; Booki\ j fur. the fauMding ef a- College in- thif £olony> • iLiiiBiaamr • Deposited by the Linonian and Brothers Library 1908 THE DIVINE ORIGIN CHRISTIANITY INDICATED BY ITS HISTORICAL EFFECTS BY RICHARD S. STORRS, D.D., LL.D NEW YORK ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY 900 Broadway, Cor. 20th Street COPYRIGHT, 1884, BY Anson D. F. Randolph & Compan.. EDWARD O. JENKINS' SONS, . -0BER- „„----. Printers and Stereotype™, Binder 20 North William St. Il6 and „8 E„st ,'.<,, gtree. TEN LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINAEY, NEW YORK, THE LOWELL INSTITUTE, BOSTON. WITH NOTES AND AN INDEX. TO THE MEMORY OF WILLIAM ADAMS, D.D., LL.D. HONORED AND BELOVED, FOR HIS ADMIRABLE POWERS, FOR HIS MANY ACCOMPLISHMENTS, FOR HIS LARGE USEFULNESS, POR THE WISDOM OF HIS COUNSELS, THE GRACE OP HIS ENGAGING COURTESY, THE UNFAILING FIDELITY OF HIS FRIENDSHIP : MOST OF ALL FOR THE BEAUTY AND STRENGTH OF HIS CHRISTIAN FAITH : THESE LEOTUEES, PREPARED AT HIS URGENT INVITATION, AND AFTERWARD REWARDED BY HIS APPROVAL, ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. CONTENTS. LECTURE I. External evidence for Christianity as Divine : the value and limitations of its probative force ; 3-32 ; notes, 361-380. LECTURE II. The new conception of God, introduced by Christianity ; 35-63 ; notes, 381-408. LECTURE III. The new conception of Man, introduced by Christianity ; 67-99 ; notes, 409-433. LECTURE IV. The new conception of the duty of Man toward God, in worship ; 103- 132; notes, 434-458. LECTURE V. The new conception of Man's duty to Man, in politics and society; 135-169; notes, 459-_97. LECTURE VI. The new conception of the duties of Nations, toward each other ; 173- 208; notes, 498-526. LECTURE VII. The effect of Christianity on the Mental culture of mankind ; 211-245 ; notes, 527-566. to vi CONTENTS. LECTUEE VIII. The effect of Christianity on the Moral life of mankind; 249-282; notes, 567-597. LECTUEE IX. The effect of Christianity on the world's hope of progress ; 285-316 ; notes, 598-624. LECTUEE X. A review ofthe argument, with added suggestions; 319-357; notes, 625-639. Index, 641. ATJTHOE'S NOTE. The following Lectures were prepared to be delivered before the students of the Union Theological Seminary in Eew York, on what is there known as " The Ely Foundation," * and also before the Lowell Institute in Boston. They were subsequently, by request, delivered in Brooklyn. The publication of them has been delayed, partly by the neces sity of using occasional and infrequent intervals of time for col lating and transcribing the passages from various authors whose respective statements of fact or opinion will be found in the Ap pendix, and partly by the wish to get sufficient leisure for revis ing the Lectures, for considering critically the argument which they present, after the mind should have ceased to be affected by any lingering influence from the impulse of rapid writing, for limiting whatever might appear on such review excessive in statement, and for reinforcing whatever a maturer thought might regard as imperfect in conception or inadequate in ex pression. Circumstances have hardly permitted the writer, to the full measure of his desire, to accomplish this purpose. Sen tences have occasionally been changed in form. A number of paragraphs are retained on the printed page, which had been ex- * Established by Mr. Z. Stiles Ely, of New York, A.D. 1865; the title of the Lectureship being "The Elias P. Ely Lectures, on the Evidences of Christianity." viii AUTHOR'S NOTE. eluded in speaking by lack of time. In a few instances, the argument, where it seemed needful, has been slightly expanded, or differently illustrated. But in all important respects the Lec tures appear in the volume as they were when deHvered. A good many notes and references have here been added to them, as will be observed : in the hope that these may illustrate, sustain, or if needful correct, related statements in the text. In arranging these Notes the compiler of them has had no thought of seeking to instruct studious scholars, to whom, on the other hand, he gladly acknowledges his constant indebtedness, and to whom he is quite aware that many of the JSTotes will seem wholly superfluous. But knowing that some of those whom it is hoped that the Lectures will interest may not have ready access to some of the books important to be consulted in connection with the subject, he has thought it well to quote, instead of merely referring to, such passages from ancient or modern au thors, lying within his reach, as have seemed to have the most direct bearing upon his principal trains of thought. The many to whom these passages are famihar, or who might easily turn to them in their libraries, will understand, he doubts not, the motive wliich has prompted to the printing of them here, for the con venience of those less amply equipped. Other passages, equally pertinent, have been excluded, by an unwillingness to increase unduly the size of the volume. In making selection of those to be printed, while laying others aside, the lecturer has had, of course, to use his own judgment as to what would probably be most interesting or helpful to those reading his pages. He has no doubt made mistakes, perhaps many, in applying this rule ; and he regrets the absence of pas sages which he had taken pains to collect, because possessing to his mind important significance. But he hopes that, in the main affirmative statements made in the Lectures will be found to have AUTHOR'S NOTE. jx sufficient verification in the Notes ; and that the roots of the tree, even as here presented, will not be deemed altogether unequal to the trunk and branches which they ought to sustain. "When the passages cited have been taken from classical or for eign authors, they are always presented in an English translation, to render them serviceable to those unacquainted with other languages. Where this translation has been made by the wri ter, he has sought to secure accuracy in it, rather than ele gance. But he has 'freely used translations by others, where these have become accredited among scholars, and where no reason for changing them has appeared. Thus the quotations from Plato are made in Jowett's version ; those from Plutarch, in Goodwin's, or Clough's ; and those from the early Christian Fathers, almost uni formly, in the translations of the Ante-Mcene Library. Especially where the meaning of single words has been a matter of special importance, as is not infrequently the case, one naturally pre fers to have his own judgment thus corrected or justified by the conclusions of others. In not a few instances, as will be noticed, extracts are taken from modern authors with whose general lines of thought the writer of the Lectures can by no means agree, and from whose prevailing spirit he must earnestly dissent, but who seem to him, upon the points specifically touched, to have borne a witness to the truth which as coming from them has perhaps peculiar value. In all cases, it is to be distinctly understood that the gen eral sentiments quoted, from whatever author, may not be pre cisely or fully expressive of the opinions of the lecturer. They are sometimes purposely taken from those with whom he differs, as showing how other minds have regarded the same matters, and as repeating the thoughts concerning those matters which they have put into energetic or attractive expression. To enable any one wishing to do so to verify the references, or X AUTHOR'S NOTE. to read the cited passages in their original context, the editions which have been used are carefully mentioned ; and they have been the most recent which it has been convenient to consult. Where foreign editions and American reprints have been equally accessible, the latter have been used in maldng the citations, the correctness of these being first ascertained, in order to afford all possible facilities to any wishing to examine them further. It is hoped that each Note will be found connected, with sufficient clearness, with the page on which -lands the corresponding pas sage in the text of the Lectures ; but this connection is only indi cated at the beginning of the Note itself. In order to avoid the frequent and troublesome arrest of the eye in traversing the pages, it has seemed best, to both publisher and author, that all numbers or signs directing attention to the Appendix, should be omitted from the body of the volume. The comparatively few foot-notes wliich are retained have been employed to mark the location of passages fully quoted in the text, or of such as it has seemed less important than in other cases to print at large in the Appendix. One who has suffered many times from the necessity of review ing large parts of volumes which had been left wholly unindexed, in order to find a passage containing an important statement of fact or opinion, the authorship of which was known, but the pre cise place of which could not be recalled, may perhaps be par doned if he has sometimes regretted that the ancient vigorous forms of anathema against sins of omission are not now in custom ary use. But he would certainly lose all claim to forgiveness on the part of his own readers if he had failed to supply to them what he has desired and missed in others. A very minute and elaborate Index was prepared for this volume, with the utmost kindness and care, by Dr. S. Austin Allibone, of the Lenox Li brary. The necessary limitation of the size of the volume pre- AUTHOR'S NOTE. xi eluded, however, so large an addition, and a briefer Index has been substituted. It is believed that this will still afford, to those wishing to refer to any passage in the book, or to any author quoted or referred to, the needful assistance. In reading the Lectures and the Notes, for the purpose of preparing an Index, Dr. Allibone by no means charged himself with any responsibil ity for suggesting typographical corrections. But his accurate and trained eye detected occasional errors, which had before passed unnoticed ; and to his judgment and critical taste, in such matters as in others, the author has been frequently indebted. That branch of the External Evidences of the Divine origin of t Christianity which is considered in these Lectures is often inci dentally referred to, but it hardly seems to have had among us the comprehensive and particular treatment to which it is enti tled. Professor George P. Fisher has treated a part of it, in his Lectures on " The Beginnings of Christianity," and he has done it with the abundant learning, the precision and elegance of state ment, and the admirable candor, which he brings to the discus sion of every subject. But large parts of it did not come within the range of his replete and instructive Lectures ; and of these parts it is equally important to gain a distinct and just impression. No one can become more profoundly aware, after reading the present Lectures, than the author of them already is, of the in completeness of his own discussion of so great a subject — under the sharp Hmitations of time restricting the Lectures in theinoral delivery, under the more imperious limitations imposed by mani fold independent occupations. He found, however, long ago, in the trains of thought here suggested, instruction and satisfaction for his own mind, an argument for faith, an incitement to Chris tian obedience and service. In preparing the Lectures, therefore, he was not seeking to construct an argument for a foregone con- elusion, but simply to recall and present to others an argument xii AUTHOR'S NOTE. the propriety of which, and its legitimate force, had appeared to him evident when he began to inquire for himself, without refer ence to the opinions of others, into the claims of Christianity upon him. He cannot but regret his inability to do the work, committed to him by the partiality of friends, with that rare and spacious range of knowledge, and that power to coordinate all particulars of knowledge in complete exhibition, which would better have matched the imperial theme. But he has been glad to do what he could, for the elucidation of a subject so vast in both its compass and its importance; and it would be to him a great joy and reward if the processes of thought in connection with which he reached years since distinct conclusions, which remain influential for his own mind, might bring to others a similar assurance, with an animating impulse more deep and fruitful. He gratefully remembers the testimonies which came to him of such impressions received by some when the Lectures were deHvered. He would fain hope that others who may hereafter consider them, on the pages to which they are now committed, will find their confidence awakened or renewed in the Divine origin and the superlative authority of that Eeligion to which Christendom seems to the writer, beyond doubt, to owe whatever is chiefest in its inheritance of moral wisdom and spiritual Hfe, and from which the conscious human soul, in the future as in the past, must derive, as he conceives, whatever is sure and uplifting in its knowledge of the Unseen, whatever is hoEest in its expe rience, whatever is sweetest and most transporting in aspiration and in hope. Of course, upon any one denying at the outset the essential possibihty of a supernatural revelation of truth to man, neither the argument here presented, nor any other of a similar nature can exert particular influence : as no argument can convince us AUTHOR'S NOTE. xjij that philosophical speculations may be communicated to dogs, or that parrots can be taught spiritually to interpret the tender and majestic secrets of the symphonies of Beethoven. To one admit ting a revelation to be possible, who yet has in his mind a precon ceived model to which, in method, instruments, and proof, such a revelation must be conformed, but with which Christianity does not correspond, the argument of these Lectures, or any other on the same subject, wiU be for the most part ineffective : as it would be in vain to try to show the ample blessing of summer- showers to one predetermined to find no quickening virtue for vegetation except in ice-storms or in cyclones. But to one who admits it possible, at least, for God to reveal His truth and wiU to the man whom He has made, and who is content to have Him do this, if at all, in the way which to Him appears best adapted to His benign purpose — the argument which is outHned in these Lectures seems to the writer one of important persuasive force. The Lectures were certainly not suggested by the emphatic words of Dr. James Martineau, but these might fitly enough stand as their motto : — ¦" The thorough interweaving of aU the roots of Christianity with the history of the world on which it has sprung, is at once a source of its power, and an assurance of its divine- ness." * It is probably hardly necessary to add that these Lectures had been f uHy written and deHvered before the author of them had any knowledge of the volume since pubhshed by Mr. Charles Loring Brace, entitled " Gesta Christi ; or a History of Humane Prog ress under Christianity." A part of the subject discussed in these Lectures — particularly in the fifth and the sixth Lectures — is presented in that volume with such exemplary clearness and carefulness, and such ample command of the necessary learning, * Miscellanies; Boston ed., 1852: pp. 208-9. Xiv AUTHOR'S NOTE. that the present writer would hardly have ventured upon an in dependent treatment of these particidar themes if he had -known beforehand of the existence of the volume, and of its expected publication. He cannot, however, refrain from expressing the gratification which he has felt in finding that the conclusions which he had reached, in his previous occasional studies of the subject, are in close accord with those presented, and confirmed by a wider range of references, in that excellent treatise : which has brought fresh honor to American scholarship, as weU as to the mind and the spirit of its accomplished and diHgent author. E. S. STOERS. Brooklyn, N. Y., October 25, 1884. LECTUEE I. EXTEENAL EVIDENCE FOE CHRISTIANITY AS DIVINE THE VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF ITS PEOBATIVE FORCE. LECTUEE I. A paktto tjlar and commanding scheme of religion, commonly known by the name Christianity, has for many centuries been in the world. The name is not one given to it in its own early books, but one which, by the common consent of its advo cates and its opponents, has come to describe it. It is primarily presented in a collection of writings, about the date of the authorship of which, or of some of which, there has been pro longed discussion among scholars, but which all now admit to have come from the earlier part of that era of time in wliich we live : from a period not later, at the latest, than the age of Hadrian, or of the first Antoninus. In these writings, familiarly known in the homes of all of us, are declarations purporting to set forth facts and truths concerning God, on the one hand, and Man, on the other, with the recip rocal relations between them. They include, also, distinctive rules for conduct and for character, which are intimately con nected with these alleged declarations of fact. They present impressive warnings, with astonishing correlative promises, as offering incentives for obedience to these rules ; both warnings and promises having reference in part to the present experience of man on earth, but in another and larger part to that which is affirmed to be waiting in reserve in realms of being beyond the grave. They all culminate, these Christian writings, in the assertion of the presence in the world at a certain great epoch, synchronizing closely with the historical age of Augustus and Tiberius, of an extraordinary Person : remarkable in power, yet more remarkable in wisdom and character ; who lived in obscure circumstances, who attracted no wide immediate atten tion, who died before his middle manhood by a painful and shameful anticipated death, but who called himself " the Light of the World," who claimed a preeminent relationship with 4 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY: God, and to whom his foUowers rendered an homage, with a voluntary service, as singular and transcendent as was his sur passing self-assertion. The career of this Person, from his birth-place to his sepulchre, and even afterward, to the time of his alleged final disappearance from the eyes of his followers, is traced in these writings, with such extraordinary grace, vividness, and felicity of narration, as seem to many to make the records quite unequalled in human literature ; while, with this principal public career, and the por trait of character conspicuous in it, are connected also biograph ical allusions which bring many others incidentally before us, with an account, brief but animated, of the stir which was made in Jewish, Greek, or Boman communities, even among semi- barbarous peoples, by the teachings of him whom the narratives present, as those teachings were eagerly distributed by the men who had taken from him their lessons and law. I am not now concerned to put any interpretation upon these ancient and memorable writings, or to declare what in my opin ion is the system of religion which they include. I am not concerned, even, to ask to what precise date they should be ascribed, or by whose pens they were probably written. The only point to which I have occasion to call attention is the fact that they exist, and have long existed ; and that there is a some thing in them, the exact extent and nature of which it is not now my province to indicate, which constitutes the religion known as Christianity. Before the time when these writings were traced upon the first papyrus or parchment, that religion had been declared to individual minds. The writings only seek clearly and permanently to present it to mankind. It is to be found to day in them, in its original meaning and scope, and not in any subsequent writings displacing them, or adding to them discord ant elements. Whatever changes have since occurred in human opinion, whatever varieties of controlling interpretation have been sought to be imposed on the New Testament Scriptures, it is undeniable, certainly among Protestant disciples, that they hold Christianity, as nothing else does; and that in them, first and supremely, must be sought the religion whose impression upon history has been positive and enduring. ITS PROBATIVE FORCE. 5 It is with Christianity, in this respect at least, as it is with the sunshine. That may be hidden behind thick clouds. It may seem grotesquely or hideously tinted, by steaming vapors rising to intercept it from forges and factories, from chemical labora tories, or from the noisome reek of slums. But these pass away, and the sunshine continues : the same to-day, when we untwist its strand into the crimson, gold, and blue, as when it fell on the earliest bowers and blooms of the earth ; of a unity too perfect to be impaired by assault, of a purity too essential to contract de filement from what in nature is most foul. So Christianity, which has certainly been variously tinted and refracted in the represen tations which men have made of it, continues, nevertheless, in its spiritual substance, in whatever it has of an irradiating beauty or of vitalizing force, in these primitive writings ; and it still will shine from them, in all that it possesses of grace or glory, till man's labor on earth is ended. As it was at the beginning, and will be to the end, the religion remains manifested to the world by Gospels and Epistles. They did not create, but they certain ly represent it. Each student is to search them, with candid attention, to find it for himself, with a practical certainty than which the scientific should not be more sure ; and as long as these writings continue to be read, the Christianity which pre ceded them, which gave them form, which has been the chief element of their power, and which still becomes articulate through them, will not cease* to be discernible by man. The system of religion thus anciently introduced to the knowledge of men, and thus preserved and presented to us in its original meaning and spirit in these remarkable writings, has been affirmed from the outset, is now believed by multitudes of persons, to be of Divine origin and authority: to be so in a 'sense so paramount and unique that no other system known among men can claim similar origin or an equal authority. It is not affirmed, certainly, that everything in other reHgions has been untrue : that they may not have had in some respects an emi nent value, as coming from minds greatly gifted, and from hearts pervaded by devout and discerning religious feeling. But it is affirmed that this system alone is so fully representative of the Divine Mind, revealing itself to and through the human spirit, 6 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY: that it, and it only, has a complete and peremptory claim to be believed and to be obeyed, whatever difficulties its disciples may encounter, whatever dangers, shames, or deaths, they may have on its behalf to face. This is not an impression among the ignorant or the credu lous alone, or among those practically indifferent to the subject, whose traditional impressions hardly rise to the dignity of definite convictions. " It is the matured and assured belief of many of the most thoughtful, cultured, free-spirited of men, whose attainment and aspiration are exceptionally high, by whom the question thus determined is recognized as one of superlative significance, and in whom this affirmative persuasion has often times been slowly produced, sometimes against great inward re luctance, and only after a searching scrutiny of arguments and proofs. At the close of all, as the crowning result, they have this conviction: that the Christianity implicitly contained in all the Bible, but specially declared in the New Testament, it, and it only, comes to man as the reHgion designed for him by God : that it issued from the sovereign wisdom and the unshadowed goodness of the Infinite Mind, and has upon it the authority of that; that it is, therefore, to be the universal religion of the world ; while he who now trusts it, trusts the same intelligence and holy will which set stars in their courses, and hung upon them the pendulous planets. In the judgment of such minds, Christianity is an authentic instruction given to mankind by the Author of the Universe, as to what in the highest departments of moral life it is needful for men to believe and to do. It is the one system of religion on earth for which the eternal creative Spirit from whom the spirit of man is derived is directly re sponsible, and to which His veracity is pledged. This is certainly a stupendous claim: which it is well-nigh blasphemous to make, unless it is sustained by sufficient evidence, of whose validity and force we are sure ; which it is in a high degree perilous to admit, if our minds and moral natures are not satisfied of its justness ; but which, on the other hand, it involves a large responsibility to deny, unless we do this upon good grounds, and are confident that the claim should not be allowed. No other question can be to us of superior importance as ITS PROBATIVE FORCE. 7 matched against the question whether the religion of that New ! Testament which is our inheritance has come to us from God, i or is the product of human logic, conjecture, or legend. Th. compound question of the existence and character of God is the only one which concerns more deeply, if even that does so, our moral life. — __ ,-_.._ It is a claim, as we know, which is not peculiar to this re ligion, but which has been made, and is still made, by others, though not perhaps in a tone as imperative, or as contemplating relations equally universal. Other schemes of religion, for the most part at least, claim rather to be Divine each for its localityj and people ; to have been a gift from the unseen Powers to those who possess them, rather than to all the families of man kind ; and the missionary instinct — though in the instance of Buddhism it has been singularly active — is thus not common under the teachings of the ethnic religions. At the same time, however, these claim to have a supreme authority over the peoples to whom they severally pertain ; to have come to them, not from man's wit or device, but from the inexhaustible sources of wisdom in the heavens above. Gautama, Confucius, or Lao-tse, may neither of them have claimed for themselves celes tial inspirations ; but their followers have, with a growing en thusiasm, ascribed such to them, and no other religions, outside of Christendom, have had wider power, have held their adher ents with firmer grasp, or have been more emphatically honored as Divine, than these, which started on a basis of natural ethics and of human philosophy. Christianity, therefore., is but one among many religions, in\ claiming Divine authorship for itself, with a correlative Divine I authority over the hearts and minds which it reaches. It is a claim, I need not remind you, which many wholly and vehemently reject, who are not partisans of any other religion, but who confidently affirm that all religious faiths and forms, Christianity included, have had common origin in the native re ligious sentiment of man ; that no one of them, therefore, has any peculiar Divine authority ; that all are of necessity imper fect, if not as yet wholly rudimental ; and that others surpassing them are doubtless to appear, as other forms ot science, philoso- 8 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY: phy, of social manners, of government, of invention, are con stantly appearing, till the Absolute Eeligion, the Eeligion of Humanity, shall at last be attained. They do not admit that God has given any religion — according to their conception of things it would be essentially out of accord with His adminis tration to give a reHgion — in an early time, to a special people, as the ultimate system for the world, in all ages. Such antagonists of the paramount claims of Christianity are many and able. They have often been nourished in knowledge and power by the religion whose place of solitary preeminence in the world they dispute or deny. Its authority they repel, but its vital impulse is in their blood. They become more nu merous, rather than less so, as civilization advances. They are not to be confounded with the ribald and furious assailants of Christianity, whose vulgar roughness of attack, whose malice, and sometimes their mendacity of spirit, have done so much to heap moral discredit on the name "unbeliever"; or with those who, in reckless eagerness for applause, 'to win a clap, would not scruple to sink a continent.' These men, who simply put Christi anity, in its origin and authority, on the level of other religions, regarding all as equally destitute of any supreme Divine claim upon human regard, are frequently as delicate as they are dili gent and dexterous in their war with the sentiment in which they were nurtured. In the dignity and charm of their social spirit, of their moral habitudes, as in the vigor and variety of their mental action, or the abundance of their mental resources, they are often deserving of cordial esteem. While then, on the one hand, the Christianity which is brought to us in the New Testament asserts for itself this supreme and enduring authority, as being, in a sense transcendent and ex clusive, revealed from God ; while other religions claim much the same thing, at least as related to the peoples which receive them, and gather around their ancient origins the shining mists of alleged Divine converse with men; and while speculative philosophers, in indifference to all, with a controlling Pyrrhonic tendency, rule all alike out of the category of Divine institutes, and attribute all to the more or less cultured spirit of man : it becomes to us a duty, than which hardly any can be more urgent ITS PROBATIVE FORCE. 9 to examine this stupendous claim of Christianity, and to see if there appear reason to accept it, or if, on the other hand, there be such an absence of reasons for this that the claim may by us be properly dismissed, as either exaggerated or wholly untrue. There has never been a time, in the last eighteen centuries, when it was not appropriate and important to do this. I might almost say that there never has been a time when precisely this office was not being accomplished, by the inquisitive minds of men, by their reflective and searching hearts. And there will not come a time when the pertinence and significance of such a discussion will not be obvious, so long as there are those still living on the earth, in the same communities, with minds inter acting upon each other, who on the one hand with confidence affirm, and on the other hand with eagerness deny, this impres sive and surpassing proposition. But at no time in the Past has the question more distinctly demanded discussion, at no time may it in the Future, than it does at this moment : when the world, by the superb advances of its general civilization, seems in the judgment of many to be growing superior to the need of religion, as it certainly is be coming less sensitive to its influence; when it seeks, as by a general impulse, in cultivated lands, to shake itself free from what it fears as a fetter on its thought ; and when science, philosophy, history, are invoked, to show alleged faults or crude apprehensions in this religion, or to overturn its essential dec larations. Not any more ingenious objections than had before been urged, not any larger array of learning on the side of un belief, not any more attractive and elaborate eloquence convey ing the materials for assault upon the Faith — not any of these, so much as the general drift of mind, in Christendom at large, toward secular aims and secular success, and toward a correspond ing indifference or aversion to the sovereign claim of Christi anity upon it — this makes it needful to consider that claim, and to decide for ourselves whether it be as sound and imperative as many have believed it in the Past, as many still gladly believe it. We cannot surely be indifferent to the question ; and it is a wise maxim which Carlyle repeats, in closing his second essay on Eichter, ' what is extraordinary, try to look at with your own 10 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY: eyes.' I know of nothing to which the maxim applies more directly, with greater force, than to the claim of Christianity upon us. And certainly for no others is such an inquiry more pertinent or important than for those who expect to teach this religion, that others may be led to accept and obey it. Clearness and thoroughness of conviction, on the subject of the Divine origin of Christianity, are to such men indispensable; unless they would build the whole structure of their work not so much on the sand as on the surface of shifting tides. They must have canvassed and felt the proofs that God has given superlative authority to the message which they carry, or their words will be as deficient in power to move mankind as is the mimic agony of the opera, as wanting in heat as is pictured flame. ~" This, therefore, is the subject which we confront, and concern ing which I would bring such suggestions as I may in this series of Lectures. The line of argument which I hope to exhibit is not suddenly conceived, though it has, of necessity, to be rapidly and very imperfectly presented. I found in it long ago, and have found in it since, a delicate yet strong persuasion for my self of the truth of the claim which Christianity makes. I would fain hope that it may in a measure impart this to you. At least, I trust that He whom all but the atheists accept as in Himself the perfect Truth will keep me from saying anything untrue, or anything misleading in its impression ; and that He will so guide and control us in considering the theme that .aU our words, and all our thoughts, in tlieir final effect, shall conspire to His glory ! Two embarrassments detain one at the start, in advancing to the subject. Ojne arises from the fact, obvious to all, that opinions widely differing have prevailed, and still prevail, as to what Christianity actuaUy is, in its substance and scope, in the intimate and organizing elements which compose it. They pre vail not merely among those who stand altogether outside the range of its discipleship, but in the societies which accept it ; among those who equally feel and affirm that they are adherents of the religion. So it may be naturally asked, " What is this Christianity, the claim of which to a Divine origin, and a related Divine authority, we are to investigate ? " ITS PROBATIVE FORCE. ±\ Is it the doctrine that Jesus was a man, singularly gifted, nobly consecrated, of a really surpassing genius for religion, with ex traordinary power for morally impressing and inspiring others, who spoke words of such sovereign significance that the world has not been able to forget them, who gave a rule of action and of spirit exceptionally pure, while his life corresponded, in its harmonious beauty and majesty, with the precepts which he uttered ; who has thus been able to affect generations subsequent to his time, in parts of the world which he had not traversed • but who stood after all on a level of nature with ourselves, and only surpassed us in the fineness and reach of his moral intui tions, and in his power of imparting to others of the fullness of his rare and kingly spirit? Is this what you mean — the pre cepts, rules, and thoughts of truth, announced by this man — when you speak of Christianity . Or is it the doctrine, widely accepted, that He, being essen tially Divine, but taking upon Him our nature in the wonder of the Incarnation, founded an organic visible Church, to abide on the earth, with ritual and hierarchy, into which one is brought by regenerating baptism, in which he is nourished in goodness and truth by effectual sacraments, and through whose authorized officiating priests he obtains absolution and remission of sins ; a Church in which the Lord is evermore personally although mys tically present ; which is, therefore, empowered to teach perpetu ally, without doubt, or error, in His name; through whose sacraments, as orderly administered, His personal energy is con tinually exerted ; and by which, in its continuance on earth, His Incarnation becomes perpetual, and is made universal through out the Church ? Is this the Christianity, whose claim to be considered Divine in origin and authority you would wish us to consider ? Or is it, again, that system of doctrine which sometimes is called "the evangelical," which is also accepted in large parts of the world where this religion, coming from Palestine, has got itself established : which teaches that man is by nature depraved, ' in the governing temper and tendency of his heart ; that this depravity reveals itself with certainty in the natural and con tinuing action of his Hfe ; that Christ came to the world as a 12 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY: Eedeemer, uniting in Himself the human nature with the Divine ; that He died on the cross to make atonement for humar. transgression ; that having then ascended into heaven He sent forth thence the Holy Spirit, to enlighten, convert, and purify men ; that the Church on earth is simply the great invisible com munion of those who beHeve, love, and obey, with reverent affec tion, this Son of God ; and that beyond our present palpable sphere of being are realms of recompense, for evil and for good, into which each shall pass at death, and in which character, with the destiny involved, remains indelible ? Is this, or any similar system not essentially divergent from this, the Christianity, concerning whose origin, and whose rightful authority, you would have us inquire ? »-. ' I admit, of course, the propriety of the question, after one has come to a definite impression, or, better still, to a serious con clusion, that there is a system, whatever in the end that may show itself to be, which is presented in these ancient writings, and which has fair claim to be considered as having originated in a mind above man's, and in the will everlasting and Divine. But it is precisely that preceding question which I am to con sider : while, after an answer to that has been given, affirmative and decisive, it will be in order for each to consider, with the most sincere and intent application of his supreme faculty for the work, what is that system which composes " Christianity." The question before us does not forestall that. It simply leads toward it, and prepares the way for it. I may see that the earth has been builded by a Power invisible and supernal, thouo-h I do not yet know the interior secrets of its material or chemical constitution : what gulfs of fire are under its crust, or how it is balanced on other stars. One may lead another to the front of a palace, and make him aware that it was surely erected by a king, though he has not as yet seen the treasures within, of jewels, mosaics, pictures, marbles, and costly marquetry. So it is plainly and surely possible to have a conviction that that re- ligion which lies in the writings that by common consent con tain Christianity has come from God, and not from the o-eniua or will of man, though we have not as yet developed for our selves, and set in their relations, its constituting doctrines. It ia ITS PROBATIVE FORCE. 13 this primary inquiry, not any which comes later, in regard tc which at present I would offer suggestions. But here the second embarrassment confronts us, which in volves plainly a graver difficulty than does the preceding. It arises from the fact that the religion itself makes a personal spiritual experience of its power the only final evidence for it. " Taste and see that the Lord is good "; " if any man be minded to do the will of my Father in heaven, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of my self ": these are consenting representative declarations from the older writings and the later of what is called among us The Bible, which harmonize with many others in setting forth the fact that only by spiritual experiment of the Gospel can man be assured of its Divine originj^as ultimately proved by its Divine energy. All other impressions of this must be, in the nature of the case, preparatory, rudimental. Only by trying it do men find with what subtle and exquisite adaptation the air is fitted to the lungs, so that by inhaling it their life is reinforced. Only by ,-/ joyful experience of it is such a certainty produced in the mind of the inestimable beauty of sunshine, as could have been formed, as can be shaken, by no argument conceivable. Imagine the attempt to make that beauty as certain as it is to us, to one who had passed his entire life in the unlighted cavern ! So it is only by trying Christianity, in its fitness to our deepest personal needs, of alliance with God, of moral renovation, of tranquillity, and of hope, that men can become utterly certain that it is from above ; not a fabric, any more than the earth is, of human fancy, or a con struction of human logic, or even a brilliant and lofty surmise of human aspiration ; but a Divine system, as is the atmosphere, as is radiant light, presented by God to the world of mankind for their permanent sovereign life and peace. Every religion must have it for its office to bring men to God. Mental philosophy, ethics, art, have other purposes. A religion, by its nature, must have this for its object, sublime and special. If one has found this accomplished in himself by Christianity, it may reasonably be said, he will need no further argument to prove that that which thus lifts him into intimate and conscious alliance with his Maker has come from Him. No stUts, con 14 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY: ' structed in human workshops, can enable man to walk on the | level of stars. No legend or logic can lift one to new and essen tial fellowship with Him whose wisdom governs the universe which His holiness illumines. If one has not this experience of the system, in its efficacious and beautiful virtue, all external argument, in the absence of this, must be an ineffective marshal ling of words : a breath of air, set in motion for a moment, and speedily absorbed in the great world-currents that play and pul sate around the globe. I do not in the least overlook the importance of the difficulty thus stated. As against the final demonstrative value of any ex ternal argument for Christianity, it is insurmountable. It must be impossible, in the nature of the case, to give one a vivid and governing conviction of the Divine source and the heavenly mission of a religion, by intellectual suggestions. He can gain that, as I fully beHeve, only by experience: as one learns in practice the virtue of a medicine, the tonic value of a strength ening cordial, or the strange power to conquer pain which lurks in the odorous anaesthetic. The kind of faith, if such it may be called, which is based simply upon extrinsic proofs, is never one to quicken joy, to inspire to service, or to win from others sym pathetic response. It fails in the grand emergencies of life. It cannot have the settled security, the vital energy, it cannot in spire the overmastering enthusiasm, which belong to the faith that is born of experience. To take the just distinction of Maurice, a man may come to hold a religion, in consequence of its externa] proofs ; but that religion will not hold him, in its con stant, subtle, and stimulating grasp, except through his experi ence of it. But again, my inquiry is so primary in its nature that this ob jection does not really challenge it. I go back to meet a prior stage of mental and spiritual search for the truth, and the ques tion which waits for our answer is this : Is there, or is there not such a fair, obvious, antecedent probability that Christianity is from God, that each conscientious and intelligent man should study it for himself, should master it in its statements, require ments, offers, should set himself in intimate personal harmony with its law and life— thus making a sufficient experiment of it ITS PROBATIVE FORCE. 15 by accepting and applying it to his own soul ? I would only, as before, lead the unconvinced mind up to the system, as it stands declared in the New Testament, and show him such reasons for beUeving it Divine, in the transcendent sense, as may persuade him, as may forcibly prompt him, to investigate its contents, and to see if on spiritual trial of its energy he finds in it a really celestial power and glory. So, only, can the indestructible certainty be wrought in the soul. But the steps preliminary may yet be needful ; as needful as is the hand of him who leads us up to the master-piece of the rich gallery, that the delicate and ethereal charm of its splendor may stream upon us ; as needful as was the ancient errand of the woman of Samaria, who called the men to see that Lord of whom afterward they said : " We have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ." If one hold himself care fully to this definite purpose, he may hope, I think, to do service to his hearers ; and he need not regard the sharp sneer of Dr. Newman, that ' if we rely much on argumentative proof as the basis of personal Christianity, we ought in consistency to take ; chemists for our cooks, and mineralogists for our masons.' One other embarrassment, though certainly involving far less of difficulty than those which I have mentioned — but which es pecially confronts one who would gather the testimonies offered to Christianity by its recorded career in the world — arises from the fact that some of the worst wickedness on the earth has been wrought ostensibly on behalf of this religion, by those who have been held its disciples and advocates. The fires, kindled pro fessedly in its service, have lighted with their glare long passages of history. The cruelties, lusts, ambitions of those who have stood as princes in the society called by its name — the treacher ies, conflagrations, wholesale murders, accomplished by those who have borne with crimsoned hands its consecrated banners — these are, assuredly, frightful to contemplate. Men may seem at first fairly justified in saying, as oftentimes they have said : " If we are to judge the tree by its fruits, which even the New Tes tament requires us to do, then the system must be intrinsically evil, bom of man's nature, and of the worst part of it, not of God, from which have proceeded effects like these. If we are 16 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY: not at liberty absolutely to predicate untruth of the whole of it, we may say that it cannot, in any exclusive and preeminent sense, be from His mind who is infinitely pure, since it has been associated with, has seemed to tolerate, or even to inspire, the fiercest and foulest vices of man." I do not overlook the difficulty, here, as I have shown by stating it in strong terms. But it is rather apparent than real, and does not, I am sure, interpose any grave or governing ob stacle, to a reflective and candid mind, in the way of the accept ance of Christianity as Divine. The physicist has to recognize a difference between the theoretical effect of a force acting without friction, in ideal freedom, and the observed effect of that force, as incessantly though silently hindered or deflected by resistances of matter. How vast the difference between the harmonies in the soul of the composer, or even as inscribed on the musical score, and the same as harshly or ignorantly rendered on jangled strings ! An original energy is not to be condemned because of imperfection in the instruments or the media through which it is revealed ; as the sunshine is not less purely lucid when it pierces the crystal of violet or of ruby ; as the expansive force of steam is not less a beneficent instrument because it explodes the im perfect steam-chamber, or drives the ship, carelessly piloted, crashing upon reefs. However Divine Christianity may be, and in whatever superlative sense, if human nature be what it postu lates, so darkly obscured, so vitaUy disordered, as to need a Divine intervention to amend it, it is not unnatural, it was rather to be expected, that according to the impact of this religion on any spirit remaining unpurified must be the mischiefs wrought in its name. Hypocrisy everywhere counterfeits virtue; and it deepens, as shadows do, when the light grows intenser. Fa naticism and enthusiasm are near of kin. It is only a moral difference which divides them. And the fierce fanaticism of the sanguinary bigot, though in utter contrast with the vivid en thusiasm of the devout and numble disciple, may simply show the tremendous impression made by the religion upon a temper which it does not essentially overcome and renew. The Eeligion, in other words, is not disproved by the fact that the alien and hostile human will has mistaken or misapplied ITS PROBATIVE FORCE. 1? it. Eather, as poisonous weeds grow must fruitfully on soils made prolific by culture, and under a glowing baptism of sun shine, so crimes and shames, if the germs of them continue in human nature, may only come to more frightful exhibition be neath the force of a religion from above. The impression which they make on the quickened public moral sensibility will certainly be sharper than in the absence of such a religion. It is not improbable that their intrinsic evil energy may be aug mented. ,' _ . . ._. .. I. , I do not assume anything, then, as to the essential interior constitution of that religion declared in the New Testament. I do not fail to recognize the fact that only by inner experience of its power can we fully know if this religion has come to us from God. I do not overlook the disastrous fact that it has by no means done as yet its fairly authenticating work in the world ; that it has even incurred, often, a heavy opprobrium from the gross and fierce wickedness of its adherents. But admitting all this, and looking at Christianity not now analytically, but simply as a historical Faith, confessedly discovered to the world at the outset of our era, and represented to-day, to whomsoever would clearly find it, in these ancient writings, I ask myself if there is any obvious, forcible, presumptive evidence that that Eeligion, so declared, has come to us from God as its author? Is there such evidence, so far potential, as to properly impel men to study Christianity with a profound and faithful attention: to make themselves masters, by such attention, of whatever of doctrine, law, promise, or of alleged spiritual fact, it presents : and then to make personal experiment of its efficacy, when what it affirms, and what it requires, has to them become evident ? I think that there is such important directive and preHminary evidence : that it is of a nature, and of an extent, which properly demand that it be fairly pondered by all : and that the impres sion received from it will become always stronger as it is more carefully and largely considered. And along a particular line of this evidence I would, in the Lectures which are to follow, con duct your thoughts. Even here, however, a distinct limitation must be recognized by all. Anything approaching demonstrative proof, absolutely 2 18 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY: coercive of intellectual assent, cannot be demanded, as it cannot in the nature of the case be supplied, in an argument of thia kind. The evidence must be moral in its nature, and such as will require, for the fair impression of its probative force, not only intelligence, and a certain amount of mental discipline, but moral candor: a willingness to be convinced: even a cordial though a judicial disposition to accept the conclusion, if such ac ceptance shall appear warranted by the arguments presented. \- All moral truth requires as a condition of its acceptance a moral state in a measure at least sympathetic with itself. There fore, only, does it test character, as well as mould it. Therefore is it, as no other is, a judge between men. Tou can compel the assent of every one, who has intelligence enough to follow the necessary processes of thought, to any one of Euclid's proposi tions. You can by experiment compel the recognition of the presence and the activity of the crystallizing force in the turbid mixture of the chemist. But you cannot so show the beauty of charity to the habitual and passionate miser, or the beauty of patriotism to the embittered and preengaged traitor, as to com pel either to see the charm of the summoning virtue. To argue the moral preeminence for man of dangerous and high philan- thropieal enterprise over selfish indulgence, to one who lives only to follow inclination or to gratify lust — it is leading the deaf to hear oratorios, or showing to the blind the charm of expansive summer landscapes. Of course, these are special exceptional instances ; taken pur posely as such, that the law which they suggest may be empha sized before us. But the law holds, always : that where moral truth is the subject-matter presented to the mind, the mind must not withstand it, with predetermined hostility, if it would feel its fair impression. It must at least be willing to hear, to seriously reflect, to consider candidly what arguments may be brought; and it must not be committed against a conclusion, it must be in fact quite ready to receive that, if the arguments for it turn out to be sufficient. In this way we discuss, intelligently and fruitfully, the character of men ; in this way, the propriety of customs or legislations ; in this way, even, the qualities and the career of historical persons, or of public institutions. In this ITS PROBATIVE FORCE. 19 way only can we with fairness discuss the question whether Christianity comes to us, in any transcendent and superlative sense, from the Mind unseen, which has built the suns, and from which our conscious life has sprung. The proposition is a vast one. It is addressed to the spirit, not to the sense ; to the con science and heart, not alone to the critical understanding. It pertains to the sphere of spiritual truth. The argument for it can only, therefore, be moral in its nature. It must appeal to a temper in men wholly welcoming and receptive, or it might as well be addressed to fishes, or to those unacquainted with the accents of the tongue in which it is expressed. There is pro found truth in the saying of a Hindu, quoted by Sir William Jones : " Whoever obstinately adheres to a set of opinions may at last bring himself to believe that the freshest sandal-wood is a flame of fire." * If there were any argument for Christianity of another sort, coercive not persuasive, demonstrative and scientific not moral and probable, it would certainly have been discovered long since, in the centuries which this energetic religion has instructed, commanded, and filled with debate. But in proportion as such an argument were urged and_ distributed it would, in effect, rob the reHgion of its supreme office as a witness for itself ; it would exclude opportunity for spiritual faith, as involving in it any personal voluntary element ; it would cause what it proved to be the message of God to cease to be, according to its nature, ' a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.' Of the arguments which, within these inevitable limits, are adapted to convince men that Christianity is, in a supreme sense, of a Divine origin, and of world-wide authority — so far to convince them as to lead them to study it thoroughly for themselves, and to make a personal experiment of it, according to its law — of these there are several, associated naturally under the title of "External Evidences." The study of theologians, the attention of masters of speculative thought, in fact the reflective faculty of the world, have been profoundly occupied with them ; and the range of the research invited and thus incited by them is, Works of Sir W. Jones, London ed., 1807, Vol. III., p. 323. 20 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY: almost literally, without a horizon. I am to follow one path, odIv, in the broad expanse thus opened before us ; and that path, per haps, not the one most attractive, or promising to lead to most important and satisfying results. The early disciples found a sufficient argument" for themselves in the Miracles which were wrought, or which appeared to them to be wrought, in connection with this religion. They recog nized in these the signs and proofs that he who was speaking, whether directly or through his messengers, was speaking with a warrant from God Himself. The fact that such an impression was made, in early times, on many minds, and that it was full of inspiring power, cannot be questioned : and it has plainly great significance. Gibbon sets this belief in miracles prominently, you remember, among the causes by which he accounts for the spread of Christianity, at a time which did not favor it, against many resistances. The influence of it was vividly illustrated, in multitudes of instances, in dungeon, amphitheatre, at the stake, on the cross. And the argument for Christianity, as alone Divine, which is derived from the astonishing supernatural manifestations declared to have attended its early proclamation, is still pressed, with obvious candor, as well as with enthusiasm and a signal ability, by many of its apologists. I need not perhaps say that I feel, for myself, the energetic and the continuing force of the argument so presented ; and that I have no word of objection, only words of sympathetic approval, for those by whom it is urged to-day with as eager an eloquence as flowed from either lip or pen of the most eminent Christian Fathers. But I do not undertake to present this myself, in this series of Lectures. For the time, at least, I will not contest an inch of the ground on which so strenuous a warfare has been waged. I will not even controvert the position, if men choose to take it, that the miracle, after so many centuries of apparently uninterrupted regularity in the operations of cosmical force, is not easy of proof except in connection xwith the doctrine sup ported and signalized by it, and with the conceded supreme per sonality of him by whose will it is alleged to have been wrought ; that the religion, in other words, sustains the miracle, as truly as does the miracle the religion ; and that, considered in inde- ITS PROBATIVE FORCE. 21 pendence of what it authenticates, the most stupendous physical effort will prove power, primarily, rather than truth — will be a demonstration of incalculable energy, not necessarily an evidence of supreme spiritual loveliness and lordship. It must certainly be conceded that Jesus himself, according to the authoritative records, did not make the miracles early as cribed to him the means of persuading men at large to accept and obey him, so much as the means of confirming or rewarding a previous faith. He appealed to these indeed, before his ene mies, and made their responsibility for antagonism to him only clearer and more perfect because of these works. But he wrought them, for the most part, either in private, or in the least demon strative manner : as if they had simply broken from him, in the abounding spontaneity of his love, when appropriate occasions at tracted the flashes of the inner effulgence, rather than as if they had been his prearranged instruments for converting the world, Jewish and Pagan. I undoubtingly believe, for myself, the reality of the miracles thus attributed to him. The lucid and lofty simplicity of the story in which they are told is of itself to me their demonstra tion. They seem to furnish the only explanation, through their effect on the minds of the disciples, of the early triumphs of the despised Gospel on the very spot where its Lord had been cru cified, and of the victorious energy of apostles in proclaiming that Gospel, in spite of resistance, and in defiance of flood or flame. I feel the profound truth of the remark of Pascal, that " as nature is an image of grace, so the visible miracles are but the images of those invisible which God wills to accomplish."* The whole New Testament would become to me inharmonious in its proportions, timid in its challenge to ^he faith of the world, emptied of the ultimate majesty and lustre of Omnipo tent Love, if there ever should be expelled from its tender and dauntless pages these sovereign demonstrations of the Di vine Will, immanent in the person and illustrious in the action of him who as Christ claims unique authority in the world. But I will not now dispute the position if any one accounts such * "Pens.es"; Paris ed., 1878; Sec. Par; Art. VHI. 2. 22 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY: miracles the inner light shining for the worshipper in the Holy of Holies, rather than the advanced and interpreting torches with which he is lighted on his way to the sanctuary. One may reverently accept them for himself, and see the Divine glory in them, without using them as instruments for the per suasion of others : as the jeweled sceptre in the hand of the king may not be the weapon most apt for use in subduing an armed and fierce opposition, or turning the refluent tides of battle. An argument was also urged at the beginning, and has often been repeated, for the Divine origin of Christianity, based upon the fact, widely affirmed, that Prophecies written centuries be fore were fulfilled in events which subsequently occurred, in the coming and the life, and especially in the death, of Jesus of Nazareth ; and that this necessarily involves the conclusion that Omniscience was engaged in the previous utterance, and presented a certifying assurance of the fact in the later fulfilment. The inference is inevitable to those admitting the premise. Only imperfectly, and with infinite difficulty, can man trace backward a completed course of historical sequences, and ascertain the small germ out of which was developed, in the progress of cent uries, the final result; the tiny rills, by whose' unnoticed silent confluence was formed at last tbe irresistible current. To reverse this process, and forecast the end from the beginning, is surely the special prerogative of God. And if He has thus seen and declared it, before it came, and when to observant human eyes there seemed no promise of its coming, there is an end of debate on the question of His immediate connection with any religion so authenticated by Him. Justin Martyr is therefore but one among many who by the study of Hebrew prophecies, as illumined and answered by the subsequent occurrence of stupendous events, have been led to that assurance concerning Christianity which to him was more satisfying than all which he had learned from Platonist or Stoic : who have by such study been enabled to enter those 'gates of light7 which his illustrious Athenian mas ter had but seen in far fore-gleam. But there are many— they are those to whom the pertinent arguments on this great theme especially need to be pre sented—who do not admit that such predictions were really ITS PROBATIVE FORCE. 23 made, by Isaiah, for example, by Daniel, by the Psalmists, or by Moses. They affirm the predictions attributed to these to have been either of later origin, or so essentially indeterminate in their nature that human sagacity might have suggested their veiled outlines, upon the chance of future events responding to them. They shelter themselves behind the fact that even the Messianic predictions, to a spirit so profound, perspicacious, and devout, though also so free, as that of Schleiermacher, seemed to have their chief value in the evidence which they offered of the striving upward of human nature toward Christianity, and of a general Divine design in the Mosaic institutes : and that he, in fact, accepted the prophecies on the authority of the New Testament, instead of basing in any measure his sense of that authority upon the predictions. Without following in his steps, it must certainly be conceded that only an argument for which few are competent, a linguistic as well as a historical argument, at once minute and comprehensive, can so set predictions in their indisputable historical place, and show them in their indubitable meanings, that the subsequent facts, in their plain and precise correspondence with these, shall demonstrate them Divine. A general course of Prophecy fulfilled — it seems no more to require a mind peculiarly devout to find this in the Bible than it needs such a mind to see the blending steUar brightness of Milky Way constellations : as even the cautious and critical De Wette not only held the Old Testament a great prophecy, a great type, of Him who was to come, but attributed to individuals dis tinct presentiments, by Divine inspiration, of events in the future. But I have often observed that upon a reluctant or doubting mind the argument from specific predictions either makes slight impression, or needs to be preceded by another, more extended than itself, to show the substantial nature of its grounds. StiU further : an argument for the special Divine authorship of the religion of the New Testament may be properly derived from the evident characteristics of the book itself : the vast ex tent, and 6harp distinctness, of its affirmative propositions ; the pureness and reach of its ethical system; especially from the effortless and sovereign perfection of the portrait which it pre sents of him whom it glorifies as the proper Leader and King of the world. 24 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY: As compared with the final demonstration of experience, the argument thus suggested may also be classed among preliminary and external evidences ; yet I confess that to me, with my ap prehension of the scheme and the scope of the New Testament, it appears of a positively commanding force, almost making unnecessary any other form of preparatory testimony. If one seriously considers the philosophical, theological, ethi cal structure of this remarkable book,— if he sets it clearly amid its times, and then matches against it the Vedic hymns, the several parts of the Buddhistic canon, or the Sacred Books of China, now made familiar by Dr. Legge,— if he matches against it any system, philosophic or theosophic, which genius has con ceived, and which human patience and fervor have moulded,— it seems to me that he hardly can escape a serious, intimate, and enduring conviction that something beyond a peculiar talent, in a young and eager mechanic of Nazareth, was needed to frame it ; that the Divine Spirit must be recognized as speaking, through whatever may be attributed to Jesus of intuition and prudence, in this illustrious system. Preeminently, as I said, does the whole exhibition of the Christ in these Scriptures seem to set them apart, in diversity of nature, from all other writings, unillumined by them, of which human minds have shown themselves capable. Such a match less combination of power with gentleness, of lowliness without abjectness, and supremacy without pride, of a holiness of spirit so native and complete that no penitence is possible, with a sympathy for the sinner so tender and profound that no depth of degradation suffices to repel it : such a unique and incalculable career, of One asserting inherent prerogatives beside which the loftiest imperial claims were as vanishing sparks beneath the un fading splendor of suns, yet accepting a poverty than which the peasant's was less complete ; of One able to control all powers of nature by the breath of his lips, yet walking for years in patience and in pain, amid sneering derisions, and tierce opposi tions, and the weakness or the covetous treachery of adherents, toward victory by death, and the conquest of the world by what seemed an ignominious subjection to its force : — the truth of this strange, surpassing, and vital picture, seems placed almost ITS PROBATIVE FORCE. 25 beyond dispute by its very existence ! Nor does it seem credible that men Hke the evangelists should have conceived it, and flashed it on immortal pages, without having not only seen it but felt in their own spirits a Divine and transforming influx from it, of wisdom and grace. The splendor which this pict ure has cast upon history almost certifies us at once of its super- terrestrial pureness and height. Yet, no doubt, to fully set forth the argument thus suggested, in its capital force, must involve a patient preceding process of analysis and of synthesis, to show what is the astonishing system of doctrine and precept in the New Testament ; and to set it in comparison with other philosophical and ethical schemes. It must imply a searching examination of the ancient documents, in which the lineaments of the Christ are portrayed ; the proof of their integrity ; the diligent and sufficient exposition of their contents. Without these, men will not be induced to accept the asserted supremacy of the system considered, as one of truth and moral order. They will find what appear to them paraUels to it, in other schemes. They will, very likely, attribute to its Founder a genius fpr religion so special and surpassing that he was able, without sovereign and immanent inspirations from God, to write his name above the stars. They may possibly suspect, indeed, that the advancing culture of the world has im perceptibly transported into Christianity elements of a later grace and renown ; has clothed it upon with spiritual meanings, and set it in vast cosmical relations, which were not contem plated by evangelist or apostle, or by him. from whom they both had learned. They may even conjecture that the Lord himself has taken a glory from the impassioned Christian im agination of subsequent centuries, instead of imparting, as his disciples have reverently held, all its essential glory to that. It appears to me certain that such doubts will disappear, from the more candid and spiritual minds, as they follow the inquiries which I have indicated ; and that they in the end will find the New Testament standing essentially apart from and above all other books, in the doctrines announced, in the maxims of duty, and in the majestic and untroubled sweep of that illumination which it at least professes to cast over Time and Eternity. It speaks with 26 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY: an authority more native and complete than that of any ordi nance of Senates. There is no detail too minute for its scrutiny There is no expanse too wide for its survey. It comes largely from unlettered men: yet on all superlative spiritual themes, most important to man, it speaks in a voice as free and frank, while as lofty in tone, as any voice of angels in the air. In its outreach and majesty, in the intimate and unstudied concinnity of each part, the majestic ultimate coordination of all into a whole which educates the world— in these, as well as in the still unapproximated conjunction of benignity and of lordliness in the character of Him whom it presents for our homage and love- seems radiant evidence that it was not born in the wrenching throes of a human intelligence ; that it descended out of heaven, from God. But to furnish the premises for this great argument would be work for a life-time. So this, also, we will pass for the present, with only such general reference to it. I ask myself again then : Is there any form of proof, besides those which I have indicated, besides others which might be cited, but only to be encountered by similar objections — any form of proof whose probative force will be easily and naturally evident to all who are thoughtful, candid, and moraUy sensitive, and which will at least make it probable to such that Christianity is, in a supreme sense, a religion sent from God to the world ? will make it so probable that a reflective and serious person will feel himself under immediate obligation to consider, ponder, study the system, and to make that personal experiment of it which it always appropriately demands ? The question is one of controlling importance ; and I seem to find an answer to it, an \ affirmative answer, in considering the indisputable Historical i Effects which have followed the introduction of this religion into the world; which follow it to-day, wherever the system, having before been unknown, gets itself established in human acceptance, and assumes control over persons and societies. Of course, as I have fuUy admitted, much evil, and that of gross kinds, has been connected with its propagation. But this cannot be held, even by its opponents, essential to it, or a neces sary fruit of its normal operation. To infer its character from ITS PROBATIVE FORCE. 27 the abuses which men have attached to it would be to repeat the error of those who, according to the fine image of Deutsch, in criticising the Talmud have 'mistaken the gargoyles, the grin ning stone caricatures mounting their guard over cathedrals, for the gleaming statues of Saints within.' * Liberty sometimes runs to license, not because it is bad in itself, but because human passion perverts its principle. Philanthropy sometimes makes men crazy, in spirit and action, if not in mind; not because the law of charity is in itself evil, but because the unconquered heart of man makes it an excuse for selfishness or ferocity. If Christi anity comes, as in its own contemplation it does, to enlighten and rectify the nature of mankind, its proper effects must be wholly separable, in thought and in fact, from the manifestations of that alien and insolent human temper which it claims at least to have it for its function to restrain and subdue. If we can then so far untwist the tangled threads interlacing with each other in the tissue of history as to extricate what is peculiar to Christianity from what is common to human wickedness or human infirmity, and to show by themselves its special effects, then these, its characteristic products, as realized in the public life of the world, may give us light, on its nature not only, but on its origin and authority over men. "History," it has been justly said, "is no Sphinx. She tells us what kind of teaching has been fruitful in blessing to human ity, and why, and what has been a mere boastful promise or powerless formula." f Systems of religion springing out of the limited thought of man, and of his individual purpose and plan, are likely to be local rather than general in the range of their influence ; to be transient, not secular, in their power over com munities ; to be even substantially egotistic and sterile, leaving the peoples on which their limited forces are exerted without rich and large progress inspired by them, without consequent wealth and resplendence in their history. It may properly be expected of a religion coining from God that it wiU be cosmical in its aims, permanent in its power, and that it will put alto * "Literary Remains," New York ed., 1874, p. 4. t " Hours with the Mystics," London ed., 1860, Vol. I., p. 13. 28 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY: gether new elements into human society, and into the history which portrays that. It may stir great commotions, as the strong breeze does when it strikes, down upon stagnant lakes, and flings the offensive sediment to the surface. But it must be that in the end it will purify and refresh what it turbulently stirs, and that a sweeter and nobler life wUl be in communities because of its coming. In the absence of such effects, reported miracles, it seems to me, however extraordinary, could hardly hold to any religion the faith of the thoughtful. In the presence of such effects, the likelihood is great, to state fhe fact in most temperate phrase, that the reHgion by which they are wrought has come to the world, not from man, but from God. On this line of thought, then, I ask you rapidly but attentively to go with me, in the Lectures which are to follow. Of course it is not enough for me to show that the world, as it is, is better than it was, a dozen or twenty centuries ago ; or even that it has advanced in moral, social, and personal excellence, most surely and rapidly within the limits of what we call Christendom. All this might be true, and still the progress be due to causes out side this religion, or due to it in a measure without proving a special divinity to belong to it. I have not the slightest wish to strain the argument, by improperly including among its premises what does not belong there : or by pressing its conclusions a hair-breadth further than they ought to be carried. It would seem to me infidelity to the Master to attempt this. I remem ber the wise maxim of Coleridge, and should decline to enter on such an effort as promptly and sharply as any of my hearers. But it is a striking, and, within obvious limitations, a perfectly just remark of Ewald, made certainly with no polemical aim, that religion affects peoples even more potentially than it does individuals : that is, that the public consciousness of religious obligation is frequently more pronounced and effective, as well as more enduring, than is the individual conviction of it ; that reHgion works most freely and fruitfully through the social or ganism ; and that the public development may reveal its pres ence and inspiration where they are hardly as clearly discernible in the private life of separate souls. In the case of a historical religion like Christianity, having ITS PROBATIVE FORCE. 29 rules, institutes, ministries, and working itself into the general life of peoples, this may be expected to be the case ; and if it be true, as I think it to be true, that nations have been widely and beneficently affected by it, that the world itself is practically another world in moral life since Jesus of Nazareth taught in it, that it is as diverse from that which preceded him, whose arts, industries, philosophies, social systems, prevailed in his time, as the planet would be if another earth had replaced the old one, or if the sun had first shined in his time with quickening splen dor on meadow and hill — if it be true, as surely it seems to me to be true, that this change dates from his exact epoch, and had its vital beginnings in him — then it appears impossible to believe that a human mind, no matter how gifted, has wrought the change ; that any genius, or any will, in which the unsearchable Divine energy was not resident and enthroned, has produced a transformation so immense beyond parallel. The world of human life and force is too vast for any man to master and mould it. Society is too continuous and organic for any human spirit to work in it so enormous a change. A system that sud denly swept into history with a rush of beneficence which eight een centuries have not exhausted, can hardly have been a mere day-dream of Galilee. I find no adequate account of it possible which does not ascribe it to God Himself. In partially indicating some <5f the principal facts in history which appear to me to illustrate the Divine beneficence and power of the system of Christianity, and to put it wholly beyond comparison with any fine or forcible institutes of human device, I am keenly sensible of the many imperfections which must mark my treatment of such a theme: but I shall certainly try to treat it in a discerning and dispassionate temper, exaggerating nothing, coloring nothing, concealing nothing, but simply and fairly setting forth, for myself as for you, what has been accomplished by the special force of this religion in its action on mankind. Certainly one who exhibits this can hardly be reckoned among those of whom it has been sneeringly said that they argue ' from their own hearth-rug upward.' It is a realistic form of evidence : and one which meets the desire of men for something recent, not remote, which they can measure and test for themselves. It 30 EXTERNAL EVIDENOE FOR CHRISTIANITY: is one, too, to which the most sceptical historical writers may not reluctantly contribute : as the distinguished historian of Eationalism in Europe, to take a single illustration, has clearly recognized and eloquently set forth many facts important to it, while himself putting miracles, almost with a sneer, upon the same basis with fairy tales. It is a method of proof which asks no preliminary question as to when, or by whom, the New Testament writings were prepared or col lected, if only they be conceded to contain Christianity. The value and influence of the Homeric poems would not be obscured if the theory of Wolfe and Heyne, elaborated since, as well as controverted, by many others, should be generally accepted, that they were originaUy separate songs, put together by an editor, perhaps as late as the time of Peisistratus. The reign of Charle magne would not cease to be a fact of cardinal importance in the medieval Europe though all the historical records of his career should appear upon scrutiny to be variously imperfect. And if Christianity has left of itself large witness in history, we need not begin our inquiry about it with investigating the documents in which it was early proclaimed to the world. A discussion of' these may properly follow : but without primary reference to them it may appear, from the nature, the permanence, and the beautiful fruitfulness of the effects of the religion which they present, that it must have had lis lofty origin in the mind which is Divine. Then we may expect the argument to grow stronger, all the time, as society advances — as the argument derived from ancient miracles hardly can : while miracles and prophecies, at tending the religion at its first introduction to the knowledge of the world, will seem scarcely more than natural aids and fit illustrations given it by its Author, and any surpassing and ma jestic sublimities in its own constitution wiU commend them selves to us as germane to God's Mind. » , The personality of that Mind I do not of course undertake to prove, since I am speaking not to or for atheists, but to those who already believe in God ; not as ' a generalized expression for natural causes,' but as the Creator and Governor of the Universe, who is in Himself eternal Wisdom, Goodness, Truth. That such a Being can give a system of religion, by revelation, to ITS PROBATIVE FORCE. 31 mankind, no one of us certainly will deny. Whether He has in fact done so, is our question. I accept fully the imperative hy pothesis that if He has done it, the system so promulgated must be marked by His character, and must be adapted to produce such effects, spiritual and social, political, ethical, juridical even, as may with fairness be attributed to Him. I have a right, on the other hand, to contend that if the effects which follow the particular scheme of Christianity are such as had not before been produced by any religious or ethical system, are other in nature, higher in character, more extensive, and more enduring, and with higher prophecy of what still is to come — then, in propor tion to the rareness and difficulty of these special effects, will rise the probability that that which has produced them has proceeded from God : as we undoubtingly ascribe to Him the sunshine which blesses the earth with its beauty, or the sweet and or derly succession of the seasons, marking the moments on the horologe of the centuries. I cannot be mistaken in conceiving the argument worthy of attention, whether or not I have mis conceived its proper force. As I said, 1 would neither exaggerate nor conceal. I admit, at the outset, that many things in which we delight, as belonging distinctively to our civilization, have come through those not consciously affected by Christian faith, and sometimes through those who strenuously resisted this religion. I would not rob any one of them all — inventor, writer, captain of troops, bold discoverer, sagacious statesman — of the honor which is due him. I would recognize every noble, toiling, victorious man, whether or not he has accepted the Master of the new ages. It is not individual action for which I am to look, to condone or condemn, or, otherwise, to applaud ; but it is the broad general effects which seem to rae to have followed Christianity, springing out of it, for the first time by means of it getting themselves real ized and established in society, in spite «of all contrary tenden cies in mankind, in spite of the resistance of all the institutions, habits, laws, which had before them to be dislodged. If we find such, on a large scale, going everywhere with Christianity, continu ing through the centuries, and giving promise of nobler eras yet to come, I think you wiU agree that it is not rash to ascribe such 32 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR CHRISTIANITY. effects, with the system which brings them, to a mind above man's, and to a will working for our welfare, in comparison with which our strongest wills are of wavering weakness. To this inquiry I therefore invite you, in the foUowing Lectures : and may He who is surely the Author of the soul, whether of the outward religion or not, give us grace to discern clearly the truth, whatever it is, and to be its prompt and glad disciples I LECTUEE II. THE NEW CONCEPTION OF GOD, INTEODUCED BY CHEISTIANITY. LECTUEE II. That a new and nobler conception of God has been common among men since Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed his religion, it seems quite impossible to doubt; and that such change and ele vation of thought on this supreme theme have been radically due to his sovereign instruction, and his efficacious and undecay- ing influence, appears equally evident. But certainly, if this be admitted as true, it cannot be dismissed as of trivial importance. It must be conceded to be of a reaUy royal significance. No greater intellectual or spiritual gain can be conceived for a man than that which is implied in a more vivid, just, and in spiring conception of Him from whom his nature came, and with whom he stands, by reason of that nature, in essential re lations. No object can be conceived more worthy the aim of a Divine revelation than to give men precisely this uplift and ad vancement in the knowledge of their Creator. It has to do with their mental progress, in power and in culture. It is intimately connected with the training of conscience, and of the sweetest and noblest affections. It concerns the regulation, and the fine in spiration, of the voluntary force. There is in fact no element in our energetic and complex nature which should not take beauty and blessing upon it from a clearer and larger apprehen sion of God. As the tides are lifted beneath the unseen pull of the moon, so human aspiration must be exalted when the vision of the infinite Author of the Universe rises above it in majestic distinctness. As flowers and trees respond with blooms brilliant and fragrant to the kiss of the sunshine when spring replaces the icy winter, so whatever is noblest in man, and what ever is most delicate, must answer the appeal of a radiant dis covery of that presiding Personal Glory, from which order and life, power and love, incessantly proceed. (35) 36 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF &0D, Undoubtedly, also, whatever noxious forces there are in one's moral nature, of rebelUous desire, or of a defiant and passionate will, these may be quickened to ranker development, or stirred to a more impetuous swing, by such a revelation ; as the poison is ripened, no less than the rose, by the play of the sunlight ; as the storm is pushed to a fury more destructive by the force radiated from satellite and sun. But the normal effect of the more ample discovery of God, on the finite intelligence, must be to exalt, clarify, and ennoble it. And so men have always sought for this, precisely as they have been sensitive and reflective. They who have missed it have sadly deplored the absence of it. They who have had it have felt in the depth of their responsive and stimulated being that no other privilege was so august, no other knowledge so life-giving. The supreme energy, in the sphere of moral life, in Christendom or outside it, must always be this which descends from the heights of the creative and kingly Authority which resides in the heavens. That a richer impression of God has been prevalent and illus trious in the world, since Jesus taught in it, appears, as I have said, beyond dispute ; and the more closely we examine, in its particulars, this essentially new conception of God, the more pal pable will the contrast of it appear with whatever preceded it ; the more, it seems to me, shall we inwardly feel that not by human means alone— long tried before without success— but by a transcendent Divine revelation, was such a change, so intimate and immense, accomplished for man. No thoughtful person will speak without tenderness of any ancient religious scheme which, in the absence of ampler light, has drawn to itself the trust and hope of human souls, and has been their means, however imperfect, for ascending to nearer in tercourse with God. More majestic in proportions, more signif icant often in particulars of detail, than any renowned architect ure of temples, are some of these religions ; more pathetic are they than any tragedy, when we really touch the solemn con sciousness and the timid aspiration which lie beneath them • musical sometimes, with sad deprecation or with diffident praise, beyond the melody of secular poems ; picturesque, even, with a vivid and varied beauty surpassing that of spectacular pageants. INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 37 As simple historical monuments they appeal to a profounder study than obelisks, palaces, or civil legislations. As systems illustrating human feeling, they touch our hearts. We may never forget that souls Hke our own have sung their hymns, have builded upon them their tremulous hopes, have left them baptized with their irrepressible passionate tears. But it is necessary carefully to trace the influence of such religions, pursuing them to their effects as these had certainly been realized in society when Jesus came, to understand the work accomplished by him, the prodigious revolution which, through the Christianity that claims him for its Head, has in this direction been wrought in the earth. That man has an innate sense of God, — implied in his constant consciousness of dependence, and also of obligation, both point ing to a Power above him, and in his vague but real intuition of an Infinite beyond his measurement or sight, — this seems demon strably certain; almost, in fact, an axiom in religion. The old etymology of the Greek word 'Anthropos,' which made it rep resent " the one who looks upward," may or may not have been the correct one ; but the characteristic mark which it gives of the human person is justly descriptive : and nothing is more ap parent in history than the search which man has made after God, in all places and times, if haply he might find Him. The great teachers, the Orphic brotherhoods, more vaguely, yet really, the common multitudes, have alike been eager in this quest for the Power which they had to assume as the ultimate source of order and of life. The fact becomes startling, then, that so many of the thought ful, in the days which remain memorable to men for the mission of Jesus, had become wholly and frankly atheistic, or had come to recognize no other God than the universe itself, which to them was the impersonal source, and the ultimate reservoir, of existence and energy. It is only to be explained by their vehement recoil from the rites of worship, immoral and debasing, which were practiced around them, and from the fictions of his torical tradition which bore these as their appropriate poisonous fruit. How immoral and how debasing these rites had become, I need hardly remind you. There had been points, in the ex- 38 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF GOD, perience of various peoples, where natural religion seemed nearly, if not wholly, to touch the level of revelation ; where the primi tive conception of God had been so comparatively worthy and high that the subsequent descent from it appears almost incred ible : the monotheism being lost so utterly in the multitude of divinities ; the adoration of contemplation, or the solemn ancestral ritual of sacrifice, giving place so completely to frivolous, licen tious, or obscene customs of what was called worship. But these customs were now so established that only a radical and world-wide revolution of thought and feeling could displace them. Cicero, and Seneca, with many others, recognized and rebuked the tendency of men, instead of bringing the Divine to the human, to attribute their own sins to the gods: till such were encouraged, and seemed authorized, from on high. The testimony of Herodotus, Strabo, and others, as to the infamous usages of worship in Babylon and in Egypt, is sufficiently familiar. The voluntary sacrifice of virtue by woman was ac cepted as an offering dear to the gods ; and a sensuality so fright ful that Christendom could not bear its story, if the veil of the ancient language were lifted, had become part of the ritual of religion on the Nile and the Euphrates. It was said of the Greeks by Apuleius that they differed from the Egyptians in that they honored their gods by dances, which the Egyptians replaced with lamentations. The lighter and more fanciful spirit of the Greek is suggested by the remark. But in one respect they were certainly alike, in their readiness to instal the animal lusts among services of religion : so that Strabo tells us, you remember, that the wealth of Corinth proceeded largely from the foul hire of prostitution in the temples ; and Athenseus records that to the prayers of the temple-courtesans, as well as to the valor of the heroes of Marathon, the Corinthi ans ascribed the great Persian repulse. Even statues of such courtesans had honored and eminent place in the temples. Gibbon himself — who looked at whatever was not Christianity with passionless and discerning eyes — has given the world in his Twenty-third chapter a slight but a fearfully significant sketch of the license in worship which prevailed in Antioch : where pleasure, as he says, assumed the character of reHgion, and INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 39 where "the lively licentiousness of the Greeks was blended with the hereditary softness of the Syrians." * In Eoman worship, as publicly practiced, an equal licentious ness was not unknown. The Eoman nature was haughty and restrained. For a hundred and seventy years after the city was founded the gods had been worshipped without statues ; and re ligion, with that conquering and political people, was always a vast and elaborate public art, by which to compel the services of the gods on behalf of the city. Yet Ovid and Juvenal set pictures before us of fearful significance ; and Seneca complained that men uttered the most abominable prayers in the ears of the gods, so that what a man ought not to hear they did not blush to speak to the Deity: while to the general multitude of worshippers he at tributed indecency, and virtual insanity, adding that only the number of such secured for them the reputation of reason. All gods had come to be recognized as local. The oracle at Delphi had authorized the maxim that the best religion was that of a man's own city. The noblest of the divinities were not imagined to take any interest in human virtue. The most popular stories current about them were the frightful and depraving legends which rehearsed their furious passions and amours. The Chris tian Fathers, in their most passionate appeals against idol-worship, had only to repeat what was commonly accepted in the popular notion. Indeed, the tnost dismal superstitions were coining to take the place of any semblance of faith : as Tiberius put his trust in laurel-leaves to protect him from lightning ; as the Em peror Nero, Dhlhorn reminds us, ' having become tired of the goddess Astarte, worshipped no longer any god, but an amulet which had been given him — the ruler of the world becoming the devotee of a fetish.' f In this terrific condition of things, three controlling tendencies appeared, each of which we must recognize to bring before us the fearful arena into which the new force of Christianity entered. The first is, the increasing atheistic or pantheistic unbelief of * "Decline and Fall, etc.," London ed., 1848, Vol. IIL, pp. 173-7, 196. t "Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism," New York ed., 1879, p. 63. 40 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF GOD, philosophers in any personal God at all — in any God, except an indefinite principle of order, or a lambent fire-soul of the uni verse. The sad words of the elder Pliny have been often re ferred to, in which he utters his blinding doubt whether there be any God at all, distinct from the world or the sun— and counts it at any rate a foolish delusion to suppose that such an infinite Spirit, if there be one, would concern himself with the affairs of men. It is difficult to say, he thinks, whether it were not better for men to be wholly without a religion than to have one of this kind. He concludes with the lament that nothing is certain save the absence of certainty. He speaks re spectfully of the opinion then beginning to prevail, which at tributes events to the influence of the stars; and he breaks into the passionate saying that the best thing bestowed upon man is the power to take his own life. So Yarro is reported to have held that the only thing true in religion is the idea of a soul of the world, by which all things are moved and governed; and Seneca speaks, as quoted by Augus tine, of that ignoble crowd of gods which the superstition of ages has collected, in the worship of whom the wise man will join only as remembering that it is matter of custom, not due to reality, as commanded by the laws, not as pleasing to the gods. The Epicureans, represented by Lucretius, practically denied all gods, made the outward world and the so i>l of man the necessary result of a play of atoms, and esteemed it the chief end of phi losophy to banish as iUusory, or brand as fictitious, all forms of religious belief. The Stoical school, whose original teachings show so much of the semblance of Hebrew conceptions as almost to justify the suspicion of many that Zeno and Cleanthes had learned what was written in the Law and the Prophets, — this had become, if it were not at the outset, essentially pantheistic. Traces of this meet us plainly in Seneca ; and a scornful Pyrrhonism appeared the only philosophical refuge from atheism on the one hand or pantheism on the other. Even Plato — who, according to Justin Martyr, had learned of the Hebrew faith in Egypt — had said in the Timaeus that it was hard to find the Creator of the Universe, and that when he was found it would hardly be possible to make INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 41 him evident to all; and the aristocratic tendency of the ancient philosophy, represented in the remark, made such conceptions of any unseen supernal unity as philosophers might attain with out effect on the general mind. All such speculations, to the common understanding, were, as the sneering Caligula said of Seneca's eloquence, ' sand without lime.' When Cicero, there fore, wrote his Scipio's Dream, or Seneca his Natural Questions, when Strabo said — imposing his own thought upon Moses — that the one highest Being is that which we call heaven, the universe, and the nature of things, when Marcus Aurelius long afterward said, but in the same spirit, 'the man of instructed and modest mind says obediently to Nature, who gives all and takes it again, Give what thou wilt, and take back what thou wilt,'* or when Plotinus, the Neo-Platonist apostle, said in dying that he ' should try to convey back the divine in man to the divine in the universe 'f — there was nothing in all this to make the impression of a vital Divine Unity on the popular mind. The conception of that had no distinct hold on the thoughts even of philosophers; and they were almost as distinctly atheistic — if theism imply faith in a creative Person — as had been the religion of Buddha at the outset, or the ethical instruction of Confucius. | A primitive monotheism, general in the world, is indicated as probable by many facts : among Eomans, Greeks, Orientals, Hin dus, the earHest inhabitants of Egypt or of China. But it had certainly come to pass in the day when Christianity broke upon the empire that the world by wisdom knew not God. What Duncker says of Brahman might have been said of the very highest conception of God then obtaining among the thoughtful : it was " a soul-less World-soul " which they recognized.^ Light foot has tersely expressed the faet, when, after a large and candid summary of the maxims of Stoicism and of its principles, he says in his Commentary on the Letter to the Philippians, ''The supreme God of the Stoics had no existence, distinct from ex ternal nature." § This was true; and the thin veil of mysti- * "Meditations," X. 14. t Neander's "History of the Church" : Boston ed., 1851 : Vol. I., p. 31. X "History of Antiquity," IV., 546. § p. 294. 42 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF GOD, cism here and there thrown over the stony system does not dis guise its essentially cold and hard materialism. With this tendency in the philosophical minds was simul taneously shown a wide and swift decay of faith concerning the gods among the people, especially in the cities ; so that the ancient rites of worship became objects of public sarcasm ; so that Horace describes the manufacture of a god in a style as con temptuous as that of Isaiah or Jeremiah; so that Froude, it would seem, hardly exaggerates when he says that in the time of Csesar ' the Eoman people had ceased to believe : the spiritual quality was gone out of them : and the higher society of Eome was simply one of powerful animals.' * A certain apprehension that there might be Powers, unseen yet near, whom it was at least not safe to offend, still kept men to the performance of some rites of reHgion. But Livy — writing at about the time of the Lord's advent — complained of that neglect of the gods which even then widely prevailed. The tendency in later times only increased. The constant introduction of new gods into Eome from Egypt and the East, the portentous syncretism which filled the pantheon with a promiscuous crowd of divinities from all the earth, show how lightly the old ones had come to be regarded ; while in Greece — where Aristophanes, conservative as he was, had burlesqued the gods with riotous ridicule — at the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries the religious processions were greeted by the populace with mocking gibes. It may perhaps with reason be doubted whether the vehement satire of Juvenal is to be taken as representing exact lines of historical truth ; whether the temper of the man, and his pessimistic tendencies, have not surcharged with lurid tints his picture of the times. But there can hardly be room for doubt that he at least approximated the truth when he said that even children had ceased to believe anything about the under-world, and that the priests of august temples could commonly be found in corner-taverns, among sail ors and slaves. Indestructible instincts in the soul would not allow nations to become atheistic ; but the deified Virtues of the early Eomans — Valor, Truth, Clemency, Concord — had ceased to * "Csesar": New York ed., 1879: p. 18. INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 43 attract the later worship ; and the multitude of new gods, jostling each other in their appeals to the popular fancy, could only excite in the morally sensitive a passionate disgust. Cicero, you re member, in one of his most famous treatises, represents the ac complished and honorable Pontifex as sneeringly repelling all arguments for gods, or for Providence, while upholding the ex pediency of the established public rites. Here, then, appears the third tendency — in some respects more startling in itself, and more threatening in its prophecies, than either of the others — to the deification of Eoman emperors, even during their life, and in spite of the utmost ferocity, sensuality, or intolerable folly, manifest in them. This had its chief cur rency in the provinces, no doubt, but at the capital it was au thorized and maintained. A tendency to it had crept into Eome from conquered and tributary Oriental countries, where deified men had long been adored; but its rapid development shows how thoroughly the old faith had fallen into decay. Here, at least, was a recognized power : a power unhmited, over property and life. There was that one affirmative fact, amid the whirl of departing beliefs and bewildering doubts; so that not unnatu rally miraculous stories sprang up about Csesar, or about Augus tus ; and the latter was deified by decree of the Senate, as the former had been apotheosized by the people. This came to be the only general worship known in the empire. In Spain, Afri ca, Gaul, Greece, in Palestine and in Egypt, were temples, im ages, and the offerings of this worship. Festivals and games were associated with it. Fraternities of those devoted to its celebration were widely established; cities coveted the name 'servants of the temple of the C.esar-God': and of even the Jew it was inexorably required that he should worship the em peror. Other gods he might neglect, without immediate hazard. The deified emperor he must adore. To refuse it was practi cally the "crimen laesse magistatis"; and this, though Seneca could satirize bitterly the deification of Claudius— dying of med icated mushrooms — whom he had recently extolled as a god ; though Nero's daughter, of four months old, had been made a goddess ; though it must have been felt, about many of the em perors, that if they were gods, then devils had taken Divine 44 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF GOD, prerogatives ; though the rough and ready Yespasian could sneer at the thought of becoming a divinity, in his last sickness ; and though, at a subsequent time, the frightful Elegabalus solemnly installed the black conical aerolite of Emesa as sovereign of all gods, on the Palatine mount. It was into this world, so dim and uncertain in either the pop ular or the philosophic conception of God, so bewildered and baffled between polytheism and pantheism, so fallen from the monotheistic idea which had probably had supremacy in an earlier time, so unbelieving concerning the gods whom its ances tors had worshipped, so certain at last of only one thing in the sphere of religion — that the emperor had an awful power ; that whatever his vices he could be no worse than Jupiter had been, or any one of a score of gods ; and that if the Senate decreed worship to him, then worship he should have, as a matter of patriotism and public order, if not as a matter of personal con viction — it was into this world, stumbling amid such fetid darkness, that Christianity came: and the doctrine which it made speedily controlling, and finally universal, concerning God, was certainly in the most absolute contrast with what had preceded ; the effect which it accomplished can hardly be exag gerated, in its spiritual significance, or its secular importance. It had of course to put at instant defiance that worship of the emperor which was the terrible final fruit of the rotting heathenism which it overshadowed; and in that tremendous contest it was that multitudes of Christians were tortured, burn ed, sold as slaves, or flung to wild beasts. But it had as well, this new Christianity, by spiritual force to combat and conquer the polytheistic or pantheistic schemes of the universe ; to present to men another portrait of God ; and to establish toward Him a loving belief, in place of the sad or cynical incredulity with which the very idea of the Divine had come to be regarded. It was a vast work : how vast may be inferred from the utter failure of men like Plutarch, like Epictetus, or like Marcus Aurelius afterward, with all their earnestness, all their power of ample and persuasive statement, and all their hold on the popular re spect, to do anything whatever, wide or enduring, toward giving men a better knowledge of God. They wrote or spoke in the INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 45 interest of the ancient systems, though they came after Chris tianity was declared, and when a subtile infiuence from it acted perhaps imperceptibly on themselves, was certainly beginning to act on the empire. Yet Plutarch, or the disciples who followed him, could work no moral improvement in society ; and Plutarch could only denounce superstition as worse than atheism, because more positive in its effects, and try to show a reasonable basis beneath the figures of the pagan mythology. In some aspects of his thought, as in many of his life, one cannot consider him without admiration ; but he must have felt that all his efforts were essentially vain, while he wholly failed to recognize the fact that a new Hght was rising on the world, that a new force was descending into it, by which should be accomplished more than all for which he idly and sadly strove. In considering what Christianity did, in this superlative de partment of thought, we are to remember that it was not in all things a novel system, without hold on the Past, or an organic connection with that. It had, on the other hand, immense and vital historical connections : it was so divine, as Pascal observed, that another divine reHgion was only its foundation :* and in its discovery of God to the world it simply absorbed into itself all the virtue of that preceding and preparatory system which had led the way to it ; it poured a nobler illustration upon that ; it added to what had been in that, other elements of supreme im portance ; and when it had thus given it consummation — a sud den, strange, transcendent consummation — it gave it also a swift and amazing universality. This is the office which Christianity accomplished, in instructing mankind as to Him who is above. Observe, then, how unique, how imperative, how ultimate, is the word which it utters concerning God : the fixed and final conception of Him which it has made familiar and controlling wherever its astonishing energy has been felt. That it ascribes to Him absolute Personality, I need not say : that it never, for a moment, confounds Him with the universe, or conceives Him as the animating but impersonal soul of the earth and the heavens. The ethnic worshipper, untaught by * "Pens.es '' ; Sec. Par; Art. IV. 12 ; Art. XVH. 9. 46 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF GOD, philosophy, had apprehensively suspected a hidden Will behind the various palpable phenomena of wind and stream, of star or storm. The idol now, in the heathen temple, however gro tesque and appalling to the sight, or however decked with rai ment of gold and shining stones, is not worshipped for itself, but for the secret and awful presence which is supposed to lurk be hind it, to be watchfully present in the uncouth outlines of limb and arm, and thence to be able to threaten men. The moment the mind, advancing in discerning and critical power, began to carefully reflect upon this, its folly was apparent : and so, with reaction from the common idolatry, came the loss of the sense of personality in God, the substitution of Nature or Fate in place of the idol. Indeed, tendencies to a logical or poetical pantheism are always active in the world, and have by no means been unknown in our own time. The Christian Faith, Hke the Hebrew which it consummates, refuses any image of God ; it looks upon all such as paltry and blasphemous ; and it has been often energetically denounced for what was esteemed the ruthless violence with which it has turned the noblest statues, purporting to outline the Infinite Majesty, into lime and dust. But the sense of the perfect Divine personality is in it more intense than it ever had been in the simplest idolater. The Hebrew hymns, from first to last, had been vocal with this. The whole historic Hebrew legislation had throbbed with this pervading thought. So vivid had been the conception of it in prophet and singer that they had gone to the edge, at least, of anthropomorphic pictures of God, to show that as the architect is different from the house, the governor from his kingdom, the psalmist from his harp, so God is distinct from His creation ; and that as man has intelligence, conscience, the power of choice, the capacity for affection, so God contains within Himself, in His sovereign life, all elements and attributes of a perfect personality. Whatever else is true or not of the Hebrew Faith, this certainly is. There is no touch or trace in Christianity of anything inju. riously anthropomorphic in its supplemental disclosure of God. He is a Spirit, to be worshipped only in spirit and in truth. But that conception of His personality which it forced upon all who INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 47 heard it in the world is as vital, universal, and as sharp in its impression, as if this had been the only lesson which it was given to it to bring. Against all philosophical speculation which would challenge or cloud this, against all governing preference for a universe with no supreme Person at its head, it sets this forth in resplendent exhibition. Its doctrine of Man, as a person be fore God, is not a whit more definite and complete than its doctrine of God as a Person above him. .; To this it adds a doctrine of His Unity, in both Old and New Testaments, only the dim foreshadowing of which had even Plato or Xenophanes caught, and from which the mind of the world at large had seemed hopelessly estranged. Monotheism is believed by many, as I have intimated, to have had original prevalence on the earth, among other peoples as well as the Semitic, and only gradually to have lost its supremacy. But how utterly it had passed from the noblest ethnic religions, in the day when Jesus appeared on the earth, no student of history needs to be told. Though recognized possibly in the early Per sian faith, it certainly was not by those who succeeded to the in heritance of that, with whom the dualism, which seductively promises to solve problems of the universe, became, the estab lished norm of religious thought. If the Indian people once recognized and revered one multiform Power behind the visible phenomena of the world, even iu the Yedic hymns the three de partments of earth, air, and heaven, were already assigned to separate divinities ; and there appear among them the gods of Fire, Tempest, the Sky, the Ocean, and the Dawn, with the Adityas, with Yishnu, Civa, Pnshan, and the rest: while under the influence of that ancient religion, to which he clings with patient tenacity, the Hindu has come in later time to worship his three hundred millions of gods. It is said by those familiar with them that the ancient hymns at least admit the doubt whether man was not originally esteemed a part of Divinity. How utterly, even frightfully, the thought of God's oneness had passed out from the popular mind, in Egypt, Syria, Greece, Eome, has already been suggested. The tendency had been constant, unreturning, to crowd the earth and people the sky with subordinate gods, to whom prayer was offered and tribute . 48 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF GOD, brought; who were simply, as HeracHtus said, 'immortal men,' yet no one of whom could be conciliated without service, or of fended without danger. This seems to represent a law of human nature, the operation of which has not been unknown in Christen dom itself. Outside the special Jewish people, often indeed within that, it wrought in antiquity with a subtle and over whelming power. It was not as malaria rising from swamps, and isolated basins. It was an impalpable spiritual poison, which infected the entire air of the earth. Under the teaching of Christianity, in both its earlier and its later stages— when Law and Promise were preparing the way for it, and when it came to complete exhibition — the doctrine of God's oneness, I need not say, is imperative, universal. What had been the occasional thought of rare and high minds, which transcended their time, and which caught uncertain glimpses of this truth, as Pythagoras did of the unity of the universe in its revolving spheres, but which were not able to hold clearly for themselves the high speculation, much less to make it a law and an impulse to the general mind — that, since Jesus, is an axiom in religion. Eoman, Greek, German, Sclavonian, for each and all the pantheon has been emptied ; and the moment the new Faith burst upon them, one God was recognized, lord of winds and seas and stars, author alike of day and night, pain and pleas ure, life and death. Those who find in Christianity the declara tion of a Trinity in the Divine Being yet find this always asso ciated with and subsidiary to the absolute oneness to whose com pleteness it in their view contributes. It would be no more ab surd for any geometer to maintain the natural circularity of squares, or the identity of the globe with the cube, than it would be for any disciple of Jesus to doubt the absolute oneness of God; and the moment any exposition of the Trinity touches the line of tri-theistic speculation, it shivers into fragments against this immovable article of faith. An impression of unlimited and sovereign Power, belonging to this one personal God, is now also upon the world as it was not before, and of the dependence of the universe upon Him; with a similar impression of His complete constructive Wisdom. Of course, these are not to be traced altogether directly to INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 49 Christianity, as a system of religion, but also to those researches of science which are quickened by it, and which give illustration to its lofty theology. But the fact is significant that such science has been possible only where the basis for it was furnished by a clear apprehension of God's oneness and power. The Macedo nian Aristotle is esteemed its father : and his famous cosmoloei- cal proof of the existence of an infinite immaterial Energy, unmoved and all-moving, inclosing in itself all time and infinity, was not so much a deduction from, as an indispensable condi tion to, his physical research. He may have foimd an impulse to it from the Jews, with whom he had lively intercourse. Whencesoever it came, it made him the one master of science domesticated at Athens; and he, because of it, was expelled from the city. Just so far as Christianity has accustomed the world to its radical doctrine of a changeless and omnipotent personal God, it has given to science an undecaying basis and impulse. If mira cles are accepted as having been wrought for this religion, they show a power as unsearchable as any which the astronomer needs, for the support of furthest suns, or the configuration of remotest and vastest nebular systems. If they are denied, it can not be denied that such an impression was made of God's power, by the Faith which Christianity exalted to completeness, and by Jesus himself, that miracles seemed to men not improb able. And He of whom the Nazarene taught that He cares for the sparrow, and clothes the Hly by His delicate touch with its daintiest grace, only shows therein the constructive skill of which science searches the manifestations in shells or insects, in the analysis of fibre, or in the secret chemistry of plants. What ever she discovers, by lens or drill, by experiment or induction, only gives the Hght of further illustration to that doctrine of God which has been incessantly widening in the world since Christianity drove from the thought of mankind the gross or fanciful schemes of divinity with which the old world reeked or rang. She must be a witness, whether joyfully or not, to the gran deur of the religion which has given to her her larger freedom and finer inspiration. The discovery of the Eternity of God, which came also to the 4 50 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF GOD, world through the religion unfolded in part in the Old Testa- ment, but fully in the New, has the same relation to man's high est powers, and especially to his studies in science. It anticipates the largest demands of these, and gives to them unbounded scope. To get the amplitude needed here, unbroken by bar riers of time, Aristotle had affirmed unmeasured duration as the sphere of primal energy; while Plato seems to have conceived of the universe as an unwasting Hving thing, compounded by the creator of the whole of each of its four elements, not liable to old age or decay, with a soul of its own at once centered and diffused : itself a God, alone in its kind, and sufficient to itself.* There was no philosopher among the Hebrews, and none among the followers of Jesus, who could measure himself with that illustrious teacher of the Academy, whose genius has at once mastered and inspired so many greatest thinkers of the world. But it may certainly be said that in the doctrine of God's Eter nity, which they with such an emphasis taught, they gave a ba sis which he himself could never parallel for all conceivable cosmical processes. If the astronomer counts five hundred millions of years since the first fire-mist began to be condensed to make the earth, if the evolutionist holds it probable that an equal interval of ages has elapsed since the first life-germ appeared upon the planet — I am not committed, in either ease, to their calculations; but I match the periods demanded by them against the Eternity repre sented in the Bible- as the sphere of God's Life, and they do not exhaust or even diminish it. " In the Beginning," that is the majestic and interminable expression, " God created the heavens and the earth "; and " in the Beginning," that is the response from the century which saw Christianity complete, " the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The longest conceivable periods of time are here surpassed, as the drop by the ocean, or the reach of the hand by the bend of the heavens ; and they who never saw telescope or microscope, and who had learned nothing in any school of the impalpable majesties of creation, in declaring to the world a personal God, sole and sov- * Timteus, 30-33. INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. $\ ereign, of unsearchable wisdom and a power eternal, not only sur passed all previous teachings, not only conveyed to human souls the grandest thoughts which these can receive, but they gave to the largest discoveries of science, or its remotest and subtlest hypotheses, warrant and liberty. But it is, of course, when we turn to the special impression on the world through the teaching of Christianity concerning the temper and character of God, that we find it in most vivid and absolute contrast with the religions which it displaced ; in which no tendency had appeared toward its majestic and lus trous declarations ; by comparison with which its vital, regal, if we may not say its celestial supremacy, becomes most apparent. Here too the fully developed system is associated vitally with that which preceded ; but it did far more than simply prolong that. It has its own imperial lessons, as characteristically be longing to it as does perfume to the violet, or the radiant azure to the sapphire. In the manifold popular religions of the world the tendency has been constant to make the god Hke his worshipper, with only greater knowledge and force, and a larger opportunity : as the traveler among the high Alps sees his image reflected from the clouds, huge and terrific. Here and there a philosopher might conceive of a Being, hardly personal however, who dwelt apart in unexcited supremacy while men wrangled or suffered, were enslaved or victorious, lived or died. The Brahman may at times have seen in his supreme God a sovereign Intelligence, to be approached by devout contemplation, and into whose essential splendor the worshipper might hope at last to be absorbed. But the common mind, however quick to receive impressions — as the Greek mind was, as the Indian must have been — has never held fruitfully so remote a conception, and has come back to the wor ship of a god with all the parts and passions of our nature in gigantic development. The very forces of nature have been humanized by man's fancy, that he might thus draw nearer to them. Mohammedanism itself, largely indebted for its more recent conception of God to Hebrew and to Christian sources, hardly does more than reflect in that conception the character of its prophet. A stern, absolute, unloving Will, demanding only 52 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF GOD, to be obeyed, that is the Koran-conception of God : a Being who will give to the fullest measure what those who serve Him most desire — the sensual joy, ever fresh and immortal, of drunkenness and of lust. It stands in as fearful a contrast as possible, this • hard and ruthless later system, with the teachings of Christianity. It wants even the grace of Attic heathenism ; which at least, amid all its childish follies and sensual vagaries, built an altar to Pity, and made that honored wherever through the world men looked with admiration to the " City of the violet crown." It is not needful to show in what absolute contrast with this whole trend of the ethnic religions is that alleged discovery of God which was made in part through the Hebrew economy, and which is completed and proclaimed by Christianity. The pure character of God — that is the basal element in it : a character of intense clarity and brightness, which man does not even like to contemplate, and from which he constantly seeks to escape into alluring and liberal idolatries. Ever anew this char acter is declared, eternal in God : in the Law which articulates Divine commands ; in the setting apart of places and times in which this Being may be approached by him who fears His im maculate purity ; in the institution of a priesthood, with sacri fices, through whom and which the soiled but seeking worshipper may come ; in the ' benign intolerance ' of that sharp separa tion, inexorably enforced, between the worshipper of the true God and the worshipper of the false ; and in a thousand impas sioned utterances, of devout enthusiasm or of penitent depreca tion, ascribing such splendor of spirit to Him. So keen was the impression made on the tough and insensitive Hebrew nature that a fear of Him in whom this character was in cessantly supreme became the predominant sentiment in worship. It was not at all an abject fear, as if He might do men harm without reason. It was not a fear which forbade a confidence, sweet and strong, in His kind purposes toward the nation. But it was the awe, the contrite sense of condemning majesty, which was proper to the soul conscious of sin, when contemplating a Sovereign intolerant of that. However fascinating the sin might be, however common or even consecrated in all the world out side of Palestine, the Hebrew knew, at Corinth or at Thebes as INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 53 well as at Jerusalem, in Antiochan groves as on the terraced slopes at Bethlehem, that the God of his fathers was the enemy of that sin, and that His displeasure — like a swift, silent, con- suming fire — would follow its commission. However signal might be the prosperity of the nation which He fostered, how ever stately or lovely the house which men erected for His wor ship, catching suggestions for its ornate architecture from Egyp tian, Pbenician, Persian models, bringing into it the lily, the lotus, and the palm, carving with dexterous Syrian skUl its flower-capitals, overlaying it with plates or hanging it with chains of Indian gold — however full of thanksgiving and praise might be the service offered before Him, still the fear of the Lord was always to the Hebrew " the beginning of wisdom." The vivid, supreme, impenetrating impression of the lucid lightnings of His sovereign holiness pervaded the moral Hfe of His wor shipper. No more remarkable or subliming thought had ever been con veyed to man. Intelligence and power, both eternal, take from this character their ultimate and transcending moral lustre. It seems, at once, to vindicate itself as not suggested by the crafty or covetous spirit of man, but by Him above of whom it teaches, and who through it appals and rules rebellious wills. When Christianity was proclaimed in the earth— the consum mate flower on the thorny stalk of the preceding Judaism, the spiritual system in which that was transfigured — it did two things in regard to this immaculate purity immanent in God. It illustrated more fully its meaning and energy, and it made that the possession of mankind which before had pertained to a separated people. " Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts," is the cry, not of seraphim only, but of saints, in all the New Testa ment. That God is to be feared by one cleaving to sin, as well as to be sought with eager desire by one ready to leave it, as the stars in the sky this is evident in Christianity. Jesus himself, as admitted by aU, was intolerant of sin, though inviting and welcoming toward each who turned from it. With flaming eye, and a voice whose intonations still reverberate from the page, he rebuked pride, greed, malice, an undue passion though aroused for himself, the simulation of unreal virtue, the lust 54 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF GOD, within even if unexpressed in the life, a mere indifference to spir itual welfare. Not in the Decalogue, not in the sternest warn ings of Old Testament prophets, is the Divine pureness of thought and will so radiantly apparent as in the sermon preached by him on the grass-covered ridge of the Horns of Hattin. It is incor porate in his life, in every action which illustrates his spirit. To those who accept his death as a sacrifice, appointed of God as the condition of the remission of human sin, the eternal holi ness foreshadowed in ritual, priesthood, and silent splendor of the column of the Shekinah — finds its ultimate earthly expres sion on the Cross. But even if that be not so understood, the Divine purity, resplendent in Jesus, must make, as it has made, an incessant and an indelible impression on the mind of the world. As exhibited in him, giving him his lordship, consti tuting the light to enlighten the nations, it smote with instant and powerful impact on the souls of his disciples ; and the final description, by his last surviving personal disciple, of Him who is utterly righteous and true, surrounded by those redeemed and renewed to a similar righteousness, only answers to all which had gone before in setting forth this perfect holiness. As the indestructible azure in sea or sky, as the golden beauty in the sunshine, this character appears, throughout both the Testa ments, immortal in God. The gods before had given no law, had had no interest in human morality, and had exemplified everything in character known to man except the element of imperative virtue. Here was a God, for the first time proclaimed to all the world, to whom sin was the scarring scorch of hell : who would follow it with a steady and victorious displeasure never attributed to even that Nemesis who bated prosperity, and to propitiate or repel whose possible anger at his singular successes, Csesar, in the very pride of his triumph, was fain to repeat a magical formula on ascending his chariot. The new impression thus made on the world, of the character of God, is one of the preeminent facts of history. It is all the more striking because so many had tried to make some similar though infinitely fainter impression, and had signally failed. Pindar had said, that favorite lyric singer ofthe Hellenic world, INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 55 that nothing unbecoming should be recited of the divinities. Pythagoras had said, as quoted by Plutarch, that men are then best when coming nearest the gods.* The illuminated Plato — ' the greatest man of the ancient world ' — had rejected as fables whatever attributed immorality to them. Socrates had risen higher yet, and had affirmed that the service paid to the Deity by the pious soul is the most grateful sacrifice, and that no real evil can happen to a good man under God, either in Hfe or after death ; and by Sophocles, and _Eschylus, with all the doubt of the Divine rectitude which they represent, it had been taught, in the stately accents of tragic song, that recompense must over take the guilty, and that even an insolent thought shall be pun ished. But no one of these, nor aU combined, nor any other on whom had played the prophesying fore-gleams of the transcend ent Hght, had ever persuaded the peoples which honored thern — much more, mankind — that the gods were not drunken, passion ate, profligate, given to jealousy, lust, and war. The drift of hu man nature had set always that way : tiU even Brahmanism, which at its height contemplated God as an absolute Intelligence, though careless of character and not intent on moral distinc tions, became so corrupt that Buddhism, under Gautama, revolt ed, and substituted for it an absolute atheism. Even Cicero, in his ample and elaborate writings, derives no argument for virtue from the character of the gods, but relies solely upon philos ophy to show the end, the object, and the standard, of right Hfe and noble action.f By Christianity, and only by that, has the world which it educates been taught the lesson, now recognized by all as prime in religion, that immaculate sweetness and splen dor of character is the glory of God, and that only the pure in heart shall see Him. And yet — what could hardly have been expected — with this Purity in God, from which men had instinctively recoiled in their consciousness of personal moral exposure, a wholly new discovery is made by Christianity of His kindness, compassion, and solicitude for men : all flowing from the Love which is the vital element of holiness, and which is declared with imperative * De Superstit. IX. t Tuscul. Queest., I. : 4, 26 ; II. : 4 ; V. : 2 ; et . 56 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF GOD, energy to be His essential spiritual being ; since " God is Love " affirms the last Christian apostle. Out of this flow, as in it are involved, intense sympathies, radiant compassions, providen tial cares, fatherly affections. This impression of God, inacces sible to early ethnic thought, only dimly expressed in Hebrew Scriptures, but declared with perfect emphasis by Christianity, has been widening in the world ever since it was proclaimed, with a power which we continually feel. That the interest and care of heavenly Powers extend to all creatures — that in their cloudless celestial seats they take note of the ant, the insect, and the snail — this is no thought which heathen ism generates, or for which its theology has room. Whatever may have been the conception concerning man, in his relation to the gods, such creatures as these have always been recognized as de veloped under general laws, by impersonal or inferior forces. Christianity presents God as the author of all things, and as in terested in all; and it acknowledges no interval between His sovereign and immeasurable glory and His care for such creat ures. It is an axiom with it that as in Him is eternal majesty, so in Him is an infinite love ; and that His benignity extends in their measure, and according to their needs, to the grass of the field and the birds of the air, to the very ephemera whose span of life is the. swift summer's day. So all investigation of minor as of superior forms of organization, as now enlightened, feels itself following Divine processes, treading in the track of the In- ' finite wisdom, when it searches the structure of humming bird or of bee, of the flower beneath, or of the butterfly that sails flower-like in the air, released and winged. It rests upon the lesson, of which philosophy had not dreamed, of which glimpses had been caught by psalmist and seer, but which was first so announced by Christianity as to fill the world with its bright effluence :— the lesson that He who built the universe is immanent in nature, with a loving compassion as unlimited as His power, and that nothing is too humble, as nothing is too high, for His thoughtful regard. That such compassions extend to man, the highest of terres trial creatures, is a matter of course in the New Testament. There is no room in all its compass for any conception of hea- INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 57 then Fate ; but a Divine providence is recognized in it, as it never had been by even Xenophon or Socrates, and certainly not by the popular religions. It is a providence which extends to the humble and obscure, to the child as to the adult, never impinging on their fine sense of freedom, but guiding each with a touch more impalpable than that of the unseen air on the muscle. It is the providence of a Father in Heaven : and this concep tion of God for the first time shines here, in an exhibition at once luminous and tender. Max Mulier finds the "Heavenly Father " a name for God among all the original Aryan peoples, and traces the name in the ancient mythologies of India, Greece, Italy, Germany: a striking indication that monotheism— how ever wanting in persistent cosmical energy — had been to these peoples the primitive religion, and that some way or other, in historical times, they had fearfully fallen from its high level. But even that early name of " Father " did not mean what it means in the Christian sense, as Coulanges, for example, has for cibly shown. It did not imply, what even under Stoicism it did, a generative paternity, for which other names stood side by side with it. It did not in the least imply affectionate paternity. | It represented supremacy, only : was applied by poets to those whom they honored ; by slaves and clients to Master and Patron. The idea which it contained as applied to the gods was of paramount authority, superlative dignity. But Christiani ty shows the fatherhood of God, in His spirit of love, as well as in His authorship of finite intelligences, extending to all who are born of His life, and becoming intense toward those who seek ' moral fellowship with Him. To them He gives gifts, according to this conception of things, wliich the mind of the world had wholly failed to attribute to Him, or to conceive possible, untU it was exalted and instructed by Jesus — the gift of His own thought not only, but of His essential and renovating spiritual power. There is a fact indicated here which not only surpasses proba bility, and transcends utterly logical analysis, but which can be understood, or certainly can be verified, only by experience. The poet gives us of his fancy and feeling, of his discursive spiritual thought, or his treasured knowledge, in the music of his melo- 58 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF GOD, dious numbers. The philosopher gives us of his far and fine intellectual schemes, the expression of the result of his mental intuition, of his resolving analysis or reconciling synthesis. But neither poet nor philosopher, nor any other, ever seeks or is able 1 to impart of the exquisite life of his genius, or the supreme qual ities of his spirit. That it is reserved, according to Christianity, for our infinite Author to do for man ; for every man, the hum blest, meanest, who will accept the sovereign gift. By the im parting of His own spirit, in a way no more mysterious than is every contact of the Infinite with the finite, in a way wholly practical in its efi'ect, He will quicken and purify, and knit to Himself in immortal sonship, the lonely and timid human soul. This is the astonishing promise of Christianity, the privilege of whose fulfilment has been recognized by men precisely in pro portion to their faith. What the noblest ethnic precursor of the Master — the ' John the Baptist,' as one bas called him, ' of the world before Christ'* — vaguely felt as a daimon within, of a strange authority to restrain and direct, though not to renovate or to impel, that the humblest human disciple of Jesus, according to the Master, may aspire to find, in richer and more supreme experience, in the Spirit of God presiding in his heart. There is nothing in this approximating the pantheistic conception of hu man souls, as transient emanations, to be reabsorbed in the Di vine. The personality of God is the vital and everlasting founda tion of a similar personality in the souls which He creates. But each of these, according to Jesus, as strictly and centrally dis criminated from God, may yet receive the inspiring grace of His separate soul. That millions have thought they found this true, we certainly know. That it is among the most tender yet astounding of all the thoughts which ever uplifted and crowned human life, no thoughtful mind can refuse to concede. But something beyond even this appears, attributed to God in this unique and astonishing religion. It is a readiness on His part, through transcendent self-sacrifice, to restore to Himself, and to their rest and blessedness in Him, the most vicious and depraved. Whatever one's theory of Christianity may be, this is always conspicuous iu it. If we accept, as multitudes do, Jesus the * Marsiglio Ficino. See Neander : " History of Church " : Vol. I., p. 18. INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 59 Lord as being himself essentially and eternally Divine, then this becomes indisputably evident. The mystery of Incarnation, the humiliation and patience of the subsequent life, the gloom of Gethsemane, and tho agony of the Cross, have here to such their infinite meaning. It was not suffering inflicted on a creature, it was suffering which He who held miracles in His hand accepted for Himself, which became the ground of man's spiritual life. In that conception of Christ, sovereignty yields the preeminence to sympathy ; and the power which holds the worlds on their poise is not dimmed but is diademed by the infinite pathos of stupendous condescension. But even if men only see in Jesus the perfect representative of the Infinite Father, in the wisdom of his mind, and the ten der, heroic, Divine benignity which inheres in his spirit, the same supreme truth becomes still apparent. For more at least than any other is he to such the witness for God. Not merely his precepts, teachings, promises, then express to us God's heart ; but his readiness to suffer, even to die, to die in ignominy, die in agony, that he might thus draw men to himself. Unless we degrade the whole history of his death to the flattest level of common murder, accomplished by hatred on the helpless, that supreme self-surrender for the ignorant, for his enemies, becomes to us a mirror, from whose streaming yet resplendent surface flashes reflected the moral glory of Him who shaped and estab lished the suns. The Son has still declared to us the Father. We see God's temper evident and illustrious in his utter self- devotion, as we see His power in the miracles which were wrought, if these we accept. The more closely, in other words, we associate the spirit of Jesus with God, the more fully shall we see in his voluntary Passion the direct revelation of the heart of the Infinite. He who on any theory stood nearest to that heart, and was in innermost sympathy with it, has given us the key to its unimagined treasures of love, in the crowning tragedy of the history of the world. The Southern Cross, blaz ing upon the distant heavens, cannot so show the power of God, and the eternal majesty of His plan, as does that darkened Cross, on the low hill outside the gates, declare the spirit of self-sacri fice in Him, if His Son has fairly revealed Him. 60 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF GOD, If Christianity, in other words, be a religion, and not the mere uncertain philosophy of a Jew who was killed, this Love in God, carried to utter fulness of development toward even the degraded and the depraved, shines supreme on its front. There is an element here of which no rainbow or star had taught, and the thought of which had not entered man's heart. The nymph Egeria might teach Numa, according to the legend, in the fond ness of a personal passion, what were the proper religious cus toms. The Pythian priestess, at what was esteemed the central spot on the surface of the earth, might deliver ambiguous mes sages from Apollo, amid ecstasy and convulsion. But no other reHgion, nor any poetical compact of legends, ever supposed the essential spiritual life of the gods to be imparted to the soul of their worshipper. And assuredly no other had ever conceived of a personal God, of an infinite power, with a pure and awful holiness of spirit, yet careful of the humblest, mindful of the meanest, and with the temper of utter self-sacrifice for the wel fare of others, paramount in Him ! It seems too stupendous for human apprehension. I do not marvel, though I see it with sadness, that men even now find it incredible. I match every other conception of God ever known in the world, even that which obtained among the instructed Hebrew people, against this which is radiant in the New Testament, and all the others — of philosophers most enlightened, of rapt and fine poetic spirits- are as painted dust in the comparison : torch-lights beneath the meridian sun : tinted vapors before the heaven-high crystal air. It may truly be said, as it has been said many times, that if Jesus had done nothing more than teach men to say "Our Father" in the Christian sense, his Divine legation would have been justified. Plato, or one speaking in his name, had said through Socrates in the second Alcibiades : ' We must wait for some one to teach us our religious duties ; as Homer says that Athene took the cloud from the eyes of Diomed, that he might recognize gods and men ': and that One now was in the world ! That the conception of God thus authorized and impressed by the religion of Christ has not universally pervaded the world, even where that religion has been longest established, ia evident enough. Such imperfect effects were only to be expected : as INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 61 the most ribald blasphemies still mock the Gospels from those who hear them, and as some of the bloodiest battles of the world have had their field on the Mount of Beatitudes. It shows how hard it has been, and is, to hold up mankind to the supreme level of this Christian theophany. Some, under its light, have made the God declared by Jesus an inexorable tyrant, and have turned Christianity into a system as severe and repressive as that of Mohammed. Others have dissolved the whole moral energy of God into an undiscriminating compassion, as careless of the governing forces in character as were the gods of Syria or of Greece. One must have eyes to see the sunshine. A moral idiocy can only transfer its own image to the heavens. But it cannot be denied, it is as certain as the continents, that a change has occurred, prodigious and inspiring, in the thought of the regions which now constitute Christendom, concerning the Being recognized as supreme : and that this change dates from the point where the new religion broke radiantly over the earth, as if the heavens had then been opened. There had been no progress toward such a change, but only retrogression from it, in preceding religions. No man, or people, had ever expected, much less had themselves been able to accomplish, a similar change. In those who have accepted Christianity with the heartiest faith, the effect which it has wrought in this direction has been as novel as it has been surpassing. As I have suggested, a science which was impossible before, has taken from it basis and impulse. History has ceased to be an enigma, beneath the discovery of an order of events foreseen •. by Him who is thus declared sovereign in energy, and prescient / in thought. There is now a majestic rhythm in it. It is felt tc be moving toward remote consummations. Even nature has ] been enjoyed with fresh enthusiasm, in the light of the new and larger knowledge of Him who ordained it ; and a love of land scape, unfamiliar to the world of heathen thought, is almost as present as household affection in the realm of modern life and letters. There is a courage and hopefulness of spirit, not felt before: an expectation of better ages. There has passed a transcendent impu se into poetry ; and songs are now heard such as never before had stirred the air, exalting the spirit as 62 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF GOD, with the rush of angeUc plumes. Philosophy itself takes finer exactness, on higher levels, with larger range; while the charac teristic spiritual life of the modern believer infolds elements 'unparalleled, unimagined, in the earlier time. The lowliest feel themselves related in spirit to the Lord of the Universe. The little child feels it, as well as the mature ; the savage just en lightened, as well as the cultured Christian disciple ; the peasant, uninstructed in human knowledge, only more easily than the savant. It is not strange to such, henceforth, that God has builded a city above, and has crowded it with glories which men cannot prefigure, that they at last may share His rest. It is not strange, or passing behef, that the hand which holds the universe together should wipe the tears from human eyes. The grandest, tenderest, most inspiring thought which the mind of the world has ever received is this of God, now made familiar to it through Jesus. Even the sceptic has to admit it the loveliest of dreams ; while the discerning student of history finds in it the source of a vast, prophetic change in the life of mankind. I do not now argue, you observe, for the truth of this conception of God ; but I point to the majesty, harmony, and impressiveness of it, and to its effects, as vital and grand be yond possible cavil. It holds its place, while ages pass ; as unaf fected by changes of custom or mutations of states as the atmos phere is by the waving of trees. It involves supremest blessing and promise. All character, rooted in love to the Highest, takes from that a superior glory ; philanthropy, heroism, domestic af fection, the very passion of patriotism, being ennobled and con secrated by it. Self-surrender for the truth, self-sacrifice for others, which were the rare experience of the few, have become the familiar enthusiasm of many, since their Divine authority and splendor appeared in Jesus ; and no occasional fitful ecstasy of thilo or Plotinus could rival that sweet and solemn joy which has come to millions of human souls since the God of the New Testament was declared to the world. There is no department of human experience on which there does not fall to-day a beneficent force from that declaration. The change from the old world to the new, in this regard if in no other, can only be compared to the change of which the voyager INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 63 is sensible when, turning his keel from Arctic seas, he meets on the mighty oceanic current airs prophetic already of the soft ness, the fragrance, and the serene briUiance, of unreached tropics. If the reUgion announced in words so strangely simple, yet so full of authority, from the rugged and lowly hills of Gal ilee, had done nothing else but make this impression on the life of mankind, it would take its place as the highest, most positive, and beneficent energy which the earth has contained ; surpassing arts, and arms, and ethics, as the unsounded skies surpass our roofs. It might, assuredly, have come from God — whether in fact it did so or not — if only for this purpose of teaching man kind what before had not been affirmed or surmised concerning Him whom all the peoples had dimly felt or keenly feared, but the picture of whose radiant and sovereign holiness, vital with Love, was hung upon no celestial consteUations, was imaged on no poetic fancy, is only shown to the world which it blesses in the mission, the words, and the face of Jesus ! LECTUEE III. THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN, INTEODUCED BY CHEISTIANITY. LECTUEE III. That another and a nobler conception of God has been made familiar and commanding in Christendom by the religion which has moulded and taught this, will probably hardly be denied. It must certainly be conceded by any one surveying with candid attention the progress and change of human thought on this sublime theme. But that any equivalent change has oc curred in man's conception of his own nature, may not so easily be admitted. It would, no doubt, have seemed antecedently far less probable. Whatever else man does not know, it might plausibly have been said, he must be expected to know himself. The elements of that knowledge are within him. The faculty for detecting and combining these elements, in systematic representation, can scarcely be increased or essentially changed by any effect of re ligion upon him. If not then instantaneously apprehended, when moral life begins with a man, his knowledge of himself must be early and certainly attained ; and it is hardly supposable that important augmentations can be made to it by a change in his forms of religious service, or in his conception of the Powers unseen. He cannot be expected to perceive or appreciate the vast and subtile harmonies of science at the outset of his career. He cannot be supposed to have mastered then the superb mechanisms, the knowledge of which implies large inquiry, long experiment. The lightning, for him, will not have learned to run on his messages. The needle of the compass will not for him have become a seer, guiding his course amid the darkness, and loosening his keels from the visible headlands. Not the type alone, but the alphabetic characters which give that signifi cance, he may not possess till centuries have succeeded his be ginning on the earth ; and the beautiful lights or the towering heights of physical discovery or philosophical speculation may (67) 68 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN, long remain as unapproachable by him as rainbows cresting in accessible summits. But one thing, at any rate, he must know from the start : his own nature, in its constituting forces, and its spiritual value. Con sciousness must precede speculation ; and speculation can only define and elucidate what consciousness involves. Without lens or drill, sharpened edge or chemical solvent, the man who cannot find out without these what is around him, may discern by intuition what is within him ; may know it with an exactness to which no reflection can add precision, and with an assurance whose fullness no contrary argument can abate. Even as the most perfect poetry — in its motive, and for its use — has some times appeared in the earliest time, in lyric, dithyrainbic, epic song, in tales of Troy or northern sagas, some song of Poland, or some weird and passionate Nibelungen-Lied, so man's knowl edge of himself may be expected to be as perfect at first as ever thereafter, and his earliest insight to teach him all which any religion or philosophy can. This, as I have said, might seem to be the fair presumption, independently of historical facts ; making it doubtful whether any religion, however peculiarly and transcendently Divine, could add essential or crowning elements to man's knowledge of him self. Especially might such a doubt appear justified when philos ophers had arisen, still preceding such a religion, who, in instances at least, as of Plato or Socrates, and in some departments of self-revealing inquiry, seem to have sounded all the depths, unveiled the heights, and opened to view the wide expanses of man's intellectual and spiritual being. Here, at least, it might reasonably be said, neither Christianity nor any possible form of religion can make important further contributions to the knowl edge of man concerning the powers which his nature infolds, or concerning its proper lordship on the earth. In theology it may teach ; in psychology it can say nothing novel. Undoubtedly in this there is an element of truth ; and as un doubtedly, if it shall appear that Christianity has taught the in trospective and aspiring man what he did not know concerning himself — has taught him that which his educated consciousness rejoices to recognize, but which it had never before apprehended, INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 69 has thus exalted the general estimate which man puts upon him self, not as a moral person perhaps, but as a Divinely consti tuted being, and has given him a new sense of the worth of his nature, and of the place which belongs to him amid the multi tudinous circles of the universe — if this shall appear, then here is at least a superlative force, which works at once for the welfare of man and for the glory of Him above from whom our nature is assumed to have come. It will not then be unnatural to infer, though the argument may certainly not be demonstrative, that the system tlirough which this fresh and surprising energy is exerted proceeds from God, and not from any spirit of man, surpassing philosophy, and with an impetuous and imperious push, after the failures of thousands of years, enthroning in its proper supremacy, under the heavens, the human soul. That Christianity has done this appears to me evident ; that it has done it by reason of its organic structure, not accidentally ; and that the changed conception of man which certainly now obtains in the world — as compared with that which prevailed before Christ, which now prevails outside the reach of his religion — is not externally connected with the religion, as a gold ornament imposed upon the shield, or as decorated porches and carved window-caps added to the finished frame of the house, but has its condition in Christianity ; as the flora and fauna of the tem perate regions, diverse from those on arctic parallels, have their condition, not so much even in soil, as in the warmth and light which surround them. It is this thought which I would pre sent for your acceptance, if in the end you judge it correct. I begin with the remark that such an ennobled conception of God as this religion seems beyond doubt to have introduced carries with it, naturally, a similarly ennobled conception of man. It must do this : since all men, recognizing a God at all, recog nize man as in some sense His representative on the earth. The popular ethnic religions, as I suggested, have done this habitu ally, making the gods gigantic prototypes of the spirit in man. The Christian system, beginning at exactly the opposite point, and professing to come from God to men, not to be an effort, successful or otherwise, on the part of men to arise to God, yet begins, in its earliest premise, with the formal declaration tbat 70 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN, God has made man in His own image ; and it proceeds with constant steadiness upon the assumption that if the resemblance in character has been lost, or painfully obscured, it remains in delible in the frame of his being. It is only a religion Hke Brahmanism, which recognized God only as a neuter, cold, and passionless First Cause, or a philosophy like the Buddhistic, which knows no God, which represents existence as essentially evil, and which traces the ultimate life of its leader through more than five hundred previous lives, of rat and crow, dog and pig, fish, peacock, and golden eagle — it is these alone which find no specific likeness to a Divine original in the human soul. Even Stoicism, with its doctrine of a World-soul, an ether-god, made the human soul a representative of it : a kind of evapora • tion of blood, penetrated with ethereal fire from the World-soul, destined to exist, perhaps, for a time after death, in a hardly personal separateness, but to be re-absorbed at last into the primal originating substance. Of course, on such schemes of thought no room is left for at tributing a real royalty of nature to the personal human spirit. It has no intimate or organic relationship to a Divine Personal ity. It cannot aspire to essential or permanent celestial experi ences. All that it can be prompted to do is to cultivate a stern hardness of will ; to be careless of circumstances, defiant of the future, ready to part with individual consciousness, and not afraid of any fate. One need not go back to Epictetus or Anto ninus to find this. Eead- the despairing and fascinating words among the most pathetic, I think, that have been written in our time in Christian England— by Holyoake, the earnest and elo quent Secularist leader, addressed to the people whom he would instruct, and see if this is not so : " Science has shown us that we are under the dominion of general laws, and that there is no special Providence. Nature acts with fearful uniformity ; stern as fate, absolute as tyranny, merciless as death ; too vast to praise too inexplicable to worship, too inexorable to propitiate ; it has no ear for prayer, no heart for sympathy, no arm to save." * * See Farrar's Lects. on " Critical History of Free Thought"- London ed., 1862; page 441 [note]. INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 71 From such a conception of the Power above us, which is only harder and more relentless than that of the Stoics, there can come no interpreting light on the majesty of man's nature, and no inspiration to a higher sense of the dignity of his spirit. The soul, on this theory, is simply the product and plaything of un intelligent caprice or an unmoral force. Its grandest faculties move in chains. Its deepest sensibilities are the saddest. It is walled in the iron of force and law, in the midst of a universe having no Head. It is here that the agnostic scheme — ignoring God, or treating Him as ' the eternal Why ? to which no man has replied ; the infinite Enigma, which no Sphinx has solved ' — deals its deadliest blow, not more at revealed religion than at human liberty and civilization. But wherever a personal God is conceived, from whom man came, whom man resembles in spiritual being, there, as the conception of the Divine One is lifted, the conception of man will be also exalted. And he who has seen the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ, is certain to think more justly and loftily of bis personal nature, derived from a Being so transcendent, than he who has only imagined an Apollo, god of music anti prophecy, or a lovely Aphrodite, springing lightly from the foam of the sea, and girt with the alluring cestus. I cannot think that this needs to be argued ; and so we may properly proceed to consider what man did in fact think of himself, in the world at large, in the times before Christ. It seems too obvious fairly to be questioned, that there was no prevalent sense in men of an essential primitive dignity belong ing to their nature. The Greeks, for example, though inquisitive, aspiring, and bold in speculation, ascribed no glory to that nature from any imagined Divine energy concerned in forming it. Its origin confessedly lay hid in ' the dark backward, and abysm of Time '; as Plato said that ' the human race either had no beginning at all, and never will have an end, but always will be and has been, or it had a beginning an immense time ago.'* In the common understanding of things, man had sprung from the earth — an autochthon — and the grasshopper was his fitting *"Laws," VI. : 782. 72 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN, badge. From rocks, and trees, and swampy places, some had come ; those born of the marsh having legs like serpents. Heroes themselves had been earth-born ; and even the gods, ac cording to Pindar, had drawn their breath from the same mother .* The first men had lived as insignificant emmets in the excavated earth, or in the sunless depths of caverns ; and Prometheus had first shown them the risings and settings of stars ; had made known to them letters, numbers, and the func tion of memory ; had helped them to the ornaments of life.f Dissociated thus from a Divine originator, the nature of man failed to impress the ancient world as possessing inherent splendor or majesty ; and the immediate impulse was to honor its accidents more than itself, especially to honor the extraordi nary power which was sometimes associated with it, and to con ceive this the supreme thing in human experience. Whoever had this, by acquisition or inheritance, became thereby an object of homage; of an homage increasing as the power became greater, and reaching its climax when that was sovereign. So barbarous tribes, as Herbert Spencer reminds us, still worship their rulers as divinely descended, as gods themselves ; as the Fiji Islander, to take his Ulustration, stands unresistingly to be cut to the ground if the king, who appears to him Divine, or dains his destruction.^: So our Aryan ancestors worshipped the weed whose distiUed juices could lift them for a moment into the excitement of an unaccustomed power. y As the power of the muscle is succeeded and surpassed by that of the mind which equips and wields it — as tbe power becomes organized, in a sense impersonal, yet only therefore more per manent and far-reaching, through the raising of one in whom it is lodged to the headship of the State — this worship becomes only more complete, in those mastered by the power, and de pendent upon it. It even displaces the earlier worship, received from ancestors, of mythical heroes, or of personified forces of nature, whose voice is in thunder, or whose play of motion is in the shining sea-surge. It is simply in the natural development * " Nemean," VI. : 1 . t -Eschylus : " Prometheus," 448-160. J "First Principles of System of Philosophy "; New York ed., 1879, p. 5. INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 73 of this tendency that the worship of the Emperor, as I showed the other evening, becomes the enthroned religion of the State. No matter how recent or mean his life, how atrocious his char acter, how essentially frivolous his habits, tastes, or personal faculties, because he is Emperor he is worshipped as having kin ship and compact with Divine beings. It seems almost to have been a part of the plan of Providence — if such a plan may be at this point theoretically assumed, in connection with our religion — that such a consummate demonstration in history of the tendencies of man's spirit should be matched simultaneously against the first teaching of Christianity in the world : that the worship of Tiberius, Claudius, Caligula, should show forever, in colossal exhibition, how natural to man, in the civilized as in the barbarian state, is homage toward power ; how mean hu man nature appears to itself, when set wholly apart from any station of superior force. Civilization has not outgrown the tendency, or learned the supreme lesson of the Master that the highest of all should be servant of all, and that of little children is the Kingdom of Heaven. But power, at least, however valued, has not the place in modern times which it had before Christ : when whoever had it was worshipped in proportion to it ; whoever had it not, became despicable in consequence. To despise him was inevitable ; to enslave him was legitimate. 'J— Among peoples to whom the attainment of eminent political or military power was not possible, as it was not to the Greeks under the Empire, among a people distinguished as they were for intellectual activity and a keenly responsive sesthetic sense, success in these nobler domains of effort gave distinction ; and weakness of frame, obscurity of origin, the utter want of polit ical influence, did not hinder men from paying their eager tribute to the genius which touched the canvas with light, or moulded the marble to forms of passion, or shaped the quarry into archi trave and frieze, or which uttered rare thought in melodious num bers. Still it was the accident of genius, or of special accom plishments, not the original endowment of nature, to which the Greek rendered his honor. All Greeks were separate in his thought from the rest of mankind ; and it was at Eome, not at Athens, that the populace applauded the poet's words who 74 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN, ' counted nothing human unworthy of his regard.' The Greeks themselves were sharply separated into ranks of honor and of dishonor ; and one of the most significant things in even the highest Greek philosophy is its disesteem for man as such, its regard for only the rare and -cultured : as Plato ad dresses himself to the philosophic nature — a plant, he says, which but occasionally grows among men ; as Aristotle defends servitude on the ground that those of inferior powers are to the abler as the body to the soul, the lower benefited by serving the higher ; as Plotinus, later, discriminates sharply between the vile rabble, of mechanics and others, who cannot attain, who do not tend toward, the summit-good, and the few who do;* as Tacitus suggests the affectionate hope that there may be some exalted spirits which do not perish with the body, as do the rest. Always, it is that which is special in man which attracts the philosophic respect, not his common human nature. ^J_ -]„ Under the Brahmanic system, as it appeared to the armies of Alexander in substantially the characteristics which belong to it to-day, the highest place among men belonged to those supposed to have power over the gods through prayer and sacrifice — they having issued from the mouth of Brahman, while the other or ders had proceeded from his arms, his thigh, or his foot. And even in this highest order, it was the abstracted contemplating intelligence of the man twice-born, who entered thus into con ference with the Absolute, and drew into himself the infinite essence, which gave distinction : a distinction not dependent on physical strength, or on multitude of possessions, but on the sup posed capacity and habit of this absorbing contemplation ; a dis tinction which naturally raised its possessor to immeasurable su premacy above the other classes in the land. Here was the germ, or the organizing power, of that enormous system of caste under which so bitterly India has groaned. There is something, perhaps, in this standard of distinction which commands our respect more than does that which meas ures worth by property, by muscle, by rank and leisure, or even by genius. But in Brahmanism also, even at its best, it is not *Seo Prof. Fisher: "Beginnings of Christianity." New York ed., 1877, p. 180. INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 75 man, you instantly observe, who is honored as such, but the men separated distinctly from others, who have been quickened to discern in nature the mere play of illusion, and to contemplate directly the eternal World-soul. A man of this class had a spe cial and splendid value. By knowing God, he became God. But the rest of mankind were as dust and burned cinders beneath his feet. Buddhism had its genetic in_].ulse in a revolt against Brah- manism. It was prompted by eager sympathy with man, and was published in a generous interest for his welfare. The legend of its author is one of the most attractive in history, and his system largely corresponded with the story. It excluded no one, of either sex, of any rank, from learning the truth, and declared itself a law of grace for all. To its many admira ble ethical precepts no student can fail to offer his homage. Its care for the poor, its ministry to the oppressed, are the crown of its glory. Yet, in utter contradiction to the common recent notion about it, Buddhism did not attack or disturb the institution of caste. It not only maintained this, where it secured dominance ; it appears even itself to have introduced it into countries which before it had not invaded; and this was only in radical harmony with its whole scheme of thought. No true conception of the essential dignity of personal and moral human existence is possible under it. That existence is regarded as the radical and essential evil, which it is the height of aspiration to annihilate. The life of man is common with the life of tiger or serpent, mouse or bat. It was never contem plated by Gautama that all could attain liberation from evil, even by seeking for non-existence after his method. A maxim of his, in the " Path of Yirtue," has even a tone of haughtiness in it : ' As on a heap of rubbish cast upon the highway the lily will grow, full of sweet perfume and delightful, thus the disci ple of the truly Enlightened Buddha shines forth by his knowl edge among those who are like rubbish, among the people who walk in darkness.' * And even one thus distinguished and en lightened, as we must not forget, could only look, in his highest * " Dhammapada ; or, Path of Virtue "; London ed;, 1870 ; p. Ixxiv. ; vs. 58-9. 76 THE NEW- CONCEPTION OF MAN, aspiration, for the extinction of desire and the subsidence of consciousness in that Nirvana in which the consummate individ ual life should sink at last, as the bubble breaking in the sea. Any noble conception of the human soul was in such a scheme simply impossible. y~~- In the Hebrew system, as I need not remind you, man, as such, if belonging to " the people of God," had a value ascribed to him unknown elsewhere, independent of property, of personal strength, of military distinction, or of capacity for affairs. As a child of Abraham, to him Divine promises had been given ; for him had been declared, amid majestic phenomena, that sovereign Law which ' made for Eighteousness '; for him had been in stituted the priesthood and its ritual ; for him, the illustrious office of the kings. Canaan had been given not to a few, but to the many. The rights of the poorest were carefully guarded. The sharp and strict Agrarian Law, which was the basis of the civil constitution, was for his protection, with the law which for bade his wealthier neighbor to take usury from him. For every Hebrew, as the development of the State went on, because of his relation to the nation and to its sovereign Head in the heavens, psalmists had sung, prophets had predicted the future events, great teachers of truth and of imperative duty had been preter naturally inspired of God, to bring His message to the humblest. Whatever else may be true or not of that remarkable prepara tory system which preceded Christianity, it certainly is true that it recognized, as had no other, the place of man amid the im mensities, his vast responsibilities, his right and privilege of per sonal communion with the Most High. No matter what his native obscurity, or his narrowness of resources, provided he were of the chosen people, or had become incorporated with that as a proselyte accepted, all promises were his, the entire theoc racy was established and administered on his behalf. But this recognition of human worth was still sharply limited by one inflexible line of demarcation ; and to Eoman, Greek, Egyptian, Assyrian, the Hebrew did not ascribe the value which confessedly belonged to his humblest brother in the Hebrew commonwealth. It was not human nature, in itself, that he honored, any more than it was that which Plato honored in the INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 77 Eepublic, when he severed the Greek from the barbarian, and treated, the nobler Hellenic race as so superior that others were natively alien to it. Practically, systematically, the Hebrew reserved his spiritual regard for the sons of the fathers who, as he conceived, had seen the miraculous glory on the mount, and felt the throb of the rocky cliffs when Omnipotence touched them ; who had come out from Egypt amid wonders and signs ; and whose not remote ancestors had talked with the Almighty, and seen visions of angels. It was Hebrew nature, rather than I human nature, which even to him possessed intrinsic grandeur. But the moment we meet the supremer force of Christianity in the earth, we enter a changed condition of thought. This reHgion is preached, by admission of all, to Eoman, Greek, Syrian, Scythian, as well as to Jew. It recognizes no distinction of classes, but senator and slave sit side by side in its assemblies. It lifts the humble, without degrading the high. Its first teach ers, and distinguished apostles, are taken largely from the uncult ured classes. It acknowledges no limitation to race ; but as soon as the minds of its earliest disciples have been enlightened as to the import and value of its contents, it is by them pro claimed without pause to all who will hear it, whether in Asia, Africa, or Europe. The most tenacious and stubborn prejudice, in a mind so narrow and so intense as that of Peter, is overcome by this religion ; and he is constrained, by an immense impulse connected with it, to offer its sublimest provisions to the man at Cesarea, who especially represents the fierce and haughty foreign Power which has conquered his country, profaned its temple, and heaped gross injury on himself. Nothing in history is more remarkable than the sudden expan sion, at the liberating touch of this religion, of the minds which had been rigoreus and limited under the restraints of their previous system. It is the inrush of a flood, lifting and swelling the trickling stream, till it fills the channels, passes all banks, and spreads its waves over widest expanses. It is the sudden transfiguring advent of summer-air, which pours reviving light and force over areas continental, instead of restricting them, as the winter had done, to tropical islands. The sudden distribution of accumulated properties, hereditary for centuries, to aU the 78 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN, needy and mean of a nation— the sudden dispersion of master pieces of painters and sculptors, lodged for generations in princely saloons, to those who in the eye of the law had not the smallest claim upon them— neither of these would have seemed so strange as the readiness, the eagerness, of the early disciples to give the religion which, to them at least, seemed Divinely au thenticated, to all the world. It has become an instinct with their successors. It seems to us supremely appropriate ; because the Christianity which they then preached has been for centuries the life of the life of those from whom our blood has come. But at the outset it was almost as extraordinary as would have been a man with wings that a Jew should be eager to preach his religion to those who were not of the chosen people, to those who in all political relations and ancestral affinities stood to him as aliens and enemies ; that he should be ready to plead with an impassioned earnestness on behalf of that religion, in the face of danger and daring death, before Greeks and Orientals, in the schools or the streets of An tioch or of Ephesus ; that he should be ready to take as its first converts in Europe a proselyted Greek woman, and a Eoman jailer ; that he should preach, at Athens, Corinth, or amid the turbulent multitudes in Eome, to philosophers, laborers, rulers, soldiers, and heathen slaves, the majestic system unfolded to him by the teaching of Jesus, in which he felt that the whole revered and attested theocracy had at length been fulfilled. It goes without saying that a wholly new force had broken suddenly into his spirit, to produce this unmatched and amazing effect. It is as evident as the mountains of Moab from the heights of Olivet, that a power unexpected, energetic, expansive, had wrought a vast revolution in his thought, giving him wholly new conceptions of the value of Man, without reference to nation, class, or race, and showing him the duty of each man to others, whatever their social or political separations. That force was found in the reHgion which he had accepted ; in which were the lessons that inspired him to preach it, with out discrimination, to all who would hear. This becomes only the more apparent when we remember that Jesus himself, the great Teacher of this religion, so far as we learn from the records INTEUDUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 79 of his life, almost never went beyond the boundaries of his country or nation. He spoke to his townsmen of God's ancient favor to the woman of Sarepta, and to the Syrian noble ; and their reply was an effort to Mil him. The furious rush toward the summit of the Mount of Precipitation was their only attempt to rival the level of his sovereign thought. He suffered himself to be sought and found by the ardent woman of Syro-Phenicia. Under the shadows of Ebal and Gerizim he opened conversation with the woman of Samaria. The most sympathetic catholicity of spirit appears in his life, as that lies before us in the New Testament, giving a tender majesty to his words, a serene and resplendent benignity to his action ; as the sun-bright radiance, according to the story, broke through and suffused the woven threads of his common but transfigured dress. But, personally, his ministry was almost strictly confined to the Jews. It im presses us the more, then, with the essential breadth of his re Hgion, with the value it attaches to all human souls, that the in stant force of it should have been such on the minds of his followers as to prompt them to surpass the limits of his example, as well as utterly to transcend the teachings or the moral suggestions of the Faith before governing with themselves and their fathers. It can have been only in the organic structure of that religion that they found this surprising impulse — ratified, however, and clothed with emphasis, by the closing words of the Master to them, as reported among them, and by the last gesture which they very early ascribed to him, of Benediction on the earth, before the heavenly cloud received him. It was this inherent energy of the religion, pushed in on their souls with incalculable force, which carried them abroad in world-wide effort, and which made all distinctions of rank or power, of race or class, disappear from their sight. The new light thus cast on the value and greatness of human nature, was not limited to them. It has entered since into the vital consciousness of mankind. It is to-day, thanks be to God ! the broad and clear illumination of the world. On the face of it this religion purported to be one which sought men, and sought them on behalf of God, to bring them to Him. It was not a religion for the devout only, but for all 80 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN, men: however unintelligent their minds might have been on highest themes, however refractory and rebellious their wills against the precepts of a supreme righteousness. And it was by no means, in its own contemplation, a religion which had been constructed by men, to lift them nearer to heavenly levels. The ethnic religions, in their best and most attractive aspect, are such religions of aspiration : the lower ever looking up to the higher, the ignorant creature trying to find the unknown Creator. In an early Vedic hymn, translated by Max Miiller, after affirm ing as wise and mighty the works of him who stemmed asunder the wide firmaments, the poet asks : " How can I get near unto Yaruna [Heaven] ? Will he accept my offering without dis pleasure ? When shaU I with a quiet mind see him propitiated ? " So, in another translated passage from the Zoroastrian Avesta, is shown us another up-reaching spirit : " I ask thee to teU me the truth, 0 Ahura ! Who was from the beginning, the Father of the pure creatures ? Who has made the path for the sun and the stars ? " * There had been traditions among the Greeks that in the prehistoric times the gods had held commerce with men. Hecataeus of Miletus is said to have definitely fixed the era at which they ceased to intermarry with mortals, in the 9th or 10th century before our era. The feeling continued that poets, as Plato expressed it, ' might often still, by the assistance of the Muses and the Graces, attain truth in their strains '; f that their highest works were indeed to be attributed to a possessing divinity. But there was nowhere among the Greeks any con ception of a positive body of law and truth declared by the gods for man's acceptance. It would have seemed scarcely less pre posterous than that stars should be sent for human torches. But Christianity came, professedly at least, with such Divine discoveries to man ; and it claimed to come with illustrious her alding. If men conceive, as they not unfrequently have con ceived, the song of angels over Bethlehem to be a later poetic legend, without any sure historical warrant, this aspect of the Gospel remains still evident ; for it then is apparent what ivn- * "Science of Religion": New York ed., 1872, pp. 110-111. 1 "Laws": III., 682. INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 81 pression it had made on the minds of its disciples, an impression so quick, deep, and continuing, that it was afterward spontane ously expressed — or, if any one chooses, was expressed with a purposed and calculated conformity to the feeling of those disci ples — in the radiant picture of the Bethlehem legend. Their religion claimed, from the beginning, not to be a product of human contrivance, but a message from the heavens : in which the eternal and invisible God, who had made man in His image, spoke to His creature, to bring him into higher communion with Himself. And in this vast initial fact was plainly involved, to those who received it, a supreme affirmation of the dignity and worth of that nature in man to which a message so august had been addressed. r— ^_ In this, Christianity contrasted, as I have said, the highest philosophies which had preceded, while it was utterly, by its constitution, set apart from the prevalent religions of the world, HeUenic, Buddhistic, or any other ; but it corresponded with, while immensely surpassing, that earlier system upon which it was suddenly super-imposed. The Zeus of the Greeks, as Mr. Grote has clearly recognized, in his highest supremacy was not a Law-maker, but a Judge, having only the commanding Divine,/ functions judicial and administrative. The whole conception of the Deity as dictating a code of laws, Mr. Maine declared, in his " Ancient Law," to belong to a range of ideas compara tively recent and advanced.* But the grand uplifting and edu cating force to the Hebrew nation always had been their fervent belief that God had given a Law to their fathers : a Law which contemplated high character in them, and which showed impres sively that the Sovereign of the Universe was ever at hand, tak ing instant cognizance of the action of men, and of the spirit revealed in that action, and certain to recompense, in this life or the next, according to their obedience to Him. It might weU be that a pursuing fear of God should be inspired by this Divine Law. It might well be that life should appear so solemn and momentous, under its overshadowing cloud and glory, to those morally weak, that they should desire the easier rule of enticing * " Ancient Law ": New York ed., 1864, p. 5. 6 82 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN, idolatries, confronting their austere religion from Tyre or Da mascus, in Babylon or Nineveh, or along the verdurous banks of the Nile. But as long as the fact remained in their convic tion that such a Law, holy and mandatory, had been given to them of God, they could not but recognize also the estimate thus put by Him upon their nature. That Law of which Kant said that 'two things filled his soul with profound awe, the starry heavens and the moral Law,' had at any rate this contin ual mission. Over every Hebrew household and heart shone a gleam from the Sinai brightness. Over the whole history of the people fell a force of ujnftion and benediction from that unfor- gotten revelation of God. In the highest political, as in the deepest moral sense, that Law was their life ; because it ever more quickened the sense of their public value as a people, of their importance, commensurate with their duties, as persons before God. Other nations might be richer, more famous, more powerful, with vaster military resource and skill, capable of con quering and plundering them, of deporting them from their land, or of grinding them into the dust within it. But no other nation, to their apprehension, had been so sought of God as had theirs. In all the wisdom of the Egyptians it was not recited that the Eternal himself had bended the heavens to communicate His thought and paramount wiU to those who had lifted the stately columns of Memphis or Thebes. The Eoman, Greek, Assyrian, Phenician, had no such record of Divine intervention. The nation which had it was lifted to moral supremacy by it. Its will was strung for every great endurance and effort, as long as the faith of this continued. When the alluring Phenician idolatries expeUed this from the thought of Israel, the infected tribes lost vitality, and were swept into far Oriental spaces, as ' a rolling thing before the whirlwind.' When, then, Christianity, in its profounder spiritual signifU canee, in its alleged ampler discovery of the Infinite Mind, claiming the same Divine origin, purporting to be a more efful gent final message from the supernal spheres of light — when this came to men, and challenged their faith, the same impres sion which before had been made of the worth of the special Hebrew nature was reinforced, and capitally augmented, as ap- INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 83 plied thenceforth to all men, to whom peace had been offered, with the Divine blessing on men of good-will. An impression of the dignity before angels and God, of that spirit in man to which this religion was addressed, was inseparable from it, in the minds of its disciples. No matter whether one were em peror or servant, could utter his thought in the flexile and ex quisite Attic tongue, or could only harshly stammer it forth in the hardly inteUigible barbarian jargon, if God was sufficiently interested in him to address to him a reHgion like this, his soul was ennobled and crowned by the fact. That touch of Divine recognition of his nature stamped it as royal. ,< But, still further, this religion purported, and was believed, to have come from God in fulfilment of a plan fully indicated be fore, after an immense and prolonged preparation. It was be lieved to contain amazing elements, of miracle, theophany, ac complished prophecy, and to have for the central personage in it a Being of celestial nature and power, whom it was at least lawful to worship, and whose appearance on the earth made the supreme epoch in its history. It is not now essential to in quire whether these convictions were just or not. The point to which I call your attention is the fact that such convictions were / entertained, at what all must admit an early date ; and that their necessary influence was to enlarge and quicken the general conception of the man for whom a reUgion so transcendent had been proclaimed. According to its immeasurable greatness must be the great ness, in native constitution, in worth of being, of him for whose acceptance it divinely appealed. Even men would not build _ostly ships to carry sea-sand from Sidon or Ascalon, and drop it into the deep ; but only to carry wealthy fabrics, products of art, or treasures of looms, between the rich commercial cities. Even men would not send armed legionaries to conquer rabbits, or capture mice. Always there must be a certain proportion be tween means employed and ends desired ; between benefits proffered, and the accredited worth of the recipient. And if it were true, as they assuredly held it to be true, that God had sent His Son to the world, by teaching, life, and the mystery of death, to draw men to new relations to the Highest, then he 84 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN, must be worthy — the man for whom all this had been done — of Divine regard ; and then for man to overlook or deny his per sonal value, or to magnify the transitory accidents of his position above the intrinsic worth of his spirit, was to impeach the eternal wisdom. Precisely, in other words, as the primitive con ception of Christianity was higher in the minds of its disciples, their impression was more complete of the grandeur of that moral nature in man to which it appealed. As a scheme of ethics, a human philosophy, the theory of a sensitive and skilled Nazarene, it could not have urged a power of this sort on their minds. As a Divine revelation of duty and truth, as it to them plainly appeared, made with miracle, preceded by a vast and majestic preparation, and consummated in the marvellous advent and work of a Person celestial — it was inevitable that it should impress them with the conviction that he for whom it was de signed had possibilities, if not prophecies, in his nature, which made him worthy of Divine contemplation. The inference was immediate ; the impulse which it gave immense and new. Yet further, of course the particular provisions of this religion, as they apprehended them, wrought with a silent consistent en ergy toward the same unique and fruitful impression. They all appeared distinctly to imply, to those who accepted them, the inestimable worth of the nature of man, and the infinite su premacy of the living, thinking, aspiring spirit, above any con comitants of language or race, of property or poverty, obscurity or power. I have nothing to say here of the special contents of the religion about which there may be diversities of opinion, but only of those aspects of it which lie on its surface, and which none will dispute. The appeal was made by it, as they understood it, to man, to each man, to change his course and his purpose in life, in the exercise of his personal sovereignty of will, under the influence of invisible motives appealing purely to his moral sensibUity, and under a subtile spiritual force proceeding directly from God himself. The captain of troops might disregard such a will in man, and treat it as the foolishest impediment and impertinence. The rich patrician might no more consult it, in one slave or in all, than he regarded the slight invisible pulsations of the air INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY. 85 through which his litter was borne by his attendants : and this, although it well might be that these slaves, captured in war, or purchased of pirates, were of an ancestry nobler than his, of a spirit as high, and of rarer accomplishments. They had not power. Subjects of violence, or victims of defeat, they had been bought from the slippery deck, or on some bloody disas trous field, for a few sesterces each : and thenceforth their right to a personal wUl was no more practical than their right to carry the suns in their hands. They were as cattle, as the dead, be fore their lord. The master's will was the law of their life. The emperor's will was the law of the State: before which re luctant wills must yield, as the stems which the tempest bends or breaks. Even in the ideal phUosophy of Plato, the common wealth is the organism for which and by which the individual exists, to which his personal will is subject, even in matters like marriage, or worship, or the training of children. No one should dare to publish a song, though sweet as the golden tones of Orpheus, if it had not been approved by the guardians of the laws. But when the supreme author of Christianity proclaimed his illustrious religion to the world — according to the conception of its earliest disciples — he solicited for it the voluntary accept ance of each human person to whom it came. He regarded no chain, excepted from his commands no human station, and brushed away the meshes of Stoical necessity with an unswerving hand. He set before each man good and evil, that he might choose. He admonished and attracted him, by a vast and mani fold variety of motives, delicate yet august, to give up idolatry and accept the new Faith, or to come out from the narrower system of Moses into the ampler liberty of Christ : in either case, to turn his life into new courses, and accept for himself sublimest i aims. But always he applied for men's assent, and did not over bear them with even heavenly force. Faith must be free. Conse cration is the chiefest volition of a soul. A man's destiny turns on his own election. The intrinsic sovereignty of a will to be de termined from within, not to be controlled by mechanical pressures, is always recognized by Christianity. As a Person, its author spoke as to a person, to the humblest hearer to whom came his 86 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN, message by evangelist or apostle ; and the intrinsic dignity of the soul thus addressed could need, to the believer, no other demonstration. Humanity was recognized by this religion as having its centre above itself : but it was appealed to, to relate itself freely, in an intimate way, with the eternal and sovereign Spirit. Each created soul took a strange majesty on its native constitution from such a winning and animating appeal of God himself, as represented by Jesus, for its free choice. " Urbs beata Hirusalem, Dicta pacis visio, Quae construitur in Coelis, Vivis ex lapidibus — " are lines of a Latin hymn, of about the eighth century, by an un known author. It was to build the blessed and holy City of God in all the earth, preparing for that which is supreme in the heavens, that Gregorian and Ambrosian chants arose; that preacher taught, and singer sang, while churches prayed, apolo gists argued, martyrs died. It is by that worship that the bar barous now are most deeply impressed, as the untaught heathen 132 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF THE DUTY OF MAN. of distant islands, or of our own cities, hear in it strains as of the angels singing still. And by that worship, carried into life, all action, all history, shall finally become, if this religion shall ever get to its predicted perfect supremacy, at once glorious and pure. Then laws shall repeat it. Life shaU infold it. The mightiest and the meanest, pervaded by its spirit, and uniting in its harmonies, shall be one in its courts. The rule of Worship in this religion, preached from Palestine, wUl then reveal its perfect glory, as measured with that of any other known on earth ; as measured with that of the loftieot conceptions which man can form. And then the world, in all its social and public life, in secular enter prise, in literature, in art, as well as in private and household ex perience, shall be like the King's daughter of the psalm, " all glorious within." Do you say, ' It is ideal ' ? It is the Ideal for which the Lord gave up his life ! It is the Ideal with which his religion is as separate and vivid as the sky with its blue, or as the sun with its radiant light. A consummation like that is worth working for, praying for, dying to hasten ! It wUl not come as an exhala tion, rising to the soft impulse of lute and dulcimer. It will only come as the answering result to faithful heroic endurance and work, in those who honor and love the Lord. But this — even this ! — foreseen from Judea, shall come at last : the planet itself the final vast terrestrial temple : the sacrifices of Praise which rise within it, from loving, lowly, and triumphing hearts, conscious of sin but confident in grace, the prelude of the song to be heard by and by, when they who now adore and serve before the glory revealed through Christ, shaU rise to more ecstatic worship, as with the Church, at last Triumphant, they see the Almighty face to face ! LECTUEE V. THE NEW CONCEPTION OP MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. LECTUEE V. That a nobler conception of the duty which man owes to God, in the vast and vital department of Worship, has been in troduced and maintained by Christianity, this may be admitted by those who will still be prompt to deny that any change cor responding to this has been wrought by the religion in the prac tical impression obtaining among men as to the duties which they owe to each other. Man stands toward man, such will affirm, substantially as he did in the days before Jesus ; or, if there has here been any change, it has been the result of a gen eral natural advance of society, of improvements in the arts, the expansion of commerce, a wider and wiser practical philosophy ; and it is not to be attributed, unless by some too zealous dis ciple, to the teachings, the spirit, and the positive impulse of the distinctive religion of the Christ. Empires as tyrannous, and re bellions against them as furious and sanguinary, as before had been known, have since appeared ; and the pages of history are lurid and bloody with the terrible story. Personal regard for the rights of others has scarcely become more general or effective. Domestic Hfe was as intimate and sweet, and morally as fruitful, in Greek or Eoman or Hebrew times as it has been since ; and justice was as carefully administered in the courts, when an ap pellant complained of an injury, or when society took imme diate cognizance of crime. In fact the Eoman Law — largely anticipating in its development any general control of Christi anity over men, and presenting simply the matured public reason of the empire in the domain of jurisprudence — has had large sway in modern Europe, and is at the base of much of its juridical doctrine and life. It has had a degree of authority even in England, and with us ; though the ancestral Common Law, pro- (135) 136 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, tected in its early insular home, and more germane to the spirit of the people, has not allowed it to gain such authority, there or here, as it elsewhere has had. In a word it may be said, reply these critics, that the general recognition, and the practical acceptance, of the duty which man owes to man, has hardly been clearer, wider, finer, than they were before Christianity came; or if there has been any ad vance, it is due, as suggested, not to it, but to influences separable from it, which began to appear at about the same time in the sphere of affairs. Whatever the religion may have done for man in his attitude toward God, instructing and uplifting him, it has scarcely affected him in the relation which he holds to ward Man. It must be granted that there seems much reason for such impressions ; and that he who reads history from the point of view presented by the lessons and the spirit of Jesus, — espec ially if he reads it with any affirmative pre-conception as to the celestial character of Christianity, and as to the effects which such a reHgion ought to have produced upon human society, — will be likely to find himself sharply disappointed in the evident result : as he sees kingdom arrayed against kingdom, and the turbulence of vice yet unconquered in any ; as he sees the robber still successful in his violence, and the villain in his craft, the assassin still gratifying his deadly thirst, the weak still overcome by the strong, the innocent sacrificed to the arts of the guilty, and the menacing figures of human passion as busy as ever, and almost as commanding, in the picture of the ages. But we must not expect, it were surely unphilosophical to ex pect, that the sudden coming of even a Divine religion would have power at once to remove from society incrusted abuses, to remodel usages long established, and to rectify the habitual life of mankind. Supposing that coming to have been occasioned by a real mental and moral need on the part of him to whom the religion was addressed, it hardly could be that such a need, in vast communities, should be supplied in a period less than of many generations. It must be presumed that time would be required, and long intervals of time, before the vital root and 6ubstance of personal and of pubHc character could be impene- IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 137 trated by such a new force, so that society, in its immense com plex, should be re-fashioned according to its law. It is only fair to count upon this; and the greater the need of such a re ligion, the ampler the probabiHty thence derived that the Divine wisdom would proclaim such, the longer must be the necessary interval before it can exhibit its normal supremacy. Till the end is reached, it can show but occasional and particular effects ; a few snatches and airs, it may be, but not the final mighty music ; a few brilliant angles and facettes, but by no means the consum mate crystal. Nature herself may here instruct us. It is already many weeks since the earth on these parallels turned toward the sun, at that point in the year where the custom of Christendom has located also the traditional observance of the advent of Jesus.* But summer has not come, as yet. The cold and storm which have smitten and benumbed the earth since that memorable date have been only harsher and more tempestuous than those which preceded. We shiver still, at intervals at least, in the gripe of an atmosphere that seems to have drifted into our latitudes upon the fields of unbroken ice, or to have dropped in conquering frigor from aerial regions untouched of sunshine. It is still by only a long look forward that we anticipate the summer blooms, fragrance, and fruitage, which yet at last shall surely appear. So, I think, it might have been expected that only more im petuous and severe would be occasional blasts of passion, only more intense some chills of man's selfishness, after the light of a celestial religion had dawned on the world. Generations must pass, centuries even, before its benign and salutary force can vitalize and reform the vast social systems whose condition of need had occasioned its coming. Only here and there, in spots and at intervals, can its full power be expected to be shown ; as we find already, here and there, a patch of cultured and sheltered soil, green with the promise of the affluent summer ; as we walk now and then already, for a day, amid a brilHant and balmy air that seems to have sallied from the tropics to meet us. * The lecture was first delivered on an evening in March. 4 138 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, Such sweet and prophetic parentheses in history we may ex pect, where the Christian religion has conquered, in instances, the selfish passion which it came to subdue. But more than this we can hardly, I think, reasonably anticipate, until that re ligion, riding like the sun to its perfect meridian, shall illumine the world ; shining in its celestial effulgence— if such shall at last be found to belong to it— the quickener of love, and the regent of peace. I do not now affirm that it is such a religion. I simply affirm, what all must admit, that if it be such, this will be the natural course of its influence on the history which it was sent to reconstruct. That such partial effects, special, imperfect, yet not unim portant, and of a character nowise uncertain, have been accom plished under Christianity, it seems to me impossible to doubt, dreary and dark as have been often the passing centuries since its new accents were heard in the air. I am confident that with no prepossessions whatever on behalf of Christianity— if such attitude of mind were possible to us — we should be constrained to recognize this. In illustration of it, observe some effects accompUshed by this reHgion, in instances where its moral force most distinctly col lides with physical strength, and with established and armed custom, on behalf of the rightful claim of weakness ; and, for the first instance, take as a striking, one would almost say an en tirely incontrovertible example, the now recognized duty of I Christian society toward little Children ; toward all chUdren born IWithin it : and compare this with anything of the sort which ex isted in the world before Jesus was born. It seems to me that we must be impressed with the vastness and the permanence of this most radical and most fruitful of changes. -\A- In the Eome of the splendid time of Augustus childhood. had\ practically no other rights than the carelessness or the sentiment^ of the father might fitfully concede. To the father, as magis trate of the household, belonged an utter authority, over liberty, over personal security, and even over life. The law of the Twelve Tables had expressly authorized him to either abandon or kill his children, if he preferred not to rear them ; a-T__-i"Ei_rper6r -+- Claudius, suspecting the faithfulness of his wife IJrgulanilla, IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 139 ordered the daughter who had been born of her to be stripped and exposed. It was a rule, correlative to this, that whoever picked up a child thus deserted might keep it for a slave. When retained in the house, children were under the tutelage of slaves, with whom their relations were unrestrained ; and they learned vice, and exercised cruelty, with a freedom sufficient of itself to explain the decadence of that haughty state which had subjected to its will not only barbarous tribes but cultivated nations, and had made itself rich from their resources. No thought whatever of the sacredness of childhood, of the debt which is due to it from the state, appears in the Eoman philosophy or law. In all the range of classical poetry there is scarcely a line upon that theme, to us so famUiar, of the beauty of life's morning, when to the chUd, ' so exquisitely wild,' " the boat May rather seem To brood on air, than on an earthly stream." * Cicero spoke of it as the natural feeling that if a child died young it was no cause for grief ; if it died in the cradle, it was matter of entire unconcern. Octavius, father of Augustus, either seriously thought of killing in his infancy the boy whose subsequent beauty gives loveliness to the marble, or he smartly threatened it, because the Senator Nigidius Figulus had pre dicted for the babe future lordship in Eome. The general facts have nowhere been set forth more lucidly or correctly than by Gibbon, in his Forty-fourth chapter. " In the forum, the Senate, or the camp," he says, " the adult son of a Eoman citizen enjoyed the public and private rights of a person ; in his father's house he was a mere thing ; confounded by the laws with the mov ables, the cattle, and the slaves, whom the capricious master might alienate or destroy, without being responsible to any earthly tribunal The majesty of a parent was armed with the power of life and death ; and the examples of such bloody executions, which were sometimes praised and never punished, may be traced in the annals of Eome beyond the * Wordsworth : " To H. C, six years old.' 140 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, times of Pompey and Augustus." "The exposition of chil dren," he further says, " was the prevailing and stubborn vice of antiquity ; it was sometimes prescribed, often permitted, almost always practiced with impunity, by the nations who never enter tained the Eoman ideas of paternal power; and the dramatic poets, who appeal to the human heart, represent with indiffer ence a popular custom which was paUiated by the motives of economy and compassion."* Nor is it to be imagined that this attitude toward children was peculiar to the Eoman, a fruit of that fierceness and hardness of will which had made him the unchecked conqueror of the nations ; for it is to be observed that it was as common in the Hellenic states as ever on the Tiber. It was not in Sparta, only, that children might be whipped at the altar of Diana till their Ufe-blood ran on the steps of the altar. It was not alone on the forest-sides of Mt. Taygetus, or in the rocky caverns at its base, under the methodical ferocity of the Peninsula, that weak or sickly children were exposed, to be torn by wild beasts, to die of hunger, or to perish in the blast. Plato, and Aristotle, con-> summate masters of Attic thought, whose names outshine in signal respects those of all their successors, expressly approve of such abandonment of children, in case the parents are unable to/ support them, or if they fail to give physical promise of service to the State. (The doctrine of Plato is, that a child belongs less to his parents than to the city) the latter having need of him for its advancement, for which reason even his infantile sports are proper subjects for public regulation ; while Eoman moral ists, on whom Greek influences had descended, including even Seneca himself, speak as of course, without any denunciation, of the exposure of children if sickly or deformed. It is on such exposure of a son, you remember, on Mount Cithasron, that the memorable Q_dipus tragedies are based. The law which permitted a father to sell or expel his son at pleasure was a law in Greece as well as in Eome. The father had the right, in tnel one as in the other, to accept or reject the child at its birth ; the! right to give son or daughter in marriage, without debate ; the! right to exclude the son from the household, even at his matur- * London ed., 1848 : Vol. V.: pp. 387, 391. IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 141 ity, and adopt another in his place. Natural affection was not the organizing principle of the family, in the contemplation of ancient law, either in Europe, or in the East. But the family was based on the domestic religion — on the worship, that is, offered to ancestors ; and was maintained as subservient to the State. So the laws of Menu described the oldest son as one who is begotten for the performance of a duty, that the worship due to the dead may be offered, because of which he has con trol of the patrimony. Of course in societies so founded and organized, and morally ruled by such conceptions of the gods as obtained among them, there could be no effective recognition of public duty toward the feebleness of childhood, or of immediate rights in infants to protection, training, succor, and nurture. The human heart was not wholly transformed, nor its innate sensibilities destroyed. Natural affection was an instinct and a power in the most sav age tribes. It could not be wholly or permanently wanting amid Attic culture, or at the centres of Eoman power. Many a mother, no doubt, held in her heart of hearts the son or the daughter who was only the dearer by reason of sickness, or of natural infirmity. Many a father, of nobler nature than the religion which he had inherited, must have felt his children as dear to him as his life, and have shrunk, as the hand shrinks from fire, from any injustice or cruelty toward them. But the customs, legislations, and spirit of society were not even a de fence for life itself in its earlier years ; and the characteristic tone of literature, as it was carried at that very time toward almost its highest historical development, shows how haughtily careless society was, in what we call the classic ages, of what to us appears its imperative and primary duty. Care for the child^ > when required at all, was so only because of the citizenship.^ which was about to be his. I doubt if any parallel can be found, in all the stately treasure-houses of ancient sculpture, to that carved cradle in Westminster Abbey, in the splendid chapel of Henry Seventh, not far from the famous monument of Eliza beth, in which lies sculptured the sleeping figure of the little Sophia, the baby-daughter of James First, whose life had gone out almost at the beginning. 142 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, Not till Christianity had begun to affect with beneficent force the Eoman Empire, touching with subtile invisible energy even those who were quite unconscious of the fact — as the currents of the Gulf-stream clothe with beauty the very rocks which repulse them, in the Hebrides, or within the Norwegian fi6rds, — not tiU then did affection for children find expression in literature, and care for children become the custom of the great. Then Trajan attempted to give an unpurchased freedom to the children of free" parents, deserted, but preserved. He even established a fund for the maintenance of poor girls and boys, and was portrayed on coins and monuments raising from the ground women kneeling with their chUdren. PHny, with no doubt other citizens of a generous opulence, followed at a distance his example. Hadrian increased moderately the bounties for this purpose. Antoninus Pius augmented them still further ; and Marcus Aurelius put such endowments under the charge of Consular officers, and set apart fresh funds for the purpose — while he wrote to his friend and teacher Fronto of his happiness in the health of his little girls, and Fronto in turn sends kisses to ' their fat little toes and tiny hands,' and recalls the merry sound of their prattle. 4urg- lius appointed a praetor to watch expressly over orphans, and re quired a registration of births. A bas-relief at Eome is believed to show thejmellw Ftmstinicmm clustering around the figure of the Empress, from whom the name had been derived. There was not improbably a new tendency shown here, as Eenan insists,* springing not directly from Christianity, but by a reaction from the shocking^and savage preceding cruelties. I think such a tendency does appear ; having source in part in the Stoical ethics, and preparing the way for the Gospel to tread, as opening men's hearts, in a measure at least, to its superlative lessons and force. But it seems to me almost as indisputable \ as is the indebtedness of the city around us to commerce for its i growth, that to the new Christian atmosphere, ever more widely ; although impalpably diffused through the empire, even such late / and imperfect recognitions of the rights of childhood must be fairly in some part ascribed. * Hibbert Lectures : London ed., 1880, pp. 23-6. IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 143 The Hebrew Faith, preceding Christianity, and supplying the base on which its spires and pinnacles arose, had at least in volved a widely different view of childhood from that which prevailed outside of Palestine. It had given great authority to the father, but it had imposed also strict obligations ; while to the mother had been trusted an authority which she nowhere else had equally possessed. While infanticide was common and was justified elsewhere, it was no more permitted among the Hebrews than was the murder of the High-Priest. The large number of children in a household was regarded as a token of Divine favor. Mothers nursed their own children, and the day of the weaning was signalized in the family. The instruction of children in the history of tbe nation, and in the precepts and principles of the Law, was early, solemnly, and repeatedly pre scribed. The whole community guarded each child ; and the independent will of the father was not supreme, under the re straining Hebraic legislation. If he judged his son even worthy of death, as stubborn and rebelUous, gluttonous and a drunkard, the mother must agree with him, and together they must bring him before the whole city, for lawful punishment. The pros perity of the city was then only conceived as perfect, when, with old men and old women dwelling in it, it should also ' be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.' * The! hope and prayer of the devout was, that ' their sons might be as ' plants grown up in their youth, and their daughters as corner stones, polished after the similitude of a palace.' f It was only natural, under such a religion, that children should be accounted the heritage of the Lord ; that for them, at differ ent stages of their growth, the language should furnish many general names, of a tender significance ; that they should be presented with thank-offerings in the temple ; that it should be affirmed of even the son of the concubine that God had ' heard the voice of the lad';$ that some of the most touching and memorable passages in Hebrew literature should be those re counting the grief of parents when the infant of days had died ; and that the sweetest and grandest thought, one may almost say, * Zechariah viii. 4, 5. t Psalm cxliv. 12. \ Genesis xxi. 17. 144 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, which prophecy itself ever delivered, was that which came from the sublimest of Hebrew seers, that the fierce and warring ele ments on earth shall be subdued in the reign of the Messiah, that the wolf and the lamb shall dwell together, and the leopard with the kid, and that ' a little child shall lead them.'* That word is like the point of light in the eye of a portrait, illumi nating the scheme of the prophetic economy. Even the preparatory Hebrew system is thus plainly distin guished from the state regulations and the social economies pre- vaiHng around it. But Christianity surpassed it, here at least, as the light of the sun the pale lustre of moonbeams. Transcend ent in its doctrine, searching in its law, robust and masculine in all its development, never sentimental and never effeminate, it yet came to the docile tenderness of childhood as a priest to consecrate, as a king to enthrone it. It made at any rate spaces of quietness amid the tumultuous commotions of the world, in which infancy should be sheltered, and its mysterious glory be felt. It was when they who believed in the Lord not only saw in each hu man soul an appropriate object for his Divine mission, but looked back with venerating wonder to his obscure cradle — when thej imagined, whether justly or not, that angels had sung above his birth, and had made this the sign of the world's redemption, when they conceived that kings had come from out the dim and distant East, rich in gold, aromatic with spices, bringing to him on his mother's breast frankincense and treasure — it was then thai the sense of the sacredness of Infancy took its secure possession 01 the world. For childhood, at least, the new age dawned w_ he whom men thought a celestial Person came, according toi their apprehension, from the heavens to the earth, not in thei fulness of power and supremacy, but amid the very humblest! conditions which ever invest a human birth. As the light from the ^ babe, in Correggio's Holy Night, illuminates all surrounding fig ures, so the light of that birth shed an unfading lustre on the minds of the disciples. To them it was only natural that afterward, in the perfect fulness of his energy and wisdom, the Lord should take children from the street in his arms, and lay his hands on * Isaiah xi. 6. IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 145 them in supreme benediction ; that he should say, " of such is the kingdom of Heaven ";* that he should announce that their angels do always behold the face of Him before whom the sera phim bow;f that he should declare, in words whose echo never ceases in the world, " Whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me ! "% That was, for the world, the coronation of childhood ; and from that time not only the cruel abandonment of it by parents has been made impossible, but the shelter of its weakness, the culture of its delicate but prophesying power, have been chief ends in all the societies into which the inspiration of Jesus has entered. If we find no special texts in the New Testament explicitly commanding the baptism of infants, this only makes more sig nificant the fact that such an ordinance, however difficult to be reconciled at first sight with the evangelical requirement of faith before baptism, sprang up in the church at a time very early, and found itself at home in the welcoming spiritual consciousness of believers. Even infant communion came in among customs of almost immemorial ancientness, was approved by eminent Fa thers and Pontiffs, and lingered in places in Western Europe till the Council of Trent. It is still maintained, with original vigor, in Oriental communions. The same strong current of governing influence which thus was revealed breaking into history has flowed on in it ever since, and it is not needful that I even remind you how richly it is manifest in the Christendom of to-day. The assiduous and af fectionate training of children — it may not be always accom- phshed as it should be, but it certainly is honored as a primary duty, not of the household or church alone, but of the state. The protection of the child is as general and careful as of the adult ; and no infant can suffer disastrous injury, by permission of the law, even though it be inflicted by the parent. The wrong is avenged, and the babe is protected. Not merely to the children of cultured households does such watchfulness extend, but to the destitute and the orphaned. Institutions of beneficence, for their shelter and nurture, such as had not been known in the world * Matthew xix. 14. t Matthew xviii. 10. | Matthew xviii. 5. 10 146 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, till the power of Christianity began to be felt, are now common in the countries which Christianity has blessed; while the Church, inspired by the words and by the action of him whom it accepts as Master, regulates its worship, constructs its build ings, invents or applies new forms of art, creates a new litera ture, to minister to children. The ancient prophecy is fulfilled. The little child does lead the' household, and lead the state. The deepest fountains of affection are unsealed with its advent in the household. The first faint cry, laden with the ever-new mystery of life, seems a voice appealing from the Eternities, as it breaks into time. And the subsequent solicitude of the state for its future citizen is not wholly from motives of expediency. The parental love in those who form and who govern the state inspires here its administration. The one consecrating spiritual function which secular commonwealths still retain, after severing themselves from every office of religious instruction — that which more than all else gives them moral elevation, and a charm for the heart — is this of securing to all children within them the in struction of knowledge, and a quick communication with the best and largest thought of the world. If no other change had followed the coming of the religion of Jesus, this change in the attitude of civilized society, with its multiplied instruments, its vaster enterprises, its prouder hopes, and its bolder ambitions, toward tbe weakness of childhood, is surely one to impress and delight us. It seems to me to repeat the example of the Master himself, and to bring the Christen dom which now honors, blesses, and consecrates that childhood, nearer to him than all cathedrals ever builded ! But go yet further in the same line, and observe the equiv alent change which has occurred, where this religion has got itself estabhshed, in the_place and the relation. of_ Woman in.-'' the world: the add^dprotet_oh7~the enlarged opportunity, now given to her — and given by laws hitherto made exclusively by men. Under the preparatory Hebrew system the position of woman was relatively high, as compared with that assigned to her in ad jacent nations. She had larger liberty than even now is allowed her in Oriental countries, with greater variety and importance IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 147 of employments. She headed, like Miriam, the bands of women who celebrated with triumphant song the overthrow of enemies. She led armies, like Deborah, and was like her a prophetess and a judge. In the free grace of an unconfined maidenhood she went out to meet her conquering father, with timbrels and dances. Her hymns were included in sacred records, as was the song of Samuel's mother. She was consulted, like Huldah, by high-priest and king. And while the effect of polygamy was disastrous, so far as that obtained before the captivity, and while it is obvious that the husband, not the wife, was the acknowl edged head of the household, in independence of whom the wife could enter on no engagements, the dowry was given for the wife, not with her ; the modern harem was unknown ; the ma tron walked abroad unvefled ; her husband's house was esteemed her 'rest'; she had a large authority in the family, and the grace and force of her character and mind were honored, cult ured, and allowed opportunity. Many references to the gra cious power and charm of womanhood occur famUiarly in the Hebrew Scriptures, especially in that section of them which in corporates the ethical wisdom of the time ; and hardly a nobler or lovelier description of the wise matron has been contained in any literature than that which is found in the poem added to" the monitory words of the mother of Lemuel — which might have been designed as a just and animated verbal picture of that sovereign woman, whom some have sought to identify with Bathsheba. But still, under the Hebrew system, in its relation to the true place of woman in society, we have to recognize what in gen eral describes it : a partial light, positive and prophetic, but not complete ; as much, perhaps, as man could yet bear of restraint upon his spirit, but by no means a final and true consummation. But when we turn to the other peoples, synchronizing in their history with the Hebrews, into which also Christianity came, we see at once the relative dignity, as concerning this point, of the Palestinian code and custom, and are able to measure, yet more distinctly, the immediate and the enormous advance which the new religion everywhere enforced. In Greece, remember, when its literature was most elaborate 148 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, and engaging, when its art had reached its superb consummation in the most renowned temples of time, and when its general civilization excited the emulation or provoked the despair of tother peoples, women were excluded not only from public affairs, /but from the education provided for men. The greatest of Hellenic philosophers represented the state as radically disor ganized in which wives should claim to be equals of their husj J>ands. Aristotle regarded them as beings of a certain inter. mediate order between freemen and slaves. Plato suggested/a community of wives, on the ground that children so brought into life would be more wholly devoted to the state. It was only the women recognized as unchaste who were permitted ito frequent public lectures, and to be on terms of equal association with artists and scholars. A daughter at Athens legally inher ited nothing from her father. She Hved, untU marriage, without any systematic or general training, in the strictest seclusion ; and after marriage she could on her own account conclude no bar gain, and be a party to no important transaction. So far was the distrust of her carried, that even what a man did, through the advice or at the request of a woman, was treated by the law as of no effect. At Syracuse, according to Athenaeus, who cites Phylarchus as his authority, no free woman was allowed to go out after sunset, unless for adultery; nor even by day, except as attended by a female servant.* The woman was regarded as always a minor, and never free. Her glory was, as Pericles said, that no one should speak of her. Plato's statement is express, that ' a woman's virtue is to order her house, to keep what is indoors, and to obey her husband.'f It had been a maxim, long before, in the laws of Menu, that a woman ought never to govern herself, according to her will. No sacrifice was allowed to her, apart from her husband, and no rites of religion. It was declared, with a mandate of absolute authority, that ' a woman is never fit for independence.' This was not an Indian tradition, by which western countries were im- palpably influenced. It represents, no doubt, the original norm of the Aryan household. It was not, indeed, peculiar to that. * Deipnosophistae : xii. 20. t "Meno "' : 71. IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 149 JJonfucius, with all his exceUent ethics, recognizes no sanctity in t__e~T__TfrTage-borld. As a mother, woman was invested by him with special dignity, on account of her relation to her sons. Aside from this, her highest duty was servile submission. As one of the Chinese sages said : ' Men, being firm by nature, are virtuous ; and women, being soft, are useful.'* It is a curious statement, cited by Schlegel from Eemusat, that the Chinese char acter to represent woman, if doubled, means strife ; if tripled, immorality. The Eoman temper and rule about women were marked by substantially an equivalent tone, though instances were certainly more numerous there of those who rose, while retaining their virtue, and in spite of their sex, to distinguished position. But Metellus, the Eoman Censor, equally honored in private and in" public life, energetically declared, in a pubHc oration, that if I nature had allowed man to exist without woman, he would have been spared a troublesome companion, and that marriage could only be recommended as a sacrifice of pleasure to public duty. Cato the Censor, of rougher nature, was only more vehement in the same declaration. The spirit manifested by such distinguished and typical Eomans entered into the permanent system of the State. It was a fundamental conception of the law at Eome, r -^— __— . 2— j no less than it had been in India, that a woman should never bej independent. As a daughter she was subject, until married, to the jpatria potestas of her father. If remaining unmarried after his death, she was equally subject to the same power in the suc ceeding male head of the household. As a wife, if married ac cording to either of the ancient ceremonies, she came under the control, in manu, of her husband, and was legally regarded as his daughter, the sister of her own children. Her property became the husband's ; her consent was not necessary to the marriage of her daughters ; the husband had at least a quaHfied power over her life, for even petty offences ; she could not, after his death, be the legal guardian of her own infant children. By the famous Voconian Law, which Cato the elder had successfully advocated more than two hundred years before the voice of * Quoted by Douglas : " Confucianism, etc.": London ed., 1879, p. 128. 150 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, Christianity was heard in Eome, and which, in its important provisions, continued in operation in the time of Gaius, nearly a century after St. Paul had there been beheaded — no citizen en- rolled in the census, of even moderate wealth ($5,000) could make a woman his heir, however he might desire it ; not if she were his only daughter. The right to select a female heir was reserved exclusively for vestal virgins. Nor could any man, en rolled or not, leave more than one-half of his property to a woman. Habitual and contemptuous distrust. of the sex was in the very Hfe of the governing classes. "It ruled custom, shaped statutes, and entered with depraving and dominating force the highest minds. Seneca wrote with passionate outbreaks against the women of his time, though he is almost singular among phi losophers of the more refined class for speaking with affection and honor of his mother. One would not know from any allu sion in the manifold and elaborate writings of Cicero that he ever had had one. Pliny speaks in his letters, with urbane com placency, of the excellence of his wife ; but it seems to have been largely because she gratified his vanity by admiring both his writings and himself, and singing his verses to the cithern ; and he applauds the example of a friend who had celebrated the funeral of his wife with a fight of gladiators, only regretting that the African panthers intended for the occasion had been delayed by stormy weather. What fearful decay of all that is noble, all that is pure, in womanly character, came as the fruit of this attitude of society toward the delicate sex, I need scarcely remind you. Plato must have done but scanty justice to the better class among Greek women when he spoke of them in the " Laws " as prone to secrecy and stealth, and accustomed to creep into dark places ; but he was certainly right in suggesting that if they should gen erally resist legislation they would be too much for the legis lator.* In revolt against the system so harshly oppressive toward Eoman women, because founded on a conception of their nature so false and debased, there came into use a form of fjee-- * VI.: 781. IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 151 '-marriage, in which the wife retained relationship to her kindred and control of her property, and under which either she or the iusband could perfect a divorce by giving to the other a written declaration of a wish to that effect. Concubinage, too, became customary, familiar, and was legalized by Augustus. The tend ency to moral laxity, starting in such a natural reaction against the offensive and tyrannical strictness of previous rules, went swiftly forward, till at last the wrongs which had for ages been inflicted on woman in civilized Europe were terribly avenged in the downfall of the empire before those fierce Germanic hosts who had associated their women most closely with themselves, both in toil and in battle, and to the stern chastity of whose daughters and wives even Tacitus, sad and cynical as he was, pays honorable tribute. \ 1 But what it concerns us now to observe is that just so soon, and just so far, as Christianity gained its place in the empire, the position of woman, social and legal, instantaneously improved ; and that this was the effect of direct, immediate, constant pres sure, from the religion brought by Jesus. \ The Lord himself, whom the early disciples regarded certainly as a transcendent Person, had_been . born_of jLwoman ; and the fact was recited, to her praise as to his, in the jubilant ecumeni cal creeds of the Church. Women had been his devoted dis ciples, during his personal ministry on earth : the wife of Chuza, the sisters at Bethany, the woman who because she loved much had been bidden by him to go into peace. Women had beenf^ the first converts in Europe : Lydia at Philippi, the honorable women at Thessalonica, the woman named Damaris — another Athenian Magdalen she may have been — upon Mars' Hill, the Priscilla whose name is more than once placed before her hus-- band's, as if to indicate a certain conceded and beautiful leader ship in her genius and spirit. As soon as congregations of Christian disciples began to be formed, in any proud and disso lute city, women began to be recognized and effective in defi nite and important ministerial functions. Salutations were ad dressed to them, epistles even, by the foremost apostles; and that faith which was afterward radiantly shown by their sisters in the spirit, in the arena and at the stake, had been discovered 152 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, and commended in themselves, before the persecuting frenzies arose. The grandmother Lois, the mother Eunice, were remem bered by Paul in his prison at Eome, when his chained hand could not trace his own words. The whole Church, to thej thought of the disciples, took the form of a Woman, radiant and crowned, on earth and in heaven. The effect of all this was immediate and immense. The standard of character, and of moral aspiration, was rapidly and permanently lifted among women. Not losing modesty, only finding it perfected in the love of the Lord, they began to reveal that intensity of faith, that reckless completeness of self-conse cration to noblest aims, which has been since the glory of the sex. This was true of those in the humbler class. From celestial in structions, assurances, hopes, even menial service took upon it celestial gleams; while those of higher social ranks, like the British Claudia — supposed by many to have been referred to iu the epigrams of Martial — passed out of enticements of luxury and lust into a wholly new realm of experience. Monogamy \ was made universal in the Church, and marriage became a free \ and solemn covenant for life, taking a character even sacramental, i The larger moral power won by woman, by degrees made the tightest legal restrictions loose and elastic ; till in spite of the stiffest prejudice of ages, and the wild license of a passionate revolt, the just and rational liberty of the sex at last came with Christianity into the licentious and ambitious empire which had fettered and debased it, and which in the end could find nothing more meet to do with woman than to make her a gladiator. In all the Lord's recorded dealings with the women of his time, his act had been one of liberation. To woman, as the disciples be lieved, he had spoken from the cross, as on the Via Dolorosa which led to that. To her, as they equally believed, he had shown himself first after his Eesurrection. Women had been joined in prayer with the apostles when from beneath the opened heavens they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Oli vet. And the lesson of the position thus assigned to the sex has never since been lost from the world. It was a natural exclamation of Libanius, the brilliant and cult ured friend of Julian, and the pagan teacher of Basil and of IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 153 Chrysostom, when he saw the mothers and sisters of his pupils : ' What women these Christians have ' ! In the influence exerted by EmmeHa and Macrina on Basil, by Anthusa on Chrysostom, by Nonna on Gregory Nazianzen, by the mothers of Jerome and Ambrose upon them, or by Monnica on Augustine, is seen the fruit of the new position and the new inspiration which Christi anity had given to the women who received it. And the effect was not personal, local, or transient, merely ; it has been as per manent and as wide as Christendom. It was in fact because of this that in the darkest times of the Middle Age, women, as teachers, mothers, abbesses — like the mother of Bernard, or of Peter the Venerable, Hke Heloise, like Hildegarde — had secure place, and eminent influence. They taught in great schools when these were established, as at Bologna, sometimes veiling their faces that the charm of the utterance might not be inter cepted by the more vivid charms of eye and cheek. As peer esses, in their own right, they built churches, endowed convents, and made their castles a refuge for the poor. As royal persons, like Blanche of Castille, they guided with grace and administered with wisdom the policy of kingdoms. Even the fantastic cus toms of chivalry, in connection with the Christian position of woman, have a moral significance ; and in all the rough violence of the times, and the dense darkness of their skies, in the power of such a woman, for example, as the Countess Matilda, the friend of Hildebrand, or of the intrepid Beatrice, we see stars of promise shining in the night. The tendency of Christianity always has been, while recognizing the sex in souls, to give to woman larger opportunity, more effective control of all instru ments for work : to put her side by side with man in front of all the great achievements, in letters, arts, humanities, missions, as at the majestic south portal of Strassburg Cathedral the figure of Sabina, maiden and architect/faces the figure of Erwin of Steinbach ; and though the old traditions of law are hard to change, the entire movement of modern society is toward the perfect enfranchisement of the sex to which the religion brought by Jesus gave at the outset preeminent honor. It is that religion which has fundamentally effected the change : not machinery, nor commerce, nor scientific philoso- 154 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, phy, but the power behind, which glorified gentleness, which con secrated purity, and which showed the Church as the Bride of Christ. It is that power which has wrought hitherto, which still is working, toward the grand consummation. Do you say, ' It has been a long time coming ' ? Understand, then, more fully how settled and radical were the customs of ages, which this religion had to overcome ; how strong is still that instinct in man which measures worth by power, not grace, and wliich says as of old, ' I muscularly can ; therefore, morally I may ' ! To conquer, or even to curb that instinct, has surely been no trifling thing; and if Christianity had no other jewel to place in its crown, it has certainly this : the new respect, born of its ministry, toward that gentler sex whose delicacy of structure, for ages its chain, is now its girdle of beauty and honor ! It is a fact significant for the past, prophetic for the future, that even as Dante meas ured his successive ascents in Paradise, not by immediate con sciousness of movement, but by seeing an ever loveHer beauty in the face of Beatrice, so the race now counts the gradual steps of its spiritual progress, out of the ancient heavy glooms, toward the glory of the Christian niillennium, not by mechanisms, not by cities, but by the ever new grace and force exhibited by the Woman who was for ages either the decorated toy of man, or his despised and abject drudge. Still another illustration, equally suggestive of the benign power exerted by Christianity upon the relation of man to man, is that which is presented by the change which has taken place, under its unwasting spiritual energy, in the legal and social- status of the Enslaved ;. and perhaps there is nothtng~else which ffiore vigorously emphasizes its beneficent effect, or which indi cates more clearly that it came from a mind, and had within it the energy of a will, superior to man's. Of the universality of slavery in the world into which this new religion entered, you need hot be reminded. In respect to this, all peoples were alike : and German and Egyptian, Frank, Dacian, and Hun, the aesthetic Greek and the conquer ing Eoman, even the Hebrew, whose ancestors had been brought out of bondage only to become slave-owners themselves — all were partakers in this most attractive, apparently most reward- IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 155 ing, really most destructive social system. Here and there the voice of poet or philosopher might suggest that it was not ac-. cording to nature that one man should own another : as Seneca did in notable passages, and as others had done before him. They might inculcate, as beautifully as he did, with some who followed him, the duty of humane treatment of slaves. Even Aristotle" had done this, who yet found slavery an important part of ^nat ural law. ,JS And they might in later time make some impression on the hard legislations : forbidding the master to compel his slave to fight with wild beasts, protecting the slave against the more frightful bodily mutilations, enjoining that one who had treated his slave with what even Eoman hardness reproved as excessive severity should be constrained by the magistrate to sell him. The occasional feeling of gratitude, too, for a devoted or profitable service, would express itself, here and there, in the slave's liberation. But the system itself, which made some men the property of others, seemed as firmly rooted in human society as were the Apennines in the substance of Italy.; and no more emerging indication appeared of its removal from its ancient and solid establishment on earth than of the mountains being melted by sunshine, or overturned and scattered by storms. Of the special form of slavery, as it existed in Greece and in Eome, we are well enough informed. It was so vast and so prominent an element in the ancient civilization that its char acter could not have been hidden if men had tried ; but they did not try, any more than to hide headlands or seas. The slaves at Athens, for example, were of the same blood with their masters ; at least not separated from them by such apparent differences of race as separate the African or the Mon golian from the European. They were captives, taken in war, or poor persons who had sold themselves because unable to gain subsistence. Those who could not pay a public tax were liable to be sold for such default. The children of the poor were sold, to buy food, or in simple caprice. Children exposed for death, and rescued, became the slaves of those who had found them ; as may have been true in the case of Epictetus. Captives taken by pirates were sold ; and because it furnished such multitudes of slaves to the cities of Greece, piracy was held an honorable 156 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, profession, tributary to pubHc welfare. The very name ' ser vus ' was said by some to be derived from ' servare,' because the prisoners designed for slavery were of course kept alive. Au gustine gives this as the probable derivation in his " City of God." Diogenes, the cynic, was thus captured and sold. Plato himself is reported, you know, by early authorities, to have been sold in _Egina, by the elder Dionysius, who had taken offence at one of his remarks ; and to have been afterward ransomed by Anniceris. The story is told with various embellishments, and in some of its particulars may not be correct ; but the fact that slaves skilled in music, poetry, the drama, the arts, were bought and sold, at Eome especially, and were commonly owned in the families of the rich, is nowise uncertain. Physicians, sculptortjj were numerous in this class ; architects, painters, linguists, ex pert copyists, were also included, with distinguished authors, as _Esop, Terence, Epictetus, Phaedon, and others. The greatest of Greek philosophers, therefore, if captured by pirates, taken pris oner in battle, or simply fettered by the will of a tyrant, could have pleaded no exemption for genius or culture from the dis^ mal fate of a life-long bondage. The number of the slaves was something enormous. In At tica it was at one time estimated [309 b.c.J that there were resi dent in that State, five-sevenths of the size of our Ehode Island, 84,000 citizens, 40,000 aliens, 400,000 slaves. Gibbon, you re member, reckons the slave-population of the empire as under Claudius equal to the free, or sixty millions each.* Fabius is said to have brought 30,000 into the markets, as the fruit of the sack of Tarentum ; and Paullus 150,000, after the conquest of Epirus. When Pindenissus was taken by Cicero, the inhabitants were sold for more than half a million dollars of our money. Athenaeus, in the Deipnosophistae, refers to individual Eoman owners as having 10,000 and more slaves. At one time, accord ing to Aristotle, the island of _Egina contained 470,000 in bondage : an island covering an area of only forty-two square miles, but having commercial relations and dependencies. Cor inth is said to have had almost as many, 460,000 ; and Chios— * " The Decline and Fall," etc. : London ed., 1848, Vol. I., p. 56. IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 157 known to us as Scio — according to Thucydides, had still more. Only the architects and masons belonging to Crassus exceeded 500. There was a just fear at Eome of measures which would make the slaves generally acquainted with their own numbers ; and as late as the time of Chrysostom, reference is made by him to the fact that under the reign of Arcadius rich persons owned a thou sand or two thousand slaves. Of course the price was commonly smaU, — a good slave at Athens, in the time of Demosthenes, costing about thirty dol lars of our money ; or at Eome, in the time of Horace, about ninety dollars ; while a man was purchasable, in the camp of Lucullus, in Pontus, for less than eighty cents ;* and the 97,000 Jews sold by Titus after the capture of Jerusalem brought, prob- / ably, individually less than Judas had received for betraying his ' Master.f So extended, luxurious, and lucrative was the system, it had existed from such time immemorial, it was apparently so inextrica bly connected with the political and social organization, that the wisest thinkers, the most eloquent champions of public liberty, accepted and sustained it. Plato doubts : only contending, in the " Eepublic," that Greeks should not be reduced to such bondage, and in the " Laws " finding that something is radicaUy wanting in the soul of the slave. Xenophon makes no objection to it, but sug gests that the State, for its own profit, should buy and work slaves. Aristotle is perfectly clear in treating the subject in his " Polit ics." Property is only, he says in substance, an accumulation of instruments ; and a slave is just a movable instrument, endowed with life, wliich, under direction, gives motion to other in ferior instruments. On account of the differences in human minds, he concludes that slavery is founded in utUity and in jus tice. Demosthenes inherited slaves from his father ; while in the West they were commonly classed with wagons and oxen, and it is noted that Cato the Censor — himself sprung from the poorer classes, regarded as a model husband and father, and cer tainly representing no foreign temper — used to flog his severely when they had failed to wait on him correctly ; he forbade them, * Plutarch : " Lucullus." t Josephus : " Wars of Jews," VI., 9 : 2, 3, 158 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, even, to entertain any sentiment of piety, reserving such ex clusively for himself; and he exposed them remorselessly, in old age, when there was no more possibility of selling them, like old oxen or worthless sheep, to storm and starvation. Of the condition of the slaves, under the hard and haughty temper thus generated in masters, it is difficult to speak without seeming extravagant. Of the frightful atrocities perpetrated upon the Spartan helots, the lashings, mutilations, and savage ambus cades, I need not remind you. Concede these as exceptional^) But remember that in general, throughout the Greek cities, their / servile condition was marked in the dress, in the cut of the hairy- in the whole demeanor demanded from them. They were sold naked, in the public slave-markets. They were not allowed any\ place in the courts, and could not defend themselves when mal treated. They were liable to cruel and fatal tortures, to compel confession of suspected crime. They often walked with fettered feet, to prevent their escape. They were not unfrequently branded on the forehead, in punishment for slight offences, or in angry caprice : — a practice to which the apostle Paul refers, you remember, when he speaks of himself, in his touching words to the Galatians, as bearing in his body the stigmata of Christ.* They were employed, of course, in all harder and more wasting forms of labor ; and though the final penalty of death could not be legally inflicted by the master at his own pleasure, almost any other form of injurious treatment was open to him. I con ceive the condition of few classes of human beings to have been more harshly oppressive than theirs : and amid aU that fascinates the memory in the eloquence, philosophy, poetry of Greece, through all the apparent briUiance of its history, the real bril- Hance of its splendid achievements in many arts, we shaU hear rising, if weHsten aright, above Parthenon andErectheium, above Agora and Areiopagus, the wailing undertone of the dreary and hopeless misery of slaves. The very comedies in which they were caricatured, to the thoughtful reader have in them an un speakable pathos. But in Eome their condition was still more severe. With an * Galatians vi. 17. IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 159 awful prodigality their life was built into the vast and magnifi cent works, porticoes, temples, aqueducts, mausoleums, whose enormous ruins still amaze us. Great multitudes of them were* trained and slain as gladiators. Multitudes more were kept for purposes viler still. As porters, they were chained Hke dogs to the door-posts. As workers on farms, they labored not unfrequently under chains, and slept at night in the cells of the ergastula, un der-ground, wet, filthy, and full of disease. No injury done to a slave was counted by the law an injury to him, but to the master. If done by the master, no one had suffered. If a master was murdered in his house, all the slaves connected with it were Ha ble to be killed, and even the freedmen with them. Not untU the time of Hadrian were attempts made to limit the master's ab solute power over his bondmen. Vedius PoUio might feed with them the lampreys for his table ; and when in the presence of Augustus he doomed to this fate au attractive boy, who had simply slipped on the poHshed pavement while carrying in his hand a crystal vase, it was only the arbitrary will of the emperor which saved the slave and filled up the pond. Juvenal, himself son of a freedman, satirizes a Eoman lady who would have a slave crucified in simple caprice, and would think it an insane question, 'if he also were not human ' ? For slaves the punish ment of the cross was reserved ; and one form of crucifixion, as we learn from Seneca, was by impaling.* There were torturers by profession, whose business it was to exercise upon them their detestable craft. So cruelly complete was the power over slaves, and so benumbed the general sensibility, that when the praetor Domitius had had a slave crucified for killing a wild boar with a weapon appropriate to freemen, even Cicero only spoke of it afterward as ' perhaps appearing a harsh thing.' And so com mon was it, according to Suetonius, to expose decrepit and in valid slaves on an island in the Tiber, that there they might die without expense to the master, that Claudius himself, certainly one of the least exacting of imperial reformers, had by law to discourage the practice. This was slavery in the European countries, civiHzed and * Ad Marciam ^onsol. : XX. 160 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, cultured, into which came the new religion ; where forum and palace faced each other ; where the stateliest temples united with Porch, Lyceum, Academy, to give to their sites perpetual renown ; where orators like Cicero, moralists like Seneca, com bined to instruct and to elevate the peoples : while among the barbarian tribes of the North, from whom we have sprung, it was as common, and no less cruel. Christianity entered on no superficial and obvious contest with this ancient, consolidated, and haughty iniquity, so general in the world, and so intricately involved with the customs of the rude, the laws of the advanced, with barbarian ferocities, Gre cian philosophies, Eoman power. It sent no formal chaUenge to/ the system, to which it was still as fatally hostile as it was to idolatry. But it smote it with blows more destroying than of arms, and caused it to vanish as summer skies and melting cur rents consume the glacier, which we call an iceberg, which has drifted down from Arctic coasts. The Sermon on the Mounts God's affectionate and watchful Fatherhood of all, the brother hood of disciples, the mutual duty and the common Immortality _ of poor and rich — these were the forces before which slavery inevitably fell. Where philosophies had utterly failed, and elo quence had been wanting, and the progress of arts, cities, or states, had only clenched tighter the manacles of the bondman, he who taught on the narrow Galilee-beach overwhelmed, by the mystic energy of his words, the consummate oppression. It fell before him, as the warrior falls, more surely than by bullets, by famine and thirst ; as the giant's strength fades in fatal at mospheres. ' Not now a slave, but above a slave, as a brother^ beloved, so receive him '; it was the voice not of one apostle only, though he were the chiefest, but of the whole church, to the master who was himself in Christ. " The grace of God, that bringeth salvation, hath appeared to all men"* — before that announcement slavery could not stand, any more than flax before shriveling fires. Christianity sought to reform society from within outward ; , by working a true regeneration of spirit, and thus of laws and * Titus ii. 11. IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 161 social custom. It planted the acom, and was surer of the oak than if it had built it in any manufactory. It sent the Spring on the earth ; and left the old ice-fields, untouched of pick, or drill, or dynamite, to take care of themselves. But as fast as its power widened in the world, slavery grew milder, weaker, less crushing, narrower in its range and more merciful in its rule, until it ceased. This brief synopsis sums up in a sentence the crowded records of centuries of struggle. The incipient movements toward reform appeared under Ha drian and the Antonines, a century to a century and a half after the recorded death of Jesus, when, as I have said, the atmos phere of society, however severe, was beginning to be imper ceptibly modified by the new Faith. The master was then . forbidden to kill his slave at his pleasure, or to sell him for a gladiator without permission of magistrates, or for combats with wild beasts. If a slave were subjected to excessive cruelty, the magistrate, on appeal, could constrain his master to part with him for a price. A right of sanctuary was granted to him beside the statue of the Emperor ; and the formalities of enfranchisement were made perceptibly simpler. So far as this it was principally, no doubt, the direct or indirect influence of the Stoical philoso phy which contributed to mitigate the condition of the slave ; though neither jurist nor philosopher attempted to give him his full measure of rights, and a ruler as thoughtful, philosophical, conscientious,- as Marcus Aurelius, left the ancient legal posi tion of the bondman substantially unchanged. But when that renowned Emperor died, a.d. 180, there was a force rapidly extending throughout the empire, which he had recognized only with contempt, and had blindly combated with persecution, which was to do in this direction what he had not conceived to be possible ; which was to accelerate, widen, mul tiply, all the forces that had been slowly and partially working toward a future of liberty and hope for the slave, and was to add to them others, more powerful, to make that secure. This force^ was Christianity. From the first, __la_.es. were welcomed in Christian congregations, on a level of equality with others. By the church, in the third century, the liberation of slaves was put on the same level of privilege with the rescue of martyrs. Lac- 11 162 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, tantius portrayed emancipation as a principal duty of Christian- righteousness. Prayers for slaves were early inserted among the solemn petitions of the Litanies. The oblations of harsh mas ters were refused, as bearing upon them the odor of a temper not acceptable to God. Bond and free were on the same foot ing in the houses and in the offices of worship. Gladiatorial - fights, as a matter of course, were forborne and forbidden ; and the royal worth of a soul redeemed unto God by Christ was joyfully recognized, by prelates like Chrysostom, in the poorest disciple. The laws of Constantine, though scarcely consistent""" among themselves, helped on the powerful movement toward freedom ; manumission under him was largely facilitated, and the practice of branding was finally forbidden. Under Theodo-'' sius the separation of families was prohibited. The laws of Justinian moved more strongly and steadily in the interest of humanity. By them emancipation was still further encouraged. Slaves were admitted as witnesses in court, and recognized as having certain rights to be guarded. They were required to work but five days in the week, and had the privilege of the church-festivals. That they were under a higher law than the will of the master, obedience to which law brought perfect free dom, was eloquently taught from metropoHtan pulpits. Influential teachers early and emphatically condemned all slavery, and de clared the liberation of those in bondage the duty of Christians. The Council of Orange, a.d. 441, forbade the reducing of Chris- - tians to bondage. The Council of Bheims, a.d. 625, prohibited Bishops from breaking up sacred vessels except for the redemp tion of captives.* Gregory the Great only expressed the grow ing, at last the governing feeling of the Christendom which he ruled, when he based his own manumission of slaves on the fact that the Lord had come from heaven to redeem all men, without distinction, from the bondage of sin. .. — Of course the process was a long one. Of course it was arrested by pauses and reactions: especially when the ascetic spirit hard ened men's sympathies, and made them almost indifferent to suffering, their own or others' ; still more, when the deluge of * See Guizot : " Hist, of Civilization " : New York ed., 1882 ; Vol. IH.: pp. 250, 279. IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 163 northern hordes, pouring in turbulent torrents into Italy, set back for a time all Christian advance ; or, later, when wealth and luxury in the church rivaled those of the previous empire. It is not often, in this world, that great ideals get realized in a day. The very cloud is slowly dispersed ; and the stony glacier has to be dissolved, an ounce at a time, into the brook that runs musically from it. But the progress was sure, although it was slow. If, as has been said, the water of baptism fell upon the brow of the poor 'to sanctify its sweats,' it fell upon the slave to loosen into liberty first the spirit and afterward the body. Before the religion which streamed upon the world through the coming of Jesus, as before nothing else ever known on the earth in the form of religion, the immemorial system of human bond age at last gave way all over Europe. It had disappeared in Italy by the fifteenth century ; in parts of Germany before the end of the thirteenth ; and though it lingered longer — to our shame! — in our own country, it. must' be remembered that here it seemed to many to be justified on the ground of essential diversities of race, and of its alleged tendency to civilize, and in the end to christianize, the imported barbarian. I do not defend, or accept for myself, any such line of argument ; but it is by no means to be forgotten that slavery continued here as long as it did only because humane men, de siring for themselves to be faithful to Christ, earnestly believed that it was harmonized by what they esteemed its beneficent effects with the spirit of the law of the Master. In spite of that, the ever-growing moral resistance which hated and fought it at last became so general and determined that when the great op portunity came it swept the system from the land as the breaking of an ice-dam sweeps timbers and trees, ice-blocks and boulders, before the sudden and terrible rush of the liberated waters. The ethics of the New Testament then marched behind bayonets. The roll of a thunder as awful as that which spake from Sinai was heard beneath the roar of artillery ; and it was the irresistible force of Christianity, which could not be baffled and could not be bribed, overruling politics, governing battle, and finding a voice in the great Proclamation, which in our time erased from the statute-book the last vestige of Slavery. The North and the 164 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, South both suffered in the struggle, and both alike see God in its issue ! It is not needful, the time would not permit, that I follow further, with equal minuteness, the effect of Christianity in chang ing the relation of human aocietiesio ward, the poor, the uncult ured, and t-_e~dependent. We are surrounded, on every hand, by its illustrations. But the thing to be observed is, that this immense change, full of benefit, full of prophecy, has come by virtue of the organic structure of this religion, and not because of any side-forces accidentally or occasionally associated with it. This has wrought it, as the sun brings the loveliness of summer ; as the chemistries of nature elaborate the gold, which man's art can only mimic. There had been no suggestion in heathenism of right behavior between man and man, as demanded by the prevalent religions. The thought of Humanity, as a vital or ganism, each part related, to every other, and all capable of being pervaded by one supreme spirit, — this was not a thought of the highest philosophy, or of the subtlest and most delicate song. It came by him who surpassed philosophers, as far as he surpassed the rigorous limitations of Hebrew sympathy. The local re ligions had tended always tb isolate states; while individual liberties shrank, in each, in precise proportion to such isolation. The individual existed for the interest of the state ; and classes thus inevitably arose, with rights varying according to their for tunate fitness to serve it. So came the great number of the free poor at Athens ; who might hear Demosthenes from the Bema, or see Pericles in the Pnyx, but who had no part in public affairs. So came the almost unending struggle between plebeians and patri cians at Eome, with the final practical disappearance from Italy of the middle class of small proprietors. And so came the senti ment, repeated by Phmtus with brutal frankness, that ' a man is a wolf to another man whom he does not know7; the more terri ble maxim of one nobler than Plautus — whose writings have given to the name of Plato a lustre wliich neither Propylaea nor- Parthenon could equally give to that of Pericles — that the poor and -hungry, being condemned by their appeals for assistance, should be expelled from market-place and city, and 'the country be cleared of that sort of animal.' / / IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 165 How exactly Christianity reversed all this, I need not say. It knew no distinctions of State or race, but was utterly cosmopol itan. It was preached to the poor, and the common people heard it gladly. In this universality of its address it honored each man to whom it came. In its presentation of its own great Teacher — whatever may be our precise conception of his unique and superlative person — it exalted human nature, and showed it near and dear to God, if it did not put — as most of the early Christians surely felt that it did put — Divine honors upon it. In its exhibition of the final just Judgment, waiting for each, where destinies should be determined according to character, it made every man free in the court of Heaven, whether with or with out any personal standing before human tribunals. Upon present benefits conferred on the poor, in the name of the Mas ter, and for his sake, the very decisions of that tribunal were foreshown as depending, by him who unrolled, according to the record, before the appalled apprehension of men that tremend ous panorama. So, every way — by fact and precept, and lurid forewarning, by the cross and the throne, by lowly advent, and astonishing work, and the most majestic Sermon of time — -the new religion wrought through the circles of human Hfe, wher ever it touched them, to make the humblest an object of solici tude, to bind upon the haughtiest a new sense of obligation ; and when men met ' around a table, not a tomb,' where all alike were the guests of one Lord, Jew and Gentile, master and slave, barbarian and Greek, the lines which had divided them wholly disappeared, in their common privilege, their common love, and their common expectation. With all the energy of its command, and with the force of its exuberant life, the new religion taught whoever became its dis ciple his incessant personal responsibility for power; and so it made faith in the unseen Lord the most effective ethical, social, political force ever known on the earth. It required any so- 1 called ' consecration ' to him to be manifested toward those ' with whose class he had principally dwelt in the world, and for whose salvation he was declared to have specially come. And its influence, of necessity, showed itself widely, and has shown itself long. Even as the springs in distant hills fling up the 166 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, waters which have silently flowed from their far fountains in the glittering sheaf which flashes in the sun above garden or park or city square, or in the great reservoirs from whose abun dance populations are supplied, so these remote and unseen forces, from Galilee and Jewry, still break forth in Christendom into more humane laws and more just institutions. The secret of the whole is in the Christian law of the obligation of man to man. ,. Stuart Mill, in one of his essays,* criticises the Christian scheme as dwelling too little on public duties and public virtues. It is characteristic of the school of thought represented by him, which expects sometime to regenerate man by improving his conditions, rather than to improve his conditions by regenerat ing the man. But I read in face of his critical words the words of St. Paul — the manliest, most intrepid and high-minded person whom the age of Seneca presents to our view — " I am debtor, both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians ; both to the wise and to the unwise ":f and there I see not merely the temper which made that trained and converted Ciliciau a master-builder in civilization, but the temper which afterward shot forth its mis sions on every side, and which enabled the early Fathers, in the midst of the fearful oppressions of the empire, to see slavery, with its pagan theory of two races, falling at last before the holy word of Jesus that all men are brothers, as the children of God. No debtor to any man, on any human accounting of bene fits, was the unwearied and ardent apostle. The Greek had laughed at him ; the Barbarian had stoned him ; the Eoman sword was shaking in its scabbard, seeking his life. But because they were men, for whom the religion which he preached was designed, and whom he knew it had power to bless, he was under incessant obligation to preach it, to the most remote, the most obscure, for whom the Master had come from heaven, for whom the great Immortality waited. Beside this, the splendid picture in the ' Ethics,' of the mag nanimous man, becomes cold and hard, sterile as a marble statue. The maxims of Cicero upon the duties of man to man, or those of Seneca, are feeble beside it : wanting authority, wanting fire, * On " Liberty ": Boston ed„ 1863, pp. 95-98. f Romans i. 14. IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 167 and wanting above aU the unsearchable energy of personal ex ample. ( Self-sacrifice for another cannot be shown to be a duty of man, unless upon the Christian basis. It is upon the law of moral obligation in this reHgion, not upon auy personal sensibili ties, or any dictates of scientific altruism, that whatever has been humane and beneficent in the public life of Christendom has rested ; and the history of this is also a promise. We sharply object to the vast Church-establishment which ruled Europe for centuries ; but it is, at least, to be remembered to its honor, that obscurity of birth, poverty of resources, weak ness of frame, were not barriers to eminence in it, and that some of its chief prelates and princes came from the classes from which in Athens slaves were supplied, which in Eome were con tent with bread and the games. The one English Pope, Adrian Fourth, who held himself lord of Barbarossa and who fought him with relentless severity, while he claimed to bestow the sov-' ereignty of Ireland on the English monarch, was so ignorant at the outset that the monks of St. Albans would not receive him, and he became a servant in a monastery at Avignon. Alexander Third, who followed him in the Papacy, from an origin hardly less humble, who conquered Barbarossa, and nearly laid England under an interdict, subduing the stubborn Henry Second and forcing him to an ignominious penance, was the same who asserted the general principle that nature has made no man to be a slave, and who has been credited with that scheme of universal Hbera- tion which Voltaire declared should make his name dear to the world. It is the same power working with us, under other polities, but with a force unchanged and unwasting, upon which demo cratic institutions are based, with educational, philanthropic, and missionary enterprise. The hospitals for the sick, the asylums for the aged, the homeless, and the orphan; the consecrated ministry of skill and genius to the blind and the deaf, as the fruit of which the blind become readers by their fingers, while the old miracle of the Lord seems repeated as the dumb are taught to articulate ; the ministry to the insane and the imbe cile, which began among the monks of German forests and of the Pyrenees, and which has been carried in our time to su- 168 THE NEW CONCEPTION OF MAN'S DUTY TO MAN, perb consummation ; the ministry to even the criminal classes, who might seem severed by their offences from further claim upon society, but for whom the plans of prison-reform are in cessantly at work :— all these illustrate the new era introduced by Christianity : the new conception which it brought and has taught of man's duty to man. Communism itself is only the refracted image of a supreme truth — the truth of the indebted ness of the strong to the weak: as that, however, is dimly dis cerned, by intoxicated brains, through bloodshot eyes. I submit to you, then, Ladies and Gentlemen, that it was a novel and astonishing force which came to the world when Chris tianity first was preached. If conduct be, as has been said, three- quarters of human life, that which has changed so materially the conduct of men, in great organized societies, has at least enormous power and value. It seemed wholly impossible that the frail, obscure, and scattered societies of the early disciples should do any such thing. Eenan has said, not untruly, " at first sight the work of Jesus did not seem likely to survive ; his congregation appeared to have nothing before it but to dissolve into anarchy." * But the religion which was in those societies not only survived, it accompHshed this change, showing itself as vast in energy, as it was certainly singular in beneficence ; checking passionate adverse opinion with its breath, and trampling tempestuous social waves into a plain ; exalting itself to a moral supremacy which grows only more illustrious as the centuries advance. We wonder still, in mute admiration, before some triumphs of ancient art. But we certainly may say, without hesitation, that no marbles or mosaics of the days before Christ had ever such moral glory on them as has that old and dim mosaic in the city of Eome, of the thirteenth century, which represents the Master sitting between captives white and black, and liberating both ; \ as has that pic ture before which the world has for centuries been pausing, radiant, more than with Eaphael's genius, with the Divine infancy and the holy motherhood of the Sistine Madonna. The final work of this religion we do not yet see. It will not * Hibbert Lectures : London ed., 1880, p. 156. t On the Csclian, near the arch of Dojabella and Silanus. IN POLITICS AND SOCIETY. 169 be accomplished till a perfect society, various and complex, yet harmonious and free, is universal on the earth, under the sov- Breign rule of him who chose the poor for his friends, and peas ants for his apostles, who honored Woman, loosened the fetters Df despair from the Slave, and set the unfading celestial aureole Dn the head of the Child. And that ultimate society — it wUl not carry the race back to any primitive innocence, with a primeval simplicity of relations; it wiU accept, complete, and bless all civilization ; it wiU be rich in lordly arts, vocal in literatures, abundant in garnered wealths from the Past ; but it will also, as moulded by Christ, be like himself — sweet in sympathy, pure in hoHness, vital with love ; a City, not a Garden, but the City of God, coming down out of Heaven, "having her light like a stone most precious, even like a jasper-stone, clear as crystal." LECTUEE VI. THE NEW CONCEPTION OP THE DUTIES OP NATIONS, TOWARD EACH OTHEE. LECTUEE VI. Two things are to be observed in considering Christianity in connection with the subject which confronts us this evening. The first is, that in its own contemplation it is particularly a sys tem of religion, taught with reference to a practical and specific effect upon persons. The second is, that its benefits, whatever they may be, are designed to be preeminently moral and spiritual, rather than secular, social, or political. Its first design is to lift men toward God, not to make them, or the communities which they form, more prosperous, energetic, or secure upon the earth. Whatever it may accomplish in the latter direction is to be looked upon as done, not reluctantly, but in a secondary way, as inci dental to the bestowal of higher good, even the highest, upon the mind and life of the disciple. It is the spiritual fitness of individuals for fellowship with the Heavenly Father, and for the Immortality to come, which Christianity professes to promote: not any general civilization of nations, except as this may be consequent on the other. Yet it is also to be observed that a powerful impression on the public life of organized states may properly be looked for through the developing energy of the system, if it have really a Divine place in the world's economy. To make a man freer, wiser than he was, more sensitive to the claims of justice upon him, more clearly aware of what is needful to his ultimate wel fare, and only more consciously' interested in men because in more intimate relationship to God — this is to benefit not himself alone, but every community which he affects ; and what sets any people forward, in the path of righteous and wise advancement, in the end must instruct, stimulate, and assist others around it. If therefore Christianity be a religion coming from God, and designed for the world, it must have it for its final magnificent (173) 174 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, function to benefit peoples, as well as persons ; not merely to se quester from barbarous wastes occasional gardens, bright in bloom and delightful in fragrance, but to re-fashion continents; not merely to instruct and purify households, but to make the entire race, in the end, a household of God. It must, of course, have time conceded, and long periods of time, in which to do this. But it must accept this sovereign mis sion. And if it be said, ' That is too vast a thing to expect it to accomplish '; the answer is immediate : ' Then it must not claim, in any transcendent or superlative sense, to be an enduring cos mical religion, sent from God.' It may charm many minds by pleasing narratives, or comfort individual hearts by animating hopes ; but it has not the power which a Divine Faith should have, and must have, to conquer, quicken, and regulate nations. That Christianity has done something in this direction, and that it is vivid and rich with promise of doing much more as it widens in the world, appears to me almost as evident as the bil lowy seas seen from a headland ; that to it, as the moral and in exhaustible source, is primarily due the amelioration which already has taken place in the relation of nations to each other ; and that on it must depend the further and fruitful changes for which we hope. To illustrate this, in a few particulars, though rapidly, briefly, and with great imperfection, is my pur pose this evening. Let us first get the change wliich has cer tainly occurred in this direction, by an instance or two, distinctly before us. That armed combatants, taken in battle, might either be killed, enslaved, or sold, at the pleasure of the captor, was simply an elementary rule in ancient war ; and by both Greek and Eoman usage the principal officers of the hostUe army, being captured, might properly at once be put to death : as were, for example, the Athenian generals, captured at Syracuse ; as was probably Eegulus, by the Carthaginians ; as Hannibal would have been, — the most illustrious general of his time, who had scattered the Eoman armies like chaff, and in the face of icy precipices and fierce mountaineers had lifted elephants over the Alps— if he had not preferred to anticipate by poison the death prepared for him by the Eoman Eepublic. The object of war, in the sim TOWARD EACH OTHER. 175 plicity of antique custom, was the utter destruction of the inimi cal power. The awful maxim literally obtained, that the laws of war know no limitations : ' Jus belU infinitum.' And while in practice, in wars in which Eomans or Greeks were engaged on both sides, it was common to give quarter if it were asked, and to allow subsequent ransom, any degree of injury to the enemy was permitted and sanctioned by the recognized rules. The Eomans regarded their own citizens, captured by the enemy, as losing thereby their status of freedom. All their rights re mained in abeyance until they had escaped from bondage, or had been ransomed. The Jus Postliminii was based on the principle that while the Eoman citizen remained a captive of the enemy he was their slave. Nor was any duty violated, any right over borne, if all the captured and all the wounded were despatched on the field after the engagement : as when the Eomans were slaughtered at Cannae, or the Samnites by the Eomans when the latter retrieved their previous disaster at the Caudiue forks ; as in the terrible examples at Melos and Platea ; as when even Germanicus exhorted his soldiers to prosecute the slaughter till the people should be exterminated against whom they were fighting. This was in the ancient time. On the other hand, one pass ing through Europe in the early summer of a.d. 1871, saw the numerous railway-trains in Germany and iu France crowded with troops captured by the victorious armies which had swept across France from Forbach to Sedan, and thence to the famous and fascinating capital which they had girt with lines of steel, and on which they had poured destroying fire till they forced its surrender. The troops thus captured, and now returning, had been carefully tended in their captivity. They had been treated as friends, from the moment of their surrender ; had been skill fully, patiently, and effectively cared for, in hospitals and in camps, cured of sickness, healed of wounds, fed and clothed, and ministered to by the kindness of woman as well as the trained dexterity of man ; and they were now returning to their homes, to civil rights which had suffered no suspense in their absence, and with no bitter recollections, with only those gentle and suave, of even the country whose miHtary foresight, its skillful leader- 176 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, ship, and its arms of precision, had broken in pieces their organ ized strength. It had made their enforced residence in it, if not pleasant, yet not destructive, or intolerably severe. And the Emperor who had provoked the war, and on whose head it might reasonably be felt lay the dreadful responsibility for scores of thousands of German lives as well as of French sacri ficed in it, when he was caught in the terrible ring of iron and fire in the town on the Meuse, was sent to be lodged, with safety and honor, in a princely castle, which was also a palace. These are not exceptional facts. They are paralleled so often, so usually indeed, after a war as at present conducted, that they have ceased to excite surprise; and whereas Bajazet, in a.d. 1396, after his victory at Nicopolis over French and Hungarians, impelled by the spirit of his religion, slaughtered all save a few held for enormous ransom — killing mercilessly the defence less captives, till the sharpened scimetar's edge was blunted, or the arm was too weary to wield the mace — when the chief sol dier of Bajazet's successor, Osman Pasha, surrendered at Plevna after terrible fighting, he was treated almost as a son of the Czar ; was conducted in state to his transient captivity, and sur rounded with all attainable luxury. Something or other has changed and relieved the aspect of war, even along the banks of the Danube. Take another illustration. Heralds and public legates have always possessed special immunities, being reckoned not so much inimical persons, even amid the stress of war, as necessary rep resentatives and messengers of nations, without effective guaran ties for whose safety public intercourse must be suspended. This lies level with the commonest practical sense of men. It takes no fine philosophy to discern it, and no quick sense of moral obligation. From early times, therefore, the function of herald had had the attribute of inviolability ; and the sanctions of religion had been invoked to support and perfect this. Yet when the Persian king sent to Spartans and Athenians a demand for tlieir submission, in the fifth century before Christ, not only was the demand rejected, but the heralds who had brought it were savagely put to death. And when, at a later day, Sparta, then in the presidency of Greece, sent ambassadors TOWARD EACH OTHER. 177 to Susa, asking Persian intervention to protect her against the hostility of Athens, two of these, being seized in Thrace, were not even immediately killed — for which the excuse of a sudden fierce impulse might have been pleaded—but were taken to Athens, and there deHberately executed. Such instances are not singular in history ; but they are significant, as showing how the most advanced state of Pagan antiquity, rich in arts and preeminent in philosophy, disregarded even a primary rule, if any primary rule existed, for the intercourse of nations, when its passions were aroused and its interests imperilled. Eecall then a suggestive contrast with this in our recent history. On the eighth of November, a.d. 1861, an American war- steamer took from a British merchant-vessel, in the Bahama Channel, two men who had held high office in our Government, who were then in its view simply private persons conspiring against it, but who had been sent by the powerful confederacy in armed and active resistance to the nation, to represent its cause at the courts respectively of Great Britain and France. The men were taken, with their secretaries. It was in the early and threatening days of the struggle to maintain the unity of the nation, and to overthrow the tremendous insurrection which had risen against it. No force was used in capturing the envoys, other than that which was indispensable to remove them from the ship. Their protest, written the following day, was respect- fuUy received by the captain of the steamer by which and to which they had been taken. They were conveyed, with all per sonal consideration, to the national fortress in the harbor of Boston, for transient detention. Upon the subsequent demand of the British Government that they be surrendered, they were "cheerfully liberated," upon the sole ground, as affirmed by our Government, that the right of capture had not been exercised in the manner properly prescribed by the controlling law of nations. The excited nation was satisfied with the answer. Being released, and placed again on an English steamer, they went their way, otherwise unhindered, to do whatever mischief they might to the nation which had sheltered, advanced, and honored them, but which then had reason to dread their influ ence, and if it lawfully could, to detain and to punish them. 12 178 A. NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, If the example of Athens had been recognized, as containing any suggestion of right, such dangerous plotters against national life, wherever captured, would assuredly have forfeited their life. Some force or other has wrought a change. There is no need to multiply illustrations. An additional one, recent and signal, compels our attention : the tribunal convened at Geneva, a.d. 1871-2, for investigating and adjusting the claims of this country against Great Britain, on account of the damage done to our commerce by rebel cruisers, especially by the Alabama, a steamer built but not equipped in British territory, whose arrest had been ordered by the English authorities, on reasonable suspicion, but which had escaped from one of their ports before such orders, being late in their issue, could be enforced. Ee- membering the immense number of wars which have broken into frightful explosion on occasions far less irritating than this, remembering the vast excitements of feeling which preceded the arbitration, both in this country and in England, the peaceful submission of such gigantic and intricate claims, on the part of two proud and powerful nations, to a tribunal composed of five persons, only two of whom had been directly named by those representing the interested nations, whose decision was reached under formulated rules carefully and liberally defining the law as understood between the parties — this must continue among the significant and memorable facts of modern diplomacy : a ma jestic Ulustration of the extent to which the public law of equity and comity governing nations has come to be recognized as of sovereign authority ; a most animating prophecy of the power and scope which it may reasonably be expected to gain in after-time. ' Geneva ! ' — it was once said, when it was proposed to hold there a religious convocation: 'why always at Geneva? It is only a speck of sand on the map of Europe' ! ' Nay,' — was the answer : ' say rather a speck of musk, which has perfumed the Continent ' ! The fine pervasive odor of the action which was taken there in a.d. 1872, ought to fill with its perfume long pas sages of history. That an immense change has certainly occurred in the relation of nations to each other since Christianity was preached in the TOWARD EACH OTHER, 179 world, will not then be disputed. But the question remains — and it is for us, the important question — how far has the reHg ion introduced to the world by Jesus of Nazareth contributed to this change? Looking at the matter without prejudice in either direction, can we say that it has been, in any true sense, either its parent or its effective promoter ? That it alone has wrought directly the remarkable change, without side-forces, often themselves originating with it, but working in distinct though parallel lines, I should be the last to affirm. Commerce, the arts, the rapid advances in popular edu cation, a better social and political spirit — even a spirit which has sometimes antagonized Christianity, as in the French Encyclo- p^distes — all these have had their part in the progress, the recog nition of which must be ample and hearty. But that the ener getic and surprising religion whose effects in other spheres we have considered gave primary impulse to this movement, and has ever since sustained and advanced it, appears to me plain : almost too much so to admit of dispute : and the general con sent of the wisest and most learned of the commentators and students of the Law International confirms the judgment. I have said already, in the previous lecture, that in the ancient thoughtful and cultivated world the state was recognized as of an importance so paramount that individual liberty could scarcely be maintained, in fulness and security, in connection with an organism so imperative and exacting. The same influences which wrought to this effect wrought also to the estrangement of one state from another, and the consequent relative isolation of each. The nations were divided by their local religions, more than by any lack of commerce, or of enterprise in traveUing, or of a common medium of language. There was commerce enough between Tyre and the Ionian isles, between Carthage, Alexandria, Antioch, and Eome. But the jealous instinct for self-advancement seemed reinforced with religious sanctions in the ancient states, as a duty due to the local gods ; and relations of inherited and suspicious aversion, flaming easily into active hostility, were thus natural to them. International Law, therefore, as representing the moral and jural relations of independent peo ples, was simply impossible, in any organized development, 180 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, in that state of society. The noble declaration of Burke, that " Justice is the common concern of mankind," which a dis tinguished English writer on International Law* has made a motto for his volumes — represented a fact beyond the horizon of ancient life. The Greek states, small and contiguous, speaking the same language, having apparently common interests, having substan tially a common descent and a common religion — these were almost constrained to recognize some reciprocal rights, and cor relative duties : the allowance of quarter to the captured, for ex ample, and of subsequent ransom ; the sacredness of truces, for the burial of the dead ; the security from death of those taking refuge in particular temples on the capture of a city ; the inex pediency of erecting permanent trophies after victory ; the pro priety even, on occasion, of common action, to resist invasion, or to maintain among themselves the balance of power. Thus occasional Hellenic confederacies arose ; and thus the Amphictyonie assembly, which met at Delphi in the spring, and at Thermopylae in the autumn, and in which twelve of the Hel lenic communities were represented, though originally consti tuted for religious purposes, to watch over the interests of the Delphian temple, had a covenant at the outset not to destroy an Amphictyonie town, or to cut it off from running water ; and it afterward, at times, took cognizance of social and political mat ters. It was never, however, a federal Hellenic congress, as some have conceived it, as Cicero himself would seem to have imagined. It had no extended or permanent power. Thucydides makes no mention of it, though the times of which he left his unsurpassed record preeminently needed its intervention, if such had been possible. Xenophon is equally silent concerning it. For many generations the very fact of its existence hardly ap pears ; and at length, when it sought to assume more authority, instead of contributing to unite and protect the HeUenic peoples, it became the source of fierce and wasting sacred wars, and led directly to the fatal battle of Chaeroneia, and the supremacy over Greece of Philip of Macedon. * Phillimore : " Comm. on International Law.'' TOWARD EACH OTHER. 181 But while the Greek states were so composed and so located as to make intermittent arrangements among them for public welfare almost inevitable, and while one of the lost books of Aris totle is said to have treated of the rules of war, they recognized no obligation whatever toward " Barbarians," under which class were reckoned all external peoples ; and the term International- law is not as pertinent to what existed among themselves as would be the name Inter-state, or, to take the phrase of Mr. Grote, Inter-political regulations. The Eomans declared war with elaborate ceremony, and had a coUege of heralds for the purpose, said to have been borrowed from the Etruscans ; but they contemplated the subjection of the world to their own power, not the peaceful confederation of its separated kingdoms, and their Jus Gentium denoted therefore merely the common principles of law observed by aU peoples, in distinction from the Jus Civile, or the Law peculiar to the people of Eome. When the empire was broken into separated divisions, occupied by populations part of which had been, in various meas ure, under the dominion of Eoman Law, and which came sub sequently to be affected by a common Christianity — then was presented the first real opportunity in history for developing a Law, marked by equity, common to severed and distant king doms, and regulating the relations of each to the rest. To that point, therefore, we always turn to find the beginnings of what has been since a distinguished progress. The earliest definition of a Law between nations has been said to be that of Isidore of Seville, in the early part of the seventh century.* It is of course to be recognized as true, what is now and then scornfully said — sometimes with that superciliousness of tone which hardly impresses one as among the graces of unbelief — that the influence upon the customs of nations thus attributed to Christianity, and referred for its incipient development to that period in history, was exceedingly slow in operation ; and that for centuries, especially through what a subsequent fashion desig nates as the ' Ages of Faith,' the effect which it produced in curbing barbarism, and establishing peoples in relations of amity, * See Kennedy's " Hulsean Essay ": Cambridge ed., 1856, p. 59. 182 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, was not very perceptible. Yet it is to be observed that the state ment as thus made, without limitation, appears to be exaggerated. The reference of questions in dispute between princes to councils or to the Pope, the combination of princes in the Crusades, these with other facts show tendencies somewhat early and vigorous toward another condition than that of constant armed hostility. And it is certainly in fairness to be remembered on what a con fused and unmanageable mass of fierce and turbulent human life — full of savage impulses, inherited animosities, implacable pas sions, and the rudest superstitions — the influence of the religion had to be exerted. We know nothing by experience, we hardly can picture to our selves by any effort of an active imagination, the awful wildness of rapacity and lust, the ignorance of any moral restraint, the terrific and fermenting ferocity of spirit, amid which the Western empire fell, and which seemed only to become more portentous when that last centre of social organization and of political order had been destroyed. It was, as Guizot has said, and others before him, " a veritable deluge of divers nations, forced one upon an other, from Asia into Europe, by wars and migrations in mass, which inundated the empire, and gave the decisive signal for its fall." * The Western Germans and the Gauls had begun to be lifted, in a degree, from their recent barbarism. But the hordes of Vandals, Goths, Huns, who poured over western and south ern Europe, forced with violence enormous elements of all that was most brutal and savage into the countries which they over ran, and with whose peoples they were commingled. War was their pastime, murder their luxury, rapine their industry. To any who had knowledge of better things, it not unnaturally seemed as if the nether abysses had been opened, and demoniac powers had assumed a swift and frightful supremacy. In fact, it was in the sixth century that the fearful beHef in magic and witchcraft, which is general in savage life, which paganism had done little to dispel and much to cultivate, and which Christi anity found in the world as one of the worst legacies from the Past, took fullest and strongest possession of men's minds. The * Guizot, "History of France": Boston ed., Vol. I., p. 133. TOWARD EACH OTHER. 153 proximate and palpable diabolism of men seemed to image an energetic and an almost ubiquitous diabolism above, beating in upon the earth from unseen spheres. Satanic inspirations appeared to give the readiest account of the fierce and pitiless complex of iniquities in which happiness, hope, and human Hfe were fatally immeshed. When malignity and perfidy became so portentous, when cruelty, rapacity, drunkenness, lust, came leaping out of Hercynian woods or sweeping in irresistible fury from Scythian wastes, it is not strange that they should have seemed to men's horrified hearts to have infernal energies behind them ; that fear should interpret the air itself as swarming with ministers of fiendish passion, and of a more than mortal power. It is not strange that the shadow of that lurid and terrifying impression should have lain for centuries on the lands which then as never before it smote and filled. The marvel is that out of such a horrible chaos, of roaming ban ditti, devastated provinces, sacked cities, fighting nations, bewil dered minds, the modern Europe could be evolved ; and although by the time of Charlemagne moral forces, emanating from the centres of Christian control, had begun to operate on these bar baric populations, after his reign was over tbe old chaos seemed reestablished. To recognize this, one has only to remember that at the end of the ninth century his extended empire had already been broken up into seven separated kingdoms ; and that at the end of the tenth century there were fifty-five duchies, lordships, or other feudal fiefs, each with its proper and permanent sov ereignty, established in France. Floras said, without exagger ation, ' The general good is annulled ; each occupies himself with his own interests ; God is forgotten.' But in spite of all that was weak, ignominious, and morally disgraceful in these centu ries and in those which followed, the undestroyed power of the Christian religion continued to operate. The European celebrity, and the unrivalled influence, of a man at once so eloquent and so saintly as Bernard of Clairvaux, show what immense progress had been made in his time. The doctrine which he preached may not in all respects command our acceptance, as the true in terpretation of the Christian religion. But no one doubts that it was that religion, as he conceived and labored to spread it, 184 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, which gave to him his unsurpassed power. It was that religion which at last wrought the wonder in history of civilized states emerging from the indescribable disorder, of grossness, fierce ness, clashing passions, and slaughtering battle, of which the earlier time had been full. To have done the work which Christianity then did, is one of the grandest of its victories. To imagine that any other force known to history, conceivable by man — any stately ethics or fine philosophy, any military pru dence, or sagacious legislation — could have done it more rapidly, could have done it at all, is simply to cut loose from the teach ings of experience, and to do small honor to common-sense. Still, after the progress of the Law International had thus been initiated, it continued of course for long periods of time to be very slow. It was resisted by a thousand fierce forces, and by establishments crafty, capricious, jealous of rivals, and inveterately attached to earlier traditions. It was of course long antagonized by that system of Feudalism the spread of which I have indicated : whose tendency was to localize law, and to sever from each other detached communities, over which the several feudal superiors presided in almost unchecked control. In France, for example, or in Germany, the nation was not for a long time as distinct and self-conscious, as compact in power, as imperative in will, as was the feudal district or province ; and it could not be until national existence became fully developed, and expectant of permanence, that the respective rights and ob ligations of such slowly-organized incorporeal Persons could be defined. Eiparian rights can only be settled, with the connected easements and privileges, where rivers themselves already exist, with occupied banks. There can be no settled law of commerce till that elastic and indomitable interest has got itself estab lished. The Hanseatic League could only exist because Ham burg and Liibeck, Cologne, Dantzic, Brunswick, and the other cities confederated in it, were already populous and wealthy, and were interested in common to protect trade and to punish piracy. In the same way, there could be, in the nature of the case, no Law for Nations till nations themselves had been evolved into a definite, abiding, and self-conscious personality ; as the English was, gradually, after the Norman conquest ; as the French was, after the time of St. Louis. TOWARD EACH OTHER. 185 Even then the overshadowing Papal autocracy, though in various ways it had prepared the way for it, long delayed the development of a great voluntary secular law, regulating the re lations of nations to each other ; and the advanced state of moral and of mental training, which is an essential condition of such a law, did not widely exist in Europe until later centuries. In ternational Law, as we term the rules which regulate the inter course of nations with each other, is a voluntary thing, in a sense and measure in which other laws are not. Within the state enactments are imposed, by established authority, on sub jects or citizens. But states themselves, according to the pre mise of this larger law, are independent and self-controlling. They come under its Hmitations, if at all, only by their affirma tive consent. The very existence of it, therefore, is conditioned on the prevalence of just and governing moral ideas. It can be extended only as the range of the authority of these widens in the world ; and its ultimate triumph is to come, if ever, when such controlling moral ideas have supremacy among men. When nations feel, if ever they do feel, that they have common moral interests to consult and subserve, and that the principles of equity and humanity are as binding on them as on private per sons — are, in fact, a rule for them, coining from Him concern ing whom Hooker said that ' our safest eloquence is our silence,' and of whose rule he also said that ' no less can be acknowl edged than that her seat is the bosom of God, and her voice the harmony of the world ' * — when this is practically acknowl edged and seriously felt, then will the reign of this modern, voluntary, and sovereign Law, which seeks strictly and justly to govern nations in their relations with each other, be everywhere estabhshed. It can come only as the consummate flower of a deeply-rooted and slowly-maturing historical civihzation : not Budden, or short-lived, like the terminal bud of the Talipat- palm of Ceylon, with its fragrant golden bloom, but Hke that breaking from the summit of a stem a hundred feet high, with the growth of many successive years behind and beneath it. But how is it that Christianity has contributed to form or to *B. I: ch.2, §2: ch. 16, §8. 186 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, advance this Law between nations ? We may see that the aribient ethnic religions were of course unfriendly to it. We may know that the Koran actually forbids it: enjoining its disciples to contract no friendships with those of another faith, command ing war to the end against infidels, and ordering, when they have been overcome, to strike off their heads with a great slaughter, and to bind the remnant in bonds. But has the relig ion brought by Jesus shown positive power in the opposite direction ? Has it influenced the Law to which it may be admit ted to have given possibility? Is there any traceable connection between parables and treaties? between the Beatitudes and recent war-usages? between the Sermon on the Mount, or him who preached it, and the rules which make a neutral ship safe from assault, or which tend to substitute courts of arbitration for the undiscerning arbitrament of battle ? The question is a just one; and the answer to it appears to me in no degree difficult. Christianity certainly presents no code, according to which the affairs of nations shall be conducted. Less than any other relig ion is it a legal or rubrical system, even in relation to its per sonal disciples. Wherever it affects nations', it can do so only by its principles and spirit, not by ecumenical rules formulated in it. But through these principles, and by this spirit, it does affect peoples, even powerfully; and its energy is exerted in that precise line of development in which they have now for centuries been advancing, since the Western Empire broke apart into separated states, and the time came for a new code exhibit ing national duties and rights. A few moments' thought will make this apparent. As I have said, in the contemplation of Christianity the individual is confessedly supreme, as the conscious, spiritual, responsible person, to whom instructions and precepts are given, for whom Divine provisions are arranged, and before whom opens the waiting Immortality. By the faet that it is a religion for persons, it gives to each soul a glory from what is transcend ent in itself, and exalts the humblest by presenting him as the object of Divine solicitude. But from this comes, in immediate sequence, the constant im- TOWARD EACH OTHER. 187 pulse to social improvement ; and, especially, the doctrine of the sacredness of the state, as a Divine institute for the protection and culture of individuals. This is not an indulgence to public selfishness. It is not a tradition, derived from the Hebrew or the Eoman commonwealth. It rests on the same general basis with the right of the family, or of the church, though the special offi ces to be accomplished by the state are diverse from theirs. So long as it shelters in just security of property and of life the indi vidual citizen, and gives opportunity for his mental and moral development and activity, this has an authority from the Infinite Governor. It is practically irreligious, in the contemplation of Christianity, to fight against its life. And even if the state does not fully accomplish its ends, or does not at once seek to secure them with conscious purpose, still, as an organism for man's well-being, it is part of the Divine economy for the world, and takes a fresh permanence from the teachings of Jesus. Chris tianity reverses, in other words, the ancient tendency : and instead of working downward from the state to the person, it works upward and outward from the person to the state, making the latter more important because of the surpassing and eternal im portance which it attributes to the humblest individual. No better illustration of this can be given than that which is presented by the example of St. Paul. The Master had taught that his disciples were to render to Caesar the things which were his ; and Paul but amplifies and enforces the lesson when he writes to those in the splendid and haughty capital of the empire, under the shadow of Capitoline temples, and of that superb Palatine on which Nero was soon to build and defile his Golden House, " Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers ; for there is no power but of God ; and the powers that be are ordained of God For this cause ye pay tribute, also ; for they are min isters of God's service, attending continually upon this very thing." * In this he expresses no personal approbation of the character or the action of men like Tiberius, Caligula, or Nero. It is im possible that he should have felt anything but abhorrence for ?Romans xiii. 1, 6. 188 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, either of the men who in his time ruled from the Tiber — each one, as Gibbon tersely expressed it, ' at once a priest, an atheist, and a God.' He must, indeed, have felt, in sure anticipation, how savagely the power which was lodged in such hands would soon and long be used to the utmost against Christianity ; of what fierce cruelties it would give exhibition, when once its passion was let loose ; how long it must be before the reHgion whose an tagonism it suspected, and whose purity it hated, could gain se curity, to say nothing of supremacy, against such destroying violence of rulers. But the state, as such, a continuing and con trolling political organization, was to him as important as it ever had been to Aristotle or to Plato. Eulers, as such, because es sential to the state, had a Divine function. This was true even of the empire which had conquered his particular people, which now held that people in reluctant submission, and which ere long was to light its fires, and make bare its sword, and to sum mon dogs, leopards, and Libyan lions, to sweep from the earth, if so it might, his consecrated Faith. In spite of all, he pleaded his cause, before Felix first — the in famous procurator, born in bondage, and who exercised in Judea, according to Tacitus, in every form of cruelty and lust, the pre rogative of a king in the temper of the slave * — and afterward before Festus : not denying their authority, and saying, with the manHness which always belonged to him, " If I be a wrong-doer, and have committed anything worthy of death, I refuse not to die " ! f He appealed from the lower tribunal to the higher, and carried his case to that, very Nero whose name was already fast becoming a synonym for infamy ; and when he was led for the last time along the thronged Ostian road to the scene of his mar tyrdom, he uttered no denunciation of the government whose sword was sharpened for his Hfe. That government had been his protector before, in cities and in wildernesses, in the far in terior and out upon the sea. It was necessary to Christianity that such public governments should exist ; and vicious and vile *"Per omnem saevitiam ac libidinem, jus regium servili ingenio exer- cuit." Histor. v. 9. tActs xxv. 11. TOWARD EACH OTHER. igg as might be the passing imperial rulers, the state itself was a Divine ordinance, necessary to all those interests of man on which the Gospel was to pour benediction. Politics, as well as ethics, were founded with the apostle on a Christian base, or sprang up from a Christian root. The nation was God's provi dential ereature. It had its rightful powers, as such ; and some time or other it would find *out its duties. The moral ends which it was to serve imparted to it of their own sacredness. The same controlling and interpreting idea has prevailed in the world from that day to this, wherever the power of Christi anity has gone. Justin Martyr could honestly say, in his first Apology : " To God alone we render worship ; but in other things we gladly serve you, acknowledging you as kings and rul ers of men, while praying "—he adds, with noble frankness — " that with your kingly power ye may also be found to possess a sound judgment." * So it has been ever since. Territorial lines have been constantly changing. Forms of government have undergone frequent and vast amendment ; and the energy of Christianity has been never inactive in enforcing such changes. It cannot, by its nature, be indifferent to the forms which govern ments successively take ; and it often has pleaded, prayed, and fought, in the persons of its most faithful adherents, for those which were freest and most benign. But all the time, the idea of the state as a part of God's plan, necessary to the moral training of man, indispensable to the spread of Christianity on the earth, has been maintained ; and they who have felt the hand of its power most oppressively — as the Huguenots of France, or the Puritans of England — have still recognized the nation in its own sphere as a lawful and distinctly Divine institution. Governments themselves, so long as they serve their proper ends, do not oppress the personal conscience, and do not antag onize the advance of Christianity, have now, therefore, a perma nenee which in earlier times they did not equally command. That permanence depends, more and more obviously, on their coinci dence with the deep impulse of the prevalent religion. If they collide with this, they have to go down, not always as the walls * Ch. XVII. 190 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, of Athens were said to go down, before the music of Dorian flutes, but sometimes with resounding clamor and crash. But as long as they serve the public welfare, and give free course to the training of men by the teaching of Christianity, governments are now more secure than of old. The religion which has im pressed the institutions and invigorated the life of Europe and America conserves and consecrate*, it does not assail, the benefi cent commonwealth. But because it thus recognizes the state as existing in the Di vine plan, for moral purposes, and for highest welfare in the per sons who compose it, this religion also, and of necessity, regards each state as under moral obligations toward others, correlative to its rights. It starts with that majestic truth, never more im pressively announced than by Paul, in the face of Hellenic pride, and in front of the monuments of Hellenic genius, that God hath " made of one blood every nation of men, for to dweU on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the bounds of their habitation." * It sets forth God, as exhibited by Jesus, universal Father, Sovereign, and Judge : whose law no lapse of time changes or wastes ; whose omni science no stratagem eludes ; against whose power rebellions vainly and fruitlessly break ; who cares for the obscure as well as the distinguished ; who has a plan concerning the history of mankind on the earth, and against the majesty of whose spiritual Kingdom the ' gates of Hell ' shaU not prevail. In all its essential radical teaching, as well as by its special precepts, it exalts before men that ' moral order of the Universe ' which Heffter declares to constitute finally the guaranty and the sanc tion of International Law. The very conception of such a Law could not have existed in the pre-Christian ages. It does not now exist outside of Chris tendom, or of the regions which Christendom affects ; any more than does the English oak on the arid Arabian plains, or the date-palm of the tropics in the climate of Labrador. The Euro pean countries and colonies, with the nations which have sprung from them, and which remain affiHated with them in blood and * Acts xvii. 26. TOWARD EACH OTHER. ±91 in religion, — these are the home of International Law ; and if the religion which has educated and ruled these had not appeared, it is possible, perhaps, that cathedrals might still have been builded, and chivalries have been organized, and rituals of worship have been elaborated ; but there is no sign on the pages of history that this modern, voluntary, and beneficent Law would have been developed, as we see it to have been in human society. It is a fact of obvious significance, in connection with this, that the first great and enduring text-book of this branch of juridical science, long used as such in courts and universities, and still referred to with constant respect, was written hj Gro tius : that ' Miracle of learning,' in his earlier years ; that illus trious sufferer for his convictions, in his maturity ; who, as his torian, philosopher, theologian, ambassador, and as an eager and lucid Christian apologist, has held the admiration of two cent uries and a half ; whose study of the Scriptures was wide and exact, and the purity of whose life corresponded with the lessons which thence he derived. More than two hundred and seventy years ago, a.d. 1609, his " Mare Liberum " was published ; six teen years after, during his exile in France, his greater work, " De Jure Belli ac Pacis." The public conscience of the world may almost be said to have been awakened, it was certainly im mensely instructed and stimulated, by this profound Christian jurist, who fitly leads the lengthening series of those who have given to the same surpassing and fascinating theme their accu rate learning, their vigor and perspicacity of thought, their clear perception of governing principles, and their careful judgment of ethical rules. He wrote in the midst of the eighty years' war which his countrymen waged for their independence ; and others who have followed him have written in the midst of plenty and peace, and not unfrequently in the cloistered air of great universities. But they and he have alike derived their substantive principles from the facts and the spiritual truths de clared in Christianity, and have more and more distinctly meas ured tlieir cumulative precepts against its governing Goldeu. Eule. And the Law which they have articulated and illustrated— it has survived many resistances, it has been elaborated by many discussions, it is now more widely dominant than ever ; even 192 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, non-Christian peoples feel its attraction, while acknowledging its pressure ; it bids fair to become the omnipresent law of the World. It is instructive to observe what and how much has already been done, under such leadership, to make the nations, as moral persons, responsive to him who stood among the humblest of his time, but who claimed for himself transcendent prerogatives, and whose impress upon history has certainly been unique. Certainly, no ideal attainment has yet been realized. The structure of universal and beneficent Law, for which the philan thropist fondly looks, has hardly risen, even now, above its foundations or lower stories. But it has accurately kept its level with the general Christian education of mankind ; and some advances have plainly been made toward those finest and highest relationships of nations in which centuries to come, we may surely hope, will be bright and benign. This has been ac complished, against whatever obstacles, precisely as the Christian doctrine of states has gained power in the world ; as they have been more distinctly recognized as constituted by a Divine pur pose, as having moral functions to fulfil, and as thus under a constant obligation to respect each other, while conserving their particular powers and rights ; and the peaceful victories of this new civilization can hardly be misconceived when interpreted as having prophecies in them. The whole aim of the Law is in harmony with the religion to which its genesis is due, and it but applies to organized states those essential principles of equity and humanity which the Master showed as God's rule for mankind. It seeks to make the mutual relations of nations kindly and cordial ; to diminish the risks, or facilitate the termination, of collisions between them ; to make the peculiar treasures of each accessible to all ; and to give to each the amplest opportunity for fulfilling the Divine and beneficent office intrusted to it. Of course it is not an extemporized structure, this Law of Nations, or one built in the air. It rests on foundations of historic jurisprudence, while expressing the larger and better judgment now prevailing in civilized states as their intellectual and moral life has been quickened and enriched, and applying the governing principles TOWARD EACH OTHER. 193 of justice in new relations, as society becomes extended and complex. But its constant aspiration is perhaps not too boldly stated by Savigny, when he speaks of it as ' by its very nature aiming at confounding national distinctions in a recognized com munity of different nations.' It begins with recognizing the right to exist, in every state, with the independence and sovereignty of each in its own sphere, and its equality of privilege with others : admitting here no dif ference between the larger and the smaller, the older or the more recent states. It recognizes the right of each to preserve its ex istence, to maintain its repute, to protect its citizens, and, as far as it may without injury to others, to confirm and increase aU its resources. It treats every state as under obligation to care for those whom its government affects, to conduct toward other na tions with justice and good faith, to assist the weaker when they are imperiUed, perhaps, in an extreme case, to interpose forcibly for maintaining the general interests of humanity, or for punish ing unrighteous aggression : as the English, French, and Eussian fleets combined to destroy the Turkish navy, in the battle of Navarino, a.d. 1827, and to secure the autonomy of Greece ; as five principal European powers acted together in the treaty of a.d. 1831, to separate Belgium from the Netherlands, and to give it independence ; as Eussia lately singly interposed on be half of the Bulgarians, cognate in religion, though not in race, and affiliated with it by many sympathies. How far this right of armed intervention on the part of strong nations, to secure the existence of one endangered, to erect a new one, or to inflict chastisement for wrongs — how far this may be carried is un doubtedly a question not yet fully answered. The ground is one on which precedents conflict, and where lines of definition have hardly hitherto been sharply drawn. Much here remains to be done by those who accept, and by those who formulate, In ternational Law ; of whose judicious and influential expositors it is a boast of this country that she has produced her f uU pro portion, and among them some of the most distinguished. But plainly the tendency is constant and strong — it is Hke the silent but powerful current of an ever-full river — toward holding each state, in the tribunal of nations, as subject to the 13 194 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, sovereign rule of justice and reciprocity, which the teaching of Christianity constantly emphasizes. Moral obligations are always recognized a3 resting upon it, which time does not impair, noi distance limit, nor strength surpass — which bind it in its rela tions to other states, and to the citizens of those states, and which cannot be set aside by even an adverse immemorial usage : as the diplomatic agents of our Government have been formally instructed that such usages are not to be recognized as of con trolling obligation. Each nation, of course, must accept for itself the rule over it of International Law ; there is no exterior authority to compel this ; but when accepted, it becomes a part of the law of the land, and binds alike the most absolute despotism, the most lib eral monarchy, the most freely-organized democratic republic. The power which is manifested in its rapid development, and its growing authority, is simply the changed spirit of society in the regions of Christendom ; and the steady extension of those prevalent sentiments of equity and humanity which Christianity has made familiar to men appears illustrated nowhere else, to the historical student, with finer precision, or on a level more exalted. The permanent and powerful states of the world are giving constantly clearer witness to the salutary power, regula tive and inspiring, which resides in this religion. A few illustrations will mark sufficiently the steadiness and strength of this beneficent advance. The sacredness of treaties — that is, of national contracts for the future — where these have been constitutionally made, by those having authority for the purpose, where they rest upon no false representations, and involve no so-called obligation to acts of essential injustice : this is now recognized, as a matter of course, among Christian states. Any nation denying it would be unanimously excluded by others from feUowship with them, while such denial should be maintained. Undoubtedly there are methods by which even this imperative obligation can be rpore or less successfully evaded ; and a considerable part of the history of diplomacy is occupied and disgraced by the records of the efforts of skillful men thus to limit or escape the binding force of an assumed obligation. But as hypocrisy was well de- TOWARD EACH OTHER. 195 scribed, in tlie terse maxim of Eochefoucauld,* as ' an homage which vice pays to virtue,' so these endeavors, with all their inge nuity, and their occasional success, only emphasize the fact that each Christian state now regards a treaty as sacredly controlling until it is terminated in accordance with its provisions. So in the interpretation of treaties, the rules formulated by Grotius, and afterward passing into general acceptance, are moral and liberal : applying to the terms employed established customs of language ; interpreting strictly whatever clauses im pose hard conditions ; interpreting with a large liberality what ever favors justice and humanity; where treaties have been made with different parties, the later of which conflict with the earlier, giving the right of precedence to the earlier, in moral obligation, as in the order of time. No treaty is maintainable, in the forum of nations, which binds the parties to acts of in justice or bad faith. If they shelter themselves, in accomplishing such acts, behind the alleged obligations of their contract, their crime but becomes the more detestable, and the moral indig nation of civilized states is hotter against them. Contrast this, then, with the preceding condition of things, not among barbarians, but among the civilized states of an tiquity, where the occasional truces were brief, where hostages were taken, on either side, to secure the fulfilment of the agree ment, and where the agreement almost invariably only held until it was convenient for one party to break it : contrast the state of things which now is, among nations vastly larger, stronger, and more self-conscious, with that which obtained in mediaeval Europe, where again hostages were exchanged,! where the oath in support of a treaty was taken upon sacred relics, or in the name of the Holy Trinity, in the hope of deepening thereby the fear of breaking it, as well as the sense of its binding obligation, and where power and opportunity were still com monly conceived to give license to escape from even such rein forced obligations — and the difference is immense. It has been * "Maxi mes Morales": ccxviu. ; Paris ed., 1868. t This continued as late as the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, a.d. 1748. Pres. Woolsev. "Introd. to Int. Law," New York ed., 1879 : p. 177. 196 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, wrought in part, no doubt, by the impulse of a wiser political sagacity ; but it rests, fundamentally, on the quicker and more commanding sense of a moral obligation for faithfulness and veracity, abiding on states as well as on persons : and that has come from the broadening range, and the more distinct and con trolling impression, of the principles and spirit of the Christian religion. Because the God whom Jesus declared to mankind is recognized now as the God of all men, and as a God who judges peoples at least ' in the earth,' because the laws of public and pri vate morality are seen to be the same, immortal and universal in Divine obligation, nations more surely keep their promises, and consult equity in their dealings. The business of an ambassador, representing his state at a foreign court, was formerly defined as that of lying for his coun try. It has often been said of diplomatists that they fulfilled the sarcastic description given of men by Voltaire's capon, in his famous dialogue, ' using language to conceal their thoughts '; and to many of them might certainly have been applied, in more than one sense, the Spanish proverb, " The mouth that says Yes says No." An intentionally false statement now made by any accredited envoy of a Christian state would discredit him at home even more than abroad, and would put a stigma on the name of his nation which would burn to the bone, if he were not disgraced. Indeed, the very residence of ambassadors at foreign courts, which is itself of recent origin, with the inviola bility which is recognized as of right belonging to them, shows the changed relations of nations to each other: not only the freer intercourse between them, which is in large part the result of the commerce to which Christianity has given expansion, but their growing disposition to fulfil justice, to exercise courtesy, to promote reciprocities of feeling as of trade, and to regard each other, while equally sovereign in their own spheres, as iu essential permanent fellowship, and equaUy amenable to the par amount claims of moral obligation. It is another natural result of the new influence which has breathed upon men— since the severing force of local religions passed away, which had given the consecration of ancestral wor ships to the sharp separations between different peoples, and TOWARD EACH OTHER. 197 since one religion, with celestial characteristics, overlooking all distinctions of race, has been commonly accepted as given of God for the guidance of mankind — that the former restrictions on the entrance, transit, or residence of foreigners in modern states have almost wholly disappeared. They may now be naturalized, after a little, on easy conditions, in nearly every principal state, unless they prefer to continue to dwell there as domicUiated strangers. Yet we need not go back to the days before the shepherds of Bethlehem thought they saw the midnight light, or Nazareth heard the voice of the Teacher, to find strangers regarded outside of Palestine as natural enemies, liable to be treated, wherever found, with capricious, often with a destroying violence. The doctrine of Aristotle, that Greeks might make war on peoples who were unwilling to be enslaved as readily as hunters chased wild beasts, being under no higher obligation to them — this doctrine, as interpreted by the kindred Eoman feel ing that the stranger was naturally an enemy, held equal place where Hellenic philosophy was not known, but where the Eo man spirit survived. For many centuries, oppressive usages toward strangers were as common and severe in Western Europe as they ever had been in the South or East. The parable of the Good Samaritan was long in making its just impression upon the hearts and minds of men. It has uot wholly done it yet. But though, at the time when it was spoken, it was almost as great a miracle, of wisdom and grace, as the opening of the eyes of the bUnd was of power, by degrees the subtile transforming energy which had it for one of its instruments has worked upon nations, as well as on persons, to produce the results in which we rejoice. Christianity has made the stranger a friend, and opened the gates of the nations' hospitalities. Very marked is this in the treatment of exiles : who have no country, and for any injury done to whom it is known before hand that the nation which has deprived them of inherited rights will make no remonstrance, and will seek no redress. In the hberal hospitality now proffered to such, and the careful protec tion extended by the laws over their persons, properties, and new homes, we see illustrated the beneficence inculcated by the Master of Christianity toward those who are only connected with 198 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, us by the common human relationship to God. At the same time, the provisions, now so general, for the extradition of crim inals escaped, and their surrender to the country whose laws they have violated, shows as well, from the opposite side, the ever-extending recognition among states of the primacy of jus tice over local self-assertion, and of the obligation which rests upon each to maintain the laws which that justice ordains. The provision which commonly appears in such treaties, that no per son shall be surrendered on account of purely political offences, shows how wholly subordinate, in the widening moral con sciousness of the World, are political rules, rulers, and institu tions, when matched against social and moral interests, or when set side by side with the unseen equities which make forgery, outrage, murder punishable, in all tribunals. Many other instances might be presented, illustrating the progress of the governing moral sentiment of mankind, under the influence of Christianity, and the fresh impression which this al ways is making on the rules which obtain between separated na tions. Some of them are more signal than those which I have cited : the combination of states to crush piracy, for example, and its actual extinction on the ocean in our own time ; the com bination of such states to suppress the slave-trade, and the vast success which has attended their continued and costly efforts ; the positive refusal of the Law of Nations to legitimize slavery — whose basis and protection are remitted wholly to local law; the consequent refusal of Christian states to give up the bond man escaped from his bondage, and the general application of the sharp French rule, which in effect is also the English, that ' the air makes free,' and that a cargo of slaves stranded on the shore is liberated by touching it ; the ever advancing opening of streams to peaceful commerce, so that now, according to a recent authority, ' there is scarcely a river, in the Christian portions of the world, the dwellers on whose upper waters have not the right of free communication, by God's channels, with the rest of man kinds—so that even the principal straits of the world, long jealously guarded by the nations whose control of them seemed * Pres. Woolsey : " Introd. to Int. Law ": New York ed., 1879 : pp. 85-6. TOWARD EACH OTHER. 199 vital to their security, are now opened to peaceful navigation : these, with other like examples, show the progress of the human ity and the liberal justice which took their amazing impulse in the world, and have taken since their constant support, from the religion taught by Jesus. I understand perfectly that commerce has wrought in the same direction, under the new temper impressed on it ; and that many arts, and physical mechanisms, unknown to antiquity, have fur nished the wheels on which the more generous and ethical civili zation of our time has been carried toward its throne, as Eoman generals were borne in chariots along shouting streets toward the gates of the Capitol. But the vital force which commerce and invention have had to serve, from which they have drawn their own silent yet constant incentive — it came at the outset from the religion taught in Judea : among a people as narrow in their sympathies, and as rude in their arts, as the world then saw ; who had sent out no colonies, who sought no alliances which were not for their immediate interest, and transient at that, and who had, perhaps, in the time of the Master, no single sail or keel of their own on any sea in all the world outside of Palestine. If any say, therefore, c You are simply recounting the succes sive steps of our advancing civilization,' I answer, Yes ! but/' whence does this 'civilization' come? Not from letters, and beautiful arts ; else, why was it wanting in the Hellenic states, to which the world turns at this hour for their unsurpassed models ? Not from accumulating wealth, and power ; else, why was Eome, mistress of the world and centre of its riches, so des titute of the moral culture which now makes Christendom a great confederacy of social commonwealths? Not from com merce ; or Carthage and Alexandria should have anticipated New York and London in their aspiration for the peace, pros perity, and progress of mankind. It has not come from demo cratic institutions ; for they coexisted with piracies on the seas, and with fiercest feuds and slaveries on the land ; and the modi fications which they since have received have been the effect of a power working on them from outside themselves. It certainly has not come from improved mechanisms ; for looms and steam- engines, while they may be the ministers, are never the authors 200 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, of spiritual lessons, and the fact that men travel at forty miles an hour, or send messages by lightning, would only make colli- f sions between them more frequent and destroying if some un- i seen energy had not wrought on their minds to change, in a meas-/ ure at least, the temper out of which such collisions in other days incessantly sprang. There is no such radical force, peculiar and eminent in the modern world as it was not in the ancient, other than Christi anity. This makes the difference, when we trace that difference to its source, between states of our time and those of the day of Themistocles, or of Trajan. And if this were now universaUy prevalent, over persons and peoples, the evils which remain, and whose gloom seems sometimes portentous to us, would disappear, as clouds are scattered from the sky, or are fused into colors of amethyst and opal, before the conquering radiance of the sun. Lord Bacon was certainly right in affirming that " there never has been in any age any philosophy, sect, religion, law, or other dis cipline, which did so highly exalt the good which is communica tive, and depress the good which is private and particular, as the, holy Christian Faith." * But passing these and other particulars, there is still a branch of the subject to be noticed, of vast importance, and set against a lurid background : the amelioration introduced under Christi anity in the customary laws and usages of War. Whether war, under any circumstances, can be brought into interior harmony with the spirit and the teachings of the Chris tian religion, is a question, as I need not remind you, which has been largely and long discussed, and on which earnest and elo quent writers have taken with emphasis the negative side. By none, perhaps, has it been more persuasively treated than by that eminent Christian philanthropist the centennial anniversary of whose birth was recently observed both here and in Europe, and of whom it may be said, as he said of another distinguished teacher, that " so imbued was he with the spirit of Peace, that it spread itself around him, like the fragrance of sweet flowers." f * De Augmentis : VII. : 1. t Dr. Channing, on Noah Worcester : Works : Vol. 5 : p. 115. TOWARD EACH OTHER. 201 Into this question it is not my province now to enter. It is enough to say, what is obvious to all, that the books in which Christianity is presented contain no precept against war which is mandatory in terms, and in range universal ; that the eases of the centurions at Capernaum and Cesarea, both of whom are mentioned with special approbation, would have seemingly given occasion for such, if such had lain in the intent of the Master, or of his minister ; that the frequent references made by the apostles to the armor, weapons, and discipline of soldiers, are unaccom panied by any denunciation of the military service in its own nature ; that the saying of the Lord to Pilate, ' if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight,' may imply that the forcible defence of secular rights was not regarded by him as otherwise than appropriate, as it certainly was usual ; and that most of the earlier, with many of the later expositors of Christianity, agree with Augustine in the maxim that ' to fight \ is not necessarily a sin, though the object of war should always j be the recovery of peace ': while it is obviously difficult to see / how one is at liberty to defend his own household, or his own Hfe, from a violence which assails it, how any state can properly punish a flagrant offender against its laws, if such a state may not equally protect, by war if necessary, its life and honor against unjust assault. It would seem that chaos must come in society, that the civilized must be always at the mercy of the barbarous, that the fiercest and most unsparing robber must in the end be master of the world, if this right were denied. But while this is true— and while it is true that war some times gives occasion, and even incitement, to the nobler senti ments of courage, patience, fidelity to conviction, patriotic de votion, and that out of it has come, as among the Dutch or the English fighting against Spain, a more superb and shining tem per as well as an augumented power — it is true also, with equal , certainty, that Christianity seeks, and naturally contributes, to \ limit sharply the number of wars, confining them to those which \ have the amplest justifying grounds; and that by its teaching, and by the whole strain of its influence in the world, it tends to make war in the end unnecessary, putting all peoples which faith fully receive it into relations of cordial and helpful mutual charity. 202 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, It alone, with a governing beneficence, can put a period to wars on the earth. And while it must sadly be admitted that its influence as yet in this direction has not been as general or as effective as might have been hoped, it is certain that if ever it comes to uni versal practical sovereignty, war will have passed, with piracy and with slavery, into the class of things abolished. Offensive wars will then be impossible, while wars of defence will no more be needful. The real and final " Truce of God " will then have come ; and the sentence against war contained in the song of the herald-angels will at last be fulfilled. But while Christianity has not as yet abolished war, it has done much, which we gratefully may recognize, to mitigate its usages, and to make what are commonly called its ' laws ' less savagely severe. This is certain ; and the distinct influence of the religion can be accurately traced on the rules which obtain in this department among separated states. The personal action and temper of men are first affected, and then, as Sir James Mack intosh said, " as the mitigated practice has received the sanction of time, it is raised from the rank of mere usage, and becomes a part of the Law of Nations." * Thus the law of reprisals, if not wholly abrogated, is yet soft ened and restrained in modern times, and the principle tends to be established that ' rights ought not to be violated by one na tion because they have been by another '; f especially, that all injury done to private subjects of a belligerent power by a nation at war with that should be reduced to the narrowest Umits. The line is drawn, ever more distinctly, between combatants and non-combatants ; and the theory that each subject of one hostile power is at war with every subject of the other, drifts continu ally out of sight. The effect is to confine the inevitable injuries of war, as far as possible, to persons and properties within the range of organized warfare ; and the burning of unoffending villages, the slaughter of peasants, the sweeping off of spoils from homes and churches, are now regarded as belonging to a sav- * Misc. Works : London ed., 1846, Vol. I.: p. 360. t Pres. Woolsey : " Introduction to Int. Law "; New York ed., 1879 : p. 188. TOWARD EACH OTHER. 203 agery which the whole spirit of modern national culture hates and rebukes. Even the common coast-wise fishing was allowed by our Government to go on undisturbed in our war with Mex ico ; and similar instructions were given by their government to the French naval officers in the war with Eussia, a.d. 1854. The exchange of fish, provisions, and the common utensils, be tween the Eussian and Norwegian coasts, was then forbidden to be interrupted in the White Sea. In the same line of advance, the practice of privateering falls more and more into discredit under the Christianized law of na tions, and it is not far, we may reasonably hope, from being for bidden by all civilized states. The argument in defence of it has naturally been that it assures the power to a smaller state, possessing a large commercial marine, to contend with a larger, equipped with a more effective fleet. But so many are the evils connected with it, so stimulating is it to cruelty and rapacity, so vast and incessant are its risks of abuse, that in countries morally advanced energetic influences have long been at work to secure its abolition. The powers which concluded the Treaty of Paris, a.d. 1856, declared it abolished. Our government declined to accede to that proposal, on the ground that with it ought to be connected another provision by which private property of all subjects or citizens of a belligerent power should be exempted from seizure, even by public armed vessels of the enemy, unless the same were contraband of war. It was affirmed, in other words, by our government, as the just and humane policy, and the policy was approved by many nations, not only to abolish the evil of privateering, but to secure entire immunity to merchant- vessels engaged in lawful pacific trade. In a treaty of the United States with Italy, a.d. 1871, a provision to this effect was in corporated. In general it may be said that peace is now recognized among Christian states as their normal condition, war as the exceptional and sad interruption ; that the redress or prevention of injuries is the only motive allowed to justify the appeal of battle, instead of conquest or of plunder ; that war is required to be waged only between governments, not against the passive inhabitants of the countries involved ; that the smallest amount of inflicted injury, 204 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, consistent with effective prosecution of the war, is a growing de mand; and that the law of retaliation, if not wholly repudia ted, is in practice reduced to its lowest terms. The doctrine of Burke is now the real doctrine of Christian states : that ' wars are not massacres or confusions, but the highest trials of right '; that ' the blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity ; the rest is crime.' * A sense of accountableness to history and to God more and more attends the proclamation of wars. The employment of barbarian allies, formerly unquestioned, is now expressly and generally discountenanced. The poisoning of springs, the employment of assassins, the use even of weapons whose chief effect is the infliction of pain, are explicitly con demned. The obligation to adhere to the common civilized cus toms of war in a contest with savages is distinctly accepted ; the plunder of a town after assault is stigmatized as criminal by high military authority ; while, as I have said, the tendency to humane treatment of prisoners grows always more commanding. The ladies of highest position in England who went out to the hospitals at Scutari, under the heroic lead of Miss Nightin gale, and many of whom sacrificed Hfe in the distant and deadly philanthropical service, designed their mission for the special re lief of British soldiers ; but the example was so lofty and inspir ing that like all such examples it has sent its force forward, over other lands, into other years. The Sanitary and the Christian Commissions, in our civil war, applied their ministries of aid and relief to the sick and wounded on either side. The Eules of War prepared by Dr. Lieber, at the request of our govern ment, a.d. 1863, simply affirmed and clothed with authority what the Christian judgment of the country demanded, even amid the strain and agony of that vast struggle for national unity. In their spirit of wise practical humanity they may al most be said to have marked an era in the history of war, espec ially of civil war — formerly the most bitter and bloody of all. * First Letter on a Regicide Peace : Works ; Boston ed., 1839 ; Vol. IV.: p. 388. TOWARD EACH OTHER. 205 The Convention at Geneva, in August a.d. 1864, in which the plenipotentiaries of twelve European states took part, was as sembled to make more careful provision for the treatment of soldiers wounded in battle, and for the neutrality of sanitary supplies, surgeons, nurses, and ambulances. The subsequent Convention, at the same city, a.d. 1868, besides amending the previous articles, extended similar provisions to wounded or shipwrecked marines. The laws of war were not changed, but full security was sought to be given to those engaged, under its conditions, in the work of attending on the wounded and sick. Thirty-one governments, on both hemispheres, have now adopted the articles of the treaty — our own, to its shame, not being among them ; and the red-cross of those engaged in the benef icent service has since been seen, far to the front, on many hard- fought and bloody fields. At another Convention, held in the same interest of humanity, at St. Petersburg, a.d. 1868, repre sentatives of even Turkey and Persia appeared, among the dele gates from seventeen states ; and at that held in Brussels, a.d. 1874, at the invitation of the Emperor of Eussia, all European states of importance were represented, and an attempt at least was made, though certainly with no very signal success, to lay down ' rules practically humane and progressive ' for the con duct of all international wars. Of course war has not ceased to be attended with terrible se verities. What Burke said of the temper of insurrection is still more true of the temper of war : " the Httle catechism of the rights of man is soon learned, and the inferences are in the pas sions."* The ancient boast of the Huns has not yet ceased to be heard, that 'where viUages and cities stood, horses may run.'f But remembering the former times — the denial of quarter, the merciless killing of the captured, the enslaving of prisoners, the fearfully savage guerilla strifes, the unrebuked sack of cities where every vUest passion of man had its free ferocious exer cise—remembering the sack and conflagration of Seleucia, under the generals of Marcus Aurelius the iUustrious Stoic, with the ?"Thoughts on French Affairs": Works: Boston ed., 1839, Vol. IV.: p. 28. t Gibbon : Boston ed., 1854, Vol. 4 : p. 202. 206 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS, slaughter of three hundred thousand inhabitants — remembering Magdeburg or Haarlem, or in our century Badajos and St. Se- bastian — it may surely be said that the moral sense of the world has advanced, as concerning even the usages of war. The great recent armed struggles in Europe have aimed to secure such a balance of power as would preclude their repetition ; and the best results for liberty and progress, as well as far national honor and security, are now sought to be snatched from the bloody hand of public strife : as emancipation of the slaves came from our prolonged civil war ; as the autonomy of new Christian states, in the fairest portions of eastern Europe, was the fruit ful result of the recent war between Eussia and Turkey. The time may not be as distant as it has seemed when courts of Ar bitration shall be established — as proposed by Henry Fourth, by St. Pierre, by Leibnitz, Kant, Bentham, and others — to which questions between nations shall be submitted, and by which wars shall be precluded. This is one of the ' dreams of good men,' many of which have already been realized in the progress of this illustrious branch of juridical science. This one waits longer to be accomplished. But the drift of civilization is steadily toward it, so far as that is affected by Christianity ; and even Japan, in a.d. 1875, under the light which has freshly dawned on those ' Islands of the morning,' submitted a question between itself and Peru to be determined by arbitration. The definition of the maxims, the extension of the sway, of this most voluntary, spiritual, and general of human laws can only be secured by the prevalence of the sentiments of equity and humanity, the impression of the sacredness of inter-state duties, and the common sense of obligation to God, all of which Chris tianity inculcates. So far as it has gone, it has simply iUustrated, while it also has helped, that moral civilization which is rooted in what has been scornfully called 'the sweet Galilee vision.' Its future must depend on the general progress of the peoples of the earth in that peculiar moral development and spiritual culture to which the first cosmical impulse was given by Jesus. A distinguished English commentator upon it, Mr. Ward, has tem perately said that Christianity ' has gone furthest of all causes to introduce notions of humanity and true justice into the max- TOWARD EACH OTHER. 207 ims of the world ' : while, looking at what has been achieved, it certainly is not vain to expect that such public moral and Christian progress is still to go on, till Peace shall be every where, and Milton's majestic but not fanciful vision of the Christian commonwealth shall be fulfiUed in the experience of states. If that time comes, it will come only when, in his im perial phrase, 'the forces of united excellence shall meet in one globe of brightness and efficacy,' and wisdom shall at last ' be girt itself with majesty.' When such states are formed and compacted, as incorporeal complex persons, under the governing Christian law of justice and of charity, then shall be accomplished what the Eoman Empire grossly prefigured, when, in the amazing development of its force — as under some brooding Providence above — it flung forth its avenues toward the ends of the earth, and sought to bind aU peoples together under the power which ruled from the Tiber: what Charlemagne perhaps dimly contemplated, in the splendid rashness of his colossal and impracticable plan, when he sought to reestablish the Western Empire with more august sanctions and in a richer religious life, over the Europe which had replaced the old : what Napoleon the First sketched in a sort of lurid caricature on the canvas of history, when he rushed abroad, with what appeared irresistible legions, for the conquest of the Continent, and the combination of its several kingdoms under the sovereign leadership of France. A plan surpassing aU of these, as the bending sky surpasses the clouds which drift across it — even that will have been realized, when the different nations, each on its untroubled territory, each with its idioms of custom, law, as well as language, and each with its peculiar life, shall be united in the bonds of a peace which knows no suspi cion and admits no suspension, because it results from the vol untary subjection of each and all to a Law universal: whose authority is conceded because a Divine majesty and charm are recognized in it. Our eyes may not see it ; they probably will not. But the coming centuries, which will look back upon ours as mechanical and rude, shall rejoice in its advent. And whenever it comes, it will be surely attested by history, as already it is predicted, that 208 A NEW CONCEPTION OF DUTIES OF NATIONS. not to statesman, philosopher, scholar, has it chiefly been due ; not to the imperial Stoic, declaring in lofty but frigid phrase that ' the nature of man is rational and social, and that so far as Antoninus is a man, the world is his city '; not to inventor, har nessing the lightnings, channeling the hills, overruling the resist ance of wind and wave ; not to merchant, or bold explorer, mak ing men familiar with other climes ; and not to jurist, formu lating codes for conservation of interests, and seeking to apply • the principles of justice, as reason discovers them, to the infinite variety of human concerns. All these, and others, will have done their work and borne their part for the great consummation. But another than they wUl have made one enHghtening and reconciling religion universal in the world ; another than they will have shown the rule and the judgments of Him in serving whom states find their glory ; another than they will have built up the ultimate Christian opinion, omnipresent with mankind, by which treaties will be tested, policies measured, strifes con demned ; another than they will have given universal value and effect to every sentiment of equity and of charity of which the rare illuminated souls, under his inspiration, will have felt the authority. It will be he who said of old, amid the fierce and fighting confusions of which the world in his time was full, in words as simple as those of a child, but kingUer than Augustus ever had spoken, "All things, whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them ": and who said later, in front of the cross whose shadow already was falling upon him, " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me " ! He expected the race to receive his religion. He died that it might. And the renewed earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, will bear on all the illustrious pages of its resplendent final his tory, the impress of his thought— who had studied in no Bab- binic school, who had heard no word from Platonist or from Stoic, ij who wrote no sentence unless in the sand, who wore no crown save one of thorns, but who spoke of himself as the Judge of all nations; who first on earth announced the idea of a universal spiritual Kingdom, wide as the race and continuing forever ; and of whom even the officers said, with their insolence rebuked and their spirit subdued, "Never Man spake like this Man" ! LECTUEE VII. THE EFFECT OP CHEISTIANITY ON THE MENTAL CULTUEE OP MANKIND. LECTUEE VII In considering the effect produced by Christianity on the in tellectual power and culture of mankind, we are faced by three indisputable facts which seem perhaps to_£ontradict the reality, or certainly the principal and permanent importance, of any such effect. The (firsts, that in some respects the most signal examples of mental faculty and intellectual attainment of which history keeps the record preceded the preaching of Christianity in the earth, and occurred among "those Hellenic peoples whose polytheism was most various and fantastic. The eecond/'is, that there have been, by admission of all, long intervals of time in which Christianity, or what was held to represent it in the world, has had particular prominence and control, but during which the aspiring intellectual spirit has been sharply restrained from its legitimate plans and efforts ; has been, indeed, so suspected and disesteemed, in the ecclesiastical conception of its worth, that the impulse to free and various action was not so much shackled as nearly fatally stifled. The third fact is, that many men, within Christendom, of noble powers and remarkable attainments, of learning like Gibbon's, of a speculative genius like that of Spinoza, of a culture like Goethe's, have seemed to others, per haps to themselves, in no degree indebted to the Christian Faith for the mental energy born, quickened, and cultivated in them. Indeed, such men have often been speciaUy prompt and positive in denying the tendency of the religion, as they understood it, to expand or inspire the high faculties of man. They have looked upon it as naturally discrediting the finer tastes and the nobler forces which give to the soul its' delicacy and dignity ; and have repeated the old accusation, old as Celsus, probably older, that Christianity attributes the errors of the world to its (-11) 212 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY cultivated wisdom, and whatever is good in thought and charac ter to a silly simphcity. These facts must be recognized; and certainly at first they appear formidable, as against the idea that Christianity has done, or is fitted to do, anything distinguished, or of secular import ance, in the direction in which we now follow it. Yet some things should be said, on each of these facts, which may in a measure limit the force with which they controvert such an idea. In regard, for example, to the iUustrious minds appearing in Christendom, but admitting no personal indebtedness to the an- /i imating religion by which that is pervaded, it is fairly to be / said that many others, at least as eminent in their various depart- i ments, have gladly and reverently ascribed to this religion the I primal light and invigorating force by which their splendid powers were cherished ; that they have even found an argument for it in its fitness and tendency to affect each noblest force of the mind with beneficent effect ; and that those who have de nied this may have been unaware how much they owed to the atmosphere of society, which was richly stimulating or nobly^ exalting because it had for centuries been vitalized by the sub tile power of this religion. The California pine; or the 'tropical \ palm, the graceful elm of the New England meadows, or the I lignum-vitse of the South, may seem independent, each in its/ own height and strength, of tbe influences around it. But take away the shining and the shower of which it daily illustrates the blessing, transport it to more stubborn soils and bleaker airs, and the elegant grace or the stately strength is dwarfed and enfeebled ; the tough fibre, the stimulating juices, or the flavorous nut, are no more found. In like manner, it is not easy to analyze the influences, invisible, elusive, but omnipresent and of spiritual efficacy, which pervade society as Christianly organized, and which act more or less on every soul born to the inheritance of its diffused and undefined energy. Even the minds which have set themselves deliberately or fought fiercely against Christianity have sometimes shown, therefore, with unconscious emphasis, how much they owed to that religion which they repelled. In deed it seems not extravagant to say that the very abundance of the ingenious and eloquent attacks made on Christianity in the ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 213 lands over which its influence extends is itself an indication of its exuberant stimulating force. Intensity of light is measured by the depth of shadows; and the variety and energy of 'free- thinking ' have a natural relation to the invigorating intellectual force of the religion which that assails. In regard to the fact that Christianity, or what was accepted as such, has at times been unfriendly to genial and large intel lectual progress/it must be observed that it is by no means to be taken for granted that it was Christianity Jin its essential original life, and not some human substitute for it, which loaded with weights or fettered with chains the excursive and daring intel lectual spirit. It may have been a quite different system, which bad taken the name without inheriting the sweetness or the majesty of the religion; which had really forgotten precept and parable, with all lofty and various instruction, in its zeal for a hierarchy, or for dogmatic human Confessions ; which was sensi tive, therefore, because uncertain of interior soundness, its jealousy of the inquisitive mind increasing with its consciousness of exposure to attack. History will attest, I think, if carefully] questioned, that it has not been the religion of the New Testa-' ment, freely distributed among reading peoples, which ha^' menaced or cursed intellectual freedom ; that it has been some thing of human origin, which feared the sharp edge of analysis, or the slower erosion of a searching reflection, and which so has sought to silence discussion, and to shelter itself from the reach of debate, behind arbitrary bulwarks. {'And surely no system should be held accountable for what another may have done, masquerading in its name. ' Finally it must be remembered that genius is always the gift of God, which comes as it is sent, and is not humanly commanded. It is possible that the diamond may sometime or other become an article of human manufacture ; though chemists and lapidaries are by no means expectant of that. But the jewel of genius, which no diamonds can buy, is not explained in its production by any sociology, and no facts of environment serve either to ensure or to forbid its appearance. The cottage is its birth place, oftener than the palace. It is found by travellers among barbarous tribes. The history of peoples widely differing from 214 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY each other is at points illustrated by it. The times which had seemed least likely to develop it, have sometimes been most prolific in it. It comes only from those supreme and mystical processes in which the Almighty energy works ; and the sudden revelation of it may not unnaturally have anticipated Christen dom, or may now lie wholly outside its lines. If therefore we look, as certainly we do, to Homer for the great example of native supremacy in epic song, to _Eschylus as the father of tragedy, to Plato and the Stagirite as the masters of philosophi cal speculation and method, to the eminent orators and historians of Greece as unsurpassed in all the elements which constitute power and which confer intellectual renown — if we marvel be fore the men whose writings, like those of the three great tra gedians, were preserved by law in the archives of the state — there is nothing in this to cast a shade on Christianity. • It is still apparent that the religion of these men contributed little to their development : that skies and seas, the liberties and the commerce of Greece, its games and contests and historic as sociations, are enough to explain, if not the genesis of phenom enal genius, the swift and splendid ripening of its powers, in that active, aspiring, and in many respects most fortunate people. It is also to be observed that Ihe period of various and splendid intellectual activity in Greece was relatively brief,' covering a time, from the archonship of Solon to the battle of Chseroneia, about as long as that embraced in the rapid records of either of several American cities. That inspiring activity had passed into history, and had ceased to be a present force in society, centuries before Christianity was heard of. This want of prolonged and continuing force, and of reproductive power, in the Attic de velopment, may be variously explained ; but it cannot properly fail to be recognized in connection with the unsurpassed gifts and gains which confessedly belong to the great age of Athenian letters. If now we turn, released for the time from these primary ob jections, to consider Christianity in its relation to a powerful, wide, and salutary effect on the mind of mankind, it is not, I think, extravagant to say that it appears constitutionally adapted, j in its structure, spirit, and even in the instruments by which its j ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 215 teaching is conveyed to the world, to produce precisely such an effect ; while the fact that it has accomplished such, to an extent unequalled by other religions, appears as certain as that summer time is warmer than winter, or that the continent on which we stand is not buUt and braced of fluctuating waters. It has edu cated peoples, and not merely individuals. It has at the same time stimulated and nourished the higher minds, into which it had entered with their acceptance. Its effect in this specific direction has been not transient but enduring; and where its power has been most largely and vitally exerted it has laid most deeply the essential foundations for intellectual progress, and provided most amply its instruments and incentives. These are facts which seem to me evident in the structure of Christianity, and in its recorded career in the world ; and if we are not mis taken about them, the inference certainly cannot be a rash one that a system adapted to such rich effects, on the cosmical scale, and for centuries of time, must at least have the sympathy of the mind of God ; that so far, certainly, it is worthy to have had — whether in fact it did have or not — its lofty origin in His wis dom for the world. A tendency to such effects is inherent in Christianity : this is the point first to be considered. That its effect on its earliest disciples was intellectually re markable, as well as immense in the moral transformation wliich was accomplished, no one, I think, who admits the even partial correctness of the primitive accounts of them and of their labors, will hesitate to concede. If Peter wrote either of the epistles attributed to him — and that he wrote the first, nearly all will agree — he certainly had not been dwarfed in mind by the Faith which he confessed and taught. On the other hand, a more notable change can hardly be imagined, in the sphere of simply intellectual development, than that which becomes apparent in him between the time when first he meets us, the rude and un taught fisherman of Galilee, and the time when he wrote, perhaps thirty years after, that memorable letter. So he would surely be a bold man, unless a blind one, who should question that the native faculty of Paul— one of the most engaging and forcible of all the reasoners who have made language the instrument of 216 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY logic, and have moulded civilizations by their intrepid and hardy discussions — had been spurred and ennobled, instead of being any way enfeebled or hindered, by the energetic force of Chris tianity upon him ; that he had gained more from the searching reflection which it required, on themes which allure yet tran scend man's thought, than all the schools of the rabbis could have given, or the broader schools for which Tarsus was famous. Whether John the apostle wrote or not the gospel which adds a beautiful renown even to his preeminent name — though we should adopt the extreme opinion of the latest Dutch writers in the interest of doubt, and say that 'the name of the author re mains unknown,' only he could not have been the man whom they are pleased to designate as ' the narrow and violent apostle ' John* — the fact remains that somebody wrote it : the supremest work of human genius, if it were not produced by Divine inspira tion. Whoever attributes this to John must see how the Faith which he loved and declared had enriched and illumined his mental nature. Whoever attributes it to any one else — to some one writing on behalf of an opinion, in a century from which any creative literary energy seemed wholly to have fled — must stand amazed, if he be thoughtful, before the impenetrating intellectual influence of that religion which enabled an unknown Eoman, Greek, or Jew, to pen a book so lofty and harmonious, so pictur esque and profound, so immense in reach, so spiritual in suggestion, so rich in inspiration for other minds, before which aU poetry or philosophy of the time becomes utterly petty and commonplace. The writings of the earliest witnesses to Christianity certainly attest the force which it had generously delivered on their re ceptive and answering minds. But this may have been, we shall doubtless be told, the effect of a sudden enthusiasm in them: a transient impulse of the novelty of their Faith, which could not be prolonged into after- generations, and which cannot be expected to reappear. So the question comes back : Is there anything in the constitution of Christianity which involves such an influence, and which presents *Oort and Hooykaas : "Bible for Learners": Boston ed., 1879; pp. 691, 668. ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 217 an essential promise that that influence will be permanent, and wide in its reach ? And on this question some facts may cast light. It is to be observed, for example, at the outset, that Christi anity is peculiarly a Book-religion, a lettered Faith. It has documents, annals, prophetical admonitions, recorded discourses, lofty hymns, careful biographies, extended letters, which are the very means of transmitting it to us, and all which are carefully included in the volume which is recognized as its permanent text-book. It thus addresses directly, forcibly, and with mani fold energy, the mental faculty in its disciples. Of course, it is not the only religion known in the world which presents itself in a Book. The Hindus, Egyptians', Per sians, have their sacred-books ; Mohammedanism makes its boast of the Koran; and the religions of Confucius and Lao-tse in China rest upon ancient venerated writings. But in most of these cases it is to be observed that the original documents are com paratively brief ; and that, in the judgment of those who have studied them most minutely and largely, with sincerest desire to discover whatever is valuable in them, they furnish no basis, contribute no impulse, to a diversified and fruitful general litera ture. The hymns of the Eig-Veda, which are recognized as con stituting ' the real Bible of the ancient Vedic faith,' are only a thousand and twenty-eight, containing in all a Httle more than ten thousand verses. It is the subsequent commentary on these hymns which spreads out into large proportions; though, for the fullest understanding of the system, the three minor Vedas are also to be studied, with perhaps the Brahmanas, or later scholastic treatises. The text, with the commentaries, of the Thibetan canon, are almost immeasurable, but the original Buddhist teaching is contained in the narrowest compass ; while the writings of Confucius are of no large extent, and the princi pal work of Lao-tse, which represents the true Scripture of his followers, is said to consist of only five thousand words, and to fill not more than thirty pages.* Almost everywhere, in these ethnic sacred books, the nucleus was a small one. The subsequent *Max Mailer: "Science of Religion": New York ed., 1872: p. 36. 218 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY additions by disciples constitute the mass of the so-called sacred literatures ; and these additions— though they might be expected to answer somewhat to the expositions, homilies, canons, histories, commentaries, sermons, allegories, poems, theological treatises, missionary chronicles, religious biographies, of the Christian Church— are in fact only hard gradual incrustations upon the original teachings of the masters, not the fruit of inspired activi ties and personal researches in related departments of inquiry and thought. The Avesta, attributed to Zoroaster, was probably more ex tensive. It is said to have contained twenty-one books, of 815 chapters, until revised under Shapur II., and the parts remain ing comprised in 348 chapters. The language of the books had then long ceased to be spoken." The only remains of them are preserved in fragments still existing, in another language, among the Parsees in India. These consist of rubrics for purification, and for repelling evil spirits, with invocations and prayers of a monotonous character, for interminable repetition. The very priests of the religion cannot read its original sacred books. The Koran, as we know, though held to have been dictated word by word to Mohammed, in the Arabic language, by the tongue of the angel Gabriel, contains nothing beyond the knowledge and thought of a semi-barbarous Arab of the seventh century ; and as it deals in precepts rather than principles, is considered in capable of alteration in any particular without impiety, and / ceases to be inspired when translated, it contemplates no wide distribution in other tongues, and fastens the entire Mohamme dan world to the level and the circle of the attainment already reached by the Prophet. Its 114 suras, or chapters, are in fact so many fetters on the mental progress of those who receive it. The Greeks had in effect no sacred books. Neither the early Orphic writings, hymns, poems, or oracles, nor the later philoso phies, ever aspired to take this place. The Eomans had none ; unless we count such the Sibylline Books, which were said to have been purchased by Tarquin from a woman who suddenly disappeared, which were kept in the temple of ..Jupiter in the Capitol, were consulted for oracular direction in public emer gencies, and which finally were burned, eighty years before ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 219 Christ. No sacred literature enriched the libraries of scholars in Eepublican or Imperial times. The Eoman Law, believed to be founded in a sovereign justice, was an educating force to the Eoman mind. The religion which attended it never was : and the last efforts to make it such, when its end was drawing near, were wholly futile. After Christianity had long been preached, and the attraction and power of the books which contained it had come widely to be felt, attempts were made by some of its more learned and discerning antagonists to supply a parallel heathen literature, a sort of counterpart from the pagan side to the pre cepts and doctrines of the Gospel, and to its touching and mar vellous records. _ So the sophist Philostratus, in the early part of the third century, at the request of Julia Domna, empress of Severus, wrote, and as he says embellished, the life of ApoUonius of Tyana, to offset apparently the history of Jesus as related by the evangelists ; and so, later in the century, Porphyry is said to have collected what were represented as the answers of Oracles, especially concerning Christianity itself, to support the existing religious system by responses from the unseen world.* But efforts like these were wholly too late, and the popular mind was never generally or powerfully affected by them. Heathenism in Eome had no affinities with an affirmative literature. It presented no instruction. It sought for no proofs in philosophy or in history. In contrast then with all these religions it is to be observed that Christianity comes to us through a Book, of great extent, of immense variety, written in different times and tongues, dur ing a period of certainly more than a thousand years, and by the pens of many writers ; that this Book is internally and organi cally connected, part with part, so that each section must be sur veyed for the perfect and assured understanding of the whole ; and that while the vital substance of Christianity may be prop erly said to be here and there concisely presented in a single sentence, the whole is still urged on men's attention, and the various, complex, and interlinked scheme draws to itself the reverent thought of those who accept the final religion. There / is really not a single portion, from the first sentence 'In the be- * See Augustine: "City of God," XIX.: 23. 220 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY ginning God created the heaven and the earth,' to the last ' The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all,' which has not some radical connection with what anticipates or what follows. ' What is latent in the Old Testament, becomes patent in the New '; and Christianity is essentiaUy the religion of the Bible — its life inhering in all the parts, as the life of the tulip is essentially present both in bulb and in flower, at first rough in its earthy coat, and afterward waving and shining in the sun in the splendid beauty of the parterre. The Babylonian captivity has its connection with the subsequent missions of Christian apostles. Whoever arranged the Temple-worship finds an expositor in him who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews. And. the first lifeless chaos, out of which the world is said to have arisen, has constant relations to the final promise of the heavenly Jerusalem. At once, then, it appears what careful and long-continued at tention is sought by this religion from those who would know its intimate and ultimate secrets of meaning. It is, in fact, the supreme encomium pronounced in the world on the human in telligence, that this religion, which purports at least to have come from God, and to have within it the thoughts of His mind, yet asks men, impels them, to examine carefully many books in order completely to apprehend it. It challenges inves tigation, solicits study, that they may see how one part fits and finishes another, and how the whole converges on the Faith to be at last joyfully received. This seems an evident part of the prearranged plan of him, whoever he may have been, who ushered Christianity into the world. Its whole scope, as I have suggested, may properly be said to be presented in sentences like this : " For God so loved the world, that He gave His only be gotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." That 'little Bible' may be said, with truth, to contain the spiritual substance of all. Yet while such sayings are microcosmic, embracing realms of truth in few words, the entire series of the writings is preserved, the most ancient among them are endorsed and commended by later teach ers, and by him whom all revere as their Head, and all are pre sented in the unity and complexity of their manifold parts to the intellectual mastery of mankind. ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 221 It makes not the slightest conceivable difference, in regard to the point now before us, where or by whom these writings are supposed to have been composed, or to have been combined in one collection. If it be aUeged, for instance, that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch, the denial may affect our impression of the lawgiver, perhaps even of the Lord to whom he seems prophetically pointing, and by whom his writings appear to be accredited. But so far as*concerns the intellectual activity stim ulated by the religion known as Christianity, that is only quick ened by such denial, and directed to new paths, as men are pushed to the inquiry : ' but if not Moses, who was the author ? ' as they are moved to search not only the primitive text, but Egyptian records, Babylonian bricks, the story entombed in the figures of hieroglyphics upon the oldest monuments of the world, to find the proofs of the authorship of some one in this majestic and venerable record of origins and of progress. So with the Psalms. That many of them were not written by David, as we in early life very Hkely supposed that all of them were, only incites and maintains the effort in after years to as certain to whom to ascribe them. So with the later prophecies of Isaiah, the book of Esther, the book of Job, and with some of the epistles, the second of Peter, the pastoral epistles, or that to the Hebrews. The authorship of those to whom these were early and widely ascribed being disputed, a hundred questions are started at once, a hundred lines of inquiry are opened, to ascer tain facts which are not indeed of cardinal importance, but which must be of perennial interest to the careful student of this religion. It would seem, sometimes, as if questions of this sort had been on purpose left undecided, that each generation might come afresh with keenest interest to the study of the Word, especially in the mastery of these fascinating problems. Partly, indeed, by reason of this fact, the mind of Christendom can never detach itself from the most intent and thorough in quiry concerning the original documents of its Faith. In our own time, amid the rush of invention and commerce, while ques tions of politics engage with a continual grasp multitudes of minds, while exploration of unknown continents, distant worlds, 222 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY or of microscopic forms of life, is incessantly going on, and while the knowledges open to man are more numerous, various, alluring and rewarding, than ever before, the thoughts of those who are leaders in thought are continually busy on questions started by the scriptures; ascertaining how far, to what an almost complete extent the evangeHcal narratives, in their prin cipal facts, can be reconstructed from the four unquestioned epistles of St. Paul ; scrutinizing theta on the one hand with searching minuteness, and the records of the second century on the other, to ascertain what traces, if any, of incipient controver sies can be detected in the Synoptists or in John. I do not for myself hesitate to accept it as a part of the plan of the author of Christianity — whoever we conceive him to have been — to leave these questions, and others like them, so far un decided that new discussion should be always in order, and that the most exact and wide investigation should be never super seded. It is by such discussion and such investigation that the discerning intelligence of Christendom is constantly trained ; and libraries have been built, we may almost say literatures created, the inquisitive, discursive, analytical spirit of mankind has been educated, by the arguments and researches so called forth. The doubts which men have at some time entertained concerning the authorship of one part or another of the Christian scriptures have been more instructive in their final effect than many certainties on common-place themes. But then, this preliminary work being done, when men come into instant responsive contact with these scriptures, how mani fest and how permanent is their fitness, as an instrument of merely intellectual education, to the minds which they address ! It is remarkable, for one thing, how apt they are to all periods of life : to the youngest child, who can understand words ; to the most mature and experienced man, disciplined by work, and cultured by study ; to even the aged, who look inward with in tent introspection, or onward and up with desiring hope. They are adapted to the rude and mentally uniustructed, as well as to the man of churches and universities, whom a developed and furnished society has assiduously trained. And it is a fact of indisputafle significance that while all other "Sacred Books" ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 223 are essentially uninviting to those not taught to consider them Divine — so that, except as curiosities of letters, they would scarcely be noticed unless by some indefatigable student — the Christian scriptures, in both the Testaments, have an equal at traction for every people into whose language they are carried. They may not always be accepted, but they uniformly are read, in all regions of the world, with an interest which poetry does not rival, or romance surpass ; and those who, under the contin uing impression of their preexisting cultus, decline to accept them as specially from God, confess the immense attraction and impulse of which their vital pages are full. There are many languages into which it would be evidently impossible to translate either Homer or Shakespeare, Dante or Goethe. But no tribe of men has yet been found whose dialect could not be renewed and enriched, refined and expanded, so as at length to take into itself these surprising Christian scriptures. Not only do they thus engage and impress men upon the lower levels of intelligence. They tend, constitutionally, to ex alt and reinforce the mental faculty which they address, and to build up by degrees a middle-class mind, widely-distributed, sagacious, energetic, strong in conviction, yet free and active in intellectual sympathy, a source of strength to society and the state. So much as this it seems difficult to doubt, if we look either at Christianity itself, or at what as a specifically literary reHgion it has done in the world. Men may perhaps say that under it no rarer genius has been developed than has elsewhere been shown, no finer power for intuitive discernment, no spirit more capable of illuminating the canvas or moulding the marble into exquisite grace, of convincing men's judgment and stirring to impetuous motion their passion, or of putting high thought and delicate fancy into noblest rhythm and melody of verse. But few will deny that there has been a power in the Christian re ligion, such as never was shown by any other, to develop and train a self-respecting middle-class, in England, for example, in Germany, in this country ; measurably, indeed, though less com pletely, in Eoman Catholic countries, as in France or in Italy. And wherever the mind of such a class has been pervaded and 224 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY stimulated by the Christian scriptures, there intelligence has been general, thought enterprising, while moral forces have had peculiar and wide control. The school and the college have there come into existence, as naturally as harvests rise from the soil on which seed has been scattered ; presses have found a power more steadfast than that of any human muscle to be the support of their constant activity ; and an energetic and various training of the force native, even if latent, in human minds, has been successfully sought and secured. There was no such commanding middle-class, permanent, pro gressive, ever multiplying in numbers, under the ancient ethnic religions. Egyptian priests, soldiers, tradesmen, peasants, and the riff-raff of the populace, were as sharply separated in the days of Herodotus as they afterward continued to be.* It was the absence of power for self-development in the Athenian democ racy which compelled Mr. Grote to say, in the conclusion of his history : " When such begging missions are the deeds for which Athens employed and recompensed her most eminent citizens, a historian accustomed to the Grecian world as described by He rodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, feels that the life has de parted from his subject, and with sadness and humiUation brings his narrative to a close." f So the tendency at Eome always was to the dizzy height or the abject debasement, to the palace or the hovel, the many accomplishments or the absence of any intellectual spirit. It was so, largely, because the religion there prevailing was not a religion of doctrines, histories, or moral pre cepts, of written records or a formulated Faith, but was rather one of mechanical arts and preordained ceremonies, of external service, and interpreted augury. Only a religion which has scriptures and teachers, and which thus addresses with appro priate force the thought-power in man, as well as his moral sen sibility — only such a religion can vitally raise or thoroughly train the free, intrepid, and thoughtful populations which are besoming the glory of the world. It alone can effectively resist whatever forces, social or commercial, tend to repeat the ancient * Herodotus : 1 : 164. t " History of Greece ": London ed., 1872, Vol. X. : p. 328. ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 225 results in modern society. It shuns or slurs no class in society ; but it tends always to lift the ruder into fellowship with those whose mental alertness, expanding information, and practical skill, are a governing power in civilization. But now to the finer and higher spirits which meet Christian ity in its primitive documents, and in the continuing impulse of its Hfe, what is its relation? Does it limit and discourage them? does it fetter their freedom, lower their aims, and impose upon them, by an arbitrary rule, unwelcome restraints ? or is it adapted, by its nature, to make upon them impressions salutary and strong ? does it load them, or lift them ? has it for them su preme inspirations, or does it simply present certain confining and mandatory instructions, to hamper and harass them ? Such questions have been answered, as I have suggested, in opposite ways. They are questions of the gravest interest and importance. In connection with them there are some things to be noticed in the peculiar internal constitution of the concurring scriptures through which Christianity comes to the world. Many minds are in these presented to us ; and those minds are often to an ex traordinary degree replete with abounding and animating en ergy, prepared by it for effective operation on the spirit of students. Whether we accept or not the idea that a transcendent inspiring force was exerted upon them from above, it is certain that some energy operated within them to give them peculiar fulness of life, an unmatched exuberance of inspiriting force, so that they are stiU as personal to mankind, and almost as proximate to the thought of their readers, as if living to-day. Their ex pressed faculty, to say the least of it, was often surpassing, if not superlative. Certainly no more expert and splendid dialec tical energy than that of Paul is known to have wrought in even the abundant and delicate Greek tongue. No more intuitive and interpreting spirit than that which penned the Gospel of John has ever subdued to its subUme purpose the mystery of speech ; while in all the writers of the New Testament there is a fresh ness of perception, a vigor of conviction, an essential undecaying modernness of tone, which makes them singular among the writers of their time. Their eager force in what they wrote makes us almost sensible of a personal conference between their 15 226 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY minds and ours when we read. Even the prophets, the psalm ists, and the lawgiver, in the earlier stage of the development of Christianity, tower before us in the vividness and dignity of an unsurpassed strength, and sometimes touch and thrill our souls as if they spoke with us, face to face. Different languages must be mastered, too, that we may come into most direct and intimate contact with these intense and awakening minds. Long courses of history must be investigated, that we may place them precisely before our thought in their cir cumstances and times. The earliest annals of the race must b_ sought, stamped on the clays of the Euphrates valley, or cut into alabaster slabs of Ninevite palaces, that light may be cast, if they have it to give, on the primitive documents of our Faith. And when we come to the latest and the amplest scriptures — while it is true that the affectionate disciple may find his whole religion expressed in brief sentences, as one may wear a jewel in a ring which shall cover the value of palaces or of provinces, it is true also that by the attentive, who would compass the whole, great arguments must be mastered ; that many knowledges are requisite even to set the Gospels distinctly and fully under our view ; and that there is no form of attainment, no sound and useful force of the mind, which does not find its legitimate office in the conquest and illustration of these manifold scrip tures. They are as simple and tranquil in their appeal to the meditative spirit as the morning star glittering above the bright ening hills in its challenge to the eye. But with them, as with that, long and minute processes of thought are needed for the analysis of that serene splendor, and the determination of the proper height and weight in the heavens of that from which it streams upon us. It must also be noticed, it goes without saying, that the student of Christianity is always, by that fact, in contact with the themes most majestic and vital which can be presented to the human intelligence. Whatever his particular interpretation may be of the instruction which Christianity gives on these supreme themes, their dignity and vastness must be recognized by all. Here are the great gnomic sayings of the Master him self, as marvellous in the fuUness of their unwaning wisdom as ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 227 any works attributed to him : the profoundest truths conveyed to the world in the most gracious, lucid, and memorable phrase. Here are the alleged discoveries of transcendent facts, such as must be embraced in any scheme of reHgion to give it enduring hold upon the race : of facts which pass the reach of our thought as do unsounded seas the outstretch of the hand. The incessant and eager discussion of such facts never fails among men. It has highest charm for the loftiest spirits ; and it holds within it the clear prediction of larger scope, a more ex act and interpreting vision, to be expected in the Hereafter. He who meditates upon God, Duty, Immortality, as the Christian writings present them to him, feels kinship with whatever is royal in the universe, and has a sovereign sense in the soul of relation to essences primordial and eternal. In these Scriptures the supernatural element — professedly at least, whether really or not, I do not now ask— is continually presented, with simplicity, dignity, and a tone of authority ; is treated as familiarly, with as little attempt at startling expres sion as if it lay level with the commonest experience, yet with astonishing harmony and majesty in the outlines and vast ad umbrations of its glory. No greater mistake can possibly be made than to suppose this amazing supernatural element— whose recognized presence in the Scriptures leads some to repel them — depressing or harassing to the stimulated mind. Above all things else, it is the one power which exalts, inspires, and rein forces. It is so everywhere, and not merely in the Scriptures. We are conscious sometimes of a strange exhUaration in watch ing the storm, when the burst of the thunder-crash, the terrible and incessant illumination of Hghtnings in midnight skies, make the earth the evident arena for the time of forces which man cannot check or compute : when it is as if the heavens were opened, and we saw forth-coming supernal energies. There is at such times an intensity of Hfe in which, as has been said, the mind feels itself ' akin to elder forces that wrought out existence before the birth of pleasure and pain.' So, sometimes, when looking from deck or headland on the sweep of the ocean in its immeasurable majesty of wrath, or when the infinite cope of heaven is bung as with banners of crimson and gold in the sud- 228 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY den and universal flash of meteoric phenomena, there is some thing above all that is visible which then strikes down its gleam of glory on the over-awed and up-looking spirit. It is the ' something infinite and immense,' surpassing imitation, surpass ing conception, which arrests and uplifts it. But then we stand only, after all, upon the higher levels of nature. It is but a distant approach which we recognize to what is really transcendent and supernal. Whenever the soul does fairly face that — if ever it does — in which eternity, with its in comparable splendors and terrors, touches time, in which God is manifest in His august life, in which the life of multitudinous spheres superior to ours becomes the object of contemplation — if the soul be in any measure responsive, it must be supremely exalted by it. The great discoveries, the magisterial thoughts, will then lie nearest to its vision. In such a mood it will be, if ever, that the falling apple or the pendulous dew-drop will lift the mind to Sirius on his throne, or carry it out to the nebulous whirls which God is moulding into worlds. In such a mood it certainly has been that celestial panoramas have unrolled them selves to a spirit like Dante's, or that voices have been found for what else were unspeakable in the harping symphonies and majestic hallelujahs of the Paradise Lost. The veriest material ist, who wUl not believe what he cannot take up in metallic tweezers, or weigh in bulk on Fairbanks' scales, can hardly be so foolish, if he ever reads history, as to question the power, in a merely intellectual system of training, of that apprehension of things supernatural to which the Scriptures always profess and claim to minister. Above ethics, philosophies, arts of men, they rise through the immeasurable blue, and purport, at least, to open to thought celestial gates. One stands amid them be neath skies that outreach the ring of suns, in the midst of eternities by which the briefest anticipating life is made measure less in subHmity. But by the side of these astonishing discoveries, or what are certainly affirmed to be such, one cannot but be struck by the surprising and the apparently prearranged silences, which mark as well the Christian scriptures : silences, upon themes which with constant force attract our attention ; silences, which seem as ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 229 clearly a part of the marvellous purpose and plan of the scrip- I tures as are the vacant spaces in waUs through which the house- -* holds dwelling behind them look out on landscapes or distant 6kies. On the physical appearance of the Master, for example, or of either of his apostles ; on the appearance, the manner, or even the personal history of his Mother, of whom such astonish ing stories were told at a time very early, and to whom was at tributed such an unsurpassed song ; on the origin, the occupations, and the powers of angels ; on the special constitution of the spiritual body ; on the place, if there be a place, for celestial ex periences, and on the possible recognition of friends amid its unattained and superlative wonders, — on these, and other similar matters, concerning which the mind receiving Christianity is in cessantly busy, the plan of this religion leaves it to be busy, as if on purpose to incite it to unlimited thought, and to keep its questioning temper and habit in fullest activity; while on matters graver, and even momentous, but still not essential to its practical aim, it preserves the same intent attitude of silence, — not seeking to explain, if that be possible, the relations of the human and the Divine in its own constitution, or in the preemi nent person of its Lord ; not seeking to interpret the intimate coincidence of the human will with the Divine in what it calls the ' second birth,' or to solve the problem of the origin of evil, or of the harmony of Divine pre-vision with the unconstrained activities of men. Concerning all these questions, and others, on which philoso phy loves to speculate, which the mind of each century strikes at afresh as if they had never before been mooted, Christianity preserves a studious silence. It leads men up to the edge of them, often, and leaves them to do what they may for them selves, to search and sound the untracked deeps. This is a fact, it seems to me, as striking and significant as any other in the whole remarkable constitution of Christianity, as addressed to the mental power in man. It has been said of La Place that in that immense work, the " Mecanique Celeste," which has given to his name its splendid lustre, he purposely omit ted many demonstrations, cancelling them after they had bet n completed, and simply saying in place of them, ' Thus it ap- 230 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY pears,' ' So it is evident ': that nobody might be able, unless through a labor like his own, to go with him to his conclusions, except by simple faith in himself. He opened, in other words, enormous crevasses in the pathway of his immense calculations, in the confident expectation that these could not be bridged ; and it is the renown of his American translator, Dr. Bowditch, not that he turned French into English, which others might have equally done, but that, with skill and stubborn patience, and an unwearied labor, he crossed and bridged these separating chasms by his own calculations, so that others could follow where he had led. So, and in a yet higher sense, the Christian scriptures, while setting before us in every part the spiritual attainment which they declare to be possible for man, and bringing all possible in struments of impression to impel us to seek that — extensive his tories, delightful biographies, great arguments of doctrine, pro found maxims of duty and of truth, exulting hymns, apocalyptic forewarnings of destiny — yet leave these inter-stellar spaces of a supreme silence, into which if one is moved to adventure he must go alone, to sound as he may along the dim and perilous way. There seems here an echo, from the domain of spiritual truth, to that first record of the Bible, that ' thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them, and on the seventh day God rested from His work.'* In somewhat the same way Christianity presents to the world which receives it an orb of truth, or what it declares such, and Uf ts it to its place amid the immensities : and then whoever gave it rests, leaving man thenceforth to work upon it, to measure its mountains, un earth its mines, to cross for himself its unbridged oceans, and to set it if he can in just relations with the universe of truth. This is part of a strange and mighty method. We sometimes speak of authors as ' suggestive,' because they conduct to more than they teach ; because our minds, in passing from them, are con scious of impulse to a fresh and keen activity in many new di rections of thought, and have almost arrived at many truths which we must afterward search out for ourselves. Such au- * Genesis ii. 1, 2. ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 231 thors are most of all rewarding and inspiring. And the one book, in all the world, which seems to me, here at least, preemi nent in literature, is that brief book in the faith of which so many of the best have loftily lived and triumphantly died, and which either of us may carry in his pocket — the New Testament of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not true, therefore, it cannot be, under Christianity, as has sometimes been scornfully said, that ' he who has science and art has no religion.' In individual instances that may sadly be true. But in general it is true that he who has most fully accepted and deeply studied the Christian scriptures, provided his faculty be equipped for the work, is the one who has the finest and most delicate feeling for truth in art, the most exhil arating pleasure in philosophical thought, the deepest delight in the real and final achievements of science. Take out from mod ern civilization what has been done for it, in physical research, in historical exploration, in philosophical construction, specula tive criticism, or aesthetic endeavor, by Christian scholars, in spired to their work by Christian faith, and pursuing it with powers which that faith had trained, and it would be left almost as devoid of what is most enriching and memorable as the glacier is of trees, or Sahara of blossoming shrubs. The variety of the intellectual work thus prompted by Christianity is one thing re markable. Its practical fruitfulness is another. And the per manence and the widening energy of the impulse which stiU flows from it upon the minds which it reaches, is as striking as either. Our own times are full of _t ; but it did not begin with our times. It is as old as the religion to which it brings its con stant illustration. In spite of the heathenism with which that was saturated, some of the more eminent of the early Fathers, especially in the East, earnestly advocated the careful study of the Greek literature : among them Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory Thauma- turgus, and, later, the great Basil, who wrote a discourse in favor of it,* Gregory Nazianzen, the sainted Chrysostom. Platonism * Sermo de leg.ndis Libris Gentilium: "Opera": Paris ed., 1722: Tom. IL, pp. 173-185. 232 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY was honored by St. Augustine. Justin Martyr attributed a Di vine inspiration to certain parts of the ancient philosophy. Je rome quoted Virgil familiarly in his correspondence. Seneca was claimed as a correspondent of St. Paul, and in the time of Jerome letters purporting to have passed between them were in general circulation. Even the harsh and vehement Tertullian, who regarded Plato as the ' caterer to a host of heretics,' speaks of Seneca as often found on the Christian side. A single generation after Constantine, when the schools of grammar and rhetoric had been opened to the Christians, JuUan found it needful to his plans for reviving paganism, not only to exclude the Christian children from such schools, but to make strenuous efforts to displace the many instructors of the same faith, who, by reason of superior fitness, had already taken posi tion in them. The famous Greek copyists, of whom Alexandria had been long the resort, were reproduced, more numerously than ever, as soon as Christianity came to power ; and the ut most faithfulness, patience, skill, of those who had transcribed tragedy and epic, oration and history, were surpassed in those who afterward, with a higher enthusiasm, devoted their lives to multiplying copies of the Christian scriptures. To the later monks, of the mediaeval scriptorium, we owe the preservation of pagan literature, of Virgil and Homer, as of David and Moses, of __Eschylus and Demosthenes, as of John and Paul. And when the pen doing its utmost, with practiced skill and diligent celerity, could not meet'the demands upon it, the mov able type came to replace it, pushed to discovery by the inces sant desire for something to multiply, without ceasing or weary ing, the records of faith, and the productions of Christian thought ; and it was but appropriate that the sacred and large Book of our religion, partly by blocks, fully by separate inter changeable types, should be offered to the world as its earhest gift, by the novel invention. The Christian Faith, in certain austere forms, has sometimes appeared unfriendly to art. But art began to be cherished in the Catacombs, by the church there imprisoned ; and on the walls of the Callixtine cemetery, or of that of Domitilla, symbolic paintings are found, some not improbably of the second century : ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 233 of Moses, smiting the rock with his rod ; of the fish, bearing a basket of bread ; of the branching vine ; of the story of Jonah ; — of one scene, which had then a terrific significance, of Elijah as cending in his chariot of fire. The final glimmer of the Greek technical skill, which was slowly dying long before in its en forced transfer to Eome, is still preserved in these primitive pictures : where the Good Shepherd replaces the poetic Apollo, where Orpheus appears as in some sort the type and forerunner of Christ, where the crowns and palms of Olympian games become the symbols of Christian triumph, and the ship, beating against turbulent seas, but at last nearing the harbor-gates, is the obvious sign for the Christian life. Even there was shown the subtile and strong aesthetic tendency, combined with a consecrating spiritual conviction, which afterward broke into light more splendidly in the dexterous carvings and capitals of Eavenna, or its superb and shining mosaics ; in the rude bronze gates of the Veronese Church of San Zenone — anticipating those more famous at Florence ; in many features and ornaments of churches which have not ceased to attract and charm the eyes of travellers. When technical skill had again been mastered by those whose genius impelled them to it, and to whom leisure gave opportu nity, and when Christianity had at length had time, amid the terrific confusions and destructions of almost uninterrupted war, to work the sense of its majestic and tender stories, and of its revelations of realms above sight, into the general conscious ness of peoples, then came the wonderful new birth of poetry and art, the true Eenaissance, in all southern and central Eu rope. We apply this name, in a limited sense, to the movement of the fifteenth century and after, which took its impulse from a renewed study of the antique monuments and life. In an equally just and a larger sense it applies to all that continuing and astonishing development of culture which sprang from deeper and broader forces, as early as the thirteenth century. Its prophecies, at least, are to be traced in the more active polit ical life, the acquisition of Latin authors, the development of universities, as well as in the beginning of mediaeval art, in pic ture and church, in liturgy and music. The arts of design, in color or in marble, came later to ampler development, but tha 234 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY strong impress of religion was on them. Who has not felt the prodigious change which passed upon painting, and which left its records in sculptured stone, when a real rapture or a real agony, of a Person believed to be superhuman in essence and in relations, began to take the place of the self-conscious fancy which had sought to portray the Juno or the Diana, the Hercules or the Faun ? Freedom, variety, naturalness, dignity, a new ethical tone, a larger and sweeter inspiration, came with the im pulse of the new Faith into the arts which heathenism had cherished and yet had dishonored. The stimulated soul endued with fresh grace and a more eager force the animated hand; and so, and not otherwise, were born at last the world's master pieces, the Assumption of the Virgin, the Last Communion of St. Jerome, the Sistine Madonna, the Transfiguration. Into the brain of builder and architect streamed, even earlier, the same surpassing and stimulating effluence from the august reHgion ; and rock rose as in modulated psalms, fortress and palace being humbled and dwarfed by the temple for worship, when the solid quarry broke forth before genius into Gloria and Te Deum. Certainly, by consent of all, there has been thus far no art in the world like the Christian art. Its temples arose on a soil still quaking with tread of armies, and hot with the unex- tinct fires of war ; and the singular combination which the Chris tian records everywhere present of the most minute touches of human biography with the vast, overshadowing, unsearchable reach of the realms supernatural — of the Lord who was a babe in Bethlehem, and afterward Eedeemer and King of the world — this is the key alone sufficient, when applied to such art, to unlock the secret of its harmonies and its heights. Mighty columns, daintiest capitals, darkling shadows, glancing colors, the gleam of sunshine smiting through translucent gold, the crimson splashes spattering pavements, scutcheon and banner effulgent with glow of royal purple, the dome that seems pur posed to roof the world — they are not a medley, they are a marvel, by which the dullest are impressed ; and they could not have been, in their mysterious and astonishing combinations, ex cept for the religion which the timid have trusted, by which genius has been profoundly searched and supremely exalted, and from whose power Christendom has sprung. ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 235 Even the sensitive enjoyment of nature stands connected at its root with the rich and majestic monotheistic conception. It has finer expression in Hebrew literature than in all the Greek or Eoman classics. Humboldt notices the fact that a single Psalm — the 104th — ' represents the image of the whole cosmos '; and Goethe spoke of the book of Euth, with its simple and charming pictures of nature, as ' the loveliest specimen of epic and idyl poetry which we possess.' * The love of noble or gentle landscape, which has come to be a source of such keen and wide pleasure among western peoples in more recent times, is in harmony with, as it seems plainly to have sprung from, the picturesque and exalting instructions of the Gospel ; and noth ing else so links the earth, in lily and mountain, and winding waters, with blooms above and rivers of Hfe, as does the astonish ing record of the Christ. Indeed, to whichever side we turn, a similar impulse to free and various mental activity is always before us, along the paths of the Christian advance. The religion which brings so much of literature, so much of history associated with it, which pre sents such practical yet imperial themes for human contempla tion, and which naturally calls for such prolonged and vigorous exercise of all powers of the mind, such a religion cannot but send the intellect forth, equipped and strengthened, into every field on which it may enter. What Milton said of any good book may certainly be said, with preeminent emphasis, of the book of our religion : " The precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a Hfe beyond life." f It deals with great principles, and so stimulates the spirit whose business it is to ascertain and apply these. It seeks illustra tion from every side of physical nature, of human life. It stirs the enthusiasms which are as the fiery heart of the engine, under whose impulse wheels revolve, and ponderous arms play back and forth. It liberates the higher inteUectual nature, so far as its influence is accepted, from binding appetites and mis-inter preting passions. And it affirms, whether truly or not, that the * " Cosmos ": London ed., 1870 ; Vol. H. : pp. 413, 415. t Prose Works : London ed., 1753 ; Vol. I. : p. 151. 236 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY word which it presents is in harmony with God's works, and that nothing which is true can contradict or displace it. At once tender and commanding, connecting our Httle life on earth with life unending in other spheres, it challenges alike the largest reflection and the most acute and unrelaxing research from the world of mankind. I expect, therefore, to find fresh studies and sciences springing in its path, as flowers and grasses beneath the benignant touch of spring. The theologian : it may be first the heart which makes him, ac cording to the loved maxim of Neander ; but the discerning and reconciling brain is surely as needful, as has often been shown, in Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, in the English Butler, in our own Edwards, pronounced by eminent Europeans among the first of metaphysicians, and in multitudes of others. Their whole large endeavor in life has expressed, better than any words, their sound and strong sense of the rightful prerogative of the human mind, interpreting the ways of the Almighty to man. However sharply they have censured man's character, they have not been insensible to the indefeasible magistracy which belongs to his in tellect ; and however diverse their theories may have been of the profound philosophy of religion, however we may possibly dissent from all of them, they have been witnesses, as surely none wUl dispute, to the energizing force which the Christian scheme, whose mysteries they have sought to elucidate, delivers upon the mind. So have been, equaUy, the great preachers, from Chrysostom onward — before him, indeed — and in all regions or sects of the church. There were none such, there could be none, in the ethnic religions. Heathenism concerned itself scarcely at all with moral teaching, still less with any systematic exhibition of spiritual truth. But, from the beginning, Christendom has been resonant with earnest teaching, because the religion which has had command in it has been doctrinal, historical, preceptive in its character, requiring to be commended to men by earnest and careful intellectual processes ; and the greatest of these preachers, whether Catholic or Protestant, have addressed with their eager and quickening thought, and with the almost magical force of spiritual enthusiasm, the humblest minds — precisely those which ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 237 the ancient philosophy would have deemed itself dishonored by touching. So expositors have come, in numbers almost countless, stu dents of tbe word, and learned and lucid interpreters of its con tents ; and libraries have been gathered, when once formed they have rapidly been enlarged, to supply the instruments for defin ing or expounding the sacred text. The labor expended upon that text, to assure its correctness, since the earliest time, but especially since the days of Erasmus, has made centuries cele brated in the merely literary history of mankind. It is a work prosecuted as eagerly at this hour as ever before, and the last thirty years have only done more for it than many preceding equal periods. Historians, too, have arisen, rich in learning, broad in survey, careful in detail, with minds discerning and intuitive, and with the fine detective insight of spiritual sympathy, to unfold the progress of Christianity in the world : to show how it fought with alien powers, and overcame them in ' the unsubduable might of weakness '; and how the subsequent advancing consciousness of the ever-unfolding Christian society, in all its periods, has found its various, but on the whole its grand expression ; how men and institutions have illustrated this, and then have reacted with energy upon it ; and how the present unseen activity of that Lord of this religion in whom, as Pascal said, ' all contra dictions are reconciled,' has been revealing itself afresh through controversy and mission, in councils and in cottages, making individuals its servants and champions, making the nations reflect its lustre. All history, to be vital and rich, implies that moral sympathy with man which Christianity nurtures : implies the recognition of that Divine order in the progress of the world of which Christianity alone supplies either the conditions or the discov ery. Max Mulier has said that the worship of the Semitic na tions ' is preeminently the worship of God in History.' * But Christ in History has been always the inspiration to largest thought, to richest and most illuminating study, in Latin or in ' Science of Religion": New York ed., 1872 : p. 62. 238 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY Gothic Christendom. I conceive that no grander single monu ment was ever erected to the comprehensive reach and the in terpreting insight of the human intelligence — though it was meant for anything but that ! — than the marvellous history of the Christian reHgion which has made familiar to all the world the chosen new name of Neander : who wrought with such prodigal patience and labor, such intuitive skUl, and such sustain ing enthusiasm of love, to show the living witness in Christen dom to the Divine power of that religion which his ancestors had hated ; whose motto, ' Theologia crueis, non gloriae,' ex pressed his whole spirit ; * of whom the Eoman Catholic theo logian Moehler said that he embraced everything, even the most profound, and apportioned to every man his place with undevi- ating justice ; whose lectures have been happily described, by one who felt and who still reproduces both his diligence and his sympathy, as an uninterrupted flow of learning and thought from the deep and pure fountains of the inner life ; and who at last, after almost incredible achievements in study, simply said, ' I am weary — let us go home,' and was carried to his grave fol lowed by thousands of students and of citizens, with the king among them, and with his own copies of the Christian scriptures borne upon his bier. I match Gibbon's history against his, or any other which a haughty and sceptical temper has wrought, and the power of Christianity in inspiring the intellect, as well as in subduing and transforming the. heart, appears to me beyond dispute. I need not speak — I cannot, of course, in the minutes which remain — of the great Christian jurists, who have surpassed, not in learning only, or in scientific merit, but in ultimate judicial wisdom, Paulus or Papinian, Ulpian or Tribonian, because following in their path with a nobler juristic spirit, a sweeter and sounder ethical insight, taught by Christianity ; nor of the authors, various, multitudinous, who in all forms of letters, poetry, philosophy, scientific discussion, narrative, romance, have shown the force of inspirations around them, whether or not they *Dr. Schaff: "Germany, its Universities, etc." New York ed., 1857: p. 273. ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 239 were equally within them, prompting to finest and highest thought, and giving grander moral meanings to what language became ennobled in expressing ; nor of the diligent travelers and ex plorers, who have made the ancient streets of Jerusalem as evi dent to our thought as these are to our eyes along which we familiarly walk, who have followed each step of the Lord in his journeys, and have traced and mapped the journeys of his apos tles with a care and fullness surpassing that of any Itinerary of Antoninus ; nor of the inventors who, under the practical im pulse of Christianity, catching its enthusiasm for peaceful arts, and in inward accord with its benign bent, have put so many novel instruments into the disciplined hands of men, — working sometimes with a positive purpose of consecration, and always in an air electric with aspiration because quickened by the Master. It is not possible to even indicate the forms in which the vast new mental inspiration which came by Jesus has been exhibited. To enumerate and describe them were the labor of many life-times. The common familiarity with many languages in modern times is itself to be ascribed, in large measure, to this religion which came out of Galilee. The mere labor of translating the Christian scriptures into other tongues than those which first held them has been continuous and immense. It has been prompted and sustained by the sense of the superlative import ance of these scriptures, to persons and to peoples, and by the enthusiasm kindled toward them in those who receive them. The age which saw their translation into the Syriac, the _Ethiopic, or the Gothic, is linked indissolubly by the sublime labor with that which has witnessed in our own day the regeneration of savage dialects, that into them might enter the word of him who spake to the world from Nazareth. The work is one peculiar to Christianity, j The Koran contemplates no version of itself out of the sacred ' Arabic words into the jargon of external dialects. Its inspira tion must evaporate in the process. No Chinaman puts Confu cius into English. Even Gibbon remarked that Chinese gram mars were written in Paris, and doubted if the mandarins knew their own language as well as the Frenchman.* No Buddhist * Misc. Works : London ed., 1796 : Vol. II. : p. 237. 240 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY transports the three Pitakas, or even the Dhammapada, into Ital ian or German forms. But the Gospels and Epistles — the whole Bible, indeed— under the impulse which inheres in themselves, are constantly pushed into translation by their disciples, into every known or accessible language. Linguistic studies become thus each year more thorough and wide, in the lands ruled by this religion ; and Christendom is characterized as the circle of nations in which most numerous languages find readers. It is so because the religion which moulds it comes to men in a Book, and claims for itself universal supremacy. If the dialects of mankind were once divided by any catastrophe, it is certain that this reconciling religion means to make the sovereign contents of all at last identical. The name of its founder is already at home in Oceanica or in Africa, as it is in our churches ; and the documents teaching of his character and his life have created their own alphabetical forms in the most uncultured tongues of the earth. Of course popular education has been incessantly stimulated,. wherever this religion has gone, by the effort to bring the general mind into immediate and quickening contact with the doctrines and precepts set forth in its books, and with the studies which these inspire. The Greek education, es pecially at Athens, was noble in its aim, caring for morals as well as for learning, full of that fine paramount instinct of proportion and harmony which appears in all the greater Greek work, and seeking to give equal and elaborate culture to every force of mind and body, by the grammar, music, and gymnastics associated in it. Teachers from other lands were attracted to the city whose intellectual Ufe was a glory of the world. The grand works of Hellenic genius were themselves a liberal education ; and the presence of eminent men, in a pop ulation as limited as that of Athens, was a constant stimulant to all rare forces of talent or genius. But no public institutions for education were erected or maintained at the general expense, though the age of tutors, and the number of their scholars, were under a certain regulation by law. The chief object of edu cation was to make good citizens, and to give an ampler enjoy ment in life ; and the poor, in respect to it, were at vast disadvan- ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 241 tage, as compared with the prosperous. The Eoman spirit, more strict and imperious, for long periods of time Hmited its instruc tion to such departments as should conduce most to miUtary success and public aggrandizement ; and Cato only expressed the feeling in the midst of which he had grown up when he denounced the phUosophy of Greece, and resisted the sudden passion for it on the part of the young. He no doubt felt at the time, as he said, that the state would perish, if it should come to be infected with the Greek literature. In the great days of Eome only agriculture and war were held in general esteem, and Hterary employments were largely left to the servUe class. Even in the imperial time, the preceptor and the pedagogue, the reader and the scribe, the clerk, the singer, and the keeper of the books, were commonly slaves. And though within the century and a half after the capture of Corinth, to the time of Augustus, the eminent Greek authors had come to be familiar at Eome, and Latin Hterature had attained a brief and splendid consummation, in which the language was enriched, while poetry, history, philosophy, jurisprudence, in eminent instances the nat ural sciences, were carefully cultivated, the period was short, the decline was inevitable, because there were no towering truths behind these liberal arts and ' fair humanities.' Contests of rhe torical skill, pubHc recitals, were adopted from the Greeks, and literary feasts became a temporary fashion. But the system of education had then for its end the adding more of luxury to life, as it had before had it for its special purpose to fit men more perfectly for the haughty game of politics and of war. It was closely limited, also, to the wealthier classes. Christianity alone, with instinctive impulse, seeks to quicken and expand the minds of the humblest, that they may apprehend what 6he affirms to be truths of the universe, and may be lifted to contemplate His incomparable plans on the word of whose power the worlds are hung. It is at least a great aspiration. We see its effect in the millions of schools with which continents are alive, and in which are laid the sure foundations of the world's ultimate civilization. These are not special to our times. They had their origin far back, in the depths of the darkness which followed the crash of the Western Empire. Before that, 16 242 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY indeed, they had already begun to be established ; and the forces manifested in their erection have never since failed in Christian communities. It is noticeable, too, that wherever such schools have once been established, their tendency has been to enlarge-. ment and expansion, under Christianity ; till the " Schola " has become as of course the " Universitas," and that which started with teaching men only the contents of the Scripture, and- the general laws of Christian living, has gone back over history, has gone abroad over nature, has pierced the rocks and searched the' suns, has taken learning from all languages, and discipline from all acute dialectics, and has gathered in its enormous libra ries the aggregate treasures of the mind of the world. So the University of Paris grew up from the theological teach ings of William of Champeaux, of Ab_lard, and of Peter Lom bard ; the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford from obscure conventual schools. And whereas the famous Arabic seminaries in Spain, of the media, val period, teaching a reHgion of dominating will and predestinating force, have left no successors, and have to-day no vital relation to the mind of the world, these Christian universities, springing up as by magic all over the continent, are as sure of continuance as are the cities and countries which they make famous, and are being reproduced on our recent shores. The university, as truly as chapel or cathedral, is the offspring of the Faith which was preached in Judea. Hadrian planted one, after his fashion, amid the opulence of Eome. It was like his attempt to represent the majestic or delightful sceneries of countries at his Villa at Tivoli; a superficial attempt, which scarcely survived his own frail life. Our Fathers started one in their utmost poverty, on shores barren of beauty, and under a sky black with tempests, and we know to what already it has grown ; how many others have taken from it impulse, instruc tion, and large aspiration. With one swift glance, then, notice the contrast of other re ligions, even those which at first seem most intellectual. There have been, as I have said, Sacred Books beside the Christian : the Hindu Vedas, Brahmanas, Upanishads, Sutras ; the Buddhist Pita- kas,Vinaya, Sutta, and Abhidhamma ; the Chinese books ; the Per sian Avesta, the Koran. These have been made familiar in Chris- ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 243 tendom by the labor of Christian scholars, often of devout Chris. tian missionaries ; and it is a point of honor to-day, among these scholars, to find in such books whatever can be anywhere discov ered 6f wisdom, beauty, and moral force. Undoubtedly there is much ; for the Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world was not left without witness in the often high and sensitive spirits from which they came. Eeligions differ more widely in their principles than in the particular precepts which they inculcate ; and the precepts may seem in formal agreement, while the effects of the systems with which they are connected shall be wholly diverse— as the same botanical order which embraces the deadly night-shade embraces plants nutri tious and tonic. So a Eoman Catholic Bishop has affirmed that Buddhism teaches in its scriptures ' a surprising number of the finest precepts and purest moral truths,' * though the peculiar re ligion of those books culminates, he affirms, in atheism and ni hilism. But laying aside all special comparisons, what have these religions done, either or all, for the general, liberal, and progressive education of the ardent, ingenious, and capable peo ples, among whom they had ancient place, and have had since continued power? What strong, steady, effective impulse has gone from them into the recipient public mind ? What sciences, arts, poetries, have sprung from them, which the world at large will not surrender ? Of what beneficent and fruitful civilizations have they been the unwasting source ? I think of Hindustan, inhabited for ages by our own kindred, whose ornaments were sought by Solomon for his palace, whose gold brocades were in the courts of imperial Eome, whose poetry, ante-dating the Christian era, is still read and admired in Europe — without present science, history, poetry, or any recent mechanical arts, except as these have pressed in from abroad ; with no geography, even, of native production, and no phUosophy which asserts itself valid to the mind of the world ; constrained to import its very arguments against the religion of the New Testament from the countries in which men have been stimu lated and trained by that religion : — I think of China, where it is said that the seat of the understanding is assigned to the * Bp.Bigandet: " Legond of Gaudama " : (Preface). London ed., 1880. 244 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY stomach, but where respect for learning is almost a religion, and where the assiduous cultivation of such learning is the pride of the people, and the glory of the throne— without epic or art, with the old-time classics still in their place, but with no living literature to enlighten and discipline the mind of the people ; whatever they attain marked, as Frederick Schlegel said, ' with unnatural stiffness, childish vanity, exaggerated refinement, in the most important provinces of thought, and the language itself chiefly characterized by jejuneness and poverty ';* — and then I turn to the lands which Christianity has filled with its scriptures, and with their unwasting indefinable impulse, and how vast is the contrast! No matter, now, by whom or when these scriptures were written ; how far they deserve the faith which they challenge from the mind of mankind. No student of the past can dispute their enduring and astonishing effects on the minds, not of per sons only, but of peoples. I see the rough and savage strain of Gothic, Slavic, Turanian blood, pouring upon the Eoman Empire, apparently insuscepti ble to culture, and ruthlessly destructive of all ancient monu ments ; I see the ages of what seemed a hopeless disorder follow ing, when learning must hide itself in convent or palace to keep itself alive, when languages themselves went out of existence, when the naked sabre, which the Alani are said to have worship ped, with its hilt in the earth and its point toward heaven, ap peared the only worthy symbol of the forces which presided in the barbaric chaos : — and then I trace the grip and scope of this most spiritual but most masterful religion which comes to its fullness in the New Testament ; I see its ministers compelled to know something of history, ethics, the thought of the past, as well as of rubrics and of tithes ; I see its cloisters coming to be crowded with diligent writers, until the presses take their place ; I see languages reduced to order and form that they may receive the immortal evangel ; I see schools and universities rising be fore it, education expanding, no learning discredited, all forms of true knowledge at last welcomed and honored — till the entire air of society is full of subtile intellectual stimulation, till the * " Philosophy of History " : New York ed., 1841, Vol. I. : p. 155. ON THE MENTAL CULTURE OF MANKIND. 245 new ages rise into the manifold fullness of Hght in which we are embosomed, till the more inviting realms of the world, ear lier in their culture, now turn to Christendom as having in that their only hope for even a secondary mental progress ; I see the great discoveries coming in this circle of nations which bar barism so lately ruled, to enrich and empower human society ; I hear there the poems, tender or triumphing, which are the tim brels and the trumpets to which the race is marching forward ; I see the ages of intelligent faith fruitful and quickening, while those of unbelief are barren in contrast ; I see the vast amphi theatre filled with the light of the Book, as Eaphael's picture of Peter in prison with the light of the angel, subduing tbe light of torch or of moon : — and I say with absolute certainty, for myself, that the power here shown is like a power coming for the race, and coming from God ! Whatever else is true or not, the superlative educational force of the world appears embodied in this system of Faith which came by peasants as its ministers, and the son of a carpenter as its mysterious sovereign Teacher. It lays its hand of supreme benediction on countries and centuries at the furthest remove from its first proclamation. It furnishes the matrix out of which genius may be expected plenteously to spring. And sceptics themselves, with whatever learning, eloquence, or wit, appear to me but involuntary witnesses to the underlying and impenetrat ing impulse of this religion, which has given possibUity to even their hostile culture and force. LECTUEE VIII. THE EFFECT OF CHEIS_TANITY ON THE MOEAL LIFE OF MANKIND. LECTUEE VIIL The picture of the moral life of antiquity at the time when Christianity presented its imperative commands to the world — of that life as exhibited not in remote and uncivilized districts, exceptional in barbarous wickedness, but in the chief centres of culture and of commerce — this is presented, in rapid and inci dental touches, but yet with precise and impressive distinctness, in the letters of St. Paul ; and probably no one will be tempted to regard his portraiture of it as fanciful or unjust. He was no scholastic recluse, brought suddenly face to face with the actual spirit and conduct of mankind. He was a man of robust nature, experienced in affairs, conversant with the customs of different peoples, by no means insensible to the manifold elements of grace and of grandeur in the ancient civilizations : a man of clear-sighted practical sense, who was prompt to recognize each point of support for the religion which he preached in the his tory, the letters, or the moral education, of those whom he ad dressed ; who was even regarded by some fastidious disciples as ready to interpret Christianity too largely, and to be too tolerant of the errors of his hearers, that he might fulfil more completely his vast and fruitful mission to the Gentiles. What this observant and practiced man, of keen intelHgence, large experience, and wide observation, incidentally or directly tells us of those whose acceptance of the Faith which he taught he is eager to win, we may without demur accept. At least we may be sure that he has not forgotten his own common-sense so far as to outrage the hearts of his readers, and to instantly repulse their judgment, by painting themselves, or society around them, in colors too sombre. Eead then, in the light of this, his un questioned letters to the Corinthians, who had been withdrawn, (249) 250 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY , largely through the influence of his eager eloquence, from the vices of the heathenism in which most of them had been trained, and see in that vivid ancient silhouette how fierce and flagrant the old wickedness was ! Eemember that Corinth was at that time an intellectual cap ital of Greece, as well as its dependent poHtical centre ; that in it stood the grandest temples of that luxurious and decorated order which had taken its name from the famous city ; that the Isthmian games were there still celebrated ; and that not only par ticular schools, or eminent teachers, had distinction in and around it, but the city itself was renowned in the world for its polished learning, and its cultivated fondness for instruction and research. Among those, then, in this city, who have distinctly, with revo lutionary action, come out from the defilements, whatever they may have been, of ancestral religions, what is the present moral attainment ? how much, if anything, of the earlier dross still clings to the very image of the Lord, as formed amid the heats of conviction and consecration in their softened and stimulated souls ? what indications are thus given of the previous character of their custom and spirit ? I need not remind you what witness is borne, or with what emphasis it is borne, on either of these points, by the earliest of these letters. The old sensuality, which had in other times had religious consecration by its intimate connection with the tem ple-rites of Aphrodite, had so infected the nature of the converts that Christ himself, the Lord of purity, had not wholly deliv ered them from it. Profligacy was defended, on the ground of Christian liberty. The orgiastic feasts of the heathen still drew to themselves Christian disciples, in temples defiled with every lust. The solemn and pathetic Supper of the Lord was degraded into a drunken carousal, or at best a secular feast. The spirit of faction raged with such violence as to despoil worship of sig nificance and of order. FinaUy, a man who had done what pa ganism itself could not but reprobate, in contracting an incestu ous marriage, was tolerated in the Christian society, and had the passionate support of many of its members. These facts are not recited by the apostle as things alleged, of which proof may be needed. They are referred to as familiarly ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 251 known, as constituting the very occasion of his writing from the distant Ephesus, amid the fertile Asian meadows ; and his sec ond letter shows the fear which he had had lest his rebuke should prove ineffective. The question then inevitably comes : ' If this were the condition of those who had actively come out from heathenism, because a something higher in their nature had been reached by the startling appeals of Christianity, what must have been the preceding life from which they had emerged ? what must have continued to be the life of those who clung with un shaken tenacity to the ancient cultus, and to the attractive and canonized vices which it sanctioned and garnished ? ' The an swer to these questions involves the whole terrific story of an cient manners. But if we wish this set before us, not incidentally, but in a definite face to face portrait, we turn of course to the letter to the Eomans, and read again the awful words in which the apostle, in the first three chapters, but especially in the first, de picts, as with pencil tipped with fire, the terrible scene on which he looked. The simplicity and thorough fidelity to truth in his lurid delineations would scarcely impress us as they ought — these would surely, I think, seem over-charged — if the parallel ac counts of secular historians did not sustain them ; did not add, indeed, emphatic illustration to each principal point in his sad and stern indictment. This was what the old civilization had come to, in its ultimate fruitage ! Here was the result of what philosophy had inculcated, of what religion had enjoined, of what art, commerce, and government had done, to restrain and refine, to ennoble and invigorate the nature of man. Let us draw near, and see what it is, this ancient life : not now as de picted by Paul, but as illustrated by the men themselves born in it, and who could not be its unfriendly critics ; by men who no more thought at the time of the apostle, or for many years after, of coming out from it, through the acceptance of any new Faith, than they thought of jumping from the planet. Let Seneca, Tacitus, Suetonius, and the others, be our teachers. Then we may see, through their eyes, in a measure at least, what was the festering and feculent morass, poisonous, malefic, rank with cor ruption, into which the new religion burst, and through which 252 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY it poured its sudden current of quickening and transforming life. If it did not wholly purify, it at least did something toward sweetening and cleansing, the foul habit of society. And if it was the teaching of a mere Jewish peasant which accomplished this effect, it is surely the most remarkable phenomenon in the moral history of mankind. The Eoman nature, it must be remembered, if hard and coarse in comparison with the Greek, was also relatively vigor ous and simple. It had more of self-restraint, and of moral vigi lance. Less picturesque, it was more practical, resolute, and robust ; less addicted to delicate thought, it was more devoted to public affairs, and to the justice which guarantees welfare. In a measure this moral tendency survived, through changes of manners and vicissitudes of history ; so that, down to the last, there were those in Eome who amid the pageants of imperial pomp delighted to recall the time when the founders of the Ee- public had dressed in rough raiment, and had taken counsel, not under marble porticoes and roofs, but in green meadows, beneath the open and lucid heavens ; or when one who had been twice a consul, as Augustine long after was glad to remember, had been expelled from the Senate by the Censor, for undue luxury, because he was found to possess ten pounds weight of silver-ware.* The reed-thatched hut of Romulus, or what passed for such, was still preserved on the Palatine hill, while gorgeous structures rose around it ; and Augustus himself had only bought there the house of Hortensius, and lived in a sim ple and manly dignity. There was no very sensitive instinct of righteousness in the empire. The Latin " conscientia " had not meant what we call the moral sense, until a late period, any more than had the Greek " suneidesis." Each represented, primarily, only conscious intelligence of anything. But the patriotic virtues were naturally in high estimation in Eome. The ideal of character, in the day of Cato or of Cicero, was caught from the hardy Stoical conception. Indeed, the domi nant tone of philosophical thought in the imperial city, when Christianity first was preached there, was peculiarly Stoical ; and the doctrines and precepts of Zeno and Cleanthes had an accept- * "Civit. Dei"; V.: 18. ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 253 ance among the stalwart and self-contained Eomans wider and readier than they ever had reached among the vivacious and pleasure-loving Greeks. There was to the end a ' party of virtue,' represented by Burrhus, Helvidius, Priscus, Thrasea and others, represented in his writings most memorably by Seneca, which resisted and would restrain the fierce currents of profligacy, swift and swelling, amid which they stood. Seneca wrote in a strain so lofty, so morally wise, so nearly Christian, that it was afterward commonly thought, as I have in timated before, that he must have gathered his maxims from the Scriptures, and have had correspondence with St. Paul. Some of the illustrious Christian Fathers, as Tertullian, Lactantius, St, Augustine, quote his words with approbation. Jerome speaks of him as ' our own Seneca.' * He is said to have been quoted, as one of the Fathers, at the Council of Trent. He was cer tainly so referred to in the Council of Tours, in the sixth cen tury. And whoever carefully reads the precepts, of which he presents so many, so tersely, wUl be often surprised at their almost verbal agreement with the New Testament. The natural impression certainly is of one who had heard, from slaves or others, Christian teachings. So Cicero declared that no one had attained the true philosophy who had not learned that all wick edness should be shunned, though hidden from the eyes of gods and men ; and the younger Pliny, in his subsequent time, eulo gized a friend as one who did nothing for exhibition, all for con science' sake, seeking the reward of virtue in itself, not at all in the praise of men. He teaches the duty of forbearance and for giveness ; as Cicero had recognized the beauty of humanity, and forbidden the severe resenting of injuries. Even Horace, the practiced and dainty man of society, describes, you remember, the just and steadfast man, with his firm mind undaunted amid the crash of worlds, and calls him alone happy, not who possesses much, but who knows how to use the gifts of the gods, who can suffer poverty with patience, who dreads a wrong deed more than death, who would die without fear for friends or country. t * " Noster Seneca " : Adv. Jovin. I. : 30. t L. III. : Car. 3 : 1-7. L. IV. : Car. 9 : 45-52. 254 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY The subsequent teaching of Plutarch, that virtue is the health of the soul — answering to the earlier teaching of Plato, that justice is in the mind what physical health and strength are in the body, and that injustice is analogous to sickness and impotence — this was in perfect harmony with the teachings which were honored at Eome by the elect spirits at the time when the first Christian congregations hid in the shadows of lanes or of catacombs. Phi losophy, in fact, was fast becoming absorbed in ethics. The house-philosopher, to train in virtue, became an attendant on a family of wealth as commonly as the slave-physician ; and, at the last, philosophical lectures were almost as prominent in Eoman society as they have been in any later community, while the cynics — ' the monks of Stoicism,' as they have been called — per vaded the empire, in evident rags, and in presumed wisdom. It was not, therefore, by reason of any peculiar rottenness of nature that Eoman civilization had come to be what it certainly was in the day of St. Paul, nor by reason of any want of such precepts and rules, and moral incentives, tending toward virtue, as philosophy could supply. Yet what had that civilization be come, in the moral habit of the society which it trained, and in spite of all elaborate and strenuous conservative forces? We know what the only answer is, though one naturaUy shrinks from telling the story. The gluttony practiced, and the fantastic indulgence of appe tite, were simply staggering to the modern imagination. Juve nal might well say that men devoured patrimonies at a meal.* Not only were hundreds of dollars sometimes paid for a fish ; dishes were served of the brains of peacocks, and of nightingales' tongues. All regions were ransacked for strange luxuries for the table. Vitellius was credited in the rumor of his time with having consumed between thirty and forty millions of dollars in our money, in eating and entertaining, in about seven months. Apicius was said to have dissolved pearls in his wine, to make it more costly ; and he is also said by Seneca to have killed himself, after consuming in eating an immense property, together with * Sat. I. : 138. ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 255 revenues, and presents of princes, because he was afraid that, having only $400,000 left, he should die of hunger.* Seneca wrote : ' You may not wonder that diseases are numberless : count the cooks ! All study is at an end. There is solitude in the schools of rhetoric and philosophy ; but how famous are the kitchens ! ' Buffoons, and dancing girls, attended on the feasts. They closed in the most licentious revelry ; and whoever would have the image of one of them distinctly before him may find it in the fearful picture by Couture of the Eoman Decadence, still, I think, in the gaUery of the Luxembourg, and reproduced in occasional prints. But gluttony, or eccentric extravagance at the table, was a vice so feeble in comparison with others that it might have passed almost without notice. The fiercer and fouler sensual passions associated with it made simple gluttony nearly respect able. In the thirst for incessant change and zest of licentious pleasures marriage was despised, and was so often avoided that Augustus sought to arrest the tendency, destructive to the state, by imposing taxes and pecuniary disabilities on those unmarried. Yet the marriage-bonds were as easy to be loosed as they were tardy in being assumed. A form of marriage became common whose sanctions were so slight that divorce was easy, on any im pulse : so that Seneca could speak of the women who reckoned the years by the number of their husbands ; and Juvenal, of those who were divorced before the nuptial garlands had faded, and whose chief distinction it was to have had eight husbands in five autumns ; while Martial founds one of his epigrams on the almost incredible story of one who had married within a month her tenth husband. Even Martial himself, who was certainly troubled with few scruples, had to speak of her as an outright adulteress, under cover of the law, and to confess that an undisguised prostitute would be to him less offensive. Men married dissolute women for the purpose of divorcing them, while securing the dowry which would be for feited by their unehastity. Wives were even interchanged be- * Consol. ad Helv. X. 256 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY tween friends. The punctilious Marcus Cato, of Caesar's time, gave his wife to Hortensius, himself assisting at the marriage, and, after the death of the latter, married her again as a wealthy widow ; while Plutarch only intimates that it might be a subject for discussion whether he did quite right in the matter* Women of high rank even sought to be enrolled as common prostitutes, that they might be unhindered in their lusts. The very temples became the resorts of lust. Minucius Felix indicates that in his time the chambers of the temple-keepers saw more licen tiousness than the brothels themselves ; and such enormous ex cesses of sensuality were familiar in life as had had no precedent, as have had — thank God ! — no repetition. The gods themselves were appealed to as supreme examples of licentious appetite, giving authority to the like among men ; and many who loved their wives and daughters might have repeated the outcry said by Plutarch to have been made by a spectator in the Athenian theatre, after a song in honor of Diana : ' May you be cursed with a daughter like her ' ! No frightf ullest periods of licentious ness in Europe, in profligate courts, or in loose and promiscuous sea-faring populations, have approached in utter and shameless sensuality the period of the empire when the new religion, by apostle, evangelist, and devoted disciple, began to be preached in it. The records of the Court of Catharine Second, or the Eussian Elizabeth — one might almost say of the Papal Court of Alexander Sixth — would look nearly white beside the memorials of the wives of Claudius. The very climax would seem to have been reached when Hadrian built a city, erected temples, set up statues, and instituted games, in honor of Antinous, for whom he was generally reputed to have had an unnatural passion ; when a star was named for him, and he was enrolled among the gods. Meantime, of course, home-life, as it had existed, among large classes ceased to be ; and most distinctly among those who had seemed most fortunately placed. The magnificent mansions, built and furnished at a cost which strikes modern lavishness dumb — filled with bronzes, mosaics, costliest marbles, Babylonian * Lives : " Cato the Younger ": Boston ed., 1859, Vol. IV. : pp. 395, 423. ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 257 tapestries, carved ivories, chairs and couches of ebony and pearl, ornaments of gold, vessels of amber, murrhine vases, Alexan drian glass, wanton pictures — these were not for domestic pleas ure, or for individual study or labor, but for ostentation, and the fullest indulgence of ambition or lust. Slaves were ready for any service, however detestable, or however atrocious ; and the most extravagant expedients were adopted to give some relish of vivacity and distinction to the sated and monotonous life of luxury : as when Nero's Poppa_a led about a train of asses in foal whose milk should give her cosmetic baths, and had the mules drawing her carriage shod with gold. All Hfe with the wealthier had become a glaring show and revel. The men of moral feeling, of intellectual desires, or of a generous public spirit, of whom there were still many in Eome, could only staud aside, watching with bitterness this infernal procession of all the lusts — always in peril of being caught in it, or of being hurled by it into the unexplored abysm of Death. As with patricians, so equally with the people. To feast and to be amused had come to be their final ambition. The desire for artificial excitement incessantly increased, as all impulse of no ble purpose passed more completely out of life ; and that desire sought and fouud its Eoman answer in exhibitions which Chris tendom shudders to remember, which it hardly indeed can clearly recognize as having ever been possible in the world. Pantomimes and buffoonery of course took the place of the deli cate comedy or the serious tragedy of the earlier time. The scenes presented were full of adulteries, and amorous intrigues. The pimp and the courtesan in Plautus' plays had a popularity which Terence could not rival. The most frightful obscenities added relish to the performance; and the ballet-dancers danced nearly or wholly naked upon the stage. Not even thus, however, were thoroughly to be stirred or fully to be sated the dulled sensibiHties of those who then ruled the Eoman world. Public games, and chariot races, into which entered the element of danger, were more nearly on a level with their intense thirst for savage stimulation ; and so these, intro duced two centuries before Christ, rapidly became a popular passion. Augustus surpassed all before him in the frequency, 17 258 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY variety, and magnificence of his spectacles.* Titus gave a fes tival extending over a hundred days ; and Trajan one of more than four months. Domitian crowded a hundred races into a day, and introduced young girls as contestants.f The attendant crowds were so enormous that lives were not unfrequently sacri ficed in the crush. Of course, however, no games or races of the old Greek type could meet that demand for inordinate excitement which grows always by what it consumes, and is more insatiate after every in dulgence ; and so the awful gladiatorial exhibitions became the really eminent feature in the social and popular life of Eome. The Colosseum, which contained eighty thousand spectators, is even now, as has been said, ' the most imposing and the most characteristic relic of Pagan Eome.' But the Colosseum was small, compared with the Great Circus, which in Pliny's time contained two hundred and sixty thousand seats,:]: and which finally is said to have been made to accommodate nearly half a million. There were gathered the representatives of illustrious families, senators, judges, philosophers, poets, ladies of highest rank and breeding in magnificent apparel, vestal virgins, in their sacred dress, in seats of honor — while around were gay tapestries covering the stone benches and balustrades, with festooned flow ers, and shining metallic statues of the gods, while above parti colored awnings sheltered from the sun, and while below went on the hideous unimaginable work of cruelty and death. In each of twelve spectacles, given by one of the _Ediles, from a hundred and fifty to five hundred pairs of gladiators appeared, to fight to the death with net, dagger, lance, and trident, or with straight or curved blades, ground to the finest edge and point. At the triumph of Aurelian, later, eight hundred pairs of gladi ators fought ; ten thousand men during the games of Trajan. Sometimes female gladiators fought, sometimes dwarfs, as under Domitian ; § and the condemned, not always if Christians, as by Nero, were sometimes burned in shirts of pitch to illuminate ?Suetonius: Oct. August:, xliii. t Suetonius : Domit. : iv. \ Nat. Hist. : L. xxxvi. : 24. §Statius: Silva.; I.: Car. 6 : 57-64, " Audax ordo pumilonum." ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 259 the gardenB, or were hung upon crosses, and left to be torn by famished bears before the populace. The combats of animals, with each other or with men, were always refreshing to this hor rible thirst for cruel excitement. Criminals, dressed in the skins of wild beasts, were exposed to tortured and maddened bulls. Under Nero, four hundred tigers fought with elephants and bulls. At the dedication of the Colosseum, by Titus, five thou sand animals were killed. The rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the stag, the giraffe, even the crocodile and the serpent, were introduced in what Tertullian fitly named 'this Devil's pomp';* and there is scarcely one element of horror, which can be con ceived in man's wildest dreams, which was not presented as a matter of luxury to make complete the ' Eoman holiday,' at the time when Christianity entered the capital. Friedlaender de clares that the people were seized with an actual mania, in all ranks, of either sex, for these terrific and ghastly spectacles. A man representing Hercules was burned alive. Platforms were constructed to drop in pieces at a signal, and launch those upon them into cages of devouring wild beasts. Naked women were bound by their hah" to the horns of wild bulls, that the lust and cruelty of the savage spectators might be gratified together, f When even such unspeakable horrors were not enough, great sea-battles were arranged, as by Caesar, by Augustus, memorably by Claudius, who sent two fleets, with nineteen thousand men upon them, to a desperate contest on the Lake Fucinus, for the mere amusement of the throngs of spectators covering the sur rounding shores. Domitian, as Suetonius tells us, tried hard to surpass even this. The terrible influence extended widely over the provinces. Men admired and envied the incomparable hor rors of the Eoman Colosseum, and sought in a humbler way to repeat them. Eemains of amphitheatres still confront us, dis tributed in the regions then subjected to the Empire : as at Aries and Nismes in France, at Treves on the Moselle, at tha Istrian Pola, at Syracuse and other cities in Sicily, at Pompeii, Paestum, Capua, Verona, and elsewhere in Italy. Yet only * De Spectaculis, rv . t See Renan : " Hibbert Lectures " : London ed., 1880 : pp. 86-9. 260 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY those built of stone, or quarried out of hills, have survived the turbulent changes of the centuries. Friedlaender gives a detailed list of nearly a hundred and twenty amphitheatres known to haVe existed in Europe, besides those" in Asia, or in Africa;* and indications are said to remain at Caerleon, Bath, Dorches ter, and elsewhere in England, that the spectacles, if not the vast buildings for their exhibition, had been carried by the Eoman legions into Britain. At the amphitheatre in Treves Constantine himself, in his earlier career, at the impulse of those still surviving and terrible passions which Christianity had to encounter, twice exhibited vast spectacles : exposing un armed Frankish chieftains and soldiers to the fury of wild beasts, till these were so utterly glutted with blood as to refuse longer to devour, and then commanding the prisoners to fight with weapons of battle, and to kill each other as gladiators. I cannot further unroll before you the infamous and almost incredible history. You would feel as if I were asking you to look into the present and palpable circles of Dante's Inferno. But the thing to be carefully noted is this : that all this was a development, unique and awful, but entirely natural, in the so ciety then foremost in the world. The absence of any moral purpose, the failure of even political opportunity after the Em pire was established, the rush upon Eome of mingled populations from all parts of the earth, the vast and sudden accumulations of wealth from the conquest of ancient and cultured nations, the want of any clear sense of a coming existence, and the con sequent desire to crowd the present with all possible pleasures — • these conspired to give to the savage and sensual passions which there broke loose the most tremendous exhibition which the world has yet seen. And philosophy stood before the outburst, not speechless altogether, but certainly wholly ineffective for its restraint. Indeed, philosophy hardly condemned, save with bated breath, these scenes in the arena. Cicero admits, in the Tusculan Questions, that by some, as in his time conducted, ,they were regarded as inhuman, but he adds his own opinion- that ' when the condemned fight with the sword, no better disci- ?"Mceurs Romanies" : Paris od., 1867. Tom. H. : pp. 303-311. ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 261 pline against suffering and death could possibly be presented to the eye.' * The younger Pliny, cultivated and humane, distinctly praised them, as tending to inspire an honorable courage, to make men regard wounds as glorious, and to hold death in dis dain, f Seneca reproved them, to his honor be it said, with all the energy that Stoicism permitted ; % but Juvenal hints no dis approval, caustic and unsparing as his satire is ; and neither Tacitus nor Suetonius enters any protest against what of such facts they were called to record. Suetonius distinctly ranks the atrocities against Christians among the more praiseworthy acts of Nero. Ovid, you know, gives instruction to those who are present at the spectacles, women as well as men, to improve any temporary intervals of the games in amorous converse, so natu rally was an utter sensuality of spirit associated with the cruelty expressed and nurtured by these astounding and signifi cant spectacles. It had become only literally true, what Livy said, who died while Jesus still tarried at Nazareth, that Eome, which had become great by her virtues, 'had at last reached a point where men could neither bear their vices nor the remedies for them.' As the elder Pliny said, ' all liberal arts had fallen to decay, and only those of avarice were culti vated ; servility alone conducted to profit, and men preferred to foster the vices of others rather than their own good qualities ; a large part of mankind had come to think drunkenness the one prize of life, and to feel that the purpose for which they had been begotten was to drain vast draughts of stupefying wines from lascivious goblets.'§ Juvenal bore his terrible testimony in words which have since been famous and familiar, that ' there will be nothing further which posterity may add to our evU manners ; those coming after can only reproduce our desires and deeds. Every vice stands already at its topmost summit.' ** The dreadful demoralization was not among the rich alone ; it was in all classes, and the very philosophers were sneered at by the people as only more greedy and licentious than them selves on a fit opportunity. Troplong says, not too strongly, * Tuscul. Qusest. : IL: 17. t Panegyr. : Cap. xxxm. \ Ep. ad Lucil. vu. § Nat. Hist., xiv. : 1, 28. ** Sat. T. : 147-9. 262 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY that " society was profoundly gangrened."* It was not a transient debasement of manners. It was, as sceptical scholars have ad mitted, a radical and permanent degradation of the spirit, from which Mr. Lecky earnestly affirms that the distinctive Eoman people have never recovered. He does not paint the fact too strongly when he speaks of the pages of Suetonius as remaining ' an eternal witness of the abysses of depravity, the hideous and intolerable cruelty, the hitherto unimagined extravagances of nameless lust, that were then manifested on the Palatine.' f The people were simply on fire of hell, with all lust for what ever would gratify an insatiable craving for viciousness and for blood ; while the character of the emperors was often such that the dreadful words in which Tacitus sums up the spirit of their reigns from Nero forward, is the truest picture : ' Virtue was a sentence of Death.' Even Eenan testifies that 'in Eome every vice flaunted itself with revolting cynicism,' and that 'the public games, especially, had introduced a frightful corruption '; though he maintains, and no doubt correctly, that domestic virtue sur vived to some extent in the provinces.:]: Uhlhorn seems to me to state the fact with simple exactness when he says that " the general conclusion must be that the heathen world was ethically as well as religiously at the point of dissolution ; that it had be come as bankrupt in morals as in faith ; and that there was no power at hand from which restoration could proceed."§ Augus tine's searching judgment was that " dire corruption, more terri ble than any invader, had taken violent possession, not of the walls of the city, but of the mind of the state." ** Philosophy tried to insert better forces ; but it was like trying to rear a fortress with paper walls, cemented by a vanishing breath. It had no power to compact and bind what was sound in society, still less to build into virtuous beauty what there was debased. The honest and strong hearts which still remained, * De l'lnfluence du Curistianisme : p. 214. f " Hist, of European Morals " : New York ed., 1870 : Vol. I. : pp. 276, 280. X " Hibbert Lectures '' : London ed., 1880 : p. 23. § " Conflict of Christianity '' : New York ed., 1879 : p. 142. ** Bp. cxxxvni. [to Marcell.] c. 16. ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 263 among men and women — like Helvia, mother of Seneca ; like Arria, the wonderful wife of Paetus, or Fannia her grand daughter, or the wife of Macrinus, of all of whom Pliny writes ; or like the men whom he also portrays, grave, cheerful, hospita ble, faithful — these could no more avail against the tumultuous flood of iniquity than a man amid the rapids of Niagara can check their current, or than one caught in the suck of a whirl pool can fight the force which pulls him downward. At a later day, Marcus Aurelius tried with his might to reform the empire, without Christianity ; and his effort would have been equally successful if he had tried by laws and soldiers to push the planet into another ethereal path. There was no power, of philosophical teaching, of ceremonial religion, of all-regulating government, of all-criticising society — there was no power known to heathen ism, of lovely art, historic recollection, sonorous eloquence, sting ing satire — which could avail in that momentous and awful crisis. It seemed as if the disastrous influence of that epoch in history must continue to sweep on, pitiless and destroying, over the centuries which still were to come, and over the lands in which stood preeminent the imperial and conquering name of Eome. Matthew Arnold has truly said : " On that hard Pagan world, disgust And secret loathing fell ; Deep weariness, and sated lust, Made human life a hell" I The fury of that iniquitous license, the steam and the stain of its infernal exhalations, are almost as palpable as if they had been things of to-day, to one who reads with discerning though well nigh incredulous eyes the ancient records. Against this radical, frightful, enthroned wickedness, eame then the unrecognized power of Christianity : a new, unlawful, despised religion, coming out of the East, and undertaking to change and vitally renew the moral Hfe of the capital and the empire. If ever a claim to power seemed absurd, that was the one. A child offering to stop with his breath the blast of the tornado, and to hurl it upward into the air, would hardly have seemed more impertinent in his challenge than did, to the ac- 264 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY complished philosophers of Eome, this new religion, in the work which it undertook. The Jews had long been suspected and hated, in the Eoman Eepublic, and later in the Empire, as insubordinate in their po Htical attitude, contemptuous or hostile in their religious posi tion, unsocial in their manners, greedy and unscrupulous in their commercial relations. Juvenal struck at them with his sarcastic and sharp-edged satire.* Imperial proclamations exiled or slew them, as if they had been noxious animals. Popular animosity took occasion of any public calamity to denounce and destroy them. More than once they were driven out of Eome, ban ished to islands, swept with pursuing swords out of Italy, by the empire which had conquered their country and capital, but against which stood, erect and fierce, theh" unsubdued wills. In this vehement hatred against the Jews the Christians of course shared at the outset, being to the pagan world only a new and irritating sect under the detested Mosaic system. But soon came the time when the Jews hated and cast out the Christians with as fierce an anger as they themselves, in the worst of times, had ever experienced. The most fearful curses were pronounced upon them, three times a day, in the public synagogues, as trai torous renegades ; and the separation of those who still observed the ancient Law from those who had come to larger light, be came as distinct as it has since been, in any time. At the same time, the familiar hostility of the empire toward the Jews was heated to a double intensity against these recent per verse schismatics, whom even their own nation rejected. They were aggressive : with a missionary zeal which sharply contrasted the previous intermittent religious activities of those from whom they now were severed. They criticised, without sharing, the cruelty and lust which were nearly omnipresent. They offered no sacrifices, joined no processions, burned incense to no em peror; and they expected the destruction of the empire, and warned the most polished and eminent around them that tre mendous punishments waited for them unless they turned from their elaborate and sumptuous wickedness. Whether they were * Sat. XIV. : 96-105 : et al. ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 26. right or not in their doctrine, they at least had the strongest conviction of its truth, and they uttered it in words which smote and stung like tongues of flame. It was not unnat ural, therefore, that they should come to be generally re garded, as Tacitus indicates, as ' haters of the human race '; * that the cry, ' The Christians to the lions!' should exhibit the impulse of popular fury whenever calamities impended or fell ; that the vehement scorn of men like Celsus, if directed against both Jew and Christian, should fall on the latter with fiercest force ; and that persecutions against them should rage, not only in occasional frantic outbursts of a tyranny like Nero's, but un der the reigns of emperors like Trajan, or like Marcus Aurelius. If ever moral teachers stood at an utter disadvantage in the effort to make their instructions effective, certainly the Chris tians of the empire did so ; and it cannot cease to be matter of wonder, to those who look only on the human side of historical movements, that they were so far successful as they were. But they had, at least,, a noble system, of pure, incisive, and mandatory ethics, with which to work. According to their con ception of things, they had a Master, of living and sovereign spiritual power, behind and above them. They believed that the reason and conscience in men, to which he had spoken whUe manifested on earth, must still respond to the appeal of his word ; and they expected, in spite of all apparent discourage ment, that that supreme word would make its way, however ob scene and fierce the times, wherever were hearts still existing in the world which were in a measure, as Tertullian said, ' naturally Christian.' The Biblical morality of the Jews had always been higher than that of the nations, in other things more advanced, whose seats of empire were around them. Nothing of the Egyptian, the Babylonian, the Phenician licentiousness, had been counte nanced by their Law, however strange influences had now and again been imported from these into their practice ; and the doc trine of God which was paramount among them, with the mighty overshadowing commands of the rule understood to be * Annal. XV. : 44. 266 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY from Him, effectively counteracted, in particulars at least, and for considerable periods of time, the tendencies to iniquity which in other religions were tolerated not only, but were often clothed with religious consecration. But now had come a law at once ampler and simpler than the old, more intimate, more spiritual, and with far more vivid and admonitory sanctions, through the teaching of a Master who claimed singular preeminence, and who, as those who accepted him thought, had illustrated his claim by marvellous works. This law revised, interpreted, and surpassed the ancient rules. It insisted on utter pureness in the heart, and would com promise with no evil, of purpose or desire, of wandering thought, or even of indifference to spiritual things. It was an essential part and power in what they held to be a. vast, unique, Divine religion, which had spoken to men with authority from the heavens. As the Sermon on the Mount, in its finer penetration into the hidden life of motives, in its wider sweep over the rela tions of men in society, stood towardtthe Decalogue — not con tradicting or annulling that, but under-running, pervading, over topping it, with deeper and more celestial significance — so stood the whole moral system of Christianity to that which had pre ceded and prepared the way for it. It was pure as the Ught. It had no more tolerance for evil, anywhere, than light has for darkness. It searched and exposed the secrets of the soul : mak ing sin more awful because committed by one in nature divine, against a God whose inmost Ufe was holy Love. Nothing was allowed by it, no genius, or learning, or power, or renown, to take the place of that vital and crystal purity within, wliich was as the brightness of God's face. Nor was this simply an ideal system, proposed to men for their moral admiration, or their unimpassioned intellectual as sent. That was the tenor and utmost reach of the various phi losophical or ethical schemes developed in society. But this was a Law : obedience to which was declared indispensable, essential to worth, declarative of character, decisive of destiny. Chris tianity had an end to accomplish which the ethnic religions never had sought. They, as I have said, had had no outlook toward the formation of nobler character. The Eoman religion, ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 267 for example, had been not a system of doctrinal principles for men to believe, or a code of morals for them to obey, but a com pact of contrivances, an elaborate ancient public art, by which it was hoped to avert Divine jealousy, or to attract Divine favor toward either pubHc or personal enterprise. So little had that religion ever sought to accomplish in regard to the moral life of the people, that the sense of any ethical efficacy residing in a system of Faith had failed to assert itself ; and the heathen his torians, of the earlier centuries after Christ, did not suspect the transcendent energy which under this new form of religion was beginning already to restrain and renew the spirit of the em pire. The brevity and infrequency of their references to it are only thus to be explained; with the fact that when they did refer to it, it was always as a strange, unaccountable superstition. But character was the essential thing, under Christianity. It portrayed this, as it ought to be. It demanded it, with a per emptory, with what seemed an intolerant, tone of authority. It made men's entire future experience depend on its possession, and brought the unmeasured pressure of celestial motives to prompt to its attainment. . And so it smote the slumbering con science as the clangor of a thousand trumpets in the air could hardly have smitten the startled sense. Not content, even, with delineating this character in words, however glowing with inward lustre, it showed it iu vivid realization, in the personal Head of the religion: in whom charity and power, both passing the limits of historical parallel, were declared to have been inseparably joined ; in whom no trace of the evil had appeared which infected society ; who suf fered, though sovereign ; who was patient, amid incessant provo cation; who claimed for himself the highest place, and the largest authority over human souls, but who yet gave his life to win the wandering, to enlighten the obscured, to save the con demned. According to the early Christian conception, this un matched character had appeared in the world, at once to glorify and to condemn it, in him whom his disciple, loved as a brother while revering him as their Lord. No matter now when the Gospels were written, or when the oral tradition pre-supposed became compact and current, this conception of the Christ was 268 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY certainly in the Church when Paul's principal epistles were writ ten ; and it had been there, as appears from those epistles, from the beginning. They who early followed the Lord certainly be lieved what Athanase Ooquerel eloquently said, in answer to Strauss : that ' Jesus is the ideal of virtue ; so perfect that all the efforts of the most delicate conscience, the most fertile imag ination, the most expansive charity, cannot add to it the least trait '; and they also believed, with the same enthusiastic and untrammeled preacher, that the ideal thus exhibited is a practi cal ideal ; that the Lord had clothed himself with a perfection proportional to our faculties ; and that while we admire, extol, and worship, we are also under supreme obligation, through the help which he offers, to aspire to resemble him.* In order to such personal reproduction of the Christ in one's spiritual Hfe, faith in him was demanded and inspired — a wholly new and transfiguring force ; not a mental assent to conceded propositions, this had been familiar ; not an unloving submis sion of the will to a power above it, that too had been common; but faith, confiding, affectionate, self-consecrating, in a Hving Teacher, Saviour, Lord, ascended to the heavens, but still as per sonal as when on the earth — this was what Christianity began with, as the essential primal element in any true experience of its power. In this was freedom, fervor of feeling, the joyful con sciousness of inward sympathy with the Divine. It had hope in it, gladness, a certain exulting passion of the soul; and by it that soul, thus united to the Master, should be inwardly charged with his purifying energy, should feel a flash of God's life within it, should rise to even ecstatic victory, and should go into the world, as the Lord himself had been sent by the Father, to illu minate and renew it. Under the light, and in the impulse, of this central and sovereign principle of faith in a loved and reigning Master in the heavens, a wholly new conception became common of the nobleness and delight of such a service as that which he offered. It was recognized as adding wings, not weights, to the consecrated spirit; as freeing, not fettering; as infusing such bounteous and inexhaustible energy into spirit and will as * See Thomson's Bampton Lectures : London ed., 1853 : pp. 283-5. ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 269 would carry one, almost without consciousness of effort, through hardest contest, to the height of attainments before unconceived. This was certainly illustrated multitudes of times by disciples whose names are lost from history, as the brightness of their particular careers has been merged in the galaxy of the first Christian centuries. They might honestly say with Octavius, in the famous dialogue of Minucius Felix : ' We may not speak great things, but we live them.' By none, surely, could it have been shown more nobly than by Paul: the independent, in trepid, and heroic apostle, who yet gloried in subscribing him self ' the slave of Christ,' and whose joy it was to bear in his body the marks of stone and scourge and chain which showed his triumphant subjection to the Lord. There was in all this, in him and in others, a something unparalleled in human experience : an electric flame, not quenching but surpassing all common fires ; a celestial energy, contrasting the most vital and forcible spirit be fore known among men. Its intensity, and its property of rapid dis tribution, were simply incalculable. All former precedents ceased to apply, when elements so novel and so transcendent entered into the problem of whether society could be reformed. There was no momentary doubt or pause on the part of disciples, who shared in the temper because sharing in the faith of him who thought he had seen the Master on the way to Damascus. They did not even take up their work with timidity, caution, or prudential re serve. It was with a glad victorious energy, with a step that echoed the JubUate, that they went upon their errand : uot ashamed of the Gospel of Christ ; ready to preach it at Ephesus, or Corinth, or in the front of Eoman pride ; anticipating pains, but expecting them soon to give place to palms ; looking for re sistance, but never afraid of it, and assured that in the end it must yield before him whose very cross had now become their mightiest instrument, in whose supremacy, to their thought at least, lay the hope of the world, and for whom it was the su preme desire of their triumphing souls to serve and to suffer. They knew that they had a vast system behind them, of law, prophecy, rite, song, all which they felt had pointed forward to the coming of the Christ. They believed that he had appeared iu the world, heralded by wonders, manifest in miracles, Ulus- 270 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY trious on the mount, crowned in the ascension, more powerful than monarchs, more winning and tender than any friend. They thought that he had sent a wonderful energy upon the apostles, to turn their cowardice into courage, and to unfold in them a moral preeminence before unsuspected. They did not doubt that he could again interpose, when needed, to change antagonists into disciples, and to make the intensest zeal for antiquity obey and serve him. And the work before them, in converting individuals or in purifying peoples, with the help of his grace it seemed nowise impossible. It mattered little, before the impact of his word and the might of his Spirit, how vile and fierce was the temper of sin in any heart, or how tenacious the chains of its habit over life. They saw that temper most terribly iUustrated in the murder of the Lord, in which Jew and Gentile, Eoman governor, legionary soldier, had equally had part. But they saw as well, or thought they saw, that his murderers themselves had felt the impression of a something unequalled and subduing in his death, as connected with what followed it, and that many of them, pricked to the heart, had accepted his rule. "And in spite of all the energy of sin, and all the temptations which re newed this from without, they thought that each one, if appealed to aright, might be led to turn in penitence and faith to him in whose coming the world was illustrious, to him by whose future coming for Judgment its history should be finished. An influence from himself was promised and assured, to their apprehension, to accompany their appeal, and to give Divine suc cor to those who should hear this, in their struggle for holiness ; while the tremendous stimulants to such struggle which came from the discovery professedly made by the new religion of the realms beyond the grave, and of the relations declared to sub sist between character here and recompense there — these were obvious to their minds, and had prodigious power for others. Infidel historians have admitted the unique and capital force of this majestic and vivid appeal from the eternities, breaking forth upon men, and have ranked it chiefest among the instruments by which the empire at last was subdued. Each warning had its correlative promise ; and the exultation of Christian hope was uttered in the song last on the lips of the dying believer, in the ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 271 words ol final assurance and victory inscribed on his cell in the catacomb-crypts. Men had, therefore, by degrees, to recognize the fact that a new character had appeared in the world, among men like them selves: a character in which gentleness, sweetness, and saint liness of demeanor were combined with enthusiasm, and inflexible zeal ; in which was a joy that blended inseparably with supreme self-devotion, and a conquering hope that no enmities could crush. It was an evangel in human life ; a discovery of some thing transcendent in the spirit ; a Hving revelation of forces supernal. The gentler virtues had not been unhonored in the old civilization. Euripides had celebrated the beauty of them, in his admired and musical verse, long before Christianity appeared. At the very time when the Eoman women had largely come to be what the historians and satirists describe, in the passages I have cited, on the tombs of some of them were placed inscriptions by those who survived them, full of tender affection and exquisite pathos, commemorating their modesty, sweetness, gentleness, their prudence in affairs, and their affection for home.* And at a time not long subsequent to this, Plutarch finely illustrated whUe nobly commending the same class of virtues. But never had they had such honor in the world as when Jesus showed them exemplified in himself, and put the whole pressure of his religion upon the inspiration of such in others ; as when Paul wrote to the rough and hardy Galatian herdsmen, sprung from the fiercest fighting tribes, that ' the fruits of the Spirit ' are those deUcate and almost feminine graces, ' love, joy, peace, long-suf fering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance '; f as when Peter, or some one writing in his name, led out as figures in the Christian chorus, surpassing all that had ever been seen on Grecian stage, ' faith, courage, knowledge, self-restraint, pa tient endurance, godliness of spirit, brotherly kindness, and finally charity.' X A certain glad and stately modesty, affectionate yet reserved, among women especially, replaced the old frivoHty and license. * See Northcote ¦ " Epitaphs of Catacombs " • pp. 69-70. t Galatians v. 22-23. % 3 Peter »¦ 5~7- 272 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY Yet consecration in them was only more eager and complete than in men ; and the wrist accustomed to bracelets threw them off, according not more to the instruction of teachers than to the joyful impulse of the heart, that it might be readier for the bard chain ; the neck hung with emeralds and pearls unclasped, disdained, and laid them aside, that it might give room, if need be, to the broadsword. Not thus, only, were previous ornaments of luxury discarded, but to furnish the means for ministering more amply to the wants of the needy. For a new charity was now in the world : a law of benevolence, enjoined by Christ, il lustrated in him, and made obligatory upon his disciples, obedi ence to which became a delight under the impulse of his Spirit. There had been no such systematic benevolence, either in ex tent or in profound and animating spiritual impulse, in Greece, or in Eome. Neither the art of the one, nor the power of the other, had taken from it any softer illumination. At Athens had been, as I have said, an altar to Pity ; but without worshipper, priest, or offering. In later times, a provision had been made there for orphans, and for the poor ; but no eager or general enthusiasm had been awakened by it, and it rather recorded than relieved the suffering which it recognized. At Eome were oc casional spasms of sympathy, when multitudes had been killed, and other multitudes had been left destitute, by some unusual calamity. Imperial largesses, of money or public banquets, had on special occasions been given to the populace ; while regular distributions of corn and of oil contributed to keep citizens alive without work, and to make them more contented with the gov ernment by which such supplies were provided. But the prevalent tendencies of the ethnic civilizations had been to restrict and localize affection, and to discourage sympathy. The popular temper had been too hard, and too intent on in cessant excitement, to leave room for gentle and generous af fection ; and the Stoical philosophy, the best of the time, even as elaborated by one like Seneca, declared sympathetic pity a vice of the mind, and that benefits were only rendered wisely when rendered as a matter of general equity. But the law of Christianity was to love all men, especially those of the household of faith ; and this, as not only proclaimed by the hps ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 273 but realized in the life of many, broke as a sunbeam out of heaven, through darkness and cloud, on the ancient world. Philosophers had sometimes suggested the sovereignty of the humane sentiments as a remote and delightful ideal ; but what has been truly called by one of their admirers their ' reasoned and passionless philanthropy ' had had no power to solace sor row, to relieve labor, to comfort the poor, to inspire or quicken despondent souls. Now came a law of charity to mankind : be lieved to have been incarnated in the Christ, warmly welcomed and ardently realized by his followers ; which sought the weary, the needy, and the sick ; which knew no bounds of race or tongue, which prayed for even the judge who sentenced, and the savage executioner whose blade struck the blow. When the Archdea con Laurentius was called upon by the prefect of the city for the treasures of the Eoman church, he presented under the colonnades the poor, the crippled, and the sick, whom tins had sheltered and nourished. It was thought so stinging a sarcasm that roasting alive was not a punishment too severe. In the middle of the third century the Eoman bishop wrote of more than fifteen hundred persons, the needy, the suffering, and the widows, cared for and nourished by the church in the capital.* When pestilence raged, the Christians cared for the heathen sick, so far as they could soothed the dying who knew not Christ, and with hands soon to be fettered or burned buried the dead. The words which were said to have been on the lips of the first revered martyr, in the hour of his death, were often on their lips, as they faced the sword, the cross, or the stake : " Lord, lay not this sin to their charge ! " f The moral realms of the ancient world were thus compelled to recognize the fact that a something Divine in spirit and life had suddenly appeared, to break the long and strong contexture of selfish customs. Vivid as lightning, yet soft and sweet as summer-airs, the new influence streamed on the world ; and its transfiguring energy wrought, with accelerating progress, to majestic effects. Eepresentatives of noble families began to accept this mysterious religion, so full of tenderness and of con- * Eusebius: Eccl. Hist. VI.: 43. t Acts vii. 60. 18 274 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY quering hope, so manifestly nobler and more transforming than had before been known among men. The catacombs show that members of the Pomponian gens, and probably of the Flavian, were among them. Domitian, during the first Christian cen tury, condemned his cousin, Flavius Clemens, to death, and the wife of Clemens, his own niece, Flavia Domitilla, to exile, on the charge of atheism, which was the common accusation against Christians. In the time of Hadrian, distinguished philosophers became Christians, as Aristeides, and Quadratus ; a little later, Justin Martyr, with orators, lawyers, and men in repute for ex cellent learning. Hadrian is reported by Lampridius to have thought of enthroning the Founder of Christianity among the gods of the empire, though dissuaded from doing it. And how ever doubtful this may be, it is certain that Alexander Severus kept in his oratory an image of Christ, with those of Orpheus, Abraham, and ApoUonius. The despised ' religion of weavers, shoemakers, and slaves,' had at last by its ethics, as well as by- its surpassing declarations and imperial doctrines, impressed the empire ; and the very persecutions which then burst forth against it remain as the appalling demonstration of its exciting and commanding effectiveness. There is something in these before which the imagination, re placing them in particulars as well as in mass in the lurid pic ture of ancient society, still stands aghast, as if facing directly diabolical energies. When the Master was on earth it seems to be the evident sense of the Gospels — whether justified or not, I do not here affirm — that evil personalities in the realms preter natural were fiercely and stubbornly stirred against him, till earth and air swarmed with the powers of a hideous malice be yond man's emulation. If men count that a fiction of the fancy, they may see what almost answers to it in the fury which broke on the Christian communities which were peacefully worshipping and working beneficence, in the capital and the provinces, when scores of years had succeeded the death of their Lord. As dynam ite explodes at the tap of the hammer, the whole savage empire smote them with an unutterable fierceness, and wrap ped them in consuming fury. But the attitude which they held, in the midst of it all, only gave another sublimer proela- ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 275 mation to the novel Faith for which they dauntlessly suf fered. As St. Marc Girardin said, ' The truth of that era was too great to make poets, it could only make martyrs.' Instantaneous death, in whatever savage and horrible form, was not the worst which they encountered, when a word of re cantation, or a motion of the hand, would have instantly saved them. Many were banished to distant mines, to work among the worst of criminals, in a service so hard that death be came a desired relief. Matrons and virgins were doomed to outrage in public brothels. Great teachers and bishops, Hke Ig natius and Polycarp, were ground, as Ignatius said, ' like the wheat of God, between the teeth of wild beasts, into the pure bread of Christ '; or they were burned at the stake, only asking, with Polycarp, not to be fettered or fastened to the wood, that their firmness might be shown, and praising God that they were permitted to be numbered with his witnesses, and to partake of the cup of Christ. Humble women, like Blandina at Lyons, en dured every species of torture without flinching, saying only, to all questions : ' I am a Christian ; we have done no wickedness.' Eeserved to be the last to suffer death, having encouraged the others and witnessed their agony, she was immeshed, without re sistance, in the confining net, and delivered to the fury of the wild bull. Potamiaena, rejoicing to have escaped the threatened out rage of her chastity, died cheerfully, with her mother, in the bath of boiling pitch. Perpetua, at Carthage, only daughter as well as wife and recent mother, at twenty-two years of age, went forth from the agonized entreaties of her father, and harder yet from the clinging arms of her little babe, to die for him who had come from Heaven, as she surely thought, for her salvation, and who had said : " Whoso loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me " ! These, remember, are not pictures of the fancy, or extrava gant legends. They are facts, authenticated by the soberest his tory. The most sceptical concede the intensity of the suffering, though some, with Gibbon, have tried unduly to limit its extent. Mr. Lecky, whom certainly no one will suspect of a too great enthusiasm for historical Christianity, sums up the whole matter in these terrible words: "We read of Christians bound in 276 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY chairs of red-hot iron, while the stench of their half-consumed bodies rose in a suffocating cloud to heaven ; of others torn to the very bone by shells or hooks of iron ; of holy virgins given over to the lust of the gladiator, or the mercies of the pander ; of 227 converts sent on one occasion to the mines, each with the sinews of one leg severed by a hot iron, and with an eye scooped from the socket ; of fires so slow that the victims writhed for hours in their agony ; . . of tortures prolonged and varied through entire days. For the love of their Divine Master," he adds, " for the cause which they believed to be true, men, and even weak girls, endured these things, when one word would have freed them from their sufferings."* Eusebius's History, especially in the eighth book and the book of the Martyrs, in dividualizes the solemn and awful history with a pathos which all intervening centuries have not exhausted. It was simply impossible that such amazing exhibitions should appear, of spiritual supremacy quenching pain and conquering death, in the midst of vices, cruelties, obscenities, amorous odes, decaying religions, and pallid philosophies, without pro ducing a vast impression on an ever-enlarging circle of minds. These persons, it was known, had been concerned in no con spiracy, had been sentenced for no want of civic fidelity, for no refusal even of the military service. Yet, as one of their histo rians said, ' the Syrias reeked with the odor of their corpses, and the waters of the Ehone failed to wash from Gaul their blood.' f A certain sympathy for them became inevitable, in all noble and sensitive spirits. When their sufferings were borne in the spirit of Perpetua, who returned joyfully to the prison after being con demned to the wild beasts, or of Felicitas, giving her companions the kiss of peace under the very gleam of the sword — when it was united not only with pureness of manners and gentleness of speech, but with a patient assiduity in kindness which continued to the end, and with a wholly unconquerable temper of self- forgetful love and of triumphing hope — there could be scarcely * "History of European Morals": New York ed., 1876: Vol. I.: pp. 497-8. t Tertullian: " Ad Nationes " : I. xvn. ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 277 any soul so hard and dark that it should not feel an over-master ing force from such examples, that it should not be conscious of a strange gleam from worlds above. In an age from which all moral earnestness had seemed to have departed, here it was, in most intense and surpassing exhi bition, unparalleled since man had stood upon the planet. In a heathenism which had had no bright or large inspirations of hope, which was full rather of deprecation and fear, here was a gladness springing from such hope in the God now fully de clared to the world — a gladness which slavery could not crush or the deepest dungeons even silence, and which the most in fernal tortures could no more conquer than they could break the sunshine on wheels, or brand the sunbeams with hot irons. " Dum premor, attollor," was the motto on a book of Edward Sixth, with the figure beneath it of a fountain whose waters were flung by pressure toward the sky. It was typical of what has often appeared in gentle spirits. The mind of man shows something of its power when it curbs elemental forces of nature, and musters and marshals the energies which its research finds into a series of instruments for its work. But there breaks into sight a more vivid and unsearchable display of its supremacy, it shows more regally the inherent majesty which belongs to its life, when it faces without flinching the most desperate oppositions raging against it, and only reaches the sublimity of a triumphant calm before whatever man can do. It feels itself then free of the universe, the heir of transcendent and eternal experience, alone among men, but only more consciously allied with God. So the spirit of disciples even rose in enthusiasm as the outrages in flicted became more dreadful. There was at length almost a passion among them for enduring such suffering, which had to be restrained by vigilant teachers, — their spirits aspiring more eagerly toward the path which led to Heaven, while the deviltry of earth was crowding them faster into bloody graves. At last, therefore, the whole empire had to yield to this new and amazing energy descending upon it out of Palestine. Tertul lian was right in saying : " The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in numbers do we grow. The blood of Christians is 278 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY the seed of the harvest." * Justin Martyr was lifted out of his philosophy, he says himself, by these brave deaths. Many others followed, on that path of discipleship so fearfully and sublimely illumined. The Jews, who should have been first, according to human probabilities, to receive Christianity, repulsed and scorned it ; and after the Talmud in its first part, or the Mishna, had been collected, were separated into fiercest hostility against it. But the savage, sensual, luxurious empire, whose moral life had seemed nearly extinct, whose wickedness was as preeminent as its power, did accept it, and find by it at least a partial renovation. The history of the change I may glance at again in the follow ing lecture. The reason for it is what now is before us.: and I certainly do not think that Mr. Lecky overstates the case when he says, repeatedly, that Christianity conquered because 'it united with its distinctive teaching a pure and noble system of ethics, and proved itself capable of realizing it in action'; 'it produced more heroic actions, and formed more upright men than any other creed '; it ' transformed the character of multi tudes, vivified the cold heart by a new enthusiasm, redeemed, regenerated, and emancipated the most depraved of mankind. Noble lives,' he adds, ' crowned by heroic deaths, were the best arguments for the infant church.' \ Eenan, with equal frank ness, admits that what effected " the true miracle of nascent Christianity," was " the spirit of Jesus, strongly grafted into his disciples ; the spirit of sweetness, of self-abnegation, of forget- f ulness of the present ; that unique pursuit of inward joys which kills ambition ; that preference boldly given to childhood ; those words, . . 'Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant!' "| I believe, for myself, that the kingly declarations of alleged transcendent and vital facts, with their majestic coordinated doc trines, as presented to men by the new religion, had more to do than these distinguished writers would admit, with the impres sion wliich it made on the empire ; while I also undoubtingly *Apol. c. 50. t "Hist, of European Morals": New York ed., 1876, Vol. I.: pp. 412,419, 441. X " Hibbert Lectures "' : London ed., 1880 : p. 159. ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 279 believe that providential guidances and spiritual aids, from above the earth, were Divinely accessory to it. But, no matter what the explanation may be, the fact remains indestructible in his tory : that the religion preached by Jesus — simple as it seemed, and wanting in any equipment whatever of secular force, with no slightest aid from army or navy, treasury or senate, and with all the letters and arts of the age for its unwearied moral oppo nents — took the foremost peoples and cities of the world, at the time when vice in every form was most triumphant and most universal, and wrought a change unprophesied and unmeasured. It conquered, where philosophies had failed. It exalted, where arts had degraded. It purified, where religions had polluted ; and, in the eloquent words of another, it made ' the instrument of the slave's agony a symbol more glorious than the laticlave of consuls or the diadem of kings.' * The splendor of that su preme achievement no scepticism can shadow, no lapse of time rob of its brightness. From that effect an influence has flowed, with sure though often unrecognized force, upon the moral life of the world. By the same power which wrought that change — weak, apparently, as the staff of Moses, which ' being one, and an instrument of peace, did yet break in shivers all weapons of war, the ten thousand spears of Pharaoh and his captains' — other similar changes, if not equal in prominence, have since been accom plished, among Goths and Huns, Celts and Slavonians, wherever the Gospel in the fuUness of its energy has come to be estab lished. It is not true, of course, that it ever has had an unob structed way on the earth. It contemplates the fact of sin in the soul, finds it secreted in the sources of life, and expects to be encountered by its resistance till the spirit of man has been everywhere subdued to Him who leads captivity captive. There have been men who claimed to be its eminent disciples who have been as untouched by its spiritual power as any of the philoso phers who sneered at its principles, or the profligate patricians who gnashed their teeth at its mandatory restraints. They have only hidden, under the disguise of the Christian profession, a more *F. W. Farrar: "Witness of History to Christ": London ed., 1872: p. 100. 280 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY treacherous untruth and a crueler lust. There have been periods in the history of Christendom in which the moral power of its religion has seemed almost paralyzed : as there are certain acoustic belts, Mr. Tyndal reminds us, before or behind which sounds are heard, of bell or gun, but within which those sounds are strangely inaudible. But certainly some things must be admitted as hav ing been accomplished by or under this system of Faith. It can hardly be denied that the general level of moral life has been exalted, since the Eoman Empire absorbed this relig ion, and was then broken into separate kingdoms ; that life is now, in Christian communities, more serious, thoughtful, ethical than it was, more conscious of relations to God and the hereafter, and with a nobler force from the Future raining upon it ; that moral criticism of men, manners, customs, arts, theories, institu tions, is vastly more searching and imperative than it was before the Sermon on the Mount had been preached ; that no such social and moral state as was supremely established at Eome has for centuries been possible in the compass of Christendom ; that the ideal of character, as contemplated now by the humblest disciple, is richer and purer than shines before us on any pictured page of the poet, or from the lordliest speculative maxims, of the world before Christ ; that, at the same time, the savage barba rian is still reached and redeemed by this spiritual Faith, while even the utterly vicious and abandoned in our own cities are sought out by it, and are not unfrequently reclaimed and purified, trained and transformed, through its unwasting, intrepid force ; and that it is no more exhausted of its virtue, or drained of its energy, by all the works which it has done, than is the air by the lungs which have breathed it, or the sunshine by the flowers whose tints it has brightened, whose cups it has filled with lovely perfume. It expects further triumphs, this religion of Jesus : to be wrought by the same essential force which has been revealed in its previous history. And it is not to be fulfilled, in the plans which it proposes, in the great expectations which it inspires, till the coming centuries follow each other in the whiteness of holiness, on an earth filled with righteousness and love. For one, I believe that that time is to come. More than ON THE MORAL LIFE OF MANKIND. 281 twelve years have passed since I saw in the studio of Kaulbach, at Munich, a great cartoon, whose vivid impression I have not yet forgotten. It represented an early persecution at Eome. Upon the portico of the palace, as I remember it, stood the emperor, in the embroidered dress of a woman, with a sensual, half-vacant and half-insane look, on a face from which still the singular traces of a fallen beauty had not disappeared. Around him were handsome and dissolute women, and beautiful boys, servants of his lust, or panders to his frivolous passion for dis play. The prefect of the city approached him with servility, clapping his hands as the sentence of death was lightly uttered. A Eoman Senator, of the older type, looked on from the side with haughty scorn. The soldiers, in their scattered groups, were some of them indignant, some wholly stolid, and some ex ulting, with greedy eyes fastened upon the luxury which they saw. On the standards above blazed the motto " Divus Nero ! " In the foreground, at the side, was a company of Christians, bound to the stake, at the foot of which already fires were kin dled : among them a father kissing his chUd, with agony but in victory, for the last time. Peter was there, a little apart, being crucified with his head downward ; and Paul, in his privilege as a Eoman citizen, was thundering admonition against the terrific cruelty and lust, while a stalwart executioner, with an axe in his hand, was laughing at him, with almost the leer of an idiot on his face. The whole story which I have rapidly and very imperfectly recited this evening was on that terrible German canvas. I have not seen it since ; but it is almost as present to me now as are the faces at this moment before me. I do not believe that that supreme force which conquered then, against so much, without any assistance from politics or from letters, is to leave its work half-done in the world. I expect for it a future career only more illustrious than has yet been achieved. And even now, as its uncompleted triumphs are before us, I match it against all which philosophy had done, even that of the Stoics, who had caught adumbrations of majestical truths, and who may have learned something from Hebrew sources — I match it against the Indian Buddhism, which doubtless of all the ethnic religions 282 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY. approaches it nearest, in ethical maxims and in practical force, but to which, as Hardwick has said, ' vice had no intrinsic hideousness, and virtue was only another name for calculating prudence,' which therefore, as he affirms, has left the countries which it has possessed 'the prey of superstition and demon- worship, of political misrule and of spiritual lethargy' — I set Christianity against either of these, against anything else, and then I say that if the power suddenly breaking forth from Pal estine on the world, to work this immense and salutary change which history records, came from man as its source, and not from God using man as His instrument, I shall not be aston ished when it is shown me that the oceans have gushed from the fountains at Nazareth, or that the planet itself was framed in Judea ! LECTUEE IX. THE EFFECT OF CHEISTIANITY ON THE WOELD'S HOPE OF PEOGEESS. LECTUEE IX. The distinct apprehension of the unity and the eternity of God appears indispensable to any vigorous conviction of a grad ually developed unity in history ; while the recognition of the wisdom, the power, and the character of God, seems as indispen sable to any just expectation of an ultimate benign and majestic result, — in which, after obstacles are overcome, and resistances are vanquished, all peoples shall partake in the consummate beauty and the serene life of righteousness and of peace. This is not an unsupported suggestion of religion. It is a maxim of practical philosophy, considering the past, or investi gating carefully the nature of man, with the energetic contend ing forces, of reason and passion, which meet within that in a continually rekindled strife. It is, in fact, a necessary inference from the manifoldness of human life, and the vast complexity of affairs on the earth. There must be a plan even for a house, that it may be builded in shapely proportion, with halls, apart ments, facade, roof, and may not remain a confused pile of stone and brick, lumber and lime. There must be a plan for a mili tary campaign, that it may not be resolved into desultory at tempts of dissociated squads ; that the preadjusted movements of those furthest from the centre may at last converge on the critical point, there to be compacted, with irresistible force, for the conqueriug effort. So, and much more, there must be some where a plan in history : which shall take account of the near and the far ; of the ancient, the modern, and even of peoples yet to be ; which shall recognize and regulate the moral forces which build up states, or which work their decay; which shall antici pate tendencies, occasions, men, and take cognizance of arts, inventions, knowledges, even before society has reached them, that all may be confederated in systematic inter-action for a (285) 286 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY final effect : — there must be somewhere such a plan, or the entire progress of mankind will be at best uncertain, fragmental, with an ever-recurring tangle of confusions suspending or forbidding any orderly progress toward a foreseen supreme result. There must be such a plan ; and the only Being who can be imagined to have formed and to maintain it is He who exists from everlasting, who is infinitely enamored of righteousness and truth, whom no opposition can finally thwart, and beneath whom the most refractory wiUs are compelled to contribute, with whatever reluctance, to celestial designs. ""In the absence, then, of such a positive and illuminating rec ognition of God, even in philosophy, still more in the popular religions of antiquity, there couldbe no confident expectation of a general and sure progre^soTlnerace toward a result of liberty and light, beneath the permanent sovereignty of a paramount justice. By reason of the darkness in which it was walking, each nation was naturally egoistic : with its own gods, as with its own territory ; with its special traditions, customs, rites, and a worship connected with historical descent which severed it from others ; its language no more peculiar to itself than was its religion ; all contributing to set it apart from other peoples, in an ambitious and hostile isolation. The practical sense of re ciprocal relationships was therefore wanting, as I have already in a measure illustrated, in the ancient states. It was so, more than for any other reason, because of their want of a common religion. Leagues, or councils, like the Amphictyonie, might be established among contiguous tribes, of a common descent, and thus substantially of a common religion. But even these were exceptional ; and the august predominant idea of the vital or ganic unity of the race had quite passed away from the prac tical and governing thought of antiquity. If it continued at all, it was only as a dream which haunted here and there the thoughts of philosophers, and found some faint unillumined re flection on their passionless words. With that, the thought of any assured cosmical progress, as attainable or possible, had equally passed ; and any clear outlook over a future, in which separated nations should dwell in char ity, with a common Faith, and the constant mutual interchange ON THE WORLD'S HOPE OF PROGRESS. 287 between them of thoughts and of arts, — this was almost as im possible to be reached, even by spirits of rarest prescience, under the ancient Hmitations, as is the sight of the ocean from the nar row Swiss valleys, as is to us, while tarrying for the hour beneath this roof, the vision of stars shining above it. There was noth ing, there could be nothing, to exhilarate the spirit in the large and clear prospect of an ultimate universal welfare of the race.; And while there were times, in many states, of great prosperity/ commercial, political, military, artistic, at which hope was buoy ant, plans were eager, and the world seemed open to intrepid aspiration, it is to be noticed that such passages of experience came usually amid the relative youth of a people ; that after generations were intent on conserving, not on augmenting, what had already been attained ; and that as the power of others in creased, or as an inward decadence in themselves began to be felt, of political skill or martial ardor, the sense grew stronger, it came to be pervading, of the insecurity of most vital institu tions, and despondency settled, with a dull hopelessness con cerning the future, on each thoughtful and powerful people. Even in Homer, one is frequently impressed with the tone of sadness beneath the exquisite cadences of the immortal song, as the minstrel sings of the miseries of mankind, of the destructive wrath of the gods, smiting armies with swift arrows, hurling heroic souls to Hades, and leaving their bodies a prey to dogs, and birds, and crawling worms ; as he makes the skillful and eloquent Odysseus say — whose personal courage no calamity can conquer — that the earth nourishes no animal weaker than man, who looks for good, but on whom the gods bring grievous things, to be borne reluctantly, with a suffering mind.* But this was still in the morning-time of letters and of Hfe ; when the plains lay sparkling beneath the light of the new-risen sun, and the crisp freshness of energetic and prophesying vitality seemed quickening in the air, and gaily reflected from shining shores. How far the same familiar tone of gloomy contempla tion wass deepened and darkened in subsequent time, I need hardly remind you : till in spite of victories, arts, eloquence, in Odyssey, xvni. : 130-135. 288 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY spite of games and splendid processions, of moulded marbles, echoing squares, unsurpassed temples, the solemn and threat ening voice of Tragedy became the sombre dominant note in Athenian culture. The early buoyant and aspiring spirit, from which that which was stately and that which was splendid had prolifically sprung, passed by degrees into conscious lassitude and disquieting fear; and the figure of the Nemesis, daughter of Night, kindred in office with Ate and the Eumenides, represent ing the avenging anger of the gods — this awed and shadowed the failing Greek will. Once conceived of as a lovely young vir gin, she came to be figured as armed with a rod, with a wheel at her feet, and finally as winged : and the thought of her fear ful, fateful power, brooded as a mystery of darkness over the happiest human life. Even the moral and religious elements associated with her function at length disappeared, while she remained the author of startling and unmerited vicissitudes. ' The gods hate the prosperous ': out of what a profound and fruitful melancholy that thought was born ! The downfall of the strongest is but matter of time ! Eevolution in the fortunes of the state comes of course, and the highest shall be the most debased ! The appreheusion of this irresistible fatality, certain as nightfall, not to be arrested, not to be escaped — it is this, surely, beyond anything else, which in its majestic solemnity constitutes the strongest moral appeal that the later Hellenic poetry makes to the sympathy of mankind. It is the pain which attends the desper ate struggle of prescient intellect against an overwhelming Divine Power, which gives its meaning to the Prometheus. It is the awful, inevitable catastrophe, which the oracle of Delphi cannot avert, which in fact it ensures, which made the Q_dipus legend so fascinating. It is the same weird element of combined duty and doom, and of fierce agony involving the innocent, which imparts their immense pathetic power to the Antigone and the Iphigeneia. As near an approach to the Greek conception as any perhaps in modern letters, is in the sombre words of Goethe, in his aphorisms on Nature : ' She tosses her creatures out of noth ingness, and tells them not whence they come, or whither they go. . . She wraps man in darkness and makes him forever long ON THE WORLD'S HOPE OF PROGRESS. 289 for the light. She is always building up and destroying ; but her workshop is inaccessible.' Even in Greece, therefore, with all the courageous and imag inative vivacity which belonged constitutionally to the spirit of the people, there was no quickening or large expectation for the future of mankind. In later times there was none for the con tinued prosperity of either celebrated Hellenic state. After the final Eoman conquest, such an expectation had lost its last chance to get recognition. The whole temper of the people was then expressed in those lines in the Greek anthology, ascribed to Alpheus, of Mitylene, and probably written in the time of Au gustus : " Shut, god, the unsubdued gates of Olympus ; guard, Jupiter, the holy citadel of the sky; for already is the sea brought by the spear under the yoke of Eome, and the land also ; only the road to heaven remains untrodden." * Nor was there any more of hope for the future advancing progress of the world among other peoples, outside of Palestine. In India, especially after Buddhisim. had appeared — that strange and energetic philosophy of being, which had such missionary enterprise in it, and which had made remarkable conquests cen turies before Christ — it would seem that this .might have been otherwise, and that the idea of an ultimate transformation of all to a Divine likeness might at least have been accepted as a hope. But no such expectation or hope appears. The doctrine of the transmigration of souls through successive bodies, so that the princemight become a worm, and the meanest of reptiles en close the life~of him who had marched at the head of armies — this doctrine, rooted in the Hindu conception, and common to both its great religions — forbade there any theoretical conception of a permanent and beautiful progress in history. So it came to pass, as Frederick Schlegel years ago pointed out, that in spite of all which there was accomplished in art and jurisprudence, while the Indian temples rival the Greek in the fascination of their beauty, and the Indian jurisprudence is a magnificent monument of early intellectual and moral refinement, the his torical view is always turned backward toward the past, and * Greek Anthology : Burges's trans. ; London ed., 1876 : p. 98. 19 290 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY literature breathes a melancholy regret for all that man and the world have lost. Of the final period of the world the Hindus thought, as he affirms, "as the age of progressive misery, and an all-prevailing woe." * There was really only one people on the earth, at the time when Christianity began to be preached, in which might have been expected a different view as to history and its progress. The Egyptians were not likely to entertain such : because they shared in the doctrine of the metempsychosis — in fact it has been sometimes supposed that from them the Hindus had de rived it — and because the tremendous political disasters which had fallen upon them made hopefulness for the future almost absurd. The great Pyramid has been treated by recent eager and interesting essayists as a Divine standard of measures and weights, supernaturally inspired, though humanly builded. I am not competent to discuss it in that sense ; but certainly no thoughtful Egyptian of the time of the Master could have looked upon the pyramids, or on any of the remaining temples and monuments at Memphis or at Thebes, without feeling that, as compared with any genius still remaining on the banks of the NUe, the genius which had built them was almost superhu man ; without being ever freshly reminded of the multiplied burdens under which the renowned and powerful state now stag gered in weakness. So the vast Persian empire had collapsed into chaos before the destroying march of Alexander ; and, after the death of Antiochus, had succumbed to the swiftly developed and widely victorious Parthian power. Its early religion had recognized life as a sore battle between evil and good, but had expected the ultimate triumph of the good and its God. Those who received this had yearned for a Deliverer ; and, we are told by one of the writers of the New Testament, had thought that they saw from the East his star, at about the time when Jesus was born. But there was left little room, even in that state, for any uplifting hope for its future. It was not till after the spread of Christi- * Lects. on " Philosophy of History ' ': N. York ed., 1841 ; Vol. I. : pp. 184, 219, 228, 230. ON THE WORLD'S HOPE OF PROGRESS. 291 anity, in the age of the Sassanidas, that the figure of the future heroic Benefactor became prominent with the Persians ; and the final expectation of him vanished when the last of that dynasty fled and fell before the fierce Mohammedan Arabs. But it might have seemed then — I had almost said it might still seem — that in the vast and carefully organized Eoman empire, so long advancing, in later years so swiftly widening, compacted and secured as now it appeared under a central impe rial care, there should be a great expectation for the future : a pre-vision of the time when the recent and ungirt Parthian empire outlying on the East, with the barbarians of the North, the West, and the South, should be equally subjected with Egypt and Greece to that colossal and haughty Power which, enthroned on the Tiber, had flung out its legions to every quar ter, and had spread its authority, like a mystical Fate, across many lands ; when one Law should be everywhere supreme ; when, in the tolerance of all religions, no further religious quarrel or feud should vex mankind ; and when the return of the star-bright Astrsea, daughter of Themis, should bless again with her benign light the waiting race. This would certainly have appeared, to those looking on from without, a natural pre sumption ; and doubtless occasional intimations of this, or of something like this, are to be found, as in Virgil's fourth eclogue, or in scattered verses of other poets. In Eoman oratory it is more than once shown as a wish, if not as a hope. In the common Eoman feeling, expectation of success was so closely associated with an admiring pride in the past that it could only reluctantly give way. Yet Eome itself, in the time of Christ — steady and strange as had been its historical progress, immense, confirmed, and almost unquestioned, as was then its admitted supremacy — Eome itself was rather haunted by disturbing apprehensions than inspired by expectant and confident hope ; was burdened with a sense of inward decline, which in sensitive spirits became almost crush ing, and which made the future to such not so much uncertain as appalling. The Greek Polybius — statesman, historian, phi losopher, philanthropist — two centuries before the day of St. Paul, had given a picture of Eoman life while still in its sim- 292 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY plicity, and had attributed the strength of the state to the relig ious reverence and faith by which its people were distinguished. Men felt, afterward, that with the failure of this ancient religious ness the state was imperilled, and calamities were imminent ; yet the old religion could not be restored to its former authority. The very oracles were ceasing. Strabo said that they were oppressed by the general contempt ; and Cicero, in his treatise on Divination, attempts an explanation of why the oracle at Delphi, formerly so renowned, had ceased to give any truthful and useful counsel to men. Pausanias contrasted the time of old, when men in piety walked with the gods and were guests at their tables, with his own time, when wickedness had come to be supreme in the city and the land. As early as the sixth year of our era, while Jesus was still a child at Nazareth, it had become almost impossible to find maidens willing to be chosen as Vestal Virgins, or parents will ing to yield their daughters to this most famous ancient service. Augustus tried, almost in vain, to overcome the resisting reluc tance ; and the office had to be opened to those whose parents had at some time been slaves. Afterward, a rich pecuniary gratuity was assigned to one joining the sacred company ; and the emperor's mother took a place among them at the theatre, to add whatever of honor she might to the waning prestige of their office. This was only a significant symptom of the general inward decay of faith in the ancient religion. And so, even as early as that— when the empire appeared most masterful and secure, as well as most splendid, when the city of brick was fast becoming a city of marble, and when the brilliant Augustan age was crowning with intellectual attainments the long preceding periods of strength, seeking, like Pheidias in his statue of Athene, to add plates of ivory, robes of gold, to the stony hardness underneath — the apprehension of disaster was widely diffused. There had been an ancient traditional prediction, mentioned by Dio Cassius, that ' when thrice three hundred years should have passed,' Eome should perish ; and Juvenal makes a Eo man say that ' the ninth age is now running its course, and an era baser than the days of Iron ; for whose iniquity nature ON THE WORLD'S HOPE OF PROGRESS. 293 has no name, and with which she shows no metal for com parison.'* The famous writings attributed to Sibylla, and allowed by the Senate for many years before Christ to have augural authority, had in them frequent predictions of disaster. Cities were bidden to continue for the present to. orna ment themselves with temples and stadiums, with market places and golden images, but assured that they should come to the bitter day. It was distinctly declared that Dik_, Justice, as ruler, should cast the things heaven-high to the ground, that all oracles should come to an end, and that Eome should be ruin.f Even the gay, musical, convivial Horace, practical and playful in his customary song, exclaims in his second ode : ' Whom of the gods shall the people call to assist the affairs of the perish ing empire ? With what prayers shaU the sacred virgins weary Vesta, now Httle attentive to their hymns ? To whom shall Ju piter give the task of expiating our wickedness?' In another ode he breaks into even passionate prophecy of disaster: "An other age is now worn out with civil wars, and Eome is ruined by her own strength ! What neither the bordering Marsi were able to destroy, nor the Etrurian band of threatening Porsena, nor the envious valor of Capua, nor Spartacus the bold, nor the faithless AUobroges eager for new things ; what neither fierce Germany subdued, with its blue-eyed youth, nor Hannibal, de tested by parents — this we shall destroy, an impious generation of doomed blood ; and the land shall again be occupied by wild beasts. The barbarian conqueror shall tread upon the ashes of the city, and the horseman shall make it reverberate with the resounding hoof." % In the Secular Ode, written at the request of Augustus, a few years before the birth of Jesus, he seems expressly to restrict the future conditional prosperity of Eome to the Latin territory. Augustus, becoming Pontifex Maximus, seized and burned two thousand volumes of the so-called prophetical writings, re taining only a selection to be deposited in gilded coffers in the temple of Apollo. He sought thus to arrest the propagation of * Sat. xm. : 28-30. t Sibyl. Orac. in. : 57-60 : 360-1. I Epod. : xvi. : 1-12. 294 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY fears among the people ; but his success was very limited. In the days of Marius, occurrences deemed ominous had startled men's souls. Cicero had elaborately recon ntgdjn verse portent _ appearing in his time, and believed to threaten JtJie. state : con-_ currences of fiery constellations ; comets, tremulous with flame ; terrible forms seen in the night-time ; lightning flashing fatally out of clear skies, or at another time smiting the bronze statue of the wolf of Mars, and of the children suckled by her ; and he" spe cially mentions the many soothsayers, pouring their oracles over the land, from furious breasts.* To similar portents Dio Cassius refers, adding a total eclipse of the sun at about the time when the war between Caesar and Pompey was commencing, and a fiery crown, with pointed rays, surrounding the sun, in the year following Caesar's death.f Virgil commemorates the fearful prodigies of the same period in one of the Georgics4 So Sue tonius, afterward, records the sudden appearance of a circle like a rainbow around the sun, in a clear and bright sky, followed by a thunderbolt which smote the tomb of Julia, Caesar's daughter ; § and Tacitus mentions the repeated earthquakes, with the failure of provisions in the year 51 after Christ, with birds of iU omen perching on the Capitol, and the fright of the multitude who in their panic trampled on the infirm, regarding the condition of things as ominous. One is sometimes impressed, even in the earlier Eoman history, by a certain sombre and mournful tone, as well as by a haughty strength, in the character and the action of that memorable people. They reckoned time, it has well been said, by nights not by days ; and the dial bearing upon its plate the inscrip tion, ' I count no hours but the cloudless ' — ' non numero horas nisi serenas ' — which to the Venitian or Neapolitan of our time would seem so fitting, must have appeared the least suit able of instruments for measuring the' progress of the high, heroic, but often shaded and stormy days of Eoman progress. But now the stately solemnity and strength seemed to have sadly disappeared, or only to survive in limited circles, while * De Divinat. I. : 11, 12. t xiv. : 17. X Georg. I. : 466-492. § Oct. August. : xcv. ON THE WORLD'S HOPE OF PROGRESS. 295 riot and revel, alternating naturally with boding fear, had come in their place. For hundreds of years this impression of terror at anything unusual continued upon men. The effect was with some to lead them to turn anywhere for a Faith which the trembUng of the planet could not disturb, to which meteors were but signs of a Divine watchfulness, and which was not afraid of ominous birds; but it was, with most, morbidly to intensify heathen fanaticism, and to make the spread of the new religion more difficult and perilous. Calamities felt, or calamities dreaded, bred only a fiercer hostility to the Christians. One may almost measure the energy and the extent of the public foreboding by the outrages which the disciples of the Master had to suffer. Lucretius, in one passage of his famous essay on the nature of things, in trying to explain au alleged fact that the water in wells is sometimes warmer in winter than in summer, supposes certain seeds of fire to be lodged in the earth, which under the sun shine are drawn forth, but which in the night, or in the winter, being repressed by the cold, are forced to descend into the water.* In like manner, one may almost literally say, the seeds of fierce persecuting fire lay always in the Eoman life; but amid the splendor of a constant success, those seeds were dormant, or seemed to be exhaled, so that even monotheism had its liberty at Eome. But as the night of fear drew on, and the dreadful winter of discontent, those seeds struck down into the popular temper and will — and the fruit of them was the blazing pile in which stood the Christians, since whose appearance the calami ties had fallen, and in whose presence it was vaguely felt that the conquering empire could not stand. The passionate ferocity expressed and intensified a new and dread element of fanat ical unreason, which more and more was perverting and inflam ing the popular spirit in regard to all unseen Powers. The belief iu magic became popular and wide. Soothsayers, astrologers, were consulted not only by the ignorant but by the rich, and by em perors. Even Cicero, in his time, spoke respectfully of astrology, as cultivated by the Chaldeans and Egyptians.! Tiberius was * De Rer. Nat. L. VI. : 840-848. t De Divinat. I. : 1. 296 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY said to be addicted to it.* When a swarm of bees settled in the Capitol, near the statue of Hercules, five years before the death of Cicero, it was solemnly decreed that the temples of Isis and Serapis at Eome should be destroyed, as being possibly con nected with the prodigy .f Ever lower and lower sank the old proud self-reliance, until women and children were cut open alive in the palace of Galerius, that their entrails might be in spected for their promise of the future. It really looked, for long periods of time, as if, to use the words of Uhlhorn, "the splendor of the ancient world was about to end in a Witches' Sabbath " ! % s How immediate and how immense is the contrast when we / turn from all this to the hope__inspired by the strong Hebrew i Faith, and still more by the Christian, concerning the advancing P'agei"of the world ! In their circumstances, there is something surprising and significant in this hope among the Hebrews. A comparatively small people, as matched against Egyptian, Assyrian, Macedonian empires — in the same comparison an un- prosperous people, not fertile in invention, debarred from wide commerce, if by nothing else, by their want of inviting and ac- ', cessible coasts — -shut up chiefly on a tongue of land of less than the area of the state of Vermont, which was eut across with deep ravines, and suitable only for farms and flocks — acquiring prop erties sufficient to be desired but never to be envied by their wealthier neighbors, and by the very conditions of their terri tory naturally secluded from other countries, while occupying, through what they esteemed .a Providential allotment, a central position among the nations — they had really had only one brief period of any special prominence or power, as these are reckoned in the records of states, in the reign of David, and especially of Solomon, bis less fervent but more accomplished and brilliant successor. Immediately after, the unity of the nation had been fatally broken ; and after a time the larger and stronger section of it, having lost their early reverence for the Law, and become * Suetonius : Tiberius : lxix. f Dio Cass. xi_x 26. % "Conflict of Christianity,'' etc.: New York ed., 1879 : p. 324. ON THE WORLD'S HOPE OF PROGRESS. 297 infected with lascivious idolatries, had been swept into an exile from which there were few returning steps. The tribes retain- ng Jerusalem as their centre had suffered under profligate and dolatrous kings, had often themselves relapsed in large measure nto a heathenism which allured and defiled them, had seen the house of David on Zion, and even the Temple of God on Moriah, the scene of frightful conspiracies and murders, had at last themselves been hurled into exile — their distinctive exist ence apparently utterly merged and lost amid the vast popula tions, the dazzling riches, and the military strength of the grand est and wealthiest of the capitals of the world. They had there been detained through more than the life-time of two generations ; and had finally been sent back by the conqueror of Babylon, in utmost weakness, poverty, dependence, to begin again, on their ancient seats, amid the wrecks of palace and temple, of burned gates and broken walls, their historical life. Even then they had suffered terrific calamities, under Egyptian invasions, under the Syrian sweep of Antiochus Epiphanes, in the fierce struggle of the Maccabees, till the Eoman power had conquered them utterly, and the Eoman legionaries looked down from Antonia on the Temple in which an altar to Jupiter had once been set up, with swine's flesh offered upon it, and in which a statue of the Emperor Caligula was afterward ordered to be enthroned. If any people on earth might seem at liberty to be hopeless of the future, it was certainly this people. If in any the expec tation of something grand and benign to be attained in coming centuries might seem absurd, this was the one. And yet iu this people, from first to last, had been the confident assurance of a vast and bright future, reserved for them, and, through their ministry, for all the rejoicing and reconciled peoples of the world. ' It had not failed when on the distant banks of the Eu phrates the willows held their silent harps, and tears choked the songs of Zion. It had not failed when the hosts of Alexander swept over their country, with no more apprehension of resist ance from them than we should have of opposition by sparrows to the rush of a train along the rails. It did not fail when Ptolemy carried them by scores of thousands into a new south- 298 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY ern exile and bondage. It had not failed when Antiochus Third was forced to cede the land to Egypt, or when the temple was plundered and desecrated by his rapacious and vicious son. It aid not fail when Judea became a Eoman province, and when Crassus plundered the temple again, with a hand more unsparing than that of Epiphanes. It had never failed ; and it did not utterly give way when, in sight of the generation which suc ceeded the crucifixion of Jesus, Jerusalem was destroyed, in a fire that was almost itself quenched in simultaneous torrents of blood, and when the armies of Titus — marching in, as he is said to have felt, under a power unseen and supernal — carried the wretched remnant of population which had not been massacred into remote and bitter slavery. Broken, hated, ground to pow der, flung into exile, counted as less than the dust of the balance, whatever anywhere yet survived of this amazing and indomitable people retained the robust and indestructible hope which had been the impulse of the Hfe of their Fathers. It had come from their religion : in which law and promise had been closely combined — the law, to impress the idea of God, and to educate them for His service and honor ; the promise, to open before their view the future from the first contemplated by Him, in which the earth should be the home of His redeemed and praising people. Not only had ardent and eminent prophets appeared among them, recognized by them as Divinely in structed, predicting such an issue of history. Their whole ex traordinary career had to them been a prophecy, ' not fulfilled punctually,' as Bacon says, but having ' springing and germinant accomplishment throughout many ages.' The peculiar Messianic doctrine of the Hebrews was not something theoretic and inert, or adscititious. It was involved in all their system : a vital, coherent, energetic discovery of One who was to come, greater than David, wiser than Solomon, holier than most eminent saint or seer, a royal Deliverer and Lord to his people. It was im bedded in institutions, not merely articulated in words. It flashed before the eye through offices and symbols, as weU as on illustrious verbal predictions ; and the hope inspired by it was not pale and colorless, but glowing, radiant, round about their hearts and their state as a bended rainbow ' like unto an ON THE WORLD'S HOPE OF PROGRESS. 299 emerald.' It has been truly said by Eenan, that ' what more than all else characterized the Jew, was his confident belief in a brilliant and happy future for humanity.' It was because he saw a God, holy, wise, and of sovereign might, who exercised moral government in the world, whose providence followed a moral order, and to whom the circle of centuries was a day, that he discovered this light above, however masked in enveloping clouds, and did not doubt that in the end the Divine kingdom would infold the whole earth, or that in it aU tribes of mankind would be blessed. Tho most vehement sceptic must admit this. Indeed, he sometimes ascribes so much to this waiting attitude of the Jew ish mind as to affirm that by reason of the appeal which Jesus made, whether unconsciously or of purpose, to such an intense and eager expectation, the early successes of his religion may be fairly explained, and the marvellous reports of him which took permanence in the Gospels ; that through its undiscerning and passionate impulse, he, being a man, was transformed, by the almost creative enthusiasm of those who received him, into a Being more celestial than angels. I do not so interpret the facts. The picture of the Christ presented in the Gospels appears singularly temperate, harmonious, self-demonstrative ; and the only effect of the vast and bright expectation of the Jews con cerning their Messiah, on him who certainly professed to come as a Heavenly messenger, appears to have been that he entered the race as an obscure babe, not as one of princely rank ; that he put aside the temptation to win the world by the majesty of power ; that he hid the might to which miracles were attributed under human muscles ; that when he was transfigured, according to the story, he took but three companions with him, the same who were soon to be with him in his anguish ; and that when he left the impression on the disciples of a supernatural ascen sion from the earth, he called only those already attached to him to the astonishing spectacle. I find the expectation of the Jews recognized by Jesus, at each step on his path ; but pre cisely so recognized that the kingship promised should be seen to be that of a spiritual Teacher, the lordship of the world to be that which belongs to " the Lamb that was slain." 300 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY The development of this earlier system, which had nourished such tenacious and indestructible hope, was closed indeed in the coming of Christianity. But, as another has said, ' it died in hope.' It handed on this legacy, at least, to that which came after : when ' those innumerable threads of golden light that run through all the annals of the Hebrew nation met harmoniously in Him,' to whom from the first they had been pointing .* Not out of the Hebrew system, but as sublimely super-imposed on its antique strength, appeared the Faith first uttered in Galilee ; and while it wag heir to all that had been best in tbe progress of the past, it was heir, above all, to this majestic and unfailing hope. Whoever else had desponded before, the Hebrew had not, because he saw, or thought he saw, the God Everlasting the defender of the people which inherited His law; because he saw, or thought he saw, that while they clung to Him in faith, or when they turned to Him in repentant consecration after sin, the whole power of the world would be insufficient to destroy their vital national identity, or to forbid their future to be ful filled. Whoever else might despond or despair, in after-time, the Christian could not : because he stood amid the consumma tion of lines of history, to him at least vivid and august with prediction and miracle ; because the God, gracious and just, was now manifested to him as never before, by the Lord who had declared Him ; because so unique and so powerful an instru ment for the welfare of mankind had been entrusted to his hands ; because — to his imagination, if you please, but as I think more truly and deeply to his heart — the Heavens seemed alive with helps and helpers for man's redemption. To his on-look ing and stimulated spirit, the new religion held in it the assur ance of better ages. He walked, as of course, amid Eomans, Syrians, Egyptians, Greeks, with the light as of the morning- star on forehead and face. Yet it may seem that at first this could scarcely have been ; because we know that many of the earlier disciples expected the coming of Christ as Judge, in the Parousia, as not distant in time, and could hardly have had large or exalting expectations * Hardwick : " Christ, and other Masters ": London ed., 1882: p. 109. ON THE WORLD'S HOPE OF PROGRESS. 301 of future cycles of advancing earthly wisdom and peace. But this expectation of the speedy visible advent of the Lord was itself but a refracted image of that assurance of his final and cer tain supremacy in the world which was inspired by all that they believed. In its more crude and unspiritual form it seems hardly to have been, at any time, a part of the governing Faith of the church. It was, rather, the attractive resource of the perplexed, when savagely smitten by the powers of the world. After the terrific destruction of Jerusalem, in which the tremendous pro phetic denunciations uttered by the Master appeared to his fol lowers to have had their evident primary fulfilment, the time of his final coming for Judgment was remotely postponed in the common expectation ; while the subsequent chiliastic specula tions, tinged with Judaism if not springing from it, and after ward associated with the Montanist errors, though accepted by such distinguished teachers as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Lac tantius, and others, did not intimately penetrate or permanently control the common spirit and hop*e of the church. After a time, as Christianity grew stronger in its grasp upon men, and as its surpassing spiritual competence for astonishing effects became more apparent, the expectation grew to be gen eral that it was to conquer the Eoman empire by the Divine energy inhering in it, or silently and supremely associated with it, without aid from a visible intervention of the Christ. The expectation naturally followed that on similar terms it was at last to conquer the earth, and that in that all prophecies of the past should be at length supremely fulfilled. The end of the world was still regarded as not far distant, but the conquests of the Gospel were expected to precede this, preparing the way for the grand consummation. And so it was that, as has been eloquently said, 'the great Christian Fathers laid anew the foundations of the world while they thought that its walls were tottering to the fall, and that they already saw the fires of Judg ment through the chinks.' * Origen, ' the Adamantine,' was among the first, no doubt, to * J. H. Newman: "Historical Sketches'": London ed., 1873, Vol. II. p. 437. 302 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY announce this final victory of the Gospel ; though, in substance of doctrine, others had probably preceded liim. Jerome, Augustine, and those who followed, made it the prevalent doc trine of Christendom. Each Christian disciple, even at the beginning, but more as his religion widened in the world, had the sense of sharing in a certain glorious corporate life, the Hfe of the great kingdom of disciples which the Lord had established ; and this, almost as by necessity of logic, carried on his thoughts to the unreached future, as the scene of its victorious extension. So he rose to a point of anticipation which philosopher or states man had not attained. Plato himself, with all his insight and clear intuition, had had no conception of any ultimate goal in history. The Stoics expected the destruction of existing things on the planet, either by fire or by flood, and the commencement of a new order of history. Marcus Aurelius expressed the feel ing of the best part of Paganism, when he said, in substance, ' things are repeated over and over, from eternity '; ' whatever happens, or is to happen, hate in fact already been. It is only the same show repeated.' But the thought of progress, toward an end Divinely contemplated, by agencies of new and tran scendent effectiveness, this was common to Christians ; and it "formed the contrast," as Neander has said, "between the Christian view of Hfe, and the Pagan notion of a circle aimlessly repeating itself by a blind law of necessity." * So it was that as the early sense of weakness and exposure, under the sword of infuriated power, gave place to this intimate governing consciousness of a sovereign and beneficent purpose in history, and of the wholly incalculable strength of the novel in strument prepared to assist it, the expectation of advancing success, in, whatever concerned the true welfare of the world, grew always stronger. No matter what particular application we give to passages of the Apocalypse, or when or by whom we conceive it to have been written, it cannot be denied that its theme is of victory: of heavenly agencies striking down upon the tribes and tumults of the earth, and making their immeas urable impact upon human affairs in the interest of him who * " History ofthe Church " : Boston ed., 1851 : Vol. I. : p. 649. ON THE WORLD'S HOPE OF PROGRESS. 303 was slain upon Calvary. In this ' high and stately tragedy,' as Milton called it, ' shutting up and intermingling its solemn scenes and acts with a seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and harp ing symphonies,' * are simply outlined, in colossal figures, the crash of conflict through which the world is to be borne at last to the peace and the splendor of the City of God. If wholly human, it expressed and illustrated, while it powerfully moulded, the supreme feeling and thought of the church in the earlier centuries. To these who held it inspired of God, and humanly to be ascribed to the beloved disciple, it brought the power as of another theophany to assure them of the future. As soon as it was felt, too, as it early was felt, that the new religion not only surpassed, but could use for its furtherance, whatever had been best in even the literature of Greece or of Eome — as was vigorously affirmed and practically illustrated by Justin Martyr, for example, or by Clement of Alexandria ; as soon as it was felt, as it was already felt when the remarkable epistle to Diognetus was written, in the time perhaps of Trajan, while Christianity was still a novelty in the world, that ' what the soul is in the body, that Christians are in the world,' diffused throughout it but not of it, invisible, watchful, holding the in closing body together, dwelling in the corruptible, but looking always for incorruption ; above all, as soon as it was seen that persecution itself could not arrest the advancing Christianity, nor even those licentious pleasures the fear of losing which, as Tertullian said, kept men from accepting the new religion who were not afraid of losing lifef — then the assurance of a future for the world, of hoHness and of glory, to be wrought by this transcendent Faith, and to ultimate in the universal dominion of Christian pureness and Christian peace, came forth in full energy. The martyrs were sustained by it. The ample accounts given by Eusebius and by Cyprian of their sufferings and deaths throb with the general and indomitable sense of the glory of him for whom they suffered, whom alone they would worship, and of whose kingdom there should be no end. The vision * Prose Works: London ed., 1753 : Vol. I.: p. 63. t De Spectaculis : c. 2. 304 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY which came to Perpetua in the darkness of the dungeon, of a golden ladder stretching up into heaven, with swords, spears, and knives on the sides, and with a dragon at the foot, but at the top a lovely garden, where the Good Shepherd was waiting to re ceive her, this was a vision which others had for the future of the world, as well as of the soul, in which Christ was to reign. The heathen world had long been growing old, and more and more turning its thoughts backward to the Golden Age, now gone forever. In the time of Decius disaster was so general, the collapse of the empire under inward confusions and external assaults appeared so imminent, that his most savage persecution of the Christians, in the interest of the public religion, took therefrom occasion and impulse. Then, for the first time, the sanctity of even the catacombs was violated, and Christians were buried alive in them, as well as subjected, outside their cham bers, to exquisite tortures, to extort their apostasy. But even this was ineffectual, as were the continuous persecutions which followed, under Gallus and Valerian ; and the hope of the Christians concerning the church, with the world which contained it, was not even shaken. As Augustine said afterward, looking back to this time : ' Christ appeared to the men of a decrepit and dying world, that while all around was fading they might receive through Him a new youthful life.' * A sense of the unconquerable power of his religion had been in Justin Martyr. It is everywhere in Tertullian ; and it gave to Origen, when writing for Christians or against their antagonists, the boldness, with the prophetic expectation, of the most eager of modern missionaries. He was sure of the end : when every ethnic wor ship should vanish, and that of the Christians should alone maintain mastery. By degrees the sense of this forced itself even upon the persecutors themselves, whether emperors or people ; till after the last frantic effort of Diocletian, under the savage impulse of Ga lerius, to destroy churches, scriptures, and Christians, in a com mon annihilation — when that had failed, when Diocletian had left the throne, and when Galerius, consumed by a disease * Neander : " History of the Church " : Vol. I. : p. 77. ON THE WORLD'S HOPE OF PROGRESS. 305 which turned his living body to corruption, had issued his edict, a.d. 311, ending the persecution, and soliciting for himself and for the empire the prayers of those Christians whose fellow-be lievers be had maimed, outraged, and burned by whole congre gations at a time — then the subsequent conquest of the empire to Christianity was hardly more than a matter of months. The " Eeligious Liberty " which Tertullian had demanded, was fully conceded. The cross was at last blazoned on the imperial stand ards. It was stamped upon coins, and painted on shields. Tbe flnal fierce struggle against the religion which had come out of Galilee went down with Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge. The waters of the Tiber swept over its relics ; and the religion of the despised Nazarene, against the most savage and persistent resist ance ever known in the world, had conquered the empire ! After that came again long periods of darkness, but nothing extinguished the Christian's hope. When Julian sought, in his cultured paganism, to dethrone and expel the new religion, you remember the almost scornful words of the prescient Athanasius, driven from Alexandria : ' It is a little cloud, and it will pass.' It was after the Visigoths had overrun Europe, and Eome had been stormed and sacked by their terrible hosts, under that Ala- ric who left no grass-blade growing behind him, that Augustine wrote his " City of God." The shock, as it seemed, of a tum bling world, which terminated the old era, and which sent noble families into beggared exile, only exalted before his vision that enduring and triumphing Kingdom of God in which he had part. And when be died, in the midst of the Vandal siege of Hippo under Genseric, he had as sure an expectation of the ultimate victory of Christianity on the earth as has any modern disciple, who sees governments confessing the religion of Jesus, with let ters, arts, industries, policies, suffused by its influence, and the world open to its proclamation. Even the rise of heresy in the church could not disturb this imbedded conviction in the mind of Augustine. ' The testimony of Jesus ' was to him certainly ' the spirit of prophecy.' How the expectation of such a future, for the new religion, and for the 'world which it was conceived to have come to bless, has since wrought in the church, I need not remind you. The differ- 20 306 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY ence of Christianity, as a religion for mankind, from the old re ligions for places and peoples, being clearly apprehended — the fact being seen that it appealed, not as had ancient philosophies and ethics to an educated class, or a select circle of high-born youth, but to even the humblest and least accomplished, and that through its unique inspiration of faith in a Lord unseen but still sovereign in the heavens, it had a power which former systems inevitably had lacked, for the noblest exaltation and the true regeneration of those who received it — these facts being seen, and the impression being received, which naturally attended them, that God was in this new religion, and would work for it in His stupendous and governing providence — the expectation of its ultimate triumph became only natural. It rested not so much on particular predictions, though these seemed abundant, as on the general energetic and victorious Christian conscious ness. It had thus a certainty as of intuitive conviction ; and it made men as sure of the final result as of any completed processes in nature. Here has been the foundation, here the immense and constant inspiration, of that missionary enterprise which is almost pecu liar to Christianity ; and the splendid series of Christian mis sions, now almost forgotten, but in themselves benign and illus trious, which went on with amazing enthusiasm, and with prodigal expenditure of labor and of life, throughout the Middle Age, which carried over Europe the reHgion of the Christ, and made it there an eternal possession — it was based, fundamentally, on the expectation that he was to conquer, and that service ren dered to him must be fruitful. When Ebbo and Anschar, in the ninth century, would evangelize the Danes, and afterward the Swedes — when Friedrich and Thorwald, a century and a half later, carried the new religion to Iceland — when Adalbert of Prague ministered to the savage Hungarians, or when at a later time he died, under pagan violence, while seeking to carry the Gospel to the Prussians — when Otto, at Stettin, in the twelfth century, assailed by a furious heathen mob, walked forth to meet them, in the midst of his clergy, calmly chanting psalms and hymns — always was seen the ..motive force of faith in the reHgion which they honored and taught as apt for mankind, ON THE WORLD'S HOPE OF PROGRESS. 307 of faith in the Master whom they believed its living Defender, of faith in the future which its regenerating power was to bring.* No Christian disciple can read, I am sure, without a tender and strong emotion, of the vivid and seemingly supernal expe rience of the youthful French Anschar, in the ninth century : conscious always of attraction toward God ; hearing voices, which seemed to him from the heavens, in the ecstasy of his dreams ; beholding at last, as in a vision, an immeasurable light, beneath which were standing celestial hosts, and out of which came a Voice which said to him, " Go, and return to me crowned with martyrdom" — a Voice which two years later was followed by another, distinctly saying, " Go preach the word to the tribes of the heathen!" We are not surprised at his utter conse cration. We are not surprised that when the fury of fanatical violence raged against him in heathen Sweden, and when all de pended on the decision of one assembly, he said simply, ' I am sure of my cause ! Grace will be with them ! ' — as it was.f It was the same assured expectation which animated the monks, the real civilizers of Europe, in their hard labors and manifold perils. When they pierced the dense and malarious woods, journeying by day, and lying at night on earth and stone, till on some spot less sterile than the rest they built their rude and lonely huts, they still, like Imier in the Jura, heard in the night the future beUs of that monastery ringing which was to replace their hasty shelter. The howl of wolves might be at first, as sometimes -it was, the only response to their morning and evening song and prayer. The bandits and brigands, who roamed through the woods in reckless ferocity, might hunt them for a prey, and reckon tlieir life of no account. The hunting cavaliers, waking with horns the many echoes of grove and glade, might look with utmost scorn upon them. The King him self might order them, as Childebert is said to have ordered Karileff, to leave the woods, and allow to the hunt a freer * See Neander: " Hist, of the Church " : Vol. III. : 271, et seq.: 300 : 832; Vol.4: 42,28. t Neander : " Hist, of the Chureh " : Vol. III. : pp. 274, 285. 308 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY course.* But the monk believed, in spite of all, that at last there should come to these wild and rocky forest sohtudes the reign of a Christian civilization: the nature of which he no doubt often misunderstood, but the reality of which was as cer tain to him as were planet beneath and stars overhead. Mon talembert has well said that 'the ensign and emblazonry of the entire history of the monks during those early ages,' was "Cruce, et Aratro." The result of their invincible patience and labor is recorded in the fact that the richest districts of France are to-day those wherein jt.he- ancient monasteriesjvere planted, and that the wildness of savage tribes, more formid able than of nature or of beasts, became in the end subjected to them. This sure-expectation, of -ult__na£e__|ussfia% because their re ligion had come, they thought, from God himself, to lift men to Him, because to them its law was imperative, its miracles were inspiring, its discoveries of the future transcendently bright — this, and _Dj_t-their zeal, for jjjiigrarchy, was the earliest and the grandest incentive of the monks, all over the Continent : as it was, as well, of Dega in Ireland, transcribing with his own hand three hundred copies of the Gospels ; or of Finnian, lead ing toward the heavenly country innumerable souls ; as it was of Columba, landing in Iona, where the piety of Johnson, twelve centuries later, grew consciously warmer, preaching to the savage and unsubdued Picts, preaching in the Orkney Islands, most tender to his companions, while so daring upon tempestu ous seas that the sailors thought him the meek master of aU the winds that ever blew ; as it was of the Benedictine Augustine, carrying the new religion to England ; or of the Venerable Bede, dying while translating the Gospel of John into the familiar Saxon tongue, and with his last difficult breath giving glory to God! Almost everywhere throughout the Middle Age, in the midst of whatever outward calamities, we trace this expectant Chris- tain pre-vision of the brighter and grander time to come. The * Montalembert : " Monks of the West ": London ed., 1861 : Vol. II. : pp. 341-347. ON THE WORLD'S HOPE OF PROGRESS. 309 only point at which it failed, signally or widely, was at that most disastrous period, the close of the tenth century, and the opening of the eleventh ; and then the transient discouragement was due, not so much to any misconstruction of the words of the Apocalypse, as to _the frightful, corruption enthroned and domi nating at the centre of Christendom. It was lust, greed, faction, malice, murder, incest, in the swift successive or the desperate simultaneous claimants of the Papacy — it was luxury, worldliness, insatiate avarice, and a haughtier than any military arrogance, in the principal seats of churchly authority — which made men fear that the pestilence and the famine smiting the earth were forerunners of Judgment ; that even the religion Divinely authenticated for the blessing of man must fail of success, and that the final catastrophe of the planet, heralded by meteors, and by strange showers of bloody rain, was nigh at hand. But when that terrible epoch passed, and when Christianity began again to assert, in places at least, its power to master human passions, the up-spriug of hope was like the sudden break of day after a wild and dreary night. Again men looked forward to the coming of a future of beauty and of peace. It was the expectation of this, to be wrought out of course by the Church which they ruled, which in large measure gave to Hildebrand his power, and to Innocent his, over soldiers and kings. The whole elaborated and complex hierarchy had had from the first an intimate relation to this conviction of the per manence of the religion which it was designed to subserve and maintain, and of the ever-widening power proper to that. The vast organization had been rooted rather in fancied needs than in fantastic ambitious. It attempted to give an earthly instru ment sufficiently extensive and sufficiently powerful for the full expression, and the cosmical activity, of the advancing world- religion. The more than imperial authority of the Master was to find in it a more adequate exhibition than the imperial secu lar authority ruling from Eome had found in the careful con stitution of the empire ; and so, for centuries, the immense and manifold ecclesiastical system gave illustration, while it gave stimulation, to the expectant confidence of believers. This particular development of that expectation, in the line of 310 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY. an earthly organization vast enough, splendid enough, to corre spond with the grandeur of Christ's spiritual kingdom — to have a permanence like that in the world, and to bear on all its won drous constitution celestial benedictions, while it showed in its structure celestial inspirations — this we hold, without any doubt? to have been mistaken. Its subsequent history appears to us to have proved it human, not Divine : the creature of man's misapprehension as to what the religion of the Master required, for its surest defence, for its widest propagation ; the result of a confusion of secular needs with those on the higher spiritual levels, to which the others were not correspondent. It seems to us to show the impulse, and incorporate the effects, of man's not unnatural misconception, in an age when fixed titular rank and positive authority had still much of their ancient preemi nence, rather than to be, in any just sense, the fruit of the counsel and incentive of the Master. But we must not over look the significant fact that it based its imperious appeal to men's thoughts on their assurance of the proper lordship and the predicted supremacy of the Christ in the earth ; that their admiration was attracted to the effort to make it as grand in earthly exhibition as his kingdom was in moral preeminence ; and that because it was widely beheved — and is by many to day believed — to be the appropriate palace in the world for his indwelling, it had such majesty, and keeps it still, before the minds of its adherents. It was to be — if the primitive concep tion had been correct, it ought to have been — to other kingdoms, as Hildebrand wrote of it to William the Conqueror, ' what the sun is to the moon in the heavenly order.' * Because men thought it Divinely commensurate, in earthly relations, with the proper supremacy of him who was the immortal and reno vating King of the world, they expected it at last to fiU the earth, and all the ages, with its superb and shining presence. By the same great interior expectation, the vast cathedrals, built to stand for many centuries, were modulated to mighty rhythm ; and their enormous continuing foundations have this * Villemain : " Life of Gregory Seventh " : London ed., 1874 : Vol. H. : p. 232. ON THE WORLD'S HOPE OF PROGRESS. 311 _^2££_of jthe rfii._Lr&„_yrought into every enduring course of Cyclo pean masonry. The Crusades implied it, if they did not spring from it. Their moral significance is in their vast and impassioned affirmation that Christendom is properly sovereign in the earth, and that the places trodden by its Lord should be possessed by his religion. It lurks as a refrain— this sense of the sovereignty which belongs to Christianity, and of its final victory on earth — under the stubborn discussions of the schoolmen. It breaks into expression in sweet and lofty mediaeval hymns, whose stanzas chime as if written for harps, or throb and thunder as to drum-beat and organ. Out of it, in fact, sprang the Eeformation : which was seen to be needful, which had for generations been seen to be needful, by those who in spirit preceded the Eeformers, in order to the fruitful work of Christianity in the upbuilding of its su preme future. Their spirit was always that of John Tauler, who quotes a text in an Advent sermon which nobody since has been able to find, but which to him was manifestly precious : " God leadeth the righteous by a narrow path into a broad high way, till they come to a wide and open place." * On the front of a house at Frankfort on the Maine, from whose antique balcony, facing the Cathedral, Luther is reported to have preached, I remember to have read the Latin legend, said to have been suggested by him : "In silentio ac spe erit vestra fortitudo." SUence does not seem, to "one" study ing" his career, to have been a marked attribute of the great German, whose words, at once tender and terrible, wrought such changes in Christendom ; but hopefulness for the future surely was, as it was, if not equaUy, with his gentler associates. Partly be cause he had it not, Erasmus tarried outside the combat which he had done so much to compel. Since that great era of Eeformation this spirit of hope never has failed, among those who have inherited the doctrine and re peated the impulse of its great leaders. What a power it showed in Puritan England, in the darkest days for evangelical * " History of John Tauler '': Miss Winkworth's translation. New York ed., 1858 : p. 213. [The German quotation is : " Gott fuehret die Gerech- ten durch einen engen Weg in die breite Strasze, dasz sie kommen in die Weite und in die Breite."] 312 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY teaching and for liberty of worship, we perfectly know ; what power among theJHu^uenots^of Franee^when hunted to their fastnesses in the Cevennes, or when done to death in fire or flood, or the fierce dragonnades ; what power among the perse cuted Christians of the valleys of the Vaudois, or of the Aus trian Tyrol. It has been the inheritance of the church on this continent, from the beginning. ThaJPilgrims had.-di!aw4t-t____. robus^conyictto_iinto^hejrJjfe, fromjILtheir study of both the Testaments, that kingdom might perish after kingdom, dynasties pass, the most sohd institutions of the earth be subverted, but that the religion of him of Nazareth never should fail ; and that to plant this in the untracked woods of this wilderness-con tinent was to give it the only certain promise of an enduring civilization. So hither they came, and here they stood, un daunted by nature in her unaccustomed and terrifying aspects, undaunted by savages, undaunted by even the evil personalities which seemed to them to be darkening the air. They had, at any rate, the courage of their convictions. They expected small colonies to become the foundation of great commonwealths ; that the seed of their humble sacrificed life would spring at last into bounteous harvests, vital and golden ; and their fortitude was inspired, and continually maintained, by this immense un- subduable hope. The Dutch had been in like manner animated in their heroic and unsurpassed struggle against military tyranny and religious persecution ; and on that marshy and yielding soil which they themselves had plucked from the sea, they had faced without flinching the utmost fury of Spanish power, because they ex pected success in the end for what was conformed to Christ's re ligion. Except for the resistant and incalculable force thus in spired they must have yielded to the proud, wealthy, infuriated empire, which for eighty years, with only the interval of a twelve years' truce, raged around them like a furious sea beat ing upon their recent dykes. They, if any people on earth, were ' saved by hope.' Our fathers, therefore, Dutch, English, Huguenot, brought hither this profound expectation of a future f orjthe world, bright and great, ample and hoTy, to be secured by their religion. It ON THE WORLD'S HOPE OF PROGRESS. 313 was in them amid the Indian wars, which scarred with fire where they did not consume the nascent settlements, and it was an unfailing tonic to their souls. It was in them amid the Eev- olutionary struggle. It was in their councils when the great institutions of government in this country were shaped and set, after the Peace of a.d. 1783. The later missionary development sprang from it, as it had done before, centuries earlier, in south ern and in central Europe. All juJiaeq_ient.-.pl_Ua_i_l__Qpical effort and j>lan have had inthis their inspiration. It has lain at the base of colleges, seminaries, and the multiplied schools for popular instruction, as well as of special church-activities. How powerful a force it was, you remember, in our late CiyU_Wax. Men could not be persuaded — no matter what the present deci sion of arms might appear on the bloodiest fields, no matter what peril might at any time threaten, of division in the loyal 6tates, or of foreign intervention— ^they could not be persuaded j that a righteous Liberty was not at last to conquer in the strife ; ' because this seemed as essential as the planet to the future of the race, and that future, as one of consummate clearness and peace, and of majestic moral order, was to them as certain as was the historical advent of Jesus. I do not believe, for one, that a forty years' war would have conquered this hope, so im bedded is it in the national mind. If it had ever failed, the loss would have been more than the loss of all armies, since the con tinent would then have been ready to accept almost any fate of anarchy or misrule. Nor is this assured expectation of the future peculiar to us : the result, perhaps, of our national youth, of our great spaces of virgin soil, of our brilliant and exhilarating atmosphere. It is in Europe, in Christian communities, as it is among us. There, as here, the religion which is so apt for mankind, and which has so signally blessed the world, has spread this immense impres sion around it, even upon those who for themselves scarcely ac cept its discoveries or its rules. Among those who do accept these, the religion is recognized as in its nature of secular and unwasting force. It is seen to be powerfully advancing in the world, at the present hour ; to be widening in its range, and ex tending to remoter regions ; to be putting fresh energies, aU 314 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY the time, into moral, political, social life. Assaults upon it are made, of course, as they were aforetime. They only show its enduring vitality; are the sceptical response to its inflexible claim of authority. They offer the most significant tribute to its unchanging and imperative power ; and they no more harm it, in the end, than errors in geometry confuse the spheres. It en ters literature, in our own time, more finely and fully than ever before. It is in novels, poems, histories, in delightful essays, profound treatises, charming biographies, even more, one might not unfrequently say, than it is in sermons. It affects legisla tions, in their spirit and intent, with an ever-expanding reach of influence. It erects continually new institutions, of its charity, for its beneficence. It, and it only, involves the elements and presents the assurance of that moral culture, common to peoples, and general in the world, on which civilizations may securely repose, and in expressing and serving which they become of en during ethical worth. Philosophies are futile, and moralities are inadequate, to an end at once so vital and so vast. The re ligion of the New Testament, in its prodigious and stUl unmeas ured spiritual force, has done the work, partially at least, amid disastrous and disheartening times, in the previous centuries. It is now as apt and equal to it as ever it was ; and with the old confidence, of the time of Origen, or of that of Augustine, it expects stiU the coming ages. No matter what men's fears may suggest, to such as would have shrunk from the gopher-wood Ark as not strong enough for the waters, to such as are fearful on any warm day of an impend ing conflagration of the planet, Christianity to-day, to a greater I extent than ever before, is the moulding force in civilizationjji and it is the one force, infrangible as" sunshine, while silent as that, and far more glorious in function and effect, which fears no assault, knows no decay, and suffers no waste, as years go on. So it appears, at least, to those who have traced it in the past, and who have felt on themselves its vast impression ; and while that impression continues on their spirits, their glad and great expec tation of the future can only grow brighter as that future comes nearer. It has passed, in faet, into the thought and life of the world; and all recent enterprise among the nations of Chris- ON THE WORLD'S HOPE OF PROGRESS. 315 tendom, for physical advance, for legal reform, for just amend ment of political conditions, takes impulse and courage from this hope of the future. The age is one, some one has said, ' im patient of Isthmuses.' It is equally impatient of mountain-bar riers, or of the obstacles to human intercourse interposed by winds and waves on the sea, by streams or desert-tracts on the land. And behind every drill which cuts the rock in the moun tain tunnel, behind every engine which drives the ship against storm and tempest over the riotous fury of waves, or which pro pels the loaded train over alkali plains and rocky crests, is this invisible force of the spirit which since the new religion came has expected a future to be wrought out by it, conformable to it, its ultimate crown of earthly glory. Whatever else fails, while that remains, the race will still be rich and strong. Whatever else comes, if that has vanished, mankind will be without foresight or nerve in the loss of this unmeasured incentive. Christianity alone can supply it. All other religions have entered their period, or have fulfilled it, of retrogression. Christianity alone develops still its pristine force, advances still on the path of its conquests. Scepticism is uni-\ formly pessimistic. Faith, alone, soars and exults. To the mair who is doubtful about this religion — who looks upon it with either critical incredulity, or the frigid complacence of an out side amateur — the world almost always grows daily darker. To the missionary laborer in far lands, mastering with difficulty un known tongues, surrounded by unfamiliar arts and dusky faces, toiling for years to make a few souls know something of him who taught in Palestine, the future is as certain as if he touched it ; and that future, to his exulting expectation, is to be as radi ant with glory as the sky over Calvary was heavy with gloom — as resplendent with lovely celestial lights as to his imagination, if you hold that the faculty chiefly concerned, was the mount of the Lord's supreme ascension. He expects long toil, and many disasters, incarnadined seas, dreary wildernesses, battles with giants, and spasms of fear in the heart of the church. But he looks as surely as he looks for the sunrise, after nights of tempest and of lingering dawn, for the ultimate illumination of the world by the Faith. And however full of din and dissonance 316 THE EFFECT OF CHRISTIANITY. the history of mankind has seemed hitherto, seems even to-day, he anticipates already the harmonies to be in it as under the guid ance of him of Galilee it draws toward its predestined close, ' not sentimental or idyllic, but epic and heroic' In a familiar and famous passage in Virgil's fourth eclogue, written perhaps forty years before Christ, he hails with song the birth of a child who is to restore the Golden Age. His figures seem caught from the prophecies of Isaiah — perhaps through the books of the so-called Erythraean Sibyl, then read in Eome — as he sketches the time when the goat shall bring home the milk- swelled udders, and the herds shall have no fear of great lions; when the serpent shall be extinct, with the poisonous herb ; when the ruddy grape shall natively hang on vines uncultured, and the stiff oaks shaU distil liquid honey ; when every region shall be fruitful in all things, and the ground shall no more be subjected to the harrow, nor the vine to the knife. The boy of whom Virgil is supposed to have written was im prisoned by Tiberius, and starved to death in his solitary dun geon. The child of whom Isaiah wrote now leads in triumph, toward unreached ages, the aspiring and hopeful civilization of tbe world. In his Name, is the hope of mankind. In the sign of his Cross, Christendom conquers. LECTUEE X. A EEVIEW OF THE AEGTJMENT, WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. LECTUEE X. In reaching the last of this series of Lectures — the delivery of which has been always a pleasure, through your unabating and kind attention — 1 trust that I may assume the admission by you that the design with which I commenced has been at least in some measure accomplished : not as it might have been, if I had had the larger leisure and ampler knowledge which others possess, but as far as one working within my limitations could perhaps hope to fulfil it. I did not propose at all, you remember, to prove with apodeictic certainty the Divine authorship of Chris tianity, — the very nature of the moral and affectionate faith for which this appeals making such an attempt plainly absurd. But I hoped to show that such an origin of this reHgion is impres sively indicated, by certain evident historical effects attending it in the world ; and to this I have limited our attention. I have certainly had no end to accomplish, except to ascertain and set forth the truth, which it is as important for me as for any one to discover and accept. I do not, of course, profess to stand toward the religion which we have inherited as an intelligent pagan might have stood in the day of Tiberius. Beyond dispute, it seems to me, the crowded and significant intervening centuries ought to count for some thing, iu your estimate, and in mine, of the novel force then en tering society. I have had no wish either, and I make no pre tence, to take the place of an incredulous, or a merely careless and indifferent critic, when standing in front of our religion. The recognition of its transforming power involves neither weak ness nor shame, nor does it discredit any man's judgment. But neither, on the other hand, have I had the least wish to over-esti mate, in thought or in word, what it has actually done among (319) 320 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, men. I have simply sought frankly to place you at the point of view from which I regard the matter considered ; to offer to your minds a course of thought familiar to my own, and influen tial years ago on my convictions ; and to lead you to conclusions, if these at last shall seem to you fair, in which I rejoice. If I have been anywhere seriously mistaken, I am glad to be sure that your further studies will correct me. If what I have said shall appear to you, now and hereafter, justified by the facts, I delightedly hope that you will thank God more than ever for the Faith which He sent into the world, and will serve and honor the Master whom it manifests to our minds, with a fresh consecration. You will bear me witness, I am confident, that, whatever my personal convictions may be, I have assumed nothing concerning this religion which does not lie plainly upon its surface, to be no ticed at once by every observer. Without discussing or describ ing its particular contents, as I rejoice to apprehend and accept these — without trying by analysis to exhibit systematically its general vast and affirmative scheme, and to set forth its parts in what to me appears beyond doubt their just coordination — I have taken it simply as a distinguished historical system, which ap peared in the world at a definite date, recognized by all, and which is fairly reported to us in certain writings familiarly known as the New Testament ; and I have sought to outline before you the distinct relations of that religion which these writings con fessedly represent, to the progress and culture of the subsequent times : not desiring to attribute anything to it which does not belong to it ; not seeking to refer to it directly what may have come from secondary forces, often as I think inspired by itself, yet working with it in parallel lines ; and certainly not trying to conceal, from your eyes or from my own, the faUure of its energy to wholly renew the nature of man, or to do all the work in amending his customs which from a celestial religion, if unre sisted by human foUy or human passion, might properly be ex pected. It is no picture of fancy which I have tried to exhibit : no picture of prophesied Millennial beauty, as if already that had been realized on this confused and turbulent planet. But taking the state of human society as it palpably was before this religion WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 321 was declared in the world, and comparing it with that which has since appeared, I have exhibited to you my conviction that certain peculiar and transcendent elements have entered the governing life of mankind through this religion ; and that its effect thus far has been to elevate and purify, to up-lift and set forward, in a wholly unique mode and measure, the race to which an impulse was brought by it immense and commanding. In pursuing this general line of thought, I have shown, as I think, that a new and nobler conception of God was certainly thus made familiar to the world : one naturally surpassing any thing which had been reached on the same majestic and inspiring theme, either in the popular religions of antiquity, or in the highest philosophy of that time : one in which the sublime ele ments of that discovery of God to the Hebrews which preceded Christianity were accepted, combined, and magnificently sur passed, by a fresh and surely a supreme exhibition of Love as the inmost life of God's being, of holiness as its perfect mani festation, and of the Divinest self-sacrifice as its fruit. The effect of this Christian doctrine of God on the mental and moral life of mankind, and on the civilization which gives to that life its constant exhibition, can hardly, it would seem, be overstated. I have shown also, or sought to show, that a change in large measure corresponding with this has been wrought iu the con ception which man now has, so far as this reHgion has reached him, of tbe dignity and worth of his own nature : that since Christianity made its appeal, which all must admit to be vast and majestic, and which it affirms to be Divine, to every person to whom its teachings and documents come, as the ancient religions or speculative moralities had not done — since it showed God, taking its statement of things as true, as interested in man, and declared Immortality waiting for him, with such a solemn and sovereign emphasis as was wholly unparalleled in any poetry or any religion before it was preached — the soul of man, for its own sake, amid whatever accidents of condition, has been rec ognized as worthy of nobler care and higher honor ; and what ever involves this idea, and is animated by it, has had a promi nence and a permanence in the Christian society such as before were unimagined. 21 322 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, I have shown also, or sought to show, the new conception which plainly and certainly came to the world with the teaching of Jesus concerning the duty which man owes to God in the sphere of Worship: how the old forms of external sacrifice passed away on the instant, wherever this religion appeared ; how for such was substituted the more intimate and inesti mable sacrifice of self, in the conquest of whatever within the sou] is alien to God, and in consecration to His Divine service ; what a power of love was then shown in worship, unknown in the world until that hour, and what joy was expressed in it, with a new-born and reverent faith — articulate in music, in mighty and exulting hymns, in great liturgies and creeds, after a time in the very structure of the houses for praise ; and how this spirit is contemplated by Christianity as working abroad into the entire contexture of life, and as properly impenetrating and de voting to the Most High all active powers, in all their exercise, in the manifold labor and endurance of man. The new conception of man's duty to Man, introduced by this religion, I tried equaUy to Ulustrate : showing the energy and the beautiful fruit of it, especially in the cases where its moral force most distinctly collides with previous established custom or law, in giving protection and aid to the weak : as in the in stance of little children ; of woman, systematically reduced in antiquity to unjust subordination ; of the enslaved, with those incapacitated for the struggle of life by sickness, destitution, or by native infirmity of body or of mind. As the sun in the heavens turns winter ice to rippling streams, so the gospel of Galilee has certainly, to a great extent, throughout the domains which it af fects, turned wealth and power into the channels of cordial be neficence. It carries to-day into millions of cabins securer lib erty, more abundant prosperity, a new aspiration, a more ani mating hope ; and while its results are yet confessedly incom plete, awaiting a consummation still to be realized, in each of those already attained lies the prediction of other changes, follow ing the same clear line of direction, which shaU make the future civilizations of the worid more lovely and benign than others, or ours, thus far have been. Even the relation of States to each other has also been changed, WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 323 and vitaUy improved, in a measure almost equal. That relation, as one of mutual alliances and reciprocating charities, was first made possible by the passing away of the separating force of pagan religions, and by the breaking up of the Eoman empire, which had come to be pervaded more or less by a common Christianity, as well as by a common jurisprudence. Since its distinct emergence into history the movement so initiated has gone majestically forward, with ever-enlarging power and scope, under the impulse of the prevalent Faith. Since the feudal system fell, which localized law, and which organized society around minor centres into many distinct defiant districts — since nations, breaking out of those paralyzing restrictions, became compact and permanent, with almost a personal consciousness in them — and since the imperious Papal autocracy ceased to attempt to regulate states in their conduct toward each other — the sense of obligation to the unseen equities honored by Christ, and of common obligations to God and to each other, has been growing among nations in clearness and force : tiU now treaties are sacred, within the limitations determined by themselves; am bassadors are respected ; injustice is rebuked, between peoples as between persons ; combinations occur to resist the ambitious, and to shelter the weak ; and the usages of war are constantly miti gated, if war itself is not yet abolished. The tendency here is to the final establishment of courts of Arbitration, taking the place of decisions by Battle ; and the ultimate enduring peace of the world — though a vision still, not yet a fact — is a vision neither so remote nor so vague as it uniformly seemed in the preceding times. That something of this, that much of it indeed, has come, in- strumentally, through the widening of commerce, the multipli cation of useful arts, an advancing social and political wisdom, I have not sought to conceal from your view. It is as evident to me as to any one. But that the power of the Christian religion has been behind it, and behind these instruments conspiring to assist it, seems no less apparent; and if that now were with drawn from the world, with its teaching and law, and its spirit ual impression — if peoples and governments were left to no other guidance and control in their moral relations than those 324 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, which preceded the advent of Christ — I see no guaranty that the old chaos of jealous and contending nations might not return, in fiercer fight, with bloodier weapons, a more terrible tyranny of the stronger powers over the weak. In developing the effect of the new religion on the mental culture and training of mankind, I showed how inseparable is such an effect from its very constitution, as the chief literary re ligion of the world : coming to us through a large Book, having many authors, who wrote with a singular vividness of concep tion and exuberance of impulse, and who give us many particu lar books, of history, biography, legislation, prophecy, with maxims of profound ethical wisdom, with great arguments of doctrine, with spiritual rules for the shaping of character, and with gnomic sayings which put into the narrowest compass vast riches of thought : how such a religion, of necessity, sets the mind on which its powerful impact falls into instant, various, and wide- ranging action, to find in other departments of knowledge its illustrations and proofs, or, if that must be, to find arguments against it ; how it builds up always a rich and fruitful middle- class mind ; and how at the same time it ministers with intrinsic vigor to higher minds, sending them forth on all quests for truth, giving the incentive, and creating the instruments, for every species of intelUgent research. Its literatures multiply, its schools expand and grow to universities, by a law of its na ture. It exalts the mental spirit in man, instead of depressing it, by the tender, majestic, harmonious discovery of things super natural, which is one of its vital characteristics. It opens remot est realms of speculation by its circumspect silences, before each inquisitive spirit. And the contrast of its continual effect, in this direction, with those of the various ethnic religions, boasting also their sacred books, but assisting no wide inteUectual progress, and giving birth to no benign literatures, is Hke the contrast, ever repeated, of the day with the night, or of life with death. When we turn to consider the moral effects accomplished by this religion, not on individuals only, or in limited communities, but on the scale of national life, and in countries and capitals most advanced in arts, industries, and accumulated resources, the influence of it appears if possible yet more remarkable, as weU WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 325 as more salutary. It came to communities cultured in letters, instructed in arts, mighty in arms, but to a great extent morally rotten with luxury and lust, the prey of degraded and savage passions, the story of whose life, and the picture of whose man ners, are almost too fearful to be contemplated : accustomed to spectacles, and to sensual excesses, which now would make any country so infamous that the world would expect the globe itself to open beneath it and swallow it up. Christianity, in its wor ship, its humanity, its charity, in the inflexible fidelity to truth which it demanded, and in the heroical energy of faith toward a Master unseen which it inspired, struck down upon this an cient life, in the most cruel and dissolute capitals, as a veritable gleam from worlds celestial ; and though it encountered tre mendous resistance, of law, argument, fierce invective, stinging satire, of the society which it rebuked, of the government which it challenged, of military opposition, and of popular persecu tions unparalleled in the frenzied fury of their onset, — it over came that resistance, awakened an enthusiasm which spurned and curbed the assailing hostihty, converted some of its noblest champions by their recoil toward its amazing serenity amid storms, and finally became master of the empire, by its moral force, aided by whatever of Divine providence we may recog nize in its history. If it did not accomplish all that might seem desirable to us, it made at any rate the former conditions of personal and of public life impossible to be repeated. It was something to put Con stantine in the place of Galerius, and to set a man like Leo the Great on the throne defiled in imperial days with hideous and indescribable crime. It was something, afterward, to take the savage nomadic populations which rushed in upon the empire, and to build up from them Christian states, in which vice exists but without repute ; in which no man in eminent station Gould repeat with impunity any one of thousands of uncriticized ex cesses of Eoman Senators ; in which the strongest throne would fall if the Sovereign upon it were now to repeat a single one of many crimes of the ancient emperors. Until Christianity has wholly impressed with its transforming power the nature of man, it cannot banish iniquity from the earth. But it has, at 326 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, any rate, branded vice, in whatever station, with indelible mark. It has forced upon vast communities of men the sense of the necessity of righteousness in the spirit, as the source and the safeguard of righteousness in conduct. And its prodigious force has been shown, in instances uncounted, in the new purity to which it has lifted those most depraved, who seemed abandoned of God and man. Once let it come to its perfect contemplated supremacy in the world, and a society as pure as the Sermon on the Mount, as radiant as the whiteness of the transfigured robe, as supreme against evil as was the Lord in whom the religion was then incarnated, must be its immortal and iUustrious trophy. Finally, this religion has given to the race a hope for the fu ture, in the coming ages of earthly history, which was not known, and which could not be, while a Divine providence was not recognized over all, and when there was no force whatever, known to statesmen, conjectured by philosophers, by which a certain moral progress, toward ultimate issues of Hberty and of peace, could be assured to the multiform clashing societies of mankind. It has dissipated the fears which were in the might iest empire of the earth, when it began its novel and astounding work. It has widened the view encouraged by the earlier Hebrew system. It has turned the general gaze of men from the past, to which they were wont to look back as the Golden Age, toward the future whose promise grows more inviting as the tread of the centuries approaches it nearer. It has shown in itself the power to reconcile, to liberate, and to set forward na tions, with a steadiness and a strength which had certainly before been unknown in the world. That power continues absolutely unwasted by all the periods which have witnessed its exercise, by all the conflicts through which it has passed. It has never been more signally declared than in recent years — in amended legislations, expanded philanthropies, widened missions ; and in spired by its instinctive energy, as well as taught by its consum mating prophecy, the peoples who receive the religion of the Christ now expect each century to be brighter than the past, all tending to the final reign on the earth of righteousness and of wisdom. It is this which invigorates every effort of disciples to extend their religion, and which gives to their prayer impulse and joy. WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 327 This has been the work of this Christian religion, as thus far accomplished, in the world which first heard it from Jesus of Nazareth. In detail, very likely, it may be questioned if every particular of the manifold progress to which I have referred is to be ascribed to it as its source. And I have not hidden, from your eyes or from mine, the fact that much remains to be ac complished : that a picture might even now be drawn of Chris tendom as it is, of this very city, which would almost tempt one to feel for the moment that Christianity itself had found the work committed to it too vast and hard, to be performed, the spirit of man too vehement and refractory to be subdued ; and that the promise of such a future as those taught by it fondly con template is only a delightful delusion of faith. I admit the justice of much of that sharp condemnation of society which implies a higher standard of judgment than was known in the old world, with a finer and more imperative sense of the paramount au thority of an ideal rectitude. I repeat, too, what I said at the beginning, that if this religion did come from God, it could have come only because there was imminent moral need of it ; and that therefore, until its celestial supremacy is wholly complete, great evils must be expected to continue, resistant forces, yet unconquered, must be looked for. In spite of all such, it seems to me beyond the reach of intel ligent dispute that the broad, permanent, general effects to which I have adverted, have been the result of the coming of this religion to the world. In the aggregate, I see not how they can be denied, until we re-make the Past, or until we accept the Indian doctrine that ' all is illusion,' and apply it to Christendom. I see too that they have come, not as casually associated with the religion, by a force from without, but as vitally involved in its constitution ; made necessary by palpable elements in its struc ture, which none will dispute ; proceeding from it as the stream from its source, or as radiant effulgence from the substance of the sun. Nor is it true here, as may be sometimes elsewhere the case, that the many particulars hide from our view the great general outline, so that one ' cannot see the forest, on account of the trees.' The vast result which is always before us, in the work of this religion, manifestly and mightily transcends the most 328 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, careful catalogue of particulars. The world is a new one, not wholly, but surely in significant measure, since Jesus met his death on the cross. And there is no sign in all the heavens that the influence which thus has emanated from him is now or here after to be arrested : that the race will swing back, could do so if it wished, to the spiritual carelessness, the enthroned cruelty, the deified lust, of the earlier time, all rooted in the ignorance of God and the Hereafter. Match London, or Paris, or the Eome of to-day, against the Eome or the Corinth of Paul — match the Colosseum as now it stands, with the cross in its centre, against the Colosseum filled with its thousands of shouting spectators, looking on with delight, as one sees them outlined in the picture of Gerome, at the horrible slaughter of animals or of men — and we seem to be on a different planet. The victories of this gen tlest and most spiritual of Faiths, have surely, thus far, been indisputably grand. I am not unmindful of the fact, which I hope you will also clearly recognize, that still one great and rich department, in some respects the richest of all, in the work which Christianity has accomplished in the world, has scarcely been touched in this series of Lectures : the department, that is, of what may be caUed its individual victories ; over men like Augustine, whom it con verted, and afterward richly instructed and inspired ; or like Norbert, of the twelfth century, whom it transformed, on occasion of a startling natural occurrence, from an utterly reckless and dissolute courtier, into an apostolic preacher, whose sermons flashed the fire of conviction on multitudes of hearts, and seemed to open Heaven to the faithful. Such conquests of this religion have been repeated in many men and many women conspicuous in history, whom it has brought out of darkness into light, out of sin into holiness, and out of a passionate love of the world into fervent and supreme adoration of God. If the scheme of these Lectures allowed another to be added to the series, no other theme could have been so inviting, no other, I think, so reward ing to our thoughts, as the one thus suggested : since in such ex amples we see brought, as it were, into a focus, the spiritual en ergies which elsewhere are exhibited in their general operation ; and the impression thence resulting is like that of the sunbeam WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 329 when by the lens its associated rays are concentered upon the hand. The flesh which before had hardly felt it, then responds to its touch with instant thrill. Indeed, such instances of spiritual victory over minds and hearts set in stubborn resistance to its appeals are in themselves the surpassing effects of Christian power; clearest, grandest, and most characteristic. In a memorable passage by Macaulay, in his essay on Mitford's History of Greece, he says of Athens, with a scholar's enthusiasm : " Her power is indeed manifest at the bar, in the senate, on the field of battle, in the schools of philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain — wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep — there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens." * In only a more reverent and affectionate spirit, and surely with a justice still more apparent, we may say of Christianity, that while it trans formed the savage and sensual life of the empire, while it mas tered the barbarians who broke upon that in successive terrific inundations of destruction, while it has changed the face of Europe, building cathedrals, hospitals, universities, and has covered this country with at least the foundations and lower stories of its appropriate civilization, while it has made the en lightened and aspiring Christendom of to-day the fact of chief importance thus far in the progress of mankind — its true glory is that it has wiped the tears of sorrow from the eyes of its dis ciples, and has comforted hearts which were desolate with grief ; that it has given celestial visions to those who dwelt beneath thatched roofs, and has taught a happier humility to the proud ; that it has shed victorious tranquillity on those who have seen the shadows of death closing around them, and has caused to be written over their graves the lofty words of promise and cheer, " I am the Eesurrection and the Life." This is the diadem of this religion : sparkling with gems, lucid and vivid, such as never were set in any philosophic or poetic crown. Because of these effects, and not merely for its infln- * Works: London ed., 1873 : Vol. VII. : p. 703. 330 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, ences upon cosmical progress, men have loved this religion with a passionate intensity beside which all other enthusiasms were weak. Because of these, if for nothing else, it will live in the world tiU human hearts have ceased to beat. But to all this vast and alluring theme I can only thus refer in a word, and must trust your own thought, it may be I hope your own experience, to show how the Faith preached in Judea still touches the heart, in all its critical, fateful moments, as with an energy coming from God. It speaks to us through languages wholly unknown to those who proclaimed it at Antioch or at Corinth, upon a continent not prefigured by any reminiscence of the lost Atlantis, and toward which the imperial eagles of Eome never had turned their haughty eyes. But it is, to-day, the life of the life in millions of spirits, over which bend the heavens which it has illumined, upon which faU the premonitory Hghts of that great Immortality which through its Master has been manifested to men. But leaving this, and looking only at what I have been able imperfectly to treat, I certainly am not timid in asking, What is the fair inference from it all ? Have not the facts already out- Hned been sufficient, at least, to justify the thought with which I commenced: that enough is apparent in this track of inquiry to warrant, to deniand, from every one, the most careful and earn est study of Christianity in its characteristic and vital contents, as probably from God . enough to impel us, when we are thus assured of its nature, to make a personal experiment of it, ac cording to its law ? I do not wish to exaggerate anything ; but it seems to me in disputably clear that so much, at any rate, has been attained, and that while Christianity cannot be scientifically demonstrated, it is most surely indicated, by these unique historical effects, as having had its lofty origin, not on earth, but in the mind which had ordained and which perfectly knew the soul in man, and which could not be unmindful of the wants of that soul, or of the attainments which are possible to it. The fountain cannot rise higher than the spring. The vast, shining, perpetual up- spring of these immense and world-wide effects — it seems to me absolutely incredible that the source of it all was in a sensitive WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 331 Jewish brain in the workshop of Joseph, and in an unbroken garden-grave. The origin of Christendom cannot fairly be ex plained by the terse and trenchant sarcasm of Ebrard, com menting upon the notion that the narrative of John is a sort of philosophical and poetical romance: 'At that time it came to pass — that nothing happened ! ' At this point, then, observe stUl further some other things connected in history with this religion, — especially this: how suddenly it broke forth upon a race which was not in the least expecting its coming, which seemed almost as far as possible from being prepared to accept and absorb it with intelligent faith, yet in which certain preparations had been made, appar ently for its introduction to mankind, which at least distinctly agree with the thought that a vigilance overhead was concerned in its coming, and that a plan not of human device was in that fulfilled. It has sometimes been made an objection to Christianity, in its claim to supreme Divine authority, that maxims are found in it which were not unknown in other systems, and declarations of fact which find resemblances, if not exact or equivalent coun terparts, in other religions. Undoubtedly this is true. We know distinctly what the principal prevalent religions of the world, outside of Palestine, essentially were, in their own na ture, in their historical development, and in their moral and social influence. Yet when we know also that Aratus said, whom Cicero translated, and from whom Paul quoted, ' full of Zeus are all the streets and market-places, full of Him are all seas and harbors, . . and we are also His offspring ': when we hear Seneca say that 'between good men and the gods there exists a friendship, or rather a certain relationship and resemblance,' that ' the mind came from God, and yearns to ward Him,' that ' a sacred spirit resides within us, and no good man is without God,' that ' the first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the fact of having sinned,' that ' we should so give as we would wish in turn to receive,' and that a perfect man in the world ' would be like a light shining in darkness ': when we read in the Buddhist Dhammapada that ' the evil-doer mourns in this world, and he mourns in the next,' that ' wise people, 332 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, after they have listened to the laws, become serene, like a deep, smooth, and silent lake,' that 'happiness is the outcome of goodness,' and that ' not to commit any sin, to do good, and to purify one's mind, that is the teaching of the Awakened': when we read such discerning and monitory words, and know that they were written by men who could not have heard, except possibly in the instance of Seneca, the name of Christ: — and when we remember, further than this, that in a subsequent stage of the Hindu development, among the various avatars of Vishnu, was reckoned a docetic incarnation in Krishna, the hero who came to lighten men's burdens, and as a great Teacher to save mankind, who, amid much that was frivolous and much that was lascivious, vanquished serpents, overcame demons, and at last defeated the gods themselves : above all, when we read the wish attributed to Buddha, ' that all the sin of the world might fall on him, that the world thereby might be delivered,' — we are tempted to ask, What is there, what can there be, in Christianity, which in essence transcends all this ? Was it not, after all, like these other systems, a human development out of principles recognized by the natural conscience . a majestic but still a terrestrial consummation of ethical maxims, spiritual yearn ings, mysterious fancies, which had appeared among other peo ples, but which finally took this lofty and rich historical form, and which since have commanded such astonishing influence ? I think the doubt thus suggested the subtlest and strongest which any ingenuous mind can feel concerning Christianity. It seems to leave the intrinsic spiritual splendor of that substantial ly undimmed, while ascribing it all to an earthly origin. It has the charm of free and wide sympathy toward other religions, among which Christianity is recognized as one of a similar na ture, though extolled as the best. And it leaves each student of this religion to take from it what he likes, rejecting the rest, and to feel bound by no limitations from supernal authority, only animated and instructed by great human suggestions, in what he takes or in what he rejects. Fully to respond to this far-reaching question, and to show how essentially and loftily dissimilar Christianity is to the various religions which preceded or surrounded it, would obvi- WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 333 ously require a careful and full analysis of its contents, as com pared with those of other systems; but from such analysis I have carefully refrained in this series of Lectures. I have been standing outside the religion, rather than within it : taking only those obvious undeniable elements which all recognize at first sight, and showing how, by reason of them and of whatsoever else was associated with them, it has modified history. The fur ther work, of investigating at large, and with accurate scrutiny, the intimate, distinctive, and governing principles confederated in it, I have left with intention to your subsequent studies. That it must involve such preeminent principles appears indis putable from the fact that it has had and still retains so large a place in the world's history, and has been the source of such cos mical beneficence. But what they are, and how they are properly combined and coordinated in a systematic theological scheme, I have wholly remitted to your personal inquiry : only seeking to do a simpler and humbler preliminary work, and to give you such impressions as may possibly prepare you the better to ac complish this nobler task. I am not therefore now in the proper position to put Christi anity in fair measurement of comparison with other religions, so far as its organic structure is concerned. I can only suggest a few thoughts, from a point of view still outside the analysis of the system, which seem to me to have a just and an important bearing upon the question thus presented. However especially and transcendently Divine Christianity may appear to any of its disciples, there is certainly nothing unaccountable, or properly unexpected, in the fact that partial resemblances to it, at various points, even pregnant suggestions looking and possibly leading toward it, should have appeared at different times, and among widely differing peoples. Christiani ty itself not only authorizes but instructs us to expect this, by those teachings concerning human nature which lie as palpably on its surface as do the examples of gold-bearing quartz above the mine. It is always thus to be remembered that, according to the tenor of New Testament teaching, God never had left Him self without witness among men, in giving them rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and 334 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, gladness ;* that they had had a law implanted in the conscience, though the written law was not before them ; and that there fore, as Paul argues, they were in fact without excuse, because when they knew God they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankfuLf The undestroyed sensibility of the soul to what is Divine, is the primary postulate of Christianity, as it is the authoritative verdict of history. It constantly reappears, this innate sensibility, in religions, household customs, sometimes in poems, often in arts. It was this which made human experience moral, and not like that of beavers or birds. Though, according to the energetic apostle, men were alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance which was in them because of the blindness of their heart,;): they were by nature, in the Christian contemplation, alHed with the Deity; they had had early dis coveries of Him ; they had innate tendencies pressing them to ward Him ; they had even imperative intuitions, of which no vicious disposition could rid them, declaring the unseen and the supernal ; and they could not as a race become atheistic, even if they tried. Therefore Christianity had been sent to address them ; and therefore, only, could it exercise upon them such a power for their mental and moral inspiration as that whose effects we have rapidly traced. If this conception of the nature of man be a correct one, it was plainly to be anticipated — where there had been a primitive knowledge of God and His will, where were souls made in His image, and which still retained that in faculty if not in spiritual temper, where the heavens were all the time telling from above, and the earth from beneath, of the power and foresight from which they had sprung, where it is affirmed, on the front of one of the principal gospels, that there had been some Light, whatever that is conceived to have been, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, and where it had been predicted beforehand that One " the Desire of all nations " was to come— that there should be adumbrations, going before, of whatever religion might be at last divinely sent ; that philosophical maxims would show preparatory elements of truth ; that religious institutions would sometimes contain the flashes and gleams of a true radiance ; * Acts xiv. 15-17. t Romans i. 19-21. % Ephesians iv. 18. WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 335 that here and there expectant spirits, yearning for what they had not found, might catch foreshadowings of what ultimately should appear, to bring them nearer to their Maker, and might take from these a prophesying brightness — as the cloud which rises in the morning-horizon before the sun, though dark at its centre, is rimmed on its edges with crinkling gold. Premoni tions of this sort, high imaginings, were surely to be expected, if the account given by Christianity of the origin of man, and of his nature, be the correct one ; while, in the entire absence of such, a celestial religion, no matter with what of miracle attended, would have had apparently no point of contact with the spirit in man. Its appeal must have been as a summons to the heart in a bronze figure ; or, certainly, as an attempt to teach rabbits and ravens the higher mathematics. It is natural to expect such ' unconscious prophecies ' of what at last may appear, from the nature in man : and they plainly constitute, in a sense most important, an appropriate preparation for a final majestic religion of God, though it seems as certain as anything in history that they never were enough to constitute of themselves a separate, sufficient, and ultimate Faith. Any relig ion coming from the Heavens without some antecedents of this kind must have had the effect of a sun bolting up into a sky of ebon darkness, to irradiate the world with rash, flaming, intol erable splendor. Such ethical maxims as I have cited, and such dreams of the possible exhibition of God in human nature, which yet never were compacted into a peculiar and positive re ligion of cosmical relations, impress one as precursory rays of light, palpitating, flickering, and gradually mingling above the horizon, to turn the darkness to partial dawn, before the illuminat ing orb appears. In this sense it is certainly the fact, according to Augustine's thought, that ' there are grains of truth in all re ligions '; that others than Hebrews had been in time past of the spiritual Israel; that those speaking Divine things before the Master were to be congratulated, if not to be followed ; and that Christianity is, in a sense, ' as old as the creation.' We understand how Justin Martyr should have felt that Christ had been par tially intimated in Socrates.* The ethnic religions were never * Apol. II. : c. 10. 336 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, able to build up in man a life harmonious with even the higher philosophical precepts. They could not give — did not seek to give — a consciousness of sweet and purifying communion with a holy Creator, whose love was immortal as His power. The bur den of sin they could not lift, from any troubled and travailing soul, by authentic promises of forgiveness. The transformation of the spirit in man from pride or fear into the humble yet joy ful tranquillity of self-consecrating affection toward an invisible King in his beauty, was something outside their range of effort. But we may not overlook, or momently depreciate, any virtue of thought or aim manifest in them. It only shows how much more was needed than they could furnish, to rectify man's spir itual life. It only adds, f of a discerning disciple, to the glory of him in whom such scattered preceding intimations appear sub limely completed and surpassed. If God at last did send a religion, appropriate to Himself, for all mankind, for all coming ages, these bursts of aspiration, these uncertain yet elevating ap prehensions of verity, these evanescent foreshadowings, only show how long and how widely He wrought — though in a silence like that which attends the motion of stars — preparing the way for the final discovery of it. But another thing carefully to be noted is this : that however numerous, or however signal, such pre-Christian or extra-Christian indications may have been of what at last becomes manifest in the Gospel, the new religion did not come by natural develop ment from any one preceding, or from all of them combined. It was not the result of a shrewd eclecticism, which sought to blend certain elements of each in a wider scheme of reconciliation. Still less was it a crass syncretism, equally ready to authorize all, making no essential distinctions between them. Efforts of this sort were abundantly made at a later time, in the Gnostic de velopment ; and what came of them, he who runs may read. But whatever else it is, or is not, Christianity, as apparent throughout the New Testament, is at least, to the most cursory observation, a system peculiar and self-contained : with its own affirmations of alleged Divine and invisible facts, and its special maxims of duty and truth founded upon them : with an interior law and life of self-development as absolutely belonging to itself WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 337 as those of tree, animal, man, belong to the organisms in which they are expressed. No one has established an effort in it to borrow from other religious schemes. It is in fact as independ ent of those which the world had elaborated, outside of Pales tine, as if they had been non-existent ; and in its effect is contra dictory and expulsive of their fundamental practices and ideas. The only religion with which it had intimate or vital relations was that of the Hebrews : to which it gives continual honor, as a Divine preparatory system, intended to teach the basal doctrine on which its crowning structure should be reared ; whose glo rious completeness should be realized in it ; and which should take from it fresh illustration on whatever in itself was of cardi nal importance, or of secular meaning. The relation of Chris tianity to the system which came before by Moses is one which the writers who first proclaim it are never weary of presenting. The Master himself, according to them, makes it often impres sively prominent. It is still apparent to every student who ex amines the records, old and new. But how far the later religion was from being in any sense a spontaneous development out of the earlier, appears on the instant demonstrated by the fact that from the very people whom that had trained came the first and fiercest resistance to it, and that from them proceeded afterward, as it has done to this day, the most strenuous, stubborn, and relentless hostility to the whole Christian scheme. It was not the feeling of one man only, or another, whether scribe or -pharisee, Herodian or Essene, it was the instinctive judgment of the nation, that this reUgion which had come out of GalUee was something apart from, or essentially above, what they had received in inheritance from the Past ; that instead of being an outgrowth from that, it was a system claiming so transcendently to supplement and surpass it, that by inevitable force it must suspend it, and if generally accepted must leave for that earlier and venerated economy no place but in history. Therefore they fought it so fiercely as they did. Therefore, as a people, they maintain toward it the old antago nism. And therefore when one trained by that system now ac cepts Christianity, it is with a violent wrench of the spirit, un der the impulse of its powerful motives, such as the heathen do 22 338 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, not know when aboHshing their temples and burning their gods. The Jew crosses a chasm, he does not merely ascend by steps from one court to another, in coming to Christ. The boy Mendel becomes the Neander — the veritable " new man " — when baptized to the Lord. It is hard to conceive how any demonstration of any faet could be furnished in history, more complete than is that which thus is given, by the Hebrews themselves, to the fact that Chris tianity, as it stands in the New Testament, is not a mere flower ing into larger proportion and lovelier beauty of the religion which they had possessed. I cannot but feel that the more care fully and profoundly one studies the system, the clearer and the deeper will be his conviction that in this they were right. The later religion was in a true sense based on the earlier, and pre supposed it. It was the Pleroma, of which that had been the prophecy. That had presented the preliminary truths, the ru brical precepts, the solemn and significant symbols, which were the heralds and advanced pioneers of its bright armies. But they take illustration and importance from it, not it from them. And there is no conceivable law of moral evolution, by incon siderable variations, gradually established, and resulting at last, through constant increments, in a fixed and definite change of type, which can possibly account for the coming of Christianity out of Judaism. It was a "new doctrine" which the Jew heard from Jesus ; and because it was new, and still so impera tive, he shut his ears against its teaching, he answered it with stones, and he finally slew the Master who had brought it. But if Christianity was not a development out of Judaism, assuredly it was not from any other religion known on the earth. The attempts of writers like Bruno Bauer to trace its origin to commingled elements of Eoman and Hellenic thought, though once assuming a temporary prominence, have long since ceased to attract attention. If referred to at all, it is only with ridicule, even by those who equally desire to find in the new Faith a human development out of preceding systems, but who certainly know that its germinating principle is not to be looked for on the banks of the Ilissus or of the Tiber.* It is not there ; nor * See Kuenen's " Hibbert Lectures " : New York ed., 1882 : pp. 203-4. WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 339 is it in the fantastic and transitory scheme of those aspiring Alex andrian philosophers, represented by Philo, who accepted the divinity ®f the Hebrew scriptures, but who sought to associate with their teachings, on equal terms, philosophical speculations derived from the Greeks: who therefore forced allegorical meanings on Hebrew texts, to make these cover what they con ceived universal ideas ; and who reached at last a mystical ra tionalism, as their supreme truth in the sphere of religion. Christianity is as centrally and sharply discriminated from such a tendency, and from its recorded speculative fruits, as it is from the worship of crocodiles or of cats. Undoubtedly, occasional resemblances appear between the elab orated verbal economy through which the Alexandrian scheme found expression, and that which is employed in passages and sections of the Christian scriptures. Especially the term ' Lo gos ' — which had been derived from Old Testament scriptures, which appeared later in Apocryphal books, and in subsequent Targums — was frequently and gladly employed by Philo, and gained through him wider currency in the world ; and this is the term preeminently used by the writer of the fourth gospel, as personally descriptive of the Lord whom he celebrates. But to infer equivalence, or resemblance, or genetic relationship, be tween their doctrines, from their common employment of this word or of others, would* be immensely wide of the mark. Words are related through contents, not form. 'Sin' means with one man an offence against good manners or taste, and with another rebellion against God. 'Death' means with one extinction of being, and with another the birth-time of Immortality. Yet both employ the identical word, if associated letters constitute identity. In just this way the whole Greek language, as far as they needed it, was used by the New Testament writers, not as having previously contained their ideas, but as being capable beyond any other of receiving these into it, and of giving them expression ; as having such capacity for regeneration that its adopted linguistic forms, though never before in the least descriptive of Christian thought or evangelical experience, could be lifted and spiritualized until they contained these. In this way the term ' Logos ' was accepted, but in a definiteness of mean- 340 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, ing, and with a sublimity of personal application, not previously contemplated ; and was made to stand, in its new majesty, as a vital and almost a sovereign term in a system of thought so diverse from that of Philo and his friends that theirs formed, as Dorner has said, " the directest antithesis to Christianity."* It seems naturally related, this Alexandrian scheme, to the Gnosti cism which followed, and which already was beginning to be un folded in the time of St. Paul. But it does not tend toward, it is not even indifferent to, the New Testament religion. That stood at the beginning, as it has done since, alone in the world : to be believed, obeyed, and loved, for its own majestic lessons, if at all : to be discredited and rejected by men, if it does not es sentially depart from and transcend all other religions. This belongs to its nature. Its Teacher had been taught in no Greek or Eoinan or Alex andrian school. He was not even learned, as Moses had been, in Egyptian wisdom. He acknowledged no dependence whatever, so far as the utmost diligence can trace, on Hellenic conceptions, or even on prevalent Jewish traditions. He amended and spiritualized, without hesitation, the law of Moses. He an nounced thoughts which even his trained personal disciples were wholly unable to understand ; by which the people, as at Capernaum, were astonished and repulsed ; by which the minds of principal authority to which they were addressed were keenly enraged. He presented what he taught as having immediate and peremptory claim on the acceptance and faithful obedience of all who heard it. He recognized no other scheme of thought as synonymous with his own, or as its equivalent, only one as having been preparatory to it : itself incapable, by its nature, of affiliating with others, simply, inevitably, exclusive of them. It came suddenly, this separate, imperious, and expulsive religion : when neither the Jewish world nor the Gentile was expecting such a system ; when the Jew was looking with eager desire for a secular Messiah, not at all for a dying Teacher and Saviour ; when the Gentile world was intensely preoccupied with the contemplation of Eoman power, and the adoration of imperial * "Person of Christ": Edinburgh ed., 1861 : Vol. I.: p. 19. WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 341 Gods. Then this religion broke into history : and in spite of the apparent obscurity of its origin, in spite of the slight and limited impression which was all that it could make on those who heard the voice of Jesus, it undertook to fill, possess, and renovate the world. In the physical world there is a great gulf, fixed, between matter, in any dexterous arrangement, and the life which impene trates, governs, up-builds that into organic forms. A great gulf is fixed between the highest faculty of the brute, with whatever skill of instinct endowed, or whatever strange power of limb or wing, and the reasoning, imaginative, conscientious, and worshipping spirit of man. No one yet has bridged these chasms. Spontaneous generation is a discredited hypothesis. However eager any man may be to find that he had an ape for his grandfather, he cannot yet trace the physical relationship. In like manner, yet more profoundly, a great gulf is fixed be tween Christianity and any other scheme of religion which ante dated or synchronized with it. The separateness of its results, as shown in history, is itself the demonstration of its separateness of nature. So unique in effect, it must be equally unique in constitution. A something wholly unmeasured and transcend ent, in spirit and power, came with a bound into the world, leaping upon the mountains, when the word of the Gospel was preached in Galilee. It was not a development, but an announce ment. There is a positive break of continuity iu the series of history, at its appearance, far more than answering to the inter val of centuries between the last prophet and the advent of Jesus. We are in another atmosphere when we have entered the sphere of Christianity : with another radiance falling through it, and another effect of moral stimulation proceeding from it. So capital, sudden, immense a change, if it contradicts anything, contradicts above all the notion that it came — this religion — by any forces of evolution the alleged law of which has ever been formulated. The palingenesia of a moribund world did not arise from ethical speculations, from scattered surmises and hopes of men, or out of the ancient law of Moses. When matched against the noblest preceding scheme, it is as a power enthroned in the sun, compared with a power regnant from echoing rocks 342 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, of Sinai. The fact that nothing has even yet come tp surpass and replace it, after all the enormous activity of mankind in ethical inquiry, in spiritual experience, and in speculative thought, since it was published, seems sufficient to demonstrate Divinest truth in the words of its Teacher, who said, according to the early record, to the most religiously instructed and exact of the world in his time : " Ye are from beneath ; I am from above. Ye are of this world ; I am not of this world ! " An arrogance of egotistical boast surpassing parallel is in these words, or else the sublime and victorious calm of a just and temperate self-affirmation. And History tells us, with the irresistible and undying consent of her millions of voices, which it was ! Yet while this system of reHgion thus stands apart from every other, in essential and permanent preeminence of nature, it is important to notice what special arrangements had apparently been made for it, that at the time when it appeared it might have large and swift extension, reaching most rapidly the most numerous hearers, and becoming very early an established power in the principal and controlling civilizations of the world. A vast plan concerning it seems here impressively evident. Three centuries before, Alexander had marched, as in a vast victorious raid, across the Asian expanses, from the Hellespont to the Hyphasis, or almost to the Himalaya ramparts. He had not only subdued the countries which he traversed, but had es tablished Greek kingdoms, the survival of which is one of the neglected seed-fields of history. He had subjugated Egypt, as well as Syria or Persia, and had planted the city which, becom ing a chief centre of population and commerce, was to perpetuate his name in the world. According to Plutarch, he conceived himself a kind of Divine umpire, whose mission it was to unite all together, forming of a hundred diverse nations a common body, mingling as in a cup of friendship the customs, marriages, laws of all, and making the world to all one country. Whether his plans were so far impersonal, or had so much of general philosophy, may reasonably be doubted. But the fact remains, that he vastly surpassed the ambitious enterprise of any European who had preceded him, that he added immensely to the scanty knowledge which the West had had of the great Eastern world, WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 343 and that he brought India face to face with that part of the world whose impressions on her subsequent history were to be so important. A real expansion of the mind of mankind is clearly apparent, after his brief but amazing career. All dis tances seemed lessened. All obstacles appeared more easy to be surmounted by a daring and a far-sighted ambition. His imposing dominion passed away with his life ; but this general influence, emanating from it, was not intercepted, and the East and the West were never again so utterly severed as they had before been. And now, at the time when Christianity was preached, another empire had come to its development, not sud denly, but through a growth which knit centuries in fellowship. It touched the Euphrates on the east, upon whose banks Alex ander had died, and it went thence with the westering sun to the Columns of Hercules, to Gaul, and to Britain. It made the Mediterranean a Eoman lake. It was recognized in the Ger man forests, on the banks of the lower Danube, in the Libyan desert, at the Cataracts of the Nile. It compassed the Earth, as this was then known, so as till then had never been done. The brass of its helmets glistened beneath the Arabian sun, and re flected the brief winter-gleams along the friths of Forth and Clyde. It had its civil and judicial representatives in all prin cipal cities ; while it sent out its avenues of travel and traffic, with a lordly disregard of all natural obstacles, over mountain and river, from the milestone of gilded marble in the Forum, toward the ends of the earth. For the first time in history the assured and seemingly permanent ascendency of one great state gave general political combination to mankind. It made changes of residence easy and familiar, and made frequent passage from one land to another practicable and safe ; and it gave a new and vast opportunity for the wide propagation of whatever might be the spiritual force which lay in the religion then suddenly ap pearing in the world. Looked at in the light of its subsequent relations, the reticu lated wires which now cover the continent, and run under the sea, seem no more directly or intelligently related to the passage of the thoughts which ride upon them than does that unequalled military, legislative, and judicial empire to the spread of the story which the Gospels declare. 344 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, But another force also was present, bearing upon the same effect, as if arranged with reference to it: the intellectual ascendency now conceded to the conquered but culturing states of Greece — whose literature was studied, and whose principal ideas, conveyed in that literature, were familiar and honored, in different lands ; in whose language, indeed, the early native his torians of Eome had by preference written, by whose scholars the antiquities of the imperial city had been explored, whose theatres had been adopted in it, and whose speech was current in the provinces as at the capital, at all chief places throughout the empire. In the Eastern departments it was the general language ; and its prevalence was so permanent that Justinian, afterward, had to allow the Institutes, the Pandects, and the Co dex to be translated into Greek, in which his Novellas were for the most part originally published. A general vehicle of in struction, before unpossessed, was thus given to the early teachers of Christianity, by this wide distribution of the vital, flexible, spiritual language, which seems adapted by its very constitution not only to charm men in poetry, or stir them in eloquence, but to present, in most responsive and subtile completeness, the supreme results of speculative thought, or the instructions of Divine inspiration. Yet more, even, was given, of advantage and facility to such teachers, by the general circulation and the conceded authority of Greek ideas. The religion of Jesus, though so intrinsically separate and peculiar, found points of support in both the Pla tonic and the Stoical philosophies, which were now widely studied. Stoicism, in its stubborn and proud self-assertion, and its pantheistic conception of God, was removed as far as possi ble from the Christian doctrine of a holy and loving Father in Heaven, and from the precept of penitent humility. Yet by recognizing so far as it did the unity of the universe, by its practical spirit, and certainly by some of its ethical maxims, it accomplished a work intellectual at least, in some measure moral, which made the way more easy for the Gospel. Men taught by it, occasionally at least, reacted from it, into a system wider and grander, as well as more tender, devout, and hopeful. The Porch was, sometimes, the vestibule of the Temple. Platonism had wrought in the same direction, still more ener- WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 345 getically : by suggesting the super-terrestrial nature of the soul in man, the possibility of its redemption from pollutions of mat ter, with the vast elevation of which the intellect was capable, and with the capacity of the moral nature, in the best, for the attainment of a Divine justice. If he did not himself, as he certainly did not, see what or all which was afterward found in the Christian Faith, Plato helped many minds, as I before have suggested, to discover and to welcome the glory of that. Justin felt, with many others, a true obligation to him who from the sacred olives of the Academy had been his unconscious guide to the Master : giving the perception of immaterial things, furnish ing the mind almost as with wings for the high contemplation of celestial ideas, leading it to expect to look upon God, which is, as Justin said, 'the end of Plato's philosophy.' The wait ing attitude of the great philosopher, expectant of light not yet in the world, is forcibly expressed in the words which I quoted from the second Alcibiades iu a previous Lecture : that we must wait for some god, or god-inspired man, to show the true knowledge of our duty toward God to our purified eyes. The Platonic authorship of that is not certain, though defended in our time by Mr. Grote and Mr. Lewes. But the same feeling is expressed in the Eepublic, when he says : ' Let each one of us leave every other kind of knowledge, and seek and follow one thing only — if, perad ven ture, he may be able to learn and find who there is who can and will teach him to distinguish the life of good and evil, and to choose always and everywhere the bet ter life, as far as possible '; * and it is the same thought which he attributes to Simmias in the Phaedo, where he represents him as saying to Socrates that one finding it hard to attain cer tainty about such supreme questions should still ' persevere untU he has attained one of two things : either he should discern or learn the truth about them ; or, if this be impossible, I would have him take the best and most irrefragable of human notions, and let this be the raft on which he sails through life — not with out risk, as I admit, if he cannot find some word of God, which will more surely and safely carry him.' f ?Republic: X.: 618. t Phaedo: 85. 346 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, To the minds which, by the great Athenian, had been led to this attitude of desire if not hope for something better than he could give, the new religion came as the word for which he had longed, and of which he seemed to have had premonition. The same processes of mind which afterward appeared so sig nally in Augustine, were not unknown in an earlier time. But while there was such a remarkable preparation in these directions for the rapid communication of the new, strange, and surpassing religion to the knowledge of mankind — a preparation which, in both its nature and its extent, appears to outreach human sagacity, and wholly to transcend mortal contrivance — there is still a third element to be brought into view, to make our conception of this complete : that is, the strange dispersion of the Jews, the Diaspora so called, which had been proceeding from the time of the return from the Eastern captivity. The strict ancient localization of the Hebrew people, upon the narrow tongue of land which had been early assigned to their Fathers — this, which up to the time of their captivity had been even rigor ous, after their return gave way, you remember, to other influ ences ; "and now they were in all parts of the empire. The former stationary agriculturists or shepherds had come to be traders, mechanics, what we might call travelling-agents, to an extraordinary extent. Josephus speaks of them as widely carry ing on their mechanical trades, throughout the empire. Their strange faces and stranger speech had become familiar in all the principal cities. In Alexandria, they were gathered in such vast numbers as to occupy two of five sections of the city, aud to have for governor an ethnarch of their own. In Babylon, and the Eastern cities, great multitudes remained. In Eome, eight thousand of those resident there, it is said by Josephus, went on one occasion to Augustus, accompanying ambassadors sent by the Jews of Palestine to the Emperor against Archelaus.* At Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Cyrene, in Italy and Sicily, at Mar seilles, in Spain, they were everywhere found. It has even been suggested that Seneca himself, of a Spanish family, may have had Semitic blood in his veins, as his name was afterward borne ?"Antiquities": XVIL: xi.: i. WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 347 by a Jew. This is not probable. But certainly the Jews were so widely scattered throughout the empire that laws and cus toms, even in the capital, were more or less adjusted to their usage, as concerning the Sabbath, for example; and that the common thought of the time took from them a distinct impres sion, if not a decisive and governing trend. Wherever they went, the synagogue went with them, the an cient scriptures, and their beloved ministries of worship. Their idiosyncrasy was as perfectly maintained as if they had been dwelling at Bethlehem or at Hebron. Science applies the word " diaspora," with a curious paraUelism, to a certain mineral, of thin scales, with hard, small, prismatic crystals, which is wholly infusible, but which crackles and explodes at the touch of the blow-pipe. A more perfect image of the dispersed Jewish people in the day of the Lord could hardly be supplied by na ture. And they formed, of course, the first point of contact in all the efforts of Christian teachers to extend their religion : many of them becoming, as we know, in spite of all prejudice, and in face of all passions excited against them, among the earliest and most fervent of its converts. Looking, then, at the time when this religion whose effects we have been tracing emerged into history, and entered on its conquering career in the world, we may certainly say that while it came suddenly, without human expectation, not as developed out of anything else, but as breaking abruptly into the conti nuity of historical successions, it came also, in the most distinct and imperative sense, in ' the fullness of time '; when opportu nities were before it which in earlier centuries had been quite inconceivable; when agencies and instruments were prepared for its furtherance which had been as unthought-of in the day of the prophets as were modern steam-engines ; when, from its remote pulpit in Palestine, it could be sounded throughout the world as at no time before since the first dispersion of the children of men. As a human speculation, this could not have helped it. It must have been shattered only more utterly and swiftly in the sudden collision with the rites and rules of diverse nations. As a Divine system, prepared for the world, it had now its immense opportunity. And if this unparalleled cosmical 348 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, arrangement for its propagation was a matter of accident, it ia the most surprising accident in the records of Time. To one who finds a moral order in the history of the world, this looks as methodical, and as surely designed, as is the relation of levers and wheels to the boiler whose water is turned to power when fire smites it. He as naturally thinks of Napoleon's great Italian campaigns as accidental, or of the formation of Justinian's Code. But if it was designed, and not fortuitous, can any conceive that the immense intelligent plan here represented was the plan even of philosophers or of statesmen ? much more, of an untaught peasant of Nazareth ? that it was the plan of any other than of Him who sitteth on the circle of the heavens, and whose vast designs march on like suns . And if it was His sovereign plan for this religion, then the estimate put on it by Him is demon strated : the nearness of it to His Divine mind could not be more evident if it were written in characters of light upon the glowing Judean sky. The new religion which entered so silently into history, although with such apparently intentional adjustments for its rapid publication, worked on as a hidden force at first, as is the method with all God's seeds, even those which are afterward to spring up majestically, in oaks or palms, or in cedars of Lebanon. After the end of the first Christian century, it was still, to thought ful and cultivated Eomans, a mere foreign superstition : which Tacitus characterized as ' destructive '; * which Suetonius called ' new and noxious '; f which Pliny the Younger emphatically described as ' perverse and extravagant.' X But it wrought with an energy inherent in itself in the midst of the society whose foremost representatives so detested or disdained it. It wrought with the same persistency afterward, through ever-widening cir cles of influence, in the vaster, wider, and more barbarous popula tions to whom it was carried while the empire was falling, or after that which had seemed the strongest institution of man had gone down beneath destroying assault. It has continued * "Exitiabilis superstitio": Annal., xv. : 44. t " Novae ac maleficae " : Nero : xvi. | "Pravam et immodicam" : Ep. X. : 97. WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 349 thus to work, as I think I have shown, from that day to this ; and its power surrounds us, on every hand. It has not had a uniform development. It has not always been exhibited through equivalent forms of thought. Some times in one way, sometimes in another, it has been presented, because diversely understood. At one period certain elements in it have taken what we may think an exaggerated prominence in the conception of its disciples ; at other periods, different elements and forces in its manifold scheme have been similarly, perhaps unduly, exalted. And sometimes, no doubt, as regarded from our particular point of interpreting study, the whole has appeared overlaid and concealed beneath fantastic or pernicious additions, of human device. But the astonishing vitality of the religion has been shown, perhaps as clearly as in anything, in the fact that when most distorted and disguised it has still been more power ful to work good among men than paganism was in its clearest exposition ; that the very fragments and filaments of it have had in them a healing virtue, like that which was said to have issued on occasion from the hem of the robe of him who brought it. It has shown, too, the most extraordinary power of releasing itself from human misconception, of revealing itself afresh to men in its primitive energy, and of rectifying whatever in doctrine or institution had dangerously departed from the earliest norm. It has plainly and strangely exhibited a capacity for self-resurrec tion, like that which the early disciples ascribed to its Teacher, — their faith in which sceptics admit as indispensable to explain their amazing subsequent history: and of the religion it has certainly been true that no sepulchre-doors have been able to hold it. It has fallen in no combat to which it has been called. It has been proved inadequate to no work presented. The most prolonged and passionate assaults of its ablest antagonists have failed to dislodge it from the minds or the communities which have tried it most thoroughly. Its influence appears as plainly to-day, on every side, as it ever has done in any time since it first was proclaimed. The eagle of the Faith is not yet ' weary of its mighty wings.' Whatever may be our just criticism of modern society — or whatever, on the other hand, may be our confidence in ethics, 350 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, legislations, improved industries, widened commerce, the general distribution of letters and knowledge — it seems almost impos sible to doubt that the religion of Jesus is at this hour the com manding factor in whatever is best in the character and the prog ress of persons or of states. It has not merely rectified particu lar abuses, removed special evils, exerted a benign and salutary influence on local institutions. It has formed and instructed a general Christian consciousness in the world, which is practically ubiquitous and commanding in Christendom : to which institu tions, tendencies, persons, are more and more distinctly amenable ; which judges all by an ideal standard ; to which flattering con cessions to wealth or power, to genius or culture, are inherently offensive ; which constitutes a spiritual bond of communion be tween the most widely separated states ; and which affirms, with sure expectation, its own approaching supremacy in the world- Nothing at all approximating this, or distantly predicting it, was known in antiquity. Nothing Hke it is known on earth to-day, outside the range of this religion. Yet this unseen and regulat ing power, born of the spread of Christianity in the world, is to thoughtful observers the fact of chiefest significance and import ance in the present developing life of mankind. Men say sometimes that the argument from Miracles is not now so impressive as it was at the outset, to those who saw, or thought they saw, the dead raised to life, and the liquid wave supporting the form which trode in silent supremacy upon it. That is not a question for me to discuss. But certainly the argu ment from these recorded effects of Christianity was never so prominent or so energetic as it is at this hour. Whether we will or no, ' the standing miracle of Christendom ' is around us ; and the religion to which that must be ascribed has a prestige from it which it could not have had in the day of the martyrs, in the Middle Age, or at the Eeformation. I look back on its course, I look up to Him who personally brought it, and who undertook by it from Capernaum and from Bethany to renovate the world, I look upon the peoples who have not had it, and whose history everywhere shows its absence — and then I ask myself, not now as a Christian, but as a student of the past, as one impelled by a native and governing law of the mind to trace effects to ade- WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 351 quate causes : ' Is it possible that that young man of Nazareth had only a genius like that of others to inspire and empower him ? that only the natural human elements, of speculative thought and of ethical precept, with the incidents of a life obscure and brief, closed on the cross, have been the forces which have shaped, vitalized, and set forward Christendom % ' I have no right to anticipate your judgment; but to me this seems as strange a fantasy as ever possessed a human brain ! You observe, too, that this argument must naturally be strengthened as centuries pass. Other religions are local still, as they were in antiquity : reflecting the thought of special na tionalities ; moulding the life of particular districts. This, alone, is universal : adapted to every country and people, as the atmos phere is, or as radiant light. Other religions have passed to the state of retrogression. They are more and more timid before Chris tianity. The peoples trained under them see all the time the more energetic inspirational force, mental and spiritual, exerted by this, the richer blessings which it scatters on its path ; and the voices which were said to be heard of old in the Temple on Moriah, before it fell under Eoman assault, saying solemnly ' Let us remove hence,' * are now repeated in all the famous idol-shrines. Christianity alone is still young as the morning, full of an unwasted power, exuberant yet with strong expecta tion. Its power to impenetrate everything human, by first im buing the soul of man, continues what it was. Its facilities for extension were never so great as at this moment : the motive to that extension never was greater. If then there be any truth whatever — and there seems to be much — in the instruction of physical science that ' the fittest shall survive,' and if the rule be admitted to hold in the higher realms of moral experience, Science herself may make us certain that this religion, which has shown itself fitted for all the effects which I have sketched — making civilization, as Farrar has 'said, ' only a secular phrase for Christianity 'f — that this shall be the one to outlive others ; to conquer and accomplish, where they have failed ; to make its * Josephus : " Wars of Jews," VI. : v. : 3. t "Witness of History to Christ ": London ed., 1872 : p. 192. 352 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, past achievements in the world the imperfect signs of what yet is to come ; and to see the globe the final domain of its perennial and renovating life. If this religion is not Divine, in the transcendent sense, then assuredly no other is. And as long as man's religious nature, in the chiefest crises of his experience, cries out for a Faith on which he may, with gladdened heart and unfaltering step, ascend to God — this, which is so simple yet so commanding, so delicate but so vast, so apt for the poor, so robed and crowned with magnificent victories, wiU still attract his adoring reverence, and his passionate love ! Ladies, and Gentlemen : you have studied, I know, will study hereafter, with candid fidelity, this august and superlative relig ion. You will not be surprised, I am sure, if, coming to it along the eminent track of thought which we have followed, you find elements associated in it unique and incomparable, surpassing parallels, surpassing perhaps your own pre-conception. It is only fair to anticipate such. It cannot be anything slight or commonplace which has wrought such prodigious effects iu history. Men do not fracture bars of iron by heaping fragrant rosebuds upon them, in dainty festoons. They do not cleave the mountain-cliffs with drills of delicate opaline glass. There must be always a certain proportion between instrument and effect; and it is not possible that a scheme of careful prudential morals, persuasive sentiments, entertaining instruction, agreeable prom ise of good to virtue, should have wrought the changes which we have reviewed. There were plenty of such in the old phi losophies: beautiful, often, as tinted leaves on autumn forests, and as powerless as these to arrest the rushing and turbid cur rents of social life over which they brightened, or upon which they dropped. There must be something surpassing these, in this religion, to make it robust, practical, inspiring, as it certain ly has been; adequate to enduring and extensive effects; a fit instrument for Him to use who presides over nations and their progress. For myself I say, with utter frankness, that I look for things in this religion as singular and transcendent as its career in his tory has been. The fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 353 men, are palpable in it. The swiftest reader of its scriptures cannot miss these. But more than these it seems natural to an ticipate in a system which has grappled the mind of the world with a hold so firm and unrelaxing, and which has so largely re moulded its life. It seems to me only natural to expect a Law *at its centre — not simple ethical instruction or advice, but — a Law, moral in nature and of spiritual authority, yet as definite and imperative as that which holds together the earth, and keeps it in place among the planets. It may be spoken through hu man lips. It may be uttered in words as tender as those with which lover woos his bride. But I look beforehand for a Divine Eule of righteousness, as clear as the light, as wide in its sweep as the spheres and systems of intelligent life, which has behind it the unfaihng supremacy of the Infinite Will, and which faces the passionate spirit in man with imperial sanctions. I anticipate some stupendous ministry in this system of Faith to that craving for Sacrifice, as the gateway to God, on which the ethnic rites were based, and through which they held the hearts of peoples. I expect, for myself, a supernatural Person, the illustrious Teacher of this religion: veiling His glory, perhaps, for our eyes, behind flesh and nerve, in a strict and singular humbleness of mien, but in Himself above Socrates or Plato, Gautama or Seneca, above Moses, Isaiah, or any prophet — an immortal Lord of life and of light, whose touch gives impulse to remote genera tions, whose words have eternal freshness in them, in devotion to whom is the triumph of the heart. I expect a peculiar Divine Life to attend this religion — preparing before it human spirits, overcoming the passion and pride which resist it, and giving it that marvellous range of power which has been palpably its in heritance. Not doctrine only, however majestic, not precept only, however commanding, not example only, though having upon it the beauty of the heavens, are to be looked for in this world- compelling and astonishing system, but with them all, the source of their efficacy, a mystic and boundless energy of Life, which penetrates souls, subdues resistances, inspires benign and unquenchable enthusiasms, and knits together the minds which it fills in a supreme fellowship of peace and of power. It is fair to look for an element of this kind, which other systems always 23 354 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, have lacked, when we put the novel effects of this in contrast with whatever they have accomplished. And it is equally natural to ex pect that Eternity by it wiU be plainly foreshadowed to human eyes, with glooms and glories surpassing thought, to stir desire and startle fear ; — and to look for societies among its disciples, as permanent as itself, pervaded by the Life which continually at tends it, and so intimate and vital as no philosophy had ever conceived. I anticipate, for myself, a tone of Authority in it all : which affirms without argument, announces truths without wait ing to debate them, and asserts the Future, unseen by man, as real as the globe on which he treads. Unless I find such sovereign elements combined and regnant in this religion, it will scarcely be possible to interpret its tran scendent and unwasting power. But if I find them, even its un equalled career in the world will be to me no more unaccountable than the rush of the river from the heights to the sea, or the fiery zigzag blazing above when electric currents cleave the air. And if such amazing elements are found in the vital substance of this religion, then anything else of miracle and wonder asso ciated with it at its first proclamation becomes to me — not diffi cult of belief ? — becomes probable beforehand : a natural mark of God's interest in it ; a natural impulse, given by Him, to launch it into historical development. If one could walk along some luminous bridge of star-beams, up to the orb in which the strange effluence had its source, he could not be surprised to find there, at last, the original effulgence in an unwasting splendor. If one walks along the path, over many lands, through darkened centuries, which Christianity has brightened with glowing lights, and on which she has strewn astonishing victories, he can hardly be amazed when he finds at the outset the deaf hearing, the blind seeing, the dumb made to speak, and the poor hearing the word of life. It will be to him har monious as music, though loftier than the chiming suns, to see the Lord of this religion arising from the grave, and ascending in illustrious triumph to Heaven ! All miracles of power, or shining theophanies, will appear but as idioms of Divine utterance, when once we recognize God Himself in this religion. They wiU be the appropriate though WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 355 the emphatic motions of His might who was here intervening to bui.d a new moral creation, of loveliness and of holiness, on the chaos of the old. The absence of Miracle would then become the thing mysterious. But whatever we find, or fail to find, in this religion, of that which surpasses historical precedent, of that which staggers human thought, let us always remember, what I said at the outset, that the only final and absolute test must be in our own experience of it. No matter what its history has been : no matter what its contents may be : the governing question still remains, ' Does it bring me to God ? In belief of its teaching, in obedience to its law, through trust in its promises, through confiding and affectionate faith in its King, do I find a new courage amid danger, a new fortitude in adversity, a new suprem acy over subtlest temptations, a happiness in hope before un known, a delight in consecration surpassing all preceding pleas ure, an intense and tender sympathy with Him before whose holi ness the seraphim bow . ' If we do find these supernal effects wrought by Christianity in our life, no further argument for us wUl be needful. Whatever arguments shall have led us to that, will be to us unspeakably precious. Conspiring probabilities will then have merged in our assurance, as blue and orange and crimson are blended in the beauty of sunlight. They will have rushed inseparably together, like different rills mingling in a current of irresistible conviction. Then we shall not so much accept this religion as be possessed by it, with a fullness of strength in its unmeasured grasp which age cannot waste, nor trouble break, nor death itself shatter or smite. We shall no mo're be afraid, after that, of the furious assaults which a passion ate unbelief may make on this religion, than we shaU be afraid lest the blast of the miner in western hUls should shake the stars from their serene poise. It will stir again the old enthusiasm in our tin)id or languid and sluggish spirits. It will open afresh before our eyes the vast meanings of life. Ser vice for it will become to us a joy. We shall feel and know that in such service we are grandly allied with the Lord of our faith, and with Him whom that Lord declares to us. We shall see the secret of the unseen indefinable power which belongs to 356 A REVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT, devoted Christian work ; that spiritual assistances, the invisible energy of a benign Providence, help it forward ; and that fur ther than thought itself can anticipate, the far vibrations of its energy shall reach. In the illumined Future of the World we shall feel that we also, with apostles and martyrs, through our devotion to this religion, have a personal part. Yea, more than this will then appear : that by the religion which thus brings us to God, we have the assurance of spheres of life beyond the present, whose glories as yet we cannot meas ure. It cannot be for less than such a transcendent effect that this religion has come, if it has, from realms above our mortal sight ! It cannot be for less than that, that such unspeakable powers are in it ! The same supreme Person who has made his word the soul of History, who has been, as he claimed to be, " the Light of the World," declared that in the Father's house are many mansions, and that they who have foUowed him here in spirit shall there at length behold his face; partake his glory. On a low hill, outside the gates, he painfully died. But even then he spoke of himself as standing on the edge of Paradise. They who fled thence, in impetuous fear, believed, at least, that after death he reappeared, until the opened heavens received him. The light which later shone on Paul, from a splendor which he ascribed to the Lord, has cast its gleam on many lands. And one who saw him later still — or thought he saw him — amid the beauty of the city of God, said that on his head were many crowns. All that will seem but natural to us, if we ac cept him as Son of God, and King of the world. Then history itself will bear its witness that from that head no crown has fallen ! We shall know from the manifold progress of the world, where He has touched it, that the face which then shone as the sun has kept its vivid celestial brightness ; that the voice which said to John " Fear not," is at this hour as sweet and royal ! It seems to me to glorify life, it seems to me to banish the shadow of gloom from death, to feel that that majestic figure — of Brother, Teacher, Friend, Eedeemer — which towers supremely- over the centuries, which made the earth sublime by its ad vent, which seemed in ascending to unite it to the heavens, has equal place in worlds to come ! that we may trust His im- WITH ADDED SUGGESTIONS. 357 perative word ; that we may serve His kingly cause ; that we may see the illumined Universe, for us as for Him, a house of Victory and of Peace ! that we may stand, by and by, with Him, amid the Hght as yet unreached, and say, each one : ' I believed in Thy religion ! I saw its triumphs in the earth ; I felt its power in my heart ; I rose to God in love upon it ; I fore knew by it, what now I find — Eternal Life ! ' Then all these wonders of the Past, which we have traced, 6hall lose themselves in vaster wonders still to come : and saint and seer shall be our fellows, in that immortal Consummation ! APPENDIX. APPENDIX. NOTES TO LECTUEE I. Note I. : page 3. — "Another point may be mentioned, as to which there has come to be a general agreement : namely, that the very late date assigned to the [Fourth] Gospel by Baur and Schwegler, some where between the years 160 and 170 a.d., cannot be maintained. Zeller and Scholten retreat to 150 ; Hilgenfeld, who is at last con strained to admit its use by Justin Martyr, goes back to between 130 and 140 ; Renan now says 125 or 130 ; Keim in the first volume of his History of Jesus of Nazara placed it with great confidence between the years 110 and 115, or, more loosely, a.d. 100-117. The fatal conse quences [to his own theory of the book] of such an admission as that were, however, soon perceived ; and in the last volume of his History of Jesus, and in the last abridgment of that work, he goes back to the year 130. Schenkel assigns it to a.d. 115-120." — [Dr. Ezra Abbott : "Authorship of the Fourth Gospel": Boston ed., 1880: pp. 11, 12. " The criticism which David Friedrich Strauss brought to bear on the gospel history in his ' Life of Jesus,' 1835, grew to be a criticism of the gospel books. After a temporary wavering, 1838, it turned espec ially to John's gospel, 1840. After the headlong attacks of Bruno Bauer, 1840 and later, F. C. Baur, in Tubingen, opened with his arti cle on composition of the canonical gospels, in the Theologische Jahr biicher, 1844, the regular attack upon the Johannean authorship and the historical character of this gospel. . . It drew its material [accord ing to Baur] from the synoptists, but shaped this according to its aims, ' forth from the Christian consciousness,' and with strictest consistency made the history subservient to the idea. Its origin cannot be put earlier than 160 a.d. Schwegler, Kostlin, Zeller, and others, tried to justify this view in different books and articles ; Zeller, especially in regard to the testimony of the ancient church, wrote in 1845 and 1847. . . In 1849 and later, Hilgenfeld went further than Baur, and put the gospel between Valentinus' Gnosticism and Marcion's, finding Gnostic dualism in the gospel itself. But a series of investigations in the con trary direction, which proved the use of the gospel especially by Justin .361) 362 APPENDIX. Martyr and the Gnostics of the second century, compelled criticism to withdraw the origin of the gospel to an earlier date. Hilgenfeld went back to 135 A.D., and Keim to 110-115."— [Luthardt : "St. John's Gospel"; Edinburgh ed., Vol. 1: pp. 213, 214. "We need not then be surprised that in the end Baur alone has re mained faithful to the position which he had chosen, and that the whole school has begun to beat a retreat, in order to seek another which it is easier to defend. . . If all the writers of the second century, from Ignatius to Justin, and from Justin to Athenagoras, lived and wrote prostrate at the feet of the Word made flesh, it is because the words of an Apostle were there, unceasingly delivering over that theme which is unfathomable to the hearts of believers to the meditation of thoughtful minds. "—[Godet: " Coram, on Gospel of St. John"; Edin burgh ed., 1876: Vol. 1: pp. 208, 245. H : p. 3. — "A religion, that is, a true religion, must consist of ideas and facts both; not of ideas alone, without facts, for then it would be mere philosophy: not of facts alone, without ideas of which those facts are the symbols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they are grounded, for then it would be mere history."— [Coleridge : "Table Talk": Dec. 8, 1831; Works: New York ed., 1853: Vol. 6: p. 378. IH. : p. 7. — ' ' According to the orthodox views of Indian theologians, not a single line of the Veda was the work of human authors. The whole Veda is in some way or other the work of the Deity : and even those who received the revelation, or, as they express it, those who saw it, were not supposed to be ordinary mortals, but beings raised above the level of common humanity, and less liable, therefore, to error in the reception of revealed truth. . . But let me state at once that there is nothing in the hymns themselves to warrant such ex travagant theories. In many a hymn, the author says plainly that he or his friends made it to please the gods ; that he made it as a carpenter makes a chariot, or like a beautiful vesture ; that he fashioned it in his heart, and kept it in his mind ; that he expects, as his reward, the favor of the god whom he celebrates." The poet's consciousness of higher influences was but ' another expression of deep-felt dependence on the Deity.' — [Max Mulier: " Chips' from a German Workshop " ; New York ed., 1881: Vol. 1: p. 18. "We have in these writings, as a whole [the most ancient docu ments connected with the religion of India], an authentic literature, which professes to be what it is, which neither asserts for itself a su pernatural origin, nor seeks to disguise its age by recourse to the de vices of the pastiche. . . The religion which is transmitted to us in these Hymns is, in its principal features, this : Nature is throughout NOTES TO LECTURE I. 363 divine. Everything which is impressive by its sublimity, or is sup posed capable of affecting us for good or evil, may become a direct ob ject of adoration." — [A. Barth: "Religions of India; Boston ed., 1882: pp. 5, 7, 8. ' 'Among the most singular of the claims put forth in behalf of Buddha, we may name the assertion that though he taught the same doctrines that former Buddhas had done, all his revelations were the result of his own personal discovery, by means of intuition, entirely apart from experience, without any instruction from another, and without any aid from tradition, or from any other of the sources by which knowl edge is generally communicated to man." — [R. Spence Hardy: "Leg ends and Theories of the Buddhists " ; London ed. , 1866 : p. 198. " As to the publisher of the law, Buddha [according to Buddhist au thority], he is a mere man, who during myriads of centuries has accu mulated merits on merits, until he has obtained the Neibban of Kile- tha, or the deliverance from all passions. From that moment till his death this eminent personage is constituted the master of religion and the doctor of the law. Owing to his perfect science he finds out and discovers all the precepts that constitute the body of the law. Im pelled by his matchless benevolence toward all beings, he promulgates them for the salvation of all." — [Bp. Bigandet: "Legend of Gaudama"; London ed., 1880: Vol. 2: p. 193. [The Seven Ways to Neibban.] IV.: p. 7. — "Tho following are some of his [Confucius'] sayings: ' The sage, and the man of perfect virtue, — how dare I rank myself with them ? It may simply be said of me that I strive to become such, without satiety, and teach others, without weariness.' ' In letters I am perhaps equal to other men ; but the character of the superior man, carrying out in his conduct what he professes, is what I have not yet attained to.' . . 'I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.' ' A transmitter, and not a maker, believing in and loving the ancients, I venture to compare myself with our old P'ang.' " — [From the VHth Book of the Analects.] Legge: "Chinese Classics": Proleg. c. v.: sec. II. : § 4. "Twice a year, in the middle months of spring and autumn, when the first ting day of the month comes round, the worship of Confucius is performed with peculiar solemnity. At the imperial college the Emperor himself is required to attend in state, and is in fact the prin cipal performer. . . I need not go on to enlarge on the homage which the Emperors of China render to Confucius. It could not be more complete. It is worship, and not mere homage. He was unreason ably neglected when alive. He is now unreasonably venerated when dead. . . The rulers of China are not singular in this matter, but in 364 APPENDIX. entire sympathy with the mass of their people." — [Legge: "Chinese Classics " : Proleg. ch. v. : ss. 1, 2. "The religious doctrine of Kong-tse is ethical naturalism, founded on the state religion of the Tshow. He engaged in supernatural ques tions with as much reluctance as in practical affairs, and expressed himself very cautiously and doubtfully on religious points. Even of heaven he preferred not to speak as a personal being, but he quoted its example as the preserver of order, and he would allude to its com mands, ordinances, and purposes. . . To prayer he ascribed no great value. He did not believe in direct revelations, and he regarded fore bodings and presentiments simply as warnings. . . From the year 57 of our era the worship of Kong-tse by the side of Tshow was practised by the emperors themselves as well as in all the schools ; and since the seventh century Kong-tse has been worshipped alone." — [Tiele: "Hist. of Religions"; Boston ed., 1881: pp. 31-34. V. : p. 7. — "Among these recluses arose one who was noted as a deep and original thinker, and who became the founder of Taouism. This was Laou-Tsze, the old philosopher, who was born about fifty years before Confucius. . . Sze-ma Tseen tells us nothing of his boyhood or of his early manhood, but merely mentions that he held office at the imperial court of Chow, as 'Keeper of the Archives.' . . But though history contains but scanty references to the life of Laou-Tsze, religious re cords . . abound with marvellous tales of his birth and career. By some writers he is declared to have been a spiritual being, and the em bodiment of Taou ; without beginning, and without cause ; the ancestor of the original breath ; without light, form, sound, or voice ; having neither ancestors nor descendants ; dark, yet having within himself a spiritual substance: and that substance was truth." — [Douglas: "Con fucianism and Taouism"; London ed., 1879: pp. 174, 176, 179. VI. : p. 7. — "He [Zoroaster] is not treated [in the Parsi catechism] as a divine being, nor even as the son of Ormuzd. Plato, indeed, speaks of Zoroaster as the son of Oromazes, but this is a mistake, not counte nanced, as far as we are aware, by any of the Parsi writings, whether ancient or modern. With the Parsis, Zoroaster is simply a wise man, a prophet favored by God, and admitted into God's immediate presence; but all this, on his own showing only, and without any supernatural credentials, except some few miracles recorded of him in books of doubtful authority."— [Max Mulier : "Chips, etc."; N. York ed., 1881: Vol. 1: p. 171. The Parsi tradition asserts that all the 21 Nasks [books of the Avesta] were written by God Himself, and given to Zoroaster, as his prophet, to forward them to mankind. But such claims to God's immediate NOTES TO LECTURE I. 365 authorship of the whole Zend-Avesta are never made in any of the books which are now extant ; though the Yasna, not the Vendidad, lays claim to divine revelation. — [Haug: "Essays on Sacred Language and Religion of the Parsis"; London ed., 1878: p. 137. VH. : p. 8. — " No one teacher, or form of Religion, nor all teachers and forms put together, have exhausted the religious sentiment, which is the groundwork and standard - measure of them all, and is represented more or less partially in each ; and so new teachers and new forms of Religion are always possible and necessary, until a form is discovered, which embraces all the facts of man's moral and religious nature, sets forth and legitimates all the laws thereof, and thus represents the Ab solute Religion, as it is implied in the Facts of man's nature or the Ideas of God. . . It [the Absolute Religion] lays down no creed: asks no symbol : reverences exclusively no time nor place, and therefore can use all times and every place. It reckons forms useful to such as they may help : one man may commune with God through the bread and the wine, emblems of the body that was broke and the blood that was shed, in the cause of truth ; another may hold communion through the moss and the violet, the mountain, the ocean, or the scripture of suns, wliich God has writ in the sky. . . Its temple is all space; its shrine the good heart ; its Creed all truth ; its Ritual works of love and utility ; its Profession of Faith a divine life, works without, faith within, love of God and man." — [Theodore Parker: "Discourse of Religion " ; Bos ton ed., 1842: pp. 238-9: 478-9. ' ' Faith, in her early stages, is governed by the senses, and there fore contemplates a temporal history : what she holds to be true is the external ordinary event, the evidence for which is of the historical, foren sic land, — a fact to be proved by the testimony of the senses, and the moral confidence inspired by the witnesses. But mind having once taken occasion of this external fact to bring under its consciousness the idea of humanity as one with God, sees in the history only the presen tation of that idea ; the object of faith is completely changed ; instead of a sensible, empirical fact, it has become a spiritual and divine idea, wliich has its confirmation no longer in history but in philosophy. When the mind has thus gone beyond the sensible, and entered into the domain of the Absolute, the former ceases to be essential." — ¦ [Strauss: " Life of Jesus " ; London ed. 1846: Vol. HI.: p. 439. VIII. : p. 8. — The ancient legend of the Divine instruction of Numa is thus pleasantly told by Niebuhr : — "He was revered as the author of the Roman ceremonial law. In structed by the Camena Egeria, who was espoused to him in a visible form, and who led him into the assemblies of her sisters in the sacred 366 APPENDIX. grove, he regulated the whole hierarchy; the pontiffs, who took care, by precept and by chastisement, that the laws relating to rehgion should be observed, both hy individuals and by the state; the augurs, whose caUing it was to afford security for the counsels of men by piercing into those of the gods ; the flamens, who ministered in the temples of the supreme deities; the chaste virgins of Vesta; the Salii, who solem nized the worship of the gods with armed dances and songs. He pre scribed the rites according to which the people might offer worship and prayer acceptable to the gods. . . Numa was not a theme of song, like Romulus ; indeed he enjoined that, among all the Camena., the high est honors should be paid to Tacita. Yet a story was handed down, that, when he was entertaining -his guests, the plain food in the earthen-ware dishes was turned, on the appearance of Egeria, into a banquet fit for gods, in vessels of gold : in order that her divinity might be made manifest to the incredulous. The temple of Janus, his work, continued always shut : peace was spread over Italy : until Numa, like the darlings of the gods in the golden age, fell asleep, full of days. Egeria melted away in tears into a fountain." — ["History of Rome"; London ed., 1855: Vol. 1: pp. 239-40. "The original hearers of the my thes felt neither surprise nor dis pleasure from this confusion of the divine with the human individual. They looked at the past with a film of faith over their eyes — neither knowing the value, nor desiring the attainment, of an unclouded vision. The intimate companionship, and the occasional mistake of identity, between gods and men, were in fuU harmony with their rev erential retrospect. And we accordingly see the poet Ovid in his Fasti, when he undertakes the task of unfolding the legendary antiquities of early Rome, re-acquiring, by the inspiration of Juno, the power of seeing gods and men in immediate vicinity and conjunct action, such as it existed before the development of the critical and historical sense." — [Grote: "Hist, of Greece"; London ed., 1872: Vol. 1: p. 404. IK. : p. 13. — Lactantius was probably etymologicaUy wrong in what he wrote respecting the primitive meaning of the word ' ReUgion ' : — ¦ "We are bound and tied to God by this chain of piety; from which Religion itself received its name, not, as Cicero explained it, from care fully gathering : since in his second book concerning the nature of the gods he thus speaks : ' For not only philosophers, but our ancestors also, separated superstition from religion. They who spent whole days in prayers and sacrifices, that their chUdren might survive them, were caUed superstitious. But they who handled again, and as it were care fully gathered, aU things which related to the worship of the gods, were caUed religious — from such careful gathering : as some were caUed elegant, from choosing out; diligent, from carefully selecting; intelligent, from understanding.'" — [Divine Institutes : IV.: 28. NOTES TO LECTURE I. 367 The more correct derivation of the word is probably that given by Cicero : from relegere, not religare. But it was a true and deep sense of the spiritual import of the word — which already, in his time, had taken upon it a grander meaning than before it had borne — which in this instance perhaps beguiled the judgment of the learned and elo quent Christian apologist. X. : p. 14. — " How can I comprehend this ? How is this to be proved ? To the first question I should answer: Christianity is not a theory, or a speculation, but a life : — not a phUosophy of life, but a Ufe, and a living process. To the second : Try it. It has been eighteen hundred years in existence ; and has one individual left a record Uke the foUowing? ' I tried it, and it did not answer. I made the experiment faithfully, ac cording to the directions ; and the result has been a conviction of my own credulity.' . . If neither your own experience nor the history of almost two thousand years has presented a single testimony to this purport ; and if you have read and heard of many who have lived and died bearing witness to the contrary ; and if you have yourself met with some one in whom on any other point you would place unquaU- fied trust, who has on his own experience made report to you that He is faithful who promised, and what He promised He has proved Himself able to perform : is it bigotry, if I fear that the unbelief which pre judges and prevents the experiment, has its source elsewhere than in the uncorrupted judgment ? that not the strong free mind, but the en slaved wUl, is the true original infidel in this instance ? " — [Coleridge : Works: New York ed., 1853; Vol. 1: p. 233. "There is another evidence of Christianity, still more internal than any on which I have dwelt, an evidence to he felt rather than described, but not less real because founded on f eeUng. I refer to that conviction of the divine original of our religion, which springs up and continuaUy gains strength in those who apply it habituaUy to their tempers and Uves, and who imbibe its spirit and hopes. In such men there is a con sciousness of the adaptation of Christianity to their noblest faculties ; a consciousness of its exalting and consoling influences, of its power to confer the true happiness of human nature, to give that peace which the world cannot give ; which assures them that it is not of earthly origin, but a ray from the Everlasting Light, a stream from the fount ain of Heavenly Wisdom and Love. This is the evidence which sus tains the faith of thousands who never read and cannot understand the learned books of Christian apologists, who want perhaps words to explain the ground of their beUef , but whose faith is of adamantine firmness, who hold the Gospel with a conviction more intimate and unwavering than mere argument ever produced." — [Dr. Channing: Works; Boston ed., 1843: Vol. 3: p. 135. 368 APPENDIX. XI. : p. 14. — "They [the Christian doctrines] wiU appear to us also notions and opinions about certain great subjects : divine notions and opinions we may caU them ; but a mere name will not change their character: we shall not feel that they have to do with our own Ufe and being; we shaU regard them as truths which we are to hold, not as truths wliich are to hold us, which are to give us a standing-ground for time and for eternity. " — [F. D. Maurice : ' ' ReUgions of the World " ; London ed., 1877: p. 164. XII. : p. 15.— " Many a man wUl Uve and die upon a dogma : no man wUl be a martyr for a conclusion. . . Logic makes but a sorry rhet oric with the multitude ; first shoot around corners, and you may not despair of converting by a syllogism. . . Life is not long enough for a reUgion of inferences; we shall never have done beginning, \ if we determine to begin with proof. . . It is very weU, as a matter of Uberal curiosity and of phUosophy, to analyze our modes of thought; but let this come second, and when there is leisure for it, and then our examinations will in many ways even be subservient to action. But if we commence with scientific knowledge and argumentative proof, or lay any great stress upon it as the basis of personal Christianity, or attempt to make men moral and reUgious by Ubraries and museums, let us in consistency take chemists for our cooks and mineralogists for our masons." — [Dr. J. H. Newman: Letter, reprinted in "Grammar of Assent"; New York ed., 1870: pp. 90-92. Yet Bossuet says, in a vigorous passage of his first Pastoral Instruc tion: — " Two things establish our faith: the miracles of Jesus Christ, wrought in the sight of his apostles and of aU the people, with the evi dent and perpetual accompUshment of his predictions and his promises. . . Thus, as St. Augustine says, our faith is established on two sides. Neither the apostles nor we could doubt concerning it; that which they saw at the fountain-head assured them of all that would afterward follow ; that which we see in the subsequent time gives us assurance of what they saw and were astonished at in the beginning." — [OEuvres: Paris ed., 1822; Tom. XV, pp. 277-8. The eminent and accomplished Jesuit theologian, Perrone, whose " Prselectiones Theologies. " have passed tlirough many editions, and have been translated into different Continental languages, devotes the fundamental chapters of his great work to the elaborate consideration of the marks of Christianity as a Divine and supernatural Revelation, which are found in Miracles, in Prophecies fulfiUed, in the surpassing exceUence and purity of the doctrine of the Gospel, in its remarkable propagation and preservation in the world, and in the wonderful wit ness of martyrs to it. His discussion of the whole matter is equaUy learned, acute, and energetic. — [See "Prselect. Theol."; Paris ed., 1863: Vol. 1: pp. 24-122. NOTES TO LECTURE 1. 369 Xin. : p. 17. — "While the Greeks had been innocent in their serene unconsciousness of sin or shame, the extravagances of the Renaissance were guUty, turbid, and morbid, because they were committed defiantly, in open reprobacy, in scorn of the acknowledged law. What was at worst bestial in the Greeks, has become, devilish in the Renaissance. How different from a true Greek is Benvenuto Cellini : how unlike the monsters even of Greek mythic story is Francesco Cenci: how far more awful in his criminality is the Borgia than any despot of Greek colony or island " ! — [Symonds : ' ' Studies of Greek Poets " : First Series : London ed., 1877: p. 254. XIV. : p. 19. — "There can be no doubt that the perception of truth is very materiaUy influenced by the moral condition of the mind. How powerful are the arguments in favor of the Gospel derived from the moral beauty and symmetry of the system, from the originality and loftiness of our Saviour's character, from the adaptation of his religion to the wants of the human mind under aU its countless varieties ! And yet this species of evidence wiU be whoUy without effect on those whose minds are destitute of moral sensibUity and refinement. " — [James Martineau: " Studies of Christianity " : Boston ed., 1866: p. 486. ' 'Amid the vicissitudes of the inteUect, worship retains its stabiUty : and the truth which, it would seem, cannot be proved, is unaffected by an infinite series of refutations. How evident that it has its ultimate seat, not in the mutable judgments of the understanding, but in the native sentiments of Conscience, and the inexhaustible aspirations of Affection! The supreme certainty must needs be too true to be proved : and the highest perfection can appear doubtful only to Sensualism and Sin. " — [James Martineau : ' ' MisceUanies " ; Boston ed. , 1852: p. 167. " The prophecies, the miracles even, and the other proofs of our relig ion, are not of such a sort that we can say that they are mathematically convincing. But it is enough for the present if you agree with me that it is not to offend against reason to believe them. They possess at once clearness and obscurity, so as to enlighten some and darken others. But the clearness is such that it surpasses, or at the least equals, that which is most apparent on the other side : so that it is not the reason which can decide us not to f oUow it : and it may be only the concupiscence and wickedness of the heart. " — [Pascal : ' ' Pensees " : Sec. Par. , Art. xvu. . 20. XV. : p. 20. — A remark of Madame de StaSl seems to throw a certain unintended light on the miracles of the first Christian age : — "Violent concussions are needful to carry the human mind to ob jects entirely new : as earthquake-shocks and subterranean fires have 24 370 APPENDIX. revealed to men riches to wliich time alone would never have sufficed to channel the way." — ["De la Litt.ra.i_re " : CEuvres: Paris ed., 1820: Tom. IV. : p. 206. "That He also raised the dead, and that this is no fiction of those who composed the Gospels, is shown by this : that if it had been a fic tion, many individuals would have been represented as having risen from the dead. But, as it is no fiction, they are very easUy counted of whom this is related to have happened. . . I would say, moreover, that agreeably to the promise of Jesus, His disciples performed even greater works than these miracles of Jesus, which were perceptible only to the senses. For the eyes of those who are blind in soul are ever opened: and the ears of those who are deaf to virtuous words listen readily to the doctrine of God, and of the blessed life with Him: and many who were lame in the feet of the ' inner man,' as Scripture calls it, having now been healed by the word, do not simply leap, but leap as the hart, which is an animal hostile to serpents, and stronger than all the poison of vipers." — [Origen: adv. Celsus: H. : xlviii. XVI. : p. 20. — "I do not hereby deny in the least that God can do, or hath done, miracles for the confirmation of truth : but I only say that we cannot think he should do them to enforce doctrines or notions of himself, or any worship of him, not conformable to reason, or that we can receive such for truth for the miracles' sake : and even in those books which have the greatest proof of revelation from God, and the attestation of miracles to confirm, their being so, the miracles are to be judged by the doctrine, and not the doctrine by the miracles." — [Reff. : Deut. 13 : 1-3 ; Gal. 1 : 8.] [John Locke : quoted in Lord King's "Life"; London ed., 1830 : Vol. 1 : pp. 233h_. Pascal says : — "We must judge of the doctrine by the miracles, but at the same time of the miracles by the doctrine. The doctrine attests the miracles, and the miracles attest the doctrine. AH this is true, and there is in it no contradiction." But he adds, also: "The miracles have served for the foundation, and they wUl serve for the continuance of the church, until Antichrist comes, even unto the end." — ["Pensees": Sec. Par.: Art. xvi. : 1, 6. XVII. : p. 21. — "With each miracle worked there was a truth re vealed, which thenceforward was to act as its substitute. . . It was only to overthrow the usurpation exercised in and through the senses, that the senses were miraculously appealed to : for reason and reUgion are their own evidence. The natural sun is in this respect a symbol of the spiritual. Ere he is fuUy arisen, and whUe his glories are stiU under veil, he calls up the breeze to chase away the usurping vapors of the NOTES TO LECTURE I. 371 night-season, and thus converts the air itself into the minister of its own purification : not surely in proof or elucidation of the Ught from heaven, but to prevent its interception." — [Coleridge : "Statesman's Manual." Works; New York ed., 1853 : Vol. 1 : p. 425. The impressive moral lessons always implied in the miracles of the Lord constitute a just and forcible argument for them. The spiritual meanings so illustriously set before men surpass any limits of time, and are equally vital for each generation. Goethe missed the true les son of one of the miracles referred to by him : but even then he saw in it a secondary significance, of secular value : — "I have been reading in the New Testament, and thinking of a pic ture Goethe showed me, of Christ walking on the water, and Peter coming towards him, at the moment when the apostle begins to sink, in consequence of losing faith for a moment. ' This, ' said Goethe, ' is a most beautiful history, and one which I love better than any. It expresses the noble doctrine, that man, tlirough faith and animated courage, may come off victor in the most dangerous enterprises, whUe he may be ruined by a momentary paroxysm of doubt. ' " — [Eckermann : "Conv. with Goethe"; Boston ed., 1839 : p. 359. XVIII. : p. 22. — " Christ's miracles are in unison with his whole char acter, and bear a proportion to it, like that which we observe in the most harmonious productions of nature : and in this way they receive from it great confirmation. And the same presumption in their favor arises from his reUgion. That a religion carrying in itself such marks of divinity, and so inexplicable on human principles, should receive outward confirmations from Omnipotence, is not surprising. The ex traordinary character of the religion accords with and seems to demand extraordinary interpositions in its behalf. Its miracles are not solitary, naked, unexplained, disconnected events, but are bound up with a sys tem, which is worthy of God, and impressed with God ; which occu pies a large space, and is operating with great and increasing energy, in human affairs." — [Dr. Channing: Works; Boston ed., 1843: Vol. 3: pp. 130-131. " The miracles of the evangelic history come to us with the force of Congruity, just so far as we can bring ourselves morally within the splendour of those eternal verities which are of the substance of the Gospel. While we stand remote from that Uluminated field, they are to us only a galling perplexity : for we can neither rid ourselves of the evidence that attests them, nor are we prepared to yield ourselves to it. . . Antiquity had not conceived of a worker of miracles in whose course of life and behaviour the working of miraoles showed itself as a secondary and incidental element, and in whose character Love was of the substance, while the supernatural faculty was the adjunct." — [Isaac Taylor: " Restoration of BeUef " ; Boston ed., 1867: pp. 217, 222. 372 APPENDIX. XIX. : p. 22. — Cicero only fairly represents the impression of a Di vine instruction, universally made upon men by what they esteem ful fiUed predictions : — " There is certainly a power of prediction which appears in many places, times, states of affairs, both as concerning private matters and, more especiaUy, in regard to public affairs. The interpreters of sacri fices discern many things, the augurs foresee many; many are de clared by oracles, many by prophecies, many by dreams, many hy portents : which things becoming known, the manifold affairs of men are often wisely and prosperously conducted, and many dangers are avoided. This power, therefore, or art, or natural faculty, is certainly given to men for a knowledge of future things, nor is it given to any but by the immortal gods. . . This consideration has moved the poets, Homer especiaUy, to join to their chief heroes, Ulysses, AchiUes, and others, certain deities, as companions of their adventures and per ils."— [Nat. Deor. II. . 65, 66. XX. : p. 22. — " Since, then, we prove that aU things which have al ready happened had been predicted by the prophets before they came to pass, we must of necessity believe, also, that those things which are in like manner predicted, but are stUl to come to pass, shaU certainly happen. For as the things which have already taken place came to pass when foretold, and even though unknown, so shaU the things that remain, even though they be unknown and disbelieved, yet come to pass. . . So many things, therefore, as these, when they are seen with the eye, are enough to produce conviction and behef in those who embrace the truth, and are not bigoted in their opinions, nor governed by their passions." — [Justin Martyr: Apol. I. : 52, 53. " But whence could the prophets have had power to predict the ad vent of the King, and to preach beforehand that liberty which was hestowed by Him, and previously to announce aU things which were done by Christ, His words, His works, and His sufferings, and to pre dict the new covenant, if they had received prophetical inspiration from another God [than the One revealed in the Gospel] ? . . Neither are ye in a position to say that these things came to pass by a certain kind of chance, as if they were spoken by the prophets in regard to some other person, whUe like events happened to the Lord. For aU the prophets prophesied these same things, but they never came to pass in the case of any one of the ancients. . . Therefore the prophets spake not of any one else but of the Lord, in whom all these aforesaid tokens concurred. 'W[Irena_us: " against Heresies " : IV.: 34, §3. " The two parts, of which the Scriptures consist, are connected by a chain of compositions which bear no resemblance in form or style to any that can be produced from the stores of Grecian, Indian, Persian, NOTES TO LECTURE I. 373 or even Arabian learning : the antiquity of these compositions no man doubts : and the unstrained application of them to events long subse quent to their publication is a solid ground of beUef that they were genuine predictions, and consequently inspired." — [Sir William Jones: Works; London ed., 1807: Vol. 3: p. 183. XXI. : p. 23. — "Even supposing, however, that apart from the New Testament it were possible to bring any one to a beUef in the inspira. tion of the prophets (which, moreover, there would be no other means of effecting but by the prophet's own testimony that God's word had come to him), yet no faith in Christ as the ' end of the law for right eousness ' could be developed out of such a beUef . On the contrary, we shall come nearer to expressing the whole truth if we say that we believe in the inspiration of the prophets solely on the ground of the use which Christ and the apostles made of their prophecies. " — [Schleier macher: quoted by Bunsen: "God in History"; London ed., 1870: Vol. 3: p. 263. XXH. : p. 23. — " It wUl surprise some, that, with the exception of a few spurious productions, I consider the predictions of the prophets — which have hitherto been commonly regarded as disguised historical descriptions — as actual presentiments of the future, though without denying their limited extent in history, or attributing to their authors a superhuman degree of inf alUbUity. . . The authors of these books, for the most part, bear the name of prophets, interpreters of God. . . They were likewise caUed seers, on account of the higher intuition they had of divine truth, and, enlightened by that, of the course of earthly events, both present and future, by virtue of which they were prophets and foreteUers of the future. . . Without wishing to deny that there was a direct and immediate revelation — that is, an actual Divine excite ment, and, in some cases, an actual ecstasy or trance — I only maintain that it was indirect and mediate also, and that there was something arbitrary in the style of their discourse. " — [De Wette : ' ' Introd. to Old Testament": (Parker's trans.); Boston ed., 1859: Vol. 1: p. v.: Vol. 2: pp. 351-2, 360. "With these Umitations, it is acknowledged by aU students of the subject that the Hebrew prophets made predictions concerning the fortunes of their own and other countries which were unquestion ably fulfilled. There can be no reasonable doubt, for example, that Amos foretold the captivity and return of Israel : and Michael the faU of Samaria : and Ezekiel the fall of Jerusalem : and Isaiah the f aU of Tyre : and Jeremiah the Umits of the captivity. . . I pass to the sec ond grand example of the predictive spirit of the Prophets. . . It is a simple and universaUy recognized fact that, fiUed with these Prophetic 374 APPENDIX. images, the whole Jewish nation — nay, at last the whole Eastern world— did look forward with longing expectation to the coming of this future Conqueror. Was this unparalleled expectation realized ! And here again I speak of facts which are acknowledged by Germans and Frenchmen, no less than by Englishmen, by critics and by scep tics, even more fuUy than by theologians and ecclesiastics. There did arise out of this nation a Character by universal consent as unpar- aUeled as the expectation which had preceded him. Jesus of Nazareth was, on the most superficial no less than on the deepest view we take of His coming, the greatest name, the most extraordinary power, that has ever crossed the stage of History. And this greatness consisted not in outward power, but precisely in those qualities on which from first to last the Prophetic order had laid the utmost stress, — justice and love, goodness and truth." — [Dean Stanley : " History of Jewish Church"; N. York ed., 1863: Part 1: pp. 517, 519-20. ' ' The greatest of the proofs of Jesus Christ are the Prophecies. . . Even if one man had made a book of predictions of Jesus Christ, as to the time and the manner of his coming, and if Jesus Christ had come in conformity with these prophecies, this would be of an infinite weight. But there is here a great deal more. There is a succession of men who, during four thousand years, constantly and without variation, come, one after the other, predicting the same event. There is a whole peo ple which announces him, and which subsists during four thousand years in order still to render their testimony of the assurances which they have of him, from which they cannot be turned aside by any menaces or any persecutions which bef aU them. This is in a very dif ferent degree important." — [Pascal: "Pensees": Sec. Par. : Art. xi. : 1. XXHI. : p. 24. — "WhUe I was giving my most earnest attention to the matter [of the Heathen rites], I happened to meet with certain bar baric writings, too old to be compared with the opinions of the Greeks, and too divine to be compared with their errors ; and I was led to put faith in these, by the unpretending cast of their language, the inarti ficial character of the writers, the foreknowledge displayed of future events, the exceUent quaUty of the precepts, and the declaration of the government of the universe as centered in one Being." — [Tatian: 1 ' Address to the Greeks " : xxix. XXIV. : p. 25. — Nothing is more instructive or impressive in con nection with the Evidences of Christianity than the unique impression made by the person of Christ as shown in the Gospels on minds widely differing, in power, culture, and moral sensibiUty — even on minds in which a sceptical spirit has prevaUed. A few examples are given, which might be multiplied almost indefinitely. These are taken, pur- NOTES TO LECTURE I. 375 posely, from those representing widely different convictions and tend encies : — " It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which through aU the changes of eighteen centuries has in spired the hearts of men with an impassioned love, has shown itself capable of acthig on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions, has been not only the highest pattern of virtue but the strongest in centive to its practice, and has exercised so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than aU the disquisitions of philosophers, and aU the exhortations of moralists. This has indeed been the well-spring of whatever is best and purest in the Christian life. . . The power of the love of Christ has been dis played alike in the most heroic pages of Christian martyrdom, in the most pathetic pages of Christian resignation, in the tenderest pages of Christian charity. " — [Lecky : ' ' Hist, of European Morals " ; New York ed., 1876: Vol. 2: pp. 9, 10. "And when I come to consider his life, his works, his teaching, the marveUous mingling in him of grandeur and simpUcity, of sweetness and force, that incomprehensible perfection which never for a moment faUs, — neither in the intimate familiarity of confidence, nor in the so lemnity of instructions addressed by him to the people at large, neither in the joyfulness of the festival at Cana, nor amid the anguish of Gethsemane, neither in the glory of his triumph, nor in the ignominy of his punishment, neither on Tabor, in the midst of the splendor which environs him, nor upon Calvary, where he expires, abandoned by his friends, and forsaken of his Father, in inexpressible sufferings, amid the frenzied outcries and railing of his enemies : — when I con template this grand marvel, which the world has seen only once, and which has renewed the world, I do not ask myself if Christ was Divine : I should be rather tempted to ask myself if he were human 1 " — [La Mennais: " Essai sur l'lndiff .rence " ; Paris ed. , 1823 : Tom. IV. . p. 449. ' ' Yet Nazareth was no Athens, where PhUosophy breathed in the circumambient air ; it had neither porch nor portico, nor even a school of the Prophets. There is God in the heart of this youth. . . The mightiest heart that ever beat, stirred by the Spirit of God, how it wrought in his bosom I What words of rebuke, of comfort, counsel, admonition, promise, hope, did he pour out : words that stir the soul as summer dews caU up the faint and sickly grass ! What profound instruction in his proverbs and discourses : what wisdom in his homely sayings, so rich with Jewish life ; what deep divinity of soul in his prayers, his action, sympathy, resignation ! . . Rarely, almost never, do we see the vast divinity within that soul, which, new though it was in the flesh, at one step goes before the world whole thousands of years ; 376 APPENDIX. judges the race ; decides for us questions we dare not agitate as yet, and breathes the very breath of heavenly love. . . ShaU we be told, ' Such a man never Uved; the whole story is a Ue'? Suppose that Plato and Newton never lived ; that their story is a Ue ! But who did their works, and thought their thought ? It takes a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have fabricated a Jesus ? None but a Jesus." — [Theodore Parker: "Discourse of ReUgion"; Boston ed., 1842: pp. 294 e. .eg., 363. "What a touching grace in his instructions! What sweetness, yet what purity, in his manners ! What loftiness in his maxims ! What profound wisdom in his discourses! What presence of mind, what delicacy of art, yet what justice, in his replies ! What an empire over his passions ! Where is the man, where the sage, who knows thus how to act, to suffer, and to die, without weakness, and without ostenta tion ? What prejudice, what blindness, must be in him who dares to compare the son of Sophroniscus with the Son of Mary ? What a dis tance lies between them ! . . Greece abounded in virtuous men before he [Socrates] had denned virtue. But whence had Jesus drawn for his disciples that exalted and pure morahty of which he alone has presented at once the lessons and the example ? Out of the midst of the fiercest fanaticism the highest wisdom made itself heard, and the artlessness of the most heroical virtues glorified the vUest of aU the nations. The death of Socrates, philosophizing quietly with his friends, is the pleasantest that one could desire : that of Jesus, expiring amid torments, insulted, railed at, cursed by a whole nation, is the most horrible that any one could fear. Socrates, taking the poisoned cup, blesses him who presents it, and who weeps beside him : Jesus, in the midst of a frightful anguish, prays for his maddened executioners. Yes ! if the life and the death of Socrates are those of a philosopher, the life and the death of Jesus are those of a God." — [J. J. Rousseau: "EmUe"; CEuvres: Paris ed. , 1793 : Tom. IX.: pp. 40-42. " Whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left : a unique figure, not more unlike all his precursors than aU his foUowers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal teaching. It is of no use to say that Christ as exhibited in the Gospels is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been superadded by the tradition of his followers. The tradition of foUowers suffices to insert any number of marvels, and may have inserted aU the miracles which he is reputed to have wrought. But who among his foUowers, or among then- proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels ? Certainly not the fish ermen of GalUee : as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idio syncrasies were of a totally different sort : stUl less the early Christian NOTES TO LECTURE 1. 377 writers, in whom nothing is more evident than that the good which was in them was all derived, as they always professed that it was de rived, from the higher source." — [John Stuart MiU: " Essays on Re Ugion"; New York ed., 1874: pp. 253-4. " Christ's history bears aU the marks of reahty; a more frank, sim ple, unlabored, unostentatious narrative was never penned. Besides, his character, if invented, must have been an invention of singular difficulty, because no models existed on which to frame it. He stands alone in the records of time. The conception of a being, proposing such new and exalted ends, and governed by higher principles than the progress of society had developed, implies singular intellectual power. That several individuals should join in equally vivid concep tions of this character, and should not merely describe in general terms the fictitious being to whom it was attributed, but should intro duce him into real life, should place him in a great variety of circum stances, in connexion with various ranks of men, with friends and foes, and should in aU preserve his identity, show the same great and singular mind always acting in harmony with itself: this is a supposi tion hardly credible ; and, when the circumstances of the writers of the New Testament are considered, seems to be as inexplicable on hu man principles as, what I have suggested, the composition of Newton's ' Principia' by a savage." — [Dr. Channing: Works; Boston ed., 1843: Vol. 3: pp. 126-7. ' ' There is a man whose tomb is guarded by love, whose sepulchre is not only glorious, as a prophet declared, but whose sepulchre is loved. There is a man whose ashes, after eighteen centuries, have not grown cold, who daUy lives again in the thoughts of an innumerable multitude of men ; who is visited in his cradle by shepherds and by kings, who vie with each other in bringing to him gold and frankin cense and myrrh. There is a man whose steps are unweariedly retrod den by a large portion of mankind, and who, although no longer present, is followed by that throng in all the scenes of his bygone pU- grimage, upon the knees of his mother, by the borders of the lakes, to the tops of the mountains, in the by-ways of the vaUeys, under the shade of the oUve trees, in the stUl solitude of the deserts. . . The greatest monuments of art shelter his sacred images ; the most magnif icent ceremonies assemble the people under the influence of his name ; poetry, music, painting, sculpture, exhaust their resources to proclaim his glory, and to offer him incense worthy of the adoration which ages have consecrated to him. And yet upon what throne do they adore him ? Upon a Cross ! " — [P.re Lacordaire: Conferences; London ed., 1869: pp. 82-3, 86-7. XXV. : p. 27. — " Let us see what other nations have had and stUl have 378 APPENDIX. in the place of reUgion : let us examine the prayers, the worship, the theology, even, of the most highly civilized races — the Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus, the Persians — and we shall then understand more thoroughly what blessings are vouchsafed to us in being aUowed to breathe from the first breath of life the pure air of a land of Chris tian Ught and knowledge. . . We have done so Uttle to gain our re Ugion, we have suffered so Uttle in the cause of truth, that however highly we prize our own Christianity, we never prize it highly enough until we have compared it with the reUgions of the rest of the world. . . No one who has not examined patiently and honestly the other reUg ions of the world, can know what Christianity reaUy is, or can join with such truth and sincerity in the words of St. Paul: 'I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.' " — Max Mulier : "Chips from Ger man Workshop"; New York ed., 1881 : Vol. 1: pp. 180-1; 48. XXVI. : p. 28. — "Nothing can weU be more arbitrary than to stroU through some fifteen centuries, and, gathering up none but the most picturesque and beneficent phenomena, weave them into a glory to crown the faith with which they co-exist. In Christendom, aU the great and good things that are done at aU wUl of course be done by Christians, and wUl contain such share of the reUgious element as may belong to the character of the actor or the age ; but before you can avaU yourself of them in Christian Apologetics, it must be shown that, under any other faith, no social causes would have remained adequate either to produce them, or to provide any worthy equivalent. . . Every one is sensible of a change in the whole cUmate of thought and feeling, the moment he crosses any part of the boundary which divides Chris tian civUization from Heathendom : yet of nothing is it more difficult to render any compendious account." — [James Martineau: "Studies of Christianity " ; Boston ed., 1866: pp. 300-301, 305. ' ' I have said, again and again, that I do not think we prove our confi dence in the divinity of that which we confess by subjecting it to light tests, by arguing that this or that is not justly required of it. What ever has been found necessary, in the course of six thousand years' ex perience, we have a right to ask of that which offers itself as the faith for mankind. And I do not beUeve that it ever has shrunk, or ever wUl shrink, from any demand of this kind that we make upon it."— [F. D. Maurice : "ReUgions of World"; London ed., 1877: p. 166. XXVII. : p. 28. — The maxim of Coleridge referred to is correct and important, but it certainly in no degree excludes or Umits a readiness to receive Christianity as Divine if the Truth shall demand it:— " He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, wiU pro ceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than aU."— [" Mor. and Rei. Aphorisms "; xxv. Works ; New York ed., 1853 : Vol. 1 : p. 173. NOTES TO LECTURE I. 379 XX vim. : p. 28. — "The only grand and world-historical interest of the people [of Israel] lies in this: that as a whole, or as a People in the strictest sense of the word, once, and in fact immediately at the very beginning of its independent life, it entered actively and willingly into the highest requirements of reUgion ; indeed that it sought sim ply through this its final aim, with aU self-sacrifice, and determined to be and to continue a truly free people on the earth : whereas among other peoples, especiaUy the Indian, individuals indeed sought to know the truths of reUgion, a few even to reaUze those truths in their life, but no single genuine Community had shaped itself by a pure reUgion. But now as religion is vastly more for a whole people, and for the world, than it is for the individual, it results that only through an ap propriate Community can it perfect itself to the highest measure." — [Ewald: "Geschichte des Volkes Israel": Gottingen, 1865: Band H : S. 241. XXIX. : p. 29. — "So also the word with which the founder of Chris tianity began his preaching of the Gospel — that the foUowers of his doctrine are not only the poor in spirit, to whom belongs the king dom of Heaven, but also the meek, who shaU inherit the Earth — was brought to fulfilment, even in this sense, in the external history of Christianity, in that course of its first three centuries which con cerns the world's history. . . Only to its own principle, as the mterior effectual power, can Christianity be indebted for all which it has out wardly become in the progress of time; and the greater the effects which have proceeded from this principle, the more certain becomes the attestation thus given of the divinity of its origin. . . Christianfty itself describes that which it purposes to accompUsh in man, the sub stance of the change wliich shaU be fuUy effected through it, as a regeneration and renewal of the whole man : so as such a power trans forming man it has to attest itself historicaUy through the moral re generation brought about by it in the pubUc Ufe of mankind. But this is certainly that which gives its weightiest significance to the period of the first three centuries of Christianity, when we regard it from the most universal point of view, that of moral and religious consideration. Let us fix our thought, as here must be done, not on that which Christianity wrought in separate individuals, in the hidden deeps of their inner life, but on its effects in the larger contemplation : on what came from it in the common public life of Nations, as the noblest fruit of its efficacious activity. So with all justice may it be said that the world, through Christianity, if only in the bounded circles over which its influence could directly extend, actuaUy became a morally purer and better world. This shows itself, as in the nature of the case could not be otherwise, as an undeniable historical fact, at aU the points at which Christianity came into closest and most 380 APPENDIX. immediate contact with the dominant moral corruption of the heathen world." — [F. C. Baur: "Geschichte der Christ. Kirche": Tttbingcn: 1863: Band I.; S. 472, f. XXX. : p. 29. — In a note to the Introduction by Savigny to his System of Modern Roman Law, he gives modest expression to the spirit which had animated him in his great work. Quoting from the Lebensnach- richten uber Niebuhr : ' Above all things, in the study of the sciences, we must preserve our truthfulness without spot, absolutely shunning every false appearance, writing down as certain not the smaUest mat ter as to which we are not fuUy persuaded, and, when we have to state conjectures or probabUities, using every effort to show the degree of our persuasion ' — he adds, "much in the admirable letter from which this passage is taken belongs not merely to phUology, to which it im mediately relates, but to science in general." — ["Private International Law": Edinburgh ed., 1880: p. 23. It certainly appUes, as distinctly as to any student in the world, to one who would illustrate the historical indications of the Divine au thorship of Christianity. XXXI. : p. 29. — "The whole tendency of thought in modern times is to require evidence in religious matters on which men can exercise some judgment of their own. Scientific judgments are in numerous cases accepted without this, because many of them admit of verification in our actual experience, wliich imparts a credibility to the assertions of eminent professors on subjects which lie beyond its range ; but the case is wholly different with respect to religious truth." — [C. A. Rowe: "Bampton Lect.": London ed., 1877: p. 277 (note). XXXII. : p. 30. — "There are very few persons with whom the ficti tious character of fairy tales has not ceased to be a question, or who would hesitate to disbelieve or even to ridicule any anecdote of this nature which was told them, without the Very smaUest examination of its evidence. Yet, if we ask in what.respect the existence of fairies is naturally contradictory or absurd, it would be difficult to answer the question. . . That such beings should exist, or that, existing, they should be able to do many things beyond human power, are propositions which do not present the smaUest difficulty. For many centuries their existence was almost universaUy believed. . . When men are destitute of critical spirit, when the notion of uniform law is yet unborn, and when their imaginations are stiU incapable of rising to abstract ideas, histories of miracles are always formed and always believed, and they continue to flourish and to multiply untU these conditions have altered."— [Lecky: "History of European Morals"; N. York ed. , 1876 : Vol. 1 : pp. 370, 373. NOTES TO LECTUEE II. Note I. : page 37. — "Whether the etymology which the ancients gave of the Greek word avBouiroc, man, be true or not, (they derived it from o &vu aOpav , he who looks upward) : certain it is that what makes man to be man, is that he alone can turn his face to heaven : certain it is that he alone yearns for something that neither sense nor reason can supply." — [Max Midler: "Science of ReUgion"; New York ed., 1872: p. 12. ' ' If you will take the pains to travel through the world, you may find towns and cities without walls, without letters, without kings, without houses, without wealth, without money, without theatres and places of exercise ; but there never was seen, nor shaU be seen by man, any city without temples and Gods, or without making use of prayers, oaths, divinations, and sacrifices, for the obtaining of blessings and benefits, and the averting of curses and calamities. Nay, I am of opin ion that a city might sooner be buUt without any ground to fix it on, than a commonweal be constituted altogether void of any religion and opinion of the Gods, or being constituted be preserved. "• — [Plu tarch: adv. Colotes: 31. "Morals"; Boston ed., 1874: Vol. 5: p. 379. II. : p. 38. — "Not much more absurd are those things which do mis chief by the melody of their utterance, as poured forth in the words of the poets, who have represented the gods as inflamed with anger, rag ing with lust ; who have made us see their wars, battles, combats, wounds ; even further than this, their hatreds, dissensions, discords, births, deaths, complaints, lamentations, their lusts expressed in aU in temperate ways, their adulteries, chains, their sexual intercourse with mortals, and mortals begotten by the immortals." — [Cicero : Nat. Deor. : I. : 16. "Thence also comes the madness of the poets, nourishing men's er rors with fables, by whom it is made to appear that Jupiter, being cap tivated with the voluptuous pleasure of his adulterous embraces, doub led the length of the night. What else is it but to add fuel to our wickedness to write down the gods as the authors of such things, and tb give a permitted license to our inward distemper by the example of divinity." — [Seneca: Brev. Vit. : xvi. (381) 382 APPENDIX. HE. : p. 38. — " Every woman born in the [Babylonian] country must once in her life go and sit down in the precinct of Venus, and there consort with a stranger. Many of the wealthier sort, who are too proud to mix with the others, drive in covered carriages to the pre cinct, foUowed by a goodly train of attendants, and there take their station. But the larger number seat themselves within the holy en closure with wreaths of string about their heads — and here there is always a great crowd, some coming, and others going: lines of cord mark out paths in all directions among the women, and the strangers pass along them to make their choice. . . A custom very much like this is found also in certain parts of the island of Cyprus."— [Herodo tus: Hist.: I.: 199. "To Jupiter, whom they pree'minently worship [at Thebes], a virgin of the most distinguished f amUy, and of the greatest beauty, is conse crated—such as the Greeks caU PaUakes, concubines. She, after the fashion of a concubine, prostitutes herself with whomsoever she will. . . She is afterward given in marriage ; but before she is married, and after the time of prostitution, she is mourned for according to the usage for the dead. "—[Strabo: Rer. Geog. : xvii. : 1: §46 (Oxford ed., 1807: II. : "1156). See also Herodotus : I.: 182. IV. -. p. 38. — "There are likewise some among this number of gods who rejoice in victims, or ceremonies, or observances, nocturnal or diurnal, public or performed in secret, replete with the greatest joy, or marked with extreme sadness. Thus, the Egyptian deities are al most aU of them delighted with lamentations, the Grecian in general with dances, and those of the Barbarians with the sound produced by cymbals, tambourines, and pipes." — [Apuleius: "Daemon of Socrates." V. : p. 38. — "And the temple of Venus at Corinth was so rich that it had more than a thousand courtesans as servants of the sacred rites, whom both men and women had dedicated to the Goddess. On ac- count of these women, therefore, both a great multitude of men was congregated in the city, and its riches became what they were. Ship masters freely squandered their money ; whence came the proverb, ' It is not every man's voyage which leads to Corinth.'" — [Strabo: Rer. Geog. : VIII. : 6: § 20 (Oxford ed., 1807: I. : 549). " It is an ancient custom at Corinth (as Chamaeleon of Heraclea re lates, in his treatise on Pindar), whenever the city addresses any sup plication to Venus about any important matter, to employ as many courtesans as possible to join in the supplication ; and they, too, pray to the goddess, and afterwards are present at the sacrifices. And when the King of Persia was leading his army against Greece (as Theopampus also relates, and so does Timaeus, in his seventh book), NOTES TO LECTURE II. 383 the Corinthian courtesans offered prayers for the safety of Greece, going to the temple of Venus. . . And even private individuals some times vow to Venus, that if they succeed in the objects for which they are offering their vows, they wUl bring her a stated number of courte sans." — [Athenaeus: " Deipnosophistse " : XIH. : 32. VI. : p. 38. — ' ' The people of her neighbourhood, having had a statue made of Phryne herself, of soUd gold, consecrated it in the temple of Delphi, having had it placed on a pillar of Pentelican marble ; and the statue was made by Praxiteles. Arid when Crates the Cynic saw it, he caUed it ' a votive offering of the profligacy of Greece. ' . . And Alexis the Samian says : ' The Athenian prostitutes who foUowed Pericles when he laid siege to Samos, having made vast sums of money by their beauty, dedicated a statue of Venus at Samos, which some call Venus among the Reeds.'" — [Athenaeus: "Deipnosophistse": XIII.: 59,31. VH. : p. 38. — One having occasion to make himself familiar with that vast department of historical study in which the learning and tal ent of Gibbon were splendidly used, wiU do well to bear in mind the portrait of him by Dr. Martineau, which is as just and discriminating as it is unsparing : — "His whole spirit was unsocial and irreverent; his affections never deep in the sorrows, his moral sense not revolted by the sins, of the be ings he presents on his magnificent stage; his imagination resting on the pageantry, the scenery, the mechanism, the dress, the evolutions of national existence, but not penetrating to its real life ; and his Epicu rean cast of character wholly disqualifying him for any appreciation of the genius and agency of Christianity." — [" MisceUanies " ; Boston ed., 1852 : p. 93. Mr. Lecky has written words as discerning and just : — "The complete absence of aU sympathy with the heroic courage manifested by the martyrs, and the frigid, and in truth most unphUo- sophical severity, with which the historian has weighed the words and actions of men engaged in the agonies of a deadly struggle, must repel every generous nature ; whUe the persistence with which he estimates persecutions by the number of deaths rather than by the amount of suffering, diverts the mind from the reaUy distinctive atrocities of the Pagan persecutions." — ["Hist, of European Morals"; New York ed., 1876 : Vol. 1 : p. 494. VEII. : p. 39. — "Numa forbade the Romans to represent God in the form of man or beast, nor was there any painted or graven image of a deity admitted amongst them for the space of the first hundred and sev enty years ; all which time their temples and chapels were kept free 384 APPENDIX. and pure from images : to such baser objects they deemed it impious to liken the highest, and aU access to God impossible, except by the pure act of the inteUect."— [Plutarch: "Lives " ; Boston ed., 1859 : Vol. 1. : p. 138. IX.: p. 39. — "Her temples [Flora's] are entirely surrounded with wreaths of flowers stitched together ; and the splendid table is hidden beneath roses showered upon it. The drunken reveler dances with liis hair crowned with chaplets of the linden-tree bark, and unawares is mastered by the witchery of the wine. Drunken he sings at the re peUent threshold of his beautiful mistress ; his perfumed locks sus tain delicate garlands. . . The reason why the harlot-crowd should resort in great numbers to these games, when sought, is found without trouble. She [the Goddess] is none of the severe ones, nor is she great in the matter of high professions : she wishes that her sacred cer emonies should be open to the plebeian multitude. And she admonishes us to use the beauty of our youth, while it is blooming; that the thorn is to he disdained, when the roses have faUen." — [Ovid: Fastor. L. V. : 335-340, 349-354. ' ' The secrets of Bona Dea are notorious. When the pipe wantonly excites them, and frantic alike with the horn and with wine these Maenads of Priapus rush about, and whirl their hair, and howl: oh, how great is then the licentious longing of their minds ! what an ut terance is theirs in their lascivious dance ! . . Nothing is counterfeited in this sort of sport ; aU things are done to the life, so that the very son of Laomedon [Priam], frigid with years, might be inflamed, and Nestor himself. Then their fierce lust brooks no delay, then the wo man appears without disguise: and by all alike is the shout resounded' in the den, etc., etc. . . Would that our ancient rites and public worship might at least be celebrated unstained by iniquities like these."— [Juvenal : Sat. VI. : 314-336. X. : p. 39. — "How great in our time is the madness of men! They whisper to the gods most viUainous prayers ; if any one turns an ear toward them, they are dumb ; but what they are unwUling that man should know they set forth in words to God. See then if this may not profitably be made our precept : ' So live with men as if God saw thee ; so speak with God as if men should hear thee.' "—[Seneca, Epist. x. "If any one has time to see the things which they do, and the things which they suffer [those who would propitiate the gods], he will find so many things unseemly for men of respectabUity, so unworthy of freemen, so unlike the doings of sane men, that no one would doubt that they were mad, had they been mad with the minority; but now NOTES TO LECTURE II. 385 the multitude of the insane is the defence of their sanity." — [Seneca : quoted by Augustine : Civ. Dei. VI. 10. XI.: p. 39. — "As to what had reference to the gods he [Socrates] evidently acted and spoke in conformity with the answer which the priestess of ApoUo gives to those who inquire how they ought to pro ceed with regard to a sacrifice, to the worship of their ancestors, or to any such matter; for the priestess replies that 'they wiU act piously if they act in agreement with the law of their own country'; and Socrates both acted in this manner himself, and exhorted others to act simUarly." — [Xenophon: Memor. I.: 3:1. XH. : p. 39. — "You have gone astray, you have faUen in love, you have been guUty of some adultery, and then have been caught. You are undone, for you are unable to speak. But if you associate with me, indulge your inclination, dance, laugh, and think nothing disgraceful. For if you should happen to be detected as an adulterer, you wUl make this reply to him : ' that you have done him no injury ' ; and then refer him to Jupiter, how even he is overcome by love and women, and how could you, who are a mortal, have greater power than a god ? " — [Aristophanes: "Clouds": 1077-82. ' ' And this further I would say to you : why are you, being a Greek. indignant at your son when he imitates Jupiter, and rises against you, and defrauds you of your own wife ? Why do you count him your enemy, and yet worship one who is like him ? and why do you blame your wife for Uving in unchastity, and yet honor Venus with shrines ? If indeed these things had been related by others, they would have seemed mere slanderous accusations, and not truth. But now your own poets sing these things, and your histories noisUy publish them." — [Justin Martyr : Orat. ad Graec. : rv. ' ' Others of your writers, in their wantonness, minister to your pleas ures by vilifying the gods. . . Your dramatic hterature, too, depicts all the vUeness of your gods. . . This, it wiU be said however, is aU in sport. But if I add — what all know, and wUl readily admit to be the fact — that in the temples adulteries are arranged, that at the altars pimping is practised, that often in the houses of the temple-keepers and priests, under the sacrificial fillets, and the sacred hats, and the purple robes, amid the fumes of incense, deeds of licentiousness are done, I am not sure but your gods have more reason to complain of you than of Christians." — [Tertullian: Apolog., c. 15. XIII. : p. 39. — " In regard to the Gods, and to aU matters of religion, he [Tiberius] was very careless ; especiaUy as being himself addicted to 25 386 APPENDIX. astrology, and fully persuaded that all things are governed by Fate. Yet he was afraid beyond measure of thunder; and whenever the sky was disturbed he never faUed to wear on his head a laurel-crown, be cause it was denied that that kind of leaf is ever touched by the light ning." — [Suetonius: Tiberius: lxix. Pliny mentions the same thing, in the Nat. Hist. : XV. 40. XIV. . p. 40. — "Whatever God is, if he is at aU other [than the Sun], and in what place soever he exists, he is all sense, all sight, aU hearing, aU life, aU mind, and aU contained within himself. . . But it is ridiculous to suppose that this supreme, whatever it is, exercises any care over human affairs. Can we beUeve, or rather can we doubt about the matter, that it would not be dishonored by such a sad and complicated office ? Scarcely is it easy to decide which opinion may the more conduce to the advantage of mankind, since while by some no God is regarded, by others he is shamefully worshipped. . . An other set of people reject this principle [that Fortune rules aU], and as sign events to the power of the stars, and the laws of one's nativity. . . This opinion begins to get itself established, and the learned and the rude rabble alike are rushing into it. . . Such things as these so envelope the humanity which has no foresight that in the midst of them this is the only certainty, that nothing is certain ; nor anything else more wretched than man, or at the same time more proud. . . He [the deity] cannot compass his own death, even if he wished it — that which he gives to man as the best boon in the midst of such man [fold pains of life."— [Pliny: Nat. Hist. ; II. : 5. XV. : p. 40. — "Even Varro himself has chosen rather to doubt con cerning all things, than to affirm anything [about the gods], . . This same Varro, then, still speaking by anticipation, says that he thinks that God is the soul of the world, and that this world itself is God ; but, as a wise man, though he consists of body and mind, is neverthe less caUed wise on account of his mind, so the world is called God on account of mind, although it consists of mind and body." — [Augustine: Civ. Dei; VII.: 17, 6. "Whence, with respect to these sacred rites of the civU theology, Seneca preferred, as the best course to be foUowed by a wise man, to feign respect for them in act, but to have no real regard for them at heart. ' All which things,' he says, ' a wise man wiU observe as being commanded by the laws, but not as being pleasing to the gods.' . . 'AU this ignoble crowd of gods which the superstition of ages has amassed, we ought to adore in such a way as to remember aU the whUe that its worship belongs rather to custom than to reahty.' . . NOTES TO LECTURE II. 387 But this man, whom phUosophy had made as it were free, neverthe less, because he was an Ulustrious senator of the Roman people, wor shipped what he censured,-did what he condemned, adored what he reproached," etc. — [Augustine: Civ. Dei: VI. : 10. XVI.: p. 40. — "I shaU commence to discuss with thee [Memmius] concerning the complete explanation of the heaven, and of the gods, and shall unfold to thee the primordial elements of things ; from which Nature produces, buUds up, and nourishes things in aU departments : into which the same Nature again resolves them when they are de stroyed ; — these elements when presented in the way of explanation we are wont to call matter, and the generative bodies of things, and to name them the seeds of things, and to assume them as primal bodies, because from them as original aU things have existence." — [Lucretius: Rer. Nat. : I. : 49-56. "What is this [Christian] superstition? Man, and every animal which is born, inspired with life, and nourished, is as a voluntary concretion of the elements, into which again every man and every ani mal is divided, resolved, and dissipated ; so aU things flow back again into their source, and are turned again into themselves, without any artificer, or judge, or creator." — [CaeciUus : in "Octavius" of Minu- cius Felix : v. XVII. : p. 40.— " WUt thou caU him Fate ? thou shalt not err. . . WUt thou name him Providence ? Thou sayest rightly. . . WUt thou caU him Nature ? Thou shalt not sin. . . WUt thou caU him the World ? Thou shalt not be deceived. For he is aU that which thou seest, wholly infused into his various parts, and sustaining himr self by his own energy." — [Seneca: Natur, Queest. : II. : 45. ' ' For what else is Nature than God, and a divine reason intermixed with the whole world, and with aU its parts ? . . Thou accomplishest nothing then, most ungrateful of mortals, when thou deniest that thou art indebted to God, but only to Nature ; for neither is Nature without God, nor God without Nature ; but each is the same thing with the other, and there is no difference in their office." — [De Benef . : IV.: 7,8. 1 ' This has come to pass, believe me, under whomsoever has been the fashioner of the universe — whether it be God, powerful over aU, or incorporeal reason, the skillful artificer of great works, or a divine spirit diffused with an equal attentiveness throughout aU things great est or smallest ; or whether it be fate, and an unchangeable series of causes, interlinked each to the others — this, I say, has come to pass, that only the meanest things happen to us under a choice foreign to our own. . . The world, than which nothing is greater or more elab- 388 APPENDIX. orately beautiful, the nature of things has produced."— [Consol. ad Helv. : vin. XVTTT. : p. 40. — " Plato, accordingly, having learned this in Egypt, and being greatly taken with what was said about one God, d_d indeed consider it unsafe to mention the name of Moses, on account of his teaching the doctrine of one only God, for he dreaded the Areopagus; but what is very weU expressed by him in his elaborate treatise, the Timaeus, he has written in exact correspondence with what Moses said concerning God, though he has done so, not as if he had learned it from him, but as if expressing his own opinion." — [Justin Martyr: Cohor. ad Gra_e. : xxii. XIX. : p. 40. — "I shaU argue that to speak weU of the gods to men is far easier than to speak weU of mortals to one another : for the in experience and utter ignorance of his hearers about such matters is a great assistance to him who has to speak of them, and we know how ignorant we are concerning the gods." — [Plato: Critias: 107. " AU sensible things, which are apprehended by opinion and sense, are in process of creation, and created. Now that which is created must of necessity be created by a cause. But how can we find out the Father and Maker of aU this universe ? Or, when we have found Him, how shall we be able to speak of Him toaUmen?" — [Plato: Timaeus: 28. Origen's comment on these words, when quoted by Celsus, is surely a just one : — " These words of Plato are noble and admirable; but see if Scripture does not give us the example of a regard for mankind stUl greater in God the Word, who ' was in the beginning with God,' and who 'was made flesh,' in order that he might reveal to aU men truths which, according to Plato, it would be impossible to make known to aU men after he had found them himself." — [Origen: adv. Celsus: vn. : 42. Compare the attitude of HeracUtus toward the people : — " The mass of men have no inteUigence for eternal truth, though it is clear and obvious ; . . the order of the world, glorious as it is, for them does not exist. Truth seems to them incredible ; they are deaf to it, even when it reaches their ears ; to the ass chaff is preferable to gold, and the dog barks at every one he does not know. EquaUy in capable of hearing and speaking, their best course would be to conceal their ignorance. Irrational as they are, they abide by the sayings of the poets, and the opinions of the multitude, without considering that the good are always few in number; etc." — [Zeller: " Hist, of Greek PhUosophy": (Pre-Socratic) ; London ed., 1881: Vol. 2: pp. 7-10. XX.: p 40. — "For Moses, one of the Egyptian priests, who had a NOTES TO LECTURE II. 389 certain part of this territory, and who found his condition there irk some, emigrated thence, with many companions, who had a zeal for sacred things. He affirmed and taught that the Egyptians, and like wise the Africans, did not judge rightly, who ascribed to God the likeness of beasts and of cattle, nor the Greeks, who attributed the figure of man to the gods. But God [according to him] is that alone which contains us aU, land and sea, what we call the heaven, the uni verse, and the nature of aU things; whose likeness accordingly no one of sane mind wiU dare to picture as similar to any of these things which are present to us. So, aU portraying by images being rejected, a temple and a sanctuary worthy of Him should be established, and He should be worshipped without any representation." — [Strabo: Rer. Geog. : XVI: 2; § 35 (Oxford ed., 1807: II. : 1082). The doctrine of Moses is obviously conceived by Strabo under the forms of thought familiar to the Stoics. XXI. : p. 41. — "With the adherents of the Sankhya doctrine, Buddha believed himself to have ascertained that neither the gods nor a su preme aU-pervading world-soul exists." — [Duncker: "Hist, of Antiq uity": Vol. 4: p. 341. "As he [Buddha] recognizes not a god upon whom man depends, his doctrine is absolutely atheistic." — [Barth: "Religions of India"; Boston ed., 1882: p. 110. "These speculations are peculiar to Buddhism; and although they produce contrivance without a contriver, and design without a de signer, they are as rational, in this respect, as any other system that denies the agency of a self -existent and ever-Uving God. . . Inasmuch as Buddhism declares Karma to be the supreme controlling power of the universe, it is an atheistic system. It ignores the existence of an intelUgent and personal Deity." — [R. Spence Hardy: "Manual of Buddhism": London ed., 1880: p. 413. "I will mention two important subjects in regard to which there is a growing conviction in my mind that he [Confucius] came short of the faith of the older sages. The first is the doctrine of God. . . Con fucius preferred to speak of Heaven. Instances have already been given of this. Two others may be cited. . . Not once throughout the Analects does he use the personal name. I would say that he was unreligious rather than irreUgious; yet . . he prepared the way for the speculations of the Uterati of the mediaeval and modern times, which have exposed them to the charge of atheism." — [Legge: "Chinese Classics"; London ed., 1861: Vol. 1: pp. 99-100. XXII.: p. 41.— "On one side there is a bias to monotheism run ning through it [the Roman religion] : there must have been one sin- 390 APPENDIX. gle nameless god in existence at its mysteriously veUed commence- ment, who, in the event, turned into a Jupiter Optimus Maximus, but was never entirely lost to the conscience of the Romans; therefore they continued, even tUl late times, to invoke him in the most violent and irresistible of natural phenomena. . . In this way they sweUed the number of the gods so incalculably that the generaUty of Romans were far from being acquainted with even the names of aU their dei ties ; and we, too, remain in ignorance of many of them, including such as had a worship of their own." — [DolUnger : "The Gentile and the Jew": Vol. 2: pp. 13-14. " ' It is, therefore, more than five thousand years since, in the vaUey of the NUe, the hymn began to the Unity of God and the immortaUty of the soul ; and we find Egypt in the last ages arrived at the most un bridled Polytheism. The beUef in the Unity of the Supreme God, and in his attributes as Creator and Lawgiver of man, whom he has en do wed with an immortal soul, — these are the primitive notions, en chased, like indestructible diamonds, in the midst of the mythological superfetations accumulated in the centuries which have passed over that ancient civiUzation ' [Emmanuel Rouge], . . It is incontestably true that the sublimer portions of the Egyptian reUgion are not the comparatively late result of a process of development or eUmination from the grosser. The sublimer portions are demonstrably ancient : and the last stage of the Egyptian religion, that known to the Greek and Latin writers, heathen or Christian, was by far the grossest and most corrupt." — [Renouf : "ReUgion of Ancient Egypt " : New York ed.,1880: pp. 94^-5. ' ' We have accustomed ourselves to regard a belief in the unity of God as one of the last stages to which the Greek mind ascended from the depths of a polytheistic faith. . . But how can we teU that the course of thought was the same in India ? By what right do we mark aU hymns as modern, in which the idea of one God breaks through the clouds of a polytheistic phraseology? The beUef in a Supreme God, in a God above aU gods, may in the abstract seem later than the belief in many gods. . . But there is a monotheism that precedes the polytheism of the Veda ; and even in the invocations of their innumer able gods this remembrance of a God, one and infinite, breaks through the mist of an idolatrous phraseology, like the blue sky that is hidden by passing clouds. "—[Max MiiUer : " Hist, of Ancient Sanskrit Litera ture": London ed., 1859: pp. 558-9. The wonderfully learned and elaborate treatment of the early mono theism by Cudworth, in his fourth chapter, is doubtless famUiar. The thesis which he maintains is this : — " Wherefore the truth of this whole business seems to be, that the ancient Pagans did physiologize in their theology: and whether look- NOTES TO LECTURE II. 391 ing upon the whole world animated as the Supreme God, and conse- quen tly the several parts of it as his Uving members — or else appre hending it at least to be a mirror, or visible image, of the invisible Deity, and consequently aU its several parts but so many several man ifestations of the Divine power and providence — they pretended that aU their devotion towards the Deity ought not to be huddled up in one general and confused acknowledgment of a supreme invisible Being, the creator and governor of aU : but that aU the several manifestations of the Deity in the world should be made so many distinct objects of their devout veneration. . . We shaU afterward make it appear, that the first original of this business proceeded from a certain phUosophic opinion amongst the Pagans, that God was diffused throughout the whole world, and was himseU in a manner in aU things, and therefore ought to be worshipped in aU things : but the poets were principally ¦ the men who carried it on thus far, by personating the several inani mate parts of the world and things of nature, to make such a multi tude of gods and goddesses of them. „ . We have now dispatched the first of those three heads, viz., that the Pagans worshipped one and the same Supreme God, under many personal names, so that much of their polytheism was but seeming and fantastical, and indeed nothing but the polyonomy of one Supreme God, they making many poetical and poUtical gods of that one natural God : and thus worshipping God by parts and piecemeal, according to that clear acknowledgment of Max imus Madaurensis before cited." — ["InteUectual System, etc."; Ando ver ed., 1837: Vol. 1: pp. 308, 475, 715. XXIII.: p. 42. — "Formerly I was a fig-tree trunk, a useless log, when the workman, undecided whether he would make a bench of me or a Priapus, determined that I should be a God: thenceforth I became a God, the greatest terror of thieves and birds ; for my right hand restrains the thieves, . . but lime- twigs fixed upon my head frighten the troublesome birds, and forbid them to aUght in the new gardens."— [Horace : Sat. I. : 8 : 1-7. XXIV. : p. 42. — " But not yet had come on that disregard of the gods which possesses the present age : nor did each one then, by his own interpretation, make oaths and laws conformable to his purposes, but, rather, he accommodated to them his own customs of life." — [Livy: Histor. : HI. : 20. XXV. : p. 42. — "And then, if this wall be raised, [I admonish you] that you demand back the empire from Jove ; and if he refuses, and does not immediately confess himseU in the wrong, that you declare a sacred war against him, and forbid the gods to pass through your 392 APPENDIX. district, when lecherous, as formerly they were accustomed to go down to debauch their Alcmenes, their Alopes, and their Semeles. . . And I advise you to send another bird as herald to men, henceforth to sacrifice to the birds, since the birds have the rule. . . If any one sac rifice to Venus, let him offer wheat to the coot ; and if any one sacrifice a sheep to Neptune, let him dedicate wheat to the duck ; and if any one sacrifice to Hercules, let him offer honied cakes to the guU ; and if any one sacrifice a ram to king Jove, the wren is the king, to whom he ought to slay a male ant before Jove himself." — [Aristophanes : "Birds": 554-70. XXVI. : p. 42. — "As Athens far surpassed other HeUenic cities in inteUectual matters, so too her mysteries, the Eleusinian, had the -precedence of aU institutions of the kind. They owed this, in part, to the fame of Athens, and in part to the artistic splendour and tasteful beauty of their scenic ornamentation, and in some degree also to the care the Athenians took in cherishing the belief that those who were initiated there acquired the securest guarantee of bliss in the other world. . . The Eleusinia as a whole formed a great solemnity, lasting at least ten days, when much passed in pubUc, before aU eyes, the magnificence of which always drew to Athens a crowd of people, including many who had no desire to be initiated. Feast and mystery were treated as an institution of the state, and therefore were under the direction of the republic." — [Dollinger : "The Gentile and the Jew"; Lond. ed., 1862 : Vol. 1 : pp. 176-7. "When, at the celebration of the greater Eleusinian mysteries, the mysta. marched in procession to Eleusis, they were greeted at the bridge over the Cephissus with aU sorts of jokes and gibes, many of them exceedingly coarse. Even at the chorus dance on the meadow near Eleusis, simUar sport was made." — [Uhlhorn : " Conflict of Chris tianity"; New York ed., 1879 : p. 161. XXVII. : p. 42. — "That there are any departed spirits, and subter ranean realms, and the pole [of Charon], and the black frogs in the Stygian whirlpool, and that so many thousand souls cross that water in one bark — not even boys beUeve, unless they are not yet old enough to be charged a price for a bath." — [Juvenal : Sat. II. : 149-152. "Dost thou not know what a laugh thy simpUcity would excite among the common folk, if thou shouldst expect from any one that he would not perjure himself, but would really think that some deity is present in any of the temples, and at the altar reddened with blood? " —[Sat. XIII. : 34-37. "But seek your deputy-General [O Caesar] in some vast eating-house. You wiU find him lying down with any mere cut-throat ; intermixed NOTES TO LECTURE II. 393 with saUors, thieves, and runaway slaves; among hangmen, and the makers of cheap biers, and the sUent drums of the priest of Cybele, now prostrate in drunkenness." — [Sat. VHI. : 172-176. Quintilian refers to the frequent denial by phUosophers that the gods had any regard for human affairs, and to the light and easy way in which men accordingly held themselves at Uberty to take any oath, as matters of fact properly used by advocates. — [Instit. Orat., V. : 6. ' ' Happy the man who is able to understand the causes of things, and so has trampled under foot aU fear, and the inexorable fate, and the roar of greedy Acheron." — [VirgU : Georg. : II. : 490-492. XXVTH. : p. 43. — "A discussion has arisen [said Cotta] between VeUeius and myself concerning a great matter ; . . we were treating of the nature of the Gods. Since this has seemed to me an extremely ob scure subject, as indeed it is always wont to seem, I was interrogating VeUeius as to the sentiments of Epicurus. . . Therefore I, who am myseff a Pontifex, who think that public reUgious rites and ceremonies ought sacredly to be preserved, not only desire to be myself persuaded of the opinion first of aU that there are Gods, but I wish to have it plainly proved. . . Yet I do not think that the reasons which are pre sented for it by you are sufficiently soUd. . . It seems wonderful that one interpreter of the sacrifices should meet another without laughing ; it is yet more wonderful that you can refrain from laughing among yourselves. . . As to the voice of the Faun, I certainly have never heard it; I shall believe you, if you teU me that you have heard it; though I do not in the least know what a Faun may be." — [Cicero: Nat. Deor. : I. : 7, 22, 26 ; III. : 6. Gibbon does not exaggerate when he says, in his stately antithesis, that the philosophers of antiquity, when they " condescended to act a part on the theatre of superstition, concealed the sentiments of an athe ist under the sacerdotal robes, and approached with the same inward contempt, and the same external reverence, the altars of the Libyan, the Olympian, or the CapitoUne Jupiter"; or when he adds that "the freedom of the city was bestowed on all the gods of mankind." — ["De cline and FaU": Boston ed., 1854: Vol. 1: pp. 168, 170. XXIX. : p. 43. — "Cecrops and Theseus, who were regarded as hav ing been successive founders of Athens, had temples there. Abdera offered sacrifices to its founder Timesius, Thera to Theras, Tenedos to Tenes, Delos to Anius, Cyrene to Battus, MUetus to Naleus, Amphi polis to Hagnon. In the time of Pisistratus, one MUtiades went to found a colony in the Thracian Chersonesus ; this colony instituted a worship for him after his death, ' according to the ordinary usage.' . . Every man who had rendered a great service to the city, from the one 394 APPENDIX. who had founded it to the one who had given it a victory, or had im proved its laws, became a god for that city. . . The inhabitants of Acanthus worshipped a Persian who had died among them during the expedition of Xerxes. . . Crotona worshipped a hero for the sole reason that during his life he had been the handsomest man in the city."— [Coulanges: "The Ancient City": Boston ed., 1874: pp. 188-9, 196. "Hence [like Romulus and Hercules], Liber [Bacchus] became a God, who was born of Semele ; and on the same renown of fame the brother-sons of Tyndareus [Castor and PoUux], who are declared to have been not only helpers of the Roman people to victory in their battles, but also messengers announcing their success. . . Why! is not almost the whole of heaven — I will not dwell further on particu lar instances — fiUed with those of human-kind ? If I should attempt to search into antiquity, and thence to produce the things which Greek writers have asserted, even those who are esteemed the gods of the principal peoples would be found to have been taken up from among us into heaven." — [Cicero: Tuscul. Quaest. : I.: 12, 13. XXX. : p. 43. — "Indeed at the games which his heir, Augustus, first set forth as consecrated to him, a comet [a- hairy star] blazed forth dur ing seven consecutive days, rising at about the eleventh hour ; and it was believed to be the soul of Caesar, now received into heaven ; and for this reason a star is placed upon his head in his statue."— [Suetonius: C. J. Caesar: lxxxviii. Concerning Augustus, Suetonius reports, in like manner, that an ancient prediction had pointed out his native city, VeUetri, as the birth place of a Master of the world ; that prodigies and strange dreams pre ceded his birth ; that when his father, in Thrace, consulted an oracle about his son, the wine on the altar burst into a flame which reached heaven high; that as an infant he was taken from his cradle by invis ible hands, carried to the top of a lofty tower, and left facing the rising sun ; that an eagle snatched bread from his hand when he was dining, bore it up into the sky, and then restored it; that as he was entering Rome, after Caesar's death, suddenly, in a clear sky, a circular rainbow surrounded the sun; etc., etc.— [Octav. Afigust. : xcrv.-xcvi. XXXI. : p. 43. — "But Rome began to crave a more concrete God than the Capitolian Jove, and found a living and most terrible deity in the person of her Emperor. Earth could offer nothing more divin. ui the sense of a majesty at once recognized and obeyed, and Paganism did but push its principles to their consequence in deif ying the Caesars ; but reason fell to the lowest depth of degradation, and the Egyptians groveUing before the beasts of the NUe outraged humanity less than the NOTES TO LECTURE II. 395 age of the Antonines, with its phUosophers and jurisconsults rendering divine honors to the Emperor Commodus." — [Fred. Ozanam: " CivUi- zation in Fifth Cent.": London ed., 1867: Vol. 1: p. 80. ' ' From the time of JuUus and Augustus his [the Emperor's] person had been haUowed by the office of chief pontiff and the tribunician power ; to swear by his head was considered the most solemn of all oaths ; his effigy was sacred, even on a coin ; to him, or to his Genius, temples were erected and divine honours paid whole he Uved ; and when, as it was expressed, he ceased to be among men, the title of Divus was accorded to him, after a solemn consecration. In the confused multi- pUcity of mythologies, the worship of the Emperor was the only wor ship common to the whole Roman world, and was therefore that usu aUy proposed to the Christians on their trial. " — [Bryce : ' ' Holy Roman Empire"; London ed., 1876: pp. 22-3. XXXII. : p. 43. — "There is no more curious fragment of antiquity than the Vision of Judgment which Seneca has left us on the death and deification of Claudius. . . . When Claudius expired in the month of October, his soul, according to the satirist, long lodged in the inflated emptiness of his own swoUen carcass, migrated by an easy transition into a kindred pumpkin. The Senate declared that he had become a god ; but Seneca knew that he was only transformed into a gourd. The Senate decreed his divinity; Seneca translated it into pumpkinity ; and proceeded to give a burlesque account of what had happened in heaven on the appearance of the new aspirant to celestial honours." — [Merivale: "Hist, of the Romans": London ed., 1856: Vol. 5: p. 601. Yet, a little before, the same philosopher had said, of the same Claudius: "The emperor is divine; the divinity is with and around those blessed by employment in his service. . . Distant be the day, and reserved for the tears of our grand-chUdren, when his divine pro genitors shaU demand for him the heavens which are his own " I — [Consol. adPolyb., 31, 32. XXXIII.: p. 43. — "Already the Senate had commended the womb of Poppaea to the gods, and had undertaken vows for pubUc perform ance. These things were multiplied and fulfiUed [after the birth], and there were added suppUcations and a temple to Fecundity, etc. These things were temporary, however, the infant having died within the fourth month. But again arose the servile adulations of those decree ing homage to her as a Goddess, with a Divine bed of state, a Temple, and a Priest."— [Tacitus : Annal. : XV. : 23. XXXIV. : p. 44.— "At the first attack of sickness, he said: 'Alas! I 396 APPENDIX. suspect I am becoming a God ' [Vae, puto, Deus fio !] " — [Suetonius : "Vespasian.": xxiii. XXXV.: p. 44. — "The sun was worshipped at Emesa, under the name of Elegabalus, and under the form of a black conical stone, which, as it was universaUy beheved, had faUen from heaven on that sacred place. . . In a solemn procession through the streets of Rome, the way was strewed with gold dust ; the black stone, set in precious gems, was placed on a chariot drawn by six milk-white horses richly caparisoned. . . In a magnificent temple raised on the Palatine mount, the sacrifices of the god Elegabalus were celebrated with every circumstance of cost and solemnity. . . Around the altar a chorus of Syrian damsels performed their lascivious dances, to the sound of bar barian music, whUst the gravest personages of the state and army offi ciated in the meanest functions, with affected zeal and secret indigna tion."— [Gibbon : "Decline and FaU," etc.; London ed., 1848 : Vol.1: pp. 188-9. XXXVI. : .p. 44. — "With perfect propriety you give divine honors to your departed emperors, as you worship them in Ufe. The gods wUl count themselves indebted to you: nay, it wUl be matter of high re joicing among them that their masters are made their equals. But when you adore Larentina, a pubUc prostitute — I could have wished that it might at least have been Lais or Phryne — among your Junos, and Cereses, and Dianas; when you instal in your pantheon Simon Magus, giving him a statue and the title of Holy God ; when you make an infamous court-page a god of the sacred synod,— although your an cient deities are in reaUty no better, they wiU still think themselves affronted by you, that the privilege which antiquity conferred on them alone has been aUowed to others." — [TertulUan: Apolog., 13. XXXVII. : p. 44. — "If a man should be able to assent to this doc trine, as he ought, that we are aU sprung from God in an especial manner, and that God is the father both of men and of gods, I suppose that he would never have any ignoble or mean thoughts about him self. . . What then is the nature of God ? Flesh? Certainly not. An estate in land? By no means. Fame? No. Is it intelligence, knowledge, right reason? Yes. Herein, then, seek simply the nature of the Good."— [Epictetus: I. : 3 : II. : 8. Of his want of popular success in his teaching, he says himself:— "Who among us, for the sake of this matter, has consulted a seer? Who among us, as to his actions, has not slept in indifference? Who? Give [name] to me one: that I may see the man whom I have been looldng for long, who is truly noble and ingenuous, whether young or old. Name him!"— [II. : 16. NOTES TO LECTURE II. 397 XXXVni. : p. 45. — "Atheism is but false reasoning, single; but su perstition is a disorder of the mind, produced hy this false reasoning. . . Atheism is an absolute insensibility to God, which does not recognize goodness: whUe superstition is a blind heap of passions, which imagine the good to be evU." — [Plutarch : Of Superstit., 2; 6. "Morals": Boston ed., 1874: Vol. 1: pp. 169, 174. XXXIX. : p. 46. — Theodore Parker was an energetic theist, not a pantheist: yet hardly any passage in his writings is more beautiful in form and fancy than that in which he seeks to show the genesis of poetic and phUosophic pantheism : — "The AU of things appears so beautiful to the comprehensive eye, that we almost think it is its own Cause and Creator. The animals find their support and their pleasure; the painted leopard and the snowy swan, each Uving by its own law ; the bird of passage that pur sues, from zone to zone, its unmarked path ; the summer warbler which sings out its melodious existence in the woodbine; the flowers that come unasked, charming the youthful year; the golden fruit maturing in its wUderness of green ; the dew and the rainbow ; the frost-flake and the mountain snow ; the glories that wait upon the morning, or sing the sun to his ambrosial rest ; the pomp of the sun at noon, amid the clouds of a June day ; the awf ul pomp of night, when aU the stars come out, and tread their round, and seem to watch in blest tranquill ity about the slumbering world ; the moon waning and waxing, walk ing in beauty through the night : daUy the water is rough with the winds ; they come or abide at no man's bidding, and roll the yeUow corn, or make reUgious music at night-f aU in the pines ; — these things are aU so fair, so wondrous, so wrapt in mystery, it is no marvel that men say, This is divine. Yes, the All is God. He is the light of the morning, the beauty of the noon, and the strength of the sun. . . The soul of aU ; more moving than motion ; more stable than rest ; fairer than beauty, and stronger than strength. The power of nature is God." — ["Discourse of ReUgion"; Boston ed., 1842 : pp. 89-90. XL. : p. 46. — " Know, at the outset, that heaven and earth, and the watery plains, and the moon's lucent orb, and Titan's shining stars, a spirit within keeps alive : a mind pervading each Umb stirs the whole mass, and mingles with the mighty body. Hence spring the races of men and beasts, and living things with wings, and the strange forms which the ocean bears beneath his marble surface." — [VirgU: _Eneid: VI. : 724, et seq. ' 'As Plato's real opinion, however, we can only maintain this much, that the [world] soul — diffused throughout the universe, and by virtue of its nature ceaselessly self-moving, according to fixed laws — causes 398 APPENDIX. the division as weU as the motion of matter in the heavenly spheres : and that its harmony and hfe are revealed in the order and courses of the stars. The Timaeus also connects the inteUigence of the World- Soul with its motion and harmonious distribution." — [ZeUer : "Plato, and the Older Academy"; London ed., 1876 : p. 357. Perhaps as distinct a statement as any of the pantheistic scheme of thought is the foUowing, from the Upanishads: — ' ' He is my seU within the heart ; smaUer than a com of rice, smaUer than a barley-corn, smaUer than a mustard-seed, smaller than a canary- seed, — yea, than the kernel of a canary-seed ! He also is my seU, within the heart ; greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greater than heaven, greater than aU these worlds. He from whom aU works, all desires, all sweet odours and tastes proceed, who embraces aU this, who never speaks and is never surprised, He, my seU within the heart, is that Braliman." — [Quoted in Rhys Davids' Lects. on "In dian Buddhism"; New York ed., 1882 : pp. 209-10. "The personal Brahman, like the impersonal, was the result of theory and meditation ; in both, Brahman was a product of reflection, without life and ethical force, without participation in the fortunes of men and states, without love and anger, without sympathy and pity; a colourless, abstract, super-personal, and therefore impersonal being, the strictest opposite of that mighty personaUty into Which the Jehovah of the Hebrews grew, owing to the historical, practical, and ethical development of the conception. " — [Duncker : ' ' History of Antiquity " ; London ed., 1880 : Vol. 4 : p. 160. XLI. : p. 47. — "Rightly understood, the Persian doctrine knows but of one true perfect God, under a personal conception ; and he only ap pears in the Zend writings with aU the properties and prerogatives of deity. His name Ormuzd [Ahura - Mazda] signifies ' the eternaUy wise ' ; he is the all-wise and all-powerful creator and sovereign of the world. . . Over against the author of aU that is good and pure, there stands a hostile being, an evil spirit caUed Druckhs (Lie). . . But is he from Eternity? The Parsi doctrine knows of no abstract and abso lute dualism ; nay, according to one passage, ' the good as weU as the evU spirit was created by Ormuzd ' ; and AJhriman is always placed far below Ormuzd." — [D.Uinger : "The GentUe and the Jew"; London ed., 1862 : Vol. 1 : pp. 385-7. "This merely philosophical doctrine is not to be confounded with his theology, according to which he [Zarathushtra] acknowledged only one God, as wiU be clearly seen from the second Gatha."— [Haug : "Religion of the Parsis"; London ed., 1878 : p. 149. As striking an instance as will probably ever be given, in a highly developed civilization, of the way in which men limit God's power or NOTES TO LECTURE II. 399 reject His unity, when reasoning from the sadder phenomena of the world, and discarding the Christian Revelation, is presented by Stuart MU1 in his "Essays on ReUgion." The resolute and serious English man simply goes back to the thought of one section of his Aryan ancestors, thousands of years before : — " Nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for do ing to one another, are Nature's every-day performances. KUling, the most criminal act recognized by human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives; and in a large proportion of cases, after protracted tortures, such as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever pur posely inflicted on their living feUow-creatures. . . Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wUd beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed. . . Nature has Noyades more fatal than those of Carrier ; her explosions of fire-damp are as destructive as human artillery ; her plague and cholera far sur pass the poison-cups of the Borgias. . . Anarchy, and the Reign of Terror, are overmatched in injustice, ruin, and death, by a hurricane and a pestUence One only form of beUef in the supernatural — one only theory respecting the origin and government of the universe — stands whoUy clear both of inteUectual contradiction and of moral obUq- uity. It is that which, resigning irrevocably the idea of an omnipotent creator, regards Nature and Life, not as the expression throughout of the moral character and purpose of the Deity, but as the product of a struggle between contriving goodness and an intractable material,- as was believed by Plato, or a Principle of EvU, as was the doctrine of the Manicheans." — [Mill: "Essays on ReUgion"; New York ed., 1874- pp. 28-31, 116. XLn. : p. 47. — "Who knows not, O Bithynian Volusius, what monsters crazy Egypt worships ! One part of the people adores the crocodile ; another trembles before an ibis glutted with serpents. The golden image of the sacred taUed-monkey shines among the effigies of the gods, where the magic chords resound from Memnon broken in twain, and ancient Thebes with her hundred gates lies overwhelmed in ruin. At one point they venerate fish from the sea, at another fish of the river, at yet another whole cities worship a dog ; no one Diana. A leek and an onion it is impious to dishonor and break with the teeth. 0 holy nations, for whom such Deities grow in their gardens " ! — [Ju venal : Sat. XV. : 1-11. XLIII.: p. 48. — "He [Heraclitus] personifies this divine element 400 APPENDIX. [Fire], and says that men are mortal gods, and gods immortal men; our life is the death of the gods, and our death their Ufe." — [ZeUer : "Hist, of Greek PhUosophy": [Pre-Socratic] ; London ed., 1881 : Vol. 2: p. 84. XLIV. : p. 48. — "The fact is, Theism is also a tradition, and not, as is claimed, a universal intuition of the soul. It is no more a univer sal intuition than the Holy Ghost is a universal intuition, than mirac ulous mediation is a universal intuition. It is the intuition of such souls only as happen to come within the range of that particular pencU of Ught with which Hebrew tradition has streaked the world's history. The larger portion of the human famUy have always been, and are stiU, without that Ulumination, and without that idea : and he who fancies that outside of this historic beam he would have had the idea of God which he now has, confounds traditional experience with orig inal intuition. . . The idea of one only God, seU-existent, almighty, wise and good, Creator and Father of all, is a Hebrew tradition. The conceptions which simulate this idea in other faiths wiU he found, on closer inspection, to have but Uttle affinity with it." — [Frederick H. Hedge, D.D., Christian Examiner, September, 1864: pp. 150-151. "And if we are asked how this one Abraham possessed not only the primitive intuition of God as He had revealed Himself to all mankind, but passed through the denial of aU other gods to the knowledge of the One God, we are content to answer that it was by a special Divine Revelation. We do not indulge in theological phraseology, but we mean every word to its fuUest extent. The Father of Truth chooses His own prophets, and He speaks to them in a voice stronger than the voice of thunder. It is the same inner voice through which God speaks to all of us. That voice may dwindle away, and become hardly audible : it may lose its Divine accent, and sink into the language of worldly prudence : but it may also, from time to time, assume its real nature with the chosen of God, and sound into their ears as a voice from Heaven." — [Max MuUer : " Chips from a German Workshop"; New York ed., 1881: Vol. 1: pp. 367-8. " However, this must be confessed, that under the guidance of Di vine Providence, the great and beautiful doctrine of one God seems most early embraced by the great Jewish Lawgiver : incorporated in his national legislation : defended with rigorous enactments, and slowly communicated to the world. At our day it is difficult to un derstand the service rendered to the human race by the mighty soul of Moses, and that a thousand years before Anaxagoras was born. His name is ploughed into the history of the world. His influence can never die."— [Theodore Parker : " Discourse of Religion " ; Boston ed., 1842: p. 101. NOTES TO LECTURE II. 401 XLV. : p. 49. — "Clearchus, who was the scholar of Aristotle, and inferior to no one of the Peripatetics, says that Aristotle his master re lated what follows of a Jew : . . ' The man was by birth a Jew, and came from Coelo-Syria. . . Now this man, when he was hospitably treated by a great many, came down from the upper country to the places near the sea, and became a Grecian, not only in his language, but in his soul also : insomuch that when we ourselves happened to be in Asia, about the same places whither he came, he conversed with us, and with other phUosophical persons, and made a trial of our skill in phUosophy : and, as he had Uved with many learned men, he commu nicated to us more information than he received from us.' This is Aristotle's account of the matter, as given us by Clearchus."— [Jose phus: adv. Apion: 1: 23. "This plnlosopher [Aristotle], seeing that a court was about to be summoned to try him, on the ground of his being guUty of impiety, on account of certain of his phUosophical tenets which the Athenians regarded as impious, withdrew from Athens, and fixed his school in Chalcis, defending his course by saying : ' Let us depart from Athens, that we may not give the Athenians a handle for incurring guUt a second time, as formerly in the case of Socrates.'" — [Origen: adv. Celsus: 1: 65. XLVI. : p. 50. — " The rays of light which bear witness to the exist ence of these worlds circling in their unfathomable depths, have many of them required millions of years to reach our planet. Many of those brUUant orbs might have become extinct ages ago, and yet their rays, sent forth up to the moment of their destruction, would stiU announce their past glory to countless worlds. Thus with every improvement of the telescope not only the magnitude, but also the age, of the visible universe increases ; and as we dive deeper and deeper into the abysses of celestial space, we also plunge deeper and deeper into the ocean of the past ; and if we could fly to those islands of light, which even our giant telescopes are scarce able to reveal, we still should be only on the threshold of new worlds, and how far should we have to fly before we reached the regions of formless void, if such there be " ! — [Hartwig : "Harmonies of Nature"; New York ed., 1866: pp. 9-10. XLVTI. : p. 52. — " But, in the market-place of the Athenians, there are other works which are not obvious to every one, and among the rest an altar of Pity: which divinity, as she is above aU others benefi cial to human Ufe, amid the mutabdity of human affairs, is alone among all the Greeks reverenced by the Athenians." — [Pausanias : "Descript. of Greece": I.: 17. 26 402 APPENDIX. XLVTII. : p. 54. — "Caesar, the Dictator, they say, having on one oc casion accidentally had a fall in his chariot, was always in the habit, immediately on taking his seat, of repeating three times a certain for mula, with the view of ensuring safety upon the journey; a thing that to my own knowledge is done by many persons at the present day."— [Pliny: Hist. Nat.: xxviu. : 4. XLIX.: p. 55. — "It is becoming to a man to speak what is good concerning the Deities, for so is blame the less. . . To me it is im possible to caU either of the Blessed Ones a glutton; I stand aloof from such a thought." — [Pindar: Olymp. Ode: I. "It is said of Pindar, that when he was a young man, as he was going to Thespia, being wearied with the heat, as it was noon, and in the height of summer, he f eU asleep, at a small distance from the pubhc road ; and that bees, as he was asleep, flew to him, and wrought their honey on his lips. This circumstance first induced Pindar to compose verses. But when his reputation spread through aU Greece, the Pythian deity raised his glory to a stiU greater height, by ordering the Delphi to assign to Pindar an equal part of those first-fruits which were offered to Apollo. " — [Pausanias : ' ' Descript. of Greece " : IX. : 23. L. : p. 55. — "They [the tales preserved at Athens] speak of the gods in prose as weU as verse, . . and as they proceed not far from the beginning they narrate the birth of the gods, and how after they were born they behaved to one another. Whether these stories have a good or a bad influence I should not like to be severe on them, because they are ancient; but I must say that, looking at them with reference to the duties of chUdren to their parents, I cannot praise them, or think that they are useful, or at all true. . . He who would be dear to God must, as far as is possible, be like him, and such as he is. . . And this is the conclusion, which is also the noblest and truest of aU sayings That for the good man to offer sacrifice to the gods, and hold converse with them by means of prayers and offerings, and every kind of service, is the noblest and best of all things, and also the most conducive to a happy life, and very fit and meet. But with the bad man, the opposite of this holds ; . . and from one who is poUuted, neither a good man nor God is right in receiving gffts."— [Plato: "Laws " : X. : 886 ; IV. : 716. LI. . p. 55.— "To the Gods he [Socrates] simply prayed that they would give him good things; as believing that the Gods knew best what things are good. . . He said that it would not become the Gods to deUght in large rather than in smaU sacrifices ; since, if such were the case, the offerings of the bad would often be more acceptable to them than those of the good; . . but he thought that the Gods had NOTES TO LECTURE II. 403 the most pleasure in the offerings of the most pious." — [Xenophon: Memor., I.: 3; 2, 3. IJI. : p. 55.— " But pride begets the mood Of wanton, tyrant power ; Pride, filled with many thoughts, yet filled in vain, Untimely, ill-advised, Sealing the topmost height, Falls to thp abyss of woe, Where step that profiteth It seeks in vain to take." [Sophocles: CEdipus, the King: (Plumptre's Trans.); 874-878. The injuries which the Gods send are often, however, irrespective o_ character in those who suffer them :— " Such ills, at any rate, were those I fell on, The Gods still leading me ; nor can I think My father's soul, if it returned to life, Would plead against me here." ["OSdipus, atColonos": 995-999. " Let no man, in his scorn of present fortune, And thirst for other, mar his good estate ; Zeus is the avenger of o'er-lofty thoughts, A terrible controller. Therefore now, Since voice of God bids him be wise of heart, Admonish him with counsel true and good To cease his daring sacrilegious pride." [_Eschylus : ' ' The Persians " : (Plumptre's Trans.) ; 821-827. Yet the same poet says also, by the chorus : " Who, Zeus excepted, doth not pity thee In these thine ills ? But He, Kuthless, with soul unbent, Subdues the heavenly host, nor will he cease Until his heart be satiate with power, Or some one seize with subtle stratagem The sovereign might that so resistless seemed." [" Prometheus Bound " : 167-174. LHI. : p. 55. — "The God of Christians is a God who makes the soul feel that He is its only good ; that aU its repose is in Him, and that it wUl have no joy but in loving Him ; who makes it at the same time abhor the obstacles which restrain it, and hinder it from loving Him with aU its strength. The self-love and concupiscence which arrest it become insupportable to it. This God makes the soul feel that it has this 404 APPENDIX. self-love deeply grounded in it, and that He alone can cure it." — [Pas cal : "Pensees": Sec. Par., Art. XV.: 2. LIV. : p. 56. — "One of their most striking features [of the Foramini- f era] is their marveUous minuteness. James Plancus, who first discov ered them in the strand of Rimini, in the year 1731, counted about 6,000 of their sheUs in a single ounce of drift-sand; and Professor Schultze, of Bonn, found no less than a million and a half in the same quantity of pulverized quartz, from the shore of Mola di Gaeta. . . On examining a plate of mosaic through a microscope of very moderate strength, it looks no better than the roughest patchwork of a savage, whUe the unparalleled perfection of the butterfly's wing first comes to light under a strong magnifying power. . . Each scale is itself a mas terpiece of art ; and many thousands of these minute gems are required to deck the wings of a single butterfly. No monarch is more richly robed than this mean Uttle insect, which each summer brings forth in millions." — [Hartwig : "Harmonies of Nature " ; New York ed., 1866 : pp. 103, 204-5. LV. : p. 57. — "Do you not then believe that the gods take thought for men? . . Nor did it satisfy the gods to take care of the body only, but, what is most important of aU, they implanted in him the soul, his most exceUent part. For what other animal has a soul to understand, first of aU, that the gods, who have arranged such a vast and noble order of things, exist ? What other species of animals, besides man, offers worship to the gods ? . . What, then, must they do, before you wiU think that they take thought for you?" — [Xenophon: Memor. : I.: 4: 11, 13, 14. LVI. . p. 57. — "Is it not something worth knowing, worth knowing even to us after the lapse of four or five thousand years, that before the separation of the Aryan race, before the existence of Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin, before the gods of the Veda had been worshipped, and before there was a sanctuary of Zeus among the sacred oaks of Dodona, one supreme deity had been found, had been named, had been invoked by the ancestors of our race, and had been invoked by a name which has never been exceUed by any other name? " — [Max MflUer : "Science of Religion "; New York ed., 1872 : p. 27. See also pp. 71-72. " If I thoroughly appreciated these first words of the Lord's Prayer, ' Our Father, which art in Heaven,' and really beheved that God, who made heaven and earth, and aU creatures, and has aU things in His hand, was my Father, then should I certainly conclude with myself that I also am a lord of heaven and earth ; that Christ is my brother, Gabriel my servant, Raphael my coachman, and all the angels my at- NOTES TO LECTURE II. 405 tendants at need, given unto me by my heavenly Father, to keep me in the path, that unawares I knock not my foot against a stone." — [Luther : Table Talk: XT. "When the ancients, invoking Jupiter, caUed him Pater hominum deorumque, they did not intend to say that Jupiter was the father of gods and men, for they never considered him as such; they be lieved, on the contrary, that the human race existed before him. The same title of Pater was given to Neptune, to ApoUo, to Bacchus, to Vulcan, and to Pluto. These, assuredly, men never considered as their fathers. So, too, the title of Mater was applied to Minerva, Di ana, and Vesta, who were reputed virgin goddesses. . . The idea of paternity, therefore, was not attached to this word. The old language had another word which properly designated the father, and which, as ancient as Pater, is likewise found in the language of the Greeks, of the Romans, and of the Hindus — g&nitar, yevvrirfiQ, genitor. The word pater had another sense. In religious language they appUed it to the gods ; in legal language to every man who had a worship and a domain. The poets show us that they applied it to every one whom they wished to honor. . . It contained in itseU not the idea of paternity, but that of power, authority, majestic dignity." — [Coulanges : "The Ancient City"; New York ed., 1874 : pp. 116-117. "The Hindu supreme God is as remote as possible from being a re alization of the idea ' my Father ' ; he is set far beyond Olympus, on the highest and most inaccessible Alpine summits of a chilling and cheerless solitude, separated by a whole series of demiurges from aU care of the universe, or participation in the concerns of his creatures." — [Prof. W. D. Whitney : "Oriental and Linguistic Studies": First Se ries; New York ed., 1872 : p. 94. "The word Father was, in its original sense [among the Aryans], a title of dignity. It denotes not a physical relation, but an office. So clearly was this conception marked, even in the full development of Roman Law, that, as Ulpian teUs us, a chUdless man, or even a ward, might be a Pater-f amUias. " — [W. E. Hearn : "Aryan Household"; London ed., 1879 : p. 85. LVII. : p. 58. — " You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me, and is the divinity which Meletus ridicules in the indictment. This sign I have had ever since I was a chUd. The sign is a voice which comes to me, and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything ; and this is what stands in the way of my being a poUtician. . . Hitherto the familiar oracle within me has constantly been in the habit of op posing me, even about trifles, if I was going to make a slip or error about anything. . . But the oracle made no sign of opposition, either 406 APPENDIX. as I was leaving my house and going out in the morning, or when I was going up into this court, or, while I was speaking, at anything which I was going to say " : et seq. — [Plato : ' ' Apology " : 31, 40. " The whole personnel of the man had something out of the common and remarkable in it. There was no one to compare him with, was the thought that struck his contemporaries ; and people felt the effects of his society as that of an irresistible enchanter. The turn he had for imparting himself to every one, on every opportunity, his ready will, nay eagerness, to engage in single combat with the first and best dis putants, joined with the rare gifts of making himself understood by aU, great and simple, in their ordinary forms of speech, of developing the germs of investigation and proof in them, whUe entangling them by concessions the consequences of which they never dreamed of; the ar tistic power of weU-weighed dialectic, with which he destroyed unreal knowledge ; an ironical instinct, drawing everything into the grasp of his own dissecting processes of thought, whUe simultaneously unde ceiving himself and others ; — aU this contributed to make him a vision of wonder, past imitation, and a deep and lasting mover of souls. . . From the time the oracle at Delphi answered his disciple, Chaerephon, that no one on earth was wiser than Socrates, he considered himself as a missionary, consecrated to the service of the deity, and his exertions in teaching as obedience to that divine voice." — [DolUnger: "The GentUe and the Jew": London ed., 1862: Vol. 1: pp. 273-4. LVTII. : p. 60. — Sokr. "It is necessary therefore to wait until one shaU learn what ought to be his attitude towards gods and towards men." Alk. "When then, Sokrates, wiU this time come, and who will in struct us ? For I think nothing would give me more pleasure than to see that man." Sokr. "He that watches over you. But I think that, just as Homer says that Athene took away the cloud from the eyes of Diomedes, ' that he might recognize gods and men, ' so you ought first to take away from your soul the cloud that now rests upon it, and then use the means which wiU enable you to discriminate good from evU." — [AIM- biades II. : 150 D. Athenaeus says that by some in antiquity this Dialogue was attributed to Xenophon [Deipnos. XI. : 114]. Modern critics generally regard it as non-Platonic ; though Mr. Grote affirms without hesitation its Pla tonic authorship, supposing it to have been written, perhaps, in the phUosopher's early life.— ["Plato": London ed., 1867: Vol. 1: pp. 348-361. LIX.: p. 61. — "An expansion, a corresponding transformation, of NOTES TO LECTURE II. 497 the sentiment concerning outward nature, could only proceed from an essential change in the attitude of man toward the physical world. This change was of two kinds. On the one hand, modern contempla tion feels intimations in nature of the existence of a universal Spirit, of which the human spirit is reaUy a part, or with which at least it has profound affinities ; then also it perceives, in the infinite variety of the phenomena which strike the senses, as it were so many mirrors to re flect the vicissitudes of its own special state; it flatters itself that it can overhear and understand the language of nature, in that majestic sUence, that unchangeable purity, that immutable grandeur, in which it seeks and always finds an asylum for escape from the assaults of trouble, and from the foulness and the pettiness of the human condi tion."— [Friedlaender: "Moeurs Romaines": Paris ed., 1867: Tom. H. : pp. 491-2. LX. : p. 62. — The vehemence with which Francis Newman rejects Christianity, as a reUgion supernaturaUy inspired, only adds emphasis to words like the foUowing : — • "The great doctrine on which aU practical religion depends, — the doctrine which nursed the infancy and youth of human nature, — is, ' the sympathy of God with the perfection of individual man.' Among Pagans this was so marred by the imperfect character ascribed to the Gods, and the dishonourable fables told concerning them, that the phi losophers who undertook to prune reUgion too generaUy cut away the root, by aUeging that God was mere InteUect, and whoUy destitute of Affection.* But, happily, among the Hebrews the purity of God's character was vindicated ; and with the growth of conscience in the highest minds of the nation the ideal image of God shone brighter and brighter. The doctrine of his Sympathy was never lost, and from the Jews it passed into the Christian church. This doctrine, applied to that part of man which is divine, is the weU-spring of Repentance and HumUity, of Thankfulness, Love, and Joy. It reproves, and it com forts; it stimulates and animates. This it is which led the Psalmist to cry, ' Whom have I in heaven but Thee ? there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. ' This has satisfied prophets, apostles, and martyrs, with God as their Portion. This has been passed from heart to heart for fuU three thousand years, and has produced bands of countless saints."— ["Phases of Faith": London ed., 1881: pp. 173-4. LXI. : p. 63. — The contrast between the hard atheism and the rever- •Prof. Newman adds this note: "Horace and Cicero speak the mind of their educated contemporaries, in saying that ' We ought to pray to God only for external blessings, but trust to our own efforts for a pure and tranquil sou),' — a singular re versing of spiriiual religion " ! 408 APPENDIX. ent theism which stiU face each other in cultivated modern society could hardly be more sharply presented than in the two extracts which f oUow. Prof. Clifford, in language as startling as any in Uterature, expels the Creator from the universe, to fill the vacant throne with the creature, of whose imagination he conceives the Divine to have been the product : — "For, after all, such a helper of men, outside of humanity, the truth will not aUow us to see. The dim and shadowy outlines of the super human deity fade slowly away from before us ; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure — of Him who made aU Gods, and shaU unmake them. From the dim dawn of history, and from the inmost depth of every soul, the face of our father Man looks out upon us, with the fire of eternal youth in his eyes, and says : ' Before Jehovah was, I am.'" — ["Lectures and Essays": London ed., 1879: Vol. 2: p. 243. On the other hand, are the noble words of James Martineau: — "The universe gives us the scale of God, and Christ his spirit. We climb to the infinitude of his nature by the awful pathway of the stars, where whole forests of worlds sUently quiver here and there, Uke a smaU leaf of light. We dive into his eternity, through the ocean waves of time, that roU and solemnly break on the imagination, as we trace the wrecks of departed things upon our present globe. The scope of his intellect, and the majesty of his rule, are seen in the tranquil order and ever lasting sUence that reign through the fields of his voUtion. And the spirit that animates the whole is Uke that of the Prophet of Nazareth; the thoughts that fly upon the swift light throughout creation, charged with fates unnumbered, are like the healing mercies of One who passed no sorrow by. . . A faith that spreads around and within the mind a Deity thus sublime and holy, feeds the life of every pure affec tion, and presses with omnipotent power on the conscience ; and our only prayer is, that we may walk as chUdren of such Ught ! " — [' ' Studies of Christianity": Boston ed., 1866: p. xx. NOTES TO LECTUEE IIL Note I. : page 70. — "Buddha had known his own earUer existences. The tradition of the Singhalese ascribes to him 550 earUer Uves, before he saw the Ught as the son of Cuddhodana. He had lived as a rat and a crow, as a frog and a hare, as a dog and a pig, twice as a fish, si- times as a snipe, four times as a golden eagle, four times as a peacock and as a serpent, ten times as a goose, as a deer, and as a lion, six times as an elephant, four times as a horse and as a buU, eighteen times as an ape, four times as a slave, three times as a potter, thirteen times as a merchant, twenty-four times as a Brahman and as a prince, fifty-eight times as a king, twenty times as the god Indra, and four times as Maha- brahman. Buddha had not only known his own earlier existences, but those of all other living creatures ; and this supernatural knowledge, this divine omniscience, was ascribed to those who after him attained the rank of Arhats." — [Duncker: "History of Antiquity"; London ed., 1880 : Vol. 4 : p. 487. H. : p. 70. — The "Discussion with Townley," from which these sen tences are quoted, is not contained in the " CoUected Writings " of Hol- yoake [2 vols.]: but the following, from his essay on "The Logic of Death," appear to bear the same significance: — " Man witnesses those near and dear to him perish before his eyes, and despite his supplications. He walks through no rose-water world, and no special Providence smooths his path. . . Man is weak, and a special Providence gives him no strength — distracted, and no counsel, — ignorant, and no wisdom — in despair, and no consolation — in distress, and no relief — in darkness, and no light. The existence of God, there fore, whatever it may be in the hypotheses of phUosophy, seems not recognizable in daUy Ufe. It is in vain to say, ' God governs by gen eral laws.' General laws are inevitable fate. General laws are atheis tical. They say, practically, ' we are without God in the world — man, look to thyseU: weak though thou mayest be, Nature is thy hope.' And even so it is. Would I escape the keen wind's blast, I seek shelter ; from the yawning waves I look up, not to Heaven, but to naval archi tecture. In the fire-damp, Davy is more to me than the Deity of '409) 410 APPENDIX. creeds. All nature cries, with one voice, ' Science is the Providence of man.'"— [p. 7. HI. : p. 71. — "And first as to their birth. Their ancestors [of the brave Athenian dead] were not strangers, nor are these their descend ants sojourners only, whose fathers have come from another country ; but they are the chUdren of the soil, dweUing and Uving in their own land. And the country which brought them up is not like other countries, a step-mother to her chUdren, but their own true moth er : she bore them, and nourished them, and received them, and in her bosom they now repose. . . At the time when the whole earth was sending forth and creating diverse animals, tame and wild, this our mother was free and pure from savage monsters, and out of all animals selected and brought forth man, who is superior to the rest in understanding, and who alone has justice and religion. And a great proof that she was the mother of us and of our ancestors, is that she provided the means of support for her offspring. . . And when she had herself nursed them, and brought them up to manhood, she gave them gods, to be their rulers and teachers." — [Plato: Menexenus: 237-8. Euripides, in the Ion, refers familiarly to the ' earth-bom Athenian people,' who have risen to great renown. (29, 589, 737.) "The Athenians were the first who laid aside arms, and adopted an easier and more luxurious way of Ufe. Quite recently, the old-fash ioned refinement of dress still lingered among the elder men of their richer class, who wore under-garments of Unen, and bound back their hair in a knot, with golden clasps in the form of grasshoppers ; and the same customs long survived among the elders of Ionia, having been derived from their Athenian ancestors." — [Thucydides : I. : 6. TV. : p. 72. — " This plant, which by its nature should be akin to our common milk-weed, furnishes Uke the latter an abundant mUky juice, which, when fermented, possesses intoxicating qualities. In this circum stance, it is believed, lies the explanation of the whole matter [of the Soma- ritual]. The simple-minded Aryan people, whose whole religion was a worship of the wonderful powers and phenomena of nature, had no sooner perceived that this liquid had power to elevate the spirits and produce a temporary frenzy, under the influence of which the individual was prompted to, and capable of, deeds beyond his natural powers, than they found in it something divine ; it was to their apprehension a god, endowing those into whom it entered with godlike powers ; the plant which afforded it became to them the king of plants ; the process of preparing it was a holy sacrifice ; the instruments used therefor were sacred. . . Soma is there addressed [in certain hymns of the Veda] as a god, in the highest strains of adulation and veneration ; aU powers be- NOTES TO LECTURE III. ±\\ long to him; aU blessings are besought of him, as his to bestow." — [Prof. W. D. Whitney: "Oriental and Linguistic Studies": First Series; New York ed., 1872 : pp. 10-11. V.: p. 74. — "Every one wiU admit that a nature thus gifted, and having aU the supposed conditions of the phUosophic nature perfect, is a plant that rarely grows among men — there are not many of them." — [Plato: "Republic": VI.: 491. " It is clear, then, that some men are free by nature, and others are slaves ; and that, in the case of the latter, the lot of slavery is both ad vantageous and just. . . It is evident that some persons are slaves, and others freemen, by the appointment of nature ; and also that in some instances there are two distinct classes, for the one of whom it is expedient to be a slave, and for the other to be a master; and that it is right and just that some should be governed, and that others should exercise that government for which they are fitted by nature. . . A slave can have no deUberative faculty, a woman but a weak one, a chUd an imperfect one. . . A slave is one of those things which are by nature what they are." — [Aristotle: "PoUtics": I.: 5, 6, 13. VI. : p. 74. — " If any habitation there be for the shades of the vir tuous : if , as is supposed by phUosophers, great souls are not extin guished with the body: may you [O Agricola] tranquilly there repose, and caU us, your household, from weak regret and womanish lamenta tions to the contemplation of your virtues, which it is not permissible either to mourn for or bewail. Let us adorn thee with a true admira tion, rather than with any fleeting praises, and, if nature wiU supply help, with our oager emulation." — [Tacitus : Agric. Vit. : xlvi. VH. : p. 74. — "Since the Brahman sprang from the most exalted part, since he was the first-born, since he possesses the Veda, he is by right the chief of the whole creation. Him, the Being who exists of himseU, produced in the beginning from his own mouth: that, having performed holy rites, he might present clarified butter to the Gods, and cakes of rice to the progenitors of mankind, for the preservation of this world. What created being then can surpass Him, with whose mouth the Gods of the firmament continuaUy feast on clarified butter, and the manes of ancestors on haUowed cakes ? " — ["Laws of Menu " : chap. 1: 93-5: Works of Sir W. Jones; London ed., 1807: Vol. 7: p. 106. " The Brahmans are nearest to Brahman : in them the essence of Brahman, the holy spirit, the power of sanctification, lives in greater force than in the rest ; they emanated from Brahman before the others ; they are the first-born order. . . Even though the theory of the 412 APPENDIX. World-soul- remained unintelUgible to the many, they understood that the Brahmans, who busied themselves with sacrifice, prayers, and sacred things, stood nearer to the deity than they did ; they under stood that if they misconducted themselves toward the sacred race, or disregarded the vocation of birth, they must expect endless torments in heU, and endless regenerations in the most loathsome worms and insects, or in the despised class of the Qudras — ' those animals in hu man form.'" — [Duncker: "History of Antiquity"; London ed., 1880: Vol. 4: pp. 134, 142-3. " Caste is not merely the symbol of Hinduism ; but, according to the testimony of aU who have studied it on the spot, it is its strong hold. It is this, much more than their creeds, which attaches the masses to these vague religions, and gives them such astonishing vi tality."— [A. Barth: " ReUgions of India " ; Boston ed., 1882: Preface, p. xvii. VIH. : p. 75. — "These souls [of gods, men, and animals] go forth from Brahman like sparks from a crackling fire — a metaphor common in the book of the law — they are of one essence with Brahman, and parts of the great World-soul. This soul is in the world, but also out side and above it : to it must everything return, for aU that is not Brahman is impure, without foundation, and perishable. . . There is only one Being : this is the highest soul, and besides this there is noth ing; what seems to exist beyond this is mere illusion. . . Nature is nothing but the play of Ulusion, appearing in splendour, and then dis appearing. . . The movement and action of Uving beings is not caused by the sparks of Brahman dweUing in them — for Brahman is consistently regarded as single and at rest — but by the bodies and senses, which, being of themselves appearance and deception, adopt and reflect the deception of Maya." — [Duncker: " History of Antiq uity"; London ed., 1880: Vol. 4: pp. 300-301. IX. : p. 75. — "Here lay the secret of Buddha's success. He ad dressed himself to castes and outcasts. He promised salvation to aU ; and he commanded his disciples to preach his doctrine in aU places and to all men. A sense of duty, extending from the narrow limits of the house, the vUlage, and the country, to the widest circle of mankind; a feeling of sympathy and brotherhood towards aU men ; the idea, in fact, of humanity, was in India first pronounced by Buddha. . . ' Nothing is stable on earth,' he used to say, ' nothing is real. Life is like the spark produced by the friction of wood. It is lighted, and is extinguished, — we know not whence it came or whither it goes. It is like the sound of a lyre, and the wise man asks in vain from whence it came and whither it goes.' . . Difficult as it seems to us to conceive NOTES TO LECTURE III. 413 it, Buddha admits of no real cause of this unreal world. He denies the existence not only of a Creator, but of any Absolute Being. Ac cording to the metaphysical tenets, if not of Buddha himself, at least of his sect, there is no reaUty anywhere, neither in the past nor in the future. True wisdom consists in perceiving the nothingness of aU things, and in a desire to become nothing, to be blown out, to enter mto Nirvana. Emancipation is obtained by total extinction, not by absorption into Brahman, or by a recovery of the soul's true estate. If to be is misery, not to be must be feUcity; and this feUcity is the highest reward which Buddha promised to his disciples. " — [Max Mul ier: " Chips," etc. ; New York ed., 1881: Vol. 1: pp. 252, 207, 227-8. "We shaU confine ourselves to the remark that there is not a shadow of evidence that the social problem was ever agitated among the semi- agricultural, semi-pastoral tribes, in the midst of which Buddha spent his hfe, or that there was any thought of disputing the right of the Brahmans, which indeed was at bottom their great privilege, to be the bearers of the Veda, and by claim of blood to be the ministers of cer tain religious rites. . . One fact more is enough to discredit this the ory [that Buddhism represented a reaction against the regime of caste] : it is that Buddhism, at the time when it was dominant, never in the slightest interfered with caste in the countries where it happened stiU to exist ; and not only did it not do so — it was it wliich in aU probabU- ity imported caste into countries where it did not yet. exist, viz. , into the Dekhan, Ceylon, the isles of Sunda, and wherever a considerable number of Hindu people foUowed in its train." — [Barth: "Religions of India"; Boston ed., 1882: p. 125. Oldenburg says, as quoted by Kuenen : "We can understand how in our times Buddha should have had the role assigned to him of a social reformer, who broke the oppressive chains of caste, and won a place for the poor and humble in the spiritual kingdom which he founded. But if any one would really sketch the work of Buddha, he must, for truth's sake, distinctly deny that the glory of any such deed, under whatever form it may be conceived, reaUy belongs to him. If we permit ourselves to speak of the democratic element in Buddhism, we must at any rate keep the fuU prominence of this fact before our eyes : that the idea of reforming the life of the state, in any direction whatsoever, was absolutely foreign to the circles in which Buddhism arose." — ["National and Universal Religions"; New York ed., 1882: pp. 262-3. X. : p. 77.—" ' ShaU I further add that the Hellenic race is aU united by ties of blood and friendship, and aUen and strange to the barbari ans?' 'Very good,' ho said. 'And therefore when HeUenes fight with barbarians, and barbarians with HeUenes, they will be described 414 APPENDIX. by us as being at war when they fight, and by nature in a state of war?'"— [Plato: "RepubUc": V.: 470. XL: p. 80. — "All Brahminical acts, services, sacraments, imply an effort or scheme on the part of the creature to raise himseU to God. All Christian acts, services, sacraments, imply that God has sought for the creature, that He might raise him to HimseU. The differences in our thoughts of God, of the priest, of the sacrifice, aU go back to this primary difference." — [F. D. Maurice: "ReUgions of the World"; London ed., 1877: pp. 183-4. XII. : p. 80. — This tone of questioning doubt in the ethnic religions, contrasting strongly with the authoritative instructions of the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures, is weU illustrated in the translation of the 129th hymn of the tenth book of the Rig- Veda: — " Comes this spark from earth, " Piercing and aU pervading, or from heaven ? " Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose — " Nature below, and power and wiU above — " Who knows the secret ? who proclaimed it here, " Whence, whence, this manifold creation sprang ? " The gods themselves came later into being — " Who knows from whence this great creation sprang ? " He from whom aU this great creation came, " Whether his wUl created or was mute, " The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven, " He knows it — or perchance even He knows not." [Max Mulier: " Chips," etc. ; New York ed., 1881: Vol. 1: p. 77. A sentence quoted from Dr. Haug's translation of the Avesta illus trates the same thing : — " That I wiU ask Thee, tell me it right, thou living God ! Who is holding the earth, and the skies above it ? Who made the waters, and the trees of the field ? Who is in the winds and storms that they so quickly run ? Who is the Creator of the good-minded beings, thou Wise?"— [Vol. 1: pp. 123-4. XIII. : p. 80.— "All good poets, epic as weU as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not as works of art, but because they are inspired and possessed ; . . for they teU us that they gather their strains from honied fountains, put of the gardens and dells of the Muses : thither, Uke the bees, they wing their way ; and this is true.. For the poet is a Ught and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no NOTES TO LECTURE III. 415 longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless, and is unable to utter his oracles. . . For in this way the God would seem to indicate to us, and not allow us to doubt, that their beautiful poems are not human, and the work of man, but divine, and the work of the gods ; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the gods by whom they are severaUy possessed." — [Plato: " Ion": 533, 534. " The poet [of the ancient Epic]— Uke the prophet whom he so much resembles, — sings under heavenly guidance, inspired by the goddess to whom he has prayed for her assisting impulse. She puts the word into his mouth, and the incidents into his mind ; he is a privileged man, chosen as her organ, and speaking from her revelations. As the Muse grants the gift of song to whom she wUl, so she sometimes in her anger snatches it away, and the most consummate human genius is then left sUent and helpless." — [Grote: " History of Greece " : London ed., 1872: Vol. 1: p. 323. " The god himseU chooses the organs of his communications: and, as a sign that it is no human wisdom and art which reveals the divine will, ApoUo speaks through the mouth of feeble girls and women. The state of inspiration is by no means one of speciaUy heightened powers, but the human being's own powers — nay, own consciousness — are, as it were, extinguished, in order that the divine voice may be heard all the louder ; the secret communicated by the god resembles a load oppressing the breast it visits : it is a clairvoyance from which no satisfaction accrues to the mind of the seer. This seer or sibyl is accordingly not herseU capable of revelation ; the things announced by her are as incomprehensible to her as to her hearers ; so that an interpretation is necessary to enable men to avaU themselves of the prophecy." — [Curtius: " History of Greece"; New York ed., 1871: Vol. 2: p. 14. XIV. : p. 81. — "Zeus, or the king, is a judge, not a law-maker; he issues decrees or special orders to settle particular disputes, or to restrain particular men. " Poseidon, though second in power only to Zeus, ' ' has no share in those imperial and superintending capacities which the Father of gods and men exhibits." To Zeus belong " the commanding functions of the supreme God, judicial and administrative, extending both over gods and men."— [Grote : "Hist, of Greece"; London ed., 1872 : Vol. 2: p. 24 (note); Vol. 1 : pp. 52, 57. "The conclusion is inevitable that the decisive precepts which we find in the coUection [Laws of Menu] must have been put together and written down about the year 600 [b.O.]. The introduction [which at tributes the laws to the Highest being, and which ' is completely ignored in the body of the text '] belongs undoubtedly to a later period. . . In any case it is clear that the laws of Menu are the oldest book of law in 416 APPENDIX. India, in their contents and theory of law." — [Duncker: "Hist, of Antiquity"; London ed., 1880 : Vol. 4 : pp. 195, 196, 197 (note). " This book gives striking evidence of the mixture characteristic of the Indian nature ; a mixture of superstitious fancy and keen distinc tion, of vague cloudiness and punctilious systematising, of soaring theory and subtle craft, of sound sense and over-refinement in reflec tion."— [p. 192. XV. : p. 82. — The whole passage, from which the familiar words quoted in the text are taken, is singularly lofty and impressive : — "Two things fiU the soul with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadUy one holds them in contem plation : the starry Heavens above me, and the moral Law within me. I need not search for or imagine either of them, as U they were held in darkness, or were in a transcendental sphere, beyond the circle of my sight. I see them before me, and associate them immediately with the consciousness of my existence. The first acts upon me from the place which I occupy in the exterior world of the senses, and extends the connection in which I stand into immeasurable vastness, with worlds upon worlds, and systems of systems, even moreover into the bound less times of their periodic motion, its commencement and its duration. The second begins its action with my invisible seU, my own personaUty, and stations me in a world which has true infinitude, but which is only to be traced by the inteUect, and with which — as thereby also at the same time with all yonder visible worlds — I recognize myseU as in a con nection not merely accidental, but universal and necessary." — [Kant : "SammtUche Werke": Leipzig : 1867-8 : Band V. : S. 167, f. XVI. : p. 82. — "In the moral and ritual law, as in a sheU, is hidden the sweet kernel of a promise, that he [God] wUl one day exhibit the ideal of righteousness in living form, and give the penitent sinner par don for aU his transgressions, and the power to fulfill the law. With out such assurance the law were bitter irony." — [Schaff : "History of Christian Church"; New York ed., 1882 : Vol. 1 : p. 67. XVTI. : p. 85. — "Let there be one word concerning aU marriages. Every man shaU foUow, not after the marriage which is most pleasing to himseU, but after that which is most beneficial to the state. . . When plays are ordered with a view to chUdren having the same plays, and amusing themselves after the same manner, and finding delight in the same playthings, the more solemn institutions of the state are aUowed to remain undisturbed. . He who changes the sports is secretly changing the manners of the young, and malting the old to be dishonored among them, and the new to be honored. . . Let our NOTES TO LECTURE III. 417 decree be as follows: — No one, in singing or dancing, shall offend against the public and consecrated models, and the general fashion among the youth, any more than he would offend against any other law. . . ShaU we make a law that the poet shaU compose nothing contrary to the ideas of the lawful, or just, or beautiful, or good, which are aUowed in the state ? Nor shall he be permitted to show his com positions to any private individuals, until he shall have shown them to the appointed judges, and the guardians of the law, and they are satis fied with them. . . Nor shaU any one dare to sing a song which has not been approved by the judgment of the guardians of the laws, not even U his strain be sweeter than the songs of Thamyras and Orpheus ; but only such poems as have been judged sacred and dedicated to the Gods, and such as are the works of good men, works of praise or blame, which have been deemed to fulfil their design fairly. " — [Plato : ' ' Laws " : VI. : 773 ; VII. : 797, 800, 801 ; VIII. : 829. XVHI. : p. 85. — "We here see a broad line between Christianity and other systems, and a striking proof of its originality and elevation. Other systems were framed for communities ; Christianity approached men as Individuals. It proposed, not the glory of the state, but the perfection of the individual mind. So far from being contrived to buUd up political power, Christianity tends to reduce and gradually to supplant it, by teaching men to substitute the sway of truth and love for menace and force, by spreading through aU ranks a feeling of brotherhood altogether opposed to the spirit of domination, and by es tablishing principles which nourish seU-respect in every human being, and teach the obscurest to look with an undazzled eye on the most powerful of their race." — [Dr. Channing: Works; Boston ed., 1843: Vol. 3: p. 365. XIX.: p. 85. — "The Fates lead us, and whatever awaits any one in life the first hour of his birth has determined. One cause depends on another cause, and the long order of things draws with it aU events, whether public or private." — [Seneca: De Provid. : v. ' ' In the same way as the water of rushing streams does not flow back upon itseU, nor even tarry in its course, because that which comes behind pushes forward what precedes : so the eternal series of Fate gov erns [or rolls on] the order of things — whose first law is to stand im movably by what is decreed. But what do you understand Fate to be ? I consider it that necessity of all things and actions which no force may break. If you think that this is to be prevaUed upon by sacrifices, and by offering the white head of a lamb, you do not understand Divine things."- -[Nat. Quaest. : II. : 35, 36. XX. : p. 86.— " If some aspiring party of this day, the great Orleans 27 418 APPENDIX. famUy, or a branch of the HohenzoUern, wishing to found a kingdom, were to profess, as their only weapon, the practice of virtue, they would not startle us more than it startled a Jew eighteen hundred years ago, to be told that his glorious Messiah was not to fight, but simply to preach. It is indeed a thought so strange, both in its prediction and in its fulfilment, as urgently to suggest to us that some Divine Power went with him who conceived and proclaimed it." — [J. H. Newman: " Grammar of Assent " : New York ed., 1870 : p. 444. XXI. : p. 86. — "Sprung for the most part from a primitive worship of natural forces, repeatedly transformed by popular imagination and admixture of every kind, pagan religions were limited by their own past. It was impossible to get out of them, what was never in them, — theism, edification." — [Renan: "Hibbert Lectures"; London ed., 1880: p. 33. " There was no exposition of doctrine in the mysteries, and no course of dogmatical instruction; the address was not made to the under standing, but to the sense, the imagination, and the divining instincts of the initiated. . . For the whole was a drama, the prelude to which consisted in purifications, sacrifices, and injunctions with regard to the behaviour to be observed. The adventures of certain deities, their suf ferings and joys, their appearance on earth, and their relations to man kind, their death, or descent to the nether world, their return, or their rising again, — aU these, as symbolizing the life of nature, were repre sented in a connected series of theatrical scenes. . . The priest-class had no deposit of religious doctrine, either to guard or to propound ; for amongst the Greeks generally there was nothing taught about re ligion, and the legends of the gods were handed down from mouth to mouth, or by the universal reading or recitation of the works of the poets. . . No sort of inteUectual capacity, or special education, or training beforehand, was required of the priest. It is highly charac teristic that Plutarch, whUe specffying the various classes of persons from whom a knowledge of religious things might be gained, should make no mention of priests, though he does of poets, lawgivers, and philosophers ; quite in keeping with which Dio Chrysostom reckons as sources of religion, besides the universal sense of it which is common among men, — poets, lawgivers, sculptors and painters, and lastly phi losophers ; and so to him also it never occurred that advice on religious matters could he obtained from priests. Therefore it is not to be won dered at that Plato should not have thought of requiring any single intellectual qualification from the priests of his ideal Republic." — [DoUinger: "The GentUe and the Jew"; London ed., 1862: Vol. 1: pp. 126, 203, 210. XXII. : p. 86. — "Thornton observes [History of China], ' It may ex- NOTES TO LECTURE III. 419 cite surprise, and probably incredulity, to state that the golden rule of our Saviour, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you — which Mr. Locke designates as the most unshaken rule of mor ahty, and foundation of all social virtue,- — had been inculcated by Con fucius, almost in the same words, four centuries before.' I have taken notice of this fact in reviewing both The Great Learning and The Doc trine of the Mean. I would be far from grudging a tribute of admira tion to Confucius for it. . . Tsze-kung asks if there be one word which may serve as a rule of practice for aU one's Ufe, and is answered : ' Is not Reciprocity such a word ? What you do not want done to your- seU, do not do to others.' . . When a comparison, however, is drawn between it and the rule laid down by Christ, it is proper to call atten tion to the positive form of the latter, — 'aU things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.' The les son of the Gospel commands men to do what they feel to be right and good. It requires them to commence a course of such conduct, with out regard to the conduct of others to themselves. The lesson of Con fucius only forbids men to do what they feel to be wrong and hurtful. So far as the point of priority is concerned, moreover, Christ adds, ' This is the law and the prophets.' The maxim was to be found sub- stantiaUy in the earlier revelations of God. "But the worth of the two maxims depends on the intention of the enunciators in regard to their application. . . Confucius delivered his rule to his countrymen only, for their guidance in their relations [the five relations of society] of which I have had so much occasion to speak. The rule of Christ is for man as man, having to do with other men, all with himself on the same platform, as the children and subjects of the one God and Father in heaven." — [Legge: "Chinese Classics": Proleg. Ch. V.: Sec. 11 : § 8. " As a mother, even at the risk of her own life, protects her son, her only son, so let a man cultivate good- will without measure — unhindered love and friendliness toward the whole world, above, below, around." —[Buddhist doctrine of Duty.] Rhys Davids: Lects. on "Indian Buddhism"; New York ed., 1882: p. 111. "The moral code [of Buddhism] becomes comparatively powerless for good, as it is destitute of all real authority. Gotama taught the propriety of certain observances, because aU other Buddhas had done the same ; but something more is required before man can be restrained from vice, and preserved in the way of purity. . . There is properly no law. The Buddhist can take upon himseU certain obUgations, or resolve to keep certain precepts ; as many or as few as he pleases ; and for any length of time he pleases. It is his own act that makes them binding; and not any objective authority. Even when he takes the obligations, there is this convenient clause in the form that he repeats 420 APPENDIX. to the priest : ' I embrace the five (or eight) precepts, to obey them severally, as far as lam able, from this time forward.' The power oi the precepts is further diminished, as they are repeated in Pali, a lan guage seldom understood by the lay devotee." — [R. Spence Hardy: "Manual of Buddhism"; London ed., 1880: pp. 525-6. "The question was once put to him [Aristotle] how we ought to be have to our friends ; and the answer he gave was, ' As we should wish our friends to behave to us.'"— [Diogenes Laertius: V. : xi. ' ' Socrates : ' Are we to rest assured, in spite of the opinion of the many, and in spite of consequences whether better or worse, of the truth of what was then said, that injustice is always an evU and a dis honor to him who acts unjustly?' 'Yes.' 'Then we must do no wrong ?' 'Certainly not.' 'Nor when injured injure in return, as the many imagine ; for we must injure no one at aU. . . Then we ought not to retaUate or render evU for evil to any one, whatever evil we may have suffered from him. . . This is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my ears, like the sound of the flute in the ears of the mystic ; that voice, I say, is humming in my ears, and prevents me from hearing any other.' " — [Plato: "Crito": 49,54. XXIII. : p. 89. — " Those blessed women, whose hearts God had sown deepest with the orient pearl of faith ; they who ministered to him in his wants, washed his feet with tears of penitence, and wiped them with the hairs of their heads, — was it in vain he spoke to them ? . . His word swayed the multitude as pendent vines swing in the summer wind ; as the Sphit of God moved on the waters of chaos, and said, ' Let there be light, ' and there was light. No doubt many a rude fisherman of GaUlee heard his words with a heart bounding and scarce able to keep in his bosom, went home a new man, with a legion of angels in his breast, and from that day lived a Ufe divine and beau tiful. . . To them the word of Jesus must have sounded divine ; like the music of their home sung out in the sky, and heard in a distant land, beguUing toU of its weariness, pain of its sting, affliction of de spair." — [Theodore Parker : "Discourse of Religion " ; Boston ed., 1842: pp. 305-308. XXIV. : p. 90. — "Upon an exact and strict comparison of a man's seU with the moral law (its holiness and rigor), true humility must infal- Ubly result ; but from the very circumstance that we can know our selves capable of such an inward legislation, and that the physical man feels himseU compeUed to stand in awe of the ethical man in his own person, there results also, at the same time, a feeling of exaltation, and the highest possible seU-estimation. . . The summary of the Moral NOTES TO LECTURE III. 421 Law does, therefore, Uke every other precept in the Gospel, represent the perfection of the moral sentiment, in an ideal of holiness not attainable by any creature, but which is the archetype toward which it behooves us to approximate, exerting ourselves thitherward in an unbroken and a perpetual progression. . . Verily, it can be nothing less than what advances man, as part of the physical system, above himseU, con necting him with an order of thmgs unapproached by sense."— [Kant: " Metaphysic of Ethics": (Semple's trans.) ; Edinburgh ed. , 1869: pp. 243, 116, 120. XXV. : p. 91. — "When I [Socrates] do not know whether death is a good or an evU, why should I propose a penalty [another one] which would certainly be an evil ? . . Let us reflect in another way, and we shaU see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good ; for one of two things : either death is a state of nothingness and utter uncon sciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now U you suppose that there is no con sciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death wiU be an unspeakable gain. . . But if death be the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this ? . . The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to die, and you to Uve. Which is better, God only knows." — [Plato: "Apology": 37, 40, 42. XXVI. : p. 91. — "All experience shows that if we would have pure knowledge of anything we must be quit of the body, and the soul in herseU must behold all things in themselves ; then I suppose that we shaU attain that which we desire, and of which we say that we are lovers, and that is wisdom : not while we live, but after death, as the argument shows ; for if whUe in company with the body the soul can not have pure knowledge, one of two things seems to follow — either knowledge is not to be attained at aU, or, U at aU, after death. For then, and not tUl then, the soul wiU be in herseU alone, and without the body. . . Then the f ooUshness of the body wiU be cleared away, and we shaU be pure, and hold converse with other pure souls, and know of ourselves the clear Ught everywhere ; and this is surely the hght of truth."— [Plato: "Phaedo": 66,67. This doctrine is connected, however, with that of the preexistence of the soul : — "There can be no doubt that if these absolute ideas [of beauty, good ness, and essence in general] existed before we were born, then our souls must have existed before we were born ; and if not the ideas, then not the souls. . . If the soul existed before birth, and in coming to 422 APPENDIX. . life and being born can be born only from death and dying, must sh( not after death continue to exist, since she has to be born again ? . . Like chUdren, you are haunted with a fear that when the soul leaves the body, the wind may really blow her away and scatter her: espe cially if a man should happen to die in stormy weather, and not when the sky is calm."— [" Phaedo " : 76, 77. XXVII. : p. 91. — "Are we, then, to caU no other man happy as long as he lives, but is it necessary, as Solon says, to look to the end ? But U we must lay down this rule, is he then happy when he is dead ? Or is this altogether absurd, especially in us who assert happiness to be a kind of energy ? . . What sort of fearful things, then, has the cour ageous man to do with ? the greatest : for no man is more able than he to endure terrible things, but death is the most terrible of aU things ; for it is a limit ; and beyond it, it is thought that to the dead there is nothing, either good or bad." — [Aristotle: Nic. Ethics: I.: 10; IH. : 6. XX Vin. : p. 91. — "There are some who conceive Death to he the departure of the soul from the body. There are others who think that no such departure takes place, but that together soul and body perish, and the soul is extinguished with the body. They who think that the soul departs — some of them beUeve it to be immediately dissolved, others that it continues to exist for a long time, and others still that it lasts forever. Yet further, there is a great difference of opinion as to what the soul itseU may be, or where it resides, or whence it comes. . . ' I see that you are high in contemplation, and desire to flit into the heaven.' 'I hope it maybe that that shaU happen to us. But grant, what they insist upon, that souls do not continue : I see our selves deprived, U that should he the case, of the hope of a happier life.' ' But what of evU does that opinion present ? Admit that the soul per ishes, as weU as the body. Is there any distress, or any feeling what ever, after death, in the body ? . . Not indeed, therefore, in the soul remains any sense. The soul is nowhere ; where then is the evU, since there is no third subsistence ' [besides the body and the soul] ? . . Fo*1 if that final day does not bring extinction, but only change of abode what can be more desirable ? But if, on the other hand, it puts an end to us, and utterly destroys, what can be better than in the midst of the hard labors of Ufe to f aU asleep, and so shutting the eyes to become un conscious in an eternal slumber ? " — [Cicero : Tuscul. Quaest. I. : 9, 34, 49. Any higher thought of the soul naturaUy approached pantheism : — ' ' Strive forward then [in your ancestors' steps] said he [Africanus], and habitually consider this, not that thou art mortal, but only this body: for thou art not that which the outward form presents to us; but the mind of each one that is himself, not that figure which can be NOTES TO LECTURE III. 423 pointed out by the finger. Know then thyseU to be a god; U indeed that be god which flourishes, which feels, which remembers, which foresees, which thus rules, and regulates, and moves the body over which it is set, as the chief god is over the world itself. And as that eternal god on every hand moves the mortal world, so the ever-during soul moves the frail body. " — [De Republica : VT. : 17. XXIX. : p. 91.— In the letter written by Servius Sulpicius to Cicero after the death of Tullia, he seeks to associate aU the arguments winch philosophy could suggest to comfort the eloquent statesman, his friend, in his great grief: but these are drawn whoUy from the pubUc calami ties out of which Tultia had passed by death, from the general lot of ruin and decay in which cities and states, as weU as persons, were in volved, from the fact that she must at any rate have died ere long, etc., etc. His only reference to a future life is in the suggestion that if those in the land of shadows retain any feeling about what here takes place, she would herself wish her father to moderate his grief. Cicero, in reply, admits the wisdom and weight of his friend's sugges tions, and confesses that he should feel it a meanness not to bear his calamity as Sulpicius advises ; but he gives no hint of any expectation, for himseU or his daughter, of a Ufe after death. — [See Epist. ad. Di vers. . IV. : 5, 6. XXX. : p. 91. — The entire uncertainty of Seneca concerning the state of the soul after death is illustrated in many passages : — "He has fled away whoUy, leaving nothing of himseU in the world, and has altogether departed from it ; . . carried to highest places, where he has intercourse with the happy souls, and where the sacred company has received him, the Scipios, Catos, who have been at any rate despisers of this life, and who are now set in freedom by the blessing of death. . . Death is both the solution and the termina tion of aU griefs : beyond which our evUs do not extend .- which re places us in the tranquitiity in which we lay before we were born. If any one wiU be sorrowful for the dead, then let him be sorrowful also for those who are not born. Death is neither a good nor an evU. For that may be either good or evil which is in itseU anything ; but really what in itself is -nothing, and reduces aU things to nothingness, con ducts us to no fortune. . . And when the time shall come at which the world shaU extinguish itseU, that it may be renewed, these things [forces and forms of nature] shall destroy each other by then- own energy, and stars shaU rush against stars, and, aU material things be ing set on fire, whatever now shines by reason of its skiUf ul adjustment shaU be consumed in one flame. We also, that are blessed souls, and allotted to eternity, when it shaU seem good to God to again disturb 424 APPENDIX. these things, aU falling- in confusion together, we then, even as a smaU addition to this immense ruin, shaU be returned into our ancient ele ments."— [Ad. Marc. Consol. : 25, 19, 26. " Death is non-existence ; that which was before birth : and what that may be, now I know — that will be after Ufe which was before it. If a man feel anything of torment on account of this, it must needs foUow that the same had been felt before we were brought forth into the Ught ; but then we had no consciousness of vexation. I pray you, would you not count a man a great fool U he should think it a worse condition for a candle when it is blown out than that had been be fore it was Ughted ? We, in Uke manner, are Ughted, and again extin guished ; and in the interval we suffer somewhat. But in either of the other conditions is the highest security." — [Epist. : LIV. XXXI. : p. 91. — "Man knows nothing without instruction; he can not speak, nor walk, nor eat ; and, in short, he can do nothing spon taneously, at the dictate of nature, except weep. Therefore many there have been who have thought it the best thing not to have been born, or, U born, as quickly as possible to be annihUated. . . To aU men, after their last day, remains the same state which was before their first day ; nor is there after death any other sensation left, either in body or in soul, than there was before birth. But this same vanity of ours projects itseU even into the future, and in the very hour of death falsely represents to itseU a future Ufe ; at one time conferring upon us an immortality of the soul; at another, a transmigration; at another, a consciousness of lower regions ; etc. . . All these are the inventions of puerUe raving, and of that mortaUty which is so eager never to cease. . . What absolute madness is this, to think that hfe may re-commence after death ! . . Nor can he [God] give immortal ity to mortals, or recaU into lUe those who are dead ; nor can he bring it to pass that one who has once Uved shall not have Uved ; or that he who has borne honors shall not have borne them ; nor has he any prerogative over past events, except that of bringing obUvion upon them."— [Pliny: Nat. Hist.: VII.: 1, 56: II. : 5. XXXII. : p. 91. — " For it is unknown what may be the nature of the soul ; whether it may be born with us, or on the other hand may be introduced [after birth] into those born ; and whether it may perish with us, dissolved by death, or may visit the shades of Orcus, and its vast pools ; or whether, by divine arrangement, it may insert itseU into other animals, as our Ennius sang, who first brought a crown of per ennial leaf from pleasant HeUcon." — [Lucretius: De Rer. Nat.: I.: 113-120. " Death, therefore, is nothing, and does not in the least concern us, NOTES TO LECTURE III. 425 since the very nature of the soul is to be regarded as mortal. Thus we shaU no longer exist, when the separation shall have taken place of the body and the soul, of which we are now joined together in unity. You may understand that to us, who shall not then be, nothing whatever wtil be able to happen, or to move any feeling; not U the earth were to be mingled with the sea, and the sea with the heavens."— [IH. : 842-854. XXXHI. : p. 91. — Horace expresses no doubt the common feeling of his day, in his famUiar lines : — " Pale Death, with impartial foot, knocks at the hovels of the poor and the palaces of kings. O happy Sextius, the brief sum of Ufe for bids us to commence anything far-reaching. Presently Night wiU op press thee, and the ghosts celebrated in fable, and the cheerless house of Pluto."— [L. I.: Car. 4: 13-17. "We are all pushed in the same direction: later or more quickly the forth-coming lot of aU is shaken in the urn, embarking us in Char on's boat, for eternal extie." — [L. H. : Car. 3: 25-28. The practical phUosophy of the best among the Greeks was probably that expressed by Euripides, in lines quoted by Symonds in his "Stud ies of the Greek Poets " : ' Let those who live do right ere death descendeth ; The dead are dust ; mere nought to nothing tendeth.' [Second Series; London ed., 1876: p. 291. XXXIV. : p. 91. — The doctrine of Epictetus concerning man's rela tionship to God, seems a noble one: — " If a man should be able to accept this doctrine, as he ought, that we are aU sprung from God in an especial manner, and that God is the Father both of men and gods, I suppose that he would never have any ignoble or mean thoughts about himseU. . . Why should not such a man caU himseU a citizen of the world ? why not a son of God ? and why should he be afraid of anything which happens among men ? "—[I. : 3, 9. But respecting the future Ufe of the soul his words are fuU of sor rowful darkness : — " He [God] gives the signal for retreat, opens the door, and says to you, Go I Go whither ? To nothing terrible, but to the place from which you came ; to your friends and kinsmen, to the elements ; what there was in you of fire, goes to fire ; of earth, to earth ; of air, to air ; of water, to water ; no Hades, nor Acheron, nor Cocytus, nor Pyri- phlegethon, but aU is full of gods and daemons. When a man has such things to think on, and sees the sun, the moon and stars, and enjoys earth and sea, he is not soUtary nor even helpless." — [III. : 13. 426 APPENDIX. XXXV. : p. 91.— Plutarch inferred the probability of a future Ufe from the assumed propriety of worship to the gods : — "And therefore, if you please, not concerning ourselves with other deities, let us go no further than the God ApoUo, whom we here caU our own; see whether it is likely that he, knowing that the souls of the deceased vanish away like clouds and smoke, exhaling from our bodies Uke a vapor, requires that so many propitiations, and such great honors, be paid to the dead, and such veneration be given to deceased persons, merely to delude and cozen his behevers ! And therefore, for my part, I wiU never deny the immortality of the soul, till somebody or other, as they say Hercules did of old, shall be so daring as to come and take away the prophetical tripod, and so quite ruin and destroy the oracle."— [" Morals": Boston ed., 1874 : Vol. 4 : p. 169. ' ' What means aU this [the death of distinguished persons] ? Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou art come to shore: Get out. If indeed to another life, there is no want of gods, even there. But U to a state without sensation, thou wilt cease to be held by pains and pleasures, and to be a slave to the vessel, which is as much inferior as that which serves it is superior ; for the one is inteUigence and deity, and the other is earth and corruption. . . As here the mutation of these [buried] bodies after a certain continuance, whatever it may be, and their dissolution, make room for other dead bodies ; so the souls which are removed into the air, after subsisting for some time, are trans muted, and diffused, and assume a fiery nature by being received into the seminal inteUigence of the universe, and in this way make room for the fresh souls which come to dwell there. . . Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive faUs off when it is ripe, blessing nature which produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew." — [Marcus Aurelius: "Meditations" : IIL: 3; IV: 21: 48. XXXVI. : p. 91. — A striking example of this modern uncertainty of sceptics concerning immortaUty, is given by the words of the late Prof. Clifford:— "And this same judgment [that we must wait before deciding] ap- pUes necessarUy to another abstract and general conclusion from an unproved doctrine about body and mind ; the conclusion that a man's consciousness survives the decay of his body. Such a conclusion can be at best, in the present state of knowledge, a hope, a conjecture, an aspiration ; it can have no claim to be regarded as a known fact. . . Of such a doctrine, surely, U of any doctrine, we ought to say: 'Do not take this for estabhshed truth ; be prepared to find that it is other wise ; only for the moment we are of opinion that it may possibly be so.'"— [W. K. Clifford: "Lectures and Essays"; London ed., 1879: Vol. 2: pp. 319-320. NOTES TO LECTURE III. 427 XXXVH. : p. 92.—" In it were to be set up two statues of himseU, of a certain prescribed height, the one in bronze, the other in marble. . . Couches and benches were also to be provided for those days on which the chamber was to be opened, and even garments for the guests. Orchards and other property are assigned for the proper maintenance and repair of the sepulchre. . . Of the nature of the meal [eaten at the tomb] we do not know much. It is caUed by two very diff erent names— the one silicernium, supposed to have reference to the sUence of the Manes, in whose presence and honour it was held; the other alogia, interpreted by St. Augustine of the irrational intemperance and excess with which it was sometimes accompanied. Certainly sUence was not imposed upon those who partook of the feast; they were often expressly exhorted to be merry and glad, to eat and drink and refresh themselves without anger, strife, or melancholy — sine bile, sine quereld. . . This was one of the reasons why the Roman sepul chres took up so much room, always largely in excess of modern re quirements." — ["Roma Sotterranea" : (Northcote and Brownlow), Lon don ed., 1879: Part 1: pp. 58-62. The custom above described naturaUy connects itseU with the Etrus can fashions :— " These [Etruscan] cities of the dead are constructed on the precise model of the cities of the living. The tombs themselves are exact imi tations of the house. There is usuaUy an outer vestibule, apparently appropriated to the annual funeral feast ; from this a passage leads to a large central chamber, which is Ughted by windows cut through the rock. This central haU is surrounded by smaUer chambers, in which the dead repose. These chambers contain the corpses, and are fur nished with aU the implements, ornaments, and utensUs used in life. The tombs are in fact places for the dead to live in. The position and surroundings of the deceased are made to approximate as closely as possible to the conditions of Ufe. . . Nothing is omitted which can conduce to the amusement or comfort of the deceased. Their spirits were evidently believed to inhabit these house-tombs after death, just as in life they inhabited their houses. . . The Turanian creed was Animistic. This creed taught that in the ghost- world the spirits of the departed are served by the spirits of those utensUs and ornaments which they have used in lUe. It thus became the pious duty of the survivors to place in the tombs, and to dedicate to the perpetual service of the deceased, the most precious treasures which they possessed. These constitute the costly objects which the Etruscan tombs have yielded in such profusion, and which now crowd the shelves of our museums." — [Taylor: " Etruscan Researches " ; London, 1874: pp. 46-8, 270. XXXVHI. : p. 92.— "The transformation of the Egyptian religion 428 APPENDIX. is nowhere more apparent than in the view of the life beyond the grave which is exhibited on a tablet which has already been referred to, that of the wUe of Pasherenptah. The lady thus addressed her husband from the grave : ' Oh my brother, my spouse, cease not to drink and to eat, to drain the cup of joy, to enjoy the love of woman, and to make hoUday ; f oUow thy desires each day, and let not care enter thy heart, as long as thou Uvest upon earth. For as to Amenti, it is the land of heavy slumber and of darkness, an abode of sorrow for those who dweU there. They sleep in their forms ; they wake not any more to see their brethren ; they recognize not their father and their mother; their heart is indifferent to their wUe and chUdren. Every one [on earth] enjoys the water of Ufe, but thirst is by me. . . As to the god who is here, ' Death- Absolute ' is his name. He calleth on aU, and aU men come to obey him, trembling with fear before him. . . One fear eth to pray to him, for he listeneth not. No one comes to invoke him, for he is not kind to those who adore him : he has no respect to any offering which is made to him.'" — [Renouf : "ReUgion of Ancient Egypt " ; New York ed., 1880 : pp. 251-3. XXXIX. : p. 92.— The discussion by Burnouf of the proper import of the word Nirvana, especiaUy as originaUy used among the early and the Southern Buddhists, is too extended and elaborate to be reproduced or even sketched in a note. Those wishing to examine it will find it in his "Introduction a 1 'histoire du Buddhisme Indien " (deuxieme ed., Paris, 1876), pp. 16-18, 459-465; and especiaUy in the Appendice, pp. 525-530. His positive conclusion is, many times repeated in this learned and authoritative work, that extinction, annihUation, pass ing into nothingness, represent the significance of Nirvana. " He [Gotama] had discarded the theory of the presence, within each human body, of a soul which could have a separate and eternal exist ence. . . In no case is there, therefore, any future Ufe in the Chris tian sense. At a man's death, nothing survives but the effect of his actions. . . Buddhism sees no distinction of any fundamental charac ter, no difference except an accidental or phenomenal difference, be tween gods, men, plants, animals, and things. All are the product of causes that have been acting during the immeasurable ages of the past; and aU wtil be dissolved." — [Rhys Davids: Lectures on " Indian Bud dhism"; New York ed., 1882: pp. 93, 109, 214. "Buddhism knew not the Divine, the Eternal, the Absolute; and the Soul, even as the I, or as the mere Self, was represented in the orthodox metaphysics of Buddhism as transient, as futile, as a mere phantom. No person who reads with attention the metaphysical specu lations on the Nirvana contained in the Buddhist canon, can arrive at any other conviction than that the Nirvana, the highest aim, the sum- NOTES TO LECTURE III. 429 mum bonum of Buddhism, is the absolute Nothing." — [Max MiiUer: " Science of ReUgion " ; New York ed., 1872 : p. 140. XL. : p. 92. — "The reader wiU be prepared by the preceding accoant not to expect to find any light thrown by Confucius on the great prob lems of the human condition and destiny. He did not speculate on the creation of things, or the end of them. He was not troubled to account for the origin of man, nor did he seek to know about his hereafter. He meddled neither with physics nor metaphysics. The testimony of the Analects about the subjects of his teaching is the foUowing : ' His frequent themes of discourse were the Book of Poetry, the Book of History, and the maintenance of the rules of Propriety.' ' He taught letters, ethics, devotion of soul, and truthfulness.' 'Extraordinary things, feats of strength, states of disorder, and spiritual beings, he did not like to talk about.' . . His end was not unimpressive, but it was melancholy. He sank behind a cloud. Disappointed hopes made his soul bitter. . . Nor were the expectations of another lUe present with him as he passed tlirough the dark valley. He uttered no prayer and he betrayed no apprehensions. "—[Legge : ' ' Chinese Classics " : Proleg. Ch. V: Sec. II: §6; I.: §9. XLI. : p. 93. — "According to the ancient creed of Paganism, ex pressed in the weU-known lines at the commencement of the Hiad, the souls of departed heroes did indeed survive death ; but these souls were not themselves ; they were the mere shadows or ghosts of what had been; ' themselves ' were the bodies, left to be devoured by dogs and vultures. The Apostle's teaching, on the other hand, is always that, amidst whatever change, it is the very man himseU that is preserved ; and, if for the preservation of this identity any outward organization is required, then, although ' flesh and blood cannot inherit the king dom of heaven,' God from the infinite treasure-house of the new heav ens and new earth wUl furnish that organization, as He has already furnished it to the several stages of creation in the present order of the world."— [Dean Stanley: "Com. on Ep. to Corinthians"; London ed., 1876: pp. 326-7. "I find Him such after the suffering of death as He was before it- save His recent scars. The immortality, therefore, which is held be fore me in the Christian scheme, is no such thing as a nucleus of con scious mist, floating about in a golden fog, amid miUions of the same purposeless, limbless sparks. It is an immortaUty of organized ma terial energies ; — it is the same welded mind-and-matter human nature, fitted for service, apt to labour, and capable of all those experiences, and furnished for aU those enterprises, and armed for those endurances, which, seeing that they are thus provided for, and are one may say 430 APPENDIX. thus foreshown in the Christian resurrection, put before me a rational solution of these now imminent trials, of these hard experiences, of these frustrated labours, and of these fiery sufferings, the passing through which so much perplexes ahd disheartens me now ; which at once find their reason when I see them in their intention as the needed schooling for an immortaUty, in the endless fortunes of which this mind-and-matter structure shaU have room to show what things it can do and bear, and what enterprises of love it shaU devise, and shaU bring to a happy consummation, it may be cycles of centuries hence." — [Isaac Taylor: " Restoration of Belief " ; Boston ed., 1867: pp. 329-330. XLII. : p. 96. — "Even where the severest doctrine of exclusion has prevaUed, the fundamental sentiment of Christian faith has saved the heart from the most withering of aU passions, — the blight of scorn. Human nature may appear beneath the eye of an austere behever in an awful, but never in a contemptible light. The very crisis in which it is suspended can belong to no mean existence. What it has lost is too great a glory, what it has incurred is too deep a terror, to be conceivable except of a being on a grand scale. He is no worm for whom the eternal abysses are buUt as a dungeon, and the lightnings are brandished as a scourge. Accordingly, the very aUenations of in tolerance itseU have acquired a higher and more respectable character than in ancient faiths. The sort of feeling with which the Jew spurned ' the GentUe dog ' is sanctioned by piety no more. The Oriental curl of the lip is scarcely traceable on the features of Christendom ; and is replaced by an expression bf tragic sorrow and earnestness, where lights of admiring pity flash through the darkest clouds." — [James Martineau: " Studies of Christianity " ; Boston ed., 1866: pp. 317-318. XLIII. : p. 96. — " ' What is your name ? place of abode ? ' Fouquiei asks: according to formality. 'My name is Danton,' answers he; 'a name tolerably known in the Revolution ; my abode wiU soon be An- nihUation (dans le Ndant), but I shall live in the Pantheon of History.' . . Camille makes answer : ' My age is that of the bon Sansculotte Jesus: an age fatal to Revolutionists.' " — [Carlyle: " French Revolu tion"; Boston ed., 1839; Vol. 3: p. 319. The same title had been before applied in the same way, by the Jaco bin Societies, eulogizing Marat 1 — [Vol. 2 : pp. 211-12. XLIV. : p. 97. — "He who does not know Him [Christ], knows noth ing of the order of the world, and nothing of himself. For not only do we know God by Jesus Christ, but we only know ourselves by Jesus Christ. . . In him is aU our goodness, our virtue, our Ufe, our light, our hope ; without him, there is for us only misery, darkness, and despair, NOTES TO LECTURE III. 43] and we shaU see only obscurity and confusion in the nature of God, and in our own nature. " — [Pascal : ' ' Pensees " : Sec. Par. , Art. XV. : 2. XL V.: p. 98. — "The man who became so famous under the name of Gregory VII. was, like the greater number of those who attained eminence in the church, of obscure origin. The date of his birth, even, is not exactly known ; but we may place it between the years 1015 and 1020. He first saw the light at Soano, a smaU town of Tuscany, where his father, who was named Bonic or Bonizon, followed the trade of a carpenter. The son of the carpenter at Soano received at his baptism the German name of HUdebrand, modified by the Italian pronuncia tion to HeUebrand, which has been translated by his contemporaries ' pure flame,' or ' brand of hell,' according to the affection or the detes tation by which the writer was actuated." — [ViUemain : "LUe of Gregory the Seventh"; London ed., 1874 : Vol. 1 : p. 231. XLVI. : p. 99.— " Oh, would that nature had denied me birth 'Midst this fifth race, the iron age of earth ; That long before within the grave I lay, Or long hereafter could behold the day ! Corrupt the race, with toils and griefs opprest, Nor day nor night enn yield a pause of rest ; Still do the gods a weight of care bestow, Though still some good is mingled with the woe ! " [Hesiod : "Works and Days " : [Elton's trans.] : 227-234. "Happiest beyond compare Never to taste of life ; Happiest in order next, Being born, with quickest speed Thither again to turn From whence we came." [Sophocles : CEdipus, at Colonos : [Plumptre's trans., 1873] 1225-1229. "For it is becoming for us formally to assemble and lament for one who is born, who is advancing to meet so many evUs ; but to offer glad gratulations to the dead, to whom at last rest has been given."— [Euripides : Quoted by Clement of Alex. . Strom. IH. : 3. Quoted also by Cicero : Tuscul. Quaest. : I. : 48. "Do not then consider Ufe a thing of any value. For look to the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity, then, what is the difference between him who lives three days, and him who lives for three generations!"— [Marcus Aurelius : "Meditations": IV.: 50. 432 APPENDIX. "It would be a man's happiest lot to depart from mankind without having had any taste of lying and hypocrisy and luxury and pride. However, to breathe out one's lUe when a man has had enough of these things, is the next best voyage, as the saying is." — [IX. : 2. XLVII. : p. 99. — "Physiology distinctly and categoricaUy pronounces against any individual immortaUty, and against aU ideas which are connected with the figment of a separate existence of the soul. . . It is impossible to demonstrate the admissibility of punishment, or to prove that there is any such thing as amenabUity or responsibihty " [Vogt]. " Man is produced from wind and ashes. . Man is the sum of his parents and his wet-nurse, of time and place, of wind and mat ter, of sound and Ught, of food and clothing ; his wiU is the necessary consequence of aU these causes, governed by the laws of nature, just as the planet in its orbit, as the vegetable in its soU. Thought consists in the motion of matter, it is a translocation of the cerebral substance; without phosphorus there can be no thought ; and consciousness itseU is nothing but an attribute of matter " [Moleschott]. The watchword of this school is, in short: " We are what we eat " [Feuerbach] ; or, as Czolbe expresses it, man is " nothing more than a mosaic figure, made up of different atoms, and mechanically combined in an elaborate shape." — [See Christlieb: "Modern Doubt and Christian Belief": New York ed. . pp. 146, 158. " If we look into ourselves, we discover propensities which declare that our inteUects have arisen from a lower form ; could our minds be made visible, we should find them taUed. . . AU that is elevated, aU that is lovely, in human nature has its origin in the lower kingdom. The phUosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining aU things in search of food. Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness. Loyalty and piety, the reverential virtues, are developed from filial love. Benevolence and magnanimity, the generous virtues, from parental love. The sense of decorum proceeds from the sense of cleanliness ; and that from the in stinct of sexual display. . . How easy it would be to endure without repining the toUs and troubles of this miserable Ufe, if indeed we could believe that, when its brief period was past, we should be united to those whom we have loved, to those whom death has snatched away, or whom fate has parted from us by barriers cold and deep and hope less as the grave. But we do not believe it; and so we cling to our tor tured lives, dreading the dark Nothingness, dreading the dispersal oi our elements into cold unconscious space. As drops in the ocean oi water, as atoms in the ocean of air, as sparks in the ocean of fire with in the earth, our minds do their appointed work and serve to build up the strength and beauty of the one great Human Mind which grows NOTES TO LECTURE III. 433 from century to century, from age to age, and is perhaps itself a mere molecule within some higher mind." — [Winwood Reade : "Martyrdom of Man"; New York ed. : pp. 394-5, 243-4. XLVIII. : p. 99.— " The word of Schleiermacher: 'in the midst of finiteness to become one with the Infinite, and to be eternal in every moment ' : this is aU which modem science knows how to say concern ing ImmortaUty. " Herewith is our task for the present ended. While eternity is the unity in all things, in its aspect as a future lUe it is the last enemy which speculative criticism has to fight, and U possible to overcome." —[Strauss : " Christliche Glaubenslehre " : Band II. : S. 739. XLIX. : p. 99. — " ChUdren, and the lower classes of most countries, seem to be actuaUy fond of dirt ; the vast majority of the human race are indifferent to it ; whole nations of otherwise civUized and cultivated human beings tolerate it in some of its worst forms, and only a very small minority are consistently offended by it. . . In the times when mankind were nearer to their natural state, cultivated observers re garded the natural man as a sort of wUd animal, distinguished chiefly by being craftier than the other beasts of the field ; and aU worth of character was deemed the result of a sort of taming, a phrase often applied by the ancient phUosophers to the appropriate discipline of hu man beings. . . The most criminal actions are to a being like man not more unnatural than most of the virtues. . . The mere cessation of existence is no evU to any one ; the idea is only formidable through the illusion of imagination " : though the loss of friends, dying before us " will always suffice to keep alive in the more sensitive natures the imaginative hope of a futurity, which, U there is nothing to prove. there is as little in our knowledge and experience to contradict. . . It seems to me not only possible but probable, that in a higher, and above aU a happier condition of human Ufe, not annihilation but immortality may be the burdensome idea." — [John Stuart MiU : "Essays on Re Ugion"; New York ed., 1874: pp. 48, 46, 62, 122. It was of MiU that Holyoake wrote: "No more generous, self-re liant, self-regardless thinker than he ever entered the adventurous pass of Death 1"— [Essay on Mill: London, 1873: p. 29. 28 NOTES TO LECTUEE IV. Note I. : page 104. — "I myself, when a young man, used sometimes to go to the sacrilegious entertainments and spectacles ; I saw the priests raving in reUgious excitement, and heard the choristers ; I took pleas ure in the shameful games which were celebrated in honor of gods and goddesses, of the virgin Coelestis, and Berecynthia, the mother of aU the gods. And on the day consecrated to her purification, there were sung before her couch productions so obscene and filthy to the ear — I do not say of the mother of the gods, but of the mother of any senator or honest man — nay, so impure that not even the mother of the foul- mouthed players themselves could have formed one of the audience." — [Augustine, Civ. Dei: H. : 4. n. : p. 104. — " They [the Christians] affirmed this to have been the whole of their guilt, or their error, that they were accustomed to meet, on a stated day, before it was Ught, and to sing a hymn responsively among themselves to Christ, as to God ; binding themselves also, by a solemn oath, not to do any wickedness, but that they would not com mit any fraud, theft, or adultery, would not falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called to account for it ; after which it was their custom to separate, and then to reassemble, to eat in com mon a harmless meal. . . After this I judged it the more necessary to seek what the truth might be, by putting to the torture two female servants who were said to officiate among them [probably as deacon esses]. But I found nothing else than a perverse and extravagant superstition." — [Pliny : Ep. : X. xovn. IH. : p. 104. — " 'Let us pass on,' says he [Celsus], 'to another point. They [Christians] cannot tolerate temples, altars, or images. In this they are like the Scythians, the nomadic tribes of Libya, the Seres who worship no god, and some other of the most barbarous and impious nations of the world. . . Celsus proceeds to say that we ' shrink from raising altars, statues, and temples; and this,' he thinks, 'has been agreed upon among us as the badge or distinctive mark of a secret and forbidden society.' " — rOrigen, adv. Celsus : vn. : 62; vni.: 17. "Hence we are caUed Atheists. And we confess that we are Athe- f434) NOTES TO LECTURE IV. 435 ists, so far as gods of this sort are concerned, but not with respect to the most true God, the Father of righteousness and temperance, and the other virtues, who is free from all impurity. But both Him and the Son who came forth from Him, . . and the prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore, knowing them in reason and in truth." — [Justin Martyr : Apol. I. : vi. IV. . p. 104. — The figure referred to is weU enough represented in Lundy's "Monumental Christianity" [New York ed., 1876], p. 61. The stucco which contains it is preserved in the museum of the Vati can, as a precious reUc of early Christianity at Rome ; and the words of Tertullian would seem to indicate that such a figure was understood by some in his time to represent the Lord of the Christians : — "Like some others, you are under the delusion that our god is an ass's head. Cornelius Tacitus first put this notion into people's minds. . . But the said Tacitus (the very opposite of tacit in telting lies) in forms us that when C. Pompeius captured Jerusalem, he entered the temple to see the arcana of the Jewish religion, but found no image there. Yet surely if worship were rendered to any visible object, the very place for its exhibition would be the shrine. . . Perhaps it is this which displeases you in us, that while your worship [of beasts] is uni versal, we worship only the ass 1 " — [Apolog. xvi. So CaecUius says, in the ' ' Octavius " of Minucius Felix : — "I hear that they [Christians] adore the head of an ass, that basest of creatures, consecrated by I know not what sUly persuasion, — a worthy and appropriate reUgion for such manners." — [ix. The reference of the Palatine graphite to Christ is not, however, uni- versaUy conceded by the students of Christian antiquities. V. : p. 105. — "And on the day caUed Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles, or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time per mits ; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we aU rise to gether and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in Uke man ner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen ; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are weU to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is col lected is deposited with the president, who succors the orphans and widows, and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds, and the strangers sojourning 436 APPENDIX. among us, and in a word takes care of aU who are in need. But Sun day is the day on which we aU hold our common assembly, because it is the first day, on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world ; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead." — [Justin Martyr : Apol. I. . lxvu. VI. : p. 107. — "To maintain that the sacrifice of atonement was the only original offering of the Greeks, and to derive all other forms from it, would be inadmissible. To acknowledge in practice the supremacy and power of the divinity, to present it with a pledge, as it were, of homage and subjection to its wiU, to return thanks for gUts received, or protection afforded, — this was the primitive signification of many sacrifices. . . Even the Greek idea of the envy of the gods, and the necessity of appeasing this jealousy by a voluntary cession of a portion of their goods, was the foundation of many sacrifices. . . It was the prevalent idea, that for a man to obtain any thing of the gods, he must of necessity make them an offering to correspond. 'Presents win the gods, as weU as kings,' was an old proverb. " — [DoUinger : ' ' The GentUe and the Jew " ; London ed. , 1862 : Vol. 1 : pp. 229, 233-4. VII. : p. 108. — " In the provinces 1,500 temples are dedicated to his [Confucius'] worship, where on the first and fifteenth day of each month sacrificial services are performed before his image, and once in the spring and the autumn the local officials go in state to take part in 9cts of speciaUy solemn worship. According to the Shing meaou che, or ' History of the Temples of the Sage,' as many as 6 bullocks, 27,000 pigs, 5,800 sheep, 2,800 doer, and 2,700 hares, are sacrificed on these occasions ; and at the same time 27,000 pieces of silk are offered on his shrine." — [Douglas: " Confucianism and Taouism"; London ed., 1879: p. 165. The religion of Zoroaster is often praised for the care which it en joined in the treatment of certain animals, especiaUy the cow, the cock, and the dog. One occasion of this was the importance of such animals to a pastoral people : as Auramazda says in the Vendidad of the Avesta, ' No thief or woU comes to the vUlage or the fold and carries away anything unobserved, if the dog is healthy, in good voice, and among the flocks. The houses would not stand firm upon the earth U there were not dogs in the villages and flocks.' Therefore the dogs must receive good food ; especiaUy the watch-dog must be provided with milk, fat, and flesh, his 'proper food.' Dogs with young are to be treated as carefully as pregnant women : sick dogs, with the same medicines as sick men. All men who beat dogs are warned that their souls wUl go from the world f uU of terror and sick. To kill a water- dog is the greatest of crimes. Yet Athenaeus teUs us that with the NOTES TO LECTURE IV. 437 King of Persia a thousand animals were daily slaughtered in sacrifice : camels, hares, oxen, apes, deer, and especiaUy sheep : and Herodotus says that when Xerxes marched into HeUas the Magians sacrificed a thousand oxen on the summit of Pergamos, soliciting victory. — [See Duncker: "History of Antiquity"; London ed., 1881: Vol. 5: pp. 208-9, 174. " The Rig-Veda was mainly a collection of sacrificial chants and rit ual. Brahmans, no less than Kshatriyas and Vaigyas, were accus tomed to invoke the spirits of light in the early dawn, to offer gUts at morning, mid-day, and evening, to Agni: above aU to celebrate sacri fices at the changes of the moon or the seasons. . . The idea that every sacrifice when offered correctly was efficacious, that a magic power resided in it, that the assistance and therefore a part of the di vine power or nature was gained by the sacrifice, could not f aU to re tain the service of sacrifice in fuU force in the new doctrine. . . We see from the rules of the Brahmanas that offerings, consecrations, and sacrifices were not diminished but rather increased by the idea of Brahman, and the number of the sacrificing priests was greater. . . An incorrect word, a false intonation, may destroy the efficacy of the entire sacrifice. For this reason the rules for the great sacrifice, es peciaUy for the sacrifice of horses, fill up whole books of the Brah manas." — [Duncker: " History of Antiquity " ; London ed., 1880: Vol. IV. : pp. 162, 273-4. "In fine, a great many of these sacrifices [the Vedic] require animal victims. In the domestic ritual the act of sacrificing them is resolved for the most part into a purely symbolic act, but in the developed ritual it remained longer in force. Several ishtis are very bloody. . . In general, the more recent the texts are the more does the number of the symboUc victims increase, and that of the real ones diminish ; but even with these abatements the Brahmanical cultus remained for long an inhuman one." — [A. Barth: "Religions of India"; Boston ed., 1882: p. 57. "Dr. Haug maintains that some hymns of a decidedly sacrificial character should be ascribed to the earliest period of Vedic poetry. He takes, for instance, the hymn describing the horse sacrifice, and he concludes from the fact that seven priests only are mentioned in it by name, and that none of them belongs to the class of the Udgatars (singers) or Brahmans (superintendents), that this hymn was written before the estabUshment of these two classes of priests. As these priests are mentioned in other Vedic hymns, he concludes that the hymn describing the horse sacrifice is of a very early date. Dr. Haug strengthens his case by a reference to the Zoroastrian ceremonial." — [Max MiiUer: " Chips," etc. ; New York ed., 1881: Vol. 1: p. 105. 438 APPENDIX. Vm. : p. 108. — " But what man sought, Divine salvation and Divine counsel, this is even now, and was then more than now, the most dif ficult and mysterious thing that man can seek, besides being to him a something inexhaustible, in relation to which he stands ever freshly conscious of a new need. In his attitude toward this he therefore felt readUy inclined to any endeavor and to the hardest service, indeed ready for the most grievous and strange efforts : the something Awful standing over against men constrained them to give up aU things for it, or to hazard all things in order to draw near to it, and to attract it to themselves. But man can only give up what is human in order thereby to gain what is Divine ; and already a darkling impulse led him to believe that he would the more readily win the superlative Di vine gfft the more mightUy he, tlirough the greatest sacrifice of aU his inferior possessions, sought the higher things. Now aU work of such practical giving up, whereby the man presses in immediately to the Godhead, and seeks not only to move that, but more thoroughly to come into contact with it, in order to be in turn touched by it and made blessed, we may comprehensively name Sacrifice, to apply to it a universal word. . . But the conclusion from such a feeling must finaUy be that human lUe is incomparably the highest and most won derful sacrifice possible to be offered — be it that of a sacrificed stranger, or that which is dearest, of one's own chUd, or even of one's seU, converted into an offering. So human sacrifice was placed ap propriately as the pinnacle and consummation of aU these expressions of the awe of man before God. " — [Ewald : ' ' Die Alterthiimer des Volkes Israel"; Gottingen, 1866: S. 32, 36, f. IX. : p. 108. — "Among these [Indian] victims, which consist of aU imaginable kinds of domestic and wUd animals, there is one which re curs with an ominous frequency, viz. , man. Not only are there traces of human sacrifice preserved in the legends, as weU as in the symbofism of the ritual, but this sacrifice is expressly mentioned and formaUy prescribed. . . Neither is there room to doubt that the blood of hu man victims not unfrequently flowed on the altars of these gloomy goddesses, before the horrible images of Durga, Kali, Candika, and Camunda. Formal testimonies go to confirm the many aUusions to this practice which occur in the tales and dramas. In the sixteenth century the Mohammedans found it established in northern Bengal; in the seventeenth, the Sikhs confess that their great reformer, Guru Govind, prepared himseU for his mission by the sacrifice of one of his disciples to Durga; in 1824 Bishop Heber met with people who told him that they had seen young boys offered in sacrifice at the gates of Calcutta; and almost as late as our own time, the Thugs professed to murder their victims in honour of KfiU."— [A. Barth: " The Religions of India"; Boston ed., 1882: pp. 57, 203-4. NOTES TO LECTURE IV. 439 " To this black Goddess [CaU, wUe of Siva] with a coUar of golden skulls, as we see her exhibited in all her principal temples, human sac rifices were anciently offered, as the Vedas enjoined ; but in the present age they are absolutely prohibited, as are also the sacrifices of butis and horses : kids are stiU offered to her ; and, to paUiate the cruelty of the slaughter, which gave such offence to Buddha, the Brahmans inculcate a belief that the poor victims rise into the heaven of Indra, where they become the musicians of his band. " — [Sir WiUiam Jones : Works ; London, 1817: Vol. 3: p. 383. X. : p. 108. — "When Themistocles was about to sacrifice, close to the admiral's gaUey, there were three prisoners brought to him, fine- looking men, and richly dressed in ornamented clothing and gold, said to be the chUdren of Artayctes and Sandace, sister to Xerxes. As soon as the prophet Euphrantides saw them, and observed that at the same time the fire blazed out from the offerings with a more than ordinary flame, . . he took Themistocles by the hand, and bade him consecrate the three young men for sacrifice, and offer them up, with prayers for victory, to Bacchus the Devourer. . . Themistocles was much dis turbed at this strange and terrible prophecy, but the common people, . . calling upon Bacchus with one voice, led the captives to the altar, and compeUed the execution of the sacrifice, as the prophet had com manded."— [Plutarch: "Lives"; Boston ed., 1859: Vol. 1: p. 247. " For it once happened, that whUe the inhabitants of this place [Pot- niae] were sacrificing, they became so outrageous, through intoxica tion, that they slew the priest of Bacchus. As a punishment for this action, they were afflicted with a pestUent disease ; and at the same time were ordered by the Delphic Oracle to sacrifice to Bacchus a boy in the flower of his youth. However, not many years after this, they say that the god changed the sacrifice of a boy for that of a goat." — [Pausanias: "Descript. of Greece": IX.: 8. XI. : p. 108. — " There grew up even in Athens the horrible custom of nourishing every year, at cost of the State, two poor forsaken per sons, male and female, and then at the festival of ThargeUa of putting them to death for the expiation of the people, as though they had assumed their sins. . . The same expiatory custom existed in the Phocaean colony, Massilia. . . So in Cyprus, in the cities Amathus and Salamis, a man was every year sacrificed to Zeus ; in the latter city, in the month Aphrodisios, one to Agraulus, and in later times to Diomedes. . . In general it may with certainty be assumed that hu man expiatory sacrifices prevaUed in all parts of Greece ; among no other people are there found more or more various accounts of such offerings than among the HeUenists. . . As often as any great and 440 APPENDIX. general calamity threatened the existence of the Roman state, by order of the books of fate human victims were sacrificed. . . It was _iot until the year 657 of the city, or 97 years before Christ, that the Sen ate issued a decree forbidding human sacrifices. But in spite of this we read that the dictator J. Caesar, A.D. 708, or 46 years before Christ, commanded a sacrifice of two men, with the traditionary solemnities, upon the Campus Martius, by the Pontiflces and the Flamen Martis. Augustus, after the defeat of L. Antonius, immolated four hundred senators and knights upon the altar of the deified Julius, at the Ides of March, 713, or 41 years before Christ.* Even in the times of Adrian, the beautUul Antinous died a voluntary sacrifice for the Emperor; and the annual immolation of men to Jupiter Latiaris, upon the Alban Mount, is said to have continued even into the third century of our era. As it was in Greece and Rome, so it was among almost aU the oriental and occidental countries. . . Not any and every human be ing was immolated, "but the innocent chUdren were selected; and among these, the preference was given to the only chUd, or to the first-born. . . At Carthage there was a metallic statue of Chronos, in a bending posture, with hands stretched out, and raised upwards. This statue was heated, tiU it glowed, by a kiln beneath ; into its arms- were placed the chUdren destined for sacrifice ; from its arms they f eU into the guU of fire beneath, dying in convulsions, which were said to be of laughter. The chUdless were wont to buy chUdren of the poor. ' The mother,' says Plutarch, ' stands by, without shedding a tear, or uttering a sigh ; around the image of the god aU resounds with the noise of kettle-drums and flutes, that the crying and wailing be not heard.'" . . Human sacrifices were familiar, also, among Egyptians Persians, Arabians, and the Northern nations generaUy. — [Prof. Ernst von Lasaulx: quoted, with ample references, in Thomson's Bampton Lects. ; London ed., 1853: pp. 255-262. " In the year 270 A.D., further proof was given that, in spite of the late decree issued by Hadrian, recourse was still had from time to time to this means of appeasing the angry gods [by human sacrifice] in dan gers threatening the state, when, on an irruption of the Marcomanni, the Emperor AureUan offered the Senate to furnish it with prisoners * The authorities for the statement concerning Augustus are Dio Cassius xlviii. : 14 ; Suetonius (who makes the number three hundred, of either rank), Octav. August. XV. ; and Seneca, De Clem. I. 11. Suetonius speaks of them as ' slaughtered after the custom of sacrifices [more hostiarum] at an altar raised to the Divine Julius '; and Seneca distinguishes between the Roman blood with which Augustus stained the Actian sea, the life which he destroyed in Sicilian waters, or in his proscriptions, and his cruelty at the Perusian altars. Probably the last was an act of political vengeance, to which a sort of religious sanction was sought to be given. NOTES TO LECTURE IV. 441 of all nations for certain expiatory sacrifices to be performed."— [D61- linger: " Gentile and Jew " ; London ed., 1862: Vol. 2: p. 87. References to human sacrifices at Rome occur in Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxvni. : 3; XXX.: 1; and in Plutarch, "Lives": Boston ed.,1859: Vol. H. : p. 240 ; "Morals": Boston ed., 1874 : Vol. H. : p. 248. XH. : p. 108. — Among the notices of human sacrifices, and of the later offerings of human blood to the gods, which are found in the Christian Fathers, are the foUowing : — " Why did we not even pubUcly profess that these were the things which we esteemed good, and prove that these are the divine phUos ophy, saying that the mysteries of Saturn are performed when we slay a man, and that when we drink our fiU of blood, as it is said we do, we are doing what you do before that idol you honour, and on which you sprinkle the blood not only of irrational animals, but also of men, making a libation of the blood of the slain by the hand of the most illustrious and noble man among you." — [Justin Martyr: Apol. II. : xii. "Wherefore, having seen these things, and moreover also having been admitted to the mysteries, and having everywhere examined the reUgious rites performed by.the effeminate and the pathic, and having found among the Romans their Latiarian Jupiter delighting in human gore and the blood of slaughtered men, and Artemis not far from the great city [at Aricia] sanctioning acts of the same kind, . . retiring by myseU I sought how I might be able to discover the truth." — [Ta tian: " To the Greeks " : xxix. " ChUdren were openly sacrificed in Africa to Saturn as lately as the proconsulship of Tiberius, who exposed to public gaze the priests suspended on the sacred trees overshadowing their temple, so many crosses on which the punishment which justice craved overtook their crimes ; as the soldiers of our country stUl can testify, who did that very work for the proconsul. And even now that sacred crime still continues to be done in secret." — [TertulUan: Apologet. : ix. ' ' Among the people of Cyprus, Teucer sacrificed a human victim to Jupiter, and handed down to posterity that sacrifice, which was lately abolished by Hadrian, when he was emperor. There was a law among the people of Tauris, a fierce and inhuman nation, that strangers should be sacrificed to Diana ; and this sacrifice was practised through many ages. . . Nor, indeed, were the Latins free from this cruelty, since Jupiter Latialis is even now worshipped with the offering of human blood. . . Are not our countrymen, who have always claimed for themselves the glory of gentleness and civilization, found to be more inhuman by these sacrilegious rites? " — [Lactantius : ' ' Div. Institutes " : I. : 21. 442 APPENDIX XHI. : p. 108. — "Marius, finding himseU hard put to it in the Cim- brian war had it revealed to him in a dream, that he should overcome his enemies U he would but sacrifice his daughter Calpurnia. He did it, preferring the common safety before any private bond of Nature, and he got the victory. There are two altars in Germany, where about that time of the year may be heard the sound of trumpets." — [Ref. to Dorotheus' Italian History.] [Plutarch: "ParaUels": Boston ed., "Morals": 1874 : Vol. 5 : p. 463. XIV. : p. 109. — " He [Jutian, when preparing for his Persian expedi tion] offered repeated victims on the altar of the gods ; sometimes sac rificing one hundred buUs, and countless flocks of animals of aU kinds, and white birds, which he sought for everywhere by land and sea; so that every day individual soldiers who had stuffed themselves like boors with too much meat [at the idol-feasts], or who were senseless from the eagerness with which they had drunk, were placed on tho shoulders of passers-by, and carried to their homes through the streets from the pubUc temples where they had indulged in feasts which de served punishment rather than indulgence." — [Ammian. Marcellin. : " Roman History " : xxii. : 12: 6. XV. : p. 109. — "Let it be argued, as it easUy may — very learnedly — on grounds metaphysical, and on grounds ethical, that the Christian doctrine of Propitiation for sin (stated without reserve) is ' absurd,' and that it is 'impossible,' and that it is 'immoral,' and that it is every thing that ought to be reprobated, and to be met with an indignant rejection: — let all such things be said, and they wUl be said to the world's end — it wiU to the world's end also be true that each human spirit, when awakened toward God, as to His moral attributes, finds rest in that same doctrine of the vicarious sufferings of the Divine Person, and finds no rest untU it is there found." — [Isaac Taylor : ' ' Restoration of BeUef " ; Boston ed. , 1867 : p. 320. XVI. : p. 110. — "He, therefore, our God and Lord, . . declaring HimseU constituted a priest forever, offered up to God the Father His own body and blood under the species of bread and wine : and under the symbols of these same things He delivered His own body and blood to be received by His apostles, whom He then constituted priests of the New Testament ; and He commanded them, and their successors in the priesthood, to offer them ; even as the CathoUc Church has always un derstood and taught. . . And forasmuch as, in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the mass, that same Christ is contained and im molated in an unbloody manner, who once offered HimseU in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross ; the holy Synod teaches, that this NOTES TO LECTURE IV. 443 sacrifice is truly propitiatory, and that by means of it this is effected, that we obtain mercy, and find grace in seasonable aid, U we draw nigh unto God, contrite and penitent, with a sincere heart and upright faith, with fear and reverence." — [Canons and Decrees of CouncU of Trent : Sess. XXII. : cc. 1, 2. XVU. : p. 112. — "Shall I offer victims and sacrifices to the Lord, such as He has produced for my use, that I should throw back to Him His own gUts ? It is ungrateful, when the victim proper for sacrifice is a good disposition, and a pure mind, and a sincere judgment [or con science]. Therefore he who cultivates innocence supplicates God; he who cultivates justice makes offerings to God ; he who abstains from fraudulent practices propitiates God ; he who snatches man from dan ger slaughters the most acceptable victim. These are our sacrifices, these are our rites of God's worship ; thus, among us, he who is most just is he who is most reUgious. " — [Minucius Felix : ' ' 0 etavius " : xxxii. "IbeUeve that the true Christian phUosopher cannot but discern, through aU the deviations and all the aberrations in that history of the re ligious mind which he has to observe and to record during fifteen cen turies, and through aU the bitter contention and conflicting anathemas of priests and theologians, . . one sublime and original thought, which, even in dark misunderstanding and in deep corruption, constitutes the redeeming feature and the Divine power in the minds of behevers. This thought is nothing less than that great fundamental Christian idea of the reunion of the mind of mortal man with God, by thank ful sacrifice of seU, in Ufe, and therefore also in worship. The criti- caUy sffted and restored documents which I subjoin, [Reliquiae Litur gies] — speak that language with touching simplicity and irresistible energy." — [Bunsen : " Christianity and ]!__i___ind " : London ed., 1854: Vol. 7 : p. 4. XVTII. ; p. 113. — "Many stories are related of his youthful piety, his seU -inflicted austerities, and his charity. One day he met a poor woman weeping bitterly; and when he inquired the cause, she told him that her only brother, her sole stay and support in the world, had been carried into captivity by the Moors. Dominick could not ransom her brother ; he had given away all his money, and even sold his books to relieve the poor; but he offered aU he could,— he offered himseU, to be exchanged as a slave in place of her brother. The woman, aston ished at such a proposal, feU upon her knees before him. "—[Mrs. Jame son : "Legends of Monastic Orders"; London ed., 1872 : p. 360. A picture in one of the lunettes of the great cloister in the convent of San Marco at Florence, commemorates this action, early ascribed to the founder of the Dominicans who long occupied the convent. 444 APPENDIX. XIX. : p. 114. — '"Do not imagine, ' writes the Father Superior, ' that the rage of the Iroquois, and the loss of many Christians and many catechumens, can bring to nought the mystery of the cross of Jesus Christ, and the efficacy of his blood. We shaU die ; we shaU be captured, burned, butchered: be it so. Those who die in their beds do not always die the best death. I see none of our company cast down. On the contrary, they ask leave to go up to the Hurons, and some of them protest that the flres of the Iroquois are one of their motives for the journey. . . Thus died Jean de Brebeuf, the founder of the Huron mission, its truest hero, and its greatest martyr. He came of a noble race, — the same, it is said, from which sprang the EngUsh Earls of Arundel ; but never had the maUed barons of his line confronted a fate so appaUing, with so prodigious a constancy. To the last he refused to flinch, and 'his death was the astonishment of his murderers.' . . Lalemant, physically weak from chUdhood, and slender almost to emaciation, was constitutionaUy unequal to a display of fortitude like that of his coUeague. . . It was said that, at times, he seemed beside himseU : then, raUying, with hands uplUted, he offered his sufferings to Heaven as a sacrifice." — [Parkman : " Jesuits in North America"; Boston ed., 1880: pp. 316, 389-91: see, also, pp. 98, 214-33, 252-5, 303- 5; 405-7; et al. XX. : p. 116. — " I do not beUeve the ancients ever did use simul taneous harmony, that is, music in different parts ; for without thirds and sixths it must have been insipid ; and with them the combination of many sounds and melodies, moving by different intervals, and in different time, would have occasioned a confusion, which the respect that the Greeks had for their language and poetry would not suffer them to tolerate." — [Charles Burney: "Hist, of Music"; London ed., 1776: Vol. 1: p. 149. " Greek music was confined to twanging the gut-strings of instru ments made in the fashion of either the harp or the guitar, and to blowing reeds or pipes, analogous to the principle of our fife or flute, and our clarinette or hautboy. . . I feel therefore obUged to conclude, upon the evidence before us, that in the great days of Terpander, Al- caaus, Sappho, and Pindar, there was little that we could caU harmony, and that Music was practicaUy in a rude state." — [Mahaffy: "Rambles and Studies in Greece "; London ed., 1878: pp. 436, 450. "As to the practice of music, it seems to have been carried to no very great degree of perfection by the Romans ; the tibia and the lyre seem to have been the only instruments in use among them, and on these there were no performers of such distinguished merit as to render them worthy of the notice of posterity. . . Further we may venture to assert, that neither their religious solemnities, nor theh' triumphs, NOTES TO LECTURE IV. 445 their shows, or theatrical representations, splendid as they were, con tributed in the least to the improvement of music, either in theory or practice." — [Hawkins: "Gen. Hist, of Music"; London ed., 1776: Vol. 1: pp. xiv., xlviii. "Perhaps no one thing is more likely to strike the reader in the foregoing account than the very limited amount of invention among the Greeks, U there was even any at all, as to musical instruments. These seem to be aU Asiatic or African. Even the word ' lyre ' has not been traced to a Greek root, and we have representations of many- stringed lyres in Egyptian paintings before the Greeks were a nation. . . We can find no new principle for stringed instruments discovered by a Greek, nor anything new in pipes. AU was ready made for them, togetUer with their system of music. The Greeks were even inapt pupUs ; for although they had many strings ever before their eyes, they did but reduce the number, after a time, to bring the instru ments down to their own level. They practised a certain amount of harmony, but not so much as earUer nations. . . On a first perusal of Greek authors on music, I had formed a much higher estimate of the nation, in comparison with others, than a subsequent more general acquaintance will sustain. . . The Greeks played and sang in minor keys only, and their Seventh of the key was the old minor Seventh, a whole tone below the octave, in ascending as weU as descending." — [ChappeU: "Hist, of Music"; London ed., 1874: Vol. 1: pp. 302, 25. "It has been already stated that the musical scale and instruments of the Greeks, originaUy very narrow, were materiaUy enlarged by borrowing from Phrygia and Lydia ; and these acquisitions seem to have been first realized about the beginning of the seventh century B.C., through the Lesbian player Terpander, the Phrygian (or Greco- Phrygian) flute-player Olympus, and the Arkadian or Boeotian flute- player Klonas."— [Grote : "History of Greece"; London ed., 1872: Vol. 3: p. 299. For the great indebtedness of the Greeks to the Egyptians, in regard to music, see ChappeU's " History of Music," London ed., 1874: Vol. 1, pp. 47, 52, 60, 66, et al. XXI. : p. 117. — " We must however make some aUusion to the origin of this custom in the church, of singing responsive hymns. Ig natius, third bishop of Antioch in Syria from the apostle Peter, who also had conversed f amiUarly with the apostles themselves, saw a vision of angels hymning in alternate chants the Holy Trinity : after which he introduced the mode of singing which he had observed in the vision into the Antiochian Church, whence it was transmitted by tradition to aU the other churches. Such is the account which we have received in relation to these responsive hymns. " — [Socrates : Eccl. Hist. : VI. : 8. 446 APPENDIX. " The organ, that special creation of Christian art, alone worthy to mingle its mystic voice with the pomp of the only truly divine wor- ship, — the organ owes to the monks the perfection of its construction; and it is owing to them that it passed into general use. Cassiodorus, an illustrious monk of the sixth century, has given at once the most ancient and the most exact description of this king of instruments. . . Thus it is to an Ulustrious monk, St. Gregory the Great, that ecclesi astical music, the highest expression of the art, owes its origin. It is to a monk [Guido Aretino] that modern music owes the increase of simpUcity which has made its study less difficult. They were monks who in the soUtude of the Thebaid, as well as in the monasteries of the Black Forest, during fourteen hundred years, enriched the store of musical science by their researches and their treatises. 'They were, finaUy, poor monks who from the eighth to the tweUth century com posed, in the solitude of the cloister and under the inspiration of prayer, those immortal masterpieces of the Catholic titurgy, misunder stood, mutilated, parodied or proscribed by the barbarous taste of mod ern liturgists, but in which true knowledge does not hesitate to ac knowledge in our days an ineffable deUcacy of expression, an inimita ble mingUng of the pathetic and the powerful, the flowing and the profound, a soft and penetrating strength, and, to say aU in few words, a beauty always natural, always fresh, always pure, which never be comes insipid, and which never grows old." — [Montalembert: "Monks of the West"; London ed., 1879: Vol. VI. : pp. 241-2, 245-6. XXII. : p. 117. — "At the time of the institution of the Cantus Am- brosianus, an order of clergy was also established, whose employment it was to perform such parts of the service as were required to be sung. These were called Psalmista3 ; and though by BeUarmine and a few other writers they are confounded with the Lectors, yet were they by the canonists accounted a separate and distinct order." — [Hawkins: "History of Music"; London ed., 1776: Vol. 1: p. 1. "The first rise and institution of these singers [Psalmistae], as an order of the clergy, seems to have been about the beginning of the fourth century. For the CouncU of Laodicea is the first that mentions them, unless any one thinks perhaps the Apostolical Canons to be a Uttle more ancient. The reason of instituting them seems to have been to regulate and encourage the ancient psalmody of the church. For from the first and apostoUcal age singing was always a part of Divine service, in which the whole body of the church joined together. . , In after ages we find the people enjoyed their ancient privUege of singing aU together ; which is frequently mentioned by St. Austin, Ambrose, Chrysostom, BasU, and many others, who give an account of the psalmody and service of the church in their own ages." — [Bing ham: "Antiq. of Christ. Church": B. IH. : chap. vii. NOTES TO LECTURE TV. 447 " How greatly did I weep in Thy hymns and canticles, deeply moved by the voices of Thy sweet-speaking church ! The voices flowed into mine ears, and the truth was poured forth into my heart, whence the agitation of my piety overflowed, and my tears ran over ; and blessed was I therein ! . . At this time [under Ambrose] it was insti tuted that, after the manner of the Eastern Church, hymns and psalms should be sung, lest the people should pine away in the tediousness of sorrow:* which custom, retained from then tiU now, is imitated by many, yea, by almost aU of Thy congregations throughout the rest of the world." — [Augustine: "Confessions": IX.: 6, 7. XXTTT. : p. 118. — " We no longer employ the ancient psaltery, and trumpet, and timbrel, and flute, which those expert in war and con temners of the fear of God were wont to make use of in the choruses at their festive assemblies. But let our genial feeling in drinking be twofold, in accordance with the law. For U ' thou shalt love the Lord thy God,' and then 'thy neighbour,' let its first mamfestation be toward God, in thanksgiving and psalmody, and the second towards our neighbour in decorous feUowship." — [Clement of Alex. : "In structor " : II. : 4. " Whatever remains of the day, now that the sun is sloping toward the evening, let us spend it in gladness, nor let even the hour of repast be without heavenly grace. Let the temperate meal resound with psalms. You wUl provide a better entertainment for your dearest friends, U, whUe we have something spiritual to listen to, the sweet ness of reUgious music charm our ears." — [Cyprian: Ep. ad Donat. 16. " Between the two [husband and wife] echo psalms and hymns ; and they mutually chaUenge each other which shaU better chant to their Lord. Such things, when Christ sees and hears, He joys. To these He sends His own peace." — [TertulUan: ad Uxor. : H. : 8. " His palace [that of Theodosius Junior] was so regulated that it dtf- fered Uttle from a monastery; for he, together with his sisters, rose early in the morning, and recited responsive hymns, in praise of the Deity."— [Socrates: Eccl. Hist.: vn. : 22. "We ourselves have observed, when on the spot [in the Thehaid], many crowded together in one day, some suffering decapitation, some the torments of flames ; so that the murderous weapon was completely blunted, and having lost its edge broke in pieces ; and the executioners themselves, wearied with slaughter, were obliged to relieve one an other. Then, also, we were witnesses to the most admirable ardor of * Soldiers at the time surrounded the Basilica, to prevent the congregation from leaving it. The people and the Bishop remained thus shut up, in the buildings be longing to it, for several days. 448 APPENDIX. mind, and the truly divine energy and alacrity, of those that beUeved in the Christ of God. . . They received, indeed, the final sentence of death with gladness and exultation, so far as even to sing and send up hymns of praise and thanksgiving, until they breathed their last." — [Eusebius: Eccl. Hist.: vin. : 9. " I shaU say nothing of what he [the elder Valentinian] did at An tioch, except to mention his being struck with wonder at the freedom and cheerfulness of one most faithful and steadfast young man, who, when many were seized to be tortured, was tortured during a whok day, and sang under the instrument of torture, etc." — [Augustine : Civ. Dei ; xvm. : 52. XXIV. : p. 118. — From the multitudinous testimonies of great Chris tian writers to the spiritual efficacy of music, three may be selected :— "I am no musician, and want a good ear, yet I am conscious of a power in music which I want words to describe. It touches chords, reaches depths in the soul, which Ue beyond all other influences — ex tends my consciousness, and has sometimes given me a pleasure which I have found in nothing else. Nothing in my experience is more mys terious, more inexplicable. An instinct has always led men to transfer it to Heaven, and I suspect the Christian under its power has often at tained to a singular consciousness of his immortaUty. Facts of this nature make me feel what an infinite mystery our nature is, and how Uttle our books of science reveal it to us." — [Letter of Dr. Channing: " Life of J. Blanco White " ; London ed., 1845 : Vol. 3 : p. 195. " Let us take another instance, of an outward and earthly form, or economy, under which great wonders unknown seem to be typified; I mean musical sounds, as they are exhibited most perfectly in instru mental harmony. . . To many men the very names which the science employs are utterly incomprehensible. To speak of an idea or a sub ject seems to be fanciful or trifling, to speak of the views which it opens upon us to be chUdish extravagance ; yet is it possible that that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet so regulated, so various yet so majestic, should be a mere sound, which is gone and perishes ? Can it be that those mys terious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends in itself ? It is not so ; it cannot be. No : they have escaped from some higher sphere ; they are the out pourings of eternal harmony, in the medium of created sound ; they are echoes from our Home ; they are the voice of Angels, or the Mag nificat of Saints, or the Uving laws of Divine Governance or the Di vine Attributes ; something are they besides themselves, which we NOTES TO LECTURE IV. 449 cannot compass, which we cannot utter, — though mortal man, and he perhaps not otherwise distinguished above his feUows, has the gUt of eUciting them."— [J. H. Newman : "University Sermons"; London ed.,1880: pp. 346-7. " The interim of convenient rest before meat may both with profit and deUght be taken up in recreating and composing their travaUed spirits with the solemn and divine harmonies of Music heard or learned ; either whilst the skillful organist plies his grave and fancied descant in lofty fugues, or the whole symphony with artful and unimaginable touches adorn and grace the weU-studied chords of some choice com poser ; sometimes the lute, or soft organ-stop, waiting on elegant voices either to religious, martial, or civU ditties ; which, U wise men and prophets be not extremely out, have a great power in dispositions and manners, to smooth and make them gentle from rustic harshness and distempered passions." — [MUton : "Of Education": Prose Works; London ed., 1753: Vol. 1: p. 147. XXV. : p. 118. — " The exceUence of the Hebrew devotional hymns has never been surpassed. Heathenism, Christianity, with aU theie science, arts, Uterature, bright and many-colored, have little that ap proaches these. They are the despair of imitators; stUl the uttered prayer of the Christian world. TeU us of Greece, whose air was redolent of song; its language such as Jove might speak; its sages, heroes, poets, honored in every clime, — they have no psalm of prayer and praise Uke these Hebrews, the devoutest of men, who saw God always before them, ready to take them up when father and mother let them faU."— [Theo. Parker: "Discourse of Religion"; Boston ed., 1842: p. 372. XXVI. : p. 118. — " St. Jerome teUs us that 'at the funeral of the famous lady, Paula, the psalms were sung in Syriac, Greek, and Latin, because there were men of each language present at the solemnity.' . . Aurelius Cassiodore, writing upon these words of the Psalmist, ' She shaU be brought unto the king in raiment of divers colors,' says, ' This variety signified that diversity of tongues, wherewith every na tion sang to God in the church, according to the difference of their own country-language.'" — [Bingham: "Ajatiq. of Christ. Church": XIH: 4: §1. XXVII. : p. 119. — Canon Liddon gives the foUowing examples of " early apostoUcal hymns, sung, as it would seem, in the Redeemer's honour " : — 1 Timothy 1 : 15; 3 : 16; 2 Timothy 2 : 11-13; Titus 3:4-7; Ephe sians 5 : 14.— [Bampton Lectures ; New York ed., 1868: p. 327-8. 29 450 APPENDIX. To these may perhaps be added 1 Peter 3 : 10-12 ; with several passages in the Apocalypse.— [See Schaff: "Hist, of Church": Vol. I. : p. 464. XXVHI. : p. 119. — "Two or three hymns appear to have come down to us from a remote antiquity. BasU [who died a.d. 379] cites an Even ing Hymn by some unknown author, which he describes as in his time very ancient, handed down from their fathers, and in use among the people. "—[Coleman : ' ' Ancient Christianity " ; PhUa. ed. , 1852 : p. 333. The Greek form of this hymn is given by Daniel, Thesaurus Hynmo- logicus, IH. : 5 ; and the foUowing is one of the translations of it: — " Jesus Christ, Joyful Light of the holy ! Glory of the eternal, heav enly, holy, blessed Father! Having now come to the setting of the sun, beholding the evening Ught, we praise the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit of God. Thou art worthy to be praised of sacred voices at aU seasons, O Son of God, who givest Ufe : wherefore the uni verse glorifieth Thee." XXIX. : p. 119. — " 'Early in the morning they sing a hymn of praise to Christ as to a God,' are the words of Pliny. In the most ancient Greek Church this Hymn [the Gloria in Excelsis] is entitled ' The Morning Hymn.' The contents of this ascription of praise, here given in its original form, correspond entirely to the description of PUny. Christ is, in conjunction with the Father, the object of invo cation and praise. . . The first two verses — the angels' song of praise in the second chapter of Luke — are, as it were, the text for this more expansive Christian inspiration: the form. is that of the Jewish psalm ody."— [Bunsen: "God in History "; London ed., 1870: Vol. 3: p. 59. XXX. : p. 119. — The Hymn of Clement has been translated by Dr. H. M. Dexter, of whose fine metrical version the first and last stanzas are these : — " Shepherd of tender youth, Guiding in love and truth Through devious ways ; Christ, our triumphant King, We come Thy name to sing, Hither our children bring, To shout Thy praise I " So now, and till we die, Sound we Thy praises high, And joyful sing : Infants, and the glad throng Who to Thy Church belong, Unite to swell the song, To Christ, our King ! " [Schaff : ' ' Christ in Song " ; New York ed., 1868: pp. 675-6. NOTES TO LECTURE IV. 45 1 " Whatever psalms and hymns were written by the brethren from the beginning, celebrate Christ, the Word of God, by asserting his Divinity." — [Quoted by Eusebius, from another author: Eccl. Hist.: V. : 28. XXXI. : p. 119. — " We may make appUcation of all which has been here said to the metrical forms of the classical poetry of Rome. These the Church found ready made to her hand, and in their kind having reached a very high perfection. . . But these which she thus inher ited, while she was content of necessity to use, yet could not satisfy her. The Gospel had brought into men's hearts longings after the infinite and the eternal, which were strange to it, at least in their present intensity, until now. . . Now heaven had been opened, and henceforward the mystical element of modern poetry demanded its rights ; vaguer but vaster thoughts were craving to find the harmonies to which they might be married forever. The boundless could not be content to find its organ in that of which the very perfection lay in its limitations and its bounds." — [Trench: "Sacred Latin Poetry"; London ed., 1849: pp. 7, 8. XXXII. : p. 120. — "It [the Apostles' Creed] is not a logical state ment of abstract doctrines, but a profession of living facts and saving truths. It is a liturgical poem, and an act of worship. . . It is intel ligible and edUying to a chUd, and fresh and rich to the profoundest Christian scholar, who, as he advances in age, delights to go back to primitive foundations and first principles. It has the fragrance of an tiquity, and the inestimable weight of universal consent. It is a bond of union between aU ages and sections of Christendom. . . The Apostles' Creed is no piece of mosaic, but an organic unit, an instinct ive work of art, in the same sense as the Gloria in Excelsis, the Te Deum, and the classical prayers and hymns of the Church." — [Schaff: "Creeds of Christendom"; New York ed., 1877: Vol. 1: pp. 15,23. "I believe the words of the Apostles' Creed to be the work of the Holy Ghost ; the Holy Spirit alone could have enunciated things so grand, in terms so precise, so expressive, so powerful. No human creature could have done it, nor all the human creatures of ten thou sand worlds. This Creed, then, should be the constant object of our most serious attention. For myseU, I cannot too highly admire or venerate it." — [Luther: "Table-Talk": cclxiv. XXXni. : p. 121. — " It is now thoroughly recognized that there are five main Groups, or FamUies, of Liturgies ; which are distinguished from each other chiefly, though not solely, by the different arrange ments of their parts. Three of these are Oriental; one holds an inter- 452 APPENDIX. mediate position ; . . and one is purely Western. It is not easy to find a satisfactory nomenclature for these Groups. Sometimes they are connected with the name of the Apostle, or ApostoUc man, who evan gelized the locatity in which the chief Liturgy of each group is sup posed to have originated. Sometimes they are connected with the name of the Mother Church to which each chief Liturgy is thought to have belonged, viz., Jerusalem, Alexandria, Edessa, Ephesus, and Rome respectively. . . From an original Greek S. James sprang the numerous Syriac Liturgies (amounting to some eighty) and the Liturgy of S. BasU, belonging to Cesarea, and thence again that of S. Chrysos tom, belonging to Constantinople, on one side, and the Armenian Liturgy on the other." — [Hammond: "Liturgies, Eastern and West ern"; Oxford ed., 1878: pp. xvi., xvii. XXXTV. : p. 121. — ' ' But it satisfies me [placet] that U you have found any thing, whether in the Roman, the GaUic, or any other church, which may better please Almighty God, you shaU carefully select it, and shall estabUsh, by special instruction, in the church of the Eng Ush, which is yet new to the faith, whatever you may have been able to coUect from many churches. For things are not to be beloved on account of locaUties, but places are to be loved for the sake of good things. Choose, therefore, from individual churches, whatsoever things are pious, are religious, are correct ; and these, coUected as into one bouquet [fasciculum], place in customary use among the minds of the EngUsh." — [Gregory the Great : Answer to Augustine's Second Question. Bede : Hist. Eccles. : I. : xxvii. XXXV.: p. 121. — "Of the petitions which are comprised in our litany, it may be observed that they are generaUy of remote antiquity in the EngUsh church. MabUlon has printed a Utany of the Church of England, written probably in the eighth century, which contains a large part of that which we repeat at the present day, and which pre serves exactly the same form of petition and request which is stiU re tained. The still more ancient Utanies of the abbey of Fulda, of the Ambrosian missal, and of Gelasius, Patriarch of Rome, together with the Diaconica or Irenica of the Uturgies and offices of the churches of Constantinople, Caesarea, Antioch, Jerusalem, etc. — aU these ancient formularies contain very much the same petitions as the English Ut any. "—[Palmer : ' ' Origines Lit urgicae " ; Oxford ed. , 1836 : Vol. 1 : p. 288. XXXVI.: p. 122. — "One cannot but lament, during this Paschal season, the utter disuse [in the English service] of the Alleluia, which gave so joyous a character to more ancient services. So deeply was this felt among every class of people that one of the commonest of NOTES TO LECTURE IV. 453 April flowers stiU retains, in Sussex, the name of AUeluia. The fare- weU to Alleluia, in the Mozarabic rite, is touchingly beautiful. It here takes place on the first Sunday in Lent, the ancient commencement of the Fast. After that noble hymn, the Alleluia Perenne, the Capitula are as foUows: — 'AUeluia in heaven and in earth; it is perpetuated in heaven, it is sung in earth. There it resounds everlastingly ; here sweetly. There happuy; here concordantly. There ineffably; here earnestly. There without syUables ; here in musical numbers. There from the angels; here from the people.' . . So the French Breviaries, on this second Sunday after Easter, celebrate the return of AUeluia. After the beautiful lesson from S. Augustine — ' The days have come for us to sing Alleluia. Now these days come only to pass away, and pass away to come again, and typify the Day which does not come and pass away, to which, when we shall have come, clinging to it, we shaU not pass away' — they give the responses, etc." — [J. M. Neale : "Essays on Liturgiology " ; London ed., 1867 : pp. 65-6. XXXVII. : p. 122. — " They [the hours of prayer] were seven in number. Matins, the first, third, sixth, and ninth hours, vespers, and compline. Matins were divided into two parts, which were originaUy distinct offices and hours ; namely, the nocturn, and matin lauds. The nocturns or vigUs were derived from the earhest periods of Chris tianity. . . The lauds, or more properly matin lauds, foUowed next after the nocturns, and were supposed to begin with day-break. . . Prime, or the first hour, foUowed lauds. This was first appointed as an hour of prayer in the monastery of Bethlehem, about the beginning of the fifth century. The third, sixth, and ninth hours of prayer are spoken of by the early Fathers of the second and third centuries. . . Vespers, or evensong, is mentioned by the most ancient Fathers. . . Compline, or completorium, was the last service of the day. This hour of prayer was first appointed by the celebrated abbot Benedict, in the sixth century." — [Palmer : "Origines Liturgicae"; Oxford ed., 1836 : Vol. 1 : pp. 201-4. The sumptuous richness of these "Books of Hours" — making any elaborate and costly elegance of modern Editions de luxe common place in comparison — shows how wiUing a minister art was to piety in the Middle Age ; perhaps how far piety had become the fashion with the wealthy. In the catalogue of a single private EngUsh Ubrary — the " Huth Catalogue " — which happens to be at hand, are enumerated and described forty-four copies of the "Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis," in different languages, and the foUowing abridged description of one of these gives only a fair impression of a large class of such dainty and cherished volumes : — "A splendidly iUuminated MS. on 230 leaves of fine vellum, by a 454 APPENDIX. French artist of the first exceUence (7 by 5 inches). This beautUul volume is supposed to have been executed for Philip de Confines, and presented by him to some person of distinction. The large miniatures are thirty-seven in number, and many of them represent subjects of very unusual occurrence. [Among them are : Salvator Mundi, most ex pressively painted, with gold background ; St. John in Patmos, with a landscape of exquisite beauty; the virgin and chUd, in a jeweled frame ; the Adoration of the Magi, a very brilliant and delicate paint ing, with exquisite background; the Agony in the Garden, a wonder- fuUy painted night-scene; St. John the Baptist in the WUderness, a work of great beauty; St. Agatha seated in a garden, in a golden robe; etc., etc.] Besides these exquisite paintings, there are borders of very great beauty round every page, each one being entirely different. They are alternately painted in brUUant colors, and in a lustrous brown, heightened with gold. The Calendar is also treated in a simUar manner." A copy ofthe mere modern fac-simile of the famous "Hours of Anne of Brittany," made by M. Curmer in Paris, in 1861, has a com mercial value reckoned in hundreds of doUars. XXXVIII. : p. 123. — "Animism is not itseU a reUgion, but a sort of primitive phUosophy, which not only controls religion, but rules the whole Ufe of the natural man. It is the beUef in the existence of souls or spirits, of which only the powerful— those on which man feels him seU dependent, and before which he stands in awe — acquire the rank of divine beings, and become objects of worship. These spirits are con ceived as moving freely tlirough earth and air, and, either of their own accord, or because conjured by some speU, and thus under com pulsion, appearing to men. But they may also take up their abode, either temporarily or permanently, in some object, whether Uving or Ufeless it matters not ; and this object, as endowed with higher power, is then worshipped, or employed to protect individuals and communities." — [Tiele : "Hist, of ReUgion"; Boston ed., 1881 : p. 9. "To worship private gods, or new gods, or foreign gods, brings in a confusion of reUgions, with unknown ceremonies not recognised by the priests. It is accordingly proper that one worship the gods accepted by our ancestors, as they themselves submitted to this law. . . The Greeks, and we after them, judge better [than do the Persian Magi, who esteem the whole earth the common temple and house of the gods] ; who, in order to augment piety toward the gods, have preferred that they should inhabit the same cities which we ourselves do. For this opinion advances religion as a matter of great advantage to cities." — [Cicero : De Legibus : II. : 10, 11. "We have already seen that the proper destination of the HeUenic NOTES TO LECTURE IV. 455 temples was not to serve as places of religious assembly for pubUc devo tion, but that they secured a shelter for the image of the god, and a habi tation for the deity supposed to be attached to his image. . . In fact, they attributed to the haUowing rite, or consecration, by which the statue when finished was fitted for reUgious purposes, the power to attract the deity himself, so that he dwelt in the image as the soul does in the body. . . Thus the blessing of the image was described [by Minucius] as the act whereby the god was inducted into the image, and had a particular abode assigned to him." — [DolUnger : "The GentUe and the Jew"; London ed., 1862 : Vol. 1: pp. 239, 241. XXXIX. : p. 125. — " On the day when he pronounced these words [' the true worshippers shaU worship the Father in spirit and in truth '], he was indeed the Son of God. He for the first time gave utterance to the idea upon wliich shaU rest the edifice of the everlasting religion. He founded the pure worship, of no age, of no clime, which shaU be that of aU lofty souls to the end of time. Not only was his religion, that day, the benign reUgion of humanity, but it was the absolute religion : and if other planets have inhabitants endowed with reason and moral ity, their reUgion cannot be different from that which Jesus proclaimed at Jacob's weU. Man has not been able to abide by this worship : we attain the ideal only for a moment. . . But the gleam shaU become the fuU day, and, after passing through aU the circles of error, humanity wiU return to these words, as to the immortal expression of its faith and its hopes." — [Renan: "LUe of Jesus"; New York ed., 1864: p. 215. XL.: p. 126. — "The church is itseU this drama. It is a petrified mystery, a Passion in stone : or, rather, it is the Sufferer himseU. The whole edifice, amid the austerity of its architectural geometry, is as a living human body. The nave, extending its two arms, is the Man on the cross : the crypt, the subterranean church, is the Man in the tomb : the tower, the spire — it is still He, but erect, and rising to heaven. In the choir, which declines in the direction of the nave, you see His head drooping in the agony : you recognize His blood in the vivid purple of the windows. . . There is something here stronger than arms of Titans : What is it ? The breath of the Spirit ! That Ught breath which passed before the face of Daniel, carrying away kingdoms and dashing empires to pieces, it is that which has sweUed these vaulted arches, and wafted these towers to the sky. It has penetrated every part of this vast body with a powerful and harmonious Ufe, and has drawn out of a grain of mustard seed the vegetation of this marveUous tree. . . Ascend to those aerial deserts, to the last points of the spires, where only the slater mounts, in danger and with trembling, you will 456 APPENDIX. often find — left alone, under God's eye, to the stroke of the eternal winds — some deUcate piece of workmanship, some masterpiece of sculp tured art, in carving which the devout workman has occupied his life. Not a name is on it, not a mark, not a letter : he would have thought such a thing something subtracted from the glory of God " ! — [Michelet : " Histoire de France " ; Paris ed., 1855: Tom. II. : pp. 662, 673, 683. XLI. : p. 127. — "When the person that descended to Trophonius returns, the sacrificers immediately place him on a throne, which they caU the throne of Mnemosyne, and which stands not far from the ady tum. Then they ask him what he has either seen or heard, and after wards deUver him to certain persons who bring him to the temple of Good Fortune, and the Good Daemon, whUe he is yet full of terror, and without any knowledge either of himself or of those that are near him. Afterwards, however, he recovers the use of his reason, and laughs just the same as before. I write this not from hearsay, but from what I have seen happen to others, and from what I experienced myseU when I consulted the oracle of Trophonius." — [Pausanius: "Descript. of Greece": IX.: 39. "We went, first of all, to see the site of Trophonius' oracle. As the gorge becomes narrower, there is, on the right side, a smaU cave, from which a sacred stream flows to join the larger river. Here numerous square panels, cut into the rock to hold votive tablets, now gone, indi cate a sacred place to which pUgrims came to offer prayers for aid, and thanksgiving for success. The actual seat of the oracle is not certain, and is supposed to be some cave or aperture now covered by the Turk ish fort on the rock immediately above ; but the whole glen, with its beetling sides, its rushing river, and its cavernous vaulting, seems the very home and preserve of superstition." — [Mahaffy : "Rambles and Studies in Greece " ; London ed. , 1878 : p. 238. XLn. : p. 128. — "The Supreme Being, Brahma, is a cold Imper sonality, out of relation with the world, unconscious of His own exist ence, and of ours, and devoid of aU attributes and qualities. The so- caUed personal God, the first manUestation of the Impersonal, turns out on examination to be a myth ; there is no God apart from ourselves, no Creator, no Holy Being, no Father, no Judge — no one, in a word, to adore, to love, or to fear. And as for ourselves, we are only unreal actors, on the semblance of a stage. The goal already referred to, is worthy of such a creed, being no less than the complete extinction of aU spiritual, mental, and bodUy powers, by absorption into the Imper sonal." — [Jacob : "A Manual of Hindu Pantheism. The Vedanta- s__a"; Boston ed., 1881: p. 123. " It can scarcely be understood how the foUowers of an atheistical NOTES TO LECTURE TV. 457 creed can make, consistently with their opinions, an attempt at prayer. Such an act of devotion implies the belief in a being superior to men, who has a controlling power over them, and in whose hands their des tinies are placed. . . The Burmese, in general, under difficult circum stances, unforeseen difficulties, sudden calamities, use always the cry, Phra kaiba— God assist me — to obtain from above assistance and pro tection. . . Whence that involuntary cry for assistance, but from the innate consciousness that above man there is some one ruling over his destinies ? An atheistical system may be elaborated in a school of metaphysics, and forced upon ignorant and unreflecting masses, but practice wiU ever belie theory." — [Bp. Bigandet: " The LUe or Legend of Gaudama"; London ed., 1880: Vol. 1. : pp. 78-9 (note). XLm. : p. 128. — " Kumirila always speaks of Buddha as a Ksha- triya who tried to become a Brahman. For instance : ' And this very transgression of Buddha and his followers is represented as U it did him honour. For he is praised because he said, ' Let aU the sins that have been committed in this world fall on me, that the world may be delivered. ' It is said that U he thus transgressed the duty of a Ksha- triya, and entered the lUe of a Brahman and preached, it was merely for the good of mankind ; and that in adopting for the instruction of excluded people a law which had not been taught by the Brahmans, he took the sin upon himseU and was benefiting others.'" — [MtUler: "History of Sanskrit Literature"; London ed., 1859: pp. 79-80 (note). XLIV. : p. 131. — " But among us you wiU find uneducated persons, and artisans, and old women, who, U they are unable in words to prove the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds exhibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth ; they do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works." — [Athenagoras : "Plea for. Chris tians": xi. " The foUowing are the rules laid down by them [Christians] : ' Let no one come to us who has been instructed, or who is wise or prudent, for such qualifications are deemed evil by us ; but U there be any ig norant, or uninteUigent, or uninstructed, or fooUsh persons, let them come with confidence.' By which words, acknowledging that such individuals are worthy of their God, they manifestly show that they desire and are able to gain over only the sUly, and the mean, and the stupid, with women and children. "—[Celsus: quoted by Origen: HI. : 44. "Not only do the rich among us pursue our phUosophy, hut the poor enjoy instruction gratuitously; for the things which come from God surpass the requital of worldly gffts. Thus we admit aU who de sire to hear, even old women and striplings ; and, in short, persons of 458 APPENDIX. every age are treated by us with respect, but every kind of Ucentious- ness is kept at a distance."— [Tatian : ' 'Address to the Greeks " : xxxii. XLV. : p. 131. — " Thus do we render thanks to Thee, according to our feeble power, our God and Saviour, Christ ; supreme Providence of the mighty Father, who both savest us from evU, and impartest to us Thy most blessed doctrine : thus we essay, not indeed to celebrate Thy praise, but to speak the language of thanksgiving. For what mortal is he who shall worthUy declare Thy praise, of Whom we learn that Thou didst from nothing caU creation into being, and Ulumine it with Thy Ught : that Thou didst regulate the confusion of the ele ments, by the laws of harmony and order ! But chiefly we mark Thy loving-kindness, in that Thou hast caused those whose hearts inclined to Thee, to desire earnestly a divine and blessed Ufe; and hast provided that, like merchants of true blessings, they might impart to many others the wisdom and happiness which they had received — them selves, meanwhUe, reaping the everlasting fruit of virtue." — [Con stantine : Orat. to Assembly: xi. : (Eusebius' LUe ; pp. 258-9.) " Hence it [the martyr's death] is foUowed by hymns and psalms, and songs of praise to the aU -seeing God ; and a sacrifice of thanksgiv ing is offered in memory of such men, a bloodless, a harmless sacrifice, wherein is no need of the fragrant frankincense, no need of fire ; but only enough of pure Ught [of tapers] to suffice the assembled worship pers."— [p. 262.] XLVI. : p. 131. — "This rugged but fine old hymn, of which the author is not known, is probably of date as early as the eighth or ninth century ; such is Mohnike's conclusion. I have aUuded already to the manner in which these grand old compositions were recast in the Romish Church at the revival of learning, which was, in Italy at least, to so great an extent a revival of Paganism. This is one of the few which have not utterly perished in the process, in which some beauty has survived the transformation." — [Trench: "Sacred Latin Poetry"; London ed., 1849 : p. 291. NOTES TO LECTUEE V. Note I. : page 138.— "Table IV. : Prov. 1; as to the immediate de struction of monstrous or deformed offspring. — Prov. 11; relating to the control of the father over his chUdren, the right existing during their whole lUe to imprison, scourge, keep to rustic labor in chains, to seU or slay, even though they may be in the enjoyment of high state offices." — [Ortolan: "Hist, of Roman Law"; Prichard and Nasmith's ed., 1871 : pp. 106-7. The first of these Provisions is referred to by Cicero, De Leg. : HI. : 8. Dionysius, " Archaeologia," 2, 26, 27, is an authority for the nature and place of the second Provision. " The House Father had the jus vitas, necisque — the power of lUe and death over his chUdren. He could remove them from the famUy, either without further provision, or by way of sale. In matters of property, whatever the son acquired was held for his father's use. If a legacy were left to him, the father received it. If he made a con tract, the benefit of that contract, but not its burthen, enured to the father. The son was bound to marry at the father's command, but his wife and chUdren were not in his own Hand. They, like himself, were subject to the aU-pervading rule of the father. . . In a word, the son had no remedy, either civU or criminal, against his father, for any act, forbearance, or omission, of any kind whatever." — [W. E. Hearn: "Aryan Household"; London ed., 1879 : pp. 91-2. The statement of Coulanges is unquestionably correct : — "The law that permitted a father to seU or even to MU his son — a law that we find both in Greece and in Rome — was not established by a city. . . Private law existed before the city. When the city began to write its laws, it found this law already established, living, rooted in the cus toms, strong by universal observance." — ["The Ancient City"; New York ed., 1874 : p. 111. II.: p. 139.— "He [Claudius] next married Plantia UrgulanUla, whose father had had the honor of a triumph, and _3_tia Paetina, whose father was of consular rank. He divorced each ; UrgulanUla, on accoimt of the infamies of her lewdness, and the suspicion of mur* (459) 460 APPENDIX. der. . . Claudia, really the daughter of Boter, his own freedman, al though born five months before his divorce, he commanded to be ex posed, and to be thrown naked at her mother's threshold. " — [Suetonius : "Claudius": xxvi., xxvn. Minucius Felix refers to the exposure of chUdren to wUd beasts and birds, and the practice of crushing them by strangling into a miserable kind of death, as continuing in his day. — [" Octavius " : xxx. III. : p. 139. — "But now the new-born infant is cominitted to some Greek chambermaid, to whom is added one or another taken from among the slaves, very often the vilest of aU, and not fit for any serious office whatever. By the nonsensical stories and deceptions of these people, the tender and uninstructed minds are directly imbued; nor does any one in aU the house have the least thought of what he may say or do in the presence of the young master; whUe even the parents themselves accustom their little ones neither to probity nor to modesty, but to licentiousness and contemptuous talk." — [Tacitus: Orator. Dial.: xxix. IV. : p. 139. — "Let then these folties, which are hardly less than old-womanish, be expelled, representing that it is a miserable thing to die before one's time. . . These very persons, U a young chUd dies, think that this is to be borne with an undisturbed mind ; that U indeed an infant in the cradle dies, there is to be no complaint whatever. Yet from such a chUd nature has more sharply exacted the return of what she had given." — [Cicero: Tuscul. Quaest. : I.: 39. V. : p. 139. — " On the day on which he [Augustus] was born, when action was being taken in the Senate in regard to Catiline's conspiracy, and when Octavius, in consequence of his wUe's being in chUd-birth, came later than usual, it is a fact weU known and commonly reported that P. Nigidius, hearing the occasion of his tardiness, when he had learned the hour of the deUvery, declared that a master of the world had been born." — [Suetonius: " Octav. Augustus " : xcrv. Dion Cassius adds that he who had made the prediction then re strained Octavius, who was troubled at this, and determined to destroy the child; and that the matter was one of notoriety at the time.— [XLV. ; Leipsic ed., 1863: Vol. 2: p. 169. Possibly both spoke in jest; but the power of doing what Octavius threatened is implied in the jest. According to Herodotus, Hippocrates was advised by ChUon never to marry, or U he took a wife to send her away, U he had a son to dis own him. He disregarded the advice, and became _he father of Per sist, atus. — [I. : 59. NOTES TO LECTURE V. 461 " Within our own memory, the populace pierced with their sharp iron styles Erixo, a Roman knight, in the forum, because he had kiUed his son with whips. With difficulty did the authority of Augustus Caesar snatch him from the furious hands as weU of fathers as of sons." — [Seneca : De Clem. : I. : 14. VI. : p. 140. — " For now, in the first place, U you had been disposed to f oUow out my command, it was proper that she should be dispatched ; not that you should feign her death in words, and in reality give the hope of her Ufe. But this I omit : — compassion, maternal affection : I aUow it. But how weU was her future provided for by you I What did you wish ? Think. Most clearly your daughter was deUvered by you to this old woman ; either that through you she might get gain, or that the chUd might openly be sold."— [Terence: Heaut. : IV. : 1: 634-640. See also Apuleius: "Golden Ass": X. (Ep. 14). Vii. : p. 140. — "Nor was it in the power of the father to dispose of the chUd as he thought fit : he was obUged to carry it before certain Try- ers, at a place called Lesche ; there were some of the elders of the tribe to which the chtid belonged ; theh- business it was to caref uUy view the infant, and U they found it stout and weU-made, they gave order for its rearing ; . . but if they found it puny and Ul-shaped, they ordered it to be taken to what was caUed the Apothetae, a sort of chasm under Taygetus ; as thinking it neither for the good of the chUd itseU, nor for the pubUc interest, that it should be brought up, U it did not from the outset appear to be made to be healthy and vigorous. . . I myseU have seen several of the youths endure whipping to death at the foot of the altar of Diana, surnamed Orthia." — [Plutarch : ' ' Lives " ; Boston ed., 1859: Vol. 1: pp. 105, 108. VJJJL. : p. 140. — " The proper officers wiU take the offspring of the good parents to the pen or fold, and there they wiU deposit them with certain nurses who dweU in a separate quarter ; but the offspring of the inferior, or of the better when they chance to be deformed, they wiU conceal in some mysterious, unknown place. Decency wUl be respected."— [Plato: "RepubUc": v.: 460. ' ' With respect to the exposing or bringing up of chUdren, let it be a law that nothing imperfect or maimed shaU be brought up ; but, to avoid an excess of population, let some law be laid down, U it be not per- ^j mitted by the habits and customs of the people, that any of the chU dren born shaU be exposed ; for a Umit must be fixed to the population of the state. But if any parents have more chUdren than the number prescribed, .before life and sensation begin an abortion must be brought about."— [Aristotle: "PoUtics": vii. : 16. 462 APPENDIX. It wiU be remembered by those who have read Becker's " Charicles " that the discovery in manhood of a son who had been abandoned in infancy, is the fact by which that interesting and instructive portrait of Greek manners is brought to its climax : — " ' By Olympian Zeus ' ! shouted Sophilos, ' that man has found it ; and I am he. With this very ring I had my third chUd exposed, be cause, fool that I was, two male heirs seemed quite enough to me at that time. One-and-twenty years have roUed by since then ; that is thine age, and thou art my son'!" — [" Charicles; or Private Life of Ancient Greeks " ; London ed., 1866: p. 201. The plan of Plato to regulate the plays of chUdren by the state, has been Ulustrated in an extract from the " Laws " (vn. : 797) in a pre vious note. — [Lect. HI. : note XVH. IX. : p. 140. — "We destroy rabid dogs, we Irill a fierce and unman ageable ox, and on sick sheep we let drive the iron, lest they should infect the flock ; we deprive of Ufe unnatural offspring ; Ukewise we drown chUdren U they are born disabled and monstrous. It is not wrath, but reason, so to separate things useless from those that are sound." — [Seneca : De Ira : I. : 15. " Dost thou wish to know how sUght a benefit it may be thus to give lUe to a child ? If thou hadst exposed me [implying that this was at the option of the father], certainly it would have been an injury to have begotten me." — [De Benef. : III. : 31. Even Socrates, it is to be noticed, speaks carelessly, almost sneeringly, of the anguish of young mothers when their first chUdren were taken from them. — [Theatetus . 151. X. : p. 141. — "The mere tie of blood-relationship was of no account among the Romans. They used the words parens, parentes, in the strict sense of 'begetting,' and not as the English, who apply the term both to father and mother, nor as the French, who include in it the whole [body of] relations. . . The tie of famUy was not the tie of blood ; it was not the tie produced by marriage and by generation, but a bond created by civil law— a bond of power. . . This idea of power as the basis of the Roman famUy must be taken in its most absolute, most despotic sense. A single individual, the head, was the master, the pro prietor of aU the others, of all the patrimony ; body and estate, all were his. As for himseU, he was independent. "—[Ortolan : "Hist, of Roman Law"; Prichard and Nasmith's ed. , 1871: pp. 129, 578-79. "By the eldest, at the moment of his birth, the father, having begot ten a son, discharges his debt to his own progenitors : the eldest son, therefore, ought before partition to manage the whole patrimony. That son alone, by whose birth he discharges his debt, and through NOTES TO LECTURE V. 463 whom he attains immortaUty, was begotten from a sense of duty : the rest are considered by the wise as begotten from love of pleasure." — ¦ [Laws of Menu; ix. : 106, 107; Sir W. Jones' Works: London ed., 1807: Vol. 8: pp. 18, 19. XI. : p. 141. — " The greatest reverence is due to a boy : if you are making ready for anything base, do not despise the years of the child, but let your infant son stand in the way of the sin about to be com mitted. . . It is a matter for gratitude that you have given a citizen to your country and people, if you bring it to pass that he shaU be fit for service to the state, useful to her lands, useful in the transaction of af fairs both of war and of peace. For it wUl be a matter of the greatest concern in what pursuits and in what moral habits you shaU instruct him."— [Juvenal: Sat. xrv. : 47-49, 70-74. XH. : p. 142. — " The question which relates to the chUdren who were born free, and then exposed, and who, being afterward supported by others, have been trained in slavery, has often been discussed ; but nothing is found in the constitutions of the princes who preceded me which has been ordained for aU the provinces. . . I am therefore of opinion that the claim of those is not to be denied who legaUy demand their liberty upon this basis : nor is that tiberty to be re-purchased by paying the cost of what has been expended for their maintenance." — [Trajan to Pliny : Epist. x. : 72. This humane decision, however, was found to operate crueUy, in dis couraging the preservation of abandoned chUdren by those who found them, and so it was not maintained by later emperors. "Indeed I find nothing more suitable to the purpose [of aiding the poor] than that which I have myseU done. For five hundred thousand sesterces [$20,000], which I proposed for aid in the maintenance of free- born chUdren, I made sale of an estate of mine, worth much more, to the pubUc agent : the same estate I received back from him, with a rent-charge imposed of thirty thousand sesterces ($1,200), to be an- nuaUy paid. In this way the principal sum was safely secured to the state, nor was the revenue left uncertain ; and the estate, which far sur passes in value the rent-charge, wUl always find a master by whom it shaU be carried on. "—[Pliny; Ep. vn. : 18. XIH. : p. 142. — "Over the person of the chUd the father had origi nally a power of life and death. So the Lex Pompeia de paricidiis, enumerating the persons who could be guUty of parricide, or the murder of a blood relation, omits the father. But in later times this power was withdrawn. Hadrian condemned to deportation a father who in the hunting-field killed his son who had committed adultery with his step- 464 APPENDIX. mother. Constantine, A.D. 319, included killing by a father under the crime of parricide. Fathers retained the power of moderate chastise ment, but severe punishment could only be inflicted by the magistrate. . . It was originally at the option of the parent whether he would rear an infant or expose it to perish ; but in later times exposition was unlawful: (a.d. 374)." — [Poste: Comm. on Gaius' Instit. ; Oxford ed., 1875: p. 65. --TV. : p. 145. — " Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abor tion : nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born. Thou shalt not withdraw thy hand from thy son, or from thy daughter, but from their infancy thou shalt teach them the fear of the Lord. . . Thou shalt not issue orders with bitterness to thy maid-servant or thy man servant, who trust in the same God, lest thou shouldst not reverence that God who is above both." — [Ep. of Barnabas: xix. "But as for us [Christians], we have been taught that to expose newly-born chUdren is the part of wicked men ; and this we have been taught lest we should do any one an injury, and lest we should sin against God ; first, because we see that almost aU so exposed — not only the girls, but also the males — are brought up to prostitution; . . and again [we fear to expose chUdren], lest some of them be not picked up but die, and we become murderers."— [Justin Martyr; Apol. I.: 27, 29. "Therefore let no one imagine that this is aUowed, to strangle new born children, which is the greatest impiety : for God breathes into their souls for Ufe, and not for death. . . Can they be considered inno cent who expose their offspring as a prey to dogs, and, as far as it de pends on themselves, kill them in a more cruel manner than U they had strangled them ? Who can doubt that he is impious who gives occasion for the pity of others [to save his exposed chUd] ? For al though that which he has wished should befaU the chUd — namely, that it should be brought up — he has certainly consigned his own off spring either to servitude or to the brothel. . . It is therefore as wicked to expose as it is to kill." — [Lactantius: Div. Inst. : VI. : 20. XV. : p. 145. — The words of Irenaeus show how affectionately a relation of the Master's mission to infants was recognized in the second century, when he speaks of the Lord as "sanctifying every age by that period corresponding to it which belonged to Himself. For He came to save aU through means of HimseU — all, I say, who through Him are born again to God — infants, and chUdren, and boys, and young men, and old men. He therefore passed through every age, becoming an infant for infants, thus sanctifying infants : a chUd for chUdren, thus sanctifying those of this age, being at the same time NOTES TO LECTURE V. 465 made to them an example of piety, righteousness, and submission : etc."— ["Against Heresies": II. : 22: §4. Tertullian's energetic declaration in favor of deferring the baptism of infants shows how common in his time was the opposite practice : — "According to the circumstances, and disposition, and even the age, of each individual, the delay of baptism is preferable ; principaUy, however, in the case of little children. For why is it necessary . . that the sponsors Ukewise should be thrust into danger ? who both themselves, by reason of mortality, may faU to f ulfiU their promises, and may be disappointed by the development of an evU disposition [in the young chUd for whom they stand]. The Lord doth indeed say, ' Forbid them not to come unto me.' Let them come then, while they are growing up ; . let them become Christians [in baptism] when they have become able to know Christ. Why should the innocent period of Ufe hasten to ' the remission of sins ' ? " — [On Baptism : xviii. Origen, as is well known, treated Infant Baptism as "an 'apostolical tradition"; and Cyprian, with the consent of many Bishops, in the middle of the third century, would have as little time as possible inter vene between the birth and the baptism. — [Ep. lviii: (To Fidus). Justin Martyr, in his first Apology (ch. 15), speaks of "many, both men and women, who have been Christ's disciples from childhood, and who remain pure at the age of sixty or seventy years," and adds that he could " produce such from every race of men." This shows at least the early recognition of young chUdren in the household of be lievers. XVI.: p. 145. — "After this [the Hosanna] let the bishop partake, then the presbyters, and deacons, and sub-deacons, and the readers, and the singers, and the ascetics ; then, of the women, the deaconesses, and the virgins, and the widows; then the chUdren; and then aU the people in order, etc." — ["Apostolic Constitutions": viii. : 13 : (Third Cent.) " When, however, the solemnities were finished [of prayer and sup- pncation] and the deacon began to offer the cup to those present, and when, as the rest received it, its turn approached, the little chUd [hav ing been previously forced by the magistrates to partake of an idola trous sacrifice], by the instinct of the divine majesty, turned away its face, compressed its mouth with resisting lips, and refused the cup. Still the deacon persisted, and, although against her efforts, forced on her some of the sacrament of the cup. "—[Cyprian ; ' ' On the Lapsed " : xxv.- " The Oriental Churches, in conformity with ancient usage, stUl ad minister the Eucharist to infants. In the Coptic Church it may even happen that an infant is the only recipient. The Latin Church, on the 30 466 APPENDIX. other hand, in deference to modern feeling, has not only abandoned but actuaUy forbidden a practice which, as far as antiquity is con cerned, might insist on unconditional retention." — [Stanley: "Eastern Church"; New York ed., 1862: p. 119. ' ' If any one saith, that the communion of the Eucharist is necessary for little chUdren, before they have arrived at years of discretion : let him be Anathema." — [Council of Trent: Sess. xxi. : chap. iv. : can. 4. X VII. : p. 147. — The early Oriental feeling concerning woman may seem still to find expression in the Jewish worship of our day. In the morning service for the Jewish Sabbath, among other ascriptions of praise to God, are these : "Blessed art thou, O L6rd our God, King of the Universe! who hath not made me a Heathen. "Blessed art thou, 0 Lord our God, King of the Universe! who hath not made me a Slave. "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe! who hath not made me a Woman. " The women say : Blessed art thou, 0 Lord our God, King of the Universe! who hath made me according to His will." In " The Ethics," contained also in the Hebrew Prayer-Book, it is related that ' ' Jose Ben Jochanan, of Jerusalem, said, let thy house be wide open : and let the poor be thy domestic servants, and be not prone to much discourse with woman-kind : not even with thy wUe, much less with thy neighbor's wUe : hence the wise men say, whoever con verses much with women, bringeth evU on himseU, and thus neglects the study of the law, and at last wiU inherit heU." — [" Prayers of Is rael"; New York ed. (11th), 1870: p. 11; "Ethics": chap. 1: pp. 3, 5. Prof. Murray says, however, in speaking of the Temple-worship at Jerusalem : — "This regular choir was made up both of bass and soprano voices. The soprano parts were carried by female singers — this once disputed question is now very clear to aU scholars. Here, as so often elsewhere, the Jewish orthodoxy of modern times, in allowing no female singers in the Synagogue, represents not a knowledge but an ignorance of the past. In fact, I beUeve that all the restrictive regulations of the ser vice and the worship, as the Court of the Women, and many distinc tions inimical to them, are the outgrowth of later times and foreign influence."— [T. C. Murray: " Lects. on Psalms"; New York ed., 1880: pp. 307-8. This seems confirmed by the instruction of the Talmud : — "Love your wUe Uke yourseU, honour her more than yourseU. Whosoever lives unmarried, fives without joy, without comfort, with out blessing. . . He who forsakes the love of his youth, God's altar NOTES TO LECTURE V. 467 weeps for him. He who sees his wUe die before him, has, as it were, been present at the destruction of the sanctuary itself — around him the world grows dark. It is woman alone through whom God's blessings are vouchsafed to a house. She teaches the chUdren, speeds the hus band to the place of worship and instruction, welcomes him when he returns, keeps the house godly and pure, and God's blessings rest upon all these things." — [See Emanuel Deutsch : "Remains"; New York ed., 1874: p. 56. XVHI. : p. 148. — " The last extreme of popular Uberty is when the slave bought with money, whether male or female, is just as free as his or her purchaser ; nor must I forget to speak of the liberty and equahty of the two sexes in relation to each other." — [Plato: " Repub- Uc": viii. : 563. Cicero's commentary on Plato's doctrine on this point is : — "When the insatiate jaws of the populace are parched in thirst for liberty, and the people, instigated by evil . ministers, drains in that thirst a too untempered freedom, . . then it comes to pass that the father fears the son ; that the son neglects the father ; aU modesty is banished, that they all may become manUestly free. . . From which it results that even the slaves bear themselves as under sUght restraint; that wives possess the same legal privUege with their husbands ; in deed, in a liberty so excessive, even dogs, horses, and asses are finaUy emancipated, to rush about at their will." — [" De Repub." • I. . 43. XIX.: p. 148. — " With respect to manners [in a tragedy] there are four things to which one ought to direct attention : one, and the first, that they be good. . . But manners are to be found in each genus ; for both a woman and a slave may be good ; though perhaps of these, the one is less good, and the other is whoUy bad." — [Aristotle: "Poetic": XV. XX. . p. 148. — "The law which is the sequel of this, and of aU that has preceded, is to this effect, — 'that the wives of these guardians are to be common, and their chUdren also common, and no parent is to know his own chUd, nor any child his parent. ' " — [Plato : ' ' Republic " : V. : 457. "The proposal was that all wives and chUdren should be in com mon ; and we devised means that no one should ever be able to know his own chUd, but that all should imagine themselves to be of one family, and should regard as brothers and sisters those who were within a certain limit of age; and those who were of an elder genera tion they were to regard as parents and grandparents, and those who were of a younger generation as chUdren and grandchUdren. . . And 468 APPENDIX. you remember how we said that the chUdren of the good parents were to be educated, and the chUdren of bad parents secretly dispersed among the other citizens, etc." — [" Timaeus " : 18, 19. XXI. : p. 148. — "Nature had cried with a voice almost audible to wo man, ' to be respectable, you must be chaste. ' Athens had the audacity to say, 'to be prized and regarded among us, you must be unchaste.' . . In conformity with these views, the education which was denied to the woman of character was sedulously bestowed upon the woman who thus consented to purchase knowledge at the price of character. To sing, to dance, to play upon the lyre, to blow the single and the double flute, were accomplishments in which the hetaera was, from the ten derest years, caref uUy instructed ; and though Grecian manners did not admit of her appearing upon the stage, the habits of private lUe af forded ample opportunity for the display of these talents, and for ad vancing the fortunes of the possessor of them. . . The woman thus trained and educated became the companion of statesmen, of poets and phUosophers ; she lived and conversed with those who had the gift of immortaUty in their hands; and accordingly, whUe the modest but unlettered housewUe sank into oblivion, the hetaera became the subject of history; her birth was made an object of curiosity; her fortunes were caref uUy traced ; her bon-mots and sallies of wit were dUigently registered ; and after wearing a diadem, perhaps, during her lUe, she was buried in a tomb which, from its unrivaUed magnificence, a stranger to Athenian customs was apt to think dedicated to the most perfect of her heroes, phUosophers, or statesmen." — [Quarterly Review : Vol. 22 : pp. 190-194. XXn. : p. 148. — "The law of Solon declares that aU acts shaU be null and void, which are done by any one under the influence of a woman; much more, such a woman as that [the mistress of Olympio- dorus]. Wisely has the legislator provided." — [Demosthenes : Orat. adv. Olymp. : 1183. XXIH. : p. 148. — "If, again, I must say anything on the subject of woman's exceUence also, with reference to those of you who wUl now be in widowhood, I wUl express it aU in a brief exhortation : Great wUl be your glory in not faUing short of the natural character that belongs to you ; and great is hers who is least talked of among the men, whether for good or evU."— [Pericles' Funeral Oration: Thucydides: n. : 45. According to Plato, this celebrated oration was composed by Aspasia. "Menexenus": 236. XXIV. : p. 148.— " By a girl, or by a young woman, or by a woman NOTES TO LECTURE V. 469 advanced in years, nothing must be done, even in her own dwelling- place, according to her mere pleasure. "In chUdhood must a female be dependent on her father; in youth, on her husband ; her lord being dead, on her sons ; if she have no sons, on the near kinsmen of her husband ; U he left no kinsmen, on those of her father; if she have no paternal kinsmen, on the sovereign. A woman must never seek independence." — [Laws of Menu : chap. v. : 147-8. Works of Sir WUUam Jones ; London ed., 1807 : Vol. 7 : p. 269. "Without exception, they [certain native street-songs in India] de clared that lUe in India had become intolerable since the English crimi nal laws had begun to treat women and chUdren as U they were men. " — [Sir H. S. Maine : "VUlage Communities"; London ed., 1871 : pp. 115-16. "We are told by the same author [Megasthenes] that the Indians did not communicate their metaphysical doctrines to women ; thinking that if their wives understood these doctrines, and learned to be indif ferent to pleasure and pain, and to consider lUe and death as the same, they would no longer continue to be the slaves of others ; or, U they faUed to understand them, they wo uld be talkative, and communicate their knowledge to those who had no right to it. This statement of the Greek author is fully bome out by the later Sanskrit authorities." — [Max MiiUer : " History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature " ; London ed. , 1859 : p. 27. XXV. : p. 149.— "Man," said he [Confucius], "is the representative of Heaven, and is supreme over aU things. Woman yields obedience to the instructions of man, and helps to carry out his principles. On this account she can determine nothing of herseU, and is subject to the rule of the three obediences. When young, she must obey her father and elder brother; when married, she must obey her husband; when her husband is dead, she must obey her son. . . Woman's business is simply the preparation and supplying of wine and food. Beyond the threshold of her apartments she should not be known, for evU or for good. . . She may take no step on her own motion, and may come to no conclusion on her own deUberation." — [Legge : ' ' Chinese Classics " : Proleg. . Ch. V. : Sect. 11: § 7. After noticing the combination of two characters in the Chinese language to denote happiness, and inferring that ' the Chinese notion of happiness is simply represented by a mouth, fiUed with good rice,' Schlegel adds : "Another example of nearly the same kind is given by Remusat, with something of shyness and reserve: — the character desig nating woman, when doubled, signifies strUe and contention, and when tripled, immoral and disorderly conduct. "—[Frederick Schlegel: " Phi losophy of History " ; New York ed., 1841: Vol. 1: p. 164. 470 APPENDIX. XXVT. : p. 149. — " Even a man Uke MeteUus Macedonicus [Gibbon says Numidicus], who, for his honorable domestic Ufe and his nu merous host of children, was the admiration of his contemporaries, when Censor in 623 [A.U.C.] enforced the obligation of the burgesses to Uve in a state of matrimony, by describing it as an oppressive pubUc burden, which patriots ought nevertheless to undertake from a sense of duty.