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AUTHOR: 
 
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 TITLE : 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF 
 HEBREW TRADITION 
 
 PLACE: 
 
 BOSTON 
 
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 1872 
 
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THE 
 
 Primeval World 
 
 OF 
 
 HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 f s 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 1S72. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 
 
 FREDERIC H. HEDGE, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 PEE88WORK BY JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 
 I 
 
 D 
 O 
 
 ^ 
 
 1 
 
 ^- 
 
 TV 
 
 o 
 
 x> 
 
 IS 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 _ Page 
 
 I. The World a Divine Creation .... 1 
 
 II. Man in the Image of God . : . . 23 
 
 III. Man in Paradise 43 
 
 IV. The Brute Creation 67 
 
 V. Paradise Lost 99 
 
 VI. Cain, or Property and Strife as Agents in Civ- 
 ilization 125 
 
 VII. Nine Hundred and Sixty-nine Years? . . 143 
 
 VIII. The Failure of Primeval Society . . . 167 
 
 IX. The Deluge 191 
 
 X. The Great Dispersion 217 
 
 XI. Jehovah and Abraham. — A Hebrew Idyl . . 241 
 
 XII. The Heritage of the Inner Life . . . 263 
 
 86()9B 
 
THE WORLD A DIVINE CREATION. 
 
THE WORLD A DIVINE CKEATION. 
 
 THE WORLD A DIVINE CREATION. 
 
 " In the beginning God created the heaven and the 
 earth." — Genesis i. 1. 
 
 We have here the first proposition of 
 human reason, as it shaped itself in the 
 Hebrew mind. Whatever the learned 
 may think of the authorship and an- 
 tiquity of the Book of Genesis, there can 
 be no doubt of the high antiquity of this 
 proposition, of this doctrine, that God 
 made heaven and earth. It is a great 
 deal older than the Book of Genesis, as 
 old almost as human reason itself. Here 
 it stands in the fore-front of Hebrew lit- 
 erature, the morning-star of Semitic rev- 
 elation, the first, impregnable position as 
 it is the last result of human wisdom, 
 the beginning and end of all rational cos- 
 mogony. " In the beginning God created 
 the heaven and tlie earth." The origin 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 A 
 
 Chap I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
 of tilings is divine. The universe is not 
 self-existent, but derived. The spiritual 
 is before the phenomenal, thought before 
 thing, intelligence co-ordinate with being. 
 This is the first teaching of reflective 
 faith, the dictate of earliest wisdom. 
 Here religion and philosophy meet and 
 join hands. 
 
 I separate this first sentence from those 
 which immediately follow. The reader will 
 perceive how wide the gulf which divides 
 them. This first sentence expresses a gen- 
 eral and irrefragable truth. There follows 
 a cosmogony which challenges criticism. 
 Much ingenuity has been expended in vain 
 attempts to reconcile the Bible account of 
 creation with the commonly received con- 
 clusions of science. As if the interests of 
 religion and man's spiritual well-being de- 
 pended on the scientific accuracy of the 
 Book of Genesis, nay, on the literal inter- 
 pretation of tliat Book. What perverse- 
 ness of unbelief can exceed the perverse- 
 ness of religious bigotry which would make 
 religion accountable for the views enter- 
 
 THE WORLD A DIVINE CREATION. 
 
 tained by remote antiquity on subjects 
 which the latest science has scarcely yet 
 explored, — the bigotry which fancies the 
 credit of the Bible or the value of its spir- 
 itual revelations impaired by the fact that 
 the writers thereof entertained the opin- 
 ions common to their age on matters of 
 scientific import ? No reasonable mind 
 wiU demand of tlie seer in the realm of 
 spirit exact erudition concerning the things 
 of material nature. To question a revela- 
 tion of spiritual truth because of error in 
 matters entirely foreign from the purpose 
 of such revelation with which it may hap- 
 pen to be associated, is like rejecting a 
 pearl because of the roughness of the shell 
 which contained it, or want of culture in 
 the diver who fetched it from the deep. 
 "We have this treasure in earthen ves- 
 sels," and bibliolatry ought to see that, 
 according to its own theory, the A'alue of 
 a revelation is not to be measured bv the 
 learning of the medium through which it 
 flows, since, according to its own theory, 
 the truth revealed is not a product of the 
 
 Chap. L 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
 human understanding, but a primary gift 
 of God. The truths of science, which are 
 trutlis of the understanding, have their 
 date; they develop themselves progres- 
 sively in the order of time, and are not 
 to be anticipated by prophets and chosen 
 men of God. But the truths of religion, 
 whicli are truths of reason, are of no age ; 
 they are seen by men of all time to whom 
 the word of God comes and in whom the 
 Spirit of God breathes the revealing wis- 
 dom. They are seen by men unversed in 
 science. They were seen here and there 
 as clearly by men of old as in recent 
 time. 
 
 The attempts to reconcile Scripture and 
 science mistake tlie province and aim of 
 the former. Morally and religiously, it 
 is not of the slightest consequence that 
 tliey should be reconciled. Each has its 
 own appropriate sphere entirely distinct 
 from the other, and the commentator who 
 labors to vindicate the geological accu- 
 racy of Scripture by finding a way or a 
 sense in which the creation of earth, sun, 
 
 THE WORLD A DIVINE CREATION. 
 
 and stars may be credibly brought within 
 six days dishonors the Bible in effect as 
 much as the superficial philosopher who 
 rejects it because the work of creation is 
 so represented in the Book of Genesis. 
 No man who respects his own under- 
 standing and God's authority in it can be- 
 lieve that the rock formations whose steps, 
 as studied by geology, measure vast ages, 
 were instantaneous productions when the 
 work of creation began ; and no one who 
 listens reverently to his own heart will 
 spurn a book or collection of books so 
 freighted with everlasting wisdom, and so 
 manifestly stamped with the witness-seal 
 of the Spirit, because he finds in it tradi- 
 tions which contradict his text-books. If, 
 as astronomers assure us, there are stars 
 whose light, to be seen by us, must have 
 occupied more than ten thousand years in 
 travelling hither, it follows that creation 
 must be older than Biblical chronology 
 would make it. But this no whit affects 
 the truth of the proposition we are now 
 considering. That, as we have seen, is en- 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
8 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
 tirely distinct in its scope and import from 
 the story which succeeds. 
 
 "In the beginning God created the 
 heaven and the earth." Tliere was then 
 a time when the heaven and the earth 
 were not, and a day when they began to 
 be. A time before the all-covering sky 
 was spread, and the lights which illustrate 
 the revolving hours were sown in the blue 
 expanse; before the waters had receded 
 from the face of the earth and the dry 
 land emerged from the deep : a time when 
 nothing was but God. In the contempla- 
 tion of such a time we are lost in vague 
 conjecture or steeped in brooding wonder. 
 God is from everlasting, witliout date or 
 beginning ; yet - in the beginning » we are 
 told he made heaven and earth. When 
 was that beginning wlien the worlds were 
 made ? Eeason rejects a date so recent 
 as that of the "Mosaic chronology," as 
 commonly understood. But instead of six 
 thousand years, if we say six million, or 
 six thousand million, or name any date 
 which the human imagination may assign, 
 
 THE WORLD A DIVINE CREATION. 
 
 9 
 
 the difficulty still remains, the question 
 still recurs : Why then ? Why not earlier ? 
 And what was God doing before that date ? 
 Any beginning, however remote, is still 
 recent to the Being who has none. And 
 before that beginning can we suppose a 
 God inactive and unproducing, wrajjped in 
 the contemplation of himself and the sol- 
 itary enjoyment of his own idea ? Such a 
 God is incredible, inconceivable. Creation 
 is the logical complement of Deity. We 
 cannot separate tlie flowing from the Foun- 
 tain, production from the all-producing 
 Power. There never was a time when 
 nothing was but God. "In the begin- 
 ning was the W^ord." And that phrase, 
 " in the beginning," is but a way of desig- 
 nating a dateless antecedence, which may 
 with equal propriety be rendered, " with- 
 out beginning." Without beginning, from 
 everlasting, was the Word, the creative 
 energy, divine self-manifestation. What- 
 ever motive existed for creation at any 
 given time must have existed from all 
 eternity, since the Eternal, antecedent 
 1* 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
10 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creatio7i. 
 
 to creation could not have been motived 
 from without, and the motive power from 
 within must have been from all eternity 
 the same to immutable Wisdom. 
 
 From all eternity, therefore, we must 
 suppose God to have exercised creative 
 power. We must suppose eternal creation 
 if we suppose an eternal Creator. These 
 heavens, indeed, which now bend over ns 
 and the worlds that swim in their blue 
 abyss may not have been the first-fruits 
 of his Word. This earth of our abode 
 may not have spun from everlasting as 
 now it spins on its solar road. Creations 
 endless may have passed away ere these 
 morning stars sang together and the cho- 
 ral skies declared the glory of God. But 
 beings, worlds, there must have been to 
 reflect that glory and to occupy creative 
 Love. These heavens and this earth had 
 a beginning. There was a time when they 
 were not, and a day when their genesis 
 took place according to ideas eternal in 
 the mind of God, who saw the worlds yet 
 unformed in himself, in " the " fruitful bo- 
 
 THE WORLD A DIVINE CREATION. 
 
 11 
 
 som of his own ideality,"* and called the 
 things which were not as though they 
 were. 
 
 Six days are assigned to the ^^ork of 
 creation in Hebrew tradition. Whatever 
 else we may understand by this statement, 
 it indicates a perception in the writer that 
 the world as now constituted was not an 
 instantaneous birth, but a gradual forma- 
 tion, the growth of successive periods ; he 
 calls them days, we will call them ages.f 
 There was first a time when God said. Let 
 there be light ! And immediately the new- 
 born radiance streamed through space and 
 filled the deep void with its silent pres- 
 ence. There was a time when the fiery 
 ether collected its atoms and balled it- 
 self into suns and earths, which took their 
 places and ranged themselves for the sol- 
 emn dance whose measure is the measure 
 of all the ages. Again, there was a time 
 when the waters of this globe settled down 
 
 * Norris. 
 
 t There is no reason to doubt that the text means 
 literally dwjs of twenty-four hours ; but the fact, if not 
 the order of succession, was divined. 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
12 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
 in their beds and the dry land rose in 
 continents stretching from north to south, 
 here towering in granite masses to the 
 skies, there spreading in dreary deserts 
 or opening into fertile valleys and plains, 
 watered by rolling streams and fitted for 
 the dwelling of man. There was an age 
 when the kingdom of plants was brought 
 forth in its orders, from the clinging moss 
 and sallow ocean-flower to the perfect tree, 
 whose roots are in the earth and whose 
 head is in the skies, and which blesses 
 successive generations with its fruits and 
 its shade. There was an age when the 
 different tribes of animal nature swarmed 
 into being, and " the moving creature that 
 hath life after its kind " peopled the earth, 
 the air, and the flood. And, last of aU, 
 there was an age when man, the noblest 
 of earthly kinds, was formed " in the im- 
 age of God," and set with his hands to- 
 ward the earth and his face toward the 
 heavens, to labor in the seen and aspire to 
 the unseen, and by active beneficence re- 
 flect his divine Ori^^inal. 
 
 THE WORLD A DIVINE CREATION. 
 
 13 
 
 The length of these epochs who shall 
 determine ? Who can measure the time 
 consumed in these formations ? We only 
 know that the earth has become what it 
 is after many revolutions, that there was 
 a time when the planet was covered with 
 water, another when it bore certain mon- 
 strous forms of animal life, and that ages 
 inestimable must have elapsed between 
 the day when the earth first rolled in 
 space and the birth of man. 
 
 If this view of creation were theory 
 only, and not an assured conclusion of 
 science, it would yet commend itself as 
 coinciding with all our experience of di- 
 vine operations. The method of God in 
 the processes of nature is not instantane- 
 ous birth, but progressive formation. It 
 proceeds by stages and degrees. Nothing 
 bursts into being full grown and complete. 
 The smallest flower that paints the bor- 
 ders of the spring does not leap from the 
 earth with its petals all spread and its 
 raiment all perfect. First the seed must 
 burst its capsule, then the germ must 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
14 
 
 PKIMEVAL WORLD OE HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
 start, then the blade appears and divides, 
 and the bud must swell and tlie leaf un- 
 fold, and the colors must be stamped ; and 
 thus by slow degrees and successive stages 
 the creation of that little bein<^ is wrouo-ht 
 out. And in that production all the agen- 
 cies of nature conspire. The earth must 
 feed it with rich juices, the clouds must 
 water it with fertile dews, the air must 
 quicken it with subtile gases, the sun 
 must paint it wath w^arm beams, and all 
 the stars must unite to hold up the planet 
 from wliich it springs. If so much time 
 and such an array of means are required 
 to bring a single flower to the summit of 
 its being, how many ages must have glided 
 by before the earth, with its mountains 
 and its forests, could reach the condition 
 in wdiich man first found it? 
 
 The patient method of divine operation 
 rebukes the impatient zeal wdiich thinks 
 to create in a day what time and care 
 alone can perfect. When material crea- 
 tion proceeds so slowly, shall the moral 
 creation, the genesis of truth and good- 
 
 THE WORLD A DIVINE CREATION. 
 
 15 
 
 ness in human society, be accomplished 
 at once, by instantaneous reform? We 
 may preach and persuade, we may agitate 
 and legislate, we may plant and water, but 
 the fruit must wait the fulness of time. 
 This generation will not see its maturino- 
 our children will not see it; ages must 
 elapse before the ideal of a moral commu- 
 nity can be fulfilled. 
 
 "In the beginning God created the 
 heaven and the earth." The act of cre- 
 ation to us is as inconceivable as its Au- 
 thor. Creation out of nothing is the ec- 
 clesiastical idea. But how, where nothing 
 was, could something begin to be ? Im- 
 pressed with the difficulty of this con- 
 ception, some have assumed an eternal, 
 self-existing matter distinct from God, un- 
 conscious, inert, merely passive to divine 
 operation, of which they suppose the uni- 
 verse was formed. But this suiDposition 
 does but substitute a greater difficulty for 
 a less. It is even more difficult to con- 
 ceive of an uncreated, eternal, passive sub- 
 stance than it is to conceive of creation 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
16 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION'. 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
 out of nothing. In fact, creation out of 
 nothing means only that the worlds were 
 formed of no pre-existing foreign sub- 
 stance, distinct from God. We are not, 
 therefore, to infer that a new and foreign 
 substance was called into being, but rather 
 that the act of creation was the jzoinj^c forth 
 of Deity from the secret of absolute Being 
 into light and show. Creation is seK-man- 
 ifestation, the projection and reflection of 
 the divine consciousness. Every material 
 creature is the expression of an idea, and 
 the word matter but a phrase by which to 
 signify the reality of that idea. God in 
 creating did not bring into being a new 
 substance foreign to himself; he but ut- 
 tered forms which subsist by his contin- 
 uing effluence, and which, if he should 
 withdraw his spirit, would instantly cease 
 to be ; as the landscape ceases to be for 
 the eye when the light which showed it 
 is withdrawn. The material creation has 
 no independent existence ; it exists as a 
 constant showing of God, a stated commu- 
 nication between the supreme mind that 
 
 THE WORLD A DIVINE CREATION. 
 
 17 
 
 words it and the finite minds which ap- 
 prehend, which experience, which use and 
 reflect it. These alone of God's creations 
 truly exist, — if not by their own force, 
 for their own sakes. The material crea- 
 tion exists only in 'God and in us. In 
 God as idea and volition, in us as expe- 
 rience. 
 
 In all that God does we suppose a pur- 
 pose, and that purpose, discoverable or 
 undiscovemble, the human imderstandinf]: 
 will seek to explore. And so the human 
 mind could not fail to inquire : TFhy God 
 made heaven and earth ? WJiy did a Be- 
 ing, complete in himself, and self-suflicing, 
 come out of himself in creative action ? 
 The answer to this question is given in 
 the nature of Deity as reason conceives it. 
 It is given especially in that conception 
 of Deity which " we express when we say 
 that God is Love. God created a universe 
 because creation is a necessary constituent 
 of the divine nature, and a universe the 
 necessary complement of God. Deity can- 
 not be without self-manifestation. As it 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
18 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
 is the nature of the sun to sliine, of the 
 fountain to flow, so it is the nature of 
 Deity to give forth, to express and reflect 
 himself in creation. He created and cre- 
 ates because Love must have an object to 
 rejoice in and bless, because the all-lovin^^ 
 would not abide in himself, in the solitary 
 contemplation of his own idea, but chose 
 to impart of his fulness to sentient beings, 
 that life and joy might everywhere abound 
 and everywhere reflect his Love. 
 
 He created and creates. The work of 
 creation is not once for all, but continu- 
 ous. It is not confined to one period in 
 the life of God, but reaches from everlast- 
 ing to everlasting. In all time past the 
 Godhead has been unfolding his fathom- 
 less Self, and in aU time to come will con- 
 tinue to unfold it. The Fountain is eter- 
 nal, it can never cease to flow. The Love 
 is infinite, it can never cease to impart of 
 its fulness. These heavens and this earth 
 must pass away, for they had a beginning, 
 and whatever begins must end ; but other 
 I creations will succeed ; new orders of sen- 
 
 THE WORLD A DIVINE CREATION. 
 
 19 
 
 tient beings will express the riches and 
 reflect the glory of the Ever-giving, the 
 Ever-loving. 
 
 " In the beginning God created the 
 heaven and the earth." He made them 
 for the occupancy, use, and education of 
 rational and moral natures. The material 
 creation exists for the sake of the moral ; 
 it derives its meaning from that. These 
 visible heavens and this earth are types 
 of an invisible, spiritual creation, whose 
 import and purpose they reflect. In that 
 spiritual creation we are agents and fel- 
 low-workers with God. In the material 
 we produce nothing, we only mould into 
 new forms the material products around 
 us. The combined power and wisdom of 
 human kind can produce no additional 
 matter, nor increase by a single atom the 
 substance of our globe. But in tlie realm 
 of spirit we, too, create and bring forth. 
 There every effort of the will is creation, 
 and e^ery deed a new birth. Our char- 
 acters are our own. That which we are 
 and do as moral beings we make and 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
20 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
 fashion ourselves. And this moral crea- 
 tion in which we are fellow-workers is the 
 only one in which w^e have any continu- 
 ing place or lot, — the only one which 
 itself has any abiding reality. The heav- 
 ens and tlie earth whicli seem so real are 
 but a spectacle, a passing entertainment, 
 a vision shown by God and existing only 
 as he shows it to the spirits with whom 
 he thus communes ; a transient experi- 
 ence of the ever-living soul. It is some- 
 thing more than a poet's rhetoric which 
 affirms that " the great globe itself and all 
 which it inherit shall dissolve." It is so- 
 ber, scientific trutli. Tliat which we cre- 
 ate for ourselves and within ourselves by 
 our moral agency is our only firm posses- 
 sion ; for us the only enduring creation. 
 \yhat we rake together of this material is 
 a loan from the Lord of life, a temporary 
 trust which w^e yield with our breath. 
 Our characters alone are truly ours, the 
 workmanship of the spirit that is in us, 
 a real, substantial creation. Here, then, 
 in the realm of spirit, who labors faith- 
 
 TIIE ^VORLD A DIVINE CREATION. 
 
 21 
 
 fully is like to God, a creator. With 
 the first and sublimest of God's attributes 
 he may claim affinity. Here shall man 
 work unwearied and unceasinix, creatino- 
 in himself " the heaven and the earth," — 
 a heaven of wise thoughts, higli purposes, 
 pure affections; an earth well tilled and 
 fruitful of good ; a moral creation to have 
 and to hold wdien this material " shall dis- 
 solve, 
 
 And like " an " insubstantial pageant faded, 
 Leave not a rack behind." 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 The World 
 a Divine 
 Creation. 
 
I 
 
 /i 
 
 MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. 
 
 25 
 
 MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. 
 
 " God created man in his own image. In the im- 
 age of God created he him." — Genesis i. 27. 
 
 The creation of man is thus distin- 
 guished in Hebrew tradition as peculiarly 
 divine, — not only God-made, but God- 
 like. First in rank, tliough last in time, 
 this genesis comj^letes the eternal circle 
 of divine evolution which be^rins with 
 God and ends with God, begins with God 
 active and ends with God reflective, be- 
 gins with God imaging and ends with 
 God imaged. 
 
 " In the image of God created he him." 
 First, the fact of creation, then the kind. 
 Man is created ; he is not self-existent, 
 but derived. He liad a begjinnin^. Tliis 
 is not a fact Avliich we learn from history. 
 For all that history knows, the race may 
 have existed from all eternity, although 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Itnage of 
 
 God. 
 
26 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. 
 
 27 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Ima^e of 
 
 God. 
 
 the record of its existence embraces but 
 a span of a few thousand years. It re- 
 quired a wisdom beyond the experience 
 of history to teach a beginning of human- 
 kind. 
 
 There was a first man, and that first 
 man was not tlie first, but the last of 
 earthly creations. In this postponement 
 of human-kind to plant and brute there 
 lies a profound meaning, — a meaning not 
 explained or not exhausted by saying that 
 the earth must first be stored with yeix- 
 etable and animal for man's subsistence, 
 and in all ways got ready for his reception, 
 before he could be fitly placed upon it. 
 If tlie animal man, for the reason as- 
 signed, behooved to be last of earthly 
 kinds, still more, for other reasons, the in- 
 tellectual and moral. It was meet that 
 lie who was to be the summit of creation 
 should conclude all orders of being in him- 
 self and reflect them all, that he should 
 have creation behind him and beneath 
 him, — he being the goal in which all 
 things terminate, toward which all things 
 
 ' 
 
 
 V 
 
 diverse origin of the human race can be 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Image of 
 
 God. 
 
 point and strive, — the reason and moral; Chap, ii 
 of the visible universe, last link in the 
 chain which binds the creature to God. 
 
 There was a first man. The question 
 arises, whether one first man for the whole 
 human family or one for each continent, 
 or for each of the various races, — Cau- 
 casian, African, IVIalay, and others into 
 which the naturalists divide mankind, — 
 whether the human family originated from 
 a single pair or has flowed together from 
 different centres in different lands. Either 
 supposition is equally consistent with the 
 Biblical narrative, which, though it men- 
 tions but one first pair, and derives from 
 that the three main streams of humanity 
 represented by Shem, Ham, arnd Japhet, 
 does not affirm that all human beings that 
 have ever existed in the world were de- 
 scended from that pair, and that God cre- 
 ated no other original. This may seem to 
 be implied in the tenor of the nan-ative, 
 but is not a necessary inference from it; at 
 any rate, is not a Biblical dogma. If the 
 
28 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IL 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Image of 
 
 God. 
 
 proved from other sources, the Bible is not 
 so committed to the opposite view that 
 tlie doctrine of the sinole origin and the 
 credit of Scripture must stand or fall to- 
 gether. The authors of these Scriptures 
 adopt the views of their time on such 
 subjects, without inculcating as doctrine 
 the views they adopt. When, therefore, 
 theologians maintain as Biblical doctrine 
 the single origin of the human race they 
 mistake the aim and purport of those writ- 
 ings. The question is not one of theol- 
 ogy, but of history and physiology, which 
 the learned in those sciences must settle 
 as they can. At present it remains an 
 unsettled question. Meanwhile, this at 
 least must •be conceded, that mankind, 
 if not descended from one original pair, 
 are yet essentially one family, that the 
 differences which divide the various races 
 are extrinsic and accidental, wliile their 
 unity is intrinsic and essential. One and 
 the same nature pervades all varieties of 
 man " on all the face of the earth." Man 
 as the subject of history and divine educa- 
 
 /• 
 
 
 
 MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. 
 
 29 
 
 tion is one. All the nations embraced in 
 the scheme and scope of progressive hu- 
 manity are one. If not descended from one 
 pair, they are one in idea and destina- 
 tion. It does not seem likely that the ne- 
 gro and the white man came of one stock. 
 Yet who shall say what changes time and 
 clime may have wrought ? The advocates 
 of negro slavery were wont to argue from 
 the present inferiority of the African race 
 that bondage is their true destination. To 
 make out their case, they should have 
 proved that the negro belongs not to 
 the human family. The proof would be 
 their incapability, under favoral)le circum- 
 stances, of civil society and historic de- 
 velopment. That is a point which time 
 alone can test. If not capable of ijivil 
 society, they do not belong to the human 
 family. In that case they will finally dis- 
 appear from the earth. 
 
 Another point suggests itself in connec- 
 tion with the ori<]jin of man. Eecent zool- 
 ogists of high repute incline to the belief 
 that man was not an original creation, but 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Image of 
 
 God. 
 
30 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Image of 
 
 God. 
 
 lias grown by gradual development from 
 the lower strata of the animal world ; spe- 
 cifically — as tlie latest step in this pro- 
 cess — from tlie simian tribe. The oranjx- 
 outang, under favorable circumstances, in 
 the course of long ages, grew, it is sup- 
 posed, into first the Hottentot; then, by 
 gradual improvement, into the finished 
 European style. How reconcile with this 
 view the spiritual type su2)posed to be dis- 
 tinctive of human kind ? with the imaire 
 of God man's special and distinguishing 
 privilege ? 
 
 It will be long, I suspect, before this 
 view universally prevails ; before it takes 
 the character and mnk of scientific certain- 
 ty. Some of the greatest names in science 
 are found in opposition to it ; among them 
 our own Agassiz, the fundamental idea of 
 whose view of nature it contradicts. One 
 is sometimes tempted to think that the 
 transformation may have been the other 
 way, — a change of type from human to 
 simian, — tliat the monkey may be a cor- 
 ruj^tion of human nature sunk by moral 
 
 MA?^ IX THE IMAGE OF GOD. 
 
 31 
 
 and intellectual degeneracy into that too 
 faithful caricature. A Mussulman legend 
 recounts the metamorphosis of certain 
 mockers who, jeering at Moses and his 
 teachings, were turned into apes, and in 
 that condition continued to jeer and chat- 
 ter ever after. There are tendencies in 
 man of which the a]ie may be regarded 
 as the fit expression and consummation ; 
 and none more justly so than mocking at 
 truth, the great and serious truths of hu- 
 manity. If anything can make an ape of 
 a man it is that. 
 
 But suppose the Development-theory, so 
 called, could be established on scientific 
 and indisi^utable grounds, there is nothing 
 in that theory at which theology need be 
 alarmed. What the naturalist means by 
 man in this connection is one thing, what 
 the Bible means is another. The one is 
 speaking of the animal man, the other of 
 the moral and spiritual. Grant that the 
 human animal developed itself by gradual 
 ascent and modification from the lower 
 orders of animal life, it does not follow I 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Image of 
 
 God. 
 
32 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Image of 
 
 God. 
 
 that the human soul developed itself from 
 the brute. There must still have been a 
 time, — if man at this day is anything 
 more than the highest animal, — there 
 must have been a time when a human 
 soul, with its characteristic attributes and 
 belongings, was first lodged in that animal 
 frame, when the heavenly was first wedded 
 to the eartldy. There must still have been 
 a first man, in the Bible sense ; and that 
 first man was a new creation, a creation 
 bearing the image of God. 
 
 And what are we to understand by 
 " the image of God " ? Was the writer 
 thinking of the human form, so far tran- 
 scending all other forms of animated na- 
 ture in beauty, dignity, variety of adapta- 
 tion, in extent of function and organic 
 endowment, as to justify the poet's phrase, 
 " the human form divine " ? Did he sup- 
 pose tliat God, like his creatures, must ex- 
 ist in a bodily shape, and having conceived 
 the Creator invested with a human form, 
 did he mean to say tliat the Deity con- 
 ferred his own form upon man ? I believe 
 
 MAX IX THE IMAGE OF GOD. 
 
 33 
 
 tliat something more and better was in- 
 tended by this expression. It meant in 
 the tliought of the liistorian what we un- 
 derstand by that phrase, — a spiritual sim- 
 ilitude. Man in his original radical idea, 
 man as spirit, is divine. This is the im- 
 port of tlie saying, " God created man in 
 his own image." 
 
 The Bible contains no truth more pro- 
 found. And the Bible alone, of ancient 
 writings, contains it, or expresses it, I 
 think, with such distinctness. The wis- 
 dom which inspired these pages, in all the 
 annals of ancient wisdom, alone enunciates 
 in adequate terms this great intuition. We 
 repeat the commonplace, and think it so 
 obvious that all men in all time must 
 needs have perceived it. But what fet- 
 ichist or polytheist in that age perceived 
 or said it ? And the world was filled with 
 such when these Scriptures were written. 
 How many even now perceive the full sig- 
 nificance that lies in it ? 
 
 Man in the image of God ! "Wliere in 
 human converse does that image appear ? 
 
 2* 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Image of 
 
 God. 
 
34 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Ima'^e of 
 
 God. 
 
 Look at man in some aspects, and he seems 
 more removed from all divine similitnde 
 than even the brute. See him the victim 
 of coarse animal passions, besotted with 
 gluttony and drink; see him wallowing 
 in lust or rabid with greed of gain, raven- 
 ous, cruel, grasping, oppressing, destroy- 
 ing. Will any one pretend that a crea- 
 ture like this is made in the image of 
 God ? Certainly not, for the creature so 
 described is not man. In such cases the 
 animal has overlaid and concealed, and 
 even for the time suppressed the man. 
 That slave of appetite and passion, that 
 grovelling sensualist, that persecutor and 
 destroyer, is a human animal, not a spirit- 
 ual nature, of which alone the divine sim- 
 ilitude is predicated. The true human in 
 him is not yet apparent, is not yet devel- 
 oped, is dormant and dead. The doctrine 
 is, not that men as we find them, but that 
 man in his idea, is divine. That divine 
 man is embodied in a human animal ; it 
 is the necessary form of his earthly life, 
 the medium by which he converses with 
 
 MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. 
 
 35 
 
 the world of sense in wdiich he is tempo- 
 rarily immersed. In the genuine man the 
 spirit so possesses, informs, and commands 
 the animal that nothing obscures the di- 
 vine image ; it shines distinctly and vic- 
 toriously through. But often the animal 
 is developed at the expense of the spirit- 
 ual, it supplants the spiritual ; the image 
 of God is obscured, suppressed. 
 
 * On the strength of such examples theo- 
 losfians have affirmed human nature itself 
 to be godless and corrupt, as if human na- 
 ture were truly represented in those exam- 
 ples. No representation of human nature 
 can be regarded as legitimate wdiich does 
 not express the original idea of man. He 
 only in whom the spiritual has gained the 
 ascendency over the animal and holds it 
 in subjection, he only with whom the di- 
 vine purpose, perceived or surmised, is the 
 rule of life, exhibits the image of God in 
 his person. Only he is truly man. 
 
 Society, as now constituted, bears not 
 that image, — as a whole, is far from di- 
 vine. And vet if we search for it in frank- 
 
 Chap. 11. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Image of 
 
 God. 
 
36 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 lmas;e of 
 
 God. 
 
 ness and sincerity, how much that is truly 
 divine we shall find in the present and in 
 every past age of society. How much of 
 disinterested benevolence, how much of 
 genuine, unadultemted love, how much 
 of self-sacrificing devotion, how many he- 
 roes, patriots, martyrs, who have offered 
 up their lives for the right ! Society as 
 we have it is composed of steep contra- 
 dictions. Side by side with the hellish 
 atrocities of war we have itS heaven-born 
 charities. The "Sanitary Commission," 
 with its tender solace, follows in the steps 
 of Carnage. Tender and delicate women, 
 bred in the lap of luxury, renounce their 
 pleasant homes and take upon themselves 
 the office of nurses, breathing the infected 
 air of hospitals, watching at the bedside 
 of loathsome disease. Side by side with 
 the haunts of vice, the abomination of 
 cities, we have houses of prayer reared 
 by tlie spirit of piety, sacred to faitli and 
 the purest aspirations of the soul. Such 
 are tlie contradictions of which life is 
 made up. It is a tale of sharp contrasts 
 
 MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. 
 
 37 
 
 and huge discrepancies, of godlike vir- 
 tues and hellish crimes. But who will 
 say that the nobler part 'and product in 
 these contrasts is not as genuine a mani- 
 festation of human nature as the baser 
 and infernal ? I say it is the truer and 
 more legitimate manifestation of the two. 
 I say, this is legitimate and that is not. 
 These charities and pieties are the normal 
 products of human nature, those vices and 
 atrocities, spifrious and abnormal. Man is 
 truly himself in the one and is not him- 
 self, but " beside liimself," in the other, ^o 
 theologian is autliorized to point to those 
 offences as the real human, and to found 
 his doctrine of human nature upon them. 
 The real convictions of men, the spon- 
 taneous unbiassed convictions of the race, 
 are embodied in their speech. "We have 
 the word. Humane. It means the same 
 as human, that wliich is agreeable to the 
 nature of man. And it means also merci- 
 ful, pitiful, loving, kind, — qualities con- 
 formed to the nature of God, of whom 
 these are distinguishing attributes. We 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Image of 
 
 God. 
 
38 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 ti Chap. II. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Imas;e of 
 
 God. 
 
 have, then, the testimony of language that 
 what is peculiarly and emphatically hu- 
 man is also divine. 
 
 And we have in the Christian records 
 the testimony of finished humanity. The 
 appearance of a character like Jesus in 
 our human world is a reaffirmation of the 
 truth of the old Hebrew saying, that man 
 was made in the image of God, a proof 
 that the innermost, original nature of man 
 is divine, that to be truly human is to be 
 one with God. 
 
 This is the idea which underlies the 
 Church dogma of the Incarnation, thouo-h 
 not the meaning which the popular theol- 
 ogy attaches to that doctrine. The feel- 
 ing which prompted the decision of the 
 Church in shaping its christology, was 
 that human nature can only be redeemed 
 from sin by actual contact with Godhead. 
 How to bridge the gulf between God and 
 man was the problem which the Cliurcli 
 proposed to itself. In the animal kin<.'- 
 doni we perceive a regular gradation in de- 
 scending series through the simice, through 
 
 MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. 
 
 39 
 
 k 
 
 the mammals, through the vertebrates, ser- 
 pents, molluscs, medusa?, down to the infu- 
 soria, the rhizopod, or whatever may be the 
 lowest term and extreme limit of animat- 
 ed nature. But tlie spiritual kingdom, 
 as conceived by the Church, had no such 
 continuity ; the series was broken, a link 
 was missing between man and God. Push 
 your scale up as far as you may through 
 the heavenly principalities, from angel to 
 archangel, still the higliest finite is a crea- 
 ture, it had a beginning ; between it and 
 the uncreated tliere is a gulf which the 
 act of creation does not bridge. To meet 
 this difficulty the Church for "creation" 
 said " generation." Tlie " Son " was gen- 
 erated, and that from eternity, and so par- 
 takes of tlie substance of Godhead, and, 
 being incarnated in a human individual, 
 communicates that nature to man. Thus 
 the atonement is accomplislied between 
 the human and divine ; man is reunited to 
 God. I shall not stop to point out the 
 logical inadequacy of tliis theory which 
 required the audacious doctrine of Tran- 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 linage of 
 
 God. 
 
40 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Image of 
 
 God. 
 
 substantiation to carry out its principle. 
 It suffices to say that if the Cliurch liad 
 understood and duly considered tlie mean- 
 ing of tliese words, " God created man in 
 his own image," this elabomte theory 
 would have been superfluous. God by 
 liis image in man is in virtual contact 
 with all in whom that image lives. Man 
 fell, man falls, the image is dimmed, over- 
 laid, but not erased. It needs to be re- 
 vived, and when revived, man is once more 
 in union and communion with God. God 
 with man and in mail, so far as he is spir- 
 itual, that is the real import of the doc- 
 trine of Incarnation. Christ as the " Son 
 of Man " is the type of genuine humanity. 
 He is the " second man," as Adam is the 
 first, tlie representative of the real spir- 
 itual, as Adam is of the possible. Not less 
 human than Adam, because more divine, 
 but the more so on that account. Adam 
 represents humanity in its earlier, tran- 
 sient phase, Christ represents it in its es- 
 sential, eternal nature. The second man 
 is more human than the first, Christ more 
 
 m 
 
 MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. 
 
 human than Adam. And "as in Adam 
 all die," as the earthly nature is perishing, 
 " so in Christ all are made alive " ; the di- 
 vine in man is eternal. Christ reaffirms 
 in his life what the old Scri^^ture had af- 
 firmed in words, — that man is the image 
 of God, that in human nature God sees 
 himself and expresses liimseK as in no 
 other creature. 
 
 If man is the image of God, it follows 
 not only that man — the spiritual man — 
 is divine, but also that God is human. All 
 creation is the realization of divine ideas, 
 the going forth of God from the secret of 
 inscrutable Being in self-reflecting, self- 
 manifesting action. The last step in this 
 process of divine self - manifestation is 
 man, in whom above all created natures 
 the Creator realizes his Godhead. There 
 is no step between God and man that is 
 not virtually included in human nature. 
 All we can ever know of the divine must 
 be through the human. Whatever ])vo- 
 cess may await us in the far future, to 
 whatsoever height of being and of action 
 
 41 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Image of 
 
 God. 
 
H\ 
 
 42 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 Man in the 
 
 Image of 
 
 God. 
 
 the spirit may attain when this mortal 
 shall have put on immortality, we can 
 come no nearer to God than man. We 
 can approach him only through perfected 
 humanity, and all we can ever add to our 
 knowledge of his nature will be derived 
 from successive developments of our own. 
 We may hope to see God, in the great 
 hereafter, if we are in the line of ascend- 
 ing spirits who put off the defilements of 
 earth and cast death and hell beneath 
 them as they rise ; but not as an object 
 external to ourselves. We shall see him 
 as the pure in heart see him, — in the mir- 
 ror of their purity, in perfect emancipa- 
 tion from self, in ever-growing holiness, 
 in ever-expanding love. We commune 
 wdtli him, not by going out of ourselves, 
 but by sinking deeper and deeper within. 
 Deep in the centre of every heart he has 
 stamped and imaged and planted himself, 
 and when we most truly possess ourselves 
 we are nearest to God. 
 
 tt 
 
 V 
 
 III. 
 
 MAN IN PARADISE. 
 
 I' 
 
MAX IX PARADISE. 
 
 45 
 
 \ i 
 
 MAN IN PARADISE. 
 
 " And the Lord God took the man and put him into 
 the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it," — Gene- 
 sis ii. 15. 
 
 It has long been a matter of debate be- 
 tween ethnologists and theologians whether 
 primitive man was intellectually mature 
 or rudely ignorant. Did the species start 
 from the lowest plain of human existence, 
 but one remove from the brute, or begin 
 its career at that advanced point of intel- 
 ligence and faculty which now distin- 
 guishes the fully developed civilized man 
 from the human animal ? 
 
 Ethnology reasoning from analogy adopts 
 the former view ; maintains that the race 
 commenced in ignorance and brutaUty and 
 advanced step by step from the lowest 
 grade to the highest yet attained, — from 
 cannibalism up to European and Anglo - 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
 i 
 
46 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IIL 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
 American civilization. Tlieology, on the 
 contrary, infers from tlie Bible that' man 
 was created intellectually and sj)iritually 
 mature, and not only mature, but (accord- 
 ing to some theologians) perfect, with fac- 
 ulties as far exceeding anything witnessed 
 in subsequent time as the highest devel- 
 opments known to us exceed the rudeness 
 of savage life. 
 
 We have no sufficient data as yet to es- 
 tablish a conclusive decision of this ques- 
 tion, which is somewhat involved in the 
 previous question whether human kind 
 originated from a single pair or from sev- 
 eral independent centres. On the suppo- 
 sition of a single origin of the human race 
 the latter theory fails to explain the pres- 
 ent existence of savage races, which in 
 that case are intelligible only as wrecks of 
 extinct civilizations. But, if we suppose a 
 various origin from independent centres, 
 the theory of a rude beginning encounters 
 a serious difficulty in the fact that such a 
 progress as is claimed from the rudest con- 
 dition of man to the highest is not sub- 
 
 MAN m PARADISE. 
 
 47 
 
 stantiated by ethnological observation of 
 existing races. For, though it is true that 
 the most civilized races of to-day have 
 passed through a period of comparative 
 barbarism, it is also true that their civil- 
 ization is the growth of a graft from a for- 
 eign stock, and that the savage races of 
 to-day refuse that graft and die out when 
 broudit in close contact with civilized na- 
 tions. 
 
 On. the other hand, theology certainly 
 errs in its view of original man, as inferred 
 from the Book of Genesis. The condition 
 of Adam in Paradise is not represented as 
 one of perfection, but simply as one of 
 moral innocence. In fact, this question, 
 like so many others which the learned 
 debate, is a question but of words and 
 names. The two parties are discussing 
 diffi3rent things, the one the beginnings 
 of a zoological species, the other the be- 
 ginnings of the human family. The aim 
 of the Biblical narrative is to paint the be- 
 ginnings of the human family, — not the 
 human animal, but man so far developed 
 
 Chap. IIL 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
48 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 );' 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
 as to be susceptive of moral ideas and 
 subject to the moral law. We may sup- 
 pose as many ages as science requires, or 
 conjectures, between the first of tlie hu- 
 man species and the Adam of Genesis 
 without doing violence to the s^mY of the 
 story, although the letter seems certainly 
 to identify the two. Granting that the hu- 
 man species began in savage ignorance, it is 
 none the less true that human society began 
 at a certain advanced stage of intellectual 
 development. And this beginning of soci- 
 ety — the beginning of humanity proper — 
 it is which Hebrew tradition contemplates. 
 We assume, then, for man in Eden that 
 point in the progress of human develop- 
 ment — preceded, it may be, by ages of 
 mere animality — at wliich our historic 
 progenitors began to be capable of moral 
 agency and capable of social union. By 
 Adam in Eden we will understand the 
 beginning of human society. The date 
 of that beginning it is impossible to de- 
 termine. The learned, however, are agreed 
 that the scale of Mosaic chronology is too 
 
 1'!^ 
 
 .1 
 
 MAN IN PARADISE. 
 
 contracted to accommodate the historic 
 process imi:)lied in it, and that thousands 
 of years must be added to the Biblical 
 conception of the age of man. 
 
 As to the whereabouts ; the locality of 
 the Garden of Eden, the first experiment 
 of social life, is a question of easier solu- 
 tion. Tlie region indicated in the book 
 of Genesis, provided it can be geograph- 
 ically verified as an actual section of the 
 earth's surface, is the answer to tliis ques- 
 tion, — an answer in wliich historic tradi- 
 tion and philosophic conjecture will prob- 
 ably be found to coincide with Biblical 
 lore. There is some difficulty, however, 
 in ascertaining the jDrecise locality in- 
 tended in the narrative. The region is 
 thus defined in the text : — 
 
 " And a river went out of Eden to water 
 the garden : and from thence it was parted 
 and became into four heads. The name of 
 the first is Pison: that is it which com- 
 passeth the whole land of Havilah where 
 there is gold ; and the gold of that land 
 is good [or pure] : there is bdellium and 
 
 49 
 
 Chap. IIL 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
50 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 MAX IN PARADISE. 
 
 51 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
 the onyx-stone. And the name of the sec- 
 ond river is Gihon : the same is it that 
 compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. 
 And the name of the third river is Hidde- 
 kel : that is it which goeth toward the east 
 of Assyria. And the fourth river is Eu- 
 phrates."* Interpreted according to the 
 letter, this statement certainly defines no 
 terrestrial locality. A description which 
 brings into one view, as parts of one ter- 
 ritory, Assyria. and a province of South 
 Arabia (for such is the Havilah of Scrip- 
 ture), and which makes the Euphrates the 
 confluent of a river of Ethiopia, is alto- 
 gether useless as a topographical guide to 
 any actual portion of the earth's surface. 
 Accordingly, this description of Paradise 
 has been transferred by modern critics 
 from the region of geography to that of 
 poetry. But when we consider that two 
 of the rivers here indicated are actual geo- 
 graphical rivers, the Euphrates and the Ti- 
 gris, _ Hiddekel being the Hebrew name 
 
 * The following geographical criticism is from Bun- 
 sen's " Bibehverk." 
 
 1 
 
 of the latter river, — and that these two 
 are neighbors and confluents, as liere rep- 
 resented, and further that the Tigris, as 
 here stated, is in near relation with Assv- 
 ria, — not indeed to the east of, but, ac- 
 cording to another rendering of the words, 
 before * Assyria, i. e. before coming to As- 
 sjrria; — when we consider this fact, the 
 presumption is that the writer intended to 
 describe an actual region of the globe. A 
 mixture of geographical with merely ideal 
 localities is a very improbable supposition. 
 The problem of constructive criticism is, if 
 possible, by a new analysis of the terms 
 employed, to reconcile with this geograph- 
 ical position those parts of the statement 
 which seem to conflict with it. This prob- 
 lem has been attempted in our day with 
 apparent success. Eecent investigation 
 finds in the Pison and Gihon of the text 
 two rivers belonging to the same region 
 with the Tigris and the Euphrates. Pison 
 is identified with the river Phasis, which 
 
 * Namely, to one living west of that river, say in 
 Mesopotamia, in which region the tradition is supposed 
 to have originated. See Bunsen, in loco. 
 
 Chap. IIL 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
^gffm 
 
 52 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
 empties into the Eiixine and Gihon witli 
 the river Araxes, which empties into the 
 Caspian. Havilah is found to he Colchis, 
 the celebrated gold-land of the ancients ; 
 and the Hebrew name for Ethiopia; — 
 CksJi, by a slight change in the sj)elling, 
 becomes Cus (Cusssei or Cossa^i), the name 
 of an ancient people inhabiting a part of 
 the territory of Media. 
 
 According to these determinations, the 
 Eden of Scripture was situated in the high- 
 lands of Armenia, in what is now a portion 
 of Turkey, between the Caucasas and the 
 Euphrates. An Aryan tradition, wholly in- 
 dependent of the Hebrew, refers the origin 
 of the Aryan family to a region directly 
 east of this, which it characterizes * as the 
 land of purity, the original gift of (Ormuzd) 
 the Good Spirit, whose enemy (Ahriman), 
 the Principal of Evil, creator of the Ser- 
 pent, changed the climate of this region 
 of delight, and compelled the fathers to 
 wander forth from their early home.f 
 
 * " Bihehverk," Vol. V. pp. 40, 47. 
 
 t " In the midst of this region," says Bunsen, " the 
 
 MAN IN PARADISE. 
 
 53 
 
 Fact and allegory are so blended in 
 these records that criticism cannot always 
 distinguish between them. It is not easy 
 to disentangle tlie historic thread of pri- 
 meval tradition from its mythical accom- 
 paniment. The story of the Fall is best 
 understood as pure allegory, but the sceiie 
 of that Fall, the Eden of Scripture, — that 
 is, a beginning of human society in the 
 region here indicated, and under auspices 
 fitly expressed by the word " garden," — I 
 believe to be essentially historical. Other 
 nations have similar traditions. Greek and 
 Eoman Avriters tell of a Golden Age of in- 
 nocence, when men lived happily, subsist- 
 ing on the free and spontaneous bounty 
 of nature, when greed of gain was not, 
 and violence and strife had no place or 
 part in human life. Indian, Persian, Egyp- 
 tian antiquity discovers traces of a like 
 faith, which can only be explained, or is 
 
 naturalists of our time have discovered traces of a great 
 and comparatively recent convulsion, the consequence 
 of which was the formation of the Caspian Sea and 
 the desert character of a large portion of the neighbor- 
 ing land." 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Matt in 
 Paradise. 
 
54 
 
 PKIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
 best explained, by a corresponding verity. 
 Philosophy may dispute the tradition as 
 a past reality, may reject it as a fact of 
 history, but philosophy loves to contem- 
 plate the idea as a fmal result, as the 
 consummation of the earthly life. Phi- 
 lo'sophy loves to occupy itself with the 
 reconstruction of the Garden of Eden, that 
 is, with a scheme of society purged of the 
 evils that infest the present and have 
 plagued all former time; a state where 
 violence and fraud shall no more molest 
 and wars shall cease, where the law of 
 love shall reign supreme and shed eternal 
 sunshine on the soul ; a commonwealth of 
 regenerate and perfected humanity, a par- 
 adise of innocence and peace. The Golden 
 Age, philosophers have said, belongs to the 
 future, not to the past ; Eden is before us, 
 not behind, not a loss to be deplored, but 
 a possibility for wliich we are to strive. 
 
 This we may accept as the moral of the 
 story. It is true that what the Garden of 
 Eden imports to us is not a loss, but an 
 aspiration and a hope. Not sorrow for 
 
 i 
 
 IVIAN IN PARADISE. 
 
 55 
 
 the past, but a motive for the future, is the 
 lesson taught by this ancient tale. What- 
 ever has been may be again, and if, far 
 away in the earliest past, beyond the 
 reach of contemporary records, known 
 only to dim tradition, there existed a 
 state of society in which man was better 
 and more blest than now, in harmony 
 with nature and at peace with himself, 
 unvexed with care and untrammelled by 
 sin, his bread sufficient, his being secure, 
 and all his faculties and passions in tune, 
 then we may hope that far away in the 
 long and unsearchable future, when civil- 
 ization shall have finished its course and 
 divine education accomplished its work, 
 the time will return of that blest estate 
 when life shall be free and humanity 
 true, and Eden re-establish itself with 
 firmer conditions and a better hope, — 
 an Eden based on insight instead of in- 
 stinct, with the wisdom of all time for its 
 illumination and all himian experience for 
 its guide. 
 
 Eeading the story in this light, we say 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
56 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 MAN IN PARADISE. 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
 that a Garden is the destined abode of 
 civilized man. It will be the last as it 
 was the primeval estate. By a garden I 
 mean cultivated and transfigured nature. 
 There exists a relation between nature 
 and man which rightly understood, and re- 
 alized in corresponding institutions, makes 
 earth a garden. At present the life of 
 man is far from expressing this relation. 
 A false civilization, founded in selfish pas- 
 sions, has estmnged man from nature, and 
 that estrangement has increased with the 
 progress of society. Among the bad re- 
 sults of this estrangement we may reckon 
 the existence of crowded cities, and the 
 sickly and vicious life which they engen- 
 der. Moral and physical disorders have 
 multiplied as population concentrated it- 
 self in certain localities. A large propor- 
 tion of the crimes which infest society are 
 the necessary offspring of this unnatural 
 life. Civilization is nature developed. A 
 healthy civilization is nature developed to 
 a point where each individual enjoys the 
 full exercise of all his faculties, and where 
 
 57 
 
 the wants of one part of tlie community do 
 not corrupt and enslave the rest. If, as 
 we are told, the savage is not the natural 
 state of man, neither is the life of crowded 
 cities the natural state. The true state is 
 equally remote from either of these ex- 
 tremes. It is one in which man is in 
 right relations with nature and in which >■ 
 I brute nature has been regenerated by hu- 
 
 P man art and made to bring forth ampler 
 
 fruits and nobler than it yields in its pri- 
 mal state. Such, we may suppose, will 
 be the condition of perfected man, — a re- 
 production of the garden life. Consum- 
 mate culture will return to nature, and 
 return to nature will give Eden. What- 
 ever is false and degrading in civilization 
 will be done away, its fearful inequalities, 
 the disproportion of labor and compensa- 
 tion, the dear-bought luxury of the few, 
 the ill-requited service of the many, and 
 all the crimes and distresses which spring 
 from abject povert}^ on the one hand and 
 inordinate wealth on the other. Man will 
 live nearer to nature, there will be a rela- 
 
 3* 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
58 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 MAN IN PARADISE. 
 
 59 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
 tion of reciprocal service between them; 
 according as lie renders he will receive, 
 according to his use will be his posses- 
 sion. 
 
 For observe, that man was commanded 
 "to dress and to keep the garden" in 
 which he was placed. The Paradise of 
 tradition was not a state of passive, un- 
 conditional enjoyment, nor will any future 
 paradise be such. Man will never know 
 an Eden consisting in exemption from la- 
 bor. Labor is not an accident of this our 
 present imperfect state, but a law of man's 
 nature which no change of circumstance 
 and no amount of culture can ever abol- 
 ish. Labor is needful, not only as a means 
 of support, but also and more as a means 
 of education. We must labor not merely 
 because we have animal wants to be sup- 
 plied, but because we have mental facul- 
 ties to be developed and perfected. But 
 all labor is not equally conducive to this 
 end. The labor enforced by necessity, the 
 irksome toil for needful bread, is compara- 
 tively, barren of moral advantage. That 
 
 // 
 
 
 labor only is truly profitable to which the 
 laborer is prompted by free choice and 
 for which the enjoyment he finds in it 
 is itself the best compensation. At pres- 
 ent the greater part of man's labor has 
 no end but daily bread. The majority 
 are doomed to lifelong tasks for the bare 
 support of animal life. This is not the 
 true idea of man, nor the true destina- 
 tion of human kind. Labor in a perfected 
 state will have other objects than meat 
 and drink. It has been computed that 
 four hours a day of weU-directed effort 
 from all who are capable of labor would 
 be sufficient for the animal wants of the 
 race. When those wants have been sup- 
 plied, if ever that better state shall arrive, 
 the end of labor wiU not be private gain' I 
 but the common good ; not to acquire for 
 the sake of acquiring, but to create for 
 the sake of creating, to dress and keep 
 the garden, not to monopolize and gor- 
 mandize its fruits. Each individual wiU 
 find the sphere and the function to which 
 he is adapted by his peculiar gift. His 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
60 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
 work will no longer be an irksome task 
 imposed by hard necessity, but an art 
 which he prosecutes for its own sake and 
 the general good. He will labor as God 
 labors, not in drudgery but in sport, not 
 in the spirit of bondage but in the spirit 
 of love, from the free determination of 
 an active nature which seeks to unfold 
 and to manifest itself in endless produc- 
 tion. 
 
 Will man in Eden have private posses- 
 sions, or will all things be common to all ? 
 Property, so far as it represents the indi- 
 vidual and proportionate labor of the own- 
 er, is a natural right, a thing that must 
 always be, because eternally fit. Property 
 otherwise acquired is booty, and must pass 
 away with other injustices. As society is 
 now constituted, the origin of property is 
 partly labor and partly the act of the 
 stronger. The superior strength may act 
 as force or as capital ; the principle is the 
 same. Such is the property claimed and 
 allowed by human laws in untilled and 
 unoccupied lands. The earth is the prod- 
 
 MAN IN PARADISE. 
 
 61 
 
 uct of no man's industry except as re- 
 claimed and improved by toil. The nat- 
 ural right of man covers only so much of 
 tlie earth's surface as he actually uses. 
 What is over and above this is directly or 
 indirectly the product of force. All prop- 
 erty in unoccupied land, wlien traced to 
 the first claimant, will be found to have 
 its origin in forcible seizure on the part 
 of some government or chartered com- 
 pany, which, having first usurped, under- 
 takes to dispose of the earth as if it were 
 a product of their own creation. In this 
 way the territory of this continent was 
 seized and disposed of by governments 
 which had no more right to the soil than 
 they had to the people who dwelt in it. 
 The whole system of landed property rests 
 on the assumption tliat might makes right. 
 But waiving this point, tlie great dispari- 
 ties of human life are due to the facility 
 with wliich, in the present state of society, 
 one class of men can avail themselves of 
 the labors of another class without ade- 
 quate compensation. The earth is wide 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
62 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
 enough and rich enough for all who live 
 in.it. If conventional right were identical 
 with natural right, if no one could appro- 
 priate more of the earth's products than 
 he can use, then each might appropriate 
 as much as he requires, and none would 
 suffer need. Instead of pining with want, 
 or earning a scanty subsistence by ill-paid 
 toil, as is now the case with so large a 
 portion of the human family, all might 
 live, as God intended, a free and honored 
 life. 
 
 Undoubtedly the present system has its 
 uses. It is easy to see how the crowded 
 and struggling life which man now leads 
 has served to develop the uttermost re- 
 sources of matter and of mind, and thus 
 to prepare the way for that better state 
 which shall blend in one all that nature 
 confers with all that art creates,— the sim- 
 plicity of Eden witli the last results of 
 civilized life. Nevertheless, it is certain 
 that the present system is not to be per- 
 petual. No rational person who considers 
 the enormous injustice of the presently 
 
 MAN IN PARADISE. 
 
 63 
 
 existing social order, the bondage, the ig- 
 norance, the privation of the many, con- 
 trasted witli the lot of the privileged few, 
 — that unnatural relation which suffers 
 one man to riot in abundance wrung from 
 the sweat of his brother, and condemns 
 that brother to lifelong hardship, — no 
 one who considers these things, and who 
 believes in a wise and righteous rule over 
 all, can imagine this to be the final and 
 true destination of man. The time must 
 come when these discrepancies shall be 
 done away, when the reign of superior 
 might shall give place to that of superior 
 wisdom and virtue, when society, no longer 
 founded in force but in love, no lono-er a 
 system of self-defence, but of mutual ser- 
 vice, shall combine for the equal good of 
 all, and when the outward condition of 
 each shall be the measure of his actual 
 worth. 
 
 Thus may we hope that the paradise of 
 unconscious innocence will be replaced by 
 a paradise of conscious virtue. The first 
 Eden was the native dower of undisci- 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
64 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Paradise. 
 
 plined man; the second will be the end 
 of discipline. 
 
 The highest good is not a gift but a 
 growth, and not the growth of a few gen- 
 erations, but the growth of millennial ages, 
 — a growtli whose root was in the bosom of 
 the first-born, and whose full developments 
 will tell the story and carry the fortunes 
 of human kind through incalculable time. 
 The progress of humanity will not be 
 forced. The heavenly graces are gaining 
 on the kingdom of error and sin, but only 
 as the new-formed continent gains on the 
 lessening deep. Slowly and reluctantly 
 the hungry element retires ; not years but 
 centuries chronicle its ebb. 
 
 By no aggressive acts of violence can 
 our impatience speed the work; these only 
 serve to obstruct and retard it. The evil 
 that is in the world can be abolished only 
 by supplanting it with good. In the or- 
 der of Providence the moral and social 
 improvement of the race is effected by 
 gradual propagation from mind to mind. 
 The best we can do for the reoeneration 
 
 MAN IN PARADISE. 
 
 65 
 
 of our kind is to be regenerate ourselves. 
 By faithful occupation and due cultivation 
 of our appointed sphere, by making that 
 to blossom with good, we may help to 
 plant a new Eden in the earth. 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 Man in 
 Para'/ise. 
 
 K 
 
 / 
 
THE BRUTE CREATION. 
 
 69 
 
 \ 
 
 THE BRUTE CREATION, 
 
 " And out of the ground the Lord God formed every 
 beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and brought 
 them unto Adam to see what he would call them. 
 And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, 
 that was the name thereof." — Genesis ii. 19. 
 
 The Hebrew conception of the brute 
 creation, as existing for the sake of man 
 (so different from that of the Hindu mind) 
 could hardly fail to find expression in 
 the early speculations of that self-exalting 
 race. Here we have it in the second ac- 
 count of creation, which differs, the reader 
 will perceive, very widely from the first. 
 In the first account the Elohist* repre- 
 sents man as the last creature formed, 
 — the closing act of the great week of 
 
 * Two independent documents seem to have been 
 used by the compiler of the book of Genesis, one in 
 which God is called Elohim and one in which he is 
 called Jahveh or Jehovah ; hence the terms Eldhist 
 and Jehovist. 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 

 70 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 births. In the second the more national 
 Jehovist makes him anterior to the brute, 
 in order, it would seem, to emphasize his 
 position as sovereign lord for whom all 
 that has life on the earth exists. Accord- 
 ing to the Jehovist it is not till the Gar- 
 den of Eden has been planted, and man 
 installed in it, that the animal tribes are 
 created and pass in review before him 
 their master, and receive from him their 
 appropriate designation. This is the be- 
 ginning of that supremacy which, accord- 
 ing to the Hebrew idea, belongs to man 
 as natural sovereign of the animal world. 
 To name is to class, to subordinate, to sub- 
 ject. Man asserts his superiority over the 
 brute creation in this that he can name 
 and classify them, not they him. He sub- 
 jects them in his thought, and so demon- 
 strates the ascendency of thought and the 
 thinking mind over dumb, irrational life. 
 ^NTo doubt aboriginal man was dimly con- 
 scious of this ascendency. No doubt he 
 discerned or suspected in himself a higher 
 type and a nobler calling as he gazed on 
 
 i 
 
 t 
 
 THE BRUTE CREATION. 
 
 71 
 
 those animated but unconscious natures, 
 as he looked into those eyes through 
 which no rational soul looked back into 
 his own. He found there no response to 
 his thought and no " helj)nieet " for his af- 
 fections ; he felt that these creatures be- 
 longed to another sphere, that between his 
 nature and theirs an impassable gulf was 
 set. "And Adam gave names to all cat- 
 tle and to the fowls of the air and to every 
 beast of the field, but for Adam there was 
 found no help meet for him." Only in 
 Eve he saw himself reflected and repro- 
 duced; in her he welcomed his own. 
 "This is bone of my bone and flesh of 
 my flesh." 
 
 The brute world still confronts the hu- 
 man as in the beginning. The "Lord 
 God " who " brought " the tribes of earth 
 and air to the first man still brings them 
 as objects for man to consider and to 
 name. A rich and manifold world it is, 
 this brute creation ! Its place and func- 
 tion in the universal economy is a topic 
 of more than speculative interest. This, 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 I 1 
 
72 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 TA^ Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 too, IS a part of tlie great Revelation, a 
 chapter in the God-given Bible of nature. 
 To what purpose this multitudinous array 
 and endless variety of animal life ? The 
 human mind constitutionally inclines to 
 teleological judgments. The idea of use, 
 the idea answering to the question, where- 
 fore ? to what end ? intrudes itself in all 
 our inquiries. We are not content with 
 the simple existence of any finite nature ; 
 we seek in every object some ulterior end, 
 a use in relation to something else, a pur- 
 pose beyond itself. Tliis want of the 
 mind is not always satisfied by what the 
 senses report or science reveals. This ul- 
 terior end is not always discoverable. We 
 can generally detect the use of parts in 
 relation to a given whole. We determine 
 a purpose for which an object exists in 
 relation to its own sphere; the difficulty 
 lies in determining the ulterior end of 
 that sphere, — the use of the whole. An 
 animal being given, we can trace the re- 
 lation of part to part and find a use for 
 every organ and an adaptation of every 
 
 THE BRUTE CREATION. 
 
 73 
 
 member to the comfort and well-being of 
 the creature so organized. But when we 
 seek further and inquire the purpose for 
 which that animal exists, its use in rela- 
 tion to a higher end, that question is not so 
 easily solved, — is insoluble on merely te- 
 leological grounds. Man as the head of 
 earthly creations is apt to refer all things 
 to himself, and to fancy that other ani- 
 mals exist for his use alone, as ministers 
 to his need and pleasure. The horse ex- 
 ists for the sake of the saddle, the cattle 
 for their draught and their flesh, the ele- 
 phant for its ivoiy, the whale for its oil. 
 And as for those animals whose service he 
 has not learned to command, from whose 
 existence he has yet derived no apparent 
 advantage, he is fain to suppose that in 
 some mysterious way they also assist in 
 this ministry and are made conducive to 
 his well-being. 
 
 Spiritually considered, the brute crea- 
 tion may be said to exist for man, as the 
 visible embodiment of spiritual truths. As 
 such, it derives from him its true and best 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
74 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 import. Inferior animals are prophetic of 
 man, they are graduated approaches to his 
 perfect organism, the articulations of a se- 
 ries which finds its consummation in " the 
 human form divine." Lavater found but 
 twenty-four removes in the scale of beauty 
 between the features of the frog and the 
 face of the Apollo Belvidere, — each suc- 
 cessive delineation resembling its prede- 
 cessor so nearly as to be distinguishable 
 only on minute examination. Spiritually 
 speaking, man is the end and aim of the 
 animal world. But we are not, therefore, 
 to assume that animals exist for the sake 
 of man in the base utilitarian sense, as if 
 their highest use were to minister to his 
 pei-sonal necessities. To prove the insuf- 
 ficiency of this view we have only to go 
 a step further and inquire the use of man 
 himself. Do you say that man exists for 
 the service of his Master ? The same may 
 be said, for aught we know, of all animals. 
 Do you say that man exists for his own 
 satisfaction and joy in being ? The same 
 is true of other tribes. The happiness of 
 
 4 
 
 THE BRUTE CREATION. 
 
 75 
 
 all his creatures we must believe to be 
 equally dear to the Maker of all, and the 
 'well-being of each as much the end for 
 which that creature exists as human well- 
 being is the end of man. The joy of an 
 insect sporting in the sun is as much an 
 end of God's creation as the supreme ec- 
 stasy of an immortal soul. The lower or- 
 ders exist not for the sake of man alone 
 any more than man exists for theirs. If 
 viewed collectively, he is their head and 
 they his members; viewed individually, 
 they have an independent existence of 
 their own, and the same right that he has 
 to their place in nature and their share in 
 its joys. The brute creation, it is likely, 
 existed for ages before man arrived on the 
 earth ; it might continue to exist though 
 man were destroyed. It exists for its own 
 sake as weU as man's, and because the in- 
 finite Father, though sufficient to himself 
 and infinitely blest in his own perfection, 
 has not chosen to abide in self-contem- 
 plation, but has poured himself forth in 
 creative action, producing a universe of 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
76 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 sentient beings out of the fulness of liis 
 thought and love. The greatest possible 
 amount of sentient existence compatible 
 with the greatest amount of individual 
 well-being, and, conversely, the greatest 
 amount of individual well-being compati- 
 ble with the largest number of individ- 
 uals ; — this I suppose to be the aim, plan, 
 and final cause of creation. This end is 
 attained, not by making a few individuals 
 supremely happy, but by making an in- 
 finity of beings partially happy, — each 
 as perfect in its way and sphere as the 
 welfare of the whole will allow. 
 
 Hence the unmeasured, immeasurable 
 extent and variety of animated nature, 
 peopling all worlds and filling every par- 
 ticle of matter with life and joy. But a 
 small portion of this immensity is known 
 to us. The task of naming tlie creatures 
 of earth which the " Lord God " assigned 
 to the first man will liardly be completed 
 by the last. We know not how many 
 millenniums man has liad his being on 
 this planet, but we know that all these 
 
 THE BRUTE CREATION. 
 
 77 
 
 millenniums have not sufficed to finish 
 the lesson of zoology assigned to Adam in 
 Eden. Many thousands of animals man 
 has noted and set down in his text-books, 
 but every year adds new discoveries, and 
 who can say what numbers may still have 
 eluded his search, since every drop of wa- 
 ter is peopled with forms of animal life 
 whose existence is appreciable only by 
 magnifying instruments which increase a 
 thousand-fold the visual power of the eye ? 
 No marvel of creation is more astounding 
 than the sumless profusion, the prodigal- 
 ity of animal life which we encounter in 
 those microscopic recesses where science 
 shows us 
 
 " All matter quick and bursting into birth," 
 
 especially if we include the fossil world, 
 together with existing life, in our view. 
 Dr. Lardner asserts that among the Pyre- 
 nees whole mountains consist of little 
 else than the fossilized remains of mi- 
 nute shell-fish, which it must have tak- 
 en innumerable centuries to accumulate. 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
78 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 Mr. Ellis in his " Chemistry of Creation " * 
 tells us that most of the limestone of 
 the world is made up of the relics of in- 
 sects possessing the faculty of separat- 
 ing the salts of lime from the waters of 
 the ocean. Another class of insects is 
 found in a certain species of stone in such 
 numbers that two thousand millions have 
 been computed to the cubic inch. Of 
 other terrestrial kinds who can say what 
 unknown tribes may yet lurk in the bo- 
 som of the earth and the depths of the 
 sea ? And then, if we carry our thought 
 beyond this earth, who can guess what 
 wealth of animated nature may people the 
 orbs which accompany ours in its solar 
 round, what countless myriads of living 
 forms the sovereign sun, a million times 
 larger than our earth, may hide beneath 
 its veil of light ; or what new and unim- 
 aginable aspects the brute creation may 
 assume in the star-groups which island 
 the upper deep ! Doubtless, these worlds 
 are also the abodes of living, sentient be- 
 
 * Quoted in " Preadamite Man." 
 
 THE BRUTE CREATION. 
 
 79 
 
 ings, children of one Parent, clients of one 
 Bounty, inspired by one Soul. 
 
 The Hebrew idea of the brute creation 
 is that of a world of which man is the ab- 
 solute and rightful sovereign as well as 
 the animal head. The Old Testament, it is 
 true, exhibits marks of occasional sympa- 
 thy with the lower orders, as in that beau- 
 tiful one hundred and fourth Psa^m, and 
 in the sublime strains of the Book of Job. 
 But, on the whole, the Hebrew feeling in 
 relation to brutes is best represented in 
 those portions of their Scriptures which 
 fi<mre the inferior animals as given over to 
 man unconditionally, for his good pleasure. 
 "The fear of you and the dread of you 
 shall be upon every beast of the earth and 
 upon every fowl of the air and upon all the 
 fishes of the sea ; into your hand they are 
 delivered. Every moving thing that liv- 
 eth shall be meat for you; even as the 
 green herb have I given you all things." 
 This old tradition dating from the time of 
 the patriarchs the Psalmist exultingly ac- 
 cepts : "Thou hast put all things under 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 Tke Brute 
 Creation. 
 
80 
 
 PRIMEViVL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 his feet ; all sheep and oxen, yea, and the 
 fowls of the air and the fishes of the sea." 
 The Hebrew looked upon the animal 
 world as existing only for the sake of man ; 
 and though, as I said, occasional traces of 
 sympathy appear, the prevailing sentiment 
 seems to have been indifference or con- 
 tempt. A remarkable illustration of this 
 is the way in which the Scriptures speak 
 of dogs, the most moral of brutes. It is a 
 curious fact that there is not a single in- 
 stance in the Old and New Testaments — 
 I mean in the canonical books — in which 
 dogs are spoken of otherwise than in terms 
 of abhorrence and contempt. In the apoc- 
 ryphal Book of Tobit mention is made of 
 a dog without the accompanying note of 
 scorn. And this in the ancient literature 
 of the Hebrews, so far as I know, is the 
 only exception. It is not a pleasing fea- 
 ture of the Hebrew character. In this re- 
 spect the Hebrew religion contrasts unfa- 
 vorably with that of the Hindus, although 
 vastly superior to it in things more essen- 
 tial. The Hindu mind regards the brute 
 
 THE BRUTE CREATION. 
 
 81 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 creation as having equal rights with the | Chap^ IV 
 human, as having an equal right to be, ex- 
 isting equally for its own sake, or as man- 
 ifestation, equally sacred, of the one eter- 
 nal indivisible Being, present alike in aU 
 the kingdoms of nature, and equally at 
 home in aU ; delighting in all and justified 
 in all. The brute no more exists for man 
 than man exists for the brute; both are 
 children of one Father, both bear his sig- 
 nature in the miracle of life. As animals 
 he cares equally for both, — as much for 
 the animal as he does for the animal man. 
 Apart from the spiritual life, which is quite 
 distinct from animal, and is not to be con- 
 sidered in this connection, man and brute 
 have essentially one nature. It is the 
 merit of the Hindu view of creation that 
 it recognizes this fact. It acknowledges 
 and adores the one Being in all creatures. 
 " Such art thou," it bids men remember in 
 the contemplation of every animal. Man 
 represents all animals in his composition, 
 and every animal has something of man 
 in its make. This is the Hindu view of 
 
 4 ♦ 
 
82 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Crea'inn. 
 
 creation as opposed to the Hebrew, and 
 this, I tliink, is the Christian view suf- 
 ficiently indicated by that saying of Jesus, 
 " Not a sparrow falls to tlie ground with- 
 out your Father." The animal kingdom 
 is not separated from us by a gulf which 
 places them beyond our sympathy and fel- 
 low-feeling. So far as we are animals they 
 are fellows with us, children of one Father, 
 partakers of one life. 
 
 It follows from this view that brutes 
 have claims on human sympathy and 
 good-will. We are not at liberty to deal 
 with them as mere chattels and commodi- 
 ties without sensibilities or rights. They 
 have rights which no statute can define 
 and no legislation enforce, but which edu- 
 cated feeling i^rescribes and enlightened 
 conscience will exact. That well known 
 precept which expresses a refined sense 
 of right exceeding all civil legislation, but 
 so comprehensive, so universally applica- 
 ble, and so evidently just that it bears the 
 name of the Golden Eule, — to deal with 
 others as we in like conditions would be 
 
 THE BRUTE CREATION. 
 
 83 
 
 dealt with, — embraces the animal world 
 as well as the human in its large pro- 
 vision. The applications of that rule to 
 animals must be left to the conscience 
 of every right-minded person. Yet the 
 civil law in enlightened communities so 
 far interferes in this province as to 
 shield as well as it can the beast of bur- 
 den from merciless blows. It is often 
 asked if society improves. One proof of 
 the progress of refinement, of the growth 
 of Christian sentiment and its application 
 to real life, is the now so frequent occur- 
 rence in Christian lands of societies for 
 prevention of cruelty to animals. Such 
 societies are needless where the Hindu 
 feeling toward animals prevails. There 
 Christian missionaries in their efforts to 
 convert the natives find, it is said, a seri- 
 ous obstacle in the knowledge which the 
 people have of the manner in which brutes 
 are treated by Christians. In those lands 
 there are hospitals for the cure of sick an- 
 imals instituted, not, as is sometimes the 
 ' case with us, in the interest of property, but 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
84 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION". 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 in the interest of mercy, not for the sake 
 of the owners, but of tlie animals. And 
 travellers report, as a common occmTence, 
 that when an individual has experienced 
 unexpected good fortune he manifests liis 
 gratitude by purchasing caged birds in the 
 market and letting them fly outside of the 
 walls of the city.* Christendom has yet 
 nuich to learn from the heathen nations 
 whom it seeks with a laudable and Chris- 
 tian zeal to convert. But the beauty and 
 glory of Christianity is that Christendom 
 can learn and will learn ; that it does not 
 shut itself out from the light, but receives 
 it, desires it. Its faith is progressive, its 
 moral is progressive, it knows that what- 
 ever is fair and kind and gentle and hu- 
 mane is according to Christ, — is required 
 by his law. That law contains by impli- 
 cation, though it does not specify, all the 
 humanities and all the virtues. And ten- 
 derness to animals is one of the humani- 
 ties and one of the virtues. Christianity 
 
 * See an essay by Schopenhauer in the " Parerga und 
 Paralipomena.** 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 THE BRUTE CREATION. 
 
 85 
 
 does not explicitly enjoin it, neither does 
 it explicitly enjoin abolition of slavery; 
 and slavery has been i^ractised through all 
 these centuries by Christian nations. But 
 Christian sentiment has come to perceive 
 that slavery is cruel and wrong, and, there- 
 fore, unchristian. And Christian senti- 
 ment wdll come in due time to perceive 
 that all abuse of animals, all injustice to 
 animals, is unchristian ; that not the He- 
 brew theory of the brute creation which 
 Christendom inherited from Judaism, and 
 w^hich finds expression in those question- 
 able words of Paul, — "Doth God care 
 for oxen ?" — but the Hindu theory which 
 teaches sympathy with animals on the 
 ground of fellowship with the brute cre- 
 ation, is most in accordance with the spirit 
 of Christ. 
 
 The law of the land endeavors to protect 
 the horse from the cruel treatment of un- 
 feeling and unprincipled masters, wdio vent 
 their rage on the helpless beast that serves 
 them. And who that has witnessed the too 
 common spectacle of a savage and infu- 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
86 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 riated driver belaboring with blows and 
 kicks the noble and overburdened animal 
 whose muscles are unequal to the task as- 
 signed him has not felt that the master was 
 the greater brute of the two, and has not 
 been tempted to wish that with such meas- 
 ure as he metes to his beast it might be 
 measured to him again ? But the law is a 
 very imperfect protector of animals, and 
 beatings of horses is a very small part of 
 the cruelty practised upon them. Some 
 of these cruelties are perpetrated in the 
 name of science. One can pardon much 
 to that most worthy cause, but painful ex- 
 periments on the animal organism are jus- 
 tifiable only where the point to be deter- 
 mined by such experiments is one of 
 obvious and vital importance in medical 
 and chirurgical art, and where it can be 
 reached in no other way. The practice of 
 vivisection, — dissection of live animals, — 
 sometimes resorted to by naturalists from 
 mere curiosity, has no such apology, and 
 is wanton trifling with the sacredness of 
 life. The illustrious Blumenbach, one of 
 
 
 THE BRUTE CREATION. 
 
 87 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 the greatest of modern naturalists, strongly ; Chap. IV. 
 reprobated the practice. If ever it is re- 
 sorted to, he said, let it be by special per- 
 mission in a public council of competent 
 scientific witnesses, as it were a solemn 
 sacrifice to science.* As a general rule, 
 the knowledge whicli can be obtained only 
 with torture had better be dispensed with. 
 ]\Iore reprehensible still are those spec- 
 tacles in which brutes are worried and 
 killed for the entertainment of a rude and 
 merciless public, such as the cockpit in 
 England, and the bull-fight which forms 
 the Sunday entertainment of the most or- 
 thodox of Catholic Christian lands. One 
 can hardly imagine a stronger contrast in 
 its kind, or one more discreditable to 
 Christian civilization, than that between 
 the bull-fights of Christian Spain and the 
 Banyan hospital for maimed animals at 
 Surat in heathen Hindostan.* 
 
 Demoralizing in the highest degree are \ 
 all public spectacles whose interest is pain. 
 All public executions tend more to cor- 
 
 * Schopenhauer. 
 
88 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 THE BRUTE CREATION. 
 
 89 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 Chap. IV. [nipt and subvert the vulgar mind than 
 I even the unpunished crime. If there 
 I must be capital punishment, let it be ad- 
 I ministered in the j^resence only of the 
 necessary officers appointed for tliat end, 
 and without superfluous suffering ; for self- 
 defence alone can justify the supreme pen- 
 alty. 
 
 There is no. fault in children which 
 should give the parents greater concern 
 than a disposition to torture animals. Let 
 parents who observe this vice in a child 
 hasten to correct it with all diligence, not 
 by inflicting bodily pain in return, but by 
 bringing all the weight of their influence 
 to bear in the way of appeal to reason and 
 feeling. Let the child be taught that the 
 brute has rights, and that power is to be 
 used for the benefit, not for tlie injury, of 
 the subject. Let him be taught to enter 
 into the feelings of his victim by putting 
 liimself in its place. Teach him to find 
 pleasure in ministering to the wants and 
 promoting the comfort of domestic an- 
 imals, to delight in their fellowship, to 
 
 \ 
 
 cultivate their confidence and good-will. 
 Awaken betimes and cherish in him that 
 compassion for all suffering, the want of 
 which is a fatal defect, the abundance of 
 which allies the human with superior na- 
 tures, and the germ of which is in every 
 breast. 
 
 It is one of the imperfections of our 
 mortal state, a painful necessity, which 
 obliges us sometimes to take the life of 
 animals, — of those that harm us, in self- 
 defence, for the harm they do, of others 
 for what they yield of necessary food. 
 This right we have as human beings, as 
 human animals; for all flesh-eating an- 
 imals prey upon each other, and man by 
 constitution is a flesh-eating animal. We 
 have the right ; so far the Hebrew view 
 is correct. But the ground on which the 
 Hebrew based this right I am not pre- 
 pared to admit. It belongs to us as an- 
 imals, not as superior beings for whose 
 sake alone the animal world was made, 
 and to whom it is unconditionally sub- 
 ject. And the right has its limits, which 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 Tlie Brute 
 Creation. 
 
90. 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 should not be transgressed. Tlie destruc- 
 tion of life must not be needlessly ex- 
 tended or wantonly- indulged. The death 
 which necessity obliges us to inflict should 
 be rendered as painless to the victim as 
 the nature of the case will admit. And 
 may we not indulge the liope of a time, 
 in other far distant generations, when 
 the need of destruction for defence and 
 bodily maintenance shall no longer ex- 
 ist, when the discord of predatory nature 
 shall cease, when the new-made earth 
 shall so adjust and reconcile and mutual- 
 ly limit and mutually attract her various 
 kinds, eliminating all that is hostile and 
 hurtful, that each in its appointed and mu- 
 tually conceded place shall find a sanctu- 
 ary with none to molest or make it afraid; 
 when the purged and ethereal body shall 
 no longer subsist by slaughter and blood, 
 but find sufficing nutriment in the grains 
 and pulps of earth and the balms of the 
 air, when the hard and hateful condition 
 of life-destroying life shall be connnuted 
 for life-preserving care of life ; when not 
 
 THE BRUTE CREATION. 
 
 91 
 
 " all nature's discord," as the poet says, but 
 all nature's concord, shall "keep all na- 
 ture's peace." If the Hebrew prophet in 
 his rapt mood could dream of a time when 
 the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and 
 the leopard lie down with the kid and the 
 lion eat hay like the ox, and nothing hurt 
 or destroy in all the mountain of God, 
 may not the higher reach of Christian 
 hope report an amen to the blessed vision ? 
 But what is needed for the present is 
 due regard for the natural rioiits of ani- 
 mals, due sense of the fact that they are 
 not created for man's pleasure and behoof 
 alone, but have, independent of him, their 
 own meaning and place in the universal 
 order; that the God who gave them be- 
 ing, who out of the manifoldness of his 
 creative thought let them pass into life, 
 has not cast them off, but is with them, 
 in them, still. A portion of his Spirit, 
 though unconscious and unreflecting, is 
 theirs. What else but the Spirit of God 
 could guide the crane and the stork across 
 pathless seas to their winter retreats, and 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
92 
 
 PKIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 back again to their summer haunts ? A\Tiat 
 else could reveal to the petrel the coming 
 storm ? Wliat but the Spirit of God could 
 so geometrize the wondrous architecture 
 of the spide^ and the bee, or hang the hill- 
 star's nest in air, or sling the hammock 
 of the tiger-moth, or curve the ramparts 
 of the beaver's fort, and build the myriad 
 "homes without hands" in which fish, 
 bird, and insect make their abode ? The 
 Spirit of God is witli them as with us, — 
 consciously with us, unconsciously with 
 them. We are not divided but one in his 
 care and love. They have their mansions 
 in the Father's house and we have ours ; 
 but the house is one, and the Master and 
 Keeper is one for us and them. 
 
 The rights of all creatures are to be 
 respected, but especially of those kinds 
 which man domesticates and subsidizes 
 for his peculiar use. Tlieir nearer con- 
 tact with the human world creates a claim 
 on our loving -kindness beyond what is 
 due to more foreign and untamed tribes. 
 Ptespect that claim. *' The righteous man," 
 
 THE BRUTE CREATION. 
 
 93 
 
 says the proverb, " regardeth the life of his 
 beast." Note that word " righteous." The 
 proverb does not say the merciful man, 
 but the righteous, the just. Not mercy 
 only, but justice, is due to the brute. Your 
 horse, your ox, your kine, your dog, are not 
 mere chattels, but sentient souls. They 
 are not your own so proper as to make 
 your will the true and only measure of 
 their lot. Beware of contravenimj their 
 nature's law, of taxing unduly their na- 
 ture's strength. Their powers and gifts 
 are a sacred trust. The gift of the horse 
 is his fleetness, but when that gift is 
 strained to excess and put to wager for 
 exorbitant tasks, murderous injustice is 
 done to the beast. They have their rights, 
 wliich every right-minded owner will re- 
 spect. We owe them in return for the 
 service they yield, all needful comfort, 
 kind usage, rest in old age, and an easy 
 death. 
 
 And let us take to ourselves the moral 
 lessons which these creatures preach to 
 all who have studied and learned to love 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
94 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION". 
 
 THE BRUTE CREATION. 
 
 95 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 what I venture to call the moral in brutes. 
 Look at that faithful servant, the ox ! 
 What an emblem in all generations of 
 patient, plodding, meek endurance and 
 serviceable toil! Of the horse and the 
 dog what countless anecdotes declare the 
 generous loyalty, the tireless zeal, the in- 
 alienable love ! No human devotion has 
 ever surpassed the recorded examples of 
 brutes in that line. The story is told of 
 an Arab horse who, when liis master was 
 taken captive and bound hand and foot, 
 sought him out in the dark amidst other 
 victims, seized him by the girdle with his 
 teeth, ran with him all night at the top 
 of his speed, conveyed him to his home, 
 and then, exhausted with the effort, fell 
 down and died. Did ever man evince 
 more devoted affection ? 
 
 Surely, something of a moral nature is 
 present also in the brute creation. If no- 
 where else, we may find it in the brute 
 mother's care for her young. Througli 
 universal nature throbs the divine pulse 
 of the universal Love, and binds all being 
 
 \ ■,< 
 
 to the Father-heart of the author and 
 lover of all. Therefore is sympathy with 
 animated nature a holy affection, an ex- 
 tended humanity, a projection of the hu- 
 man heart by which we live, beyond the 
 precincts of the human house, into all 
 the wards of the many-creatured city of 
 God, as he with his wisdom and love 
 is copresent to all. Sympathy with na- 
 ture is a part of the good man's religion. 
 For nature is not godless as false relig- 
 ion has sometimes taught, nor does 
 Christian piety recall men from nature 
 into holy seclusion, with the feeling of 
 that monk who shut out the view of the 
 beautiful landscape, as God-displeasing, 
 from his cell, but rather allies men with 
 it in holy communion. They who have 
 had most of the spirit of Christ have 
 loved to converse with nature, like St. 
 Francis of Assisi, who called the sun and 
 moon and fire and death his brothers 
 and sisters, and whose celebrated hymn 
 to nature needs only a recognition of 
 the brute creation to make it the best 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
96 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 expression of Christian piety in commun- 
 ion with the visible world. 
 
 Here is the hymn, or so much of it as 
 concerns us in this connection : — 
 
 "Praised be my Lord God with all his crea- 
 tures; and especially our brother the Sun, who 
 brings us the day and who brings us the light; 
 fair is he and shining with a very great splendor. 
 O Lord, he signifies to us thee I 
 
 " Praised be my Lord for our sister the Moon, 
 and for the stars, the which he has set clear and 
 lovely in the heavens. 
 
 " Praised be my Lord for our brother the Wind, 
 and for air and cloud, calms and all weather, by 
 the which thou upholdest in life all creatures. 
 
 " Praised be my Lord for our sister Water, who 
 is very serviceable unto us and precious and clean. 
 
 "Praised be my Lord for our brother Fire, 
 through whom thou givest us light in the dark- 
 ness, and he is bright and pleasant and very 
 mighty and strong. 
 
 ** Praised be my Lord for our mother the Earth, 
 the which doth sustain and keep us and bringeth 
 forth divers fruits and flowers of many colors and 
 grass." 
 
 Here let us add. this supplemental 
 stanza : — 
 
 THE BRUTE CREATIOIT. 
 
 97 
 
 Praised be my Lord for our brothers 
 and sisters the living creatures which thou 
 hast made, the birds of the air, the beasts 
 of the field, and the fishes that inhabit the 
 sea. They, too, are thy children, they 
 praise thy handiwork, and thou blessest 
 them with thy love! 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 The Brute 
 Creation. 
 
 1 
 
 u 
 
£s!^«Mfa»SK^tte««»M@«^^'' " 
 
 / 
 
 PARADISE LOST. 
 
 101 
 
 PARxiDISE LOST. 
 
 " Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast 
 of the field which the Lord God had made. And he 
 saith unto the woman, Yea, hath God said. Ye shall not 
 eat of every tree of the garden ? And the woman said 
 unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees 
 of the garden. But of the fruit of the tree which is in 
 the midst of the garden God hath said, Ye shall not 
 eat of it, neither shall yc touch it, lest ye die. And 
 the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely 
 die. For God doth know that in the day that ye eat 
 thereof, then your eyes shall be opened ; and ye shall be 
 as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman 
 saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was 
 pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make 
 one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and 
 gave also unto her husband, and he did eat and the 
 eyes of them both were opened." — Genesis iii. 1-7. 
 
 One of the first questions that came to 
 be discussed in the infancy of thought, 
 when men began to speculate on things 
 human and divine, was the origin of evil ; 
 more specifically, of moral evil. Atten- 
 
 Chap. v. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
102 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 tion was early drawn to that schism in 
 man's nature which arrays the passions 
 against the moral sense, — the conflict of 
 duty with desire. 
 
 The parable of the forbidden tree em- 
 bodies the result of Hebrew speculation 
 on this subject. No parable of ancient 
 or modern time has exercised such influ- 
 ence as this on the thoughts and belief of 
 mankind, and probably none has suffered 
 such perversion in the interpretation of its 
 import. 
 
 The first mistake that was made about 
 it was to interpret literally, as historic 
 fact, what the writer intended as allegory. 
 It is very common, this confusing of alle- 
 gory with history in religion. WTiere the 
 form is historical it is natural to suppose 
 that the substance is equally so. Chil- 
 dren, until otherwise taught, receive the 
 fictions of fable and romance as veritable 
 fact. Experience corrects this illusion in 
 the case of secular literature. But the lit- 
 erature of religion is represented as excep- 
 tional. It comes to us, or we come to it. 
 
 PARADISE LOST. 
 
 103 
 
 with early impressions of literal historic 
 truth which retain their hold in after 
 years, confirmed as they are by tradition- 
 al views which seem to exclude the idea 
 of fiction as incompatible with the sacred* 
 lore. As if history were more sacred than 
 thought ! 
 
 Another mistake in the interpretation 
 of this parable respects the meaning of 
 the serpent which plays so important a 
 part in the story, seducing man from his 
 rightful allegiance. This figure has been 
 understood to represent the evil Principle 
 in nature, the aboriginal eternal Evil, else- 
 where personified as Satan or the Devil. 
 The serpent in this case, I am persuaded, 
 means no such thing. The supposition 
 conflicts with the whole tenor of the Book 
 of Genesis, with all the ideas and views 
 of God and creation there presented. God 
 is there figured as sole Creator, Maker of 
 heaven and earth and all that therein is. 
 Nothing is supposed to exist which God 
 did not create; and all his creatures are 
 pronounced good. The notion of any evil 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost, 
 
104 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 PARADISE LOST. 
 
 105 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 thing or person in creation is wholly for- 
 eign from the drift of the story and the 
 genius of the book. There is no evidence 
 that the Hebrews at the time of this writ- 
 ing had any conception of a Satan or em- 
 bodied Principle of Evil. The idea be- 
 longs to a later age. It did not originate 
 with tlie Hebrews, but came to them from 
 a foreign source, and was not adopted 
 among tlieir ideas until centuries after 
 the time of Moses. How has it liappened, 
 then, that the -serpent in this story has 
 been identified with satanic agency ? The 
 misunderstanding is due, I suppose, to 
 certain passages in the Book of Revela- 
 tion, which speak of the " old serpent or 
 Dragon which is called the Devil and 
 Satan." But in these passages there is 
 no proof of any reference to the story of 
 the temptation in the Garden of Eden, and 
 if there were it would not foUow that the 
 author of that story had any such idea in 
 his mind. With English readers this false 
 impression lias derived an added sanction 
 from the great authority of Milton, who 
 
 W 
 
 embodies it in his " Paradise Lost." That 
 immortal poem has served to shape and 
 fix the received idea of the Fall of Man. 
 Milton, like so many others, has mixed up 
 the later Jewish conception of Lucifer, the 
 fallen angel, the arch-fiend of mankind, 
 with the primitive Hebrew intuition of 
 evil and the fall. It suited his pur- 
 pose to do so. Now it is very essential 
 to a riglit understanding of the parable 
 that we divest ourselves of all such im- 
 pressions, of all ideas of satanic agency in 
 this connection. The very point of the 
 Biblical theory of the fall is lost by re- 
 garding it as resulting from the action of 
 an antecedent, extra human, evil Power, 
 instead of originating in the constitution 
 of man. It belongs to the essence of the 
 story that man falls by the action, the per- 
 verted action of his own nature. The ser- 
 pent represents the sensuous understand- 
 ing divorced from reason and conscience, 
 insinuating itself between the idea of good 
 and the idea of right, separating enjoy- 
 ment from duty, and urging the pursuit of 
 
 6* 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
106 
 
 PRIMEVAL WOKLD OF HEBREW TRADITIOX. 
 
 PARADISE LOST. 
 
 107 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 tlie former in defiance of the latter. The 
 serpent was an old Egyptian symbol of 
 wisdom. Here it typifies fieshly wisdom 
 as opposed to spiritual, — that subtle, in- 
 sidious reasoning by which a man deludes 
 himself into the belief that he is doing the 
 best thing, consulting his own interests, 
 when he yields to sinful desire. For no 
 man, unless it be from the impulse of sud- 
 den, unreasoning, o'ermastering passion, 
 commits a crime without attempting at 
 the moment to justify it to himself by 
 means of some plea or pretext which shall 
 make it seem plausible. This sophistry 
 of sin is figured in the story as a serpent 
 "more subtle than aU the beasts of the 
 field." 
 
 A third error respects the moral condi- 
 tion of man before the faU. The prevail- 
 ing notion represents it as a state of moral 
 perfection. Theologians have said very 
 extravagant things of the spiritual glories 
 of that first estate. " It is as difficult for 
 us," says Dr. South, " to raise our thoughts 
 and imagination to those inteUectual per- 
 
 
 fections that attended our nature in the 
 time of innocence, as it is for a peasant 
 bred up in the obscurities of a cottage to 
 fancy in his mind the unseen splendors 
 of a court ; but we may collect the excel- 
 lency of the understanding then by the 
 glorious remainders of it now, and guess at 
 the stateliness of the building by the mag- 
 nificence of its ruins. And certainly that 
 must have been very glorious the. decays 
 of which are so admirable. An Aristotle 
 was but the rubbish of an Adam, and 
 Athens but the rudiments of paradise." 
 The record knows nothing of all this. 
 There is nothing from which it can be 
 legitimately inferred. The only passage 
 that can be interpreted as furnishing the 
 least support to such a theory of man in 
 paradise is the language used in the first 
 account of the creation of man : " So God 
 created man in his own image, in the 
 image of God created he him, male and fe- 
 male created he them." But whatever these 
 words may mean, — and as I understand 
 them they mean only that man was cre- 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
108 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 PARADISE LOST. 
 
 109 
 
 Chap. 
 
 Paradise 
 
 V. 
 
 Lost. 
 
 ated a spiritual being, capable of conscious 
 communion with God, and so partaking of 
 the divine nature; — whatever the words 
 may mean, they belong to a different and 
 independent record, not that which re- 
 counts the story of the fall. For evi- 
 dently two distinct records are embodied 
 in the Book of Genesis. The second chap- 
 ter contains an account of the creation of 
 man very different from the first. There 
 we read, " And the Lord God formed man 
 of the dust of the ground and breathed 
 into his nostrils the breath of life; and 
 man became a living soul." And this 
 earth-formed man it is who is placed in 
 the Garden of Eden and encounters the 
 temptation there described. Now we may 
 suppose that the writer in the first chap- 
 ter is speaking of the spiritual man, and 
 in the second of the animal which that 
 spirit inhabits ; still, I cannot suppose that 
 the whole man thus constituted — a spirit 
 incarnate in a fieshly body and bounded 
 by an animal soul — was conceived by 
 the writer as endowed, nor that primitive 
 
 man was, in fact, endowed with that ex- 
 traordinary superhuman power and glory 
 which theologians have imputed to him. 
 A sufficient and, in my opinion, unan- 
 swerable objection to this theological view 
 of man is the difficulty of believing that a 
 being so endowed could have fallen from 
 such a height through the solicitation of 
 any such inducement as the theory sup- 
 poses, or as earth could present. There 
 must have been a terribly weak spot in 
 a creature whom the serpent could so be- 
 guile. A class of mystics, of whom the 
 excellent and spiritually minded William 
 Law is the best English representative, 
 understand the fall of man to be a de- 
 scent from an angelic state into a bestial 
 one, through a low and sinful desire to 
 taste the sensations of inferior natures, — 
 in the words of Law, by " lusting to enter 
 into a sensibility of the good and evil of 
 the bestial life of this world." How such 
 a desire could enter the mind of an angelic 
 being they do not explain. It seems to 
 me very much as if one of us should long 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
110 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION*. 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 to experience the sensations of a toad or 
 a worfh. Such a notion, I doubt, never 
 entered the mind of any sane man. This 
 writer. Law, foUowing in the footsteps of 
 Jacob Boehme, his great predecessor and 
 oracle, supposes the faU of man to com- 
 mence with the longing for an earthly 
 companion, in consequence of whicli the 
 one original nature, created male and fe- 
 male, was divided into two distinct sexes. 
 Up to that time everything had been pro- 
 nounced good. " And God saw everything 
 that he had made, and behold it was very 
 good." But now comes something which 
 was not good. " It is not good that the 
 man should be alone." Adam should have 
 been sufficient to himself as God created 
 him, male and female, but he longed for a 
 mate, he was not satisfied to be alone; 
 and God, foreseeing his f[ill in consequence 
 of this dissatisfaction, saw also that it was 
 not good for him to be alone, and created 
 woman, took his Eve out of liim, by way 
 of remedial provision, with a view to his 
 final restoration ; for the seed of the woman 
 
 PARADISE LOST. 
 
 Ill 
 
 was to bruise the serpent's head. So rea- 
 son these mystics. Tlie deep sleep which 
 fell upon Adam they interpret as his ina- 
 bility to satisfy himself any longer with 
 the contemplation of the divi^e image in 
 which he was formed. "Adam," says 
 Law, " had lost much of his perfection be- 
 fore his Eve was taken out of him, which 
 was done to prevent worse effects of liis 
 fall and to prepare a means of his recov- 
 ery when his fall should become total. 
 ' It is not good that m^n sliould be alone ' ; 
 this shows that Adam had altered his first 
 estate, had brought some beginning of evil 
 into it, had made that not to be good 
 which God saw to be good when he cre- 
 ated him. And, therefore, as a lesser evil 
 and to prevent a greater, God divided the 
 first perfect human nature into two parts, 
 a male and a female. It was at first the 
 total humanity in one creature who should 
 in that state of perfection liave brought 
 forth his own likeness out of himself in 
 such purity of love and such divine power 
 as he himself was brought forth by God. 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost- 
 
112 
 
 PKIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. V. 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 The manner of his ovra birth from God 
 was the manner tliat his own offspring 
 should have had a birth from him, all 
 done by the pure power of a divine love." 
 "But Adam turned away his love from 
 the divine image which he should only 
 have loved and desired to propagate out 
 of himself. He gazed upon the outward 
 world and let in an adulterate love into 
 
 his heart His first love and divine 
 
 power had no strength left in it ; it was 
 no longer a power . of bringing forth a di- 
 vine birth from himself. This state of in- 
 ability is that which is called his falling 
 into a deep sleep. And in this sleep God 
 divided this overcome humanity into a 
 male and a female." These mystic theo- 
 ries have a certain fascination, but are ca- 
 pable neither of proof nor of disproof from 
 reason or the record. We can view them 
 only as fine speculations whose sole value 
 consists in the satisfaction they afford to 
 individual minds and the light which in- 
 dividuals think they derive from them on 
 the great topics to which they relate. 
 
 ; 
 
 •/ 
 
 i « ■ 
 
 PARADISE LOST.. 
 
 113 
 
 r 
 
 One more error in the reading of the par- 
 able of the fall — the most prevailing and 
 most pernicious of all the errors concern- 
 ino- it — demands our notice. I mean the 
 impression that the prohibition to eat of 
 a certain fruit inculcated on the first man 
 is to be understood as an arbitrary com- 
 mand proposed for no reason in the na- 
 ture of things, but simply as a test of 
 man's fidelity, — a trial of the whole race 
 in the person of one individual; a trial 
 by which, if successfully encountered and 
 endured by that individual, the whole race 
 were to be immortal and forever blest ; by 
 which, if he failed, the whole race, in con- 
 sequence of that failure, would be cursed 
 and doomed to death. This monstrous in- 
 terpretation, — which degrades the idea of 
 God into that of an almighty tyrant, and 
 makes the moral law an exercise of power 
 for the sake of power, of domination on 
 the one hand and subjection on the other, 
 —has no shadow of foundation in reason or 
 religion. The story, though commonly so 
 interpreted, means no such thing. It is 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
114 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 simply a picture of liuman nature, its ten- 
 dencies and aberrations, and the natural 
 consequence of those aberrations. The 
 idea of hereditariness I do not find in it. 
 Of inherited guilt, of imputed guilt, there 
 is no intimation. Why, then, is the story 
 told of the first man ? Simply because the 
 first man is a type of all men, and being 
 the first is naturally selected as a fitting 
 example of the race. The forbidden tree"! 
 the prohibition to eat of it, are symboHc 
 representations of the conscience or moral 
 law in man which, prior to transgression, 
 acts as warning, -- Thou must not do this,' 
 woe betide thee if thou do this, — and 
 which, after transgression, becomes knowl- 
 edge of good and evil. This experience the 
 parable terms death or a source of death, — 
 " In the day that thou eatest thereof thou 
 Shalt surely die." Not physical death, as 
 theologians have strangely interpreted the 
 saying, -for Adam lived to what we should 
 consider a good old age, and doubtless was 
 wiUing enough to die, and thought it no 
 penalty, when his time came ; not phys- 
 
 PARADISE LOST. 
 
 115 
 
 I 
 
 ical death, but the death of innocence and 
 peace and self-content, which follows the 
 violation of conscience in every criminal 
 act. 
 
 At the same time, inconsistent though 
 it seem, and utterly at variance as it is 
 with the popular and ecclesiastical view 
 of the fall, this very death is a means and 
 moment of progressive life, a step for- 
 ward in man's development and destiny. 
 It is so represented in the allegory. "And 
 the Lord God said, Behold the man is 
 become as one of us, to know good and 
 evil." Herein is a marvellous thing, 
 that the first tmnsgression, the fall from 
 childish innocence, should bring man 
 nearer to God. And yet, if we consider 
 it, the reason is obvious and the fact is 
 in perfect accordance with the saying of 
 Cln-ist, " There is joy in heaven over one 
 sinner that repenteth more than over nine- 
 ty and nine just persons which need no 
 repentance." Sin is the condition of pen- 
 itence, and penitence is nearer to God 
 than innocence. The relation to God of 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
116 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. V. 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 innocence is the sense of divine rule and 
 jjrotection. The relation to God of peni- 
 tence is craving and aspiration, a laying 
 hold of God with thought and desire, pre- 
 saging a closer, more assured and abiding 
 union, because a voluntary, not an acci- 
 dental one. The returned Prodigal in the 
 parable was nearer to his father than the 
 elder son who had ne^'er left him. 
 
 This, however, is not the precise mean- 
 ing of the words I have cited. The like- 
 ness to God is there placed on the ground 
 of the knowledge of good and evil, — "He 
 is become like one of us, to know good and 
 evil." By this I understand the awakening 
 of self-consciousness. Previous to this cri- 
 sis in his being, man had lived as in a 
 dream. Earth' and sky and all the beauty 
 tliat is in them had been that dream, a part 
 of himself. Himself he saw not. The pas- 
 sive subject of a higher influence, he had 
 followed a given direction. The tree of 
 knowledge opens a new life. He has now 
 become a self-conscious, self-determining 
 being; he has taken his destiny into his 
 
 f 
 
 • 
 
 r 
 
 i 
 
 PARADISE LOST. 
 
 117 
 
 own hands : he will seek satisfaction in his 
 own way. He may think to find it by 
 putting forth his hand to take of the tree of 
 life, in the midst of the garden, i. e. by ap- 
 propriating to himself the good of life with- 
 out the use of the necessary means, in the 
 vain conceit of living forever, like God, in- 
 dependent of earthly conditions. • But this 
 is not the method by which the destina- 
 tion of man is to be accomplished. A life 
 of care and toil has been ordained for 
 him. By the sweat of his face, by dif- 
 ficulties and trials, disappointments and 
 pains, by endless conflict, by manifold ex- 
 perience of good and evil, he is kept in 
 remembrance of the everlasting laws and 
 the everlasting ends, and disciplined and 
 trained for immortality. His existence on 
 the earth is not to be a paradise of ease 
 and delight, but a march and a fight ; his 
 goal of satisfaction and everlasting life is 
 not to be reached by putting forth the hand 
 of desire to the tree in the midst of the gar- 
 den, but by putting forth the hand of dil- 
 igence to the God-appointed task. " There- 
 
 Chap. v. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 i' 
 
118 
 
 PEIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 fore the Lord God sent him forth from the 
 Garden of Eden to till the groirnd from 
 whence he was taken." 
 
 The purport of this story theologians 
 have termed the " Fall of Man." The Fall 
 of Man ! what a place it has occupied in 
 Christian theology ! And yet the phrase 
 is not found in all the Scriptures from 
 which Christians have professed to draw 
 their faith. Paul, in the early days of the 
 Church, brought forward the old parable 
 by way of illustration, contrasting Adam 
 and Christ as types of two different orders 
 of spirit and schemes of life. A misun- 
 derstanding of that illustmtion has lain at 
 the foundation of a false theology which 
 reigns till now, — a theology which makes 
 the act of an individual in the befjinnincr 
 of time the origin of human nature and 
 the prime and efficient cause of all the 
 evil that is in the world. 
 
 Now there is something, a fact of hu- 
 man nature, which may properly enough 
 be designated the Fall of Man. But that 
 fact is wholly independent of any first man 
 
 PARADISE LOST. 
 
 119 
 
 h 
 
 I 
 
 and of anything that happened in the 
 olden time, — a fact of human nature not 
 as vitiated by ancestral transgression, but 
 as made and constituted by its author. 
 Man falls from his childish estate of un- 
 conscious innocence, falls from the sim- 
 plicity of primal nature, falls into self- 
 contradiction and sin. This is human 
 nature in its innermost constitution; not 
 a vicious inheritance, but an aboriginal, 
 primordial necessity. We are Adam and 
 Eve. Eden is here to-day in every home 
 into which an infant is born, and the old 
 trial, with like result, repeats itself in ev- 
 ery child that comes into the world. Every 
 man is an Adam made in the likeness of 
 God, sinning against that likeness and 
 suffering loss and pain, the unparadising 
 of the heart by sin. Into every child's 
 paradise the serpent comes, — some insid- 
 ious moral mischief,- some noxious exha- 
 lation from the smooth abysses of its na- 
 ture, some sinister thought suggested by 
 occasion, some taint that steals over the 
 soul, tarnishing its morning bloom and de- 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
120 
 
 PRIMEViVL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 flowering its unconscious innocence. To 
 every being sooner or later there comes a 
 time when the knowledge of good and evil 
 awakes in the soul ; and though with that 
 knowledge the first bloom vanishes from 
 the face of creation, and the veil of enchant- 
 ment is lifted from life, yet is the knowl- 
 edge and experience of evil a necessary part 
 of man's education, a necessary stage in 
 the progress of the soul to the highest life. 
 We can know good only through evil; 
 only by victory over evil can good be 
 reached. Why it is. so passes understand- 
 ing. The Indian asked Eliot wliy God 
 did not kill the Devil ? Why indeed ? 
 Enough to know that, constituted as we 
 are, moral perfection is attainable only 
 through conflict with evil. That conflict ! 
 — creation groans with it, " groaneth and 
 travaileth in pain together until now." 
 Nature proceeds by opposition of force to 
 force, of life to life. All nature is a strus- 
 gle for existence, antagonism everywhere 
 of creature with creature, of power with 
 power. And so in the moral world '' the 
 
 PARADISE LOST. 
 
 121 
 
 flesh lusteth against the spirit and the Chap. v. 
 spirit against the flesh for they are con- ; Paradise Lost. 
 trary, the one to the other." Unquestion- 
 ably God might have formed man without 
 fleshly lusts ; he might have left out the 
 serpent and the tree of knowledge of good 
 and evil from the garden of life. And 
 suppose it were so. Wliat then ? We 
 should have our Eden and should know 
 no sin, no conflict, and no sorrow, and 
 also, we must add, no progress, no hope, 
 no to-morrow. Happy, no doubt, are the 
 Eden days in their freedom from care and 
 pain and their beautiful innocence, but 
 they are not the best. Dearer than all 
 the joys of Eden is the strength acquired 
 by conflict with evil, more precious than 
 childish innocence are the fruits of re- 
 pentance, and better than never to have 
 sinned is the conscious progress of awak- 
 ened souls in the steep ascent of tlie mor- 
 al life. This is the doctrine enounced by 
 Paul : '' I had not known sin but by the 
 law." (Thou shalt not eat thereof.) " The 
 law entered that sin might abound. But 
 
 6 
 
122 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 where sin abounded grace did much more 
 abound, that as sin hath reigned unto 
 death, even so might grace reign through 
 righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus 
 Christ our Lord." 
 
 Every child is a new Adam and repeats 
 the fall. He is born into a paradise, ig- 
 norant of good and evil. That knowledge, 
 so essential to his growth, is the fruit of a 
 forbidden tree. He eats and his eyes are 
 opened. He discovers his naked self and 
 asks. What am I, and wherefore, and whith- 
 er bound ? Then begins all the hea\7- 
 burden and woe of life. But then, also, 
 begins the discipline which unfolds a bet- 
 ter life within. Through many a fall and 
 many a bitter conflict, human nature wins 
 its way to freedom and peace. What was 
 sown in weakness is raised. in j)ower, what 
 was sown in tears is raised in joy. The 
 fall which closed the first paradise against 
 us has opened a new Eden in the soul. 
 
 So I interpret this wondrous apologue 
 which comes to us from an unknown past, 
 reaching back with its reminiscence to 
 
 PARADISE LOST. 
 
 123 
 
 original man, and forward with its import 
 to the end of time. It is curious how 
 this floating fragment of an ancient wis- 
 dom has survived, while the solid fabrics 
 of antiquity have perished and left no 
 trace behind. Generations have come and 
 gone, one millennium after another has 
 glided by, cities rock-walled and million- 
 peopled have arisen and disappeared, em- 
 pires have flourished and decayed, marble 
 and brass have crumbled into dust, but 
 the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden 
 of Eden still breathes the freshness of the 
 world's morning, while it faithfully pic- 
 tures the life of to-dav and foreshadows 
 the future of all generations. 
 
 As the Old Testament begins Avith the 
 story of a temptation which the natural 
 man encounters and to which he succumbs, 
 so the New begins with a temptation 
 which the spiritual man encounters and 
 overcomes. The last trial is the comple- 
 ment and compensation of the first. The 
 spiritual man is not less human than the 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
124 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 natural, but more so; Christ is a truer 
 representative of man than Adam, and if 
 in the likeness of Adam all men fall and 
 die, in the likeness of Christ all rise again 
 and live. The Rabbins say that Adam 
 was eighty years debating wliether or no 
 he would eat the forbidden fruit which 
 he ate at last. The evangelists relate that 
 Christ in the wilderness achieved in forty 
 days a complete victory over all the power 
 of the enemy. If, then, our theology is 
 troubled with the result of the first temp- 
 tation, it may solace itself with the issues 
 of the second, by whicli the original de- 
 cision of human nature is reconsidered 
 and reversed. The virtue is as real and 
 influential as the sin, the triumph as 
 broad as the fall. 
 
 
 VI. 
 
 CAIN, 
 
 OE 
 
 PROPERTY AND STRIFE AS AGENTS IN 
 
 CIVILIZATION. 
 
CAIN. 
 
 
 CAIN. 
 
 « 
 
 "And Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it 
 came to pass that when they were in the field Cain 
 rose up against Abel his brother and slew him." — 
 Genesis iv. 9. 
 
 " Property is theft," was the saying of 
 the Frenph socialist.* Property is vio- 
 lence, says the testimony of Hebrew tra- 
 dition. This first and necessary step in 
 civilization, involving a conflict of wills 
 and rights, was not to be taken without 
 opposition and deadly strife. The story of 
 Cain represents that first step, represents 
 the beginning of civil society, as the story 
 of Adam in Eden represents a state ante- 
 cedent to civil life. 
 
 What the facts precisely were that gave 
 rise to this story it is impossible to say. 
 These dark traditions of a prehistoric age 
 
 * " La Proprie'te' c'est le vol." — Peoudhon. 
 
 127 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 
 Cain, or Prop- 
 erty and Strife 
 as Agents in 
 Civilization. 
 
IfT 
 
 128 
 
 PRIMEVAL AVORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 CAIN. 
 
 129 
 
 are not to be received as exact report, but 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 
 "^i^^^jslr/; '^' ^nythical investment of liistoric fact. 
 civuS^^J^ 111 the absence of written clironicles, when 
 past events live only in the memory, and 
 are handed down by verbal transmission 
 from generation to generation, it is only 
 the more salient points and the promi- 
 nent names tliat tradition retains. An 
 imaginary case may illustrate this law. 
 Suppose there were no written history of 
 our late civil war, and no contemporary 
 documents from which to compile one. 
 Suppose the art of writing were unknown 
 and the whole transaction committed to 
 the keeping of tradition, that is, to the 
 memory of successive generations. What 
 aspect would the facts be likely to assume 
 in some distant age, say, after tlie lapse 
 of a thousand years ? Most probably that 
 of a personal contest between Abraham 
 Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, resulting in 
 the death of the former. The causes of 
 tlie contest, the rights of the case, would 
 be variously conceived and represented by 
 descendants of the different parties, or 
 
 rather by the different streams of tradi- 
 tion originating with them, and embody- 
 ing different views of the question. One 
 would represent it as an act of aggression 
 perpetrated by Lincoln witli a view to de- 
 prive Davis of his slaves, another would 
 describe it as a movement on the part of 
 Davis to overrun the territory of Lincoln 
 and to occupy it with an alien race. Such 
 we may imagine would' be the fragmen- 
 tary and contradictory notes that might 
 survive of a great historic event, in the 
 absence of written testimony. And such 
 I suppose to be the character and historic 
 import of this ancient fragment of Hebrew 
 tradition. I suppose it to be the sedi- 
 ment and mythical deposit of some his- 
 toric event, some great convulsion of the 
 early world, of which the names of Cain 
 and Abel have survived as prominent ac- 
 tors, — a fatal encounter between the two 
 parties represented by these names. 
 
 This critical event which forms an epoch 
 in human history is here presented in the 
 
 form of an apologue. Two brothers, the' 
 6* • 
 
 Chap. VL 
 
 Cain, or Prop- 
 erly ami Strife 
 as Ai'-ents in 
 Civilization. 
 
*'''''*i''-i<Mt>U'*,«mKmmMmmi>mmmimimmm^sK 
 
 130 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 
 Cain, or Prop- 
 erty and Strife 
 as A'^fnts in 
 Civilization. 
 
 first of woman born, dwell side by side in 
 a region bordering on the land of Eden, a 
 region still glowing witli the beauty of 
 primal nature and rejoicing in tlie pres- 
 ence of the Lord. Inclination leads them 
 different ways ; they apply themselves 
 each to his chosen pursuit. One pastures 
 his flocks and leads the roving life of a 
 shepherd, the other, more progressive, tills 
 the ground and seeks in the sweat of his 
 face a more varied subsistence than un- 
 tilled nature even then could supply. The 
 Lord, it is said, favored Abel rather than 
 Cain ; the shepherd obtains some advan- 
 tage over, the planter. Immediately the 
 world becomes too narrow for the brothers. 
 Violence ensues, the elder lifts his hand 
 against the younger and slays him. For 
 this he is driven from his native land and 
 finally takes up his abode in Eastern Asia, 
 where he builds a city, and where he and 
 his descendants introduce the arts of civ- 
 ilized life. 
 
 Such is the form in which tradition 
 has embodied some of the facts connected 
 
 CAIN. 
 
 131 
 
 with the first division of the human fam- 
 ily. The facts appear to have come to us 
 througli a colored medium, — a medium 
 colored in the interest of the shepherd race. 
 We have here one side of the story ; there 
 is another version of it, preserved by some 
 tribe of the Semite stock, in which Abel 
 appears as the aggressor and Gain as the 
 victim. 
 
 What is clearly historical is the fact of 
 a rupture between two classes or tribes ; 
 a nomadic and an agricultural people, and 
 the consequent migration of the latter in 
 an eastward direction from the land of 
 their nativity. The story supposes some 
 advance in the arts of life. It is no rude 
 " state of nature " so called, no infant so- 
 ciety that is brought to view. Between 
 the period represented by Adam and that 
 represented by Cain and Abel, a long tract 
 of time must be supposed to have inter- 
 vened. The condition of i)rimitive na- 
 ture is outgrown ; artificial life has begun. 
 We find man in possession of domestic 
 animals, which he has learned to train and 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 
 Cain, or Prop- 
 erty and Strife 
 as Agents in 
 Civilization- 
 
132 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 
 Cain, or Prop- 
 erty and Strife 
 as Agents in 
 Civilization. 
 
 make profitable. We find him tilling the 
 ground, consequently in possession of agri- 
 cultural implements, which, however rude, 
 presuppose skilled labor for tlieir inven- 
 tion. All this implies progress, and pro- 
 gress implies time. Two distinct callino-s 
 — two at least — have developed them- 
 selves, — the shepherd's and the husband- 
 man's. Hence conflicting interests and oc- 
 casional collisions,— the herdsman claimintr 
 unlimited right of pasturage, the planters 
 seeking to reserve and enclose a portion 
 of the land for agricultural use. It is 
 likely that both parties had cause of com- 
 plaint. On the one hand, the sequestra- 
 tion of what had thitherto been common 
 would seem an invasion of his natural 
 rights to the herdsman ; and, on the other, 
 the damage done to his plantations by 
 grazing herds must have been an intol- 
 erable nuisance to the planter. Both are 
 represented as addicted to the worship of 
 Jehovah. " Cain brought of the fruit of 
 the ground an offering unto the Lord, and 
 Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of 
 
 CAIN. 
 
 133 
 
 his flock and of the fat thereof. And the 
 Lord had respect unto Abel and his offer- 
 ing, but unto Cain and liis offering he had 
 not respect." Here we have evidently the 
 speculation of some narrator who has col- 
 ored the tradition with his own conceit. 
 To supx30se that God is better pleased 
 with the offering of slaughtered lambs 
 than- of fresh fruits is a monstrous mis- 
 conception of the Godhead. It was some 
 reflected idea of atoning blood, as consti- 
 tuting the value of sacrifice, which gave 
 this color to the story. 
 
 I cannot believe divine preference, or 
 envy of divine preference, as the narrative 
 allefjes, to have been the true cause of the 
 rupture between the shepherds and the 
 husbandmen. AVhatever the cause (most 
 likely a question of property, a disputed 
 title), the rupture issued in open violence. 
 There is fighting and killing ; the shep- 
 herds are routed and slain. But violence 
 fails to secure for the victor the peaceable 
 possession of the ground. Immediately 
 he migrates in search of new settlements, 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 
 Cain, or Prop- 
 erty and Strife 
 as Ai^ents in 
 Civilization. 
 
 ^*^^^^*^*-5^s»^^!^s^^3x-«r»r!!!r 
 
 li>«>kiSMM«to 
 
 *»i's'«pWp'' Ss*-««M~iflJ^ 
 
-■»^-4„>=^,., '^<«'-"'*»~»«**r-sssafeijfc.»..M««,«t 
 
 *imiik M» Ui nU m mt mit Mm\ m im^ivittt-^wt'vlMiAi'mc^^^ 
 
 m 
 
 134 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 CAIN. 
 
 135 
 
 Chap. VI 
 
 Caiji, or Prop- 
 en If and Strife 
 as Agents in 
 Civilization. 
 
 and seeks elsewhere the peace and pros- 
 perity denied him in liis former home. 
 [ His emigration consummates the division 
 of the human femily. 
 
 After this, in the Biblical story, there 
 are two races, represented respectively by 
 the progeny of Cain and that of Abel (or 
 Seth *), the former energetic, industrious, 
 progressive, covering the face of the earth 
 with the fruits of their labor; the other 
 God-fearing and religious, but apparently 
 inactive and stationary. In the course of 
 time the two races unite. " The sons of 
 God took unto themselves wives from 
 among the daughters of men." The fruit 
 of this union was a generation of men dis- 
 tinguished by their prowess and might. 
 "Giants" they are called in the Scrip- 
 ture, "men of renown in the olden time." f 
 But, on the whole, the union serves rather 
 to quicken and extend the bad than to 
 
 * Seth is the name of a god, and Enos, Iiis son 
 means man. Accordingly, the genealogy in Genesis 
 V begins properly with Cainan (Cain). Enos boin^ 
 one with Adam, and Seth tlic Creator. 
 I t See Genesis vi. 4. 
 
 nourish and diffuse the good. The cor- 
 ruptions of a selfish and material civil- 
 ization act with fatal effect on society, 
 sapping the foundations of social life. 
 General depravity ensues ; " all flesh had 
 corrupted its way upon the earth." Then 
 the great catastroj^lie of the Deluge closes 
 for that portion of earth tlie Biblical drama 
 of the early world. 
 
 The point of chief interest in this tradi- 
 tion is the illustration it presents of the 
 function of property, and that of war, in 
 the civil and moral education of man. 
 
 I assume that the real cause of dissen- 
 sion between the two parties was a ques- 
 tion of property, a disputed title to lands 
 reserved for agricultural use. Property 
 begins with agriculture. The very word 
 Cain, etymologically interpreted, tells the 
 story. Cain means possession ; and Cain 
 is the first tiller of the ground. The cul- 
 tivation of the land requires fixtures and 
 a right of ownership in the soil. The 
 first attempt i(^ enforce this right gives 
 rise to dissension and strife. It restricts 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 
 Cain, or Prop- 
 erty and Strife 
 as Agents in 
 Civilization. 
 
"" t " *jftf'-''tMI«SJW'*»WSK«^^lW*WS^*W''**^''WffM' S 
 
 136 
 
 PRIMEVxVL AVORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 CAIN. 
 
 137 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 
 Cain, or Prop- 
 erty and Strife 
 as A<ients in 
 Civilization. 
 
 the freedom of pasturage, it avenges the 
 incursion of grazing herds. Cain, the pos- 
 sessor, is the first murderer. But he is 
 also the first civilizer ; he builds the first 
 city; he is father of tlie first artificers 
 in brass and iron. To him and his prog- 
 eny the cause of productive industry, — 
 whatever concerns the material well-be- 
 ing of society, all the embellishment and 
 beauty of life, is ^assigned. All this re- 
 sults from the institution of property, and 
 may trace it& genealogy to Cain. Social 
 morality acknowledges the same parent- 
 age. It was property — the idea of own- 
 ership — that first developed the sense of 
 right, on which all morality is founded. 
 And not only so, but most of the duties 
 of social life, and most of the topics and 
 occasions of moral effort and moral frrowth, 
 which society, as now constituted, fur- 
 nishes, are directly or indirectly connected 
 with property. A large part of the moral 
 education, or means of education, which 
 society possesses, as now coj^stituted, w^ould 
 be wanting if the right of private accumu- 
 
 1 
 
 lation and private possession were done 
 away. 
 
 In the order of Providence our virtues 
 and our Vices are near neighbors, have 
 their roots intermixed, — nay, sometimes 
 spring from the same root; as in nature 
 foul and fair have one parentage. The 
 compost with which you enrich your gar- 
 den contains the germs of the weeds that 
 infest it. The brilliant flame which lights 
 your dwelling, turning night into day, is a 
 fetid vapor, an offence that poisons the air, 
 a mischief that threatens destruction, when, 
 by any abnormal vent, it escapes its pris- 
 on-house. If property in one operation 
 is jealousy and wrath and violence and 
 fratricide, in another it is order and jus- 
 tice and progress and beauty and mercy, 
 — a minister of moral and spiritual life. 
 Man has a natural right to the products 
 of his labor, and unless that right had 
 been maintained, — when necessary, main- 
 tained by force, — society would never 
 have advanced beyond its original savage 
 state. §ocial progress is possible only by 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 
 Cain, or Prop- 
 erty and Strife 
 as Agents in 
 Civilization. 
 
 / 
 
 fe'ii,-*]" . }««»«, sun-jift^i- iw^n^ -^ 
 
 '^e^^^^sw^^^w^^it^^wwiiH^t^^ «* , g-^^j^*^^. 
 
^33»;i«eMW##HMMiii»iMW«i^M 
 
 "S^SW^i^ fl* i'gr»*1%SfiHj^ ^^^ ; 
 
 1 
 
 138 
 
 PEIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 
 Cain, or Prop- 
 erty and Strife 
 as Agents in 
 Civilization. 
 
 assiduous industry, and industry requires 
 a motive power which, as man now is, the 
 lust and the hojDe of private gain alone 
 can supply. All attempts to dispense with 
 property, all social enterprises based on 
 community of goods, have been found, and 
 will ever be found, to take more from hu- 
 man weal on the whole than they give in 
 return. 
 
 Nevertheless, in all such attempts there 
 is a truth and a principle which craves 
 recognition and behooves to be adopted 
 in practice. Namely, this: that the rich 
 man owes a debt to society, by whose con- 
 sent and aid alone it is possible for him 
 to accumulate wealth, or inherit wealth; 
 that he is bound to render as he has 
 received, to give a proportionate part of 
 his havings, whether earned or inherited ; 
 not only in the way of tax to to^vn and 
 State, but in voluntary contribution to 
 social needs, to the aid and relief of the 
 poor and distressed. I say a proportion- 
 ate part, — the rich especially a propor- 
 ' tionate part. The rich man has no right 
 
 CAIN. 
 
 139 
 
 to the sole and exclusive use of his wealth. 
 It is not his own " so proper " as to justify 
 his spending it all in selfish gratifications. 
 He owes it to society, and though it is a 
 debt whose payment cannot be enforced 
 by legal process, the time will come when 
 that debt shall be reckoned a debt of hon- 
 or, and when not to pay it will be regarded 
 as disgraceful as it is not to pay any other 
 just debt which the debtor has the means 
 of discharging. The time will come when 
 the rich man who refuses to contribute 
 his proportionate share to the public weal 
 shall suffer social degradation, as already 
 he stands degraded in his own conscious- 
 ness, when he judges himself by the moral 
 law, and compares his deeds and his goods, 
 the benefactions bestowed with the ben- 
 efits received from his kind. 
 
 In the story of Cain it is shown that 
 the right of property is established by 
 force. That first step in civilization was 
 achieved by conflict, and every succeeding 
 step of deep and lasting import has been 
 achieved in the same way. It is the 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 
 Cain, or Prop- 
 erty and Strife 
 as Agents in 
 Civilization. 
 
;i>teM&K>A,t«(f gM.lu> «o 
 
 Vri^f^-^-^- 
 
 W„ f^H/i^O'^J^, 
 
 140 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION-. 
 
 CAIN. 
 
 141 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 
 Cain, or Prop- 
 erty aii'J Strife 
 as Agents in 
 Civilization. 
 
 metliocl of history. If we cast but a 
 glance along the tide of time we shall 
 see that the one universal condition, if 
 not the prime agent, of civil progress has 
 been war. Not a step has society ad- 
 vanced which has not been contested with 
 arms and purchased with blood. The civil 
 and religious liberty we hold so dear, the 
 right of private judgment, the right of self- 
 government, the establishment of every im- 
 portant principle in civil legislation, — with 
 what conflicts and fightings and bloodshed 
 these blessings have been secured! Pe- 
 riods of peace in the history of nations 
 have been but armistices, brief temporary 
 breathing spaces interposed in the stated, 
 normal, secular war which began with 
 Cain, and has raged in our day with un- 
 abated violence. Society advances from 
 conflict to conflict. So it has been hith- 
 erto, and so it will be till the animal in 
 man succimibs to the spiritual. It is the 
 animal in man whence wars and fifjht- 
 ings come, and though war has been a 
 minister of progress, of spiritual progress 
 
 as well as material, it is, nevertheless, in 
 its proper nature carnal and devilish. The 
 fruit of the spirit is peace. War has 
 been said to be a conflict of ideas. Say, 
 rather, it is a conflict of interests with 
 ideas, or with other interests. Passions 
 war, ideas never. Pure spirit is incapable 
 of passion, it can will no evil, but only 
 good. Its end is blessing and its method 
 love. If ever spirit gains the ascendency 
 in human nature, acts of violence will be- 
 come an impossibihty, and war in all its 
 kinds obsolete. 
 
 That spirit, though never supreme, has 
 never been wanting in human kind. The 
 fiercest times have been flavored by it, the 
 rudest tribes have felt its power. A prin- 
 ciple of life imparted to the world with its 
 first human occupants, it has ever been at 
 work, informing, transforming, gradually 
 subduing the world to itself. The process 
 is as sure as any process in nature. As 
 sure, though it may be as slow as that 
 which shaped the solid earth by long ac- 
 cretion from the fiery deep. Both process- 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 
 Cain, or Prop- 
 erty and Strife 
 as Agents in 
 Civilization. 
 
n 
 
 142 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 
 Cain, or Prop- 
 erty and Strife 
 as Ai;;ents in 
 Civilization. 
 
 es have one Author, both are births of one 
 creative Word, both agencies of one al- 
 mighty Power. As earthly nature duly 
 pursues her appointed course, arrives in 
 due order to her destined growths, and 
 perfects in time her several kinds, so the 
 spirit, or heavenly nature, proceeds ever- 
 more in its fixed intent, and moves and 
 grows in all its organs, until it shall fill 
 its foreordained sphere and mature at last 
 its consummate fruit. 
 
 1 
 
 I 
 
 YII. 
 
 NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE YEARS? 
 
 &"2T»i**2K«S^^»»?< 
 
|T*(*-*-f W41, ii J «*ff /I t >^m ^ ^ -v <•/•/ 
 
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^<^^^«s*i»s^ss^Ksr 
 
 NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE YEARS ? 
 
 145 
 
 NINE HUKDEED AND SIXTY- 
 NINE YEAES? 
 
 " And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred 
 and sixty and nine years." — Genesis v. 27. 
 
 The dates which Hebrew tradition as- 
 signs to the lives of men before the flood 
 present a problem that much perplexes 
 the Biblical critic. That the life of a hu- 
 man individual could ever have attained 
 the age of nine hundred years and up- 
 wards reason finds altogether incredible. 
 On the other hand, that the figures are 
 mere inventions, that they represent noth- 
 ing but a freak of the narrator, is al- 
 most equally incredible. Nor is it at 
 all likely that these dates are accidental 
 corruptions of primeval tradition. For 
 where, in the absence of written docu- 
 ments, oral tradition is charged with the 
 keeping and transmitting of past events, 
 7 
 
 Chap. VII. 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
146 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VII. 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years? 
 
 it is apt to be faithful to its trust and es- 
 pecially tenacious of numbers. Moreover, 
 the numbers here are too particular and 
 too sharply defined to favor the supposi- 
 tion of accidental corruption. Accidental 
 corruption in such matters is a relaxation 
 of memory, and memory relieves itself, not 
 by invention, but by the substitution of 
 round numbers for those which are more 
 exact. 
 
 That is a poor faith which contents it- 
 self with thoughtlessly receiving, and that 
 is equally poor criticism which contents 
 itself with thoughtless denial. The figures 
 mean something, but precisely what they 
 mean is matter of doubtful conjecture. 
 The most plausible hypothesis is that they 
 designate epochs of history marked by 
 certain predominant names,* or else that 
 they measure the prevalence of certain 
 genealogical types which naturally enough 
 bear the name of their typical representa- 
 tives ; in other words, that they represent 
 
 * See Bunsen's "Bibclwerk," 9*" Ilalbband, for 
 an explanation of the patriarchal genealogies. 
 
 NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE YEARS? 
 
 147 
 
 the duration of families instead of individ- 
 uals. We know the proneness of the He- 
 brew people to give to individual names a 
 collective signification, i. e. to speak of a 
 tribe or a nation as an individual. " Ben- 
 jamin," they say, did this and that, when 
 they mean the whole tribe of which Ben- 
 jamin was the head. " Israel," they say, 
 when they mean the Israelitish nation. 
 Eemembering this, I find it not unlikely 
 that the names of Cainan and Mahaleel 
 and Jared and Methuselah are used col- 
 lectively, — used to denote tribes and 
 epochs as well as individuals. 
 
 Those readers of the Bible and those 
 commentators who think that the cause 
 of religion is concerned in the literal un- 
 derstanding of the text, reject, of course, 
 such interpretations and insist on the com- 
 monly received term of patriarchal life. 
 One writer, even, gravely suggests that the 
 wickedness of man before the flood may 
 be explained by the patriarchs having so 
 much time on their hands. These people 
 contend that the human frame, though 
 
 Chap. VII. 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
148 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION 
 
 Chap. VIL 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
 long since incapable of half or a quarter 
 part of the wear ascribed to Methuselah, 
 may nevertheless have had that persist- 
 ency then, when the earth was young 
 and the habits of life so simple, and dele- 
 terious uses so few, as must be supposed 
 to have fallen to the lot of the antedilu- 
 vian world. But this supposed simplicity 
 of habit is a pure assumption, unauthor- 
 ized by any indications in the record, and 
 inconsistent with the crowded life which 
 such longevity must needs engender. It 
 conflicts with a state of society in which 
 ''every imagination of the thoughts of 
 man's heart was only evil continually." 
 And as to the newness of the earth in 
 those ages, it does not appear that new 
 countries are especially favorable to length 
 of life, but rather the reverse. The atmos- 
 pheric influences of lands lately opened 
 to human occupancy are quite as likely 
 to be prejudicial to health as those of old- 
 er and long-peopled climes. The only cir- 
 cumstance in the life of the antediluvians 
 which would seem to be peculiarly con- 
 
 NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE YEARS? 
 
 149 
 
 ducive to longevity was the absence .of 
 those entailed diseases which enter so 
 largely into the heirloom of later time. 
 The human organism must then have 
 been free from hereditary taint. No sick- 
 ly tendencies descending from sire to son, 
 and gaining strength with each genera- 
 tion, had corrupted the blood. Man in 
 our day is the victim of long-descended 
 infirmities. Scarce any are born sound; 
 the major part come into life already in- 
 fected with bodily ails, or predisposed to 
 one or another disease. Palsy, fever, con- 
 sumption, are old inhabitants of every 
 civilized land and liave hereditary rights 
 which are our hereditary wrongs. The 
 disorders which prey upon human life 
 and shorten the term of earthly years are 
 not so much the result of personal impru- 
 dence or exposure as they are of heredi- 
 tary predisposition. It is not altogether 
 the food. we use, the climate we inhabit, the 
 life we lead, which makes us what we are 
 in our bodily estate, but what we inherit 
 from our progenitors and their progenitors 
 
 Chap. VIL 
 
 Ni7ie Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
150 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VII. 
 
 Nine Hunrhed 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
 through many generations. In each gen- 
 eration are concentrated tlie sickly ten- 
 dencies of each preceding. Wliatever is 
 evil in our physical condition is the prod- 
 uct of ancestral influences acting through 
 immemorial time. From all this the ear- 
 lier inhabitants of the earth were exempt. 
 Their bodies were free of the mortmain 
 of former generations. The uncorrupted 
 juices of primal nature coursed through 
 their veins. They had only their own im- 
 prudences, not those of a distant ancestry, 
 to expiate. To this immunity we may 
 reasonably ascribe a term of life far ex- 
 ceeding the present, but it does not ex- 
 plain these patriarchal dates. The fresh- 
 ness of primal nature does not explain a 
 life of a thousand years. 
 
 Physiology objects that the life of the 
 human organism is not, under any sup- 
 posable conditions, capable of such dura- 
 tion. The possible term of human life, 
 under influences the most favorable, is 
 supposed by one physiologist* — the on- 
 
 * Haller. 
 
 NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE YEARS? 151 
 
 ly one, I believe, who allows it that ca- 
 pacity — to reach the length of nearly two 
 hundred years. To suppose it prolonged 
 to nearly five times that amount implies 
 one of two things, — an organization so dif- 
 ferent from that which we understand by 
 the human as to put the beings to whom 
 it is ascribed beyond the pale of humanity, 
 and thus to sever our connection with the 
 antediluvian world, or else a continuous 
 miracle wrought for the preservation of 
 the lives so prolonged. On the latter sup- 
 position, the question is between the prob- 
 ability of such a miracle and the proba- 
 bility of a misunderstandmg of the record 
 which seems to affirm this length of years. 
 Moreover, it should be noticed in this 
 connection that the record itself represents 
 Jehovah as saying, before the flood, that 
 " the days " of man " shall be a hundred 
 and twenty years." " My spirit shall not 
 always remain in man " (not " strive with 
 man," as our version has it) " for he is flesh 
 and his days shall be a hundred and twen- 
 ty years." If, therefore, we understand 
 
 Chap. VII. 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
152 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE YEARS ? 
 
 153 
 
 Chap. VII 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
 literally the nine hundred and sixty-nine 
 years of Methuselah and the nine hundred 
 and fifty of :N'oah, we bring the record into 
 conflict with itself. 
 
 But let us for an instant admit the 
 vulgar interpretation of these dates and 
 endeavor to represent to ourselves a life 
 of nine hundred and sixty-nine years. I 
 fancy that those who acquiesce so readily 
 m this idea have no very clear concep- 
 tion of its import. To make the suppo- 
 sition plain let us bring it home to our 
 own time. Suppose an individual of the 
 age of nine hundred and sixty-nine years 
 to be living at this moment. See what a 
 reach of history his experience 'takes in. 
 He was born, we will say, in England, in 
 the year 900, in the very centre and mid- 
 night of what are called the Dark Ages. 
 Six centuries had piled tlieir weight upon 
 his head when Columbus discovered Amer- 
 ica, and when Luther confronted Empire 
 and Clmrch at the diet of Worms. He 
 recalls tlie shudder which went through 
 Christendom when, at the close of the 
 
 
 tenth century, it was commonly believed 
 that the end of the world was at hand. 
 He kept the run of the Crusades, from tlie 
 mad expedition of Peter the Hermit to 
 the death of Louis IX. He was older 
 than any one now living on this earth 
 when William the Norman, at the head 
 of his barons, invaded England and vrrest- 
 ed the kingdom from the Saxons. He re- 
 members the days of Edgar and St. Duns- 
 tan; he can almost remember Alfred, whose 
 reign had not yet expired when he was 
 born. 
 
 Now the annals of the antediluvian world 
 may not have presented a record so event- 
 ful as the last thousand years of European 
 ^history. But those ages were by no means 
 a blank on the scroll of time. Wherever 
 men are congregated, there is history,—, 
 commerce and arts, revolutions and disturb- 
 ances, expeditions, wars, the rise and fall of 
 dynasties and nations. Imagine the mental 
 condition of a man whose experience em- 
 braces a millennium of history ! The bur- 
 den of such a past I conceive would be 
 
 7* 
 
 Chap. VIL 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
 <s» 
 
154 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VII. 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sirty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
 greater than the human intellect could 
 bear. The brain would sink beneath the 
 load ; would collapse into idiocy or ex- 
 plode in madness. Or, if the brain did 
 not give way, the mind preoccupied with 
 the multitude of its memories, haunted by 
 the thronging images of so many centu- 
 ries, would become the captive of its own 
 experience. Imprisoned in the past, it 
 would lose its hold on the present, would 
 lose its interest in the things of to-day; 
 and the life so prolonged would become 
 a burden to itself and the world. Even 
 within the limits of life as now bounded 
 by the fourscore years of extreme dura- 
 tion the octogenarian loses the capacity 
 of progress, not so much by the failure of 
 the understanding as by the pressure of 
 the past preoccupying the mind and indis- 
 posing it to fresh acquisition. 
 
 It might be furthermore objected to the 
 literal understanding of these dates, that if 
 the lives to which they are assigned were 
 not exceptional, — and I know of no rea- 
 son for supposing them to have been so, — 
 
 NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE YEARS ? 
 
 155 
 
 if nine hundred years was the ordinary 
 date of human existence in those days, 
 and if the race was then as prolific as 
 now, and wide-spread death by war and 
 pestilence no more frequent than now, the 
 earth's population must have greatly out- 
 grown the capacity of the then known 
 world to support. 
 
 But not to insist on this obvious view, 
 I find a stronger objection in the insup- 
 portableness, not to say inconceivableness, 
 of such a life. The material difficulties 
 are great, but the moral difficulties are 
 greater. I repeat that a life so protracted 
 would be an intolerable burden. The 
 pleasure to be derived from our connec- 
 tion with this world — the satisfaction 
 which even the most happily endowed 
 can find in it — is limited, and when that 
 limit is reached the connection becomes an 
 evil and a pain. So long as one is capa- 
 ble of learning and producing, though the 
 heart have lost its freshness and the world 
 its gloss, some relish of life will remain. 
 But the mind's capacity of learning and 
 
 Chap. VII. 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
156 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VIL 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
 producing, in a mortal body, is bounded, 
 and there conies a time when the strong- 
 est mind can no longer take in new ideas, 
 by reason, as I have said, of the pressure 
 of the past and the preoccupation of the 
 ground by tyrannous experience. The 
 tablets are full, there is no more room for 
 new entries. And because the mind can 
 no longer take in, it can no longer give 
 forth ; the influx and reflux, the tidal play 
 of the intellect is stopped, and the indi- 
 vidual is so far dead, though sense and 
 bodily health remain. There comes a 
 time when the mind outgrows this pres- 
 ent world, i. e. outgrows its connection 
 with it; not because it has appropriated 
 all that is in it and learned the uttermost 
 it has to teach, but because it has learned 
 all and appropriated all that its own ca- 
 pacity allows. For, though the mind may 
 be infinitely progressive, the organ by 
 which it works is not. If eternal pro- 
 gress is the law of the one, evolution 
 within given limits — growth, maturity, 
 decay — is the law of the other. Sup- 
 
 NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE YEARS? 
 
 157 
 
 pose, in a subject of Methuselah's age, 
 the beginning of decay to be long post- 
 poned ; give the organization a century to 
 grow in, and, putting decline out of view, 
 suppose it to remain for centuries station- 
 ary at its highest culminating point ; how 
 would a stationary organization suit a 
 spirit capable of infinite progress and con- 
 scious of that capacity ? Imagine the or- 
 gan as perfect as human conditions will 
 admit, you cannot have it so perfect as to 
 be entirely plastic and obedient to the 
 soul. It cannot accommodate itself to an 
 ever-growing spiritual life ; it must come 
 in time to be a hindrance and a prison to 
 the spirit that will on and refuses to ac- 
 cept an earthly goal. There comes a time 
 when the heart, too, as well as the mind, 
 outgrows this present world, is sated with 
 its uses, distastes its gifts, and sends the 
 thought of its longing beyond the bounds 
 of time. It is true, that, as life is now 
 constituted, the aged, while bodily health 
 and a certain degree of faculty remain, are 
 contented to live and linger on in slow 
 
 Chap. VII. 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
•/ — 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 / Chap. VII. 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
 decay. But that contentment, I fancy, 
 is sustained by the knowledge that the 
 end is near, and perhaps by the forefeel- 
 ing of immortality, by a glimpse of the 
 dawn of the great Beyond, — " the morn- 
 ing twilight of a sun that shines not here 
 on things below." But if it were told to 
 the man of ninety that the end is not yet, 
 that centuries more must elapse before 
 that dawn shall deepen into day, I doubt 
 he would not rejoice in the tidings. For 
 though the vigor of manhood should re- 
 main, though the ninety years should re- 
 tain the strength and faculty of forty, he 
 would feel that those ninety years had 
 given him all that this life can yield, that 
 new conditions were needed to unfold the 
 deeper lying powers and to quicken and 
 perfect the inner life. A healthy nature 
 rejoices in life, and in moments when in- 
 stinct is stronger than reason, may w4sh 
 it protracted beyond the ordinary term of 
 of mortal years. The English humorist 
 expresses a common feeling when confess- 
 ing an "intolerable disinclination to dy- 
 
 NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE YEARS? 
 
 159 
 
 mg. 
 
 "I am not content to pass away 
 'like a w^eaver's shuttle.' These meta- 
 phors solace me not, nor sweeten the un- 
 palatable draught of mortality I am 
 
 in love with this green earth, — the face 
 of town and country; the unspeakable 
 rural solitudes and the sweet security of 
 streets. I would set up my tabernacle 
 here. I am content to stand still at the 
 age to which I am arrived, — I and my 
 friends." It is the natural feeling of a 
 man in the prime of life to wish to stand 
 still, — "I and my friends," — to stand 
 still with them and grow no older. But 
 unfortunately, or fortunately, life will not 
 stand still ; w^e cannot live without grow- 
 ing older; and age, if it does not bring 
 decay, will bring bitter experience and 
 will bring satiety. Life is sweet, even this 
 earth -life, could we have it on our own 
 terms. But this is impossible; we soon 
 learn that it is impossible. We must take 
 life, not as we fancy it might be, but as 
 it is. We must take it with conditions 
 which we cannot essentially alter. One 
 
 Chap. VII. 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sijty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
160 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VII. 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
 
 of those conditions is the close limitation 
 of human faculty and action by inevitable 
 laws. The mind is subject to the law of 
 the body, and "that law hath dominion 
 over a man so long as he liveth." By his 
 bodily organization man is a part of uni- 
 versal nature. He must take his place 
 among terrestrial kinds ; he can only ful- 
 fil, and no more than fulfil, tlie circle pre- ' 
 scribed for him by adamantine necessity. 
 No man can unite in his single self the 
 excellences of all the excellent ; and when 
 we compare the actual achievements of 
 the greatest with what we imagine of su- 
 perior beings, we soon see an end of all 
 perfection. Could you question the he- 
 roes of old and of recent time, the cap- 
 tains and the statesmen, tlie sages and the 
 poets, they would tell you that the utter- 
 most they did was small compared with 
 wliat they felt themselves to he, in the un- 
 developed resources of their nature. They 
 were great and good, but not so great or 
 good as their conception and our concep- 
 tion. When we think of this, how far our 
 
 NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE YEARS? 
 
 161 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Yean ? 
 
 best works fall short of our conception : Chap. VII. 
 and the undeveloped force that is in us, 
 how limited our faculty, how little our ac- 
 tion, — when we think of this, the idea of 
 a lengthened life loses much of its charm. 
 However rich and full this earth-life, it is 
 not the best that may be. We can im- 
 agine something better, and we crave that 
 better, a wider scope, a freer activity, a 
 more adequate representation of ourselves 
 in our deeds. 
 
 Another condition which we have to 
 take with our given term of life, be it 
 longer or shorter, is the mutability of 
 earthly things, the transitoriness of earth- 
 ly good, the disappointment of cherished 
 hopes, the loss of our beloved, the sever- 
 ing of the heartstrings that bleed where 
 they break, and never quite heal; the 
 chronic tantalization, the slipping away 
 of life from under us, the perpetual loos- 
 ing of our hold on thinj^s. Who has not 
 had experience of these sorrows ? and who 
 would wish such experience unduly pro- 
 longed ? But such is life, and cannot well 
 
 •» 
 
162 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VII. 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years? 
 
 be other in this world of our converse. 
 These experiences teach us, if we are will- 
 ing to be taught, that it is not well to 
 live always in this world, nor to live much 
 longer than the foui-score years of Biblical 
 allowance. 
 
 This conviction is finely expressed in 
 the well-known fable of the " Wandering 
 Jew," the man who with curses bade Jesus 
 march on and not stop, when, weary and 
 faint, on his way to the cross, he had sunk 
 to the ground, and on whom, in return for 
 this cruelty, Jesus, it is said, pronounced 
 the sentence " Thou shalt wander till I re- 
 turn." And ever since then, according to 
 the fable, Ahasuerus walks the earth and 
 can find no grave. Many poets and writ- 
 ers of fiction have handled this theme; 
 and a very tempting one it is. They have 
 treated it very differently, with more or 
 less skill, but all agree in picturing the 
 weariness and anguish of such a life, — a 
 life which, with no external calamity, is 
 made by its mere duration an immortal 
 torment. 
 
 
 NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE YEARS ? 
 
 163 
 
 If, then, we fairly envisage the idea of 
 a life of nine hundred years, if we picture 
 to ourselves the intolerable burden of such 
 a life, we can hardly believe that the men 
 of the antediluvian world were cursed with 
 that load. And the more we ponder this 
 idea the more clearly we shall see the fal- 
 sity of the old theological view that repre- 
 sents death — the death of the body — as a 
 curse which man drew down upon him- 
 self by his disobedience. Not a curse, 
 but a blessing, without which life itself 
 would be a curse. Of all the angels that 
 wait around the Throne and do the bid- 
 ding of eternal Love, there is none whose 
 ministry is more indispensable than that 
 of the angel of death. Whatever sorrows 
 may attend the timing, the method, and 
 incidents of that ministration, the end is 
 sure and supreme blessing. 
 
 In the order of nature every day of 
 earthly existence is rounded with a sleep 
 by which the soul dies into new and re- 
 plenished life. If that sleep, which is 
 temporary death, be long withheld, insan- 
 
 Chap. VII. 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
164 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VII. 
 
 Nine Hunrhed 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
 ity ensues. The mind cannot bear the 
 strain of a too protracted waking. And 
 by the same order the great day of mor- 
 tality must have its crowning sleep of 
 proportionate duration. If that crowning 
 sleep were too long deferred, the intermin- 
 able day would be a burden and a curse. 
 
 And why, it may be asked, if death is 
 a necessity for this world's use, why not 
 also for the use of the next ? If the earth- 
 ly life must be shortened to meet the re- 
 quirements of finite nature, how, hereafter, 
 shall finite nature bear the burden of im- 
 mortality ? I suppose that hereafter, also, 
 there may be tlie need, from time to time, 
 of " a sleep and a forgetting," as the ages 
 accumulate their experience on the soul. 
 Immortality may be a series of births in- 
 stead of one continuous living. Succes- 
 sive deaths may be the risers of those 
 "altar-stairs that slope through darkness 
 up to God " ; each stair a new day of spir- 
 itual life, a higher capacity of serviceable 
 action, a nearer revelation of the infinite 
 Love. 
 
 NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-NINE YEARS ? 
 
 165 
 
 But all this is hidden behind the earth, 
 among the mysteries of the unknown land 
 whose day cannot dawn till earth's de- 
 clines. We only know that the " undiscov- 
 ered country" must be reached, if at all, 
 through the night of death. And will we 
 not welcome, when it comes, the silent 
 guide to the " silent land " ? 
 
 "OLand! OLand! 
 For all the broken-hearted 
 The mildest herald by our fate allotted 
 Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand 
 To lead us with a gentle hand 
 Into the land of the great departed, 
 Into the silent land I " 
 
 Chap. VIL 
 
 Nine Hundred 
 
 and Sixty-nine 
 
 Years ? 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 
 
I 
 
 THE FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 
 
 169 
 
 M\ 
 
 THE FAILUEE OF PEIMEVAL 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 " And God saw that the wickedness of man was 
 great in the earth, and that every imagination of the 
 thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." — 
 Genesis vi. 5. 
 
 Whether historic or merely conjectu- 
 ;ul, this statement agrees with the ration- 
 al view of primitive man. The depravity- 
 ascribed to the early world is nothing 
 more than might be expected as the nat- 
 ural issue and probable result of the first 
 experiment of social life. Eeasoning from 
 the nature of man, we should say that so- 
 ciety in its first state, committed to un- 
 disciplined instincts and native passion, 
 without education,- without experience, 
 without ideals, with no authority but 
 brute force, would prove a failure, would 
 suffer wreck for want of moral resources 
 
 8 
 
 Chap. VIII. 
 
 The Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
170 
 
 PlilMEVAL WOKLD OF HEBKEVV TKADITION. 
 
 THE FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 
 
 171 
 
 Chap. VIII. 
 
 The Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
 with which to stem the corruptions of vice 
 and the anarchy which vice engenders. 
 The ancients believed that man's first es- 
 tate was a golden age of innocence and 
 peace. Their poets have so represented 
 it, and perhaps the story of the Garden 
 of Eden had its origin in that propensity 
 to glorify the past, which shaped the Gen- 
 tile poets' dream. But the facts of an- 
 tiquity, so far as we know them, point the 
 other way. The earliest indications of 
 man's existence on the earth which sci- 
 ence brings to light, contradict the notion 
 of primeval innocence. The fossil remains 
 which recent investigation has discovered 
 in situations revealing human occupancy 
 long antecedent to the oldest historic rec- 
 ords, consist, for the most part, of imple- 
 ments of war. Spears and arrow-heads do 
 not betoken a golden age of innocence and 
 peace, but rather an age of wrath and strife. 
 And what archaeology makes probable, and 
 what Hebrew tradition affirms, is what 
 our experience of human nature would 
 teach us to expect, — instead of the bless- 
 
 ed tranquillity which poets depict, a state 
 of prevailing depravity, a state in which 
 "the wickedness of^ian was very great." 
 
 Is, then, human nature constitutionally 
 depraved, — depraved to that extent that 
 the evil in man exceeds the good ? God 
 forbid ! The good exceeds, but the bad is 
 soonest developed, and, without the checks 
 of education, of laws, and religion, will 
 outgrow the good and assert a baleful su- 
 premacy. It is not a question of human 
 nature in itself considered, but of human 
 nature in social combinations. Such com- 
 binations, until the accumulated wisdom 
 of many generations had shaped their con- 
 stitution for suppression of evil and pro- 
 motion of good, would furnish abundant 
 provocations to the baser propensities, cov- 
 etousness, lust, revenge ; whilst the vir- 
 tues would require a long time to develop 
 their activity, and by organized effort to 
 exercise a controlling power. There must 
 be a preponderance of good in man, or 
 society could not exist ; for evil tends to 
 dissolution and ruin. But an element of j 
 
 Chap. VIII. 
 
 Tlie Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
172 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VIII. 
 
 The Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
 evil there is, also, in man, as in every or- 
 der and realm of being ; and tlie evil, under 
 certain conditions, may develop itself with 
 such rapidity as to overpower for a time 
 the good ; as weeds in a garden will usurp 
 the ground and clioke the nobler plants, 
 if the garden be left to take care of itself. 
 This rapid development of evil would be 
 likely to occur in a primitive state of so- 
 ciety, where the moral sense had not yet 
 embodied itself in laws and institutions, 
 and established means of education. The 
 passions in sucli a community would know 
 no restraints but sucli as were- purely ac- 
 cidental; violence and lust would reiirn 
 supreme ; the contagion of evil example 
 would spread corruption, woidd infect the 
 young, and diffuse an ever-increasing de- 
 pravity. Every man's hand would be 
 against his neighbor, until society became 
 impossible, through dissolution of all the 
 bonds which bind man to man. Individ- 
 ual examples there would be of unspotted 
 innocence and persevering integrity; as 
 " Noah was found righteous in his genera- 
 
 THE FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 
 
 173 
 
 tion." But these exceptional cases would 
 only contrast, not check, the general cor- 
 ruption. The good would finally be forced 
 to give up the attempt to reform society, 
 would leave society to perish in its sins, 
 and, separating themselves from the rest, 
 would propagate elsewhere a new and bet- 
 ter kind. 
 
 This theory of primitive man agrees 
 precisely with the Hebrew record, but 
 neither theory nor record supposes an in- 
 nate depravity of human nature. It only 
 supposes what all experience teaches, that 
 the good in man requires to be developed 
 by education, and requires long time for 
 its development, while the bad without 
 education, like weeds and vermin, hastens 
 to develop itself. We are not, perhaps, 
 sufficiently aware to how great an extent 
 the moral life of society, the good that 
 exists in the average of men, and whose 
 fruits we enjoy in public order, security, 
 and peace; — to how great an extent all 
 this is due to the gradual accumulation 
 of moral forces, educational, literary, civil, 
 
 Chap. VIII. 
 
 Tlie Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
174 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VIH. 
 
 The Failure 
 
 of I'rimeval 
 
 Society, 
 
 and religious, operating in a thousand ways 
 to restrain the evil in man and to elevate 
 and purify our daily life. These composite 
 forces, these consenting influences, consti- 
 tute what may be called the moral capital 
 of society, incomparably more essential 
 to social well-being than all the accu- 
 mulations of material capital with wliich 
 the industry of successive generations has 
 enriched our estate. The value of this 
 material capital, consisting in houses and 
 warehouses, sliips and wharves, in roads 
 and farms, and mines and engines, arts and 
 mechanical inventions, we can all under- 
 stand. This complex apparatus of human 
 industry we can all appreciate. We know 
 very well to what a pitiful state we sliould 
 be reduced if all these accumulations, and 
 even the knowledge of these things, were 
 suddenly destroyed, and man were left 
 with nothing but his native powers and 
 the untamed eartli, to begin the world 
 anew. We know what the cliange would 
 be from tlie top of material civilization to 
 the lowest plane of savage life. But sup- 
 
 THE FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 
 
 175 
 
 'M 
 
 The Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
 pose these material possessions were left to \ Chap. VIII. 
 us, and that moral and religious ideas, tra- 
 ditions, and beliefs, and the institutions that 
 represent them, — Church, Bible, school, 
 the greater part of the world's literature, 
 — all that part of it which conveys any 
 moral or religious impressions, — the mem- 
 ory and lesson of all good examples, — sup- 
 pose all this were stricken out and man 
 were left with no moral guidance but his 
 native instincts and perceptions. What 
 would be the effect on society of such a 
 loss ? What would society be with no 
 knowledge of any but material interests, 
 with no experience of any but material 
 laws, in lands which are now the most 
 civilized portions of the earth? ^\Tio 
 can doubt the result ? Who can doubt 
 that in any community so conditioned 
 crime would become rampant, anarchy 
 prevail, and social dissolution ensue ? 
 With the great and numberless tempta- 
 tions which mere material progress brings, 
 with its ceaseless provocations of lust 
 and wrong, society would be impossible 
 
176 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VIIL 
 
 The Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
 without the safeguards, the motives, the 
 laws, the guidance, wliicli existing civ- 
 ilization, with its long accumulations of 
 moral increase, in otlier words, with its 
 moral capital, supplies. This was pre- 
 cisely the difference between that elder 
 world and ours. This I suppose to have 
 been the difficulty and defect of that pri- 
 meval society which Hebrew tradition de- 
 scribes, — material progress divorced from 
 moral, — the pursuit of material satisfac- 
 tions outstripping the moml sense and be- 
 coming in consequence more and more 
 emptied of moral life. 
 
 " And God saw that the wickedness of 
 
 man was very great in the earth And 
 
 it repented the Lord that he had made 
 man on the earth, and it grieved him at 
 his heart. And the Lord said, I will de- 
 stroy man, whom I have created, from the 
 face of the earth, both man and beast, for 
 it repenteth me that I have made them." 
 This was the primitive mode of viewing 
 and stating the failure of the first attempt 
 at civil society. The ancient simplicity 
 
 THE FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 
 
 177 
 
 did not shun to think of God as making 
 a misstep and confessing a failure. There 
 is something very charming in that sim- 
 plicity ; I pity the critic who can find it 
 ridiculous. So great was the faith which 
 those ancient people had in their God, — 
 he seemed to them so near, so human, — 
 they could not help crediting him with 
 their own sensations. And their confidence 
 in him and their reverence for him was no- 
 wise diminished by regarding him as lia- 
 ble to error. When he saw how wicked 
 man was, he must, they thought, have been 
 disappointed, not anticipating such a result, 
 and have grieved that he made him. We 
 cannot, of course, with our maturer con- 
 ceptions of Deity, adopt that view of the 
 fact; but the fact remains. That fact is 
 the moral corruption of the early world 
 and the failure of the first societies of men 
 for want of the requisite moral aids. 
 
 These failures are no test of the moral 
 nature of man, they only show that the 
 moral life is a gradual growth, that the 
 moral force which constitutes the stay 
 
 8* 
 
 Chap. VIIL 
 
 The Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
178 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 THI-: FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 
 
 179 
 
 Chap^VIII. and assures the stability of the social 
 
 Society. 
 
 I/prt'eZ ^^^^^' '^ ^^^^ slo^^ accumulation of suc- 
 cessive ages of moral and religious teach- 
 ings and exami)le, a funded capital invest- 
 ed in sacred memories, in public opinion, 
 in social influences, customs, and institu- 
 tions. I said that the failures of primeval 
 society are no test of the moral nature of 
 man. But they furnished the occasion of 
 such a test in the wonderful power of self- 
 recovery by which society righted itself 
 from that first fall and by which it has 
 repaired so many subsequent failures, and 
 has risen new-born from so many defeats, 
 abolished so many evils and wrongs, and 
 by which, at this day, it continues to ad- 
 vance to new degrees and fairer demon- 
 strations of moral life. Often in this or 
 that country it has seemed for a while ir- 
 recoverably sunk in moral ruin, on the eve 
 of dissolution, and still it has emerged 
 from the transient eclipse with new vigor 
 and a better hope. States may perish and 
 nations dissolve, but society profits w^ith 
 each revolution, gains new growths of 
 
 Pi 
 
 & 
 
 
 ■ i 
 
 moral good, and adds to its moral capital 
 from age to age. 
 
 This moral progress is due in part to 
 the innate goodness of human nature, and 
 in part to a process of divine education. 
 Without a foundation in human nature 
 on which o build, and without a master- 
 builder to oversee and conduct the work, 
 no moral fabric such as society was des- 
 tined to be and is striving to become, 
 could ever be erected. 
 
 I affirm a radical and preponderating 
 good in human nature. There is evil in 
 man, deep-seated, persistent evil, but the 
 good is deeper and ineradicable. Man 
 is essentially, constitutionally good, and 
 only exceptionally and abnormally bad. 
 In proof of this I appeal to the fact of 
 society. Society exists, it has existed with 
 unbroken continuity for thousands of years. 
 And society is founded in moral qual- 
 ities ; it depends on them for its preser- 
 vation and support. Mutual attraction, 
 friendship, and good-will are its origin; 
 justice and truth are its guaranties. Take 
 
 Chap. VIII. 
 
 The Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
180 
 
 PKIMEVAL WOKLD OF HEBKEW TKADITION. 
 
 Chap. VIII. 
 
 The Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
 away these qualities from the nature of 
 man, and society would straightway and 
 inevitably dissolve. Imagine every kind 
 of feeling, every liumane sentiment, every 
 right principle, all sense of justice and 
 honor, to be erased from the heart; sup- 
 pose there were no love of man for man, no 
 sympathy, no instinct of kind affection, no 
 perception of truth or no respect for it, 
 no more respect for truth than falsehood ; 
 let men be constitutionally averse to jus- 
 tice and upriglitness, loving treachery and 
 wrong for their own sakes ; suppose this, 
 and how long would society cohere, how 
 long on such terms would men live and 
 work together in communities and states ? 
 Wliat cement will bind when truth and 
 love are not in the composition ? Self- 
 interest ? Yes ! if self-interest knew what 
 self-interest requires. But self-interest is 
 blind, it seeks its own with wild and un- 
 discerning greed. It seeks its own when 
 it steals and kills ; it seeks its own in 
 vicious excess, seeks it in impossible and 
 I suicidal ways. It is quite as likely to go 
 
 THE FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 
 
 181 
 
 WTong as right ; it requires a wisdom above 
 its own to secure its own. How can self- 
 love hold society together when the ten- 
 dency of self-love is to sunder and secede ? 
 A community founded in mere self-love 
 and the passions that have self for their 
 only object is an impossibility. In such 
 a community each member would seek 
 his own at the expense of his neighbor; 
 every man's hand would be against his 
 brother, his brother's against him. The 
 consequence would be disintegration, death. 
 I say, then, that the fact of society im- 
 plies a radical and preponderant good in 
 man, by virtue of which it subsists and 
 has subsisted for unknown time. 
 
 My second proof of the radical good in 
 human nature is drawn from lano-uao^e. 
 Language is a faithful exponent and trust- 
 worthy record of the nature of man. The 
 thoughts and feelings and beliefs of man 
 are embodied in it, as past creations are 
 embodied in the earth's crust. And lan- 
 guage is essentially moral ; it bears witness 
 of a moral nature in those who made and 
 
 Chap. VIII. 
 
 T%e Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
182 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VIII. 
 
 The Failure 
 
 oj Prrmeval 
 
 Society. 
 
 S i 
 i i 
 
 > 4 
 
 THE FAILURE OF PRIMETAL SOCIETY. 
 
 183 
 
 in those who use it. In every language 
 there are terms expressive of man's delight 
 in moral good. There are languages which 
 have no word for God, but none which 
 are destitute of phrases significant of pro- 
 bity, justice, and mercy. Analyze these 
 phrases, trace their etymology, pierce to 
 their root, and you will find in them evi- 
 dence not only of an innate perception of 
 moral qualities, but, what is more impor- 
 tant, of a just appreciation of tliose quali- 
 ties; you will find in them an acknowl- 
 edgment that the virtues so designated 
 are lovely and praiseworthy qualities ; you 
 will find in them the recognition of a 
 moral law, a confession that man is bound 
 to obey that law, that his dignity and liap- 
 piness consist in obeying it. This confes- 
 sion which universal language breathes is 
 a trustworthy witness of the innate good- 
 ness of the human heart. 
 
 What is true of language is true no less 
 of the literature of nations. Here, too, I 
 find proof of native ineradicable good. I 
 appeal to that class of ^vritings whose 
 
 i. 
 
 I 
 
 only or cliief end is to please. Observe 
 the method employed for this end in works 
 where imaginary characters and imaoi- 
 nary fortunes are brought to view. Mark 
 by wliat kind of characters, and of for- 
 tunes corresponding therewith, the authors 
 of such compositions, addressing the aver- 
 age mind, attempt to interest and gratify 
 their readers. Observe that the characters 
 with which it is intended that we shall syni- 
 pathize, and for whom we desire a fortu- 
 nate end, are invested with noble qualities, 
 are represented as right-minded, honorable, 
 and just. The attributes by which they 
 are expected to win our admiration are 
 moral traits. We say the novel, or play, 
 "ends well" when the good characters 
 set forth in it prosper, or, if they faU vic- 
 tims of their own nobleness, die honored 
 and avenged, and in which the bad char- 
 acters come to grief and shame. Every 
 work of fiction is an appeal to the moral 
 sense ; the purport of it must be in har- 
 mony with the moral law. This is the 
 demand which the public make of it ; this 
 
 Chap. VIH. 
 
 The Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
184 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VIII. 
 
 Tlie Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
 is essential to its success. Let the author 
 contravene this order, let him contradict 
 the moral law in his composition, let liim 
 paint characters devoid of every virtue 
 and stained with every vice, and attempt 
 to engage our sympathy in behalf of such, 
 and he will find that he has undertaken a 
 bootless task ; he wiU find it impossible to 
 construct a story on this principle which 
 shall give satisfaction. Though he choose 
 his readers from the vilest of mankind, 
 though he write for profligates and felons, 
 and call in outlaws and outcasts to be his 
 critics, he will find none so abandoned as 
 to relish and approve a work so planned. 
 And so literature bears witness of the rad- 
 ical and ineradicable good in human kind. 
 But the mere existence and even pre- 
 ponderance of good in man is not of it- 
 self sufficient to secure the moral progress 
 which I claim for society, will not suffice '\ 
 to rear that fabric of a perfect state winch 
 reason, I think, demands as the consum- 
 mation of human history; that City of 
 God to which propliecy points and for 
 
 THE FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 
 
 185 
 
 which Humanity hopes and waits. The 
 radical good in human nature is one fac- 
 tor in this product, the other, I have said, 
 is divine education. Human nature was 
 the same that it now is in the earliest an- 
 tediluvian time, but society how different ! 
 What accessions of knowledge and insight, 
 what stores of experience, what culture, 
 what improved legislation, what social re- 
 forms, what provisions for the present and 
 the future, what guaranties, what confi- 
 dence and hope ! The difference is due to 
 the guiding, educating Power that works 
 unseen in human things, ever educing 
 good from evil, causing the wrath of man 
 to praise it, the failures arid miscarriages 
 of human effort to justify it, and leading 
 the race through ceaseless conflicts, through 
 manifold trials and defeats, through suc- 
 cessive revolutions, migrations, empires, re- 
 ligions, to its present advanced and hope- 
 ful state. The Spirit of God has never 
 been wanting to human kind. Where its 
 action is most conspicuous we acknowl- 
 edge and adore it as "revelation," as di- 
 
 Chap. VIII. 
 
 The Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
186 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VIII. 
 
 The Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
 vine dispensation. But that Spirit is al- 
 ways and everywhere active, copresent to 
 every age and phase of society. We must 
 not belittle the great idea of Eevelation 
 by imagining it confined to certain marked 
 eras and manifestations. The revelation 
 that came with the word and life of 
 Jesus Christ was a great and central il- 
 lumination, but the light that shone so 
 resplendent in him was none other than 
 that which the evangelist says "lighteth 
 every man that cometh into the world," 
 the uncreated, inextinguishable spark of 
 Godhead by which Humanity subsists un- 
 til now. Eevelation is not spasmodic and 
 intermittent, but continuous and progres- 
 sive. There never was a time when God 
 was not revealing himself with such illu- 
 minations and visions of the truth as each 
 age and people were able to comprehend. 
 Nor must we conceive of revelation as the 
 action of God upon the world from with- 
 out, as the introduction of an alien power 
 that announces itself with portents, ap- 
 I pears for a little while and then vanishes 
 
 THE FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 
 
 187 
 
 The Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society, 
 
 away. It is nothing foreign, but the Spirit Chap. Vlll 
 of God in man which giveth him under- 
 standing, and which here and there in cer- 
 tain elect natures acts with exceptional 
 power and speaks with peculiar author- 
 ity. All revelation is in man and through 
 man, and that revelation is ever proceed- 
 ing. From the first beginnings of human 
 society God has been ever in communion 
 with the race. Even in that wild and 
 profligate age which the record describes, 
 when the wickedness of man was so great 
 in the earth, there was no interruption ; 
 the divine communication was still main- 
 tained. Tradition conceived it as an oral 
 colloquy with Noah. The conception is 
 puerile, but its import is truth. In sub- 
 stance tradition was right ; there was that 
 communication of God with the better 
 mind of the time. There always has been. 
 God was always in the world suggesting, 
 impelling, restraining, guiding : applying 
 evil to the elucidation and promotion of 
 good, and leading man up to Himself 
 
 through all the aberrations of his thoudit 
 
188 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. VIII 
 
 THE FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 
 
 189 
 
 The Failure 
 
 of Primeval 
 
 Society. 
 
 and desire, tlirougli all tlie wanderings of 
 his will, througli all the successes of his 
 endeavor, and through all its defeats. And 
 this I conceive to be the sum and end of 
 that divine education by which society is 
 to reach and realize at last its moral con- 
 summation ; God leading man up to him- 
 self, filling the soul and the world with 
 his idea, making his will to appear the only 
 politic way and goal, and Himself the su- 
 preme good. 
 
 When, in the light of this doctrine of 
 divine education and social progress, I re- 
 vert to the record and read how wicked 
 man could be and was in the olden time, 
 how '' every imagination of the thoughts of 
 his heart was only evil continually," I am 
 not disturbed nor alarmed by the contem- 
 plation of such a state, for though I must 
 regard it as a manifestation of the same 
 human nature which still subsists, and of 
 which we all partake, I see it to be one 
 whose conditions are past and can never 
 return; I can look upon it as I do on 
 those saurian monsters, the lizard-fishes. 
 
 and pterodactyls of the ante-human world ; 
 as outgrown horrors, the crude abortions 
 of immature nature in its first essays. 
 
 Enlightened with this doctrine and 
 armed with this faith, I can never fear 
 for humanity, nor doubt of its final desti- 
 nation. I may fear for my country when 
 evil rulers are in power and evil counsels 
 at the helm. I may fear the troubles of the 
 passing time, but I cannot fear for human- 
 ity. For I know that its course is onward 
 and irrepressibly, irreversibly onward. I 
 know that unerring Wisdom will make the 
 faults of each age, the calamities of na- 
 tions, and the failure of states the minis- 
 ters and means of a better growth, and 
 will lead its own with strong attraction 
 througli the woes of the present, through 
 the ruptures and wrongs of the hour, and 
 over the wrecks of time, into clearer day 
 and serener life, and that out of the expe- 
 rience of so many ages, and the contribu- 
 tions of so many nations, will come at 
 length the perfect Order, the reign of Eea- 
 son, the City of God. 
 
 Chap. VIII. 
 
 The Failure 
 
 of Pri?neval 
 
 Society. 
 
n 
 
THE DELUGE. 
 
 THE DELUGE. 
 
 " And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all 
 thy house into the ark : for thee have I seen righteous 
 
 before me in this generation For yet seven 
 
 days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty 
 days and forty nights ; and every living substance 
 that I have made will I destroy from off the face of 
 the earth. And Noah did according to all that the 
 Lord commanded him And every living sub- 
 stance was destroyed which was upon the face of the 
 ground, both man and cattle, and the creeping things, 
 and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed 
 from the earth : and Noah only remained alive, and 
 they that were with him in the ark." — Genesis vii. 
 
 Among the traditions which date from 
 a period beyond the reach of documental 
 history there is none so widely diffused, 
 so generally accepted, and none of such 
 grave significance as that of " the Flood " ; 
 a deluge which destroyed the human race 
 with the exception of a chosen few, who, 
 being forewarned and forearmed, survived 
 
 9 
 
 193 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 The Deluge, 
 
194 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 THE DELUGE. 
 
 195 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 The Deluge. 
 
 the catastrophe and became the progeni- 
 tors of a new and worthier kind. 
 
 Criticism has analyzed the Biblical ac- 
 count of Noah and his ark, and flippant 
 wits have amused themselves with point- 
 ing out the inconsistencies and impossi- 
 bilities sufficiently obvious in this simple 
 tale. That is easily done. It needs but 
 little ingenuity to show that a box of three 
 hundred cubits length by fifty in breadth 
 and thirty in height could not contain 
 seven pairs of all the clean and two of all 
 the unclean animals then in existence, 
 with fodder for their maintenance during 
 a hundred and fifty days. We understand 
 all that without demonstration. What 
 more concerns us, and is not quite so ob- 
 vious, is the answer to the question, what 
 nucleus of historic truth this rough shell 
 may enclose. Wliat is the real fact em- 
 bodied in this tradition ? To dismiss the 
 whole story as a myth, having no appre- 
 ciable foundation in fact, is a more un- 
 critical proceeding and a greater offence 
 against reason and common sense than 
 
 to take the narrative without further ques- 
 tion, as the piety of former generations re- 
 ceived it, and was edified by it. 
 
 A tradition of such duration and extent 
 must be presumed to have some founda- 
 tion in fact. A frank comparison of the 
 Hebrew record with the annals of other 
 races, in other and very distant parts of 
 the world, confirms the truth of the Bibli- 
 cal account, but reveals at the same time 
 tlie limitations with which the narrative 
 is to be received. All the branches of the 
 Aryan and Semitic races, including, beside 
 Jewish and Christian nations, the Chal- 
 daic, Phoenician, Persian, Hindu, together 
 with tlie Latin and Greek, discover traces, 
 more or less distinct, of this tradition. On 
 the other hand, the monuments of the two 
 most ancient civilizations of which we 
 have any knowledge — the Egyptian and 
 the Chinese — contain no account of, or 
 allusion to, Noah's deluge. From which 
 it appears, in the first place, that the flood 
 was not universal, and secondly, that it 
 did not take place until after the races 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 The Deluge. 
 
4l-'io»Wi"'-«fsu*A«'iiMit"i*n«»*i>S,'?[*ji>^ ' 
 
 196 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITIOJ^. 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 The Deluge. 
 
 (the Turanian and Chamitic) which peo- 
 pled the eastern and southwestern extrem- 
 ities of the ancient world had migrated 
 
 if such was their origin — from Central 
 Asia, the seat of the catastrophe; and 
 that thirdly, it was prior to the Aryan 
 migration from that birthplace of na- 
 tions. 
 
 It is curious to find traditions of a flood 
 among the native American tribes. Wheth- 
 er these refer to the same event with the 
 Asiatic, or whether they commemorate an- 
 other, independent catastrophe of the West- 
 ern continent, it is impossible to say. It 
 is further remarkable tliat all the traditions 
 which record this event — American, Oce- 
 anic, Asiatic — connect with the deluge 
 which destroyed the human race the salva- 
 tion of certain elect individuals by means 
 of a ship or chest ; and most of them affirm 
 a miraculous premonition of the coming 
 disaster, by which these individuals were 
 led to make the necessary provision for 
 their escape. 
 
 The Chaldean historian, Berosus, relates 
 
 TflE DELUGE. 
 
 197 
 
 that Kronos, or Seth, the old Babyloni- 
 an divinity, revealed to Xisuthrus, in a 
 dream, that on the fifteenth day of the 
 eighth month the flood would commence 
 in which all mankind would perish, that 
 he must bury all the books in the city of 
 Helios and build a ship five stadia long, 
 two stadia broad (3,125 feet by 1,250 feet), 
 for himself, his children, and relatives, pro- 
 vide stores of food and drink, and take 
 with him all sorts of animals. Xisuthrus 
 did so. The flood came. When it ceased 
 he sent out birds, which found neither food 
 nor resting-place and came back to the 
 ship. He repeated this twice; the third 
 time the birds did not return, and Xisu- 
 thrus knew that the land had emerffed 
 and found that the ship was landed on a 
 mountain. 
 
 The Hindu legend declares that Manu, 
 the Indian Noah, was warned by a fish of 
 the impending deluge, and admonished to 
 construct a ship, which, when prepared, 
 the fish itself, one of the incarnations of 
 the god Vishnu, guided to a place of safe- 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 ITie Deluge. 
 
mmmmmm 
 
 J 
 
 198 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 The Deluge. 
 
 ty. According to a North American tra- 
 dition, reported by Schoolcraft, the accu- 
 rate observer of the aborigines of this 
 continent, it was a dog who gave his mas- 
 ter the friendly warning and the necessary 
 instructions in view of the coming catas- 
 trophe. The late Baron Humboldt relates 
 that several of the Mexican nations had 
 paintings representing the favored pair 
 (Coxcox and his wife Xochiquetzatl) who 
 escaped the deluge floating in a bark, the 
 only living forms in a universe of waters. 
 The Mexican tradition, moreover, has this 
 singular appendix. The men born after 
 the deluge are dumb, and a dove from the 
 top of a tree is represented distributing 
 tongues. 
 
 On the whole, there can be no reason- 
 able question as to the historic truth *of 
 the flood recorded in the Book of Gene- 
 sis. It was not universal, — the phrase 
 " the whole earth " is continually used in 
 the Bible in a more or less limited sense, 
 — but sufficiently destructive within its 
 bounds to ^x an indelible impression in 
 
 THE DELUGE. 
 
 199 
 
 the human mind, and to send down its 
 record to the latest time, though commit- 
 ted for thousands of years to oral tradi- 
 tion alone. It was subsequent to the last 
 of the great revolutions of the globe, and 
 falls within the present geological epoch. 
 The earth is known to have passed 
 through many revolutions, or, if that 
 phrase be thought objectionable, through 
 many changes before arriving at its pres- 
 ent state. It shows the action on its sur- 
 face of fire, water, ice ; above aU, if that 
 may be termed an agent which is only 
 a condition of action, of immeasurable 
 time. Before the rise of geological science 
 the indications of former submersion in 
 various parts of the earth, such as the 
 presence of marine shells in regions far 
 above the level of the sea, were hailed 
 by theologians and defenders of the Bible 
 as proofs of the deluge recorded in the 
 Book of Genesis. The progress of that 
 science has put a very different interpreta- 
 tion on those facts, referring them to ages 
 prior, by millions of years, to the date of 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 T^ Deluge. 
 
.XI, ri„ « Vn---%.SM»« , 
 
 -r.'^..a3is:f.ja%,ais«i»ai >rr-r 
 
 200 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 T/u Deluge. 
 
 
 Noah's flood ; but they so far confirm the 
 truth of the Biblical narrative that they 
 prove the general fact of past disturbance 
 and the changeful condition of the globe. 
 
 The fact of a deluge submerging a con- 
 siderable part of the Eastern Continent, 
 and the preservation of a smaU number of 
 the inhabitants of the countries in which 
 it prevailed, being granted, the rest of the 
 narrative must be regarded as traditional 
 accretion representing tlie speculations and 
 imaginings of after ages which gathered 
 around this historical nucleus. The point 
 of chief interest for us in the stoiy of 
 the flood is its moral aspect considered 
 in relation to human society and the mor- 
 al government of God, 
 
 The Hebrew account represents the del- 
 uge as the penalty of sin, as a consequence 
 of human depravity, ~ the method employed 
 by Divine Providence to sweep away and 
 blot out of existence a state of society so 
 corrupt as to admit of no reform. " God 
 I saw that the wickedness of man was great 
 in the earth, and that every imagination of 
 
 >; 
 
 ft 
 
 \i 
 
 THE DELUGE. 
 
 the thoughts of liis heart was only evil con- 
 tinually. And it repented the Lord that he 
 had made man on the earth, and it grieved 
 him at his heart. And the Lord said, I 
 will destroy man, whom I have created, 
 from the face of the earth ; both man and 
 beast, and the creeping thing and the fowls 
 of the air ; for it repenteth me that I have 
 made them." This is the reflection of an 
 ancient writer, representing, no doubt, the 
 mind of his time, on the great catastrophe 
 which interrupted the progress of society 
 in the old Asiatic world and made a chasm 
 in history imperfectly bridged by tradi- 
 tion. It is not a view which enlightened 
 Christian thought can adopt in the sense 
 in which it is here propounded. It con- 
 tradicts our conception both of the natural 
 and the moral world, and the method of 
 divine government. Of the natural world, 
 because the material order, as we conceive, 
 has its own distinct laws, and obeys a se- 
 quence of cause and effect entirely inde- 
 pendent of human society. Once estab- 
 lished, that order would proceed if the 
 
 9* 
 
 201 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 2'he Deluge. 
 
 • -»^mm^i^mmmm 
 
 ^!Bg?'J^W?**3J''«*ffif^"'^j«?ffl(W%.i»««-* « 
 
 ■ 14«t — /<V»)rtf. .>«,.«^.- ^t-^. 3-!;S3..KiE*rf»^ „, 
 
l|JI^'«Mt?^»-1W|^(>*^]0g»^l||tSS^i,,^^ ,^ 
 
 p.' t r -,^J^1iE«ovlHW.li],|^ Tf, ^ ,if^,ijj. aj„ |(^ u, 
 
 ii«t "--^"ft" •>".•»-.«.♦-*-- -!;S3..KiE*rf*^ „, 
 
 202 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 The Deluge. 
 
 earth were without a human occupant, 
 and cannot be supposed to be modified by 
 human action. Natural events, we con- 
 ceive, must be referred to natural causes ; 
 and those causes are the necessary opera- 
 tion of laws coeval witli creation. 
 
 On the other hand, the moral world has 
 also its own laws independent of the phys- 
 ical. Moral transgressions have their mor- 
 al penalties, and although within the limits 
 of the human organism, certain vices may 
 bear fruit in physical effects, they cannot 
 be conceived as reaching beyond those 
 limits into the cosmic mechanism, and so 
 affecting the natural order of events. 
 
 And then it contradicts our conceptions 
 of the being and government of God to 
 imagine him dealing with moral subjects 
 in the way supposed, calling in a natural 
 catastrophe to be the executioner of mor- 
 al laws ; to think of him as watching the 
 course of human conduct, and when that 
 reaches a certain degree of corruption, in- 
 stead of reviving it by his Spirit, or suf- 
 fering it to work out its natural result. 
 
 THE DELUGE. 
 
 bringing down the elements upon it and 
 overwhelming it with natural ruin. 
 
 But this is the aspect which the case 
 would present to a mind in that stage 
 of intellectual and spiritual development 
 which this record addresses, from which 
 it proceeds. Combining the two facts of 
 great depravity in human kind and an 
 overwhelming catastrophe in nature, the 
 primitive mind would suppose a conse- 
 quential relation between these facts, the 
 wrath of God supplying the connecting 
 link. It is the exercise on a larger scale 
 — the application to a world instead of an 
 individual — of that propensity to see a 
 judgment of God in every calamity that 
 befalls; which hastens to infer a man's 
 guilt from his ill fortune, as the people of 
 Melita judged Paul to be a murderer when 
 they saw the viper fasten on his hand. 
 When the excavations in the buried city 
 of Pompeii brought to light the traces of 
 a moral corruption too common in ancient 
 society, modern censors pronounced the vol- 
 canic disturbance which destroyed that city 
 
 203 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 The Deluge' 
 
 '^•■'•ii&iitxitiist^BmiimtmdStmMiaimgmm 
 
Mai 
 
 . , .u,.:«»aas«ss3saa«»xa^s»«aat'<? r s.i ji:. 
 
 "■^BritirBst^iit "^i^^tg^fif 
 
 204 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 THE DELUGE. 
 
 205 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 The Deluge. 
 
 to be a special judgment of God on the 
 sinful inhabitants, — a conclusion imply- 
 ing that if the morals of Pompeii had 
 been pure, the fires of Vesuvius would 
 have slumbered or found a different vent. 
 Jesus rebukes this way of interpreting 
 calamities. He indicates the self-igno- 
 rance and self-righteousness that lurk in 
 all such judgments. " There were present 
 some that told him of the Galileans, whose 
 blood Pilate had mingled with their sac- 
 rifices. And Jesus answering said unto 
 tliem. Suppose ye that these Galileans 
 were sinners above all the Galileans, be- 
 cause they suffered such things ? I tell 
 you, Nay ; but except ye repent, ye shall 
 all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, 
 upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and 
 slew them, think ye that they were sinners 
 above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? 
 I tell you, Nay ; but except ye repent, ye 
 shall all likewise perish." Think not that 
 wicked men only are overtaken with dis- 
 aster, or that all whom disaster befalls 
 are sinners, as if disaster were the proper ' 
 
 and only penalty of sin ; but look into 
 your own hearts ; you will find there, it 
 is likely, sins of your own to be repented 
 of, — sin that without repentance will 
 bring death. 
 
 Public calamities and personal guilt bear 
 no such relation to each other as the inter- 
 pretation in question supposes. If they 
 happen to coincide, the coincidence, how- 
 ever opportune, according to our human 
 view of fitness and justice, cannot be af- 
 firmed to be an ordained part of the penal 
 legislation of God. Calamities befall the 
 evil and the good ; they are quite as likely 
 to befall the latter as the former, as nature 
 smiles on both alike. When, in 1755, the 
 city of Lisbon was destroyed by an earth- 
 quake which brought instantaneous death 
 to twenty or thirty thousand citizens, there 
 was much speculation among philosophers 
 and divines concerning the providence of 
 God which permitted so dire a catastro- 
 phe, but no pretence of extraordinary guilt 
 on the part of the victims, of whom the 
 greater part were assembled in their 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 The Deluge. 
 
 ►»«i*«#*fa*M«»«la,XM«»!,i3SS«iJl#t tSCSCaSKSt. Si»K» SSBBMSsir ^ss,.> 
 
 'i 
 
^iASsr:-. 
 
 ri 
 
 206 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 THE DELUGE. 
 
 207 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 The Deluge. 
 
 churches and engaged, at the time, in the 
 public offices of religion. 
 
 A few years ago we were startled with 
 tidings of tlie burning of a church in a 
 distant city of this continent, whereby 
 two thousand and upward, mostly women 
 and children, were said to have perished 
 in circumstances the most appalling that 
 the human imagination can conceive. Does 
 any one suppose that these two thousand 
 were sinners above all the people of San- 
 tiago because they encountered this horrid 
 fate ? On the contrary, there is every 
 reason to believe that the awful holocaust 
 numbered many of the purest and most 
 devoted citizens among its victims. The 
 laws of nature will take their course, how- 
 ever numerous and however precious the 
 lives that stand in the way of their execu- 
 tion. If a jet of burning gas comes in 
 contact with inflammable draperies, those 
 draperies will take fire, tliat fire will be 
 communicated to whatever combustible it 
 can lay hold of, and the burnimr desola- 
 tion will proceed, whether empty walls or a 
 
 temple containing the flower and elect of 
 a city be the scene and subject of the con- 
 flagration. God in nature, acting in and 
 through natural laws, is no respecter of 
 persons, and whether or not, as the poet 
 says, " He sees with equal eye, as lord of 
 all," it is certain that he sees, without in- 
 terfering to prevent, 
 
 " A hero perish or a sparrow fall, 
 Atoms or systems into ruin hurled, 
 And now a bubble burst and now a world." 
 
 Thus we obtain, as it seems to me, the 
 true point of view for this arch-catastro- 
 phe of human tradition, — " the flood." If 
 in its effects it proved a penal operation, 
 overwhelming and destroying a flagitious 
 race, whose every thought was evil, we 
 cannot apply this view of its effect as the 
 true and sufficient interpretation of its ori- 
 gin. Its origin was a law of nature, or 
 rather a conjuncture and co-operation of 
 many laws all tending to one issue, — that 
 issue a crisis in the natural history of the 
 reixion in which it occurred. 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 The Delttge. 
 
 ii 
 
 ■ *2 
 
 ' '«V9^^m!i0»¥'m*vmK0tr 
 
 ^v5,iA^p A^S%.4.'^** ^ , J* 
 
 . ^«*. ♦^^-.^afc,^ **.^y,.>l«»fc^,..;. ^»^bi.««<.>»»<A,.,»^. ■^.t*»..,, »*i«AJA>Js.,fe « ^ , 
 
r*V--tWS*- J^B* 
 
 . ^«*. *--«-»**«« ***-,.^««fc^,,,;.^^i,,a^.,^^,..,,^,.^.^,,^^ 
 
 11 
 
 208 
 
 PRIMEVAL WOKLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 The Deluge. 
 
 If, now, it be claimed that the opera- 
 tion of these laws and the crisis in which 
 their action resulted, were so timed by 
 that Power of which the so-called laws oi 
 nature are but the method and the mani- 
 festation, as to coincide with a great so- 
 cial crisis, the consummation of those 
 vicious tendencies by which the constitu- 
 tion of society had been disintegrated and 
 rendered incapable of further development 
 or even continuance ; — if, in other words, 
 it be claimed to be a part of the divine 
 order that a cosmic revolution should co- 
 incide with the dissolution of society by 
 the action of internal moral causes, I see 
 no philosophic objection to that view, 
 but, on the contrary, accept it as, on the 
 whole, the most rational view of the mat- 
 ter. But observe, that according to this 
 view the action of the deluge is not re- 
 tributory but remedial ; its purpose is not 
 vindictive but beneficent; it mercifully 
 hastens the extinction of that whose ex- 
 istence had become to itself an unmiti- 
 gated curse. 
 
 THE DELUGE. 
 
 209 
 
 (i 
 
 i;4 
 
 And, perhaps, if we scrutinize more 
 closely the language of the record, we shall 
 find precisely this meaning in it : " And it 
 repented the Lord that he had made man 
 on the earth, and it grieved him at his 
 
 heart And God said unto Noah, 
 
 The end of all flesh is come before me ; for 
 the earth is filled with violence throujih 
 them : and, behold, I will destroy them 
 wdth the earth." God is represented as 
 acting, not in the spirit of vengeance, but 
 of penitence and grief, according to the 
 childish conception of the time. 
 
 The terms "repent" and "grieve" can 
 have only a figurative signification for us 
 as applied to God, but the language sug- 
 gests, on nearer examination, a deeper im- 
 port than perhaps our first interpretation 
 had found in it. God repents tliat he has 
 made man. The idea is, that human na- 
 ture in that stage and phase of it was an 
 unsuccessful experiment. Now, if we study 
 the course of creative action in the natural 
 world, we find a mode of procedure which, 
 considered only in its objects and results, 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 The Deluge. 
 
210 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 The Deluge. 
 
 may, without any impeachment of Divine 
 Wisdom, be termed experimenting. We 
 see successive attempts at organization 
 gradually advancing in their several kinds 
 until they reach their full development 
 and final perfection. Take a single organ, 
 the human hand. We may trace through 
 successive stages of animal life the several 
 steps by which this organ reached its. pres- 
 ent state. It first appears as the fin of 
 the fish, a membrane projecting from the 
 shoulder of the animal, designed to assist 
 its motion. The organ is next seen in a 
 more advanced state in the flipper of the 
 marine quadruped. Here it begins to di- 
 vide itself into five distinct articulations 
 or fingers. A fuller prophecy of nature's 
 design in this member may be traced in 
 the claw of the various land tribes, until 
 at last the design is accomplished and the 
 prophecy fulfilled in the human hand. We 
 cannot call the initial forms through wliich 
 this organ passed before it attained its 
 final perfection unsuccessful experiments, 
 seeing they answer their purpose in the 
 
 THE DELUGE. 
 
 211 
 
 11 
 
 1 
 
 •;; 
 
 organisms to which they belong, but we 
 may properly enough term them experi- 
 ments, i. e. progressive efforts which find 
 their consummation in man. 
 
 Again, the earth has passed through 
 successive preparatory states before be- 
 coming the abode of intellectual and mor- 
 al life. In the ages antecedent to the 
 present geological epoch, we find it peo- 
 pled with those saurian and other mon- 
 sters which may be regarded as rude ex- 
 periments in animal life, — huge unwieldy 
 organizations whose nature and propor- 
 tions, however well suited to the state of 
 the globe in which they are found, are 
 wholly incongruous with the earth of our 
 day, and were not deemed worthy to be 
 perpetuated beyond the revolutions that 
 convulsed and concluded their time. If 
 now we should say, in the style of those 
 records, that God repented of those mon- 
 sters — those megatheria and dinotheria 
 and mastodons which he made — and re- 
 solved to destroy them from the face of 
 the earth ; that way of putting it would be 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 2%< Deluge. 
 
212 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 THE DELUGE. 
 
 213 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 Tkf. Deluge. 
 
 only a more simple and childlike state- 
 ment of the fact that such organizations 
 were not consistent with the plan of crea- 
 tion and were out of place in the new- 
 made earth, — a statement identical in form 
 with that of the text concerning primeval 
 man. 
 
 The human world of that age and region 
 may be regarded as an early experiment 
 in human nature, — let us say an unsuc- 
 cessful social experiment. Unsuccessful, 
 not in any sense which impugns the di- 
 vine wisdom and goodness, unsuccessful, 
 not in relation to the plan of Providence 
 and the whole of human history, but im- 
 successful considered in itself, or viewed 
 in relation to its own date. It pleased the 
 Author of human nature to leave it in a 
 measure free, i. e. uncontrolled by any 
 overbearing moral force from without. 
 But the first expe'riment in human soci- 
 ety, based on moral freedom, must needs, 
 as I have said before, be unsuccessful for 
 want of accumulated moral capital suffi- 
 cient to counterbalance the activity of 
 
 (« 
 
 J 
 
 lawless passion. The moral capital on 
 and by which society now subsists and 
 has subsisted for many generations, and is 
 ever more able to subsist and advance, is 
 the gradual accumulation of all the epochs 
 of human history up to this date. What 
 Christ and Christ-like men of all ages 
 and religions have given to the world in 
 the way of thought and example is gath- 
 ered and garnered and hoarded and put to 
 usury by the overruling divine economy. 
 The interest of it, forever added to the 
 principal, with the compound growth of 
 the Spirit, constitutes a fund which more 
 and more redounds to the order, growth, 
 and salvation of man. 
 
 To this fund the patriarch Noah was 
 one of the contributors, — the only one 
 whose benefaction has crossed the chasm 
 in which so many ages of human history 
 are swallowed up. He towers aloft in the 
 mystic twilight of his time, above the 
 wreck of a perished world, the planter of 
 a new world, to form which three conti- 
 nents went forth from his house. i 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 The Deltige. 
 
214 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 The Deluge. 
 
 His lesson to us from the waste of 
 waters is the indestrtictibleness of moral 
 worth amid all the revolutions of nature 
 and time. That which is born of the flesh 
 is flesh, and must bear the doom of its 
 fleshly nature. Many splendid achieve- 
 ments of genius, many fair cities, many 
 monuments and arts of primeval human- 
 ity perished in that WTCck ; many mighty 
 and brave and beautiful among the sons 
 and daughters of men went down with the 
 flood. A whole generation is blotted out. 
 Moral worth alone survives, pushes its 
 way through storm and flood, and plants 
 itself anew in the new-made earth. So, 
 always, in the downfall of nations and the 
 wreck of things, that only survives which 
 is worthy to endure, which has in it the 
 seed of God. So in the moral deluge 
 which swept the old Eoman world, Chris- 
 tianity alone rode out the storm and came 
 forth conquering and to conquer from the 
 shock of time. 
 
 A divine communication, the 'narrative 
 says, foreshadowed to the patriarch the 
 
 THE DELUGE. 
 
 215 
 
 ►!: 
 
 
 
 final doom and the way of escape. Where 
 faith is, there is always a divine commu- 
 nication, an inspired forethought, a provi- 
 dence, a self-helping energy, which com- 
 mands the crisis where self-indulgence and 
 unbelief succumb. The righteous are in 
 league with God. A truer instinct inspires 
 their course and directs their steps ; they 
 are saved by wisdom from above, where 
 the wisdom of this world is gravelled and 
 swamped in its own conceit. 
 
 The history of ISToah is the history of 
 faith in every age. Forever the deluge 
 impends that must sweep away our an- 
 chorage " on this bank and shoal of time." 
 The fashion and goods of this world are 
 forfeit always to universal mortality. The 
 wise man heeds the warning voice of the 
 Spirit and builds in silence the ark with- 
 in, and awaits with composure whatever 
 may betide, 
 
 " Knowing the heart of man is set to be 
 The centre of this world, above the which 
 These revolutions of disturbances 
 Still roll 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 Hie Deluge. 
 
 I , 
 
216 
 
 rillMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION". 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 
 The Deluge. 
 
 Whose strong eflfects are such 
 As he must bear, being powerless to redress, 
 And that unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how poor a thing is man." 
 
 H 
 
 X. 
 
 THE GREAT DISPERSION. 
 
 10 
 
THE GREAT DISPERSION. 
 
 219 
 
 
 THE GREAT DISPERSION. 
 
 " And the whole earth was of one language and of one 
 speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from 
 the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar ; 
 
 and they dwelt there And they said, Go to, let us 
 
 build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto 
 the heaven, and let us make us a name lest we be scat- 
 tered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And 
 the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, 
 which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, 
 Behold, the people is one, and they have all one lan- 
 guage ; and this they begin to do : and now nothing will 
 be restrained from them which they have imagined to 
 do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their 
 language, that they may not understand one another's 
 speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from 
 thence upon the face of all the earth. And they left 
 off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it 
 called Babel, because the Lord did there confound the 
 language of all the earth." — Genesis xi. I et seq. 
 
 This weighty but brief fragment is all 
 that Hebrew tradition has preserved of a 
 great revolution, perhaps the greatest in 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
Ir 
 
 II 
 
 220 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
 the annals of time, — the breaking up of 
 a vast empire embracing nigh all the .civ- 
 ilized world, and the consequent disper- 
 sion of civilized man ; the growth of new 
 nations, polities, tongues. 
 
 The story is no myth, though the form 
 is mythical. It is a veritable part of the 
 world's history, belonging, though it does, 
 to what we call the prehistoric time, that 
 is, to ages antecedent to written docu- 
 ments and chronicled only in dim tradi- 
 tion, and in what remains of tlieir own 
 creations. A veritable piece of history, 
 and not only so, but a very considerable 
 cycle of history, embracing centuries in 
 its term and scope, — the story of an em- 
 pire in a few brief lines ! That wondrous 
 Tower of Babel is a fact. A portion of the 
 mighty fabric is still extant, still serves a 
 landmark to the nomad tribes of the great 
 Babylonian plain. A mountain of ruins, 
 the accumulation of forty ' centuries, still 
 attests the audacious proportions of one 
 of the eldest of the works of man. It is 
 said that Alexander the Great, impressed 
 
 . .'1 
 
 t 
 
 r 
 
 ( 
 
 It 
 
 
 THE GREAT DISPERSION. 
 
 with the grandeur of what remained'in his 
 day, conceived the bold project of restor- 
 ing the ancient structure. Ten thousand 
 workmen were employed for months in 
 clearing away the rubbish, when tlie con- 
 queror died and the work was arrested, 
 never to be resumed again. 
 
 The narrative is mythical in form, like 
 that of the deluge and other primeval his- 
 tories. We have to discriminate, and find 
 no difficulty in discriminating, the antique, 
 childish view of the facts from the facts 
 themselves. Such statements as that of 
 the Lord's coming down to see what the 
 people were doing on the plain of Shinar, 
 and talking to himself about his purposes 
 and acts and the reason and motive which 
 prompted them, are primitive conceptions 
 of providential processes, nowise essential 
 to the story. And wlien it is said that 
 the Lord confounded the speech of the 
 Babel-builders, we readily understand that 
 what is thus represented as a special and 
 fitful act of Almighty Power, originating 
 in a sudden mood of the Godhead, was in 
 
 221 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion, 
 
222 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
 fact the result of the gradual operation of 
 divine laws through a series of years. The 
 name of Nimrod's city is represented in 
 the story as derived from that diversity 
 of speech which originated there, but the 
 name, in fact, preceded the diversity of 
 speech ; its real meaning is the Gate (or 
 Seat) of God. Moreover, the phmse " the 
 whole earth," as commonly used in the 
 Bible, is not to be taken in an absolute 
 or scientific sense. It is not intended to 
 include the entire globe, or even the great- 
 er part thereof, but is loosely employed to 
 designate the whole of tliat particular por- 
 tion which the writer or speaker has in 
 mind at the time. In the present case it 
 denotes the country bordering on the Ti- 
 gris and the Euphrates, the seat of the 
 earliest civilization and the scene of the 
 events of Biblical history antecedent to 
 the narrative before us. 
 
 Eliminating thus what is mythical or 
 crude frum the substance of the story, we 
 have, as historic facts, the original unity 
 of the human family, the uniformity of 
 
 \ 
 
 THE GREAT DISPERSION. 
 
 the language spoken by the early world, 
 the formation of a powerful empire under 
 Nimrod in Southwestern Asia, of which 
 
 4 
 
 Babel, or Babylon, was the capital, syste- 
 matic efforts at concentration, the attempt 
 to make the empire of Nimrod universal, 
 and for this end to build a tower which 
 should serve as a beacon to the civilized 
 world; then the failure of this attempt, 
 the dissolution of the empire, the disper- 
 
 ^ '( sion of the people that composed it, the di- 
 
 vision of one nation into many, and finally 
 
 j the development of one original language 
 
 into many differing tongues. These are 
 the facts presented in this narrative ; there 
 is no reason to question their authenticity; 
 they rest in part on evidence independent 
 of the Bible. All recent ethnological in- 
 vestigations tend to confirm them. 
 
 These facts are not accidental, they are 
 not the outbreak of human caprice or ar- 
 bitrary acts of Divine Power, Mit the ne- 
 cessary operation and legitimate result of 
 the laws which govern human things, parts 
 of that providential order which shapes 
 
 223 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion, 
 
224 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
 and constitutes human history. They are 
 stages in the ever-proceeding education of 
 the human race. 
 
 I apply this view to the two most im- 
 portant points of the narrative, — the dis- 
 persion of the human family and the con- 
 sequent or accompanying division of the 
 one original language into many different 
 tongues. 
 
 The human race is originally one. That 
 portion of it, I mean, which comes within 
 the scope and record of history. Human 
 beings, in the merely zoological sense, pos- 
 sessing the human form, but incapable of 
 civilization, incapable of social progress, 
 may have sprung from different sources in 
 different quarters of the globe. But man, 
 as the subject of history, civilized man, 
 there is reason to believe, had one orioin, 
 and formed originally one family. This is 
 the Biblical idea of the human race. Not 
 that the doctrine is expressly taught, but 
 it seems to be implied, and has generally 
 been thought to be implied in the narra- 
 tives of the Book of Genesis. And philo- 
 
 <j ' 
 
 THE GREAT DISPERSION. 
 
 Sophie minds have been led by arguments 
 independent of the Bible, by the feicts of 
 history and science, to the same conclusion. 
 
 One of the proofs of this original unity 
 is the affinity, more or less obvious, which 
 may be traced between most of the lan- 
 guages spoken on this globe by civilized 
 peoples, and which seems to indicate a 
 common origin, an arch-dialect, from which 
 they have diverged and to which their co- 
 incidences must be referred. This affin- 
 ity of languages, if and so far as it can be 
 established, goes to confirm the statement 
 of the text, " the whole earth was of one 
 language and one speech." A common 
 language proves the common origin of the 
 human race or renders it at least ex- 
 ceedingly probable. 
 
 If, then, mankind were originally one, 
 speaking one language, combining in one 
 nation, exhibiting one type, why did not 
 this unity continue ? why was this uni- 
 formity broken ? Why, in the phraseol- 
 ogy of the text, did God " confound " the 
 common speech and divide and disperse 
 
 10* 
 
 225 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
226 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 Tke Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
 the united race? Why this multiplicity 
 of tongues and nations, this endless di- 
 versity of feature, custom, language, faith, 
 on the earth ? 
 
 The answer must be sought in the law 
 of growth. All growth implies division, 
 divergence, opposition, as its necessary 
 law. How strikingly this law is exem- 
 plified in the growths of the vegetable 
 world! The plant no sooner pierces the 
 clod and emerges upon the surface of the 
 ground than straightway it begins to di- 
 vide and continues to divide and to send 
 forth branches on this side and on that so 
 long as it continues to grow and to live. 
 The solar system and all the systems that 
 people space are supposed to be successive 
 and progressive evolutions of a single sub- 
 stance, which, ever disparting and dispers- 
 ing, has developed out of one a universe 
 of worlds. Humanity, in the counsels of 
 Divine Wisdom, was not to remain sta- 
 tionary but to grow, to unfold its attri- 
 butes and powers. And, in order to grow, 
 it must divide and disperse. If man had 
 
 THE GREAT DISPERSION. 
 
 227 
 
 been confined to the portion of earth first 
 peopled, his progress in social, material, 
 and mental development, as well as in 
 numbers, would have been arrested in the 
 first stages. God willed that the race 
 should multiply and replenish the earth, 
 that human nature should unfold itself in 
 all directions. In order to this, it needed 
 that mankind should divide and disperse, 
 form colonies, wander forth into new re- 
 gions ; each colony in turn, after reaching 
 a certain stage of maturity, sending forth 
 new ones, and each new colony increasing 
 more rapidly than the parent stock. Such, 
 to this day, has been the method of human 
 progress. The population of Europe has 
 not been sensibly affected by the constant 
 influx of immigration to this continent 
 since the fifteenth century, while out of 
 that immigration a new Europe has grown 
 up which is fast outstripping the old. 
 
 If humanity had been confined to the 
 land of its nativity, its development w^ould 
 have been one-sided, partial, incomplete. 
 The same local conditions, the same cli- 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion.' 
 
228 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
 mate and traditions would still have pro- 
 duced the same characters, the same cul- 
 ture, from age to age. Such has been the 
 lot of the nations inhabiting that portion 
 of the earth. Immobility is their com- 
 mon characteristic. A stationary, narrow, 
 one-sided culture is the standing type of 
 Oriental life. 
 
 Unity in variety is the law of growth. 
 It was necessary that man should know 
 other climes, should be subjected to every 
 variety of condition, witness every aspect 
 of nature, become familiar with every por- 
 tion and product of the planet on which he 
 is cast, in order that every side of his com- 
 plex nature might be unfolded and every 
 faculty brought into play. Therefore, God, 
 " of one blood," made many nations " to 
 dwell on all the face of the earth." There- 
 fore, he gave to some the burning tropics, 
 to some the arctic circle, to some the tem- 
 perate zone. To one portion of the hu- 
 man race he assigned the dark skin and 
 obscure conditions of the African, to an- 
 other the fervid heart and wandering life 
 
 THE GREAT DISPERSION. 
 
 229 
 
 of the Bedouin, to another still the high 
 culture, the enterprise and energy of the 
 European. Therefore, he appointed dif- 
 ferent polities, institutions, faiths; and 
 brought humanity into contact with all 
 external and internal conditions, with all 
 material and spiritual forces and facts, 
 that, by means of all, he miglit complete 
 the great work of time, — the education of 
 the race. And this process of division 
 and divergence, which began Rve thou- 
 sand years ago, will proceed until man 
 has thoroughly surveyed and penetrated 
 and learned by heart the globe he inhab- 
 its, and resolved in his experience every 
 fact and condition of terrestrial life. 
 
 Coincident and co-ordinate with the sep- 
 aration and dispersion of human kind the 
 narrative affirms a confusion of tongues; 
 i. e. a division or development of the 
 aborignal language into new and differ- 
 ent dialects, the speakers of which be- 
 come mutually unintelligible to each other. 
 This, too, is a natural process governed by 
 fixed laws, a part of the necessary and di- 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
230 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 7%e Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
 vine order. There is here no extraordi- 
 nary or exceptional agency. The speech 
 of the Babel-builders was confounded by 
 the operation of causes which must have 
 produced a diversity of tongues without 
 a Babel as well as with one. So great, in 
 fact, was the natural tendency to differ- 
 ence of speech in undeveloped man that 
 a miracle would have been required to 
 prevent it. Languages fully formed and 
 possessing a written vocabulary and a lit- 
 erature change little from century to cen- 
 tury. But, prior to tlie art of writing, 
 while speech lives only in oral communi- 
 cations, it is liable to great fluctuations, 
 additions, varying inflexions, and diver- 
 gent formations contingent on new varie- 
 ties of human nature and new exigencies 
 of thought and life. In the case before 
 us we have the population of a great and 
 growing empire engaged in an enterprise 
 of national aggrandizement, while lan- 
 guage was in its infancy and when tlie 
 number of words already in use was whol- 
 ly inadequate to the designation and dis- 
 
 THE GREAT DISPERSION. 
 
 231 
 
 cussion of the topics about which it was 
 necessary to confer. New exigencies, new 
 ideas, were constantly, requiring new ex- 
 pressions. These expressions would nat- 
 urally differ with different individuals and 
 clans ; new and independent vocabularies 
 would be formed, new inflexions, which 
 gradually developed into new languages. 
 
 Language is an exponent of character, 
 and will necessarily vary with different 
 individuals and bodies of men while it 
 exists in that fluid and unsettled state 
 which precedes the use of it as a written 
 dialect. The phenomenon which this nar- 
 rative describes has been often repeated 
 in the history of nations. The lanouacres 
 spoken by the Indian tribes that once 
 peopled this continent are related to each 
 other by affinities which indicate an orig- 
 inal identity between them. They were 
 pi^obably one in some remote age, but so 
 different are they now that the use of one 
 of them does not enable the speaker to 
 converse himself, or to understand one who 
 converses in another; and so fluid that I 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
232 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
 the missionary who revisited a tribe after 
 a lapse of ten years found a new dialect, 
 and was no longer able to make himseK 
 understood in the old. Our own language 
 was long subject to great fluctuations ; it 
 differed widely in different provinces of 
 England, until the use of it as a written 
 tongue, the art of printing, and especially 
 the received version of the Bible, gave it 
 a fixed and permanent character. The 
 English spoken in the time of Edward 
 III. would be unintelligible at the pres- 
 ent day. Even now, the dialects spoken 
 by different classes of society and differ- 
 ent provinces of Great Britain — and the 
 same is true of the dialects of Germany, 
 France, and other nations of Europe — dif- 
 fer so widely as to somewhat embarrass 
 oral communication between them. 
 
 In view of these facts we can easily 
 understand how differences of speech, 
 amounting to an unintelligible confusion 
 of tongues, should arise among the early 
 inhabitants of the earth in the centuries 
 that elapsed between the first settlement 
 
 ! 
 
 '. 
 
 
 i 
 
 THE GREAT DISPERSION. 
 
 233 
 
 of the plain of Shinar and the final dis- 
 persion of the tribes. And tliese differ- 
 ences, which began to manifest themselves 
 before that dispersion, which contributed 
 to bring about that event, would, of course, 
 be multiplied and hardened by it. And 
 so the dissolution of the first Babylonian 
 — the first universal — empire is histor- 
 ically connected with the first division, 
 say, rather, with the earliest development 
 of human speech. It marks that crisis in 
 human progress when language, which up 
 to that period had reached but the infant, 
 monosyllabic stage, — the stage represented 
 by the language of China at this day,* — 
 developed itself into new and nobler, more 
 capable, more flexible, more expressive 
 forms of oral and written communication. 
 The destruction of every great empire, 
 in periods antecedent to the art of print- 
 ing, has been attended with a like result. 
 " All new languages," says Bunsen, " have 
 
 * Bunsen supposes that the Cliincse language is es- 
 sentially or structurally the same with that which was 
 spoken in Babel before the dispersion. 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
234 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
 arisen from the breaking up of some great 
 political bond which imposed one speech 
 on its constituents." Tims the dissohition 
 of the Eoman Empire gave birth to five or 
 six of the languages of modern Europe, all 
 of which are derived, with various admix- 
 tures and modifications, from the Latin. 
 
 The real significance of Babel, then, in 
 relation to the highest of human functions, 
 — speech, — is not corruption, but progress. 
 What the record, in accordance with the 
 childish feeling of the time which pro- 
 duced it, represents as a sudden and mi- 
 raculous confusion of tongues, reveals it- 
 self to our riper understanding as method 
 and law, as a part of that orderly process 
 which language, in common with every 
 other power and product of human nature, 
 obeys, and by which it proceeds from its 
 rudimental to its perfect state. 
 
 So much for the scientific and historic 
 import of this ancient fragment ; but the 
 story has a moral which claims attention 
 before we dismiss the record and the 
 theme. 
 
 THE GREAT DISPERSION. 
 
 235 
 
 The kingdom founded by Nimrod in 
 Mesopotamia five thousand years ago, the 
 kingdom which culminated in the daring 
 enterprise of the Tower of Babel, is the 
 first attempt, so far as we know, at univer- 
 sal empire. Nimrod, its founder, " began," 
 it is said, "to be a mighty one in the earth. 
 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord." 
 Or, according to the Alexandrian version, 
 " against the Lord," opposed to the Lord, 
 God-defying. "Wherefore it is said, 'even 
 as Nimrod, the mighty hunter against the 
 Lord.' And the beginning of his kingdom 
 was Babel." Which means that Nimrod 
 was the first conqueror, the first autocrat, 
 the first who changed the patriarchal rule 
 for the despotic ; the earliest name in the 
 bloody heraldry of selfish ambition; found- 
 er of a line not yet extinct, but still repro- 
 ducing itself from age to age. The idea of 
 a tower which should reach to the heavens, 
 of a city which should be the world's cap- 
 ital, an empire which should gather all 
 kindreds and tribes under one name, in 
 one confederate body, was a project worthy 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
234 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
 arisen from the breaking up of some great 
 political bond which imposed one speech 
 on its constituents." Thus the dissolution 
 of the Roman Empire gave birth to five or 
 six of the languages of modern Europe, all 
 of which are derived, with various admix- 
 tures and modifications, from the Latin. 
 
 The real significance of Babel, then, in 
 relation to the highest of human functions, 
 — speech, — is not corruption, but progress. 
 What the record, in accordance with the 
 childish feeling of the time which pro- 
 duced it, represents as a sudden and mi- 
 raculous confusion of tongues, reveals it- 
 self to our riper understanding as method 
 and law, as a part of that orderly process 
 which language, in common with every 
 other power and product of human nature, 
 obeys, and by which it proceeds from its 
 rudimental to its perfect state. 
 
 So much for the scientific and historic 
 import of this ancient fragment ; but the 
 story has a moral which claims attention 
 before we dismiss the record and the 
 theme. 
 
 THE GREAT DISPERSION. 
 
 235 
 
 
 The kingdom founded by Nimrod in 
 Mesopotamia five thousand years ago, the 
 kingdom which culminated in the daring 
 enterprise of the Tower of Babel, is the 
 first attempt, so far as we know, at univer- 
 sal empire. Nimrod, its founder, " began," 
 it is said, "to be a mighty one in the earth. 
 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord." 
 Or, according to the Alexandrian version, 
 " against the Lord," opposed to the Lord, 
 God-defying. "Wherefore it is said, 'even 
 as Nimrod, the mighty hunter against the 
 Lord.' And the beginning of his kingdom 
 was Babel." Wliich means that Nimrod 
 was the first conqueror, the first autocrat, 
 the first who changed the patriarchal rule 
 for the despotic ; the earliest name in the 
 bloody heraldry of selfish ambition; found- 
 er of a line not yet extinct, but still repro- 
 ducing itself from age to age. The idea of 
 a tower which should reach to the heavens, 
 of a city which should be the world's cap- 
 ital, an empire which should gather all 
 kindreds and tribes under one name, in 
 one confederate body, was a project worthy 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
236 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Qreat 
 Dispersion. 
 
 such a character and worthy the infancy 
 of the race, before man had measured the 
 extent of his powers, or had learned the 
 limits of human nature and of human life. 
 No wonder that the mighty of that day, 
 the " giants " of the earth, should be moved 
 to attempt what has been so often at- 
 tempted since. The Babel-builders liave 
 had their fellows in every age. Lust of 
 dominion in every age has attempted works 
 as proud in their design, as ridiculous in 
 their conclusion, as the tower which was 
 planned to defy nature and to vanquish 
 time, — works arrested in mid-progress by 
 the insufficiency and confusion of those 
 engaged in them, monuments of liuman 
 frailty bearing on their front : " These men 
 began to build and were not able to fin- 
 ish." " Go to, now," says ambition, " let 
 us build us a city and a to\^•er, and let us 
 make us a name." There went a tradition 
 among the Hebrews that the builders of 
 that impossible tower caused each his 
 name to be inscribed on one of the bricks 
 of which the structure was composed, hop- 
 
 THE GREAT DISPERSION. 
 
 237 
 
 I 
 
 ing by that means to perpetuate them to 
 endless ages. What those names were 
 who knows or cares to know ? But one 
 of them has survived, and that only as the 
 name of a monstrous, lawless force, not a 
 child of humanity, with wdiom Ave asso- 
 ciate human interests and affections. Thus 
 the usurpers and lawless leaders of their 
 time vainly endeavor to perpetuate their 
 name with their works. Thus their works 
 perish with them, and their names, if they 
 survive at all, survive as unmeaning ci- 
 phers written upon ruins. The most gift- 
 ed, the most successful, the world-renowned 
 conquerors, — the Alexanders, the Caesars, 
 the Attilas, the Tamerlanes, the Napo- 
 leons, names "at which the world grew 
 pale," — remain now only 
 
 " To point a moral or adorn a tale." 
 
 One thing more. The story of Babel 
 imports a division and dispersion of the 
 human family which, as we have seen, 
 was a necessary condition of human de- 
 velopment and progress. But Christian 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
238 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
 prophecy contemplates a time when di- 
 vision and dispersion, having done their 
 work, shall cease at last, and a process of 
 assimilation commence which shall end 
 by restoring to the race its original unity 
 on a new and higher plane ; not in the 
 way of gift but achievement, — the result 
 of millennial growths, reposing on millen- 
 nial experience, fortified by impregnable 
 guaranties, assured by divine law. As- 
 tronomers tell us that the heavenly sys- 
 tems, after reaching the extreme of diver- 
 gence and exhausting the range of their 
 centrifugal forces, tend to reunion, and 
 seem, in some regions explored by the tel- 
 escope to be already merging into one. 
 May we not hope for the earthly systems 
 of society, now so widely sundered, so 
 sharply divided, a like destiny ? May we 
 not look for a day of restoration when 
 the process of reunion for man shall be- 
 gin ? May we not say that through the 
 historic Atonement and through the rec- 
 onciling power of Christian truth, it has 
 abeady begun ? Though all attempts to 
 
 I 
 
 THE GREAT DISPERSION. 
 
 239 
 
 force a union by extension of empire in 
 the spirit of the Babel-builders must prove 
 abortive and end in confusion and ruin, 
 there is reason to believe that a closer 
 union of man with man the world over 
 is designed in the order of God. Not a 
 forced combination by secular or ecclesi- 
 astical bonds, but a voluntary union in the 
 name of that humanity which is common 
 to all, in the name of Him in whom a 
 divine humanity was revealed, in whom 
 there is neither Jew nor Gentile, bond 
 nor free. To " gather into one the nations 
 that are scattered" is represented in the 
 New Testament as the mission of Christ. 
 Born of one parentage, sprung from one 
 stock, all men, even now, are essentially 
 one. Under all the diversities of govern- 
 ment, custom, color, clime, which divide 
 the nations, there is a unity deeper than 
 all these. The humanity of each nation 
 is older and deeper than all its traditions, 
 than institutions, language, race. One 
 blood circulates in all human veins, one 
 divinity lives in all souls. One spirit is 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
/' 
 
 240 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. X. 
 
 The Great 
 Dispersion. 
 
 over all and in all. Let us not forget it, 
 in all our j anglings and necessary con- 
 flicts, that we and our adversaries, be they 
 individuals or be they nations, at bottom 
 are one, divinely one; and while in hu- 
 mility and sober resignation we accept, as 
 providential appointment, the inevitable 
 feuds and collisions of our time, let us 
 cast our thought beyond the time and re- 
 joice to contemplate in the spirit what we 
 may not witness in the flesh. 
 
 XI. 
 
 JEHOVAH AND ABRAHAM. 
 
 A HEBREW IDYL. 
 
 11 
 
JEHOVAH AND ABRAHAM. 
 
 243 
 
 JEHOVAH AND ABRAHAM. 
 
 A HEBREW IDYL. 
 
 "And the Lord appeared unto Abraham in the 
 plain of Mamre." — Genesis xviii. 1. 
 
 The reader versed in the writings of the 
 Old Testament encounters in the narra- 
 tive thus introduced the only statement 
 these Scriptures contain of a converse of 
 God with man, which condescends to phys- 
 ical details and simulates the Gentile the- 
 ophanies. Jehovah, attended by two an- 
 gels, visits Abraham in his tent. The 
 patriarch receives them with zealous hos- 
 pitaHty, washes their feet in the way of an- 
 cient courtesy, causes a calf to be killed and 
 dressed, and cakes to be baked. He pro- 
 vides for their refreshment the best which 
 his stores afford, " and set it before them, 
 and he stood by them and they did eat." 
 After this entertainment, which the heav- 
 
 Chap. XL 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
244 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. XL 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
 enly visitors reward with the promise of a 
 long posterity to Abraham and Sara his 
 wife, the two angels depart on their way to 
 the doomed city of Sodom, but Jehovah re- 
 mains behind. And " Abraham stood yet 
 before the Lord." Then ensues that re- 
 markable colloquy in which Abraham in- 
 tercedes with Jehovah in behalf of the right- 
 eous dwelling in Sodom, who ought not, 
 he pleads, to be destroyed with the guilty. 
 " That be far from thee to do after this man- 
 ner, to slay the righteous with the wicked. 
 . . . . Shall not the Judge of all the earth do 
 right ? " Suppose there are fifty righteous 
 in Sodom, shall they share the fate of the 
 rest ? " And the Lord said, If I find in 
 Sodom fifty righteous within the city, I 
 will spare all the place for their sakes." 
 But suppose the number to be somewhat 
 less. " Peradventure there shall lack five 
 of the fifty righteous." " And he said, If 
 I find there forty and five I will not de- 
 stroy it." "Peradventure there shall be 
 but forty," but thirty, but twenty. To 
 each of which suppositions the Eternal 
 
 /, 
 
 JEHOVAH AND ABRAHAM. 
 
 245 
 
 replies, " I will not do it for forty's," " for 
 thirty's," " for twenty's sake." Finally, he 
 pleads: "I will speak yet but this once. 
 Pemdventure ten shall be found there. 
 And he said, I will not destroy it for ten's 
 sake. And the Lord went his way as soon 
 as he had left communing with Abraham, 
 and Abraham returned unto his place." 
 
 The whole narrative — dinner and con- 
 versation included — is exceptional. A 
 visible, palpable appearance of God to 
 man is rare in Hebrew tradition, which 
 differs widely in this respect from that of 
 the Greek and Eoman world. Usually, it 
 is the " Word of the Lord " addressing the 
 mind, or the " Angel of the Lord " address- 
 ing the sense, that mediates the divine 
 communication. But here the narrative 
 exhibits a visible personal appearance of 
 the national Jehovah to the great progen- 
 itor of the Hebrew people, — a God who is 
 not only seen and heard, but touched, who 
 not only walks and talks but eats I 
 
 There are three ways of dealing with 
 these Biblical portents. The first is that 
 
 Chap. XL 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraliam. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
246 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. XI. 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
 of unconditional acceptance and literal in- 
 terpretation. The second is unqualified 
 rejection and scornful repudiation. The 
 third is frank but reverential criticism. 
 The first was possible only on the ground 
 of blind submission to ecclesiastical au- 
 thority. It was possible only while the 
 use of reason in the interpretation of Scrip- 
 ture was forbidden or unknown. It is not 
 possible at the present day to critical read- 
 ei-s who aim to comprehend, and seek to 
 adjust with rational view^s and Christian 
 truth what they read. When the New 
 Testament declares that "no man hath 
 seen God at any time or can see him," it 
 makes the literal, liistorical interpretation 
 of the narrative in question impossible 
 with any who accept that teaching. 
 
 The second manner of handling such 
 narratives — that of unqualified and im- 
 patient rejection — is very natural and 
 very common at that stage of criticism, 
 or in that condition of mind in which, 
 whilst the pressure of authority has ceased 
 to operate and blind veneration is out- 
 
 JEHOVAH AND ABRAHAM. 
 
 247 
 
 grown, the spirit of friendly and reverent 
 inquiry has not yet succeeded to the va- 
 cant place. It is very natural and very 
 common in that state of mind and to that 
 cast of character in which the negative 
 tendency predominates over the affirma- 
 tive, in which " no " is a readier word in 
 Biblical criticism and in all criticism than 
 " yes " or " perhaps." To minds so condi- 
 tioned and characters so constituted a nar- 
 rative like this — a tale of Jehovah sitting 
 at meat — is so repugnant, so revoltingly 
 absurd that they incontinently and indig- 
 nantly reject the whole story as the mon- 
 strous invention of childish superstition, 
 and perhaps repudiate the book which 
 contains it, together with it and because 
 of it. The feeling is natural but the judg- 
 ment is not philosophical, nor is the state 
 of mind in which it originates conclu- 
 sive or propitious to right results. Many 
 things in the Bible are sufficiently absurd 
 as seen in the light of the understanding 
 alone, without regard to time and place, 
 but the book is too weighty and too exalt- 
 
 Chap. XL 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
248 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. XL 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
 ed, independently of all ecclesiastical sanc- 
 tions, and its use in the offices of religion ; 
 it is too venerable and sacred, too replete 
 with the highest and deepest in human 
 experience ; too hallowed and endeared by 
 sacred associations to be flippantly handled 
 in any of its parts. Where so mucli is 
 great and divine it is fair to presume that 
 those passages which are most offensive to 
 the critical sense admit of a view which 
 shall vindicate, if not their historic or 
 theological truth, their right to a place 
 in the sacred literature of the nations and 
 religions that have seen fit to preserve 
 them, If the alternative were historic 
 verity or wilful invention, infallible fact 
 or meaningless falsehood, the honest critic 
 must needs reject. But between the two 
 there is a third more excellent way, — the 
 way of reverent criticism. 
 
 There are several hypotheses which 
 might be entertained of this story, all 
 equally consistent with the credit of the 
 author and the writing. It may have been 
 a vision of the patriarch Abraham, — the 
 
 JEHOVAH AND ABRAHAM. 
 
 249 
 
 vision of a man who, though far in advance 
 of his time, was not too enlightened to 
 dream of personal converse with Jehovah. 
 A vision which, passing in oral tradition 
 from generation to generation, came at 
 length to assume, by gradual but unin- 
 tentional perversion, the form of historic 
 statement. Or it may have been an alle- 
 gory designed to illustrate moral truths 
 and characteristic ancestral traits, which 
 got incorporated with the history of the 
 time. Or it may be what modern criti- 
 cism terms a " imjth" by which we under- 
 stand not a wilful fabrication, but a com- 
 pound of truth and fiction, — unintention- 
 al fiction, in which it is difficult, sometimes 
 impossible, to find the boundary between 
 the two, — a story containing a nucleus of 
 historic truth, but grown in the lapse of 
 time, by passage from mouth to mouth, by 
 misapprehension of some of its reporters, 
 by unconscious exaggeration or perversion, 
 into something wide of the original fact. 
 An instance of this mythical formation is 
 
 the story of the " eleven thousand virgins," 
 11 ♦ 
 
 Chap. XL 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
250 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. XI. 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
 said to have suffered martyrdom at Co- 
 logne, whose pretended bones are still ex- 
 hibited in one of the churches of that city. 
 The kernel of fact, in this case, was the 
 martyrdom of a single maid whose Latin 
 name; mispronounced or misheard, was 
 taken for the number eleven thousand. 
 Another such instance is supposed by 
 some to be the story which makes St. 
 Peter the first bishop of the Church of 
 Eome, on the strength of a passage in one 
 of the canonical Epistles in which the 
 word Babylon is interpreted allegorically 
 as signifying Rome. Another, still, is that 
 which identifies St. Denis, the patron saint 
 of France, with Dionysius the Areopa- 
 gite, mentioned in the Acts of the Apos- 
 tles. In the case before us — supposing 
 the story to be a myth in this sense of 
 the word — the latent germ of historic 
 truth may have been some personal expe- 
 rience of the patriarch, the true nature of 
 which it is impossible to determine, and 
 which tradition, confounding together vis- 
 ions and passages of active life, embodied 
 
 JEHOVAH AND ABRAHAM. 
 
 251 
 
 in the form in which it is here pre- 
 sented. 
 
 Or, finally, suppose the passage to . be 
 pure invention, suppose it a poem in which 
 the personality of Abraham and his resi- 
 dence in Mamre are the only historical 
 elements. It is not surprising that poetry 
 should turn to history in oral tradition. 
 It would not by any means be the only 
 instance in the Bible in which a poetic 
 composition has got incorporated in the 
 history of an epoch or an individual, and 
 so fitted to the context in which it ap- 
 pears as to read like a part of the record, 
 with nothing to mark the transition from 
 fact to poetry and from poetry to fact. To 
 cite but one instance of such interpolation, 
 the dying charge of the patriarch Jacob to 
 his twelve sons, in the forty-ninth chapter 
 of Genesis, is a poem so inwoven with the 
 history of the time as to form an integral 
 part of the record, with no external indi- 
 cation and no announcement of the author 
 to mark where poetry begins £Cnd history 
 ends. 
 
 Chap. XI. 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
252 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. XI. 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
 This, I confess, is the view of the pas- 
 sage to which my own judgment inclines. 
 I regard it as a poem of the class called 
 Idyl, — a poem of unknown authorship 
 and unknown antiquity, but belonging, no 
 doubt, to the period of the first essays of 
 Hebrew literature ; not allegorical in the 
 strict and technical sense, yet partaking 
 somewhat of the characteristics of that 
 species of composition ; a poem whose 
 chief aim is to glorify Abraham and with 
 him the race of Israel, his favored proge- 
 ny ; to illustrate especially the one trait so 
 distinct and distinguishing in the mighty 
 patriarch, that prevailing consciousness of 
 God which the Scripture terms "faith," 
 and by virtue of which Abraham is be- 
 come a typical and representative person- 
 age, not to Israel only, but to all the race 
 of Shem, — the hero and prototj^e of trust- 
 ing piety. As such he is presented to the 
 Christian mind by St. Paul : " Know, there- 
 fore, that they which are of faith, the same 
 are the children of Abraham." A further 
 and secondary purpose seems to have dic- 
 
 JEHOVAH AND ABRAHAM. 
 
 253 
 
 tated the latter portion of this composi- 
 tion, — the colloquy regarding the fate of 
 Sodom. Here the design is apparently to 
 vindicate the relatives of Abraham resid- 
 ing in Sodom — the family of Lot — from 
 the charge of universal corruption pro- 
 nounced on that fated city ; with perhaps 
 an allegorical intimation of the saving 
 power of the righteous few in the midst 
 of a " wicked and perverse generation." 
 
 In order to fully appreciate the high 
 significance of this fragment of primeval 
 literature, we must form in our minds a 
 true conception of the personality of Abra- 
 ham and the place he once occupied in the 
 Hebrew imagination as Israel's ancestral 
 hero, great-grandsire of the princely Jo- 
 seph, Lord Chancellor of Egypt, prime-min- 
 ister of the first Sesostris, the chief of that 
 illustrious line. And Abraham has wider 
 relations. He is one of the great leaders 
 of human kind. In him we have the first 
 monotheist ; and not only so, but the earli- 
 est historic personality, the first historic in- 
 dividual who is anything more to us than 
 
 Chap. XL 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abrahatn. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
^iiStti^lM et^MitslW^ 
 
 iMti^fiiiiMaMXkiiiiS^.;SrS,.^i;,^^i^ 
 
 254 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 JEHOVAH AND ABRAHAM. 
 
 Chap. XL 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
 a name. Others there are antecedent to 
 Abraham by tliousands of years, — actual 
 personages, it may be, — but none other 
 of whom enough has survived to give the 
 impression of a marked personality, no 
 earlier actor in the scenes of time of whose 
 character and way of life we can form a 
 distinct conception. This is the first fig- 
 ure in the world's annals who presents a 
 definite image to the mind. In this sense 
 he is the ancestor, not of the people of Is- 
 rael only, but of universal man. 
 
 Such is the sublime, the sacred import 
 to all succeeding time of that primeval per- 
 sonality which bears the name of Abraham, 
 and whose indelible impress, as stamped 
 on his age, is preserved to us in the Bible. 
 Of such an individual it must needs be 
 that every authentic tradition would be 
 gathered up and religiously preserved by 
 a grateful and admiring posterity. And, 
 not only so, but connected therewith there 
 would almost of necessity arise in time a 
 host of sagas, a ,mass of legendary and 
 mythic lore such as gathers around all 
 
 ♦ 
 
 Providential men, a miscellaneous growth 
 in which grains of fact are so blent with 
 allegory and fable that criticism cannot 
 always separate the nucleus of historic 
 truth from the nebula of fiction which 
 envelops it. 
 
 Concerning such an one tales would be 
 framed and poems composed as codicils to 
 the genuine original story, — supplemental 
 illustrations of his spirit and life. The 
 narrative in question, describing the visit 
 of Jehovah to Abraham and the confer- 
 ence between them, may be supposed to 
 be one of these poems, unmetrical in form,* 
 but exhibiting in structure, spirit, and de- 
 sign the essential marks of poetic compo- 
 sition, — an imaginary sketch of patriarch- 
 al life, a poetic bodying forth of spiritual 
 truth. 
 
 As a poem, then, as a Hebrew Idyl, this 
 writing is not to be judged by the stand- 
 ard of our time, least of all by modern 
 Christian conceptions of the Godhead. Its 
 
 * The modern idyl is often unmetrical; witness 
 those of Gessner. 
 
 255 
 
 Chap. XL 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
256 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. XI. 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
 representations are sucli as were current 
 in the childhood of the race, when the in- 
 finite God could be supposed to appear 
 in human form and hold personal, visible, 
 and oral converse with man. Considered in 
 this aspect, the Hebrew poem may fairly 
 challenge comparison in matter, if not in 
 form, in force of conception, in vivid col- 
 oring and sensuous imagination, still more 
 in moral earnestness and spiritual truth, 
 with the best in its kind of classic an- 
 tiquity. There has come down to us a 
 Latin poem of Ovid, a writer of the Augus- 
 tan age, embodying a Greek mythological 
 tradition, — the story of Baucis and Phil- 
 emon, — which offers in one or two points 
 a curious parallel with this of the Penta- 
 teuch. Two Olympian deities, Jove and 
 Mercury, visit in disguise the cottage of a 
 Phrygian shepherd.* They are hospitably 
 received by him and his wife, who exert 
 themselves to provide a fit entertainment 
 for the unknown guests. So far the par- 
 allel holds good, and the scene and char- 
 
 * Ovid, Metamorph., VIII. 630. 
 
 t 
 
 I 
 
 JEHOVAH AND ABRAHAM. 
 
 257 
 
 acters are drawn with exquisite beauty by 
 the Eoman poet. But the sequel exhibits 
 the superior strain of the Hebrew. The 
 hospitality of Baucis and Philemon is re- 
 warded by converting their house into a 
 temple, by making them the ministering 
 servants, the priest and priestess, of the 
 new sanctuary, and granting them an equal 
 term of years. In the case of Abraham 
 the same virtue is requited with the prom- 
 ise of the long-desired succession, and a 
 blessing which extends through distant 
 generations, embracing the whole earth in 
 its gracious scope. "And the Lord said 
 .... Abraham shall surely become a 
 great and mighty nation, and all the na- 
 tions of the earth shall be blessed in him." 
 The crowning beauty of the Hebrew 
 narrative is Abraham's plea for the city 
 of Sodom. To his intercession it is prom- 
 ised tliat if ten righteous be found within 
 its gates the city shall not be destroyed 
 for the sake of those ten. Here the story 
 assumes an allegorical character, and, under 
 the guise of a special local application. 
 
 Chap. XI. 
 
 Jehovah atid 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
258 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 wwsa*ti^«t<j:W,^*& i^:«<*^ iiSsr^eiSiit&sa^sk:.^:^ 
 
 JEHOVAH AND ABRAHAM. 
 
 259 
 
 Chap. XI. 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
 shadows forth a universal moral truth, — 
 the saving influence of moral worth in 
 human society. Cities and nations are 
 saved by the righteous that dwell in 
 them, not by arts or arms. The health 
 of a country is not its commerce nor 
 its agriculture, not its exports nor its im- 
 ports; neither its military organization 
 nor its civil constitution, its legislation 
 nor its judiciary, but its conscience ; i. e. 
 the moral elevation of its citizens. A re- 
 cent historian is at pains to prove that 
 the progress of society is due to the intel- 
 lectual rather than the moral powers. Be 
 that as it may, it is very certain that the 
 preservation of society depends on the 
 moral rather than the intellectual. Sup- 
 pose a community in which activity of 
 mind has reached its maximum, in which 
 all the faculties are at work, all the arts 
 that minister to human well-being duly 
 cultivated and successfully practised, in 
 which intellectual development is more 
 advanced and more universal than the 
 world has yet known it at its best estate. 
 
 But while the material prosperity attend- 
 ant on this intellectual development is at 
 its height, suppose a sudden stagnation of 
 the moral life, a general corruption of the 
 moral sense; suppose the conscience of 
 such a community paralyzed; suppose a 
 consequent decline and final dying out of 
 all the virtues, a state in which probi- 
 ty, fldelity, continence, sobriety, brotherly 
 kindness, and charity are extinct, anji 
 where unqualified selfishness and unbri- 
 dled lust universally prevail. How long 
 in such a state would material prosperity 
 endure ? How long would mental activ- 
 ity continue to advance or refuse to re- 
 cede ? How long would arts and laws, 
 how long would the state itself survive 
 the dissolution of the moral life ? Who 
 does not see that moral qualities are the 
 only sure guaranties of intellectual pro- 
 gress, that the virtues of society are its 
 ultimate bondsmen, and righteousness the 
 bulwark of the state ? On the other hand, 
 the conservative power of righteousness 
 exceeds its diffusion. It is not to be 
 
 Chap. XI. 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
260 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. XI. 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
 measured by the number of those to whom 
 that character may be ascribed. The num- 
 ber of such in any community is compara- 
 tively small, but society survives through 
 their saving power. The Swedish states- 
 man was surprised to find witli how little 
 wisdom the world is governed. The Chris- 
 tian moralist has equal cause for wonder 
 when he thinks with liow little virtue the 
 world is saved, — with how few examples 
 of supreme worth ; when he thinks how 
 small the- number of the moral heroes of 
 history compared with those who have 
 made themselves a name and won endur- 
 ing renown by secular enterprise, by mil- 
 itary prowess or intellectual gifts. But 
 to these it is due that the latter have 
 found opportunity of action and had their 
 place in the world. To the moral heroes 
 of history it is due that there ever was a 
 history of human kind to be written, that 
 there is a history now to be read, that hu- 
 man society continues to this day. With- 
 out these it had perished long ago through 
 utter corruption, whelmed in its own 
 
 JEHOVAH AND ABRAHAM. 
 
 2G1 
 
 ruins, leaving no trace of itseK in a world 
 dispeopled of civilized kinds and aban- 
 doned forever to savage tribes. There 
 never was an age and never a city or 
 state in which moral corruption was not 
 too rife. In such as survive the ever- 
 threatening destruction and death it is the 
 more prevailing virtue of the few which 
 overcomes the abounding vice of the many, 
 and rights at last the sinking world. In 
 every age those " ten righteous " have been 
 tiie saviors of their time. They have 
 saved it with their excellent works and 
 the more excelling beauty of their lives. 
 Without ostensibly combining for that 
 end, with no visible conspiring, without 
 art or device, or shrewd organizatioli, or 
 policy or plot ; by being what they are, 
 and living what they are from the heart 
 of faith, by walking uprightly, doing 
 justice, and loving mercy, in their sev- 
 eral spheres; with the still conservatism 
 and counter-attraction of miraculous good- 
 ness, they have kept the world from go- 
 ing to pieces with the wear and tear 
 
 Chap. XL 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
^ 
 
 262 
 
 PRLMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. XI. 
 
 Jehovah and 
 Abraham. 
 
 A Hebrew Idyl. 
 
 and centrilugal strain of disintegrating 
 vice. 
 
 Those "ten righteous" are the secret 
 and immortal cabal which -unconsciously 
 plots the preservation of the state, as self- 
 ishness and low chicanery and political 
 intrigue are forever plotting its destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 XII. 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE INNER LIFE. 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE INNER LIFE. 
 
 265 
 
 THE HEEITAGE OF THE IN:NrEE 
 
 LIFE. 
 
 "And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at 
 eventide." — Genesis xxiv. 63. 
 
 A SINGLE trait will often reveal the in- 
 dividual to whom it pertains as truly as a 
 finished portrait. We know very little of 
 the second of those immortal three whom 
 the Hebrew nation was so fond of namincr 
 in associated sequence, — the ancestral trio 
 from whom they derived their origins and 
 their God. Much less of Isaac do we 
 know than of Abraham his father or Jacob 
 his son. These fill a large space in the 
 annals of that people ; they are prominent 
 and very positive individualities. Abra- 
 ham, the majestic sheik, the mighty Meso- 
 potamian prince, the first monotheist, the 
 first distinct historic personality, stands 
 out in heroic relief on the canvas of tra- 
 
 12 
 
 Chap. XII. 
 
 The Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
266 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. XII. 
 
 The Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
 dition. Jacob, the self-seeking, calculat- 
 ing, plodding, intriguing, but also much 
 enduring, patient, indefatigable adventur- 
 er, is also a marked and significant figure. 
 Between these two, so unlike in intellect- 
 ual and moral worth, but resembling each 
 other in force and enterprise, the record 
 presents, like an interpolation of a foreign 
 stock, the mild apparition of passive, med- 
 itative Isaac, a man with as little of the 
 hero in his composition as any whose name 
 has come down to us. Very little is said 
 of liim by the annalist, in comparison with 
 the other two, for the reason, I suppose, 
 that tliere was little to say. He was not 
 one of those who make history, or of whom 
 history makes much. A passive nature, 
 moulded by circumstance, easily persuad- 
 ed, obeying foreign guidance ; on no occa- 
 sijon do we find him taking the initiative, 
 or striking out a path for himself. In the 
 most important concern of his life, in the 
 choice of a wife, although forty years old, 
 he suffers the whole business to be man- 
 aged for him by paternal authority; and 
 
 I 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE INNER LIFE 
 
 267 
 
 when the arrangements are completed ac- 
 cepts without question the woman whom 
 his father's confidential servant had picked 
 up, in a very accidental way, — the first 
 he lighted on in Mesopotamia, whither 
 Abraham had sent him for that purpose, 
 — of whom he knew nothing but that she 
 was fair to look upon and willing to emi- 
 grate in view of a promised husband. 
 Driven by famine from Beersheba to Ge- 
 rar, he imitates a device of his father in 
 giving out that his wife is his sister. We 
 are told that he "waxed great," that is, 
 rich after the manner of patriarchal pros- 
 perity, rich in flocks and herds, but we 
 are not informed of any decisive act of his 
 own by which that wealth was obtained, 
 or by which he distinguished himself 
 among his contemporaries. It is chiefly 
 as a link in the line of patriarchal succes- 
 sion, as the son of Abraham and father of 
 Jacob, that his name survives. The most 
 characteristic thing recorded of him is his 
 going out to meditate in the field at even- 
 tide, at a very critical period of his his- 
 
 Chap. xil 
 
 The Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
268 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE INNER LIFE. 
 
 269 
 
 Chap. XII. 
 
 The Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
 tory. This is all that one naturally remem- 
 bers of Isaac except his narrow escape, 
 when a boy, from the sacrificial knife, and 
 the agony on his death-bed occasioned by 
 the treachery of liis wife, who conspired 
 with her younger son to cheat him of the 
 blessing intended for his favorite Esau. 
 
 But this going out to meditate is really 
 characteristic, and marks the man more 
 than anything else recorded of him. If 
 he did so on this occasion, then probably 
 often. I suppose it was his habit so to do. 
 He was one of the meditative kind. In his 
 case, as often happens, the want of active 
 energy was compensated by disproportion- 
 ate intensity of the inner life. A silent, 
 brooding character, fond of his own com- 
 pany, glad to be alone, retiring from the 
 world of affairs into the sanctuary of the 
 mind. 
 
 The theme of the patriarch's medita- 
 tions who will venture to guess ? Another, 
 at such a time, on the eve of marriage, ex- 
 pecting a wife by the next arrival from 
 the East, would have been absorbed in 
 
 anticipations of the coming event, would 
 have hastened to meet the promised bride, 
 would have kept his eye fixed on the hori- 
 zon to catch the first glimpse of the cara- 
 van charged with his fate. It is evident, 
 I think, from the color of the narrative, 
 that this was not Isaac's mood or intent. 
 He went out "at eventide," not to meet 
 his intended, like a bridegroom flush with 
 expectation, impatient of delay, but to 
 have a quiet evening stroll and " to med- 
 itate." 
 
 I infer from the nature of that term a 
 mind preoccupied with other thoughts than 
 those of impending domestic relations. 
 The word implies more abstract specula- 
 tion. " And he lifted up his eyes, and be- 
 hold ! the camels were coming." His eyes, 
 it would seem, had been previously fixed 
 on the ground, as one absorbed in specu- 
 lation; intent, perhaps, on some of those 
 great questions of Providence and destiny 
 which have been at once the puzzle and 
 delight of meditative minds in every age. 
 Who knows ? It was before the days of 
 
 Chap. XII. 
 
 The Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
 1 v*-3Bt,.»ai«s^'(?#>ss34P%-~!ji,^'*jias^9.j!Sg«lK^S,^5^».,^ ^^t-^« a^ 
 
270 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE INNER LIFE. 
 
 271 
 
 Chap. XII. 
 
 The Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
 literature. Writing had not been invent- 
 ed. If the patriarch experienced intuitions, 
 or had formed conclusions, on any of 
 these themes, there was no opportunity of 
 recording them, no provision, no medium 
 for their transmission, except the very in- 
 adequate one of oral tradition, which re- 
 tains only the gross idea or concrete fact, 
 not tlje finer, subtile thought, unless em- 
 bodied in a parable or fable. But these 
 finer thoughts do not always admit of be- 
 ing so embodied, nor do all who conceive 
 them possess the artistic faculty required 
 for such representation. And so the med- 
 itations of Isaac, and their theme, must be 
 left to conjecture. -Whatever they were, 
 whether wise or foolish, shallow or pro- 
 found, they are lost to posterity. He 
 wrote no book, he composed no fable, or 
 none that has come down in his name. 
 And yet, on the ground of this slight in- 
 timation, I entertain the fancy that Isaac 
 was a thinker and a seer, a man of con- 
 templative habit and introverted mind, to 
 whom, in rapt moods, came trutlis of mys- 
 
 tic import, and who lived and rejoiced in 
 their light. Those evening meditations 
 have not transpired; the topics of his 
 musing and their results are lost to the 
 world; but the musing spirit of the man 
 was not lost, — it survived in his descend- 
 ants, it became a distinguishing trait of 
 the Hebrew race. 
 
 Compare that people with other nations 
 of antiquity, — with the two best known to 
 us by their history and works, the Greeks 
 and Eomans. Wliat is it that first strikes 
 us as constituting the main distinction be- 
 tween them ? Beyond all question it is 
 their religion. The religion of the He- 
 brews acknowledged and adored one only 
 God. The religion of the Greeks and Eo- 
 mans believed in a multiplicity of gods ; 
 a separate divinity for every power in na- 
 ture and every aspect of life. The God 
 of the Hebrews was the infinite Spirit 
 that made and rules the universe of 
 things; the gods of the Greeks and Eo- 
 mans were partly impersonations of nat- 
 ural forces and partly deified men. They 
 
 Chap. XIL 
 
 T^e Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
272 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. XII. 
 
 The Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
 sought and saw their divinities in natural 
 objects, in sun and moon, in thunder and 
 rain, in mountains, woods, and rivers, in 
 the passions of love and lust, and the for- 
 tunes of war. The Hebrews sought and 
 found their God in the secret of the mind. 
 It is the nature of monotheism to turn the 
 thoughts of men inward, that of polythe- 
 ism to fix them on things without. Ac- 
 cordingly, the Gentile religion favored ex- 
 ternal representations,— statues and games 
 and theatrical sliows ; the Hebrew favored 
 silent thought and devout aspiration. The 
 one promoted plastic art, the other devel- 
 oped the interior life. 
 
 We may say, then, that the Hebrew 
 mind was distinguished by its inwardness, 
 the Hebrew race by the inwardness of 
 their religion and all their intellectual 
 life. We cannot deny to the Greeks and 
 Romans, to the former especially, the 
 credit of having produced great thinkers. 
 Some of the greatest the world has known 
 have been the product of Greek life. But 
 the general drift of Greek culture was not- 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE INNER LIFE. 
 
 273 
 
 in that direction. It tended rather to out- 
 ward forms, to plastic and dramatic art. 
 The genius of the Hebrews, on the con- 
 trary, was essentially religious; its legit- 
 imate expression was devout aspiration, 
 prophecy and psalm. Every monument 
 which we possess of the intellectual life of 
 that peojjle is, in one way or another, di- 
 rectly or indirectly concerned with religion. 
 Thus the spirit of silent, meditative 
 Isaac reproduced itself in the life of his 
 race through all the ages of their won- 
 drous history. Less conspicuous in the 
 record than the other two with whom his 
 name is associated, — the one as father, 
 the other as son, — a mute, undemonstra- 
 tive, isolated figure between majestic Abra- 
 ham and plodding, scheming, shuffling Ja- 
 cob ; he, too, has stamped his type on his 
 descendants. His; people still name him in 
 the triad of progenitors who prefigured the 
 fortunes of the race when the world was 
 young, and will name him while a vestiiie 
 of the race endures. The ancestral three 
 have each bequeathed to their progeny 
 
 12 * 
 
 Chap. XIL 
 
 The Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
274 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE INNER LIFE. 
 
 275 
 
 Chap. XII. 
 
 I%« Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
 one distinguishing trait. From Abraham 
 the race derived the idea of one God, 
 the original impulse of their monotheism. 
 Father Jacob gave them the acquisitive- 
 ness, the calculating spirit of trade, and 
 the long-suffering, which still distinguish 
 them among all the peoples of the earth. 
 The legacy of Isaac was the silent, brood- 
 ing mind, the tendency to inwardness, less 
 generally diffused, less frequently devel- 
 oped, less nationally prominent, but still, 
 on the whole, as it seems to me, a charac- 
 teristic trait. 
 
 It manifests itself with more or less dis- 
 tinctness in all the great worthies of He- 
 brew history. After ages of bondage, when 
 the lights of the patriarchal world had 
 faded into dim tradition, it reappeared in 
 Moses, the deliverer of the sunken and 
 oppressed race, the regenerator of Israel, 
 who conversed with the long-forgotten God 
 in the solitudes of Horeb, and evolved 
 from his brooding mind, in lonely med- 
 itation, the great thought of the Hebrew 
 theocracy. We see traces of it in Joshua 
 
 and Jephthah and Gideon, men of action 
 though they were, whose calling was the 
 sword. It manifests itself with intenser en- 
 ergy in the life of David, — also, and em- 
 phatically, a man of action ; but one who, 
 amid all the distractions of war and all 
 the disquietudes of regal office, found time 
 for solitary seK-communion, and deeply 
 meditated the wonders of Divine Wis- 
 dom, and sung the guiding hand of the 
 shepherd God. It lay at the foundation, 
 and furnished the topics, and kindled the 
 fire of the awfully sublime strains, the 
 gorgeous visions, the burning invectives 
 of the Hebrew prophets, from Joel to Mal- 
 achi. Then, after an interval of centuries, 
 it glowed again with renewed fervor in 
 John the Baptist, who drew all Judsea to 
 the wilderness to hear his warnings and 
 receive from him the baptism of repent- 
 ance. I need not say how large a con- 
 stituent it was in the life of Jesus, the 
 consummate flower of the nation's and the 
 world's history. John of the Apocalypse 
 saw in its li^ht the fall of Eome and the 
 
 Chap. XII. 
 
 Tlie Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
 ''im. 
 
276 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. XII. 
 
 TTie Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
 splendors of the New Jenisalem. Paul 
 was carried by it into the seventh heaven, 
 " whether in the body of out of the body," 
 he could not tell. In later time Maimon- 
 ides, by means of it, divined the deeper 
 import of the Hebrew Scripture. And, 
 later still, Spinoza, profoundest of modern 
 Israelites, — cast out of the synagogue, — 
 found in it the dawn of a new day and a 
 peace from the bosom of God which the 
 jar of the world could not disturb and per- 
 secution assailed in vain. 
 
 Thus the spirit of Isaac, the inward-look- 
 ing, thoughtful, brooding spirit lived, and, 
 it may be, still lives in his descendants. 
 The predisposition to interior life was his 
 bequest to the Hebrew race. And who 
 does not see that all which that race have 
 been to the world, all that Isaac's poste::- 
 ity have done for mankind, is due to the 
 wealth and force of their interior life. As 
 a civil power, they have never flourished 
 with anything like the vigor and spread 
 of other nations. Even in the time of Sol- 
 omon, the golden age of their prosperity. 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE INNER LIFE. 
 
 277 
 
 i 
 
 H 
 
 V 
 
 the extent of their dominion was very 
 limited, their^ foreign power insignificant 
 compared with the mighty monarchies 
 that bordered and finally overwhelmed 
 them. Shut up in the narrow territoiy 
 of Palestine, with a landlocked capital, — 
 few facilities of commerce and measure in- 
 dustrial development, — they present a con- 
 temptible figure in political history. But 
 what people among all the races of men 
 has obtained such moral sway and exerted 
 an influence so broad and deep on the 
 world of mankind ? What has any other 
 of the nations of antiquity contributed to 
 human growth and well-being that de- 
 serves to be compared with the blessing 
 conferred on humanity by Isaac's line ? 
 Take the most powerful of them all, the 
 strong, imperial Koman, whose legions sub- 
 dued the earth, whose empire stretched 
 from Egypt to Britain, from the Caspian 
 to the Straits of Gibraltar, the traces of 
 whose power are visible in most of the 
 countries of Europe to this day ; what, on 
 the whole, have the Eomans done for man- 
 
 Chap. xil 
 
 TTie Heritage 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
278 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE INNER LIFE. 
 
 279 
 
 Chap. XII. 
 
 The Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
 kind ? Something in the way of civiliza- 
 tion. In the way of civil jurisdiction much. 
 A body of laws they have given to the 
 world which still remains the noblest mon- 
 ument of legislation, and is still received as 
 the best in that kind. The Greeks have 
 given us letters and the highest models 
 of beautiful art. But these benefactions, 
 precious as they are in themselves, are 
 comparatively light when weighed in the 
 balance with that supreme blessing con- 
 ferred on the world by the Hebrew race, 
 — the Christian religion with its civiliz- 
 ing, humanizing, world-enlightening, sav- 
 ing power. Grecian letters and Eoman ju- 
 risprudence failed to preserve the ancient 
 world from dissolution and corruption. 
 And when that world was tumbling into 
 ruin, when decay was stealing over all the 
 glories and grace of life, and death was 
 sapping the heart of society; then, from 
 the depth of the inner life, enkindled in 
 a prophet of the Hebrew race, God sent 
 forth his Spirit to renew the face of the 
 earth. Man heard once more the genuine 
 
 
 accent of faith, and lived again. The gos- 
 pel, 
 
 '^ Through a world of death, 
 Breathed into him a second breath 
 More searching than the breath of spring." 
 
 Considered solely as a means of civiliza- 
 tion, as an agent in extending the human 
 family, — or the better and more progres- 
 sive portion of it, — as an agent in worth- 
 ily and profitably occupying the habitable 
 earth, Christianity outweighs all other 
 agencies, and all the products of human 
 invention. And Christianity, so far as 
 race and .nation are concerned in its jjen- 
 esis, is a growth of the Hebrew stem, a 
 birth from that interior spiritual life so 
 characteristic of the Hebrew race. It was 
 born of Jewish parentage, it was cradled 
 in Jewish conventicles, it went forth from 
 Jerusalem in the charge of Jewish men. 
 From the bosom of Judaism came the 
 mightiest power that has ever swayed 
 mankind. 
 
 Thus flowered and culminated the spirit 
 of meditation which Judah inherited from 
 
 Chap. XII. 
 
 The Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
280 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 Chap. XII. 
 
 The Heritage 
 
 of the. Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
 Isaac, and thus was fulfilled the promise 
 given to the arch-father of monotheism, 
 " In Isaac shall thy seed be called," and, 
 in that seed " shall all the nations of the 
 eartJi be blessed." 
 
 The quantity and force of the inner Hfe 
 in the thoughtful men of a nation is a 
 measure of the greatness which that na- 
 tion is destined to realize in its own fu- 
 ture, or of which it is to be the source and 
 occasion to other lands. The thoughtful 
 men of England in the sixteenth century 
 were the Puritans. The ruling powers 
 of the nation, king, lords, and bishops, de- 
 spised and persecuted and cast them out. 
 But from them came the overthrow of the 
 evil dynasty that sought to crush them. 
 From them came England's subsequent 
 greatness ; and from them came the great- 
 est in energy and promise of existing 
 nations. American growth, American free- 
 dom, the polity of these States, their com- 
 merce, industry, and westward-pushing 
 progress, are the latest outcome of the in- 
 ner life, whose first fruit was Puritanism. 
 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE INNER LIFE. 
 
 281 
 
 The whole Arabian civilization which 
 flourished with so much splendor in the 
 Middle Age, far surpassing the Christian 
 world of that time in science and art, was 
 the natural growth of the faith which orig- 
 inated in the brooding mind of Moham- 
 med, also a descendant of Abraham, in 
 whom, I think, the great progenitor is 
 more apparent than in any of Isaac's seed. 
 In fine, whatever is grandest and best 
 and most enduring in human achieve- 
 ments is directly or indirectly the issue 
 and fruit of the inner life. Whoever has 
 conceived in himself any fruitful, world- 
 renewing thought, whoever has proposed 
 to himself any arduous and saving work 
 or mission, has been guided thereto by se- 
 cret meditation. Alone, in the wilderness, 
 battling with self and the world, the Son 
 of Man laid fast the foundations of the 
 Christian ages. In the solitudes of mo- 
 nastic seclusion the great Eeformer and 
 father of Protestantism received into his 
 soul the new evangile of faith and free- 
 dom. 
 
 Chap. XIL 
 
 The Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
282 
 
 PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRADITION. 
 
 THE HERITAGE OF THE INNER LIFE. 
 
 283 
 
 Chap. XIL 
 
 The Heritage 
 ■ of the Inner 
 Life. 
 
 The solitary thinkers, they are the 
 world's rulers, they are the creators, they 
 are the future, they are fate. In lonely 
 self-communion the mind encounters the 
 primordial powers that have the shaping 
 of our own and the world's destinies. 
 There in their secret laboratory the silent 
 viotherSy Eeason, Imagination, Faith, and 
 Will, devise and mould the coming time. 
 Who can guess what new births of social 
 life, what new dispensations of the Spirit, 
 are yet to spring from that unknown world 
 which contains the archetypes and rudi- 
 ments of all things ? 
 
 Man has searched creation throuirh in 
 quest of knowledge: he has looked into 
 every corner of the habitable globe, he has 
 studied the products of every zone, he has 
 sounded the seas and measured the heav- 
 ens, he has noted the structure of every 
 creature and the path of every star ; there 
 is no inquiry so arduous which he has not 
 attempted, no science so perplexing which 
 he has not pursued. He has made him- 
 self acquainted with the world of his sur- 
 
 \ 
 
 1 
 
 rounding. But that inner w^orld, enclosed 
 within the walls of the fleshly frame, the 
 world of ideas, so bounded in space, so 
 boundless in wealth and capacity, who 
 shall fathom ? The possibilities of mate- 
 rial nature we are fast ascertaining and 
 may hope one day to fully explore and 
 comprehend. But the possibilities of the 
 Spirit, of life as shaped by the Spirit, who 
 can divine ? " It doth not yet appear what 
 we shall be." We know not what the fu- 
 ture has in store for the race. But when 
 we compare the idea in our mind with the 
 facts of life there opens to our thought 
 an inexhaustible field of moral enterprise, 
 an interminable prospect of ends to be 
 achieved and victories won. 
 
 God be thanked for the limitless long- 
 ing, the unquenchable hope ; for the un- 
 written leaves in the Book of Fate; for 
 the unknown wealth and incalculable 
 powers of the inner life ! 
 
 Chap. XIL 
 
 The Heritage 
 
 of the Inner 
 
 Life. 
 
S V 
 
 
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