the immense army which under Pharaoh pursued 
 them to the Red Sea. See Exodus 14, passim. (2.) 
 The relative if not absolute reduction of the number 
 of the Israelites by the judgments, wars and hardships 
 of the wilderness, would justify us in calling the body 
 of men who entered Canaan a remnant. Jer. 31: 2. 
 " The people which were left of the sword found grace 
 in the wilderness ; even Israel, when I went to cause 
 him to rest." Numbers 14: 31. "Your little ones 
 which ye said should be a prey, them will I bring in, 
 and they shall know the land which you have despised. 
 But as for you, your carcasses shall fall in the wilderness." 
 Deut. 32: 10. "The Lord found Jacob in a desolate 
 land, and in the waste howling wilderness ; He led him 
 about." (3.) When they entered Canaan to possess it, 
 the Israelites were a minority in comparison with the Ca- 
 naanites. Deut. 7 : 7. " The Lord did not set His love 
 upon you, nor choose you because ye were more in num- 
 
364 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 ber than any people, for ye were the fewest of all people. 
 lb. V. 17. "If thou shalt say in thine heart, these na- 
 tions are more than I, how can I dispossess them? 
 Thou shalt not be afraid of them, but thou shalt re- 
 member what the Lord thy God did unto Pharaoh and 
 unto all Egypt." lb. 31: 3. " The Lord thy God, he 
 will go over before thee, and he will destroy these na- 
 tions from before thee." This became a fixed thought 
 with all devout Israehtes, that success does not depend 
 upon numbers. Lev. 26: 8. " Five of you shall chase 
 an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand 
 to flight." Deut. 32 : 30. "How should one chase a 
 thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except the 
 Lord had sold them, and the Lord had shut (delivered) 
 them up." Josh. 23 : 10. " One man of you shall chase 
 a thousand; for the Lord your God, He it is that fight- 
 eth for you." I Sam. 14: 6. "There is no restraint to 
 the Lord to save by many or by few." 2 Chron. 14: 
 II. " And Asa cried unto the Lord his God, and said, 
 Lord, it is nothing with thee to help whether with many 
 or with him that hath no power ; help us, O Lord our 
 God ; for we rest on thee, and in thy name we go 
 against this multitude." Is. 41 : 14. " Fear not, thou 
 worm Jacob, and ye few men of Israel." Think again 
 of the grand inspiration, as a lesson in theocratic num- 
 eration, of such a thrilling fact as the reduction of Gid- 
 eon's army from 32,000 to 300 men, and the rout of the 
 Midianites by that picked band. 
 
 V. From the time of Samuel to Uzziah, King of 
 Judah, the golden age of Jewish history, the people, as 
 would be expected, flourished and multiplied. It was 
 now especially that the promise of increase made to 
 Abraham, " Multiplying I will multiply thee," and also 
 through Moses (see Deut. 7) were realized on their larg- 
 est scale. The division of the two Kingdoms of Israel 
 and Judah was of no special significance as touching the 
 question of num.bers. 
 
 VI.- But when the Assyrian invasions began under 
 Pul. (Sardanapalus) accompanied by departures of large 
 multitudes to Assyria, and afterwards to Babylonia, a 
 special significance begins to attach to the term "rem- 
 nant," and the kindred terms "remainder," "residue" 
 
SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF THE REMNANT. 36^ 
 
 and "left," and to the promises which specially con- 
 cerned the " remnant," whether applied to the remnant 
 in the land, or the remnant in captivity. Take the fol- 
 lowing passages from Isaiah 1 1 : 1 1 seq. * 'And it shall 
 come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set His 
 hand again the second time to recover the remnant of 
 His people which shall be left, from Assyria, and from 
 Egypt, and from Pathros and from Cush, and from Elam, 
 and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the isles 
 of the sea." ''And He shall set up an ensign for the 
 nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and 
 gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four 
 corners of the earth." "And there shall be an highway 
 for the remnant of His people, which shall be left, from 
 Assyria ; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came 
 up out of the land of Egypt." 
 
 VII. Still more significant and definite is the use of 
 the term in connection with the great Babylonian Exile, 
 whether as applied to those who were left in the land, 
 or to the captives in the land of their captivity, (as re- 
 maining over from the war and the siege) or to the re- 
 turned captives as a remnant in the land, compared with 
 its former occupants. It is more particularly in the last 
 application that the term acquires its most important 
 significance. The prophecies, especi^ally the promises, 
 relating to the restored remnant, are most interesting and 
 suggestive. Note the following particulars as character- 
 istic of the doctrine of the remnant in this its late and 
 more advanced development. 
 
 1. The existence of the remnant is due to the partic- 
 ularizing grace and mercy of God. Isaiah 1:9. " Except 
 the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, 
 we should have been as Sodom, and we should have 
 been like unto Gomorrah." 
 
 2. The preservation of the Remnant is with a view to 
 carrying out the purposes of God's Covenant with His 
 people. Note here to begin with, that God has chosen 
 Israel to be His own special possession, and has* estab- 
 lished His Covenant with them. Ex. 6\ j. "I will 
 take you- to me for a people, and I will be to you a God. " 
 lb. 19: 5-6. **If ye will obey my voice indeed, and 
 keep my Covenant, ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto 
 
366 llewelVn ioan evans. 
 
 me above all people ; for all the earth is mine. And 
 ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy 
 nation." When in course of time the nation suffered 
 disruption, deportation, disintegration, the remnant rep- 
 resented the nucleus, the kernel, with which God still 
 maintained His covenant relations. Thus in the sym- 
 bolical prophecy of Hosea (Ch. i.) the second daughter 
 of fornication was called Lo-Ruhamah (unpitied) * * for I 
 will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel ; but 
 I will utterly take them away." 
 
 The third daughter was called Lo-Ammi (not my peo- 
 ple) * ' for ye are not my people, and I will not be your 
 God." " Yet the number of the children of Israel shall 
 be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured 
 nor numbered ; and it shall come to pass that in the 
 place where it was said unto them: Ye are not my 
 people, there shall it be said unto them : Ye are the 
 sons of the living God. Then shall the children of Judah 
 and the children of Israel, be gathered together, and ap- 
 point themselves one head, " and compare Hosea 2 : 1-23. 
 Zech. 13: 8, 9. *'And it shall come to pass, that in 
 all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be 
 cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And 
 I will bring the third part through the fire, and will 
 refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold 
 is tried ; they shall call on my name and I will hear 
 them. I will say, it is my people , and they shall say, 
 The Lord is my God." 
 
 We find the idea still more vividly described by 
 Isaiah (6: 13,) (Translation of Delitzsch) : ''And is 
 there still a tenth therein, this also is given up to destruc- 
 tion, which like the terebinth and the oak, of which 
 w^hen they are felled, only a root-stump remains; such 
 a root-stump is a holy seed." The remnant is thus the 
 root-stump, the stock, the nucleus of the people with 
 which God's covenant abides, and which through every 
 disaster is the seed of the future. It represents accord- 
 ingly t?he vital core of the nation. The rest of the 
 nation are disjecta membra, which like decayed limbs, or 
 dead leaves, fall away from the living stock and perish. 
 
 It is the remnant that lives on, it is the remnant that 
 carries on God's Covenant Plan. It is in the remnant 
 
SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF THE REMNANT. 36/ 
 
 that God's Plan finds its ultimate and complete realiza- 
 tion. Isaiah 10: 22. "Though thy people Israel be 
 as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall 
 return or come back to God." 
 
 3. And so we reach another step in the development 
 and use of the term, in which the idea of relativity, 
 fewness, fragmentariness, all but disappears, and the 
 word acquires a more absolute meaning, conveying at 
 times the idea even of a multitude rather than of a few. 
 
 This is particularly noticeable in the following passages: 
 Micah 2: 12. "I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of 
 thee; I will surely gather the remnant of Israel; I will 
 put them together as the sheep of Bozrah, as the flock 
 in the midst of their fold; for they shall make great 
 noise by reason of the multitude of men.'' 
 
 lb. 4: 6, 7. "In that day will I assemble her that 
 halteth, and I will gather her that is driven out, and 
 her that I have afflicted, and I will make her that halted 
 a remnant [What does that mean ? Note the parallel- 
 ism] and her that Vv^as cast off a strong nation.'' 
 
 The remnant therefore may be a multitude, a strong 
 nation. At all events it is the root, the seed, the poten- 
 tiality of a great multitude. 
 
 4. Another characteristic of the remnant is, it repre- 
 sents the principle of unity in Micah 5:3. " Therefore 
 will he give them up, until the time that she which 
 travaileth hath brought forth — then the remnant of his 
 brethren shall return unto the children of Israel. . . . 
 And this man (the Messiah just mentioned in verse 2) 
 shall be (the) Peace." Isaiah 11: 12, f. "And he 
 shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble 
 the outcasts of Israel and gather together the dispersed 
 of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The envy 
 also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of 
 Judah shall be cut ofl", Ephraim shall not envy Judah, 
 and Judah shall not vex Ephraim." The remnant is 
 thus the nucleus by means of which the reunification of 
 God's people will take place, and the original, vital 
 unity of the People will be realized. 
 
 5. In like manner the remnant perpetuates the holi- 
 ness or consecrated destiny of the people. Isaiah 4: 3. 
 " It shall come to pass that he that is left in Zion, and 
 
368 LLEWELYN JOAN EVANS. 
 
 he that remaineth in Jerusalem shall be called holy, every 
 one that is written among the living (enrolled unto life) 
 in Jerusalem." Zeph. 3: 12, 13. " I will also leave in 
 the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they 
 shall trust in the name of the Lord. The remnant of 
 Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies ; neither shall 
 a deceitful tongue be found in their m.outh." Amos 5 : 
 15. **Hate the evil and love the good, and establish 
 judgment in the gate ; it may be that the Lord God of 
 Hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph." 
 
 6. And now we reach a still more advanced point in 
 the development of the idea. The ''remnant," repre- 
 senting as it does, the holiness, unity, vitality, of God's 
 people, representing in a word the spirit, the .purposes, 
 the powers, the prerogatives, the possibilities of God's 
 Covenant plan — ceases to be an outcast, a fragment, 
 ceases to occupy a negative, defensive position ; it be- 
 comes a positive, aggressive, mighty force in the world. 
 
 Micah 5: 7, 8. "And the remnant of Jacob shall 
 be in the midst of many people as a dew from the 
 Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that turneth not 
 for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men. And the 
 remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the 
 midst of many people as a lion among the beasts of the 
 forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep; who 
 if he go through, both treadeth down, and teareth in 
 pieces, and none can deliver." 
 
 In the first figure the remnant exerts the still but 
 irresistible power of the dew, refreshing, vitalizing, 
 transforming, beautifying the world. 
 
 In the second it exerts the more palpable, invincible 
 power of the lion, conquering the evil by destroying it. 
 
 Zeph. 2:9. "Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord 
 of Hosts, the God of Israel, surely Moab shall be as 
 Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, even 
 the breeding of nettles, and saltpits, and a perpetual 
 desolation ; the residue of my people shall spoil them, 
 and the remnant of my people shall possess them. " Thus 
 the remnant subjugates, absorbs, assimilates the mass. 
 
 7. And thus we reach the final stage of representa- 
 tion. "The Remnant," the "Few," the "Small," 
 the "Scattered," etc., becomes the "Multitude," the 
 
SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF THE REMNANT. 369 
 
 "Many," the ''Nations," " Many Nations," ''All the 
 Nations." 
 
 The ProtevangeHum reaches its accomplishment in 
 the Apokatastasis. The Seed of the Woman destroys 
 the Serpent and realizes for Humanity its original 
 Divine Ideal. The Seed of Abraham becomes the 
 world's beatification. All the people become the 
 People of God, the Israel of Jehovah. The Partic- 
 ularism of the Divine Plan merges in its Universalism. 
 
 Isaiah 60: 16 f. "Whereas thou hast been forsaken 
 and hated, so that no man went through thee, I will 
 m.ake thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many gener- 
 ations." "A httle one shall become a thousand, and 
 a small one a strong nation." Jer. 30; 19. "I will 
 multiply them, and they shall not be few. I will glorify 
 them, and they shall not be small." "Jer. 33: 22. 
 "As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither 
 the sand of the sea measured ; so will I multiply the seed 
 of David, my servant. " Isaiah 49 : 1 8 f. ' 'Lift up thine 
 eyes round about and behold ; all these [nations] gather 
 themselves together and come to thee." Isaiah 52 : 15. 
 ' ' So shall he (the Messiah) sprinkle [startle] many na- 
 tions." lb. 53: II. " By his knowledge shall my 
 righteous servant justify many." 
 
 Isaiah 2: 2. "It shall come to pass in the last 
 days that the mountain of the Lord shall be established 
 in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted 
 above the hills : and all nations shall flow into it And 
 many people shall go and say, come ye and let us go 
 up to the mountain of the Lord. (And He shall judge 
 among the nations, and shall rebuke many people.)" 
 Isaiah 54: 3. "Thou shalt break forth on the right hand 
 and on the left ; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles." 
 
 The doctrine of the Remnant is a peculiarity of the 
 Old Testament. It grows out of the history of God's 
 People as I have very briefly sketched it, as a series of 
 vicissitudes, depressions and exaltations, reductions and 
 enlargements, the series losing itself at last in the glo- 
 rious perspective of the Messianic Future, when the 
 Remnant shall multiply .itself and become the whole. 
 In the New Testament it emerges in its Old Testament 
 form once or twice in the writings of Paul, (Romans) 
 
370 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 more especially in citations from the Old Testament, 
 and in discussions respecting the relations of Israel. 
 On the one hand, the negative side of the term is used 
 to justify the punishment and rejection of the Jews for 
 the rejection of Christ. On the other hand the positive 
 side of the idea is used to justify the hope that the Jew- 
 ish nation will yet be restored through faith in Christ 
 and incorporation in the Church. 
 
 The idea of the People D;^n 6 ^aoc, or (occasionally) 
 the nation 6 iduo^ is still more prominent in the New 
 Testament. It comes out particularly in the writings of 
 Peter, and of John in the Apocalypse — who represent 
 what is called " Judeo-Christianity," Christianity, that 
 is, as seen through the eyes, as realizing the hopes, and 
 as described by the tongue of a believing Jew ; and in 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which the writer, al- 
 though an adherent and exponent of Pauline rather 
 than of Petrine Christianity, is seeking to confirm the 
 believing Hebrews in the Christian faith. 
 
 The New Testament Doctrine of "The People" 
 exhibits the following characteristics. 
 
 1. The Christian Church is the true Israel or Cove- 
 nant-People of God. It stands in the line of the Cove- 
 nant of Grace, and inherits all the promises of God to 
 His people. 
 
 2. This spiritual people, this holy nation has its own 
 organic life, and unity and law. It is a unit. It is Hv- 
 ing— nay more, it is a Hfe. It is a commonwealth, a 
 kingdom — yea verily, the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 3. Not only so — but it is t/ie people, the o?te people 
 according to God's definition of the term. We find 
 Paul and Peter alike quoting — as expressing a thought 
 of peculiar significance and emphasis — the Old Testa- 
 ment expression of Hosea : Lo-Ammi, oh labq, no-people. 
 
 "Ye are an elect race (i Pet. 2 : 9,) a royal priest- 
 hood, a holy nation — a people for God's own possession 
 — that ye may show forth the excellencies of Him who 
 called you out of darkness in His marvelous light, 
 which in time past were no people, (oh lab<^ but now 
 are the people of God." (And so Paul in Rom. 9: 25.) 
 
 Outside this spiritual unit, this Divine organism, the 
 true Israel, there is nothing which can properly be called a 
 
SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF THE REMNANT. 37 1 
 
 People. Everything else is a No-People, a new agc^re- 
 gate of units, a heap of disconnected, indefinite, mean- 
 ingless individuals. Hence we find Paul speaking even 
 of the mass of the Jewish nation as r/v£c. Rom. 3 : 3. 
 " What if some disbelieve? " 
 
 I Cor. 10: 7, 9. "Neither be ye idolaters, as some 
 of them ; as it is written: The people sat down to eat 
 and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit 
 fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one 
 day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt 
 the Lord as some of them also tempted and perished 
 by the serpents. Neither murmur ye, as some of them 
 also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer." 
 So again (Rom. 11: 17,) "if some of the branches 
 were broken off; " and again (v. 19,) ''Branches were 
 broken off." The Branches may drop, or be lopped off 
 The Tree lives. Indeed only the root-stump of Isaiah 
 may remain, and still Paul would say the tree lives. 
 
 The numerical majority, the mass, is the spiritual, 
 dynamic minority. 
 
 4. The People will absorb and assimilate all the peo- 
 ples and no-peoples of earth. This the final issue of 
 God's plan. Rev. 21 : 24 f. " The nations shall walk 
 amidst the light thereof, and the kings of the earth do 
 bring their glory into it." "And they shall bring the 
 honor and the glory of the nations into it." The New 
 Testament Doctrine of Numbers is briefly this: 
 
 I. Written as it was, while the Church was yet in its 
 infancy, and a small minority, it has much to say on 
 the one side of the * Many ' who represent the unregen- 
 erate Adamic condition of humanity, and on the other 
 side of the * Few ' in whom the purposes of Grace have 
 found as yet their realization. Matt. 7: 13, 14. "Wide 
 is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruc- 
 tion, and ma?iy be they that enter in thereby." 
 
 " Narrow is the gate and straitened the way that lead- 
 eth unto life, d,r\d few be they that find it." 
 
 Matt. 22: 14. "Many are called, but few chosen." 
 Matt. 19: 30. "Many that are first shall be last." 
 [" Many shall be last that are first." Rev. Ver.] 
 
 The same relative condition of things is implied in 
 such declarations as: i John 5 : 19. "The whole world 
 
37^ LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 lieth in the Evil One." John i: lo. ''He was in 
 the world, and the world was made by him, and the 
 world knew him not." John 15: 19. "If ye were of 
 the world, the world would love its own, but because 
 ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of 
 the world, therefore the world hateth you." 
 
 2. But on the other hand — and this is by far the 
 prevalent tone of the New Testament expression, this 
 condition of things is only temporary. Hence it is de- 
 scribed as often by alwv as by xbop.O!;. 
 
 The proportions are to be reversed. The Minority is 
 to become the Majority, numerically as well as dynam- 
 ically. The Few are to grow into the Many, the All. 
 Matt. 8: 11. "Many shall come from the East and 
 the West, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac 
 and Jacob." Rom. 8: 29. "That he might be the 
 first-born among ;;^<??y/ brethren.^' Heb. 2: 10. " It be- 
 came Him, in bringing many sons into glory." 
 
 Rev. 7:9. "I saw and beheld a great multitude 
 which no man could number out of every nation," etc. 
 John 3: 16-17. *'God so loved the zvorld," etc. "For 
 God sent not the Son into the world to condemn 
 the world, but that the world should be saved through 
 Him." Rev. ii: 15. "The kingdom of the world is 
 become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ." 
 Matt. 28: 19. "Go ye therefore and make disciples 
 oi all the 7iations.'' Mat. 13: 33. "The kingdom of 
 heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and 
 hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened.'' 
 Acts 3 : 21. "Whom the heaven must receive until the 
 times of restoration of all things'' 
 
 Eph. I : 10. "To sum up all things in Christ." 
 
 Rom. 5 : 15 f. " Much more did the grace of God, 
 and the gift, etc., abound unto tJie many." "Through 
 one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men 
 to Justification of life." "Through the obedience of 
 the one shall the many be made righteous. " The Many : 
 that is the Race, Humanity as a Multitude. The All: 
 that is the Race, Humanity as the Totality. 
 
 Brief summary in the way of conclusions. 
 
 I. The numerical phraseology of the Scriptures as 
 applied to the Church in the present, and as implying 
 
SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OE THE REMNANT. 373 
 
 that God's people equal a remnant, few in numbers, is 
 to be taken as relative and temporary. 
 
 (i.) They are a few or a remnant now. 
 
 (2.) They are few as compared with what they might 
 have been if sin had never come into the world. 
 
 (3.) They are few as compared with the many, who 
 are as yet under the power of sin. 
 
 (4.) They are few as compared with the many, who 
 will one day be on the Lord's side. They are not so 
 designated as implying — 
 
 (i.) That they are absolutely few — 
 
 (2.) That the present proportions will always con- 
 tinue. 
 
 (3.) Or that at the end of all only a few will be 
 saved. But you may say : If so, why when Christ was 
 asked. Are there few that be saved? did He not answer 
 the question in the negative ? I answer — I do not know. 
 That he did not say "No," does not prove that the 
 right answer is Yes. 
 
 Had He answered yes, — it might have done no 
 good ; might have done harm. There are states of 
 mind in which some truths — from the partial way in 
 which they are presented, or from the partial way in 
 which they are seized by the mind, hurt rather than 
 help. The practical answer which Christ then gave 
 was the one then needed: ''Strive to enter in by the 
 narrow door; for many, I say unto you, shall seek to 
 enter in and shall not be able." 
 
 2. The Particularism of Redemption also has its spe- 
 cial significance in connection with this preparatory tem- 
 porary order of things. 
 
 3. Even as applied to the present order of things the 
 Particularism of God's Plan should be interpreted on a 
 large and generous scale. Paul teaches this when he 
 says: Rom. ii: 5, ''Even so then at this present 
 also, there is a remnant according to the election of 
 Grace." He does not say — There is only a remnant, 
 but there is a remnant. Not one, as the Prophet Eli- 
 jah said of himself, but seven thousand knees. Partic- 
 ularism devotes itself to saving all that is possible out 
 of the wreck. It is a Particularism, an Election of 
 Grace, Generosity, unmerited. 
 
374 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 4. Particularism merges into Universalism. 
 
 Some are spared in order that the world may be 
 spared. The few are saved in the beginning, to the end 
 that the many, the all may be saved in the end. 
 
 5. Both in the particularistic and the universalistic 
 stages numbers are to be interpreted as representing 
 the real Divine hving forces on either side. It is a ques- 
 tion of dynamics, rather than of bare mechanical Arith- 
 metic. The numerical minority may be, nay is, the 
 dynamical majority. As when you put one before a 
 cipher, you raise zero to ten, so when you put God 
 with a few you have a majority. The Remnant equals 
 the kingdom. God's redemptive Providence aims at 
 quaHtative rather than quantitative results. His Census 
 takes no account of the No-People. 
 
 6. The Qualitative, however, carries with it the 
 Quantitative. The dynamics of God's plan work out 
 proportionate results. The statistics of His purposes 
 correspond to their vastness and their glory. The cen- 
 sus of his kingdom demands the Arithmetic of Infinite 
 Love and the Tables of Eternity. 
 
 Lessons. — Our Gospel is a Gospel of Hope and of 
 Joy. It is, verily, " Glad Tidings, " to the world. Be 
 of good cheer. You are on the winning side. Look 
 more to principles, realities, forces, than to numbers 
 or external results. Be not deceived on the one side ; 
 be not discouraged on the other. Remember that truth, 
 life, progress, religion, the Kingdom of God in a word-i^is 
 far more than a question of numbers. 
 
 Do not be ashamed of standing with the few. 
 
 Do not be afraid of being in a minority. 
 
 Do not be disheartened at working with the remnant. 
 
 Remember that the remnant represents God and His 
 work, and so always represents the future, represents 
 the Total that counts in the end. One then is a ma- 
 jority. At the same time rejoice in the privilege of 
 laboring to multiply the few, to build up the remnant 
 into the Many, the All; to the end that God may be 
 All in All 
 
XIV. 
 
 PERSONAL CHRISTIANITY.* 
 
 Most concisely, though not perhaps in all respects 
 most satisfactorily, I may state the theme of our present 
 discussion to be Pcrsoiial Christianity. The phrase may 
 call for a word or two of justification. Can Christianity 
 be anything but personal ? An impersonal Christianity, 
 would that not be a logical self-contradiction ? True — 
 but unfortunately our practical thinking is already full 
 of self-contradiction, and the only way oftentimes to 
 meet these successfully, is to insist on the tautologies 
 which they obscure or deny. When Christianity be- 
 comes a dead shell, we need to remind ourselves that 
 there is such a thing as vital Christianity. When it is 
 sublimated into dreamlike idealities, we are required to 
 emphasize Jiistoric Christianity. When it degenerates 
 into a mechanical formahsm, it is time to reproclaim a 
 spi7it2ial Christianity. When undue prominence is given 
 to its abstract, impersonal factor, we shall do well to 
 reaffirm with all earnestness the predication of a per- 
 sonal Christianity. 
 
 Personality — the highest and the greatest of all the 
 general predications of existence ; Christianity — the 
 highest and the greatest of all the special predications 
 of existence ; the synthesis of these two is an inherent 
 necessity. The vital affinity between them predesti- 
 nates their fusion. Personality — the highest type of 
 
 ^Opening address of his last Seminary Year, September lo, 1891, 
 
 (375) 
 
37^ LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 reality; Christianity — the highest type of quality; 
 personality — the consummate flower of being as to 
 its essence; Christianity — the perfect realization of 
 being as to its relations ; personality — the divinest en- 
 tity ; Christianity — the divinest expression ; the two of 
 necessity coalesce. Each pre-supposes the other, each 
 resolves itself into the other, each intensifies, exalts, 
 and glorifies the other. Personality is alike the primary 
 and the ultimate fact of Christianity; Christianity as- 
 sures to personality its purest and largest significance. 
 The synthesis of the two, whether as Christian person- 
 ality or as personal Christianity, is the transcendent 
 reality of being and of life. 
 
 Let me ask you to reflect a moment, how much it 
 means that the profoundest ,and most fruitful move- 
 ments of religious thought and life have their root in 
 the more vital apprehension of the fact and implica- 
 tions of personality. The Protestant Preformation was 
 nothing less than the uprising of personality as a spirit- 
 ual force, in the effort to throw off the dead weight of 
 mediaeval mechanicalism. Mark the power and vitality 
 of individualism both in the formal and in the material 
 principles of the Reformation. Take the formal prin- 
 ciple of the Reformation — the right of private judg- 
 ment in the interpretation of Scripture. Wherein does 
 its significance lie ? Just in this : It would brush aside 
 every intermediate mechanism for the transmission of 
 the divine thought from the Written Word to the 
 hungering heart of man. Rejecting the artificial jets 
 of ecclesiastical gasworks, it would drink its light 
 straight from the eternal stars. Or take the material 
 principle of Protestanism : justification by faith. Where- 
 in does its significance lie? Just in this: It would 
 sweep away every contrivance which, in the great crisis 
 of the spiritual life, would intervene between the Di- 
 
PERSONAL CHRISTIANITY. 377 
 
 vine Personality and the human personality — and bring 
 the soul by faith (which is a personal trust in a living 
 Savior) into direct contact with the Infinite Personality 
 that saves. 
 
 Puritanism, in like manner, is the protest of pure 
 personality quickened and spiritualized, against the more 
 impure and impersonal accretions of a materialized and 
 sensuous religion. Its affirmation of simplicity has for 
 its motive the desire to rid the renewed spirit of all 
 that would encumber and hamper its free outgoing 
 toward God. 
 
 In Methodism again — alike Wesley's and Whitfield's, 
 we see the insurgence of a Christian personality against 
 enervating conventionalism, deadening rubrics of an ex- 
 hausted formalism, the benumbing blight of a mechan- 
 ical ritualism. Methodism is thus the voice of the 
 Christian consciousness, repudiating its dependence on 
 external decaying appliances, asserting itself against 
 the repressions of empty routine and hearsay, and 
 seeking to put itself once more in communication with 
 the primary personal sources of the deepest, purest, 
 most sacred and abiding experiences of the soul. 
 
 Or look again at the spiritualism of Schleiermacher, 
 Neander, Coleridge — what does it mean ? In its inmost 
 essence it means the rejection of unrealities — the artifi- 
 cial fictions, abstractions, assumptions of a religious 
 empiricism; or of a traditional mechanicalism ; or of 
 an a priori dogmatism, which had lost its grasp on the 
 immediacy and certitude of the personal communion 
 between the living God and his children. 
 
 In a word, every spiritual awakening or advance in 
 religious or Christian development approves itself as a 
 movement /;w;? a religion of things — i. e., of forms, of 
 institutions, of external more or less material media- 
 tions: from a religion of abstractions, theories, dogmas, 
 
378 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 words, traditions, secondhand appurtenances — to a Re- 
 ligion of Personality, a religion which accords their full 
 value to the factors of the largest personal Hfe ; a religion 
 which lays its heaviest stress on tJiose facts and forces of 
 man's spiritual being and environment that are correlated 
 to the deepest needs and mightiest potentiahty of man's 
 real self ; a religion which quickens into the most vivid 
 activity the most central dominant quality of conscious- 
 ness ; to that religion in short, the verities of which are 
 susceptible of being most adequately rendered into the 
 states, experiences, movements and expressions of liv- 
 ing mind, heart and soul. 
 
 From a Religion of Thi?igs to a Religion of Personality — 
 there you have the essential note of all spiritual prog- 
 ress. Indeed when you come to think of it, all prog- 
 ress defines itself as the advance of personality, the 
 triumph of free spirit over the impersonal environment. 
 Material progress is just that — personality handling, 
 moulding the things which surround it ; asserting its 
 mastery over them, impressing itself on nature, trans- 
 fusing and assimilating all material conditions, elements 
 and forces to its own uses and life. Scientific progress 
 is just that: finding the key of Personal Thought and 
 Purpose which unlocks the mysteries of the universe. 
 Science is on the hunt for Law ; and what is Law but 
 the expression of the uniformity of Personal Thinking 
 and Willing underlying all phenomena of change and 
 movement? Nature is thus the transcript of personal 
 processes, the movements of the Eternal Mind. Leave 
 out the Thinker, of what worth the Thought ? Nay, is 
 not its reality as thought, as well as its value, due to 
 the Mind back of it? The discovery of truth is, in a 
 word, finding out the ways and workings of the Supreme 
 Reason. Herein lies the fascination of every such dis- 
 covery; it introduces a thinking mind to the Infinite 
 
PERSONAL CHRISTIANITY. 379 
 
 Thinker. Its joy is the joy of thinking, with Kepler, 
 God's thoughts after him. Truth has thus both its 
 source and destination in personality. 
 
 Beauty, too, which eludes every definition, but the 
 attraction of which attests none the less its supremacy, 
 depends for its power and charm on its spiritual source 
 and quality. Its correspondences, harmonies, graces, 
 its subtle, melting winsomeness, its entrancing, purify- 
 ing virtue have their norm in the Divine Soul, with 
 whom the fairest dreams, the purest loves, the sweetest 
 raptures have their eternal home. 
 
 Leave out the personal factor, and you have but a 
 crude congeries of things, nidis indigestaque moles, of no 
 significance or worth. But bring all into its proper cor- 
 respondence to personality; put matter in its place, 
 mind in its place, God in His place, man in his place, 
 and chaos becomes cosmos, and the discord of atoms 
 resolves itself into the music of the spheres. 
 
 "The sequences of law 
 
 We learn through mind alone, 
 'Tis only through the soul 
 
 That aught we know is known : 
 With equal voice she tells 
 
 Of what we touch and see 
 Within these bounds of life, 
 And of a life to be : 
 Proclaiming One who brought us hither, 
 And holds the keys of Whence and Whither:' 
 
 Until Mind appears, Matter has no story to tell. But 
 
 " Man once descried imprints forever 
 His presence on all hfeless things ; the winds 
 Are henceforth voices, . . . 
 Never a senseless gust now man is born ! 
 The herded pines commune and have deep thoughts. 
 
380 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 The morn has enterprise, deep quiet droops 
 With evening, triumph takes the sunset hour, 
 And this to fill us with regard for man, 
 Desire to work his proper nature out. 
 
 ... All tended to mankind, 
 And man produced, all has its end thus far : 
 But in completed man begins anew 
 The tendency to God." 
 
 Thus *' progress is the law of life," through matter to 
 mind, through mind to God — all from, through, to, God: 
 
 " Himself the way that leads us thither, 
 The All-in-AIl, the Whence and Whither." 
 
 If, then, all progress defines itself as the advance and 
 triumph of personality, much more will this be true of 
 Christianity, by which alone progress along the most 
 spiritual and divine lines is possible for man. 
 
 I would have you now trace with me the line of this 
 divine movement — so far, at least, as to glance at a few 
 of the outstanding headlands which mark its majestic 
 course. And let me ask you at the outset not to pre- 
 judge the discussion as either unpractical or superfluous. 
 I am greatly mistaken if it shall not appear that a more 
 distinct and vital apprehension of Christianity as a 
 Religion of Personality, in contrast with a Religion of 
 Things is the one thing needed just now to correct and 
 enlarge our conceptions of its contents, and to recover 
 for our Christian thinking, living, and experience much 
 of the power which has been lost. 
 
 If we are asked: "What is the pre-eminent claim 
 which Christianity makes in its own behalf? " our answer 
 would be: *'It claims, first of all, and chiefest of all, 
 to possess and to disclose the secret of salvation." "If 
 asked: "Wherein lies the need of salvation?" our 
 answer to this again would be: "In sin." And what 
 
PERSONAL CHRISTIANITY. 38 1 
 
 is sin ? The secret of salvation involves the secret of 
 sin; and the secret of sin lies in personality. Person- 
 ality is the power of being other than a thing, the power 
 of free choice, free activity, free development. What 
 we call a Thing has no such power. Its history is a part 
 of the series of causalities, of necessary changes and 
 effects, that we call Nature. Its course is absolutely 
 and irresistibly determined by conditions outside of 
 itself. It cannot be other than it is ; it cannot do other 
 than it does. In such a history there can be no sin. 
 But neither in such a history can there be freedom ; 
 and in the absence of freedom the higher developments 
 of life, of growth, of blessedness are forever impos- 
 sible. 
 
 Professor Huxley has said: "I protest that if some 
 great Power would agree to make me always think what 
 is true, and do what is right, on condition of being turned 
 into a sort of clock and wound up every morning before 
 I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer. 
 The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do 
 right ; the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with 
 on the cheapest terms to any one who will take it of 
 me" (Lay Sermons : On Descartes' Discourse). This 
 striking declaration, much as we may admire its moral 
 earnestness, furnishes the elements of its own refutation. 
 If Mr. Huxley could be turned into a clock, the ques- 
 tion of thinking what is true and doing what is right 
 would cease to be a question for him at all. For a 
 machine there is, there can be, no such term as right or 
 truth. To the clock it is a matter of obsolute indiffer- 
 ence whether it goes right or wrong, Mr. Huxley, if 
 made up of clock wheels and clock springs, and wound 
 up every morning, would have had no such desire to 
 do right as he so vividly expresses. He would not even 
 have wanted to be a clock, or to be anything else, for 
 
382 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 the sake of going right. A machine never does right; 
 it never wants to. A thing never goes wrong ; it docs 
 not care about it. In a world of things, of machines, 
 of necessary causations, right or wrong doing would be 
 a matter of no concern ; there would be no recognition 
 of sin, there could be no recognition of holiness. Free- 
 dom to do right means freedom to do wrong. The 
 power to be godlike implies the power to defy God, to 
 usurp the throne of God, to put self in the place of God. 
 That is sin ; and the power to commit sin is one of the 
 inalienable, awful attributes of personality. And the 
 further terrible penalty of that sin is the loss of the 
 conscious dignity of personality, the willingness to become 
 a thingy to abdicate the freedom of a child of God, to 
 submit to the iron causality of influences urging to evil, 
 and thus to be immured in the bondage of corruption. 
 " He that commits sin is the bondman of sin." 
 
 This, too, is the curse of scientific materialism, that, 
 having begun with the evacuation of personality, it ends 
 with the elimination of sin. What theologians call sin it 
 declares to be but one of the myriad mischances of exist- 
 ence, brought about by the evolutionary sequences of 
 nature. The Fall of Man is simply a necessary incident 
 of progress, a stumbling upward. Having thus no place 
 for sin, materialism has no place for Christianity; and 
 this belittling of sin and of Christianity, mark you, goes 
 hand in hand with the belitting of personality. For let 
 us not lose sight of the great retributive fact — to which 
 reference has already been made — that sin, being in its 
 root and essence the abdication of the regal rights and 
 functions of personality, means the permanent degrada- 
 tion of manhood, the launching of a personal agent on 
 the career of a thing, imposing the law of necessity in 
 place of the law of liberty ; bringing the higher nature 
 into bondage to the lower; clipping the wings of 
 
PERSONAL CHRISTIANITY. 383 
 
 the angel and bidding him to crawl in the trail of the 
 worm. 
 
 This, alas ! is the moral condition that confronts us in 
 a fallen world ; a condition how hopeless in and of itself! 
 How can a thing — a thing, too, by choice — become a 
 person? how can a self-enthralled slave be made free? 
 how can the earthly put on the Heavenly One? Here 
 is the problem to which Christianity addresses itself. 
 What is the first condition of the solution of this prob- 
 lem ? Manifestly it is the restoration of personality to 
 its rights and functions, the resumption by the angel of 
 the wings wherewith it may soar above the attractions 
 and gravitations of the natural life, and rise to the lofti- 
 ness, largeness, liberty, energy, beauty, and fulness of 
 a life in the immediate presence of God, and in liv- 
 ing touch with Him. 
 
 And how is this result to be effected ? Manifestly by 
 the intervention of a Power from beyond the World of 
 Things, by the influx of the Supernatural into the realm 
 of the natural. For Nature can not emancipate from 
 nature. The life of a thing, or a life which has degen- 
 erated into the life of a Thing, can not lift itself up to 
 the full height and measure of a free, Godlike person- 
 ality. The Divine personality must stoop down, touch 
 the lower, degenerated life, communicate itself to that 
 life, impart to it its own life. Christianity is thus — ob- 
 jectively, the communication to man of the Divine Per- 
 sonal Life ; subjectively, the reception by man of that 
 Divine Personal Life; concretely, the re-establishment 
 in man of his lost personal life and divineness. As 
 Christ says, it is the prodigal ''coming to himself," the 
 outcast coming to the realization of the Divine son- 
 ship, and of ' ' the freedom wherewith the Son makes 
 free." In the religious dialect of Peter, it is becoming 
 "partakers of the Divine Nature." In the vivid sen- 
 
384 LLEWELYN 10 AN EVANS. 
 
 tentiousness of James, it is the '' perfect law, the law of 
 liberty," ''the royal law" of love ; "royal" as being 
 not only the king among laws, but the law of kings, 
 enfranchising those who obey it into the rank and 
 rights of kingship. In the lofty mysticism of John, it 
 is the indwelling of the Divine Life in such fullness and 
 power that absolute freedom becomes inability to sin. 
 ''Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because 
 his seed abideth in him ; and he can not sin because 
 he is begotten of God ;" and there you have Chris- 
 tianity's answer to Mr. Huxley's yearning after a free- 
 dom to do right which will never go wrong. In the 
 dramatic, psychological realism of Paul, it is the Saul- 
 ego dying into the Paul-ego, and the Paul-ego trans- 
 formed into the Christ-ego. "I no longer live, but 
 Christ liveth in me ; and that life which I now live in 
 the flesh I live in faith, that faith which is in the Son 
 of God." "For me to live is Christ." 
 
 Christianity thus presupposes as its fundamental pos- 
 tulate, that man's true life consists in communion with 
 God. God is the spiritual complement of a perfect 
 manhood, the element, the atmosphere, the home of 
 the soul. 
 
 " God only is the creature's home, 
 
 Though rough and strait the road ; 
 Yet nothing less can satisfy 
 
 The love that longs for God." 
 
 Man's redemption is accordingly the re-establishment 
 of this Divine Communion, God making His home in 
 man, man finding his home in God. " He that dwell- 
 eth in love dwelleth in God and God in him." There 
 is an awakening of manhood in the awakening of the 
 God-consciousness within. To see God, to know God, 
 to realize God, this is the first condition of seeing, know- 
 ing, realizing my true being. 
 
PERSONAL CHRISTIANITY. 385 
 
 Now this — let me emphasize the thought — is an in- 
 tensely personal process. First, you see, it presup- 
 poses the personal activity of God in making Himself 
 known, in realizing himself to me. 
 
 *' 'Tis rather God who seeks for us, 
 Than we who seek for Him. 
 God was not gone, but He so longed 
 
 His sweetness to impart, 
 He, too, was seeking for a boon, 
 And found it in my heart." 
 
 The revelation of God to the soul — what is it ? A 
 thing, a definition, a dogma, a book, an impersonal me- 
 dium ? Impossible ! In any revelation of God, the 
 chief factor, the central, the real factor, the factor with- 
 out which every circumstantiality were an empty, mean- 
 ingless form, is God himself Given God, all else mat- 
 ters but little ; given God, and all the rest will follow. 
 Let God be there, and the acacia bush in the wilder- 
 ness will burn with the splendors of the Shekinah. Let 
 God be in it, and the prattling of the babe will say more 
 than the logic of the archangel. The revelation thus 
 derives its original and special significance from the su- 
 preme personahty of its Divine Agent. 
 
 But this is not all. The process is one of living per- 
 sonal reciprocity. By the divine correlation of energy 
 the personal activity of God passes over into personal 
 activity on the part of men. '* If that I may appre- 
 hend that for which also I was apprehended." Before 
 the revelation can be in any sense real and complete, 
 the personal recipiency must respond to the personal 
 communication. The more of personality there is in 
 the receiving, the larger will be the revelation. This, 
 you see, must be so. There can be no revelation of 
 personahty to a thing. There can be no spiritual rev- 
 elation to an unspiritual intelligence, for spirituaHties 
 
386 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 are spiritually discerned. The thoughts which wander 
 through eternity, the sensibilities which find relief in 
 tears, nay, which do often lie too deep for tears, the 
 spiritual intuitions of divine realities and necessities, 
 
 "Which are the fountain-light of all our day, 
 The master-light of all our seeing." 
 
 the moral convictions, which, like the bird of Jove, 
 grasp the thunderbolts of everlasting law, the deathless 
 yearning after immortality, the delight in truth and 
 right for their own sake, the power of self-sacrifice for 
 love's sweet sake, the enthusiasm of humanity, the in- 
 spiration of divinity — all this finds no response below 
 the level of pei'sonality. The revelation of the su- 
 preme, all-perfect personality that we call God can be 
 conveyed only to the reason, the conscience, the will, 
 to the instinct of beauty, the power of love, the sense 
 of the infinite, the presentiment of eternity. It be- 
 comes a revelation through the appeal which it makes 
 to these divine constituents of our being, and the re- 
 sponse which it evokes therefrom. God revealing him- 
 self to me — what is that ? It is God correlating Him- 
 self to this part and to that part of my being, moving 
 on this faculty, capturing that sentiment, energizing such 
 a motive, asserting Himself in such a purpose, illumi- 
 nating a thought here, sweetening an experience there. 
 But mark it! these activities are each and all my own. 
 My personality expresses itself in them. I am in them ; 
 God too is in them : through them I learn to interpret, 
 to realize, to know God. Apart from them God were 
 a blank ; apart from God they were but shadows, mere 
 possibilities. Their activity is made real by His. It is 
 his coming into my life which makes it life. It is He 
 that puts to flight the nightmare of the evil past ; it is 
 His touch that quickens, that starts the vital currents, 
 
PERSONAL CHRISTIANITY. 38/ 
 
 that Stirs the impulses of devotion and service. So does 
 Paul teach, "That which may be known of God is 
 manifest in them, for God manifested it unto them." 
 That is to say, the external and the internal revelation 
 condition each the other. Or, as Jacobi puts it, the con- 
 sonant of the one finds its vowel in the other ; and thus 
 the Word, the revelation of God, is made complete. 
 The Unknown God, whom before I ignorantly wor- 
 shipped, if at all, becomes known to me. He is be- 
 come a reality; I have found Him. "If, haply, they 
 might feel after Him and find Him, though he is not 
 far from each one of us." "Too late!" so does 
 Augustine pour out his soul in one of his wonderful 
 apostrophes: "Too late I loved Thee, O Thou Beauty 
 of ancient days, yet ever new ! Too late I loved Thee ! 
 And behold, Thou wert within and I abroad, and there 
 I searched for Thee ; deformed I, plunging amid those 
 fair forms which Thou hadst made. Thou wert with 
 me, but I was not with Thee. Things held me far from 
 Thee, which, unless they were in Thee, were not at all. 
 Thou didst call and shout and burst my deafness. Thou 
 didst breathe odors, and I drew in breath and panted 
 for Thee. I tasted — and hunger and thirst. Thou 
 touchedst me, and I burned for Thy peace " (Confessions, 
 Book X.) Even so; God touching me until my being 
 is on fire with Himself; God thinking Himself into my 
 thoughts ; God loving Himself into my love ; God Hv- 
 ing Himself into my life — that is revelation, that is re- 
 ligion, that is Christianity, that is life! "With Thee 
 is the fountain of life ; in Thy light shall we see 
 light." What I see as a luminous, indubitable reaHty, 
 I see in God's light. In that outstreaming of God, that 
 Divine halo, I exercise intuition, reflection, faith, wor- 
 ship. God's shining is all around me and through me ; 
 in that shining; I behold and believe. God's warmth is 
 
388 LLEWELYN 10 AN EVANS. 
 
 all about me and within me ; in that warmth I feel. 
 God's love floods my being ; in that love I love. 
 
 Our personal activities are thus respondent to the 
 personal activities of God. "We love because He first 
 loved us." The consciousness of God heightens, deep- 
 ens, widens the sense of our personal consciousness; 
 and in this enlargement and exaltation of the latter, God 
 becomes credible, knowable, real. The dignity of per- 
 sonality in man, the reality of personality in God — each 
 conditions the other. In every revelation God must be 
 interpreted through the soul. The objective self-mani- 
 festation of God necessarily comes first; but this can 
 become a completed revelation only through the sub- 
 jective interpretation and appropriation. God becomes 
 a part of me only through my partaking of Him. 
 
 Monergism and Synergism are equally true, and each 
 is necessary to the other. Without monergism — i.e., 
 without the primal Divine Energy, there can be no 
 synergism — i.e., there can be no answering co-operant 
 energy of the human coefficent. Without synergism — 
 i.e., without the co-operating human coefficient, mon- 
 ergism would fail of its consummation ; for even the 
 Divine Energy is graduated by that in which it works. 
 The Divine Energy in the worm cannot furnish the 
 measure of the Divine Energy in Augustine, or Luther, 
 or Wesley. The more the man, the more the God 
 within him ; the more the God within, the more the 
 man. Our Lord's paradox, "God is able of these 
 stones to raise up children unto Abraham," is an in- 
 controvertible truth, but it is the truth of hyperbole. 
 As a matter of fact, God never does raise a spiritual 
 aristocracy out of dead stones. But, as the Apostle 
 Paul shows, the seed of Abraham embraces those, and 
 only those who are of the faith of Abraham (Gal. iii : 7) ; 
 and the faith of Abraham, as the same Apostle shows 
 
PERSONAL CHRISTIANITY. 389 
 
 (Rom. iv: 19-21), is the highest exponent of spiritual 
 energy which the world has ever seen ; the noblest ac- 
 tivity of which a finite personality is capable. Through 
 that activity, as the Apostle James also shows (ii: 23), 
 Abraham reached the loftiest personal dignity to which 
 man can aspire. ''Abraham believed God . . . and he 
 was called the friend of God." 
 
 A parallel truth we find in the inspired teaching that 
 we attain to the Vision of God through personal self- 
 purification. '' Follow after the sanctification, without 
 which no man shall see the Lord." ''Blessed are the 
 pure in heart, for they shall see God." And how much 
 is implied in that wonderful declaration of our Lord's, 
 "This is life eternal that they should know Thee, the 
 only true God, and Him who Thou didst send, even 
 Jesus Christ!" Mark the expression! The highest pos- 
 sible knowledge of God, the knowledge of God in the 
 uniqueness and the reahty of His being, is life ; not a 
 single activity of life — not intellectual life merely, not 
 moral life alone, but life itself in its generic fulness and 
 absoluteness; eternal Hfe, the climax, the maximum of 
 life, life at its highest, longest, largest, best. But mark, 
 farther, the complete statement! "This is life eternal, 
 to know God and Him whom God sent, even Jesus 
 Christ," to know God, that is, in the ultimate expres- 
 sion of Himself, in the definite, historic, personal em- 
 bodiment of His perfections and purposes in Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 And here we strike upon the very core of Christian- 
 ity as the Religion of the Incarnation. As was said 
 already, Christianity is characteristically not a Religion 
 of Things, not a religion of abstractions or dogmas, but 
 of Personal Realities. It is so pre-eminently in its re- 
 velation of God. In Christianity we have, if I may say 
 so, the ultimatum of the Divine Personality. The Relig- 
 
39^ LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 ion of Nature gives us indeed a personal God ; but this 
 truth is beset with constant peril from the liabilities of 
 our sinful humanity, from a debased anthropomorphism, 
 a vague pantheism, a coarse materialism, a shallow 
 Pyrrhonism. Even in Judaism the Divine Personality 
 is lost in a Divine Legality. The Law itself, by which 
 God speaks, comes between the people and God. At 
 the reading of Moses a veil lieth upon the heart. Every- 
 where, in Gentilism and in Judaism, there is still some- 
 thing lacking to keep the world in touch with God. The 
 Most High must come lower yet, nearer yet to man. 
 There must be a face-to-face beholding of the. Divine 
 Glory, heart to-heart contact with the Divine Life. 
 This is what the Gospel assures us took place in the 
 Incarnation. In Christ the veil is taken away. He is 
 the last and the greatest of the Theophanies. '' He that 
 hath seen Me hath seen the Father." "The Word 
 was God . . . and the Word became flesh, and taber- 
 nacled among us." In the Incarnate Logos the Divine 
 Personality becomes a historic, visible, audible, tangible 
 reality. "That which was from the beginning, that 
 which we have heard, that which we have seen with 
 our eyes, that which we beheld and our h^nds handled, 
 concerning the Word of Life (and the life was mani- 
 fested, and we have seen and bear witness, and de- 
 clare unto you the life, the eternal life, which was with 
 the Father, and was manifested unto us), that which we 
 have seen and heard declare we unto you." 
 
 Christ is the practical answer to the difficulties and 
 contradictions of our earthly metaphysics in its specula- 
 tions about the Divine Personality. In Christ we find 
 the actual reconciliation of the infinite with the limita- 
 tions of a personal consciousness. In Christ as a historic 
 personality, the belief in a personal God ceases to be an 
 insoluble logical paradox, and becomes a rapturous, in- 
 
PERSONAL CHRISTIANITY. 39 1 
 
 spiring reality. At His feet our Doubt falls down in 
 lowly, holy adoration, crying out, "My Lord and my 
 God!" Christ — who will not admit it? — Christ is the 
 hving personal embodiment of the Highest Being, of the 
 Most Perfect Life. In Him the Fulness of the Godhead 
 dwelleth bodily, and in Him we are made full. Out of 
 Him remains the infinite void, the eternal unrest. " My 
 heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God. " " Oh, 
 that I knew where I m.ight find Him ! " So rings out the 
 wail of the ages, the sad refrain of humanity. 
 
 Where is God? — for a God man must have. "If 
 there were no God it would be necessary to invent 
 Him. " Even so, Voltaire ! Thought must have a God — 
 an Infinite in relation to whom there is no Beyond. 
 Worship must have a God — a Highest than whom there 
 can be no higher. Conscience must have a God — a 
 Supreme Will, whose absolute masterhood is law, whose 
 Yea is life, whose Nay is death. Love must have a 
 God — consummate Perfection, forever satisfying the en- 
 larging capacities, the crescent hopes, the ever-mounting 
 aspirations, the ever-widening and deepening activities 
 of the ever-growing life eternal. Oh God ! God ! God ! 
 Where shall we look for Thee ? Where shall we find 
 Thee? Our thoughts scale the firmaments; where art 
 Thou ? Our prayers climb the heavens ; where art Thou ? 
 Our dreams soar over the infinities and sweep through 
 the eternities ; where art Thou ? Our speculations plunge 
 into the blazing, bhnding suns of light; where art 
 Thou ? Our despair storms the darkness, and treads 
 the pathless depths of mystery; where, oh, where art 
 Thou ? 
 
 Ah ! my soul, not thus shalt thou find God, not thus 
 shalt thou enter into thy rest. "The Righteousness 
 which is of faith saith thus : Say not in thy heart, W^ho 
 shall ascend into heaven ? That is, to bring Christ down ; 
 
392 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 or, Who shall descend into the abyss ? That Is, to bring 
 Christ up from the dead. But what saith it? The 
 word is nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart; that 
 is the word of faith which we preach." Philip cries 
 out: "Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." 
 Jesus answers, '' Have I been so long time with you, 
 and dost thou not know me, Philip? He that hath seen 
 Me hath seen the Father: how sayest thou, Show us 
 the Father?" "They shall call His name Immanuel." 
 God with us ! God in the midst of us ! God on earth ; 
 among men ; Himself a man ; stooping to the depths ; 
 lifting to the heights; bearing humanity's burdens; 
 sharing the world's woes; weeping human tears; faint- 
 ing from the weakness of the flesh ; pouring forth hu- 
 man blood, yet bringing into the weakness and guilt and 
 misery of earth, bringing into the broken, bleeding life 
 of man the condescension, the sympathy, the strength, 
 the wisdom, the righteousness, the holiness, the love, 
 the All of the Infinite God ! Having this, what need 
 we more ? If God be not here, where shall we find 
 Him ? Christ ! for this Infinite of Wisdom, Power, 
 Righteousness, Love, where can thought find a Beyond? 
 Christ ! in presence of this Highest, where is the Higher 
 can woo away our worship? Christ! what other Master 
 can ever claim or win the allegiance of the soul that 
 wears His yoke ? Christ ! what fuller, larger Perfection 
 can ever lure our love from His supreme excellence? 
 Christ ! what can God be more unto us than Christ is ? 
 wherein can God do more for us than Christ does? The 
 revelation of Christ solves forever the mystery of per- 
 sonality, whether in God or man. He puts man in pos- 
 session of God. '' He that hath the Son hath the Fa- 
 ther. " Christ puts man in possession of the divinest 
 manhood. "As many as received Him, to them gave 
 He the right to become sons of God." 
 
PERSONAL CHRISTIANITY. 393 
 
 The Divine Life in all its forms and manifestations 
 thus centres in Christ, radiates from Him. Religion 
 reaches its highest expression in this Divine-Human 
 Life. Christianity means Christ. Theology in Scrip- 
 ture is first and chiefly Christology. " No man hath 
 seen God at any time ; God only-begotten, who is in 
 the bosom of the father, He hath declared Him." The 
 doctrine of God is the doctrine — that is, in true Scrip- 
 tural usage, the teaching, the exegesis of Christ ; not 
 dogma about Christ, but the personal teaching of Christ 
 Himself. And Christianity is not the teaching of Christ 
 alone, but All of Christ. Not, I say again, something 
 about Christ, but the Living Christ attesting Himself 
 by His personal presence and His personal work in the 
 world. Christianity is not a Thing, a dogma, a sys- 
 tem, a process, but a person ; Christianity, once and 
 again, means Christ. The Church is not a Thing, a 
 machine, an agency ; the Church means Christ, for it is 
 ''the Fulness of Him that filleth all in all." The 
 Bible is not a Thing, not the letter, the book, but the 
 Spirit; "and the Lord is the Spirit." The Bible means 
 Christ. The life of the Written Word is the living 
 Personal Word. The truth means Christ, the whole 
 of Christ. " Has Christ been divided? " Alas! Paul, 
 yes. In Corinth? Aye, and in Antioch and Alex- 
 andria, and Rome and in Geneva, in the first century 
 and in the nineteenth. We have divided the Living 
 Christ into partial representations, half-living dogmas 
 about Christ. We need once more to personalize our 
 truths and our beliefs, to find in Christ the eternal in- 
 carnation, the living impersonation of the great verities 
 and realities of our faith. 
 
 There is an earnest cry for a Christo-centric, and, if 
 I may add an adjective, a Christo-metric theology. I 
 heartily unite in the cry. Christ at the centre ; Christ 
 
394 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 also as the radius, measuring with His Infinitude every 
 truth that radiates from that centre. No less a meas- 
 ure than the Christ-measure will suffice for any fact or 
 truth of Christianity. Do we inquire respecting God's 
 eternal purpose ? Let us seek the interpretation and 
 the metre in Christ. Sovereignty, election, predestina- 
 tion ? Each is a paraphrase of Christ. Whatever 
 Christ means, sovereignty means that. Wherever 
 Christ reaches, grace reaches there. As large as Christ 
 may be, so large is God's redemptive purpose. Atone- 
 ment is no mere Divine mechanism, the skillful adjust- 
 ment of expedients or balancing of equivalents. *'HE 
 is the propitiation for our sins." Christ in the breach, 
 Christ filling the dreadful chasm occasioned by sin, 
 Christ reaching all the way from the trembling culprit 
 to the Throne with its everlasting thunders. Redemp- 
 tion is no mere formula, no prescription from a Divine 
 pharmacopoeia. Throughout, it is Christ's personal effi- 
 ciency. The measure of Christ, of His personality, 
 of His personal force and life, that is the measure of 
 redemption. He gives the breadth and length and 
 height and depth of it. Redemption is Christ. He is 
 the All of it. " Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who 
 was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteous- 
 ness, and sanctification, and redemption." Mark well 
 the statement : Christ was made Wisdom, and Christ 
 was made Righteousness, and Christ was made Sancti- 
 fication, and Christ was made Redemption. Our wis- 
 dom is not a creed, but a Person ; our righteousness is 
 not an abstract quality, but a Personal Reality ; our 
 sanctification is not an impersonal process, but a Per- 
 sonal Life ; our redemption is not a supernatural life- 
 saving apparatus, but a Personal God, putting Himself 
 into the work of our salvation. Formulas, creeds, 
 arrangements, institutions, things of whatever kind, are 
 
PERSONAL CHRISTIANITY. 395 
 
 well enough in their place, but that place is secondary. 
 Christ first — all the rest will follow. 
 
 " I am the Way, The Truth, and The Life." Breth- 
 ren, as we start on the work of our new seminary year, 
 let us take those words as our motto. Let us make 
 Christ our way, our path in every line of research, the 
 chart by which we determine every step, the method 
 by which we strive for every goal, the philosophy of 
 our life, of duty, and of destiny. Let us make Christ 
 our Truth ; Truth not as a logical abstraction, but as a 
 Divine Impersonation ; the Truth which is the core of 
 all that is true, the pith of all integrity, the substance 
 of all reality — that which we see with the eye of Christ, 
 which we test by the mind of Christ, which we assimi- 
 late by the spirit of Christ — Christ in every truth, 
 until it becomes an apocalypse of the ineffable Glory ! 
 Let it be our aim not to learn about Christ, but, in 
 PauHne phrase, ''to learn Christ." Let us make Christ 
 our Life ; the principle and law of our living, the sum 
 of all our being, our having, our doing. Let all be from, 
 through, in, unto Christ. Our surrender to others, our 
 devotion to humanity, let it be for His sake. What 
 we do for ourselves, let it be for Christ. Seek the most 
 full and accurate knowledge— for Christ! the broadest 
 culture — for Christ ! the largest and most vigorous un- 
 folding of all your powers and capacities — for Christ ! 
 Personal Christianity transformed into the grandest 
 Christian personality — all for Christ's sake ! "Awake, 
 thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ 
 shall shine upon thee." Oh, for that waking ! to come 
 forth into that sunrise ! Out of all our darkness and 
 weakness, our numbness and deadness, into the light, 
 the glow, the power, and the glory of that beatific 
 Christ-Shine! Thus to shine with the Christ be it 
 your pre-eminent privilege and Service. 
 
396 LLEWELYN 10 AN EVANS. 
 
 " What is this psalm from pitiable places 
 
 Glad where the messengers of peace have trod ? 
 Whose are those beautiful and holy faces 
 Lit with their loving, and aflame with God ? 
 
 " Aye unto these distributeth the Giver 
 
 Sorrow and sanctity, and loves them well, 
 Grants them a power and passion to deliver 
 
 Hearts from the prison-house and souls from hell ? 
 
 " This hath He done, and shall we not adore Him ? 
 This shall He do, and can we still despair ? 
 Come, let us quickly fling ourselves before Him, 
 Cast at His feet the burden of our care. 
 
 " Flash from our eyes the glow of our thanksgiving, 
 Glad and regretful, confident and calm, 
 Then through all life, and what is after living 
 Thrill to the tireless music of a psalm. 
 
 "Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and through sinning 
 He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed ; 
 Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning, 
 Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ." 
 
XV. 
 
 FAREWELL ADDRESS.* 
 
 Dear Brethren: — Following, as I believe, the direction 
 of Providence, I have found it necessary to take my 
 departure before the close of the Seminary year, and am 
 thereby prevented from discharging the duty, which 
 would have fallen to me in course as Chairman for the 
 year, of addressing to the class such words of counsel and 
 encouragement as by custom accompany the delivery 
 of diplomas. The Faculty having kindly united in the 
 request that I should leave a few parting words to be 
 read in my absence, I take pleasure in complying there- 
 with. The request has appealed to me with peculiar 
 force, because the life of the class has coincided with a 
 particular section of my own seminary life, which has 
 been marked by special manifestations of the divine 
 favor, beginning, as it did, three years ago, with the 
 resumption of service after a temporary suspension, 
 which had been made necessary by bodily infirmity, and 
 
 *Dr. Evans was Chairman of the Faculty the last year of his connec- 
 tion with the Seminary, and it devolved upon him to deliver the part- 
 ing address to the class of 1892. When it was found necessary for him 
 to leave before the end of the year he consented, at the urgent request 
 of the Faculty, to write some parting words. This he did in the follow- 
 ing address, which was read to the class by Professor Smith. 
 
 (397) 
 
398 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 ending as it does, with the terminating of my connec- 
 tion with the Seminary which you and I together honor 
 and love as our theological mother. These three years 
 have been to me, as I doubt not they have been to you, 
 years of multiphed tokens of the divine interest in our 
 personal history, of increasing clearness in our percep- 
 tion of the divine leadership, of constant enlargement 
 in the prosecution of our work, and of an ever-deepen- 
 ing sense of blessedness in surrendering ourselves to the 
 providential demands of the calling wherewith we have 
 been called. To you, as well as to me, they will ever 
 stand forth apart from all the years which went before, 
 or which may come after, as a special, determinate, and 
 precious epoch of our life. 
 
 It is often the case, when we come to these moment- 
 ous turning points, such as you in your life course, and 
 I in mine, have now reached, that we seem to ourselves 
 to be even as those who dream. The past seems to be 
 drifting away from us, like a thickening mist. The 
 future seems to be moving upon us, like a dissolving 
 mirage. The present seems to quaver under our feet, 
 like shifting quicksand. We scarcely know whether we 
 ourselves are flesh and blood, or ghosts. The experi- 
 ence is, happily, a transient mood, the psychological con- 
 ditions of which are not far to seek. But it readily 
 suggests, when our mood changes to that of earnest 
 reflection on the past and sober forecast of the future, 
 accompanied by faithful probing of the present, the con- 
 sideration of the question, What of the reality? If we 
 are not such stuff as dreams are made of, how shall we 
 realize what we are? If the world of truth be not a 
 world of phantoms, how shall we make sure of that, 
 and how shall we properly and vitally correlate the real- 
 ity without to the reality within, and bring the two into 
 loving and working accord? This is, I take it, at all 
 
FAREWELL ADDRESS. 399 
 
 times the problem of living-. This is for you, this is for 
 me, the particular problem of this hour. Let us for a 
 few minutes think it out together. 
 
 Speaking concretely, reality in life will mean for each 
 one of us reality in thought, reality in feeling, reality 
 in word, reality in action. Let us look for a moment 
 at our definitions under each of these heads. 
 
 ReaHty in thought, what is that ? Fundamentally it 
 is the agreement of our thinking with being, the corre- 
 spondence of the concept or of the mental process, of 
 whatever kind it be, to the entity, the phenomenon, the 
 fact, the force, which originates or conditions its exist- 
 ence. Reality in thought is secured when the entity, 
 the fact, the force, is clearly, fully, vitally apprehended 
 by the mind, so that its qualities and energies become 
 warp and woof of the mental and spiritual life. Law, 
 for example, becomes a reaUty in thought when my 
 mind so fully identifies itself with it that the processes, 
 the cogencies, the restrictions, and the requirements of 
 law are reproduced in my intellectual history, so that 
 thinking becomes to me, for the time, a process of leg- 
 islation, and my soul becomes a Sinai. 
 
 Reality in feeling, what is that? It is the full and 
 adequate response of the emotional life to the reality in 
 thought, as we have just considered it. It implies that 
 the external stimulus, the entity, the fact, the force, is 
 an expression not only of intelligence, but of loving 
 purpose. As in thought, reality means mind making 
 the right answer to mind, so in feeling reality means 
 heart making the right ansv/er to heart, right in meas- 
 ure, right in quality. Beauty for instance, is a reality 
 when its radiance is a glow within, when its glory is a 
 rapture, when its mystery is a hush of awe, when its 
 pathos is a tear, when its divinity is an inspiration, and 
 
400 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 when the heart filled with its Shekinah-Hght, is a temple 
 of ecstasy, prayer, and praise. 
 
 Reality in speech, what is that? It is the equiva- 
 lence of the utterance with the thought or the feeling, 
 as the embodiment of the thing, or fact, or force of 
 which it is the product. Speech is real when it gives 
 the measure, the quality, the power, the life of that 
 which it expresses, when it rings with the inteUigence 
 or thrills with the sensibility of the thinking, sensitive 
 spirit, when the Yea of the tongue expresses the full 
 and mighty affirmative of the entire man ; nothing more, 
 nothing less ; when the spoken Nay utters the absolute, 
 emphatic protest of mind, heart, and conscience, noth- 
 ing more, nothing less ; when the voice of man sounds 
 forth as the very trumpet of God. 
 
 Reality in action, what is that? It is the right, liv- 
 ing, adequate, expression in deed of all forces and 
 voices of the inner life which demand expression, so 
 that the outer life shall be the living echo of the inner, 
 the visible index of the central personality. Life is 
 real when the deepest inmost soul flushes all over the 
 face of it and thrills along every fibre of it, and flashes 
 with electric fire from every point of it, so that all who 
 witness it see soul, and all who touch it, feel the very 
 fire of God. 
 
 This reality, beloved, reality in thought, in feeling, 
 in word, in action, is what I would hold up before you 
 to-day, over against all " the fair, fond fancies dear to 
 youth," which burst like bubbles under the rude shocks 
 of experience, over against all the dreamy hesitancies, 
 or the more painful questionings which confront us at 
 the dividing of the ways, and especially over against 
 all the illusions of a false philosophy, of a shallow cul- 
 ture, or of an unhealthy social life ; this reality would 
 I hold up before you as the most priceless possession, 
 
FAREWELL ADDRESS. 4OI 
 
 as the noblest inspiration, as the mightiest force with 
 which you can equip yourselves for your life task. 
 
 In his bright and beautiful old age musings before his 
 driftwood fire, our large-hearted, far-visioned sage and 
 poet, whose heart is still young under its burden of 
 fourscore years, sings of himself, 
 
 " I turn from all that only seems, 
 And seek the sober grounds of truth.'* 
 
 This is the lesson which the " years that bring the phi- 
 losophic mind " have taught Whittier. I would fain 
 urge it, my young brethren, on you now in your early 
 manhood. '*Turn from all that only seems." Shun 
 all shams. Renounce all make-believes. Fling away 
 all mere forms. Bury all corpse-like conventionalisms. 
 Burn all empty shells. Cast to the moles and the bats 
 all "idols," as Bacon calls them, as the Apostle John 
 calls them. 
 
 "Seek the sober grounds of truth." Dig down to 
 the bed-rock. Seek reality as the ground of thought, 
 conviction, experience, Hfe. Build on '' the founda- 
 tions " which cannot be moved, not on the drifting 
 sand, but on the cornerstone which upholds the very 
 heavens, the eternal thought of God, the Word which 
 endureth forever. 
 
 But first of all, let me urge on each one of you, as 
 the indispensable condition of all the rest, be real. 
 Identify yourself with the abiding essence, the endur- 
 ing law, the solid substance that underlies all appear- 
 ances and forms. Make a verity of your own being, a 
 reahty of your own life. Let me remind you once 
 more of what I have had occasion so often to impress 
 on you in the class-room, that perhaps the nearest 
 English equivalent of the Bible word Truth, is Re- 
 ality. The Old Testament ' Enicth, is the stability 
 
402 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 which nothing can move. The New Testament AXijOeia, 
 is the actuahty which cannot be hidden, the lucid trans- 
 parency which needs no disguise. Our word, tmt/i, 
 at least as we commonly use and define it, suggests a 
 notion which is too purely intellectual, too narrowly 
 scholastic and speculative. But what the Bible calls 
 Truth is more a matter of the heart than of the head, 
 more a life than a definition or a system. It is as much 
 ethical as intellectual^ as truly practical as theoretical. 
 It means character no less than a creed. It is, as we 
 have seen, the thinking, the feeling, the speaking, the 
 doing which synthesizes with being. Bem^, therefore, 
 what one 07i^/it to be, under the rule of law without ; 
 dei?i^ wha.t one must he, under the stress of conscience 
 within ; being- what one would be, under the impulse of 
 the loftiest aspiration ; being what one is to be, after the 
 divine ideal and purpose ; being all this is the condition 
 of all reality in life. 
 
 First of all, then, be real ; be your true, your very, 
 your divinest self. Alas ! how many there are, even 
 among God's servants, who mock themselves, who not 
 only to others, but to themselves, wear a mask ! The 
 self which they enthrone and serve is an unreality, a 
 debasement of the divine ideal, the product of agencies 
 in the world, and within themselves, in which they 
 have never sought or found the loving, moulding hand 
 of God. They allow themselves, with passive weak- 
 ness, to become other than their better self longs and 
 prays to be. They go floundering through the weari- 
 some cycles of struggle so vividly portrayed in the 
 seventh chapter of Romans, until the «uroc lyoy, the 
 real self, is overpowered and lost. This disloyalty, 
 alas, is the fatal mistake, the error of errors, nay more, 
 the sin of sins. Be real. Be loyal to the best, the 
 purest, the most godlike ; true to God, and thus true to 
 
FAREWELL ADDRESS. 4O3 
 
 yourself; true to the divine Spirit, which is the vital 
 breath of the human spirit ; true to the divine Light, 
 which coming into the world lighteth every man ; true 
 to the divine law, which marshalls the elements, which 
 links the stars, which sways the conscience, and binds 
 the will ; in a word, so truly 07ie with God, that His 
 thinking shall be your thought. His will shall be your 
 volition, His life of love shall be your love and life. 
 "My eye," said Eckhart, ''and God's eye are one eye, 
 one vision, one recognition, one love." Discount, so 
 far as may be necessary, the mystical exaggeration of 
 the saying, but hold fast its core of truth. "In Thy 
 light shall we see light." "Blessed are the pure in 
 heart, for they shall see God." 
 
 Yourself being real, let every thought be a reality. 
 Be loyal to every fact, to every teaching of the Word, 
 to every lesson of providence, to every precept of the 
 Spirit. Break through the shell to the kernel, through 
 the form to the substance. Pierce through the human 
 to the divine. Fill the abstraction with the breath of 
 life. Plunge the definition into the crucible of the most 
 earnest, vital fires of your thinking soul, until it comes 
 forth again a red-hot conviction. Probe every term of 
 your proposition until it yields you its deepest secret. 
 Question every word of your text, until it speaks to you 
 its message in a voice vibrating with divinity in its every 
 tone. Do your own questioning, put your own ear to 
 the telephone, and be not satisfied until your text, your 
 chapter, your Psalm, your Epistle, your Gospel shall de- 
 liver its personal message to you. "Prove all things, 
 hold fast that which is good." Let nothing be a mat- 
 ter of mere rote or routine. Get into living contact 
 with every phase of life and experience. Get at the 
 men among whom you live and labor ; the men them- 
 selves, not their names, their clothes, their homes, their 
 
404 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 exterior accompaniments, but the real men, women, 
 children, their living, real selves ; their throbbing, per- 
 chance their sleeping brains ; their numbed, hardened, 
 or yet perhaps their bleeding, burdened, struggling 
 hearts. Realize the facts with which you have to deal : 
 sin, sorrow, falsehood, conscience, passion, prejudice, 
 duty, love, law, penalty, the image of the devil, the im- 
 age of God. Realize the Gospel you preach. Let it 
 be not a matter of hearsay, of tradition, of book-lore, 
 but the voice of the living Christ, so that you can say 
 to all your teachers: ''Now we believe not because of 
 your saying, for we have heard Him ourselves, and 
 know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the 
 world." 
 
 Let ^v^ry feeling be a reality, not an idle, lackadaisi- 
 cal sentiment ; not a puff or a gush of dilettanteism : 
 not an emotional luxury, a bit of spiritual epicureanism, 
 but an embodiment of the correlation of the divine en- 
 ergy ; a truth from Sinai or from Calvary; a message 
 from Hermon or from Gethsemane ; a miracle of wis- 
 dom from parable or sermon, or of grace from the 
 manger or the Cross ; a tear from Olivet, or a flash of 
 wrath from the Scourger of money-changers, and 
 Pharisees ; the power of an endless life, striking into 
 your inmost being, and there becoming holy fear, burn- 
 ing zeal, melting pity, exalted joy, all-conquering faith, 
 all-consuming love. Christlike consecration to the service 
 of humanity and of God. 
 
 Let every word be a reality. Let your preaching be 
 not an empty sound, not a meaningless echo of what 
 has been said before, not a strain of conventionalism, 
 not a string of lifeless formulas, not the rattling of dry 
 bones, but a living voice from a living soul, a loving 
 message from a loving heart. Let thoughts that breathe 
 
FAREWELL ADDRESS. 4O5 
 
 become words that burn. Let feelings that weep be- 
 come appeals that melt. Let truths that have captured 
 you go forth as convictions to take others by storm. 
 Give your own living interpretation of the Word as it 
 has touched, stirred, upheaved, re-created you. The 
 German proverb says: ''Where the life is lightning, 
 the words will be thunder." Luther's words have been 
 called thunderbolts and battles. Well they might be, 
 for Luther himself was a son of thunder, a divine storm. 
 Eternity thundered in his soul, and his life was charged 
 with heaven's own lightnings. " I have believed, there- 
 fore have I spoken." "We declare what we have 
 known." Let these be your mottos. 
 
 And so, finally, let your life be a reality; a reality, 
 because in every action your very self shall express it- 
 self, your deepest convictions shall shape themselves in 
 visible forms of beneficence, your heart-life shall live it- 
 self out, your heart-love shall pour itself forth, your ten- 
 derest compassions shall embody themselves in helpful 
 activities, your wrath against sin shall burn with the fire 
 of God's righteousness, your zeal for truth shall glow 
 with the ardor of an enthusiasm caught at the feet of 
 the Master, your every energy and movement shall 
 transmit Pentecostal power, your character shall be seen 
 and known as the outshining of the indwelling Christ, 
 your influence shall ever be the upHfting and transform- 
 ing power of the Cross working in your heart and life, 
 so that all who see you, shall everywhere and always 
 take knowledge of you that you have been with Jesus, 
 have learned of Him, nay, "have learned Christ" him- 
 self, "if so be that ye have heard Him and have been 
 taught by Him, even as reality is in Christ." 
 
 "Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord .... 
 and again I say, Rejoice." Valete I "Be strong in the 
 
406 LLEWELYN lOAN EVANS. 
 
 Lord and in the power of His might." And may the 
 grace of our Lord Jesus Christ abound toward you all 
 evermore ; may the love of God be plentifully shed 
 abroad in your hearts, and may the peace and joy of 
 the Comforter abide with you to the end of the days. 
 Amen. 
 
 THE END. 
 
Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 
 
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