llon s A^iSiiii:
 
 THE 
 
 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION
 
 THE 
 
 Beginnings of Religion 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS SCOTT BACON 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'the REIGN OF GOD— NOT "tHE REIGN OF LAW,'" ETC. 
 
 ' in tlje 'Begmtnng iuais tlje CKotn.' 
 
 
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 RIVINGTONS 
 WA TERL 00 PLACE, L OND ON 
 
 MDCCCLXXXVII
 
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 g CONTENTS 
 
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 Q_ PAGE 
 
 Prefatory Note, ........ vii 
 
 Chap. I. Religion in History, i 
 
 II. Materials for this — Research in the 
 
 Earlier History, and its Results, . . i6 
 
 CO ' ' 
 
 CO 
 
 °2 III. Natural Religion, 30 
 
 ^ j^IV^'The True Principles and Method of the 
 
 — . Use of Holy Scripture in this Inves- 
 
 "^ tigation, ....... 60 
 
 V. The Primitive Religion, . . . .100 
 
 VI. Language AND its Origin, . . . .132 
 
 VII. Primitive Words of Religion — Hebrew and 
 . its Cognate Languages, . . . 171 
 
 . VIII. Religion after the Loss of Innocence, , . 211 
 
 IX. The Dispersion, . . . . . . 242 
 
 X. The Patriarchs AND THEIR Age, . . . 262 
 
 XI. Other Religions — b.c. 2300-1800, . . 280 
 
 XII. Causes and Process of the Great Defec- 
 tion, ........ 320 
 
 XIII. Abraham to Joseph, 349 
 
 XIV. The Exodus, 379 
 
 XV. Origin of Writing, 389 
 
 XVI. Book of Moses — Ten Commandments, . . 406 
 XVII. Other Religions — b.c. 1800-1500, . . . 420 
 
 299279
 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chap. XVIII. Israel, 'the People of God' — Moses 
 
 TO Samuel, 424 
 
 XIX. Other Religions — b.c. 1500-1000, . . 434 
 
 XX. Israel — David to Daniel, . . . 438 
 
 XXI. Other Religions — e.g. 1000-500, . . 455 
 
 XXII. The Jews — From the Captivity to the 
 
 Advent, 483 
 
 XXIII. Other Religions — 500 b.c. to a.d., . 489 
 
 XXIV. Review of this Inquiry, and its 
 
 Results, 496
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 This book is simply ' An Essay,' to state what, 
 upon the whole, according to facts and true reason- 
 inofs, we ouo^ht to think of the beo^inninof and course 
 of Religion among mankind, and the substantial 
 truth of it now. I know very well that such a 
 history within five hundred pages or so must be 
 very much less full than those who have time enough 
 for a complete investigation may well wish to have. 
 But then there are many others who might like 
 to read as much as this, but be discouraged and kept 
 from it entirely by a large book. And there are 
 very many more yet who ought to take as much pains 
 to inform themselves, and perhaps may when it is 
 offered within small compass. 
 
 Yet, on account of this abbreviation, the author 
 may be accused, by some who are displeased at his 
 statements, of ignorance, bigotry, and presumption. 
 It is a severe self-denial thus to give often only the 
 results of such study and thought, instead of a fuller 
 account, which would fortify him in advance against 
 attacks which may be made by those who may accuse 
 him of bold assertions of what has no truth, and of 
 mere denial of what others have proved. And since 
 his very purpose has been throughout to leave no
 
 viii PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 important part of the subject not explored, and care- 
 fully considered as to different opinions which are 
 put forth by eminent writers, it would be a great 
 pleasure to set forth now and fully his own process 
 in this, as well as the result. 
 
 But then, having effected his main purpose, as 
 already indicated, for the benefit of the many who 
 are confused and misled by confident and contemp- 
 tuous assertions of what they have no opportunity of 
 investigating for themselves, he will be very glad 
 if the opportunity offers to argue fully with any 
 objectors, and to admit with prompt candour any 
 errors which may be shown. 
 
 He has therefore endeavoured to read with 
 attention and fairness all that professes to set forth 
 the facts upon which that just judgment should be 
 founded — all the traditions and records of the earlier 
 history ; all the later researches and discoveries ; 
 above all, not to misapprehend, much less misrepre- 
 sent, the later writers, whose opinions are now 
 generally received by reading people, but who, he 
 believes, are in this mistaken, and so the cause of 
 error in others. 
 
 Yet he freely and with humility acknowledo-es 
 that he is far from being an original investigator in 
 all these things, or from having been able to read all 
 about them that is worth reading. Indeed, in our 
 time this reading (and study) is an immense affair, 
 which no man's whole time or intelligence can fully 
 compass. If it could, he would read to very litde 
 effective use. His memory would fail, or become a
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. ix 
 
 vast lumber-room of particulars, without order, in 
 which he himself could find nothing without difficulty, 
 much less make it of any use to others. There must 
 be * specialists ' now in study. 
 
 At the same time it is the right of all intelligent 
 readers — especially in a matter concerning each of us 
 alike, as Religion does — to form some judgment of 
 their own upon what these special scholars tell them. 
 Each of these last cannot reasonably say to every 
 one else, ' You have no right to differ from me, for 
 you are not a special student of this matter ; you 
 have simply to believe all I tell you of it.' 
 
 On the contrary, he does good service to all the 
 rest of us who takes the pains to explain the various 
 dicta of various specialists, and to show what the 
 general reader may fairly decide as to the chief facts. 
 This is the more important from the tendency of the 
 special student to exaggerate the importance of his 
 department, and to disallow another order of facts 
 which he fancies to be against his results. One 
 thing is safe for each of us. If he cannot search out 
 the processes of the specialist and enthusiast in some 
 one direction, he can take the results of the latter, as 
 he himself gives them, and show their bearing and 
 value as to other facts. 
 
 The writer is not aware of there being any other 
 book of our time which takes due notice of the 
 researches and discoveries of our own century in these 
 matters, and also allows enough to the learning of the 
 past ; or traverses all the ground of this question, as 
 is here attempted. The principal instance of this
 
 X PRE FA TOR V NO TE. 
 
 omission is that all these writers who are now 
 generally allowed the greatest authority, both as to 
 research and reasoning, assume as self-evident that 
 mankind began to be religious at all, to have thoughts 
 of Divine persons, and to practise worship of them — 
 began this by their own reflections, discoveries, and 
 inventions. This seems taken for granted by all, 
 whether the further argument is that this invention 
 of religion was the instinct of every human soul, all 
 moving together to evolve an actual religion in each 
 people ; or the deep meditation of one or of several 
 such more intellectual men, afterwards influencing 
 the rest. 
 
 It seems to be altogether forgotten (or only men- 
 tioned as one of the amusing follies of the bigotry of 
 the dark ages)^ that there is another 'theory,' if we 
 will so denominate it, which deserves careful attention, 
 which cannot wisely be passed by unnoticed by any 
 who are in search of real truth. This is, that from 
 the very first mankind received the suggestion and 
 information of true religion immediately from God, 
 the Creator, as much as the child now religiously 
 educated does from his elders around him. 
 
 In this case Religion must have begun at once with 
 purity and perfection. In the other it was a very slow 
 growth from the feeblest and scarcely noticeable first 
 movement. Upon the former supposition all that is 
 false in any actual religion is subsequent perversion ; 
 
 1 So Prof. M. Muller deals with it. Mr. Baring-Gould {Origm and 
 Development of Religious Belief i. 6i) refutes (!) it (as he thinks) in a page 
 mainly upon the ' testimony ' of a French gentleman of our century. We 
 shall see that the grounds for believing it are quite beyond such refutation.
 
 PRE FA TOR V NO TE. xi 
 
 all that is true is a remnant of the Divine beginning. 
 In the other, Religion is supposed (at least by those 
 who have a consistent theory) to be always a progres- 
 sive evolution of what is true (and elimination of what 
 is false). Then whatever is later in time is truer in 
 fact. All is subject to the intelligence and invention 
 of men. This age is wiser than any before it, A 
 future age will smile at the imperfect religion of our 
 day, and only guess and wonder what will be the still 
 better religion of the future. 
 
 For myself, I became, upon reflection, entirely con- 
 vinced that the second * theory ' mentioned deserved 
 more attention than it has of late received. If there 
 is anything in it at all worth notice it ought to be 
 thoroughly and vigorously tested by all the facts. 
 Indeed, if true, it is that very master-key to all the 
 puzzles of ' Comparative Religion,' which candid in- 
 vestigators must desire above all things. If not true, 
 let that now appear, and then let it be dismissed from 
 attention. 
 
 That it is not so absurd as to deserve no atten- 
 tion is plain from the following quotation out of the 
 writings of one whom all agree to have been among 
 the most wise, fair-minded, and deep-thinking of 
 mankind.^ 
 
 ' It is evident, then, that there can be no peculiar 
 presumption, from the analogy of nature, against sup- 
 posing a revelation, when man was first placed upon 
 the earth. And, that there does not appear the least 
 intimation in history or tradition that Religion was 
 
 1 Butler's Analogy, Pt. ll. chap. ii. p. 214 ; Bohn's edition.
 
 xii PRE FA TORY NO TE. 
 
 first reasoned out; but the whole of history and 
 tradition makes for the other side — that it came into 
 the world by revelation. Indeed, the state of Religion 
 in the first ages of which we have any account, seems 
 to suppose and imply, that this was the original of it 
 among mankind. And these reflections together, with- 
 out taking in the peculiar authority of Scripture, amount 
 to real and a very material degree of evidence that 
 there was a revelation at the beginning of the world.' 
 
 I venture to suggest that the inattention to this 
 now prevailing has come, at least in part, from the 
 very strange mistake of those great men — even Butler 
 himself— who thus once affirmed it, in mentioning it 
 as probable truth, and then entirely omitting it from 
 all their subsequent reasoning ; whereas, if truth, it 
 was truth of the first magnitude, and of essential 
 urgency to the very argument they had in hand. I 
 conjecture that this mistake arose from the misleading 
 prejudice against truth as given to mere faith, which 
 all philosophy works even in the most intellectual 
 Christians. 
 
 I must also mention now what will be fully shown 
 hereafter (see Chap. V. p. loi, etc.) that the central 
 point of such a primitive religion must have been the 
 law of love to God and man, as distinctly given then as 
 it was afterwards renewed by our Lord. Perhaps the 
 utter failure to notice this by the writers I have referred 
 to is the reason why they have made so little of that 
 revelation. In any case I fully accept the issue that 
 this is the vital point of my own contention, and which 
 cannot be sustained if this not maintained.
 
 PRE FA TOR V NO TE. xiii 
 
 Professor M. Mliller merely mentions the 'theory' 
 of primitive revelation to show what follies were once 
 accepted by all Christian writers, and not as being 
 worth his refuting— classing it with the notion of 
 Hebrew being the original language of mankind, the 
 ' Ptolemaic system,' etc. But is it not worth (9?^r con- 
 sideration that, besides so many others of the wisest 
 students of Divine things, one of the most profound, 
 original, and exact thinkers a century ago declares 
 that there is ' real and a very material degree of 
 evidence ' for it ? 
 
 I am unable to see why what Butler speaks of in 
 this way is unworthy of the serious consideration 
 of any one in this generation. Is it because the 
 former knew nothing of the Sanscrit language, and 
 some in our day do know enough of it to confound 
 the rest of us ? Grant all that is claimed in reason 
 for that learning (and we are certainly unable to 
 prove the contrary, any more than as if the only 
 survivor of an expedition into the interior of Papua 
 should discourse of the value of its literary remains), 
 does it follow that what the older scholars concluded 
 from the stones of Greek, Roman, and Hebrew 
 monuments, and from the (if you will) supposed 
 superior and certain communications of God Him- 
 self to all mankind, is of no weight with truth- 
 loving people now ? While I am also trying to see 
 without prejudice what the earlier language and 
 ancient writings of the Hindus can add to our 
 former knowledge of these matters, I cannot so 
 think. It seems to me, indeed, a very unwholesome
 
 xiv PRE FA TOR V NO TE. 
 
 State of mind which takes no notice of the great 
 inferiority, as a whole, of the Sanscrit to the Hebrew 
 writings ; of the prodigious quantity of the chaff of 
 silly superstition and childish trifling in which the 
 few grains of thought are to be found in the former ; 
 while the latter (I speak only of Holy Scripture), if 
 sometimes obscure, never lose the respect of the 
 reader. For the former, certainly Professor M tiller's 
 translations are a fair test, both in the selection of 
 the best specimens, and in their rendering into 
 English (of which he is, as we can all see, an admir- 
 able master) for those who can only know them in 
 that language. 
 
 I am not without hope that this book may also 
 be of some use to students of the Holy Scriptures, 
 especially preachers and other expositors, showing, 
 from a point of view which is not common, the depth 
 of meaning there is in some passages, which might 
 otherwise escape attention. If it did no more than 
 this, the author would be well repaid for his work. 
 It is one of the noblest uses of study to help others 
 in a right apprehension of anything in the Book of 
 books. For this purpose a careful index of such 
 references is appended. 
 
 Finally, if it seem to any a departure from the 
 impartial exactness of history that the writer speaks 
 at times with such positiveness and ardour of con- 
 viction, this is not at all from negligence, but of 
 purpose. There is nothing he has so much endea-
 
 PRE FA TOR V NO TE. xv 
 
 voured in at all as entire truthfulness ; but his own 
 most well-considered judgment is that he would 
 have sacrificed, and not promoted, truth by an attempt 
 to be coldly impartial as between what God has 
 revealed to men, and the mere achievement of their 
 minds. In that case man is invariably most unfair 
 to the Divine, and most unjust to himself and his 
 fellow-men. Such pretended impartiality is a morbid 
 perversion of the love of truth, which frustrates its 
 professed object. For my own part, if as regards 
 this I were now to make my choice between the 
 unanimous applause of my fellow-men for that sort of 
 ' impartial ' genius for history and their condemna- 
 tion and contempt, as failing in this from religious 
 prejudice, my prompt and cheerful choice would be 
 the latter.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 RELIGION IN history: AN ATTEMPT TO FOLLOW IT UP FROM THE 
 TIMES OF AUGUSTUS CESAR TO ITS BEGINNING. 
 
 The Religion of mankind, as a fact of history and of our own 
 time, includes many ' religions.' Whether there is anything 
 common to all these which makes it right to use the one 
 term or not, it is a most interesting question how they all in 
 fact began. To say nothing of this being a matter of inces- 
 sant concern to each one of us, it is allowed on all hands in 
 our age to be one of the most curious intellectual problems 
 as to what the different nations and races mean or have 
 meant by their ' religions.' 
 
 What do we mean by Religion ? Is it not obscuring the 
 matter, not to say mere pedantry,' to go to Latin etymology 
 to fix the meaning of what began a thousand years before 
 this Latin word was spoken, and of which certainly the old 
 Romans are not the most instructive authorities ? In the 
 present inquiry Religion means that, besides w^hat men have 
 to do with their fellow-men, they have a belief in another 
 person or persons, whom they think to be superior to their 
 kind, and to have some power over them, to whom they do 
 acts of worship or obedience. Of these, whether really 
 existing or not, they know nothing directly by their bodily 
 senses, as they do of men, but by ' faith ' or thought. 
 
 In tracing the beginnings of this in history backwards 
 to its sources, if possible, we do not need to start from the 
 present. We can spare much labour by commencing with 
 what, by all consent, is a great fixed point. Our very calen- 
 dars and dates, in effect, witness continually that less than 
 1900 years ago a purer religion than prevailed anywhere else 
 
 ^ Of course I refer to such resolving it, as one sometimes reads, by deriving 
 religio from re-ligare, etc. etc. 
 
 A
 
 2 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 began, and has since spread and prevailed in Europe and 
 America. But this religion also recognised a certain other 
 religion, which had been practised before it as a true one 
 until then, but to be thenceforth superseded by itself as the 
 only truth for all mankind. Whatever we may judge as to 
 this and related questions at the end of the present inquir>% 
 this is plainly the best point at which to begin that inquiry. 
 I We have as our material in tracing back the religions of 
 
 men, first the Hebrew history already mentioned, connected 
 with the Christian religion, and, like that, involving the 
 belief of One Personal Creator and Eternal God. Secondly, 
 the Greek and Roman history, and traditions as to their 
 religion, made up as that was of polytheism and mytholog}' 
 and idolatry, or image-worship. Thirdly, the Egyptian his- 
 tory, if it can be called so, of monuments and inscriptions, 
 telling of a polytheism and idolatry if possible more absurd 
 than that of the Greeks. Fourthly, fragments of history in 
 the Assyrian regions of various national religions, mainly 
 idolatrous, but in some instances rejecting the notion of a 
 multitude of gods ; yet either worshipping the sun, moon, 
 and planets, or the great forces of heat and light ; or having 
 two spiritual gods to divide their latria between — one the 
 Supreme Good, the other the Supreme Evil. Fifth, Hindu 
 history. Strictly speaking, there is no connected and 
 traceable history of India so early as this. We have some 
 very ancient and interesting writings, but of uncertain date. 
 This prevents our connecting them by any clue of chrono- 
 logy with any real history in this inquiry. They are a mass 
 of precept, philosophy, and fable, which a living priesthood 
 now claims to interpret by an oral tradition that gives no 
 reasonable guarantee of correctness. This is also confused 
 by the rivalry amongst them of two opposing religions : one 
 an older idolatry and polytheism ; the other a later schism 
 from this, professing to be a great spiritual and moral reforma- 
 tion. At this day there seems no notable excellence of one 
 of them over the other (see a comparison of them in detail, 
 Chap. XXI.). Sixth, Chinese religion, so far as it is historical, 
 is either Buddhist, following the later of the two Hindu 
 religions just mentioned, or another sort of gross idolatry, 
 or is that of the famous Confucius, who (somewhat like
 
 RELIGION IN HISTORY. 3 
 
 Comte, the Frenchman of our generation) seems to have 
 believed in nothing spiritual or eternal, only in what men 
 can do now in this world of their senses to make themselves 
 comfortable. Nor is there any connected Chinese history 
 of this period to assist us in our present inquiry. 
 
 Seventh, and finally, it is only by some few fragments, 
 reports, or researches of modern travellers, that w'e know a 
 little of the traditions of religion among the wild tribes of 
 / Asia, Africa, America, and the Ocean Islands. 
 
 It seems very plain that we shall have to make our first 
 search in the first three or four of these. To be sure this is 
 not the method most in vogue now. But it seems strange — 
 strangely against common sense — that in tracing back from 
 the advent of Our Lord the various clues of history as to 
 the origin of religious thought among men, it has of late 
 seemed the fashion of scholars to pass by the definite, clear, 
 and trusty thread (at least in comparison of any others we 
 have) of the Hebrew writings, and go, e.g. to those of the 
 Hindus, which are their opposites in each of these condi- 
 tions of value. If some absurd notion of honour (how can 
 any real sense of honour ever require deviation from truth .'') 
 forbid the Christian (i*) investigator to begin with what is so 
 close to his own religious prepossessions, why not take up 
 first the Greek and Roman history, which are next in ful- 
 ness and precision, and illustration by what is the common 
 knowledge of civilised man } 
 
 This almost suggests that this late fashion of research is 
 purposely directed to what is the most ill defined and uncer- 
 tain, and the professed knowledge of which is confined to 
 the fewest persons, so that men may disguise their own 
 fancies as discoveries of History, and find shelter for them- 
 selves from confutation behind that inability to disprove 
 their assertions which has been the safety of other ' travel- 
 lers' tales.' 
 
 Certainly you and I are not bound to follow others in 
 that faulty method. So we will begin with the undisputed 
 fact that before the Christian religion the Hebrew people, Jjj^ 
 and they alone, had long had a belief in One God, the 
 Creator of all else. They had writings, dating back, they 
 believed, fifteen centuries, which they also believed to be the
 
 4 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 word of this God to them. In all the nations around them 
 were various religions of many gods and of idol-worship. 
 Such had been the religious beliefs of all the great nations, 
 far outnumbering them, and by whom they had been 
 repeatedly subjugated — and especially at this very time of 
 the mighty Romans, masters of them and all other lands 
 around the Mediterranean Sea. These ' Judseans,' as they 
 were then universally called, were also found scattered 
 through all those countries as trading adventurers, much as 
 they are now throughout the world, and in each city they 
 would have their * synagogue,' or place of religious assembly, 
 where their holy writings were read, and other religious 
 instruction given to their children and the rest of their 
 people. Thus they made no attempt to conceal how dif- 
 ferent their religion was from all others ; how, in fact, they 
 considered all other religions as false, impious, and abomin- 
 able. But neither, on the other hand, did they try to convert 
 others to this religion of theirs. They rather preferred to 
 consider it as one of their marks of superiority to all other 
 men — of their being the exclusive possessors of Divine 
 favour. This is one reason why they were generally disliked 
 by other people. For all that, their peculiar belief as to 
 there being only One true God, Whom they worshipped, 
 became widely known, and could not fail to have some effect 
 upon the thoughts of many others besides the very few who 
 accepted it as the truth, and who sought and were allowed 
 admission among them as ' proselytes.' 
 
 The curious inquirers and speculators in those days^ 
 called ' philosophers,' studied this ' new thing,' because this 
 doctrine of One God was something like one of the abstract 
 questions debated among them. But there is no proof that 
 their attention to the religion of the Jews ever went beyond 
 this curiosity about one or two things. Yet probably the 
 Scriptures of the Old Testament found some readers among 
 the Greeks, especially after their translation into that 
 language, within the two or three hundred years before the 
 Christian era. If so, we may believe that such reading 
 made a much deeper impression upon a thoughtful Pagan, 
 and affected him with an awe of their sublime purity and 
 power, far beyond what he would have got from the dis-
 
 RELIGION IN HIS TOR Y. 5 
 
 course of any Jew of that day. We cannot possibly know 
 (or on the other hand with fairness utterly reject the sup- 
 position) how far the coincidences between the Hebrew 
 Scriptures and some of the best sayings and acts of the 
 Pagans of those ages may have come, even though uncon- 
 sciously, from their contact with those writings. It was, 
 indeed, a remarkable age for the confused mixing of the 
 religious thoughts and rites of different races and nations, 
 as we shall later more fully see. 
 
 Those writings are a very remarkable and curious collec- 
 tion. No scholar or investigator of such matters now 
 questions that they are of great interest for his purposes. 
 They contain within a moderate space the entire history, 
 religion, laws, and thought of a nation (even though it be a 
 small one) for ages. For like research as to the_Greeks, 
 Romans, or Indians, we must collect much material from 
 many quarters, and are never sure that something very 
 important is not wanting. The genuine explorer of History, 
 even if these writings had no more sacredness to him than 
 Rollin, could not but be delighted with such a complete and 
 closely connected record of a community for some hundreds 
 of years back of all other distinct history. And to increase 
 this advantage, there was a system of public ceremonies, of 
 like antiquity, exactly parallel with the books, enjoined in 
 them, and corroborating and preserving them, — the Hebrew 
 people believing these writings to be the word of the One 
 true God to them, and that the part of it containing their 
 law and their earliest history had been written down by a 
 great prophet, whom God inspired for this purpose, and gave 
 him power to do vast prodigies in proof of this authority. 
 The other Holy Scriptures they believed had been written 
 by various other like prophets of God during the succeeding 
 ages, for their instruction or reproof; but that now for some 
 four hundred years there had been no more such prophets. 
 They believed, however, that one more was to appear, who, 
 in fact, would be the greatest, and would be their victorious 
 king, setting them above all other nations on the earth. 
 (This last part of their belief must have seemed extremely 
 ridiculous to people of all other religions.) 
 
 All these other religions had very much in common, and
 
 6 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 it was quite easy for a man to pass from one to the other, as 
 he changed his residence from the country where one pre- 
 vailed to another. The belief of many gods made it easy 
 to suppose that those which a man properly worshipped in 
 one country had no authority in another where the law 
 recognised other gods. ' The notion that one's native deities 
 were really the same persons as were adored -under another 
 name elsewhere easily mingled itse lf with this. \ 
 
 Not so with the religion of the Jews. They not only 
 believed that the God Whom they worshipped was especially 
 their God, but that He was the only true God ; that all 
 other religions were false and wicked, an incessant sin and 
 sacrilege against the only proper object of worship — the 
 Creator and absolute Lord of all other men as well as them- 
 selves. They made no attempt to soften or conceal this 
 exclusive and censorious aspect of their own religion from 
 their masters the Romans, or other Pagans, whom it might 
 be to their interest to please. They seemed to them rather 
 to have a fierce and gloomy pleasure in this, as some 
 revenge for their subjection, which they bore with less 
 patience than almost any others of the vassals of Rome. 
 
 Nor was the unity of God the only difference of Jewish 
 religion from all others around it. They maintained as 
 sacredly as that, and as being inseparable from it, that it 
 was a horrible sin to use images in worship. All the other 
 religions were full of image-worship. And then the religion 
 of the Jews had no allowances for sensual vices. Not that 
 they were all virtuous people — not even the most religious 
 of them — no, nor in proportion to their religiousness. But 
 no rite of that religion gave the least suggestion or tempta- 
 tion to any vice. 
 
 All that it taught them of their God tended to the most 
 scrupulous virtue. His law, for the very record and letter 
 of which they observed an almost superstitious reverence, 
 forbade such things even in thought. 
 
 It represented their God as the Holy One, Who abhorred 
 all uncleanness of spirit. It supposed them to be alwa}'s 
 needing His forgiveness for their sins, both as to religion, 
 and justice, and purity towards one another. Nothing in 
 the comparison of such things is stranger than that the Jews
 
 RELIGION IN HISTOR V. 7 
 
 should (as to this very day) have preserved and venerated 
 as their greatest treasure, writings which never flatter their 
 great vanity, but which, while ' magnifying the Lord ' of 
 their worship by every incident, are at the same time full 
 of the most mortifying rebukes and warnings to them as a 
 most unrighteous and perverse people. 
 
 We may give the name of Paganism in general to the 
 religion of the rest of the Roman Empire. Unlike that of 
 the Jews, and therefore much harder to describe, it is not 
 one distinct order set forth in writing, and thus carefully 
 transmitted for many generations. It was in the main made 
 up of mere traditional practices, local laws, and poetry. As 
 a whole, it was a mass of disconnected, inconsistent, and 
 shifting fragments, varying with places and with indi- 
 vidual fancies. In this it was like (and in a measure it was 
 what it was because of) the Roman Empire itself, then pre- 
 vailing from the Euphrates to the Atlantic. Mere conquest 
 and government — not even that of the law-giving and law- 
 enforcing Romans — did not change the languages, tradi- 
 tionary characters, or religions of peoples. But it did in 
 some degree mingle these, and modify them by one another. 
 The conquerors carried much that was peculiar to them into 
 all their dominions. But they also were much affected, in 
 turn, by the various peculiar ways of their provinces. The 
 city of Rome itself was still sternly and proudly Roman. 
 Yet every race, nation, tradition, and religion of the Empire 
 began to have its colony and its influence there in the days 
 of Augustus. This was true even of the Jews. But all the 
 other national religions found a still more congenial home 
 there. All these were, in fact, much the same in spirit and 
 in substance, and readily fused into a sort of universal 
 religion for all Roman subjects, except the Jews. 
 
 In this belief there were 'gods many.' The general 
 understanding, indeed, was that these counted by thousands. 
 Most of the people, no doubt, thought only of a few, to 
 whom they actually paid some worship, according to their 
 living near certain temples, or the habits and traditions of 
 their immediate region. The public men, the philoso- 
 phists, the more literary and reading people, allowed these 
 deities to be almost without number. (Let us reflect for a
 
 8 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 moment upon the vast difference in effect of this upon the 
 whole religious spirit, from the thought of One only God.) 
 
 No one supposed them to be of equal power and autho- 
 rity. A comparative few were far above the rest. There 
 was even a general notion that one of this superior dozen 
 or so was the chief of all, that he was a sort of father of 
 all other persons — hardly a creator. But this is the most 
 that we can fairly make of the Greek Zeus and Latin Jove 
 — and hardly that, for even he and others with him are 
 sometimes given out as the children of another — Saturn ; 
 and he again to have progenitors. 
 
 From highest to lowest they were supposed to be very 
 human in their ways. The former certainly had all the 
 violent passions, which are the cause of the chief mistakes 
 and miseries of mankind. On this account they had rivalries 
 and quarrels among themselves, and with men and women 
 too. In this last case, the mortal, however innocent, always 
 got the worst of it. A great part of this religion, in its 
 practice, consisted in rites, by which a man was supposed to 
 deprecate the wrath of these many powerful persons when 
 displeased, whether justly or not ; or to secure their help 
 against a human rival. This was often to be best done by 
 taking advantage of the quarrels of these fine gods among 
 themselves, or with some unhappy mortal. The occasion 
 of worship may be fairly said to have been in all cases fear. 
 If there are any traces of reverential love for these gods, 
 they are very faint, and the general belief as to their 
 conduct, as already mentioned, was evidently contraiy to 
 any such sentiment. To propitiate their favour or appease 
 their displeasure, splendid temples were built to them — some- 
 times by private offerings, but usually at the public expense. 
 Frequent gifts of useful or costly articles or of money were 
 brought to the temples, and delivered to the priests who 
 were in attendance there. These offerings were understood 
 to be in part for the support of the priests and the worship, 
 which were also a part of the public expense. But, in the 
 main, all that was offered was intended, as especially were 
 the regular sacrifices of * sheep and oxen,' to appease the 
 divine displeasure at their sins. That all alike needed 
 some such propitiation was always taken for granted, and it
 
 RELIGION IN HISTORY. 9 
 
 was always associated with the laws which protected every- 
 one from the wrong-doing of others. 
 
 The thought that law, morals, and religion were insepar- 
 able seemed as general then as the very opposite notion is 
 now. I say this of all religions then. And in them, as thus 
 joined, were everywhere, in the main, those same thoughts of 
 right conduct which we now call good morals. The 'gods' 
 of the Pagans were supposed to be displeased with just such 
 things as the laws forbade, and these were just what had the 
 reproach of wickedness among all men, even when they 
 escaped punishment. Did these thoughts also begin and 
 belong together } That is an interesting part of our inquiry 
 into the history of Religion. 
 
 I said, everywhere ^mong men in the main. But there 
 were some differences. The Hebrew religion had an 
 account of the matter, much the same as we understand it 
 now, as stated briefly in the Ten Commandments. With 
 the Pagan religions there was at once, to begin with, this 
 great difference — that their gods were believed to do many 
 of these forbidden things themselves, and this with impunity. 
 And even some of these things were reckoned among 
 their admired exploits. This was so as to injustice and 
 untruth ; still more so as to violent anger and revenge. 
 Yet the Pagan doctrine was that these things were wrong 
 (at least in some degree) ; certainly that they caused much 
 harm among men. (I think that many Christian moralists 
 go far beyond the truth in asserting that there was no idea 
 of wrong in revenge, known before our Lord. Certainly He 
 set it in a clearer light, as He did all duty ; but some traces 
 of that truth we find before Him.) 
 
 But it was especially in regard to all that great part of 
 morals as to the relations of man and woman that the differ- 
 ence was most notable. The wiser Pagans also thought 
 that a modest self-control in these things was a part of the 
 highest virtue ; that chastity was one of the greatest duties 
 and honours of a woman ; that adultery was a great and 
 shameful crime. [It was rather left for men in modern 
 Christendom — David Hume and the French philosophers of 
 a century ago, and now E. Renan (as Mr. M. Arnold shows 
 him to us, as representing the moral and literary judgment
 
 lo BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 of his countrymen) — to question all such scruples as being 
 artificial and superstitious ; and to treat this whole part of 
 morals as secondary and conventional.] All History, and all 
 present experience of human life, seem to teach the same — 
 that there is no greater disturber of public and private peace, 
 corruptor of all just scruples, inflamer of the fiercest hatreds, 
 and debaser of society in all its great interests, than that 
 these things should be regarded as inferior matters, so far as 
 right and wrong go — as, after all, rather amusing and inevit- 
 able incidents of ordinary life. 
 
 Here the Hebrew religion and law were most explicit 
 and solemn. The Pagan law also was not silent, but in a 
 rather feeble and inconsistent way. And how could it well 
 be otherwise .'' Yet with, what must, with our Christian im- 
 pressions at least, seem a monstrous confusion and perversion 
 of such things, their religion leaned the other way. A very 
 few of their deities were chaste in example and patrons of 
 that virtue. But their poetry and traditions were full of 
 fascinating stories of the immoral and indecent behaviour of 
 their chief ' gods,' most of all of him whom they regarded 
 as chief ruler, and often called him ' the father of gods and 
 men.' Yet these were the lawgivers of all right and 
 avengers of all wrong committed by men. The most 
 elegant art employed itself in representing these things to 
 their eyes. Even more fatal to modest scruples and self- 
 restraint it was, that some of the most frequented religious 
 ceremonies required behaviour which even law and decency 
 made infamous. Then they carried in procession, and at 
 other times kept them as conspicuous symbols of religion, 
 objects which even the least religious and fastidious civilised 
 people now would not allow in public. These are the facts 
 as to the relation of this religion to morals, however we 
 may think fit to account for this : whether by supposing 
 that they were wiser in this than Christians, or even than 
 the Jews of their time ; or utterly wrong, in this part at 
 least, of their religion. 
 
 The Hebrew ideal as to this, indeed, was not so high as 
 the Christian is. Yet there is a very great contrast between 
 its morals and the pagan. One Great, Glorious, and Unseen 
 Person, absolutely and alone Eternal and Almighty ; without
 
 RELIGION IN HISTOR V. 1 1 
 
 the least tinge of the human faults ; positively forbidding all 
 sins at all times — His temple repelling all impurity ; His 
 worship and praise teaching at all times ' a clean heart and a 
 right spirit ; ' always calling men to penitence for every sin. 
 The Jews, indeed, were far below this in conduct. The pre- 
 cepts of love for God and man, which are so plain in the 
 Law and the Prophets, vvere not much to be seen in their 
 lives. The more thoughtful Pagans might well have told 
 them that they did not seem to understand their own 
 religion. It was evidently but a small number of them who 
 observed it in the spirit of humility and penitence, of trust- 
 ing only in the forgiving mercy of the One Whom they knew 
 as the ' Maker of all things, Judge of all men,' and Whom 
 they looked to as having promised yet to make known a 
 way of ' saving health ' to them and ' to all nations,' far 
 beyond even the past glories of their people. 
 
 But the whole nation adhered firmly to the forms of their 
 religion, against the very powerful influence of Paganism all 
 around them, which had power, wealth, numbers, and, we 
 may fairly say, ' human nature,' on its side. Two of the 
 peculiar things in their method of worship had a great part 
 in this result, and each of these they accounted much more 
 than mere ceremony ; they were a part of the Ten Com- 
 mandments. Firstly, The worship of God must be only 
 spiritual. No image (or idol) must ever be used to repre- 
 sent Him ; on no pretence whatever must any figure be 
 placed in His temple or anywhere to represent Him, or to 
 be bowed down to in religious performance. Secondly, To 
 divide time by weeks or periods of seven days each, and to 
 devote every seventh day entirely to religion, allowing no 
 labour or ordinary business upon it. In contrast, all Pagan 
 religions around them used idols in worship — in temples and 
 houses everywhere — to kneel and prostrate themselves before 
 in worship. And they had no weekly holy-day, nor anything 
 corresponding to this ; no division of time into weeks : only 
 the months (moons) and year, with not infrequent yet irre- 
 gular religious festivals upon certain days, though these 
 days were not separated from all secular uses as the Sabbath 
 of the Jews was. How far these two observances of the 
 law of Moses were of the essentials of a true religion, i.e.
 
 12 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 whether they are conventional details of ritual, for which a 
 true religion might substitute something else, or entirely 
 dispense with them, it is not our purpose now to inquire. 
 It is a plain fact that by them the Jews were at this time 
 most distinctly and constantly marked from all other reli- 
 gions, and by the careful observance of them was prevented 
 that fusion and confusion of religion which seemed otherwise 
 inevitable. 
 
 About the Greek Pagan religion, on the other hand, a 
 sort of general poetic spirit of that people had thrown a 
 cloud of traditional fancies and fictions. And some men of 
 great genius had increased this much by poetry and the arts 
 of painting, sculpture, and architecture. It is perhaps impos- 
 sible to say how much of it was the conscious invention of 
 each man, and how much was the sincere religious belief. 
 But what makes it even harder to understand the Paganism 
 of that time, is, that the poets and critics of modern Christen- 
 dom have repeated it, with their added fancies, with unmea- 
 sured admiration and imitation of it as the perfection of 
 beauty in thought and form. Some future and wiser age 
 may regard this idolatry of ' sweetness (and light .'') ' in the 
 religion of the Greeks and Romans with wonder. Probably 
 the dwellers in Heaven who see it do so now. The most 
 truthful view of it is surely to be found by observing such 
 statements and allusions as we find in the New Testament ; 
 next, in the other early Christian writings — perhaps allowing 
 for some little exaggeration ; and in the poetic, historic, and 
 histrionic writings of the classic age, read with care. Any 
 good classic Greek dictionary, examined in its copious 
 vocabulary of such terms, will give a glimpse of what sort 
 of religion as to morals this was. A suggestive incident 
 also is, that the one man who just before for a long time 
 held the highest religious authority in the Roman dominion 
 — and this by popular choice, not from his victorious auto- 
 cratic power, which he did not achieve until long after- 
 ward — was Julius Caesar, a notorious profligate, and well 
 known to his intimates as an atheist in opinion. 
 
 Another great fact of this time was that religious faith 
 had long been declining among the Pagans. The rich and 
 intelligent all knew something of the philosophers ; and the
 
 RELIGION IN HISTORY. 
 
 ^3 
 
 conjectures and reasonings of all those ingenious men threw 
 doubt upon their religion. Some of the philosophy dis- 
 claimed this, but some of it was entirely (and so avowed to 
 be) ' sceptical.' It followed out certain reasonings (just as 
 some modern writers have done, and no mere reasoning can 
 refute them) to prove that we can really know nothing. 
 And while all men's worldly common sense practically re- 
 jected this as to our material life, they were not unwilling to 
 be persuaded that there were no unseen superior beings for 
 them to be afraid of. The raillery of such persons about 
 the characters and performances of ' the gods ' had also some 
 effect upon the thoughtless and ignorant, the multitude who 
 continued to believe just what their forefathers had. It 
 lessened their reverence, and made them less careful about 
 ceremonies and sacrifices. And yet so deep-seated was the 
 religious feeling that even then it was not much safer to be 
 supposed a disbeliever in Divine things than it was in the 
 days of Socrates, four centuries before. 
 
 And with all this beauty of art and indulgence of sensual 
 desire, the pagan religion was not a happy but a gloomy one. 
 * The gods,' indeed, were not good and great enough for rever- 
 ent love ; but they were powerful, and capricious, and mali- 
 cious enough to be much feared. This, added to a vague 
 sense of guilt, both towards their fellow-men and towards 
 this unseen Power which avenged all wrong, made them 
 anxious to propitiate it by sacrifices ; and the more painful 
 and bloody — even those of men, women or children — the more 
 effective. At this time human sacrifices were very rare. Yet, 
 as religion always mingled much with war, it made that 
 more cruel. It gave countenance, even if it did not give 
 rise, to the most barbarous amusement of the Romans in 
 their most refined days — the deadly combats of captive 
 slaves, the gladiators — in presence of vast multitudes of 
 eager and delighted spectators. 
 
 Nor was this brutal contempt for men's lives because 
 they thought our life has no more dignity or duration than 
 that of beasts. It was a part of their religion that, when 
 men die, their souls begin another life — better and happier 
 if they have been good in this ; or a fearful punishment. 
 The hope of the former, however, seems to have been very
 
 14 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 faint and cold, while the terrors of the latter were much 
 more real to them. Religion never made one of them die 
 with a joyful hope, or transformed the black, despairing grief 
 of a great bereavement into the sweet patience of a like hope. 
 The symbol over every tomb was a torch reversed ; the in- 
 scription some wail of hopeless and terrible sorrow. A very 
 few philosophic Pagans might commit suicide calmly ; but 
 most of them saw in death only the ruin of all desire, and 
 fled from it by every struggle. The most virtuous was not 
 sure whether his destination was Elysium or Tartarus, or 
 whether the former existed at all. He might not have dis- 
 pleased most of ' the gods.' Yet to some one of them he 
 might have given unwitting offence, and meet his w-rath as 
 he left this life. And even besides this, there was something 
 called Fate, or Destiny, which nothing that he could do could 
 arrest, nor even all ' the gods' combined resist. Only when 
 he died, as he had seen others ' go hence and be no more 
 seen,' would he know how that would at last dispose of him. 
 
 This then was, in general, the religion of the Roman 
 dominions. That of the elder Romans had been not quite 
 the same — perhaps a little simpler, though not less strange 
 to us. But it was now all merged in this prevailing Greek 
 mythology, with its adornment of art and of poetic fiction. 
 
 The Egyptian religion was even older yet ; in some things 
 admitted to be the original of the Greek ;^ but, utterly unlike 
 that, it never had pleased the eye or the mind with beauty. 
 The temples, the ceremonies, the images, had a solemn and 
 gloomy vastness, which impressed the beholder with awe ; it 
 had also the fascination of whatever was most hideous and dis- 
 gusting. The images before which the worshippers prostrated 
 themselves and made the offerings were not the ideals of 
 human beauty which were adored in the Greek temples, but of 
 repulsive beasts and reptiles or insects ; in fact, their greatest 
 deities were actual living bulls, cats, or crocodiles, and the like. 
 
 But now this too appears as one of the varieties of Greek 
 Paganism (while these ugly pecularities of Egyptian reli- 
 gion find imitators and devotees in Rome and the other 
 great cities around the Mediterranean). Since the wonder- 
 
 ^ See Clem. Alex. Strom, vi, 4 ; also Stillingfleet, Orig: Sacra ; Bryant, 
 Anc. Mythol. ; Grote, IIzsL of Greece, etc, etc.
 
 RELIGION IN HIS TOR V. 1 5 
 
 ful conquests of Alexander of Macedon, Egypt had been 
 governed by Greek law and thought, and to all this the 
 Romans had now succeeded for two generations. 
 
 The Syrian and Arabian peoples to the east of Palestine 
 retained in the same way something of their old religion. 
 And as the limits of Roman power towards the rising sun 
 were reached at the river Euphrates, the influence of Persian 
 beliefs and usages was evident. These even had their effect 
 upon the religion, and still more the philosophy, of all the 
 Empire. 
 
 Here were religious thoughts, indeed, which quite varied 
 from the polytheistic Paganism, and might even be taken 
 to be akin to the religion of the Jews. One variety of this 
 supposed but two gods — one the Supreme Good, the other 
 the Supreme Evil ; between them eternal war existed, the 
 dominion over mankind being one of the matters of this 
 strife. Worship had to be paid by men to both ; but, in 
 fact, fear enforced more religion to the evil god than hope 
 gave to the other. 
 
 Another variety of the Persian religion which for 
 centuries had rivalled this among these Assyrian and 
 Parthian tribes, was that the sun, moon, and planets were 
 the gods to be adored and obeyed by all. To keep always 
 burning a sacred fire, and to worship the sun, seem to have 
 been a great part of the ceremonial of both these religions. 
 These were adopted into the Greek and Roman rites. So, 
 too, the notion of eternal war between good and evil, and the 
 strange legends or allegories about this, found their way 
 into the philosophies of the West. But the opposition of all 
 this to the express words, as well as to the whole spirit, of 
 the sacred writings of the Jews, was irreconcileable ; so 
 that, while there was some union and fusion of this with the 
 other Paganism, the Jews kept as clear of it as of all the 
 rest. Thus, in substance, there was now simply a contest 
 between a Paganism of many 'gods,' superstitious fables, 
 and indecent rites — which seem to be the religion of almost 
 all mankind, — and one small subject nation, with the simple 
 and comparatively spiritual religion of the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures ; a rocky isle, which steadily threw back the fierce 
 waves of the great sea that rolled around.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MATERIALS FOR THE RESEARCH IN THE EARLIER HISTORY, 
 
 AND ITS RESULTS. 
 
 How came men to have these religions ? how came they 
 to have any such beliefs or fancies .'' This is a question 
 of History, — one of its greatest ; in the judgment of some, 
 much the greatest of its questions. How shall we now 
 make this search back from the Christian era .■* 
 
 In general, the materials for such inquiry are — (i) Official 
 chronicles or records of public events, preserved from their 
 date by responsible authority ; (2) Public celebrations of 
 such events, continued from former times in unbroken suc- 
 cession — as anniversary days, political or religious rites, etc. ; 
 (3) Books of history, usually the compositions of private 
 authors, for the very purpose of giving to the men of their 
 own time or of following generations a complete account 
 of public events ; (4) Other writings, contemporary or 
 nearly so, of the events, and incidentally mentioning them ; 
 (5) Laws from time immemorial, implying such beliefs or 
 events ; (6) Inscriptions upon monuments or public build- 
 ings ; (7) Other ancient writings, but the date of which 
 can only be vaguely conjectured ; (8) Such records and 
 inscriptions, but in languages utterly lost for ages, and the 
 reading of which can be made only by conjecture, however 
 ingenious ; (9) The growth of languages and the probable 
 derivation and affinities of words. 
 
 Each of these may have great value, and about in pro- 
 portion as they are numbered. The last mentioned become 
 more useful as the others fail or become obscure. It is 
 plain that as we combine them, especially if the first (and so 
 far as they are) are supplemented by the others, the result 
 is most trustworthy. But we all know (in my own personal 
 knowledge of the inaccuracy of statements which are now
 
 RELIGION IN HISTOR V. 1 7 
 
 passing into ' History' uncontradicted, I have had occasion 
 to notice this) that private (even public ?) and contemporary 
 history may make great mistakes from not knowing impor- 
 tant facts, and from that unconscious perversion which pre- 
 judice more or less works in every human mind in its own 
 mere though most sincere beliefs. On the other hand, public 
 chronicles or inscriptions way be more or less the utterances 
 of untruthful vanity. Ceremonies may diverge through ages 
 from their first meaning. Laws and languages way shift 
 very far by unnoticed deviations. The only possible certainty 
 of History would be for some one who is more true and 
 truthful than man ever is to give or guarantee this certainty. 
 Short of this, we must be thankful and contented with toler- 
 able and general probability as to past or even contempo- 
 raneous events. 
 
 Perhaps for the period now before us the Greek and 
 Roman history is much the best as to some of the materials 
 already enumerated. We will therefore begin with it and 
 what it tells us of the beginnings of the Pagan religions. 
 For the first 500 years to which this applies, and which 
 carries us back of Herodotus, whom his people called the 
 Father of History, we find considerable change, but no be- 
 ginning. We do see three great influences mingling and 
 modifying the Paganisms of different nations : traffic, war, 
 and philosophy. Especially as we go back of the great 
 events which during that time had built the Macedonian 
 and Roman Empires, we see those religions as they existed 
 apart, and before that fusion which we have seen to prevail 
 at the Christian Era. Yet the resemblances remain. But 
 in all of them, so far as there is a history — and especially in 
 the Greek lands where that histoiy is most plain — the same 
 deities are worshipped and the same rites observed as they 
 read about in the poems of Homer and Hesiod, who wrote 
 in a still earlier age. And all repeated from these earlier 
 writers that their religion had come down from their ances- 
 tors, and that these had received it with their other earliest 
 laws from ' the gods ' themselves. 
 
 Those who had the most religious doubt never claimed 
 to account for all these things by the inventions of any men. 
 The more truth-loving of the philosophers also said that in 
 
 B
 
 1 8 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 their journeys into distant lands, and other inquiries into 
 the religions of other countries, all traditions agreed that 
 ' the gods ' themselves had given Religion and Law as their 
 first and greatest gifts. Herodotus implies this as the result 
 of the curious and candid inquiries which he made among 
 the Egyptians and other nations which he visited for the 
 purpose. These conclusions and statements by such men as 
 Celsus, Cicero, Plato, and Socrates, are more remarkable, and 
 most useful as evidence of the fact of this belief, however 
 we may account for it. Their intellectual tendency was to 
 question what was traditional in such matters, — still more 
 when it was supernatural. 
 
 Thus Celsus, as quoted by Origen {Contra Celsum, i. 7, 
 p. 266) : 'A divine spirit descended to acquaint the ancients 
 with the divine truths they taught the world.' Cicero {Tusc. 
 Ques. L. i. n. 26) : ' Philosophy (Theology, as we would 
 say), mother of all arts, as Plato says, the gift, as I say (also) 
 the discovery of the gods.' Plato : ' After a certain flood 
 which but few escaped, etc., they had neither letters, writing, 
 nor laws, but obeyed the manners and institutions of their 
 fathers as laws, etc., those especially that related to their 
 gods, and thus transmitted them to their posterity,' etc. etc., 
 and in many other like passages {De Lcgibiis, lib. iii. 677 ; 
 see also Philebns, etc.). Xenophon is another like recorder 
 of the sayings of Socrates, less original for himself than 
 Plato, but perhaps more accurate as to his master. He 
 reports this in his Memorabilia or Memorable Sayings {Metn. 
 loc. i. 4) that Socrates said : ' He is a pious man who serves 
 the gods, not in what manner he pleases, but as the laws 
 made for that purpose direct, etc. ; that these laws were given 
 us by the gods ; that whatever force the laws have they 
 receive it from the gods.' The great Demosthenes also 
 speaks of it as what all believed, that laws are the invention 
 and gift of God {Oral, against Aristot.). 
 
 Earlier than this the Greek histoiy begins to be as dis- 
 connected and uncertain as that of all other nations is, with 
 one exception. We are passing back out of the region of 
 careful written history, of literature, chronology, chronicles, 
 and monuments, into the misty land of mere fragments of 
 fact and irresponsible traditions. But just before we reach
 
 REL TGION IN HIS TOR Y. 19 
 
 this we find in quite another quarter a strong and steady- 
 clue left us for some centuries yet. During the interval of 
 some 400 or 500 years before Christ, which we have been 
 able to traverse quite plainly as to the Pagan Greeks and 
 Romans, there appeared some writers among the Jewish 
 people. But these writings are evidently much inferior 
 (always so acknowledged by the Jews themselves) to their 
 earlier ones. 
 
 Of these later authors Josephus, an historian, and Philo, 
 a philosopher, wrote about the time of the Advent. Further 
 back we have the Apocrypha, including histories of the 
 Maccabees, warlike chiefs who led their countrymen in a 
 very determined, and, for a while, very successful struggle 
 against the Greek-Syrian kings. One great occasion of this 
 contest was to prevent the overthrow of their religion, and in 
 this they did entirely succeed against the greatest odds of 
 power. All the evidence concurs in showing that they 
 maintained for the period mentioned the religion which they 
 had received in their sacred books from a preceding age, and 
 as before described. 
 
 But even in the times of the Maccabees, about a ccntuty 
 — say 166-63 B.C. to when the Roman Pompey besieged and 
 took Jerusalem — the Jews could be considered an indepen- 
 dent State only by the sufferance of the powerful sovereigns 
 around them, — those of Syria, or (the Ptolemies) of Egypt, 
 who were so employed in their great wars with one another 
 that each would either abet the revolt of the Jews from the 
 other, or quite neglect them. 
 
 As for the other Pagans outside of the Greek dominions, 
 even if we include the native population of Egypt, we have 
 no other history to resort to. During this period, Manetho, 
 an Egyptian, is said to have compiled from the archives of his 
 country, as preserved in the temples, a history running back 
 for thousands of years. But we have only some fragments 
 of this, as preserved by Josephus, and a brief epitome of it 
 in a Christian writer 300 years later yet. And what we 
 have is somewhat confused and improbable ; in the judg- 
 ment of some of the most capable, does not at all agree with 
 what can now be deciphered from inscriptions and papyri in 
 the remains of that mysterious country. However, it is not
 
 20 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 without some historical value ; and what it gives us as to 
 the origin of religion in this period, or earlier, simply agrees 
 with what has been said as to the Pagan beliefs of this 
 
 period. 
 
 And so with like fragments of Chaldee and Phcenician 
 history by Berosus and Sanchoniatho. What these may 
 suggest for a still earlier period we shall see further on. 
 The earlier Roman history, which goes but a little way back, 
 and soon enters the region of evident myth, is to the same 
 effect — of a tradition of receiving Religion from their 'gods' 
 themselves ; and that they first adored the sun, moon, and 
 stars, and other great objects of sight. 
 
 All this is true in exactly the same way of the traditions 
 and monuments to which we must resort instead of con- 
 nected history among Pagan nations for 500 years earlier 
 yet, say to B.C. 1000. Among the Greeks, the poems of 
 Homer and Hesiod tell us much of the life of their people. 
 The former, near the beginning of this period, and perhaps 
 a contemporary of Solomon, gives us a great picture of the 
 ways and thoughts of his people, then rising, with their 
 daring adventures and ingenious speculations, to be in some 
 things the English of ancient history. But it is his simple 
 and most lifelike story of their domestic life, their laws, 
 society, and religion, which is worth more to truth than most 
 history. Hesiod, about two centuries later, is far less poetic ; 
 and yet, contrary to the proverbial expression, less simply 
 truthful. The Iliad and Odyssey tell us how that people all 
 believed and observed this religion of many gods (but not 
 near as many as in the enlightened days of Pericles, Phidias, 
 and Plato) ; of sacrifices, sometimes even human ; and of 
 oracles, which they had from their forefathers, among whom 
 these gods themselves had mingled, to teach men rites, 
 virtues, arts, and laws (see also supra, p. 18). Hesiod labours 
 in an artificial way to give what he supposes a more reason- 
 able account of the same things, and of the reasons of 
 them. The ' Theogony ' which commonly goes by his name 
 would be more valuable if it were not quite plain that it is 
 by some later hand. But whoever the author, it is a 
 laboured essay to show that all the gods and goddesses, 
 and their adventures, are a sort of allegory of what we now
 
 RELIGION IN HIS TOR Y. 2 1 
 
 call the forces of Nature ; which thought evidently entered 
 nobody's mind in the days of Homer and earlier. It belongs 
 with the toilsome beginnings of Philosophy then, just as it 
 is the delight of many in these last days of Philosophy. 
 
 On the other hand, all other legends of the time as to the 
 most powerful and revered princes and legislators of the past, 
 Minos, Numa, Lycurgus, Zoroaster, etc., — some of these 
 having risen by such services from human life into the rank 
 of ' gods ' themselves, — say that they received their wisdom 
 from some ' god ' who condescended to talk with them. It is 
 a curious thing that among such great men Strabo mentions 
 Moses. 
 
 Two remarkable characters in the history of Religion 
 appeared early in this period, at about the same time, in the 
 Far East — Buddha (Sakyamuni) and Confucius (circa 550 
 B.C.). But all their adventures and teachings imply that a 
 religion of many gods, of sacrifices and superstitions, had 
 been observed in India and China for ages before them, and 
 was supposed to have been taught to their ancestors by the 
 deities themselves. 
 
 The great central Pagan power at the beginning of this 
 period was that of the Persians. Their religion was a 
 strange mixture of the most sensual and sanguinary idolatry 
 which prevailed in their subject provinces around the great 
 rivers Tigris and Euphrates, with another religion which (as 
 already noticed) was more like the simple and spiritual one 
 of the Jews. But all their people agreed that both these, as 
 well that of the two gods as that of many, had been received 
 by remote tradition from former ages. It is true also, and 
 the signs of it grow more frequent and striking as we ascend 
 to the earliest sources, that everywhere — in Egypt as well as 
 in Persia and Syria, and in India in its most extravagant 
 idolatry of this period (for while the Greeks would number 
 30,000, some even say 300,000 deities, the Hindus reckoned 
 theirs at thirty millions) — there were scattered faint traces of 
 belief in only One holy and spiritual God. 
 
 The Egyptian priests were said to have a secret doctrine 
 of the kind. The writings of philosophers and others 
 among the Greeks sometimes seem to imply a like notion. 
 The Persian Zoroaster (or Zerdusht) of this very age appears
 
 22 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 to have taught positively that the prevaihng polytheism was 
 a monstrous corruption of the original true religion. The 
 more learned Hindus pointed out that in their earliest 
 books, written probably about the beginning of this period 
 (say looo B.C.), some such thought was found. And yet 
 none of these, except the Persians, treated it as more than a 
 vague speculation, which did not prevent their joining in all 
 the acts and ways of the idolatrous religion, in its most 
 superstitious as well as its most immoral usages. Much less 
 did they care to convert their countrymen from such error. 
 
 If there be any exception to this it is as to the doctrine 
 of Zoroaster (Zerdusht), the Persian ; that is, if some modern 
 scholars correctly interpret what we have of his writings. 
 But the whole subject is still involved in confusion and con- 
 tradictions, and opinions are divided. (See researches of 
 Anquetil, Rask, Haug, etc.) It is not clear ivhen he lived 
 within 500 years. If we allow this to be, as I think most 
 probable, at the beginning (as others say, at the end) of 
 this period, we have but a small fragment at the best of his 
 own writing. And if, as some say, he wrote plainly of the 
 One Eternal God, as the Creator of all, this belief, if not 
 obscured by other teachings of his own, was so obscured 
 very soon by those of his followers, as we now find them in 
 the book of the ' Zend-Avesta.' 
 
 The key of this puzzle at least may be in what he 
 claimed, — that he was trying to restore the earlier and purer 
 religion of their forefathers, which would then have shown in 
 this particular (as also in many striking points of ceremony 
 and history) a great likeness to the Hebrew Scriptures. But 
 if this was a part of his design, it was then overborne by the 
 same powerful current of tendency toward a less spiritual 
 religion, which had prevailed before. The patient student 
 of all these remains needs to be cautious in all his conclu- 
 sions. This much seems quite plain, that there were several 
 neighbour and kindred nations of those parts — Elamites, 
 Medes, Persians, etc., — among whom different religions pre- 
 vailed ; and by wars, alliances, or like events, one of these 
 religions would displace the others, and be in turn subjected 
 by one of them.^ But that of the ' Zend' was professed by the 
 
 ^ .See Rawlinson's Five Great Monarchies, i. etc.
 
 RELIGION IN HISTORY. 23 
 
 great Persian kings who reigned about the end of this period, 
 though, as before mentioned, it was then mixed with much 
 of the cruel superstitions of the others, and was as immoral. 
 
 That it was after all a very different one from that of the 
 Jews was strongly illustrated at this very time by the two 
 being brought in close contact. All the principal families of 
 the latter people lived a^ captive exiles far from their own 
 country for a whole generation, in Babylonia, under the 
 Persian kings, whose court was there, — as they had done for 
 the generation before under the kings of Babylon, who 
 brought them there. But the Jews no more relinquished 
 their religion for that of the Persians than for the other, 
 and returned afterwards from exile as unyielding in this to 
 their new and kinder masters as they had been to the others. 
 In fact, from this time forth they were far more steadfast 
 and exclusive as to the religion of other nations than ever 
 before. 
 
 We will now ascend their history for the same period, 
 for the same purpose of seeking the beginnings of their 
 religion. And here we do find, as has been already inti- 
 mated, a clear and connected narrative of events for all this 
 time, — in the books of Nehcmiah, Ezra, the Chronicles, and 
 the Kings. And, what is still more to our purpose, the reli- 
 gious side of the history is not merely incidental, but is the 
 main thing. Upon examination we find that, though very 
 brief, it fulfils and combines more of the requisites for belief 
 than even the Greek history of a later age. It is connected 
 and continuous. It is authoritative and responsible. It was 
 in the special keeping of a succession of high officers for 
 safety and authentication ; and yet it was freely in the 
 hands of all the people, as a safeguard against alterations or 
 forgeries. It was accompanied by contemporaneous usages, 
 and celebrations which were never entirely interrupted. 
 With it are also various other valuable writings of the 
 same period, agreeing with its statements (see supra, p. 5). 
 Altogether, these writings are a treasure to the curious and 
 candid explorer of the past. Some may assume that what- 
 ever is related in them as supernatural must be excluded 
 and treated as myth. Even upon this demand enough 
 remains to justify what I have said.
 
 24 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 It is scarcely possible to overrate their value in antiquarian 
 research or the higher attempts of History. We can get 
 some idea of this by supposing that a like find should now 
 be made of a collection of papyri in one of the Pyramids, oi 
 of cylinders at Babylon. The delight now felt in reading 
 any imperfect inscriptions or other fragments of such history 
 that we can put together from time to time, making conjec- 
 tures of the missing lines or words, would be multiplied 
 many fold. 
 
 The legend (if it be only that) which is the thread of all 
 this history is, that they were all the descendants of one 
 man, Israel (or Jacob), who was a pastoral chief in Palestine 
 some 1400 years before. As such their proper designation 
 was, the children (sons) of Israel. All their chief families, 
 priests, and princes (only the poorer people left in a disor- 
 ganised state) were brought to Babylon, about the year 600 
 B.C., by the great Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, who 
 had invaded and conquered their country long before, and 
 now, having entirely demolished the city of Jerusalem with 
 the great Temple, used this effectual means to prevent any 
 subsequent revolt of their kings. 
 
 The Jews were indeed only a part of what had once been 
 the children of Israel. The larger fragment perhaps had 
 been separated from them by a revolt for three centuries 
 past, and was called Israel, while the old dynasty, keeping 
 the capital city, the Temple, and the priesthood, was distin- 
 guished by the name of the royal tribe of Judah. Great 
 vicissitudes had befallen this people since the revolt of 
 Israel. There had been frequent wars with their sister 
 kingdom, defections of their own kings and people from 
 their religion to the idolatry of bordering nations ; and later 
 yet, as culminating in that of Babylon, invasion and subju- 
 gation by Pagan powers. Yet all this time, so the history 
 relates, their one Temple of the One God had stood in great 
 magnificence at Jerusalem : its rites had never been quite 
 suspended, even when other religions had seemed to prevail. 
 
 The kingdom of Israel entirely disappeared long before 
 this. The conquering Assyrians added the people to their 
 other subjects, and carried off their king and nobles to the 
 region of the Upper Euphrates, replacing them in part by
 
 RELIGION IN HIS TOR Y. 25 
 
 people from that countr)'. But the scattered Israehtes who 
 were left seemed to have mostly either migrated south to 
 Judah, or, remaining in their old homes, considered them- 
 selves still of the old people and religion, and resorted to 
 Jerusalem to worship in the Temple there. After the return 
 of the Jews from Babylon, and the rebuilding of the Temple, 
 a sect of Samaritans, professing the Law of Moses, was set 
 up among the Assyrian colonists, and some traces of it exist 
 to this day. But it is of no importance except as collateral 
 evidence of the Jewish histor}-. 
 
 The main fact, however, was, that these old Sacred Writ- 
 ings had always been acknowledged as the true law, both 
 civil and religious, of the nation, and always had a number 
 of faithful adherents among the common people and the 
 priests, even when kings, princes, and chief priests deserted 
 it. The succession of priests by family descent had been 
 kept up ; and besides this, from time to time there had 
 arisen men called Prophets of (or speakers for) God, to pro- 
 test against the false religion and recall them to the true. 
 Writings of these Prophets now formed a large part of 
 these Holy Scriptures. With them were the histories and 
 chronicles already mentioned, and some said to be earlier 
 yet ; and also, and more than all, what was called the 
 original book of their Law, claimed to be of 500 years yet 
 earlier date. In addition there were some writings of a 
 poetical and devotional kind, mainly ascribed to two of the 
 earliest and most famous kings, who reigned over all the 
 sons of Israel before the separation of the two kingdoms. 
 Take this Scripture at what value we will as history, its 
 result is that this people looked back even of the beginning 
 of this period for the beginning of their religion. (I believe 
 there is no question whatever made that this King Solomon 
 did build the great Temple of Jerusalem, and that before this 
 its ritual was celebrated in a great tent or tabernacle, as 
 described in the Book of Moses.) 
 
 We are now indeed quite alone with these Scriptures for 
 anything like history. Nothing among the Greeks, nothing 
 at all clear and connected in what we can study of the 
 Egyptian or Assyrian remains, nothing Indian or Chinese, 
 or of other races, gives us a path to follow further back in
 
 26 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 the search. These Israelites are a very small part of the 
 mankind whose religious thought and actual worship we 
 would pursue to the sources. But is it not vastly better 
 than as if we had no such clue .-* May it not possibly lead 
 to the discovery of all .-' 
 
 Let us again look well at our position. We are now 
 going far back of the Vedas and the Zend. No writings 
 whatever survive to guide us here, unless it is those Sacred 
 Scriptures of the Jews. Even the new-discovered Assyrian 
 and Egyptian writing, interesting as it is, cannot serve this 
 purpose. In fact, all the careful and eager explorers of these 
 things, whatever their religious opinions, find the Hebrew 
 Scriptures indispensable for suggestions to their researches. 
 
 There were then great kingdoms, with princes, palaces, 
 temples : with large armies, populous cities, and other in- 
 cidents of riches and refinement. But, indeed quite con- 
 trary to what we should suppose, it is not there that we find 
 the books ; but among a people rather rural and pastoral : 
 without any large towns, and shut up to themselves in a 
 small region : having no part in the great wars of those 
 ages, for all those 500 years. It is not common sense 
 to assume that writing was not known among them then ; 
 and therefore the books cannot be genuine, no matter what 
 proof is shown for them. That would be merely begging 
 the whole question. (See this whole matter fully examined 
 in Chapter XV.) 
 
 For our search so far it has not been necessary to assume 
 when any of these Hebrew Scriptures were written, even 
 those which profess to relate the earlier history. At the 
 very least they contain the agreed traditions of that people. 
 All this concurs in the main result as reached everywhere 
 else : that no man or men of those times invented the re- 
 ligion ; that it came down from remote earlier ages ; from 
 one generation to another. 
 
 But many of the greatest scholars have believed, as the 
 result of investigation, that this history was written by 
 Moses himself, 500 years yet earlier than David. And there 
 is no great change in religious thought in all this vast lapse 
 of 1 100 years from Moses to Malachi. The writings of 
 David or those of Moses are as spiritual as what we read in
 
 RELIGION IN HISTORY. 27 
 
 the later Prophets : far more so than those of Plato or of 
 any moderns who do not merely repeat those Scriptures (or 
 follow certain other writings which are avowed to be in 
 entire accord with them). 
 
 Let us then assume, if only as a hypothesis for our further 
 search, that the so-called Books of Moses may have been 
 written, as their later possessors always claimed, some 1500 
 years B.C. Here they do note a very great event in the re- 
 ligious history. The writer records that he was commanded 
 by the One Only God to lead his countrymen out of the 
 great kingdom of Egypt, where they had been a tribe of slaves 
 for hundreds of years, to conduct them across the deserts 
 of Arabia to this land of Canaan or Palestine, and to give 
 them the laws and religious rites written in these books. 
 Be this imposture, fanaticism, or simple truth, one may well 
 allow it to be fact, so far as it notes the beginning of the 
 Jewish state and ritual. 
 
 Is there any other better statement of the origin of what 
 did originate some time or other than this, that one Moses 
 uttered and wrote down this system of laws, beliefs, and 
 rites 1 and that the Israelites then followed it } It thus 
 corresponds with all other suggestions of history, including 
 this, that law and religion were always united. 
 
 Some one may think that we may now at least account 
 for the religion of Israel as Moses taught it, by his deriving 
 it from that of Egypt. But that would be at the very most 
 mere conjecture. And so far as the present reading of 
 Egyptian remains goes, it is entirely against this. They 
 show us the religion of Egypt in that age as unlike that of 
 Israel as was that of Pagan Greece afterwards. If we were 
 going to refuse all faith to any history, simply because what 
 was related is, as we think, impossible, I hardly know a 
 stronger case that could occur than would be, if Moses 
 simply claimed to have imposed all this religion upon his 
 countrymen without any previous religion of theirs, or even 
 any agreement of this with their former religion. Not even 
 did Mohammed do this, or anything like it. But this, or any- 
 thing like it, the history of Moses does not relate. On the 
 contrary, all of it implies that the oppressed Israelites be- 
 lieved in One Great God of their fathers : that they had
 
 28 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 priests and sacrifices for their worship of Him : that their 
 deliverer merely presented himself to them as a messenger 
 from that God : and that the ritual and laws given after- 
 wards were for His worship and service. 
 
 If now we desire to go yet further back for another 500 
 years, we find the Book of Moses again offering itself as our 
 guide. Of course he had no personal or contemporary know- 
 ledge of those events. But in this he 7nay give us the best 
 traditions of his people and ancestors, or even the substance 
 of earlier records. According to this, too, he is not the in- 
 ventor of the thought of One God among the Israelites, or 
 of the general ideas of right and duty as a part of their 
 religion, which are assumed in all that Law, and all which 
 they supposed they had inherited from their ancestor Israel 
 when he brought his family into Egypt. 
 
 Thus we ascend by some seven generations to one 
 Abraham, from whom had descended all this people, and 
 from him also to them all this religion of the One Only 
 True God. Did he then first invent or discover this } If 
 we have a religious faith in the history, we believe that God 
 Himself spoke to him, confirmed him in this his faith and 
 worship, and exhorted him to stand fast in it against all 
 contrary and encroaching religions around him. But short 
 of that, this history distinctly implies that the beginning of 
 the religion was not with him : that his progenitors for ten 
 generations before had known this very religion. The verj- 
 first sentence in the history of Abraham is (Gen. xii. i) : 
 ' Now the Lord (Jehovah — the most sacred name of the One 
 God) had said unto Abraham, Get thee out of thy country,' 
 etc. This of itself supposes One already known and adored, 
 Who has but to command and He is obeyed. 
 
 There were others also of his time, even in the strange 
 land where he now went to dwell, who knew of the God 
 'Jehovah,' whether they themselves followed other religions, 
 as Abimelcch of Gerar, or were themselves worshippers of 
 Him, as Melchizedek. Certainly we have not yet come to 
 the beginning of all Religion. All men then took it as a 
 matter of course received from their forefathers, as much as 
 the keeping of sheep or the use of fire. 
 
 In the same way another 500 years carries us back to
 
 RELIGION IN HISTORY. ' 29 
 
 Noah, the ancestor of Abraham, and (as most of us think) 
 of all mankind. And we find him too adoring and obeying 
 ' Jehovah.' 
 
 Yet even here, though in the judgment of most scholars 
 already far back of any other remains of History, the Book 
 of Moses does not leave us. It professes to trace all human 
 ancestry back for some 1600 or more years (compute this 
 as we will : for we do not need now to enter upon the ques- 
 tion of disputed chronologies) to the very first man and 
 woman, and tells of their having this same religion — the 
 thought of One Only God, Who had made them and all else 
 that exists by His Will : to Whom, and to Whom alone, they 
 were to pay most devout reverence and loving obedience. 
 This religion begins with their life. There is no suggestion 
 of their discovering it : there is no time for that. God is 
 supposed to have provided them with it at once, as one of 
 the necessary parts of their life, — the most necessary. It is 
 this which the history implies had descended from father to 
 son through all the generations to Noah, then to Abraham, 
 and so on with his descendants. Here is a distinct theory 
 (if we choose only to treat it as that) of the origin of Reli- 
 gion, which is worth testing now more exactly and in detail 
 by the reverse process of what we have been till now pur- 
 suing : that is, by following it down from its supposed 
 beginning. To say the least, it also supplies a basis for 
 investigating the origin of all other religions, if it does not 
 even now suggest the true solution of those questions also.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ' NATURAL RELIGION.' 
 
 There is a phrase current with all theological and philoso- 
 phical writers for the last two centuries, which, if it expresses 
 our belief, is a pre-judgment of this question. It is, ' Natural 
 Religion,' — as something apart from and earlier in time than 
 ' Revealed Religion.' On the part of Christians, certainly 
 this is not meant as a denial of God's having told them 
 directly, or, as the word is commonly understood, ' revealed,' 
 much of what they now know and believe of Him. Yet it is 
 supposed that all this came after mankind knew something 
 of Him already by ' Nature.' We shall therefore need now 
 to divest ourselves of this prepossession, at least so far as to 
 suspend our judgment, while we try the theory that the very 
 beginning of such knowledge, and of all religion, comes by 
 direct information from God. So I shall endeavour now to 
 show why the notion of ' Natural Religion ' is, to say the 
 least, no such certain and self-evident truth as it commonly 
 passes for. I should do injustice to the truth also not to 
 notice that though it now seems to be allowed on all hands 
 as an agreed principle of the Christian religion (if there are 
 any protests against it they are rather faint, and are never 
 followed up by using the other view in argument) ; it has 
 been expressly rejected by some of the wisest and most devout 
 of Christian doctors. For example. Archbishop Magee, in his 
 very valuable book upon Ato7iement and Sacrifice, which 
 is a treasury of learning and reason, argues this clearl}- 
 (i. pp. 34-43), and calls those divines who have insisted 
 upon ' Natural Religion ' ' mistaken interpreters of Revelation
 
 'NATURAL religion: 31 
 
 who depart from the written Word of God to follow the 
 guidance of their own fancies,' etc.^ 
 
 It is agreed, then, that these later generations of men, to 
 whom a revelation or ' Word of God ' (as I shall always 
 prefer to call it)^ came, either (i) had by tradition some 
 remains of an original V/ord of God to the first man ; or, 
 (2) such a word having been given, it had been utterly lost 
 to them (and of course to all the rest of mankind) ; or (3) 
 there never had been any such primitive Word of God. But 
 only in the two later cases can * Natural Religion' be possible. 
 For in the first case supposed, the surviving thought of Some 
 One Unseen and above them — this repeated and kept alive 
 in them all by all ' His wonderful works ' before their eyes, 
 with the associated thoughts of right and truth in all things 
 between man and man, — this would be a sufficient foundation 
 for the further ' revelation ' to build upon, without imagining 
 a ' Natural Religion' which had never existed in fact. Indeed, 
 would not that intelligence of man, which it is supposed 
 could arrive at the thought of God by its own processes, not 
 only have prevented any impairing but have also improved 
 upon any knowledge first given by God of Himself and of 
 the other matters of spiritual life .-' 
 
 We are left, then, to assume, that if there was a ' Natural 
 Religion,' either there never had been a primitive ' revelation/ 
 or that, having been once received, it was in the course of 
 time utterly lost. But of this latter there is no historical 
 proof whatever ; not the faintest tradition. It is not in the 
 writings upon whose evidence we may believe that God did 
 teach man religion at the beginning. If we have supposed 
 that it is to be allowed as a probable conjecture, upon atten- 
 tive examination it is most mprobable. For if the soul of 
 man is so disposed towards religious belief that, beginning 
 
 ^ See also Ellis's Knoivledge of Divine Things frotfi Revelation, passim, 
 one of those valuable but neglected books which our age would be the wiser for 
 consulting; Leland's View, etc., Let. xxvii. etc. 
 
 2 ' Revelation ' is not the term which Holy Scripture uses to describe the 
 thing in question. And it is in effect ambiguous and unsafe in this argument. 
 For a man may use it (especially in this age, when so much is said and admired 
 about ' God's Works ' being as much what He tells mankind as His Word 
 written), and say that he includes in it also whatever mankind come at by their 
 observation and reasonings.
 
 32 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 without any information, it would be sure to arrive at this 
 at last, no matter how slow or hard the process ; then much 
 more would it have never let that belief go utterly, once 
 gained by any means. 
 
 A partial illustration of this will be in supposing a com- 
 pany of people who are trying their ingenuity upon a verbal 
 puzzle, and utterly baffled for a while, though one of them 
 has much more than common talent that way. The great 
 difficulty is in the first hint as to where the solution lies ; 
 .some clue which the ingenious man can follow up. If this 
 is given to all alike, he will be first to pursue it to the 
 answer. But suppose more than this, that the complete 
 answer had been known to him just before. Is it possible 
 (I was going to say, — but I tiji// say), Is it /I'lr/)', that he has 
 at once so forgotten it, that he will go on groping with the 
 rest after the very first step ? 
 
 Yet the theory of Natural Religion' supposes the puzzle 
 of a Universe and life set before the inquisitive eyes and 
 mind of man, which he will never rest until he works out for 
 himself: this key of all existence, in a Supreme, Invisible 
 Power and Creator, Whom he must worship. Surely once 
 having this he could never have lost it, and sunk into the 
 blank helpless stupidity of having no religion whatever ! I 
 7//C7J' believe this if it is yet proved as fact. But I surel)- 
 cannot be expected to accept it only because it is asserted ; 
 and even refuse to attend to another account of these things 
 which offers to test itself by proof. 
 
 Or are we to assume the other alternative, viz., that there 
 never was any religious thought, any idea of God, until men 
 discovered (or imagined) it, by wondering at the life and 
 power around and within them : and going on to ask them- 
 selves and one another what all this meant : until perhaps 
 by a hundred generations of slow advance they reached the 
 idea and practice of a religion ? What proof of t/iis have we 
 as a fact .-• None whatever. We have already seen that as 
 we pushed on back through the ages for 4000 years, finding 
 religion everywhere, and interrogating every race and re- 
 gion for the beginnings of it, each answered — ' It is not in 
 me,' and pointed us still backward to earlier forefathers, 
 from whom they had received it. If any answered more
 
 RELIGION IN HIS TOR V. 33 
 
 than this, it was that God or ' the gods ' had taught it to 
 their remote ancestors.^ 
 
 And this bare conjecture also of a primitive human 
 invention of Religion — indeed either of those by which we 
 make a place for ' Natural Religion,' — has its antecedent 
 improbabilities. From frequent reading of such things with- 
 out dissent, we may have got into the habit of thinking them 
 reasonable. But now endeavouring, for the purpose of 
 searching out the truth, to dismiss such prepossessions — is it 
 so ? why is it so ."* Let us try and represent to ourselves 
 the process in each of these alternatives, and compare it with 
 any traces of fact which we do have. 
 
 Adam (or the first man by any name), having not only 
 known of the One Only True God, but personally known Him 
 and been 'blessed' by Him, and informed not only of His 
 being and power and graciousness, but also of whatever else 
 was necessary to His spiritual life, his descendants, after 
 some generations, lost all idea of this. No parents spoke 
 to their children, or in the inquisitive hearing of their chil- 
 
 ^ This seems to be directly recognised by the writer of the articles on 
 * Natural and Revealed Religion' in Blunt's Theological Dictionary, in saying that 
 ' the natural way to inquire how much knowledge is thus discoverable would 
 be by an appeal to history ; how much has without supernatural assistance been 
 discovered by man. . . . The historical evidences of a religion are all-important : 
 but to talk of its pre-historical evidence is self-contradictory.' Of these articles, 
 as a whole, it seems to me that, while there is much profound thought and some 
 just statements, there is to be seen throughout them the misleading effect of all 
 attempts to argue about religion ' philosophically ' — a necessity of throwing the 
 mind back of its Christian faith, though that faith is in fact more true than any 
 philosophy (an absurdity and folly for me, even if it be a logical necessity of 
 the argument) ; and thus afterwards in fact leaving it more or less in the unfor- 
 tunate position of uncertainty and questioning, if not doubt. But if I may take 
 these sentences following (p. 635) as implying the writer's acceptance of the 
 certain truth, as between the two, and as a rejection of the whole notion of a 
 ' Natural Religion ' as he has described it, that being shown to be in its very 
 nature contrary to facts and to our best thoughts, then we are of accord. ' In 
 the scheme of revelation we know nothing of God but what He has told us, 
 either when first He made us or since. We therefore have no ground for hope 
 that we can by our own effort find out anything further about Him. He who 
 has discovered that God is, may easily find what He is : he to whom God has 
 revealed Himself can only wait for the time when, not by our study, but by His 
 mere permission, "we shall see Him as He is." . . . For example, it concerns 
 us to know that God created us, if we are to behave as His creatures ; we can 
 believe in the Creator without knowing, at least in this life, why He created, 
 when He did, and not before.' 
 
 C
 
 34 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 dren, of any such Person or Power. The whole of mankind 
 became as ignorant and stupid about this as the wild beasts 
 around them. Then, after no one knows how many genera- 
 tions of such existence, some begin to notice that there were 
 strange things around and above them, mysteries of power 
 and life ; to wonder how this came to be, until, slowly im- 
 proving upon this, they discover Religion. In any other 
 matter would not a mere conjecture like this seem a rather 
 wild tale, requiring a great deal of credulity in us to believe 
 it .'' Why, if men descended from the earlier intelligence 
 to be more like the beasts, were they not more likely and 
 almost certain to go further in that direction, much less to 
 reverse that tendency } 
 
 Or take the other case, and as this will almost of neces- 
 sity require, lay aside, so far as one of us Christians can, the 
 whole Christian impression (or prejudice .-*), and have as much 
 confidence in the writings of some men of this generation as 
 so many have had in an old book about the beginnings of 
 our race. Suppose this descendant of anthropoids of whom 
 they tell us, who has just begun to be antJwopos enough to 
 make the first advances towards such things as finally 
 culminate in religion. Try to follow him step by step 
 through these sunless tracts of conjecture, until we emerge 
 into the regions of actual history, and find the whole of man- 
 kind believing and practising as religion — what } One 
 simple, true, though incomplete Natural Religion, to which 
 a ' revelation ' can add the other things which a man needs 
 to know and believe for his soul's health } No ; but, as we 
 have before seen, a vast collection of different notions and 
 observances, which no Christian would admit to belong to 
 that Natural Religion in which he has been believing. But 
 take it as a whole — that is, as regards far the greater part of 
 mankind at that time, — and this is all the fairer, because in 
 such a test we should rather leave out that very small part 
 of mankind whose supposed history we are about to ex- 
 amine as especially involving the claim to prove by it a 
 primitive religion which they did not invent, but were taught 
 it by their God. See in what a maze of other puzzles he who 
 allows this unhistorical guess-work is now involved, and 
 which I can now only state, without showing how really
 
 RELIGION IN HIS TOR Y. 35 
 
 insufficient are the probable and plausible answers which 
 may be made to them. Would you not merely aggravate 
 the wildness of conjecture by a theory that mankind first 
 achieved a pure Natural Religion, and then all marched 
 away in the direction of horrible superstitions ? Is the 
 Natural Religion you believe in one that of itself produces 
 idolatry, the belief in many gods, silly and obscene ceremonies, 
 etc. .-^ Or how should these come first in the process of 
 evolving such a pure religion .-' Were they thrown off as the 
 process advanced .'' (not rather increased .'') Did the false 
 produce the true .-' St. Paul seems to say the reverse of 
 that ; but his words will be examined at length in another 
 place. Think of the immense time required for such pro- 
 cesses. That indeed rather suits the rejectors of our Holy 
 Scriptures, but is more or less uncomfortable for a Christian 
 who feels under some sort of limit of the history. Those 
 who, like the Brahmins, are entirely free from this, and can 
 deal out their hundreds of thousands of years at discretion, 
 must share with them the suspicion of absurdity. Then 
 there is something very strange in seeing men, not one of 
 whom had ever gone through the master difficulty of this all 
 in the first step from no religious thought at all to any reli- 
 gion, who never knew what it was not to hear something of 
 God (or ' gods ') — these insisting that others discovered it, and 
 showing just hoiv they did ! It is safe to say that this 
 experiment could not be made in a Christian land even 
 with a child whose parents were utterly non-religious or 
 atheists in opinion, and tried to keep the very thought of 
 anything Divine from ever entering the growing mind. The 
 suggestion floating everywhere in the atmosphere of thought, 
 in the careless speech of servants, or of the very atheists 
 themselves, would find a lodgment in that soul. Beyond a 
 doubt the human mind and soul are so constituted that at 
 the very first communication the thought is received and 
 never quite lost. It has as much affinity to each soul as has 
 air to the lungs of the new-born child. And yet if the air 
 were not furnished the child would never breathe. 
 
 Much less than this have we now any such actual case as 
 might suggest this account of the beginnings of religion in 
 our race. Let us approach as near as possible to this, and
 
 36 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 try to make it imaginable and lifelike by the supposition of 
 a number of children whom no one has taken care to teach 
 religion, and who are yet too young to have caught any hint 
 of it from the speech of others or from reading.^ Yet we 
 must suppose them old enough to survive if cast together 
 upon an uninhabited island by a shipwreck, in which all the 
 elders of their party perish, or at least die before the chil- 
 dren are old enough to learn anything of the kind from 
 them. Have we any reason to think that they — growing to 
 manhood and living a lifetime, in which they are never 
 visited by other human beings, — that they or their descend- 
 ants, continuing in a like separation from the rest of man- 
 kind, would discover or invent any sort of religion ? 
 
 See with what care the Christian religion provides that 
 we should all be taught its doctrines and duties. What 
 continual reminders there are of it in the ceremonies and 
 instructions, public and private, of the Church ; in the divi- 
 sions of time ; in ' this visible frame of things,' which, when 
 we once get the thought, and still more the fixed belief of 
 religion, ' declares the glory of God ' to each one. Yet how 
 many are quite irreligious in spite of all this ! How many 
 are so merely by the * lust ' or eager desire ' of other things,' 
 contrary to their positive convictions and most serious 
 thoughts ! The maintenance of the mere bodily life of 
 themselves and their families seems thus to absorb many, 
 so that they will say, or others will be found to say it for 
 them, that it is unreasonable to expect them to spare time 
 or thought for religion. (Yet we are to suppose that the 
 earlier ages of mankind, when this struggle was universal, 
 and perhaps more engrossing, discovered religion.) Love of 
 enjoyment or ambition in like manner engrosses others ; 
 mere indolence others yet, and these in all repress religious 
 thought. 
 
 Nor is this confined to a few very dull people, or to the 
 many who are dull by comparison. The better-informed, 
 
 1 Even then, such is the subtle power of heredity, intellectual as well as 
 spiritual, that we could not be sure how much more easy or likely this was for 
 those whose ancestors for at least a hundred continuous generations had had 
 religious thought as some part— some of them it might be a great part— of their 
 actual living, as compared with an order of beings who had never had any such 
 thought.
 
 RELIGION IN HISTOR V. 37 
 
 the more intellectual, the more readhig and thinking people 
 may have other engrossing pursuits, which as much exclude 
 religious thought. Could it have been carelessly or inac- 
 curately said of such people by the Great Master of the 
 Christians, that His teachings were rather ' hidden from 
 these ao(f>ol koI avverot' and more ' revealed unto little 
 children ' and other like less reasoning and reading people ? 
 We must not empty this saying of all its force because it is 
 annoying to our intellectual pride, or any one's else. And 
 what do we see all about us .'' Bright, intelligent persons, 
 who are fond of poetry, wit, and philosophy ; men wath 
 uncommon genius for law, medicine, commerce, or mechanics; 
 great observers of natural processes, very acute in following 
 out these researches, and elegant and eloquent in writing of 
 them for the information of others ; masterly astronomers 
 and mathematicians — who are coldly indifferent to the reli- 
 gion they profess, if any ; have no time or attention to spare 
 to it from what interests them more. Some of these will 
 discuss questions of religion, but only to disparage its import- 
 ance and suggest doubts of its beliefs, with all shades of 
 such opinion, from the slighter hints of such doubt on to 
 distinct and theoretic atheism. 
 
 This is the fact, no matter how we account for it. And 
 there is nothing so strange in it. Such men prefer this to 
 religious thought, just as another prefers good cheer, or 
 vicious indulgence, or money-making, or notoriety. Yet 
 these are all alike far inferior in essential greatness and 
 urgent importance to ourselves, to what tells us about our 
 spiritual needs, our future life, and of all we have personally 
 to do with God. How indeed can intelligent men prefer the 
 others, and even avoid and repel these } We may, if we will, 
 find the clue to this in another profound saying of One quoted 
 just before, that * men love darkness rather than light,' and 
 why they do. But, in any case, why not accept the fact, and 
 note its bearing upon the question whether primeval men 
 were likely of themselves to give such attention to these 
 matters for ages as to invent religion } For my part, I 
 always regret when good men meet these questions of our 
 day by saying that it is not the ' great men of science ' who 
 promote religious doubt, but only the 'shallow pretenders,' etc. 
 
 299279
 
 38 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 It is true, in one great sense, as Young says, that 'an unde- 
 vout astronomer is mad.' Who of us can contemplate that 
 amazing glory of space and mass and power, in which any 
 one now can see so much more, and be so much more over- 
 whelmed by its awful greatness than could the lofty soul 
 of the Poet-King, as he sang, 'When I consider Thy 
 heavens'? When 'day unto day uttered this speech ' unto 
 each one of us, what insane folly has seized upon any human 
 soul that is not devout ? 
 
 But what is the fact ? Was Laplace one of the * shallow 
 pretenders ' to astronomical science ? Yet he was without 
 doubt a thorough atheist. The story runs that when the 
 Emperor Napoleon was looking at the sky once in its greatest 
 splendour of night, and asked his great officers around him 
 who could look at that and not see God in it, Laplace said 
 that he had been searching the sky for forty years, and had 
 never found God there. Was not Mr. Darwin a great man 
 of science .-' And yet he was to my apprehension as stone- 
 blind to religious truth as any man of them all. To come 
 to my own country, is the editor of the Popular Science 
 MontJily one of the 'shallow pretenders'? I owe him small 
 thanks for justice, or even decent civility. Yet he seems to 
 me one of the most intelligent students and agreeable 
 writers of Natural Science. 
 
 Nor do I see why some of these gentlemen should look 
 down upon, or, from their point of view, be ashamed of 
 the association with some of the others, e.g. those whom 
 Professor Huxley calls 'speculative atheists' (sec Reigii of 
 Law, p. 89, note). Nor do I see why Christians should make 
 much distinction or any between them. The Bishop of 
 Carlisle's tenderness for the sceptic and abhorrence for the 
 atheist do not hang well together. Why may not the one 
 be as honest a doubter, as much to be pitied and to be set 
 right as the other? {Modern Scepticism, p. 291.) With loving 
 reverence I say it, I cannot suppose that my God regards 
 the man who admits His 'existence,' but does not accept 
 His Gospel and join the company of His people, with any 
 more favour, if as much, than him who gives his reasons, 
 such as they are, for not believing in Him. 
 
 Even we who are endeavouring to keep our religion in
 
 RELIGION IN HISTORY. 39 
 
 mind are universally far below its privileges and spirit. The 
 sense of this defect (no matter how you may account for that 
 defect) is far the strongest in those who give most thought 
 and take most pains to be all which this requires. Every 
 seventh day, to say nothing of more frequent occasions, inter- 
 rupts all our other employments, even suspends them, to 
 attend to this. Besides this, every day each one of us makes 
 humble confessions and prayers alone and in secret to our 
 God, with grateful and adoring worship, and renewed vows of 
 love — as well as throughout the day, in the midst of our 
 other avocations, in thought, with almost incessant efforts 
 and aspirations of the same kind. We believe that a gracious 
 Power, vastly superior to all our will, assists these efforts — 
 is indeed the very almighty force of them — and will in some 
 no distant future be entirely victorious over the opposing 
 evil. For some such thing drags powerfully the other way. 
 
 Some one may now say : Do you not see that this is 
 proof that your religious thought is all fanciful and unreal, 
 a morbid misdirection of your intelligence ; for it is against 
 your nature } We say. No ; for we are fully persuaded that 
 what is good and religious is our original and superior 
 nature — that is, as God made us ; the other has come in 
 since to disorder that. And the disorder is not merely in 
 an evil will, but also invades and impairs our intelligence 
 when we turn that upon the thoughts of religion. Can we 
 Christians then rationally think that this dulness and weak- 
 ness of human thought even now, when stimulated by this 
 ideal and absolute truth, would before any such teaching, 
 of its own accord, begin and persist, until it would 'by 
 searching find out God ' .'' 
 
 In truth, we Christians have not yet reached the greatest 
 test by which we must try all these opinions. If the Holy 
 Book of our God tells us of Natural Religion, then I am bound 
 to accept it. If its fair meaning is contrary to this (or silent 
 about it), then I am right in rejecting it. But before we 
 enter upon that inquiry, let us see if there be any other 
 questions of the other order undetermined. Does the matter 
 still stand thus in any mind ? Religious thought must have 
 had some beginning among men. No other account of it is 
 offered but that of mankind having gained it from Nature,
 
 40 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Therefore that, however improbable it has now been shown 
 to be, is better than none, and is to be retained. But re- 
 member that the first condition of this statement is untrue. 
 What is said now is only as an introduction to the careful 
 investigation of another such account by history, and which 
 has none of those improbabilities. Then, too, if we believe 
 in Natural Religion, it must be something consistent with 
 itself, not a confused haze of contradictory notions, in which, 
 when one view is proved false, we unconsciously slip over to 
 a different one, and upon the exposure of that glide back to 
 the first, all the time fancying that we mean one thing by 
 these contradictions. For instance, is not this respectable 
 and traditional Natural Religion to which we hold that of 
 some process by which men's thoughts went from cause to 
 effect, and so on until they reached the thought of an 
 Almighty and Eternal Creator — a very pure if a very bare 
 ' Theism' — and that this One and Only God is the Judge of 
 men as to their right- or wrong-doing, their Rewarder or 
 Punisher — and with this some idea of ' a future state of 
 rewards and punishment ' } Then our Natural Religion has 
 nothing whatever to do with the actual state of any people's 
 religion who were without that ' Revealed Religion ' which is 
 understood to be in contrast with it. And we must not call 
 in Socrates or Plato as any sort of illustration of it, for 
 they had no idea of its very beginning and introduction to 
 all the rest ; of a ' Great First Cause,' One Who is alone 
 eternal and self-existent. 
 
 On the other hand, if we are going to find the beginnings 
 of our Natural Religion in a ' Nature-worship,' as the current 
 phrase is now — of many objects of wonder or terror, and 
 all the other horrible and fantastic superstitions of all 
 actual Pagans, savage or civilised — then we must not use 
 the authority of the other sort, of the pure Theism. Any 
 way, which of these two theories, each entirely contradictory 
 of the other, do we mean ? 
 
 And let us be definite about ' Nature,' as to what we 
 mean by the term, and how we suppose that it suggests 
 Religion. ' Nature,' as now commonly used, is a very vague 
 or a very false word, and either way very misleading.^ But 
 
 ^ See The Reign of God, not The Reign of Laxv, pp. 24, 123, 125, etc.
 
 RELIGION IN HISTORY. 41 
 
 I may suppose that in this use it means, either that man's 
 own nature — the way in which he was made first and is born 
 in succeeding generations — conducts him without fail to this 
 discovery ; or that ' Nature ' means what used to be called 
 the ' Universe ' around men, all that they see and know 
 outside of themselves (or also within, if you will). Is it 
 probable that in either of these senses Nature would have 
 carried mankind on from no thought whatever of such things 
 to the idea of unseen and superior spirits, of spiritual right 
 and wrong, of love and worship, of an eternal life ? 
 
 What was shown already on pp. 32-38 is a sufficient 
 answer as to the first supposed sense of the term ' Nature,' 
 and perhaps even for the other. But we will look at that 
 now more in detail. Do we see men in proportion to their 
 thoughts of ' Nature ' thronging churches, laying aside 
 everything else in holy time for the services of religion, 
 continuing instant in prayer to God for all spiritual good, 
 mingling grateful adoration of God with all they do } 
 
 It is true enough that a religious man may now make a 
 religious use of all his notices of ' Nature.' We see that often. 
 Our religion tells us to do so. But that does not touch the 
 present question. It would have some bearing upon that if 
 now this appeared to make the less religious man more so ; 
 or rather if it prevented any man, to whom the idea of God 
 had ever come at all, from ever forgetting it, or ever neglect- 
 ing what he really believed to be true religion. Are men, in 
 fact, so far as we can see, religiously inclined, and given to 
 such thought, just in proportion as they notice ' Nature ' .'' 
 Is it so with those the very necessity of whose daily toils and 
 cares keeps them in the constant presence and sight of it } 
 — for instance a field-labourer or a shepherd-boy (unless he is 
 one who carries a Testament in his pocket for leisure read- 
 ing), or those who are the ' naturalists ' by profession, who 
 devote themselves to ' Natural Science,' whether as indus- 
 trious and patient collectors of the facts, or the brilliant 
 generalisers and theorisers and book-makers .'' And so with 
 those who ' love Nature ' sentimentally, and have the most 
 to say (and, we must suppose, to think) about it poetically. 
 My own judgment of the facts is, that, if there be a difference 
 to observe, it is they who are the least given to Christian
 
 42 BEGnVA'INGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 thought. Their special study and their sentiment seems to 
 absorb all their attention and to exclude the other. For 
 the naturalists, the constant and exclusive contemplation of 
 this vast and endlessly varied revolution and regularity tends 
 to blind them to the thought of an Almighty and Eternal 
 Person, Whose Will is the All in All. They are rather 
 impatient of, and incensed at, such an utter contradiction. 
 The wonderful machine is not perfect, as they would have it, 
 unless entirely automatic and independent. And the idea 
 of men being sinners and God their Judge as such, also 
 makes some discord with their theory. So they either 
 repel the thoughts of true religion, or barely listen to them 
 with a cold inattention. 
 
 There are indeed devout men among the ' naturalists,' 
 but they are not the representatives — only the exceptions of 
 their class. I have known such men, who were anxious and 
 alarmed at observing the general tendency of physical 
 studies to obscure the thought of God. Indeed, it need not 
 have that result ; but it will without special care, just as 
 every place and work in life has its especial dangers to be 
 guarded against. 
 
 Suppose we assume the opposite of this, and go to all 
 these devoted students or admirers of ' Nature,' and say : 
 ' You of course are the most devout of men : you think and 
 talk more than any others about God and spiritual things,' 
 would not most of them stare at us with surprise, and then 
 treat this as either very stupid or insulting } 
 
 So the profound Jacobi, as the result of his reflection 
 upon these things, cries out : ' Nature is atheistic ; it does not 
 reveal — it conceals God ' (Sir W. Hamilton, Works, iii. 
 p. 424). What real reason have we, then, for thinking that, 
 if men had not been taught religion, they would ever have 
 traced it out by ' Nature ' t Why would they have left their 
 dull ploddings for food and shelter, or their careless pursuit 
 of pleasure, their contests of war or trade, or this same intel- 
 lectual ambition which engrosses our naturalists, to discover 
 what they did not know enough about to have any curiosity ? 
 
 As a conclusion of fair common sense from these facts, I 
 should have to decide that, if mankind had to arrive at reli- 
 gion in that way, they would never have reached the first
 
 RELIGION IN HISTORY. 43 
 
 conception of it, much less that elaborate theory which is 
 commonly received as ' Natural Religion.' 
 
 Yet there remains a greater question for the Christian 
 scholar. Does the Book of God inform us of Natural Reli- 
 gion .'' If so, then all apparent improbabilities are of no 
 force. Otherwise they fairly exclude this from reasonable 
 belief Or, on the other hand, does it expressly or in sub- 
 stance tell us that mankind began to know God and their 
 duty by His immediate teaching.' Then that is decisive of 
 the fact. 
 
 We cannot fully meet such questions of the Word of 
 God until after just such a careful settling of the true 
 method of understanding the Book as I have placed in the 
 next Chapter, for our use in all that great inquiry which 
 follows. But I must now anticipate it for the present pur- 
 pose by a brief statement of what is not seldom entirely 
 overlooked in such inquiries, and so the Old Testament is 
 not approached or used in its true sense. This true principle 
 is, that the Holy Bible, with all its great variety of many 
 writings, appearing at long intervals of time, through the 
 lapse of fifteen centuries, is for us one Book of God ; and also 
 that the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the New Tes- 
 tament, as its voice to us, is our point of view as Christians, 
 as well for the old * Law and Prophets ' as for itself Accord- 
 ing to this no man did or could, before the Advent of Our 
 Lord, fully comprehend the Old Testament, as we may 
 now — not the writers of it themselves ; not David nor Moses. 
 Still less did the unbelieving Jews then, or have they since. 
 Of course this could not be true of any other sort of writings. 
 In Chapter IV. is set forth with some fulness why this is the 
 Christian's position in reading and understanding, e.g. the 
 Book of Genesis. I only state now the express words of Our 
 Lord, that He had come to fulfil the Law ; and that he who 
 was least in this new Kingdom of Heaven was greater than 
 John Baptist, than whom none greater had appeared before 
 among men ; and His corresponding act in teaching His be- 
 wildered and despairing disciples after His Death about the 
 most glorious truths of the Gospel, by * opening their under- 
 standing that they might understand the (old) Scripture ' (St. 
 Luke xxiv. 44). With this, and only with this, also agree
 
 44 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 the great arguments of the Epistles to the Romans and to 
 the Hebrews, as well as many other things throughout the 
 New Testament. 
 
 No one, I suppose, beginning to read the Book of Genesis 
 as a genuine and literal though very brief history, would 
 doubt that it tells that the first of mankind began life with 
 knowing God better than any of us do now. And when we 
 remember to look at it from the point of view of the Gospel, 
 we find that also recognising it simply as just such a history. 
 Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah are referred to as well-known 
 persons. Our Lord Himself speaks of ' the beginning,' and 
 of there being higher morals then than even Moses taught. 
 He begins what he would say of the persecution of the men 
 of God by others with ' righteous Abel.' (Think how much 
 that word meant when He used it.) 
 
 In the Epistle to the Hebrews we have what would be 
 called in any other such writing a ' most masterly and vivid 
 sketch ' of the history of true religion for 4000 years. Of 
 the nine great heroes of faith who are there chosen to chiefly 
 represent all the rest, this same Abel is the first. The son 
 of Adam, just after the great disaster of the Fall, appears as 
 making such vast attainments in religion as surely none of 
 us do, except as we have the later Word of God in the 
 Gospel. How could this be if even his father began the 
 first rude and faint attempts to guess at any religion .-• And 
 yet the notion of Natural Religion really requires many 
 generations and ages. 
 
 Adam, though he first had that promise of pardon and 
 redemption, seems rather passed by in this glory of the chief 
 'elders,' whose faith is to be our example ; perhaps because, 
 he appears most as the representative of how ' sin came into 
 the world, and death by sin.' ' Faith ' is one of those few 
 great words often used in the New Testament to represent 
 all our religion and salvation by Jesus Christ Our Lord, and 
 our life in Him (as 'godliness,' 'faith,' and ' love')— as it is so 
 strongly said right after this (Heb. xi. 6) that, ' without faith ' 
 — without this penitent, obedient, and loving trust in God — 
 ' it is impossible to please Him.' In exact accord with this, 
 St. Paul, in that great argument of his Epistle to the Romans, 
 which is one of the pillars of Christian doctrine, says that
 
 RELIGION IN HISTOR V. 45 
 
 'faith Cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God' 
 (Rom. X. 17). And so when we are pointed to Abel at the 
 head of that great line of worthies who shine out with special 
 glory in that unbroken succession of true religion, we are 
 told : ' By /aif/i Abel offered unto God a more excellent 
 sacrifice,' etc., and ' by it he being dead yet speaketh.' 
 Abraham and Moses have their places in that history, not 
 as the beginning of faith, or as the first receivers of the 
 Word of God, but far down in the line which began with 
 mankind. Let us recall again that designation of Abel by 
 our Lord, as ' righteous Abel.' What a glorious and won- 
 derful adjective from the lips of the Word of God Himself! 
 — and just as He was about to use it again, in His great 
 description of the Judgment : ' Then shall the rigJiteous say 
 unto Him,' etc. 
 
 ' But,' say some Christian writers of great fame and, in 
 some respects, of deservedly high authority for soundness of 
 true doctrine, (and so are constantly repeated by others,) 
 ' St. Paul himself, in the beginning of this very Epistle to 
 the Romans, affirms " Natural Religion." ' This, if true, is of 
 great importance. It indeed deserves very careful examina- 
 tion. The passage cited is this (i. 19, etc.) : ' Because that 
 which may be known of God is manifest in them ; for God 
 hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him 
 from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being under- 
 stood by the things that are made, even His eternal power 
 and Godhead ; so that they are without excuse.' 
 
 If any one's mind is already prepossessed with the idea 
 of ' Natural Religion,' this, taken alone, will seem to state it 
 very plainly. Yet that is not, as a matter of course, its 
 genuine meaning, for we shall now see that it readily and 
 naturally enough allows another sense, so that no one who 
 had not already derived this notion from some other source 
 would ever have found it here. We have already had occa- 
 sion to notice what St. Paul himself thought of the history 
 of the Genesis. He was also a devout believer of all that 
 was written in the Psalms, as, for instance, that all these 
 Pagans were 'the nations that forget God' (Ps. ix. 17), 
 and of what Isaiah and Jeremiah say to the same effect. 
 He himself had written before this that 'the world by
 
 46 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 wisdom (ao(f)ia or philosophy) kuezv not God,' and had 
 told the Athenians that, with all such religiousness as they 
 had, their own altar to 'the Unknown God' was an uncon- 
 scious confession that they did not even knoiv the One, Only, 
 and True (' whom ye ignorantly,' i.e. dyvoovvT€<i, unknow- 
 ing, ' worship'). He says of such worship elsewhere that in 
 it men 'sacrifice to demons, and not to God' (i Cor. x. 20). 
 Yet the brightest of the Greek philosophers, who are always 
 taken as the finest instances of Natural Religion, took part 
 in and commended some of these very superstitions. Either 
 they saw and felt no contradiction between them and their 
 religious ideas ; or else — so unlike what our religion requires, 
 and what all its Martyrs have practised — they, from timid, 
 indolent, or mercenary selfishness, basely betrayed the holy 
 truth, and so blasphemed the true God. Either way their 
 'Natural Religion' was of small account. Recall also that, 
 describing 'faith' (the true knowledge of the Unseen God, 
 knowledge which a man acts upon in true religion), he says 
 expressly that 'faith cometh by ("Nature .-' " thought .' philo- 
 sophy } — no, by) hearing (being told this truth), and hearing 
 by the word of God.' 
 
 Now, remembering that this was St. Paul's belief of the 
 history of true religion, let us begin to read the Epistle to 
 the Romans. Following him through the beautiful, loving 
 salutations of the first verses, we find him telling his person- 
 ally unknown correspondents how he longs and hopes to see 
 them soon in the great city of their residence — yet not for 
 curiosity, or merely from personal affection to them and the 
 wish to do them some good. He has an ardent hope that he 
 may proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ even in great 
 Pagan and Imperial Rome with some of the success he has 
 had elsewhere. Because men live in Rome, their salvation 
 by Jesus Christ Our Lord is none the less desired by him, or 
 any the less is it his duty to do what he can for it. No ; nor 
 whether they are Greeks — that is, Pagans — instead of Jews. 
 For all men need this pardon and salvation of God alike, by 
 which the 'righteous shall live by faith.' 'For (vers. 17, 18) 
 therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to 
 faith : as it is written. The just (rather, righteous) shall live 
 by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
 
 RELIGION IN HIS TOR Y. 47 
 
 (made known to them from above, not merely thought out by 
 them) against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, 
 who repress the truth in unrighteousness.' Observe how that 
 word * reveal ' is repeated, the second time with the added 
 emphasis, ' from Heaven.' In fact, the word in the New 
 Testament always means what God discloses to men. But 
 this wrathful judgment He would not reveal to the Pagans 
 if, unlike the Jews, they had never known what they owed to 
 Him ; if they had had no previous revelation from Him of 
 Himself and true goodness. And had they not .-' Yes, 
 verily. * Because (ver. 19) somewhat which may be known 
 of God is manifest among them ; for God hath showed it 
 unto them.' Had He not indeed } Having in mind the 
 writer's belief in that literal history of the Genesis as before 
 noticed, we naturally understand him to mean that their 
 very religion, such as it was, contained fragments and traces 
 of that revelation ; so did their laws and all their traditional 
 thoughts of justice and virtue. Nor was that all. As we 
 shall soon see, there was something besides provided to 
 remind them always and constantly of these glorious invis- 
 ible things. 
 
 It was true that for each succeeding generation, by the 
 perverseness of their fathers ' visited upon ' them, (that great 
 universal mystery and fact of human sin noticed in that 
 Second Commandment, which specially forbids false reli- 
 gion,) the original truth might be more and more lost. But 
 the glorious and gracious One would take all this into 
 account, only judging them by what was left to them of 
 that truth, and by their use of that. The Jews had been 
 favoured with many later revelations, and were judged 
 according to them also. But all men, from the very first, had 
 had something else to remind them of the primitive know- 
 ledge of God. ' For (vers. 20-25) the invisible things of 
 Him (that is, His Eternal Power and Godhead) from the very 
 creation of the world (the beginning of our race) are seen 
 into, being thought of (or kept in mind) through the things 
 made, so that they are (or may be) inexcusable. Because 
 that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, 
 neither gave Him thanks ; but they became silly in their 
 reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. Profess-
 
 48 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 ing themselves to be wise (or philosophic), they became 
 fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into 
 an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and 
 four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also 
 gave them up to uncleanness, . . . who changed the truth 
 of God into a lie, and worshipped the creation instead of the 
 Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.' Then follows 
 (vers. 26-32) that terrible description of the moral degrada- 
 tion which ensued among all the heathen people upon their 
 ' changing the truth of God,' that greatest of all truth, 
 true religion, ' into a lie,' that most dreadful of lies, false 
 religion. 
 
 Surely this is an account of all men (except those who 
 had received the Word of God, which came by later revela- 
 tion) through all the ages until then : not merely of Greek 
 philosophers, or a very few men wiser than all the rest ; and 
 not excepting such men either. And surely this does not 
 describe a slow advancing and improving process of thought, 
 by which men rose from no idea of God, or of anything divine 
 or spiritual, to a clear knowledge of 'His Eternal Power and 
 Godhead.' On the contrary, it is all the history of a great 
 and terrible descent, from a time when ' they knew God,' 
 and also were continually reminded of Him, though invisible, 
 by His works — down from this glorious light to great dark- 
 ness of false religion. Yet in that these later generations are 
 in some degree responsible and not innocent before Him. 
 
 Why should we put another meaning upon the writer to 
 contradict what he plainly implies elsewhere "i Is it because 
 Plato says some fine things superior to the popular religion 
 of his time, and so must have got these thoughts from 
 ' Natural Religion ' .? But it is precisely the ' Eternal Power 
 and Godhead ' which Plato and all these other men did not 
 see, even if we will not consider that all their better thoughts 
 at least may be traces of the original Revelation. 
 
 Let us apply another test, and stating this supposed 
 Natural Religion at its best, adjust it to the words of St. 
 Paul. For ' the being of God,' ' a future state,' and ' the 
 supremacy of conscience' were discovered by these other 
 races of men. They had nothing to do with the history of 
 mankind from Adam and Abel, or with any faith w^hich
 
 RELIGION IN HIS TOR V. 49 
 
 comes by hearing : theirs was knowledge which comes by 
 seeing. Seeing sun, stars, and seasons, they who had never 
 heard or been told of such a Person, came to have a clear 
 understanding of the Eternal, Holy, and Almighty Creator, and 
 the true worship of Him. But this now long-past generation 
 then went on by further thought to pen-ert their discovery, 
 and to utterly lose all this knowledge, in a false religion, 
 which we find now among their descendants. Yet vrhat 
 would this have to do with the guilt of that generation of 
 Pagans with whom the writer actually had to do, or with 
 any since ? * so that they are without excuse.' Or did he 
 mean that these people of his time had thus learned a true 
 ' Natural Religion, from beholding the things that are made,' 
 and then all turned round and changed this 'glory of the 
 incorruptible God ' into the silliest idolatries and most 
 immoral superstitions ? 
 
 We hardly need inquire whether there can be any sort 
 of agreement between these words of St. Paul and such a 
 Natural Religion as supposes that there was a slow ascent 
 at first by ' Nature- worship ' of everything great, strange, 
 powerful, or terrible, to the thought of many personal gods, 
 and then of one such Person. 
 
 The more we bring this sort of interpretation of St. Paul 
 under clear inspection, and try it thus by practical tests, do 
 its inconsistencies and difficulties increase. Why, then, not 
 take it in its natural agreement with the history of Genesis } 
 That relates : ' So God created man in His Own image 
 (with an impressive majesty of iteration), in the image of 
 God created He him.' It has long been to me very clear 
 that this spiritual excellence of mankind, as made in the 
 Maker's Own image, is a capacity of spiritual and intelligent 
 love, especially toward God Himself, including in this 
 personality and free will. Then it goes on to say that ' God 
 blessed' the first man and woman, and ' God said unto them,' 
 etc. ' And the Lord God commanded the man, sayingl etc. 
 Even when they had been tempted and sinned, 'He said' 
 unto their terrible tempter and to them, ' I will put 
 enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed 
 and her seed : it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise 
 his heel.' And so St. Paul, at the end of this very Epistle 
 
 D
 
 50 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 to the Romans, as an inspired prophet of God, says to them : 
 'And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your 
 feet shortly.' Thus this first knowledge of God was 
 continued through the following generations, with much 
 pure worship where there continued to be some penitent 
 faith to inspire it; while, with those who 'glorified Him 
 not,' it was soon almost entirely lost in the change of 
 false worship and vile unrighteousness. In precise accord- 
 ance with this w^e have the greatest abstract thinker among 
 the writers of Holy Scripture saying (Eccles. vii. 29), ' God 
 hath made man (in the original, more precisely, Adavi) 
 upright, but they have sought out many inventions.' 
 
 If with some persons this is still ' inconceivable,' because, 
 as they will say, ' mankind had at first no language, and so 
 could not literally understand something said to them,' let 
 them consider that this is simply begging the whole question 
 in advance. You would think it very absurd in a man to 
 say that Our Lord could not have risen from the dead 
 because no man ever did ; and so reject the abundant proof 
 upon which we all ought to believe that. Are not you now 
 saying that God did not speak to men and they understand 
 Him, because — they did not t 
 
 What, indeed, must be the entanglement of that intelligent 
 mind (and I know that there are such) which cannot fairly 
 consider the proof of a fact because ' it is impossible that 
 men could have been created with the ability at once to use 
 words, and to understand them when spoken by another ' } 
 (Or do they really mean that it was ' impossible ' for the 
 Almighty God to produce the sounds of a human voice, such 
 as we could hear .'') This is a curious fact, showing the 
 tenacious hold of the mere notion of a 'Natural Religion,' or 
 the vast power of the new current of unbelieving thought, 
 bearing along with it many unconscious minds. It is closely 
 allied to the assumption (or a part of it) that, because human 
 life, in all its generations after, begins with utter, speechless 
 helplessness, therefore it must have been so at the very first 
 But how absurd this is ! The infant thus created would at 
 once have perished, and left no successors. The present 
 order can give us no reasonable suggestion of that kind. 
 For that supposes the mature parents already existing for
 
 RELIGION IN HIS TOR V. 5 1 
 
 the process of generation, so that in this we have to begin 
 with the grown man. 
 
 Then, too, the full-grown man and woman, who can neither 
 utter a word nor understand one they hear, is an altogether 
 unworthy idea of our race, as ' created in the image of God.' 
 The infant child is natural enough, because we connect its 
 life with the mature life of its parents. But to fancy the first 
 man Adam made a living soul, as a huge infant, without 
 speech (or thought, for the two are really inseparable), is a 
 most unnatural absurdity. Impossible^ indeed, to believe 
 that God could (or would) give language to this glorious 
 creature, the crown and king of all his fellow-creatures upon 
 earth, when He even makes every little brood of chicks 
 at once express their desires and understand their mothers' 
 calls. Indeed, some of the greatest seekers after truth 
 among men^ have been convinced, upon grounds indepen- 
 dent of this, that a language must have been given to 
 men with their creation, as much immediately and directly 
 as the power of moving from place to place. (See later. 
 Chapter V.) Nothing true that has since been discovered 
 as to the growth and changes of existing languages affects 
 this at all. 
 
 Perhaps the doubt takes this form of suggesting that 
 these first pages of history are an ' allegory,' and therefore 
 are not authority as to facts. We will all agree that the 
 Genesis is not, like the Pilgrim's Progress, merely an ' alle- 
 gory,' but that somewhere in it literal history does begin. 
 How, then, do we distinguish any part of it as allegorical } 
 Naturally, history would not begin with that, but it might 
 afterward appear incidentally, as the illustration used by 
 some man of what he would teach others. There are such 
 brief allegories in the Scripture history. These all appear 
 plainly enough upon their face to be such. But the account 
 of the first man is not so introduced. It is not so recognised 
 or treated elsewhere in the Book. It is a simple beginning 
 of what goes on afterwards as an acknowledged and con- 
 tinuous history. There are in other ancient books stories, 
 which are rightly enough called fables or myths, in which 
 
 1 Hobbes, Archbishop Stillingfleet, Buxtorf, Dr. Johnson, Dr. Beattie, Arch- 
 bishop Magee, Dr. Ellis, etc. etc.
 
 52 
 
 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 a poetic mind has dressed up some tradition or doctrine in 
 evident fiction. But any reverence for this as the book of 
 God, or any just sense of its method, so full of the sobriety 
 and simplicity of strict truth, will forbid our classing it with 
 them. 
 
 Without doubt, this history of the greatest things, com- 
 pressed within three or four pages, and involving the greatest 
 mysteries of all human life, is in itself unlike any other stor}^ 
 There may yet be disclosed to us in it — we may reasonably 
 expect there will — very much more, which escapes us all 
 now. To make this notion of an allegory an occasion for 
 rejecting the plain meaning, and with wild and weak guesses 
 make of it whatever we fancy, w'ould be the worst mistake 
 of all. It would in the end destroy all faith and reverence ; 
 and these surely are of the first consequence. Let us be 
 content to accept the history just as it is told, and as the 
 Word of God in person Himself used it. 
 
 Or even suppose we could reasonably believe this to be 
 an allegory, what truth does this allegory teach us .-' Can 
 we think that it has been telling mankind for all these ages 
 that their first forefathers discovered, by a slow process of 
 their own thoughts and gradual invention of many genera- 
 tions, how to use words in speech, and how to understand 
 others when they heard them speak .-' Does it read so 
 naturally now ? Did any one ever really obsei^ve this 
 meaning in it } For my own part, it seems very clear that 
 I would never have learned from this ' allegory,' if it be one, 
 that language was not at first given to man as much as 
 his senses ; but just the contrary, that it was so given. And 
 what, then, does the ' allegory ' teach us all ? Something, 
 surely. If we believe it to be what God has said for many 
 ages to mankind, for the instruction of our race (and it is 
 only with Christians, and as to the Christian view of these 
 matters, that the inquiry is made), then, if we prefer to say 
 that it is such instruction in the form of an allegory, we are 
 bound to give a reasonable account of what truth it has 
 thus been plainly teaching men through all these generations. 
 I now partly anticipate a later inquiry, and yet it is well 
 to try and put into definite words what the allegorj'- must 
 then be supposed to teach. Thus : —
 
 RELIGION IN HIS TORY. 53 
 
 ' So God created man in His Own image, in the image of 
 God created He him. And God blessed them, and God 
 said unto them,' etc. (Gen. i. 27, 28.) That is, man had no 
 more of the present power of utterance or comprehension 
 of words, if he should hear them, than the brutes have now 
 (or a new-born child) ; or God was not able to cause sounds 
 such as are now made by the human voice to be heard. Nor 
 could a man learn it, as a child does now, by hearing and 
 imitation, for as yet there was no person who could make 
 such sounds. Then, forced by their necessities, with very 
 long observance and imitation of the cries of animals, etc., 
 they found out a method of vocal sounds, at first little above 
 these cries of the other animals, but, improving upon this 
 slowly through many thousands of years, it became at last 
 human language. 
 
 ' And the Lord God commanded the man, saying,' etc., 
 ' and brought them (the other living creatures) unto Adam, 
 to see what he would call them : and whatsoever Adam 
 called every living creature, that was the name thereof 
 (Gen. ii. 16, 17, 19). Here also the allegory has been teach- 
 ing mankind for some thousands of years that they began 
 life without any words, just like the other dumb brutes, as 
 we now call them. The full-grown man and woman were, 
 indeed, as regards this, much worse off than an infant of 
 a day old is now, for not only was there no one to take 
 care of them in their dumb ignorance, but no one to teach 
 them language as time advanced, or even any language to 
 learn, until their remote descendants should invent it. 
 
 This is not caricature, nor is it derision. Surely, if it is 
 assumed that man had no language at first, and that there- 
 fore God could not tell him anything in words — and yet this 
 does not contradict the story of Genesis, because that is an 
 allegory, — then the allegory must teach this, or what is con- 
 sistent with it. Any way, it ought to be plain enough to us 
 all what the allegory does teach. For my own part, I alto- 
 gether prefer, as the more reasonable and natural under- 
 standing of the account in question, to take it as a true 
 history, virtually informing us, among other things, that 
 God provided man with a language as being as much a 
 part of the complete human nature as locomotion or under-
 
 54 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 standing ; that God did speak to Adam — at least as directly 
 as He did to Moses ; and that Adam both understood the 
 words, and was able to use words in response, of obedience 
 and love to His Maker, and of society with his wife. 
 
 To say the least, the notion of such an allegory, and 
 that St. Paul accepted this history in that sense, is so far 
 from probable and reasonable, that I need not use it in 
 understanding his meaning in this account of the Begin- 
 nings of Religion. Or rather, recurring to the greatest fact 
 before us, I need not so read what here the ' Holy Ghost 
 teacheth.' 
 
 The whole theory of Natural Religion is of no such 
 authority, in any sense, as to forbid being questioned, or to 
 bar the way to inquiry which does not accord with it. It is 
 not * one of the Articles of the Christian Faith, as contained 
 in the Apostles' Creed.' It is not in form or substance in 
 any Symbol, Articles, or Confession of Faith, or any Liturgy 
 or book of authority of any body of Christians that I ever 
 knew of 
 
 It is of interest and use to trace, as far as possible, its 
 origin — more especially, how it came among Christians. 
 Some persons, in fact, will not be able entirely to rid them- 
 selves of the prepossession, unless they can, in a measure, 
 understand how it has been so entirely taken up by certain 
 of the great defenders of Christian truth, as though it were 
 an agreed part of that truth ; and so entirely followed by 
 others since. 
 
 By those who had not our Divine account of the first 
 ages of man — for example, by some of the great Greek 
 philosophers, — religion was conjectured to be one of his inven- 
 tions, from his study of ' Nature ' and of his own thoughts. 
 The first favourable allusion by a Christian writer to 
 ' philosophy,' as applied to religion (St. Paul had mentioned 
 it two generations before, but with veiy strong disapproval), 
 we find in Justin Martyr. Clement of Alexandria and 
 Origen carry it much further. But the best account we 
 could give of their intentions in this cannot acquit them of 
 a great mistake. There will always be a tendency in those 
 who are fond of studies other than those of religion — good as 
 any such may be in their place — to treat the truth which we
 
 RELIGION IN HISTORY. 55 
 
 receive directly from God in the same way. They wish to 
 arrange it also in a method ; to ' co-ordinate the facts ;' to 
 ' give it a scientific form.' This is all very well for human dis- 
 coveries, but unsafe and misleading as to what we know only 
 by God's words to us. We cannot ' co-ordinate ' the human 
 and the Divine ; that is, some mystery or transcendent truth 
 which God gives to our faith, and our reasoning from this, 
 or personal application of it ; for they are not of the same 
 ordo. Even less can we wisely undertake to re-arrange all 
 these Divine things in some method of ours. For it is of 
 their essence to be simply accepted by us as given. So in 
 those early ages, from Origen down, the effect was to obscure 
 the heavenly truth, and to confuse it with human errors. 
 The same thing occurred in the Middle Ages with the 
 writings of the Schoolmen ; and in Aquinas, the greatest of 
 them all, we find ' Natural Religion ' largely and positively 
 affirmed. (See Sinn. Theol.) After the Reformation some 
 of the philosophising theologians gave it a large place ; even 
 one of our very greatest and wisest divines (a careful exami- 
 nation of the first and fifth books of the Eccles. Pol. with refer- 
 ence to this would be useful). Archbishop Tillotson, and 
 those of his school, went yet further in the same direction. 
 And then the ' Deists ' found it altogether to their purpose. 
 Thus later Christian writers employed a great part of their 
 work in trying to frame answers to the puzzles and doubts 
 about the truth of God which Bolingbroke and Hume argued 
 from this very ' Natural Religion.' Those Christian apologies 
 were successful only just in proportion as they had left the 
 ground of ' Natural Religion.' But they seem seldom 
 to have seen clearly that to allow it at all was a wrong 
 done to truth and to the Word of God. 
 
 Some indeed laid hold of it, with a timid eagerness to 
 secure the help of ' Philosophy ' for Religion : as much as 
 possible to avoid mysteries and to exalt reason ; to propitiate, 
 to conciliate, to attract the more intelligent. Some were 
 afraid that otherwise they, too, would be accounted among 
 the * blind,' the ' narrow,' the ' bigoted,' instead of being 
 simply resolute to find and to defend truth, no matter what 
 names they might be called. But what counted more in this 
 direction than perhaps anything else was the notion that
 
 56 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 only thus could any sincere piety or any traces whatsoever of 
 real religion be accounted for before the Advent of our Lord 
 in any men outside of the race of Abraham. To this contri- 
 buted the recoil in some minds from the harsh judgment of 
 some other zealous Christians, that all these ' nations ' were 
 surely ' turned into hell ' for lack of that Word of God, which 
 had been given only to the small people of Israel. We shall 
 soon see how all these difficulties are met, at least as well, by 
 the idea of a primitive Revelation. 
 
 In our day this prepossession is reinforced by a tendency 
 of thought, of which Hooker and Butler, and even our grand- 
 fathers, knew nothing, and which is represented by the word 
 ' Evolution.' This may bar the way in the minds of some of 
 my readers to following with freedom and candour the inves- 
 tigation which follows. It is the belief that our age has been 
 forced by an irresistible evolution of thought to bring forth 
 an idea, which, in its turn, nothing else can resist : namely, that 
 all things which exist (and thus including all beliefs and 
 institutions, as well as worlds and souls) are the product of 
 an immense evolving and progressive force, to the beginning 
 point of which no knowledge can attain, or our knowledge 
 ever more than conjecture the duration of its processes, even 
 less place any limit of future evolution. If any one's mind is 
 really under the spell of such a persuasion, it is indeed in no 
 condition to entertain the historical proof of something which 
 is in no sense an evolution. Such a mind will find the theory 
 of Natural Religion' far more congenial, and quite reducible 
 under its favourite necessity of belief 
 
 But is that a wise and fair and free condition for an 
 investigating mind ? It certainly is not, according to the 
 Christian conditions of thinking, which w^e are now under- 
 taking, at least by way of hypothetical reasoning, to follow 
 faithfully, while we try a certain proposed solution of the 
 facts of History as to Religion. This Christian method 
 involves the * glorious liberty ' of men, as ' the sons of God,' 
 to believe whatever is most to His glory, as it has been made 
 known to them by His verbal communication. Let us all 
 refuse to accept this overwhelming constraint of believing in 
 superior, resistless ' evolution,' even in its more religious form 
 of assuming that this is the invariable way in which God
 
 RELIGION IN HISTORY. 57 
 
 does all that He does — for this occasion at least, and until 
 we have given a fair trial to this research oi facts. 
 
 Even a ' blind bigotry' in behalf of the theory of universal 
 ' evolution,' which would compel all facts to be adjusted to 
 it, and so require that man shall appear as slowly unfolding 
 from lower thought to the highest yet known, cannot upon 
 its own assumptions entirely exclude our argument until it 
 has shown that the imagined ' evolution ' did not take place 
 before the scenes of Eden. Let us then proceed to try the 
 whole question by the Di'/ine History. If that gives explicit 
 information that the spiritual nature of man, his capacity, and 
 supreme purpose of loving God and his neighbour, did not 
 begin with the first man, but was to be developed in succeed- 
 ing generations, then all the proof or probability already 
 shown gives way. If, on the contrary, in its fair sense it tells 
 of a primitive Revelation, let that be allowed as the Christian 
 truth. 
 
 The notion of a Natural Religion cannot even be rightly 
 named a human invention. It is not something real and 
 true, though inferior : — not ' revealed,' but left to the human 
 intelligence to find out by its own processes. It is a fiction, 
 a false imagination ; as Magee quotes some one as describ- 
 ing it {O71 Atoneine7it and Sacrifice, ii. p. 36) *a mere ens 
 rationis,' having no existence in fact, but only in the mind 
 which entertains it. It may be assumed, and repeated with 
 unquestioning positiveness a thousand times, and occupy a 
 large space in some arguments of ' Christian Evidences ' 
 which are otherwise very valuable. Yet none the less it is at 
 the utmost only a huge house of cards. At the first touch of 
 opposing /«^/ it tumbles into formless ruin. 
 
 It cannot even be rightly called an ' idea,' if we mean by 
 that, as the present common use is, some thought of ours 
 which represents some existing thing. Nor is it the meta- 
 physical ' idea ' of Plato and his followers, but the exact 
 opposite — as corresponding to nothing existing : without 
 suggestion from or connection with history or any present 
 experience ; much less is it the original and reality of any 
 fact. Here, curiously enough, the Platonic philosophy, in 
 which in some measure it has its origin and continuance, 
 will furnish us with another refutation, as well as of this
 
 58 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 very theory of ' ideas.' For if it be a true idea in this sense, 
 the first and essential part of it is the thought of a Creator. 
 We are told that man sees and tJiinks, and in the process of 
 this necessary thought of cause he comes to know that there 
 must be a Great First Cause — that is, GoD ; and here is the 
 foundation of all Religion. 
 
 But this is just what the acute Plato and all the philoso- 
 phical Pagans who are instanced as having a Natural Reli- 
 gion — Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Chinese — never did 
 think. The Hebrew Scriptures were through all those ages 
 the only repository of the thought that there is an Eternal, 
 Self-Existent Person Who by His Will made all else. The 
 most profound thought of all the others begins with an 
 eternal frame of things, in the midst of which sits a sort of 
 All-Powerful, who, after all, is himself only a part of this 
 To-Pan. So Plato's ' ideas ' have no right place in Christian 
 thought. They are a sort of necessity of his notions. Tlicy 
 are the Eternal, and account after that fashion for all that 
 exists, without a real Creator. This or that thing appears to 
 exist now, because there always was this eternal idea which 
 various individuals of it now display to our eyes. 
 
 In fact, Plato's 'ideas' are not at all what any one now 
 means in the ordinary use of that word, unless, as a philoso- 
 phist, he tries to keep this notion in his mind, and to write 
 or speak according to it. I shall sometimes use the word, 
 but always in the obvious and popular sense, as, e.g., the 
 'idea' of Religion means any thought of worship or of a 
 Divine Person. So one great question before us now is 
 whether this idea, once communicated to a man, would not 
 be transmitted from generation to generation, and, however 
 debased and encumbered, never quite lost in any but an 
 idiot or an irresponsible person. 
 
 Far the most safe and reasonable ground in our study of 
 the Sacred History is to read it simply, as our Lord and St. 
 Paul did, as a clear and direct narrative of such facts as it 
 does recount, and to leave any deeper mysteries in it among 
 ' the secret things which belong unto God,' to be disclosed to 
 us by Him if and when and as He will choose. If He tells us 
 of any such mystery, then of course we are to receive it 
 
 The assumption of a ' Natural Religion' as a part of
 
 RELIGION IN HISTOR Y. 59 
 
 Christian truth is, as I have intimated, with most persons 
 rather a 'prepossession' than a behef. But that it is not only 
 in the way of a fair judgment of the matter in hand, but also 
 very general, I find shown in a remarkable and recent case. 
 A writer so deservedly popular as Dr. Geikie, and who has 
 no sympathies with unbelief — indeed himself recognising (yet 
 in the imperfect and neglectful way which prevails) the 
 primitive Revelation (see Hours tvith the Bible, i. p. 115) — 
 yet soon after (p. 304) speaks of certain Pagans of Chaldaea 
 in the time of Abraham^ 'who until then had followed a 
 simple and primitive Nature-worship' and of their 'local 
 divinities.' In what sense could he think this to be 'simple 
 and primitive' .'' Was such a ' departing from the Living God' 
 more ' simple and primitive ' than Adam's or Noah's know- 
 ledge of Him .-* Or, excusing the careless use of the first 
 adjective, as meant to distinguish from some later elaborate 
 idolatry, how was it ' primitive' } The writer has evidently, 
 though unconsciously, slipped from his earlier glimpse of 
 the true primitive religion to the vague fiction of an 
 invention and development of ' Natural Religion.'
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE TRUE PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED WITH THE 
 HOLY SCRIPTURES IN THIS INVESTIGATION. 
 
 Our research is therefore now to be in History, as sup- 
 plied by the books of Moses, upon the Christian hypothesis 
 that the Holy Bible differs from all other writings in being 
 * the Word of God ' to mankind. We need therefore to make 
 sure what this fairly implies, and to use the writings in ques- 
 tion intelligently and consistently upon that method. There 
 is a great deal of confusion of thought about this now pre- 
 vailing, and unperceived mistakes, which, if we do not see 
 and carefully avoid at the outset, will obscure our sight 
 of the facts, turn us aside from the right road of History, and 
 quite impair the value of our results. This chapter will 
 therefore be devoted to examining and fixing the reasonable 
 Christian method of understanding the Old Testament. If 
 some one says. Why not read the book simply as it literally 
 reads? — I would say, Most w^illingly ; most wisely, if the 
 words are at once accepted by the reader as true. But every 
 one does not do this as a matter of course. Witness the 
 notion already noticed of all the first of the Genesis being an 
 allegory. And to do this is not as simple a matter as it sounds 
 at first. Consider that most mighty agreed fact of these 
 writings being, in a manner peculiar to them, ' the Word of 
 God ;' that as such they have a great common purpose ; that 
 this purpose is not fully disclosed, except in that part of 
 them which is of latest date, written as long after the first as 
 it is now since Constantine was Emperor of Rome, and more 
 than three times as long after the first historical facts ; that it 
 was written in a language not only foreign to us, but not exist-
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 6i 
 
 ing for now twenty-five centuries as the living mother-tongue 
 of any people — amid scenes and habits of which nothing we 
 are now familiar with gives any idea. These things alone 
 suggest that it is but common sense for us to see that we 
 need helps in a fair reading of these writings such as are not 
 necessary for any book of our own language and time. 
 
 For one thing, in examining any ancient document, it is 
 but good sense to get what suggestions we can about it from 
 later writings connected with it ; to look sharply into them 
 for whatever helps us to understand its terms or the intention 
 of its author. But that is far below the case before us. We 
 know distinctly from the highest authority that the writings 
 of Moses cannot be really understood except according to 
 events and revelations made fifteen centuries after him ; that, 
 in fact, they never were so understood before that later time, 
 and even then only by those who with all their hearts 
 accepted the doctrines of the Gospel. Of course much of the 
 Old Testament was plain enough for its immediate purpose 
 to all who heard or read it in the literal words. But for 
 certain other future purposes, which were much the highest, 
 and therefore necessary to any thorough understanding, they 
 were not comprehended. Yet we are now precisely engaged 
 in researches of these later and highest matters, and we 
 live in the age of those complete revelations. It was right 
 enough for the Hebrews of Moses' or of Ezra's days to take 
 it merely as they did, but it would be absurd for Christians 
 not to look at it from their point of advantage. 
 
 Nothing can be plainer than what St. Paul tells us of 
 the writings of Moses being only the ' shadow of good things 
 to come,' — those chief truths which Our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 ' the Son of God ' and ' the Word of God,' came to disclose, 
 and which we now have in the New Testament. Those 
 earlier Scriptures were now shown to have a new, higher, and 
 yet original meaning, which had been held in abeyance in 
 the former ages from all men (including their very writers). 
 Thus even Moses never knew the full force of words which 
 he wrote by inspiration of God. What would we think if, 
 when the full explanation and purpose of some old writing 
 of another sort were now first known, some one should take 
 no notice of this, and treat the now explained words as still
 
 62 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 standing by themselves, and having no connection with this 
 true key to them ? Even if as to some inferior particulars 
 they seemed to have an evident sense apart from that, it 
 would be but a wise caution to make ourselves more sure of 
 this by recurring to that chief idea and trying all again by that. 
 If the very matters under consideration were those of very 
 considerable — of the very first — consequence, it would then 
 be a great mistake to neglect this, making it almost certain 
 that we would miss the true meaning of the words before us. 
 Nor does this which St. Paul tells us of the Old Testament 
 as a 'shadow' of the truth, only to be fully understood by 
 means of the Gospel, apply only to the ceremonies and civil 
 laws of the Hebrew dispensation. It includes the religion 
 and the history of all mankind, the very matters now before 
 us. So he very plainly and forcibly teaches, as before quoted, 
 and in the substance of the Epistles to the Romans, Galatians, 
 Ephesians, Colossians, and Hebrews. And so he shows Our 
 Lord to us as 'the last Adam,' carrying Him and His salva- 
 tion back to the first of our race, as St. John shows Him to 
 us as the ' Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.' 
 Thus all true religion and all spiritual life are essentially 
 Christian, and can be understood only through the Gospel. 
 One of the most striking of all St. Paul's illustrations of this 
 is in the Epistle to the Galatians,^ where he tells us that the 
 story of Isaac and Ishmael, the two sons of Abraham, is an 
 'allegory,' or rather that these events, real as they were, are 
 dXkTjyopovfieva, have another and higher meaning than the 
 mere narrative. This is not a fine device of human rhetoric, 
 using the ancient history as an illustration or ornament of 
 the writer's argument. It is that voice of Divine prophecy 
 (prophecy in its primary and highest sense ; not merely fore- 
 telling, but speaking for God by inspiration), revealing to us 
 how all other history was by the power and Will of God to 
 introduce His greatest purpose in all events — that is, the re- 
 demption of men by Our Lord. So that while Moses knows 
 and relates only the actual story of Isaac and Ishmael, it was 
 not until the New Covenant or ' Testament' of the Gospel 
 came to supersede the Old, that men could know the chief 
 meaning of these events as a figure and prophecy of that. 
 
 ^ Gal. iv. 21.24.
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 63 
 
 Observe, too, that this goes far back of the mere ' law of 
 Moses' both in time and scope. 
 
 Yet even St. Paul, as ' moved by the Holy Ghost,' cannot 
 be our chief authority for this. He, with the joy of loving 
 humility, stands aside when that voice is heard, to which he 
 once replied for us all, ' Lord, what wilt Thou have me to 
 do?' (or to think.) 
 
 In many places of the Gospel He tells us this, as when 
 in St. John v. 39 He bids all the Jews ' search the scrip- 
 tures (of the Old Testament), for they are they which testify 
 of Me' ; ' If ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me, 
 for he wrote of Me' (ver. 46). Yet no one did then, or does 
 now, at first, or unless informed by Our Lord, and thus given 
 the key of the whole, see this chief meaning of the books of 
 Moses. Even to His own loving followers He did not fully 
 disclose it until after His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, 
 which events also were a part of the explanation. As we 
 read in St. Luke xxiv. 25-27, 'Then He said unto them, O 
 foolish, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have 
 spoken : . . . and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, 
 He expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things 
 concerning Himself In this wonderful passage we see that 
 none but those whom He teaches can understand ' Moses and 
 all the prophets,' and 'all the scriptures' (that is, the whole 
 Old Testament) ; that even their danger is not of believing 
 too much, but, on the contrary, of not believing enough of 
 this. Accordingly, those Old as well as the New Scriptures 
 now really belong to and are comprehended only by the 
 Church of Christ. And so St. Paul declares at Rome (Acts 
 xxviii. 25-28), as elsewhere in substance, that the Word of 
 God has departed from the Jews as a people, and solemnly 
 takes up against them all that sentence of the prophets with 
 which Our Lord had warned them before the great Sacrifice 
 was made, ' Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand,' 
 etc. To the same effect in all his own writings he regards 
 all that history which went before as but the shadow of 
 which the Gospel is the substance ; as in the great instance 
 already cited of teaching us that Our Lord is the 'last 
 Adam,' Who restores mankind to the innocence they lost in 
 the first, and raises them to even greater future glory in that 
 Redemption.
 
 64 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Thus no Christian scholar can now intelligently explore 
 the Old Testament, except from this point of view ; other- 
 wise he will certainly miss some of its truth, and probably 
 get very far astray. To follow such a history as that in the 
 mere order of time would be to mistake appearance for 
 reality. It is our great advantage in this, which no other 
 history can offer, to look at all that has passed from ' the ful- 
 ness of time' — and this not as any deduction or ingenious 
 conjecture of ours, but by certain information of one who 
 does know. We are placed by the Mighty Lord and Master 
 of it all at a point where we see what He was doing in all 
 this, as its contemporary men could not. 
 
 In the New Testament (yet in substance also in the Old, 
 though not so plainly) we are most clearly taught what is 
 the wise temper of mind (no small matter for finding truth), 
 in which we should seek knowledge about religion. It is 
 with a penitent humility toward God and a supreme love of 
 God. Observe that it is not merely the humility of inferiors 
 and dependants, but of those who are under the just displea- 
 sure of their Superior, and desire above all things His merci- 
 ful forgiveness, His teaching as to this, and His immediate 
 help both to will and to do right. This is a part of the 
 essential attitude of the Christian learner toward all this 
 teaching ; in this entirely unlike other research. And to 
 love God above all else is another like part of it, so that we 
 will not ' seek first,' in this search of truth, our own glory as 
 discoverers of the truth, or even truth for its own sake, as this 
 is sometimes stated, or for an acquisition independent of 
 Him ; but with a love which forgets all else in the love of 
 Him, and does 'all for the glory of God.' How different 
 this is from the ambition, which is often one great incentive 
 in other research, if not really the most effective one ! How 
 positively contrary it is to the spirit which would rather be 
 employed in seeking truth imperfectly by its own exertion 
 of thought, than receive it from another perfectly, is very 
 plain. Whatever any one may think of the comparative 
 dignity or delight of the two methods, this of penitent 
 humility and obedient love is undoubtedly that of the 
 Gospel. As we have proposed that method in the inquiry 
 that follows, we have no more right to suppress or deviate
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 65 
 
 from this part of it than from any other. In that case we 
 should do both it and ourselves injustice, and deprive our 
 results of all value. 
 
 By the same authority and example we also learn from 
 whom, as Christians, we are to receive the Holy Book. Our 
 Master accepted it simply and entirely as preserved in Israel. 
 He set up no critical judgment of its evidence or of its con- 
 tents ; He assumed no discrimination as to its different parts 
 being more or less worthy of religious faith. If there was ever 
 any man who might do this, He was the very one. And in that 
 case He would have been sure to mark for us the chief truth, 
 and point us the way to such investigation. That He did not 
 was from no timidity or politic caution as to wounding the 
 prejudice of people, from which we are safe. He spoke with 
 the greatest plainness and severity as to the personal conduct 
 of priests, scribes, and people alike ; and this is the most 
 dangerous provocation of men. Nor did He make great 
 prof essions oi xQwerence for the Holy Writings, as such policy 
 would have done. He simply and reverently accepted them 
 as the ' Word of God,' and used them as such. He treated 
 ' the commonwealth of Israel,' as it then existed, as ' the 
 witness and keeper of Holy Writ' He well knew the jealous 
 care exercised by those responsible persons who had had 
 charge of this through all the former generations — their all 
 but superstitious scruples to set down every letter and mark 
 of the older copies. He did not censure or ridicule this. He 
 gave His sanction to their authority for this in words as well 
 as by example in saying, at the close of His ministry, ' The 
 scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat,' etc. (St. Matt, 
 xxiii. 2), just as at the beginning of that ministry He had 
 proclaimed (St. Matt. v. 17, 18), ' Think not that I am come 
 to destroy the Law or the Prophets : I am not come to 
 destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you. Till heaven 
 and earth pass, one Jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from 
 the Law, till all be fulfilled.' ^ 
 
 ^ I cannot doubt, upon a careful study of these passages, that I state the force 
 of Our Lord's words as quoted, at least as to the scribes, who had that name 
 from this work of copying the Holy Scriptures, and carefully numbering its 
 words and letters. As in both instances He condemns with awful severity what 
 these men taught beyond and against Holy Writ, we must suppose that He 
 enjoined obedience to them only as keepers and witnesses of that Word of 
 
 E
 
 66 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 In all this reception of Holy Scripture entire from its 
 human keepers by Our Lord, He is our best pattern, as the 
 one Man Who perfectly loved God and believed His Word. 
 By this He says to us in effect, * Thus it becometh us to 
 fulfil all righteousness,' as He also prayed for us to the 
 Father, * Sanctify them by Thy truth : Thy word (and this 
 Book is specially God's word to His people now) is truth.' 
 Following Him in this, we receive that even greater Scrip- 
 ture, which includes also His words and history, in the 
 Gospels, and ' what the Spirit saith unto the Churches ' by 
 His Apostles in the rest of the New Testament. 
 
 That great society, ' the Church, which is His body,' 
 whatever theory we may have of its constitution, or im- 
 pressions as to the details of its history since, is to us the 
 ' Witness and Keeper of Holy Writ.' In this He is with it ' to 
 the end of the world.' Nowhere is the fact about this stated 
 more wisely than in the sixth Article (of the Thirtj'-nine) 
 as to the ' books' or various writings which make up the Holy 
 Bible — that they are those 'of whose authority there was 
 never any doubt in the Church.' Just so would a devout 
 Israelite of Our Lord's day have wisely answered one who 
 asked of him, ' How do you know that this or that writing of 
 a prophet is a part of the Holy Book ? ' * There was never 
 any doubt of that in Israel through the ages since.' Such a 
 receiving by His people of God's Word written, does not 
 depend upon this record of the Sanhedrim or that decree of a 
 Council, but that consent of all the holy people, of which con- 
 sent God Himself, in His care of them, is the real author. As 
 with 'the IMan Christ Jesus,' this was not His faith in those 
 * scribes and priests,' whose faults none knew so well as He, but 
 in the God of Israel, Who would have His Word preserved 
 pure for them, and still more for us, ' upon whom the ends of 
 the world are come.' So ive also trust Him that ' all things 
 work together for good to them that love God, to them who 
 are the called according to His purpose ' in His Church, (the 
 ' called out,') by the safe keeping of that precious Holy 
 Scripture of both Testaments. This is a wise, safe, and 
 certain part of our faith in God. It is not at all affected 
 
 God. In any case He gives His sanction to all that part of their work, and to 
 the very text they used.
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 67 
 
 by our finding a trifling misprint in some copy of the Bible 
 now, nor by the (very few and unimportant) differences in 
 the oldest manuscript copies we have, in which there is some 
 room for differing opinions without impairing reverence or 
 faith. We have ample proof that the same thing existed 
 in the days of Our Lord and His Apostles, in the discrepancy 
 between the Greek translation (LXX.), from which they very 
 often quoted, and the old Hebrew writings, as well as these 
 last among themselves. But all attention is given to the 
 sacred truth of God, non^ to the trifling errors of the copyist. 
 They had too great a sense of that truth, and too much faith 
 in God, to waste their thoughts upon cavilling, doubting, or 
 even hesitating over such objections, though these writings 
 had come to them through the prevailing hypocrisy of priests, 
 rulers, and people, after the Captivity, as Malachi relates it ; 
 or through the selfish vanity and harsh arrogance of even the 
 zealots of the law in the time of the Maccabees ; or still more 
 that iniquity of His Own age, against which were denounced 
 the awful woes in the Gospel. There was no war of conjec- 
 tures and arguments as to which parchment roll was written 
 first There was a general textiis receptiis, to which all 
 assented with devout common sense. No one thought of 
 ' searching the Scriptures ' in a way to cast doubt over them, 
 or to destroy their powerful influence with men. It was not 
 then that disparaging contrasts were made between ' truth ' 
 and the Scriptures, as ' a mere literary record ' of that truth ; 
 or that the accepted belief for the past ages as to the human 
 authors of these different writings, or of the times of their 
 composition, was called in question by ' critical ' ingenuity. 
 Yet then, if ever, was the very time and occasion for that. If 
 those were superstitions or errors of any sort, then was the 
 time, and these were the men, for their correction. On the con- 
 trary, all they said went to confirm reverence and obedience. 
 Especially what Our Lord (Whose is the supreme example in 
 all this) blames in the formal and superstitious Jews of His 
 time, is not their reverence for the very letter, and minute 
 observance of it as Divine, but just the opposite of this — 
 their departure from it after their own contrivances. Further 
 than this. His recognising any one as the writer of what He 
 cites (or any of the New Testament writers who do this) is
 
 68 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION 
 
 final authority which Christian criticism cannot call in ques- 
 tion. Thus to say the least, any new reading or new sense 
 of an old reading, different from what has been generally 
 received in the Church heretofore, has a presumption against 
 it, which must be overcome by very strong positive proof. 
 We shall be far less liable to foolish doubts and waverings 
 which will obscure the truth of God to our minds if we keep 
 in mind that we are very safe as to the main accuracy of this 
 Word of God to us, since it is not a matter for each one's 
 guesswork, or for any one's most anxious research, but 
 comes to us far more safely from the guardianship of those 
 whom God has put in charge of it. This Divine keeping of 
 the Book of God by the Church of God has been shown in 
 a very wonderful way when some erroneous and strange 
 doctrines contrary to that Word have prevailed in that 
 Church. No fact of all the wonders of Israel is more strik- 
 ing than that they should have so carefully preserved a book 
 which does not at all flatter them as a people, but, on the 
 contrary, gives the most severely humiliating account of 
 them that can be found in the annals of any nation. (Com- 
 pare this with the boastful Egyptian and Assyrian records 
 lately deciphered, and which are so much admired.) But as 
 wonderful, if not even more so, is the safe keeping of the 
 New Testament by the Church of the Middle Ages, its 
 reverent preserv^ation still among those who persist in those 
 errors which the great Reformation of the sixteenth century 
 cast out from belief and practice in so large a part of Christen- 
 dom simply by appealing to the plain words of those Holy 
 Scriptures. That the Gospels and Epistles should have been 
 for many such ages carefully kept and copied, with all rever- 
 ence and acknowledgment of their Divine authority — kept 
 thus to bring the Church back to the truth, — is a fact of the 
 first magnitude. It is exactly as Our Lord did not have 
 occasion to accuse or to suspect those blind scribes of not 
 being faithful keepers of that Holy Writ. He accepted and 
 approved it from their hands as pure, and from it He 
 exposed their false teachings, and showed how all of God's 
 Word before was a true introduction and prophecy of the 
 Gospel. Exactly so His Apostles accepted and used it. 
 We as Christians are to follow in their steps.
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 69 
 
 And thus we receive it as the Church has delivered it to 
 us, made up of the two Testaments and many different 
 writers and writings, yet as one book, a consistent whole, of 
 which the various parts assist in explaining one another, 
 the Gospel, as we have already seen, being the main point 
 of view of the whole. The very word Bible (' book ') has 
 attested this for now at least 1400 years. But the idea of 
 all these Scriptures being but parts of one perfect Book of 
 God is ver>^ much older than that word, as is evident in all 
 the earlier Christian writings, and this whether the term used 
 was 'Scripture' (ypacf)^) or 'Scriptures' {ypa^aC), just as 
 now either one of these expressions is with us equivalent to 
 ' the Bible' or ' Book.' 
 
 When we resort again to the New Testament we find 
 nothing but what accords with this ; in fact, the longer and 
 more carefully we look at all passages which bear upon this 
 matter, the more plainly they imply the same thing. Just as 
 all that belongs to the human authorship (the thirty or forty 
 different writers, the sixty-six different writings, the thirty 
 or forty different generations, the different governments, 
 migrations, conquests, captivities, hostile religions, persecu- 
 tions) — as all these remind us of the various books, so the 
 Divine authorship always recognised reminds us that this 
 is, after all, the one Book, with the one consistent purpose of 
 its whole, without attending to which we cannot even well 
 see the real meaning of any part. 
 
 This is so throughout all Our Lord's sayings, though He 
 sometimes spoke of * this scripture ' to mean some one 
 passage; yet in other such, as in St. John vii. 38, 'as the 
 Scripture saith,' etc., meaning the Divine Writings as a 
 whole. But He usually, if not invariably, thus applies the 
 plural word ' Scriptures,' as, for instance, Matt. xxii. 29, 
 'Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of 
 God.' In St. Matthew v. 17, 18, after mentioning the whole 
 as ' the Law and the Prophets,' He in the next sentence de- 
 scribes it all as simply ' the Law.' At another time He quotes 
 from it thus : ' Have ye not read that which was spoken 
 unto you by God ? I am the God of Abraham,' etc., whereas 
 this was literally spoken only to Moses, spoken to them as 
 lorittcn in God's Book.
 
 70 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 We find the same use of both ' Scripture ' and ' Scrip- 
 tures ' by the Apostles in at least sixteen different places^ 
 as, for instance, that remarkable one in the Epistle to the 
 Galatians (iii. 8) : ' The Scripture, foreseeing that God would,' 
 etc. The Second Epistle to Timothy (iii. 15-17), even if we 
 should adopt the new rendering, ' Every scripture ' instead 
 of ' All Scripture ' (though the older seems the most natural 
 and genuine), is to the same effect. The Epistle to the 
 Hebrews expresses the same thought with great power and 
 solemnity in introducing a citation from the Psalms, with 
 the words, ' As the Holy Ghost saith ' (iii. 7, also ix. 8). 
 The same idea of the one author and one substance of all 
 Holy Scripture is implied in the Second Epistle of St. 
 Peter (2 Pet. i. 20, 21), 'Knowing this first, that no 
 prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. 
 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man : 
 but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the 
 Holy Ghost' The more and the more carefully we look 
 at this truth and the proofs of it, the more will we see the 
 inipo7'tance of it. We must not forget it now, or treat it as 
 of no practical use in the inquiry which follows, but apply 
 it constantly and carefully at each stage of the research. 
 
 Some writers have assumed that this also implies a 
 progressive development in time of the Word of God and 
 true religion, the successive steps of which they think they 
 can point out. At least, they confuse the truth of its unity 
 and consistency with this notion of a chronological * develop- 
 ment.' But these two things have no necessary connection. 
 The one, we have seen, is true ; the other must stand upon its 
 own merits. It certainly is not declared in Scripture itself 
 On the contrary, I shall have occasion in the history to 
 point out facts which are entirely contrary to it. There is 
 so much said in this age about a ' law of progress ' and 
 'development' that most minds are afraid to maintain 
 anything as truth unless they can adjust it to these theories. 
 However that may be as to other knowledge, we must 
 remember that these things of God are great mysteries, to 
 which it is as ' natural ' to go beyond our comprehension 
 as it is for us to reduce all other things under that com- 
 prehension. If He in His very Word has left this vast
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 71 
 
 succession of the parts of that Word simply to be 
 believed with awe and obedience, without our being able 
 to see why this or that thing is done before the other, 
 let us so accept the knowledge with faith and gratitude. 
 Certainly we must not let any of these theories stand in 
 the way of our believing the facts.^ Even more important 
 than all the matters so far treated in this chapter, — of seeing 
 all the rest of Holy Scripture from the point of view of the 
 Gospel of humility, reverence, and love of God, as conditions 
 of the best understanding of His Book, of receiving it from 
 the Church of God as its keeper, and using it as one com- 
 plete Book, — more than all these, (and itself somewhat 
 involved in all these, as we cannot have helped already 
 seeing,) is the true thought of it as 'the Word of God.' 
 We might think of it as just a sacred book, the sacred 
 book of our religion, in various ways : as something to be 
 read or recited in our worship, public or private ; as the 
 composition of the wisest and most pious men of a former 
 age ; as partly true and partly erroneous, partly Divine 
 and partly human ; as true in the past, and as a sacred link 
 to the past, yet to be superseded by the greater intelli- 
 gence of our or future generations. Or we may regard it as 
 the one only and incomparable Book, which is God's speaking 
 to mankind as directly as if we ' heard a voice, but saw no 
 similitude,' uttering what He would say to us all. But 
 if this last is our belief, it excludes the others. It puts 
 these writings upon altogether another plane than any 
 others. It requires them to be treated, and studied, and 
 used in a way entirely peculiar to them. It fixes what- 
 ever they say as truth, whatever else must then be wrong. 
 
 To settle this question is therefore now a necessary pre- 
 liminary to the researches which follow. For while it is 
 indeed pJiysically possible for one who assents in terms to 
 this last account of the Bible as being all God's Word, 
 nevertheless, to determine at the outset of a historical 
 inquiry in which that is one of the materials, that it shall 
 be merely used as and with other ancient books of history, 
 as Herodotus or Manetho, and where there is a conflict of 
 
 ^ On this 'Development,' as set forth by Bishop Goodwin in Modern 
 Scepticis7>i, p. 231, etc., see infra, pp. 203, 274, etc.
 
 72 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 their statements in such or such a case, that it may be 
 adjudged in the wrong. But I do not see how this can be 
 rationally done. Either it is no such perfect book of God 
 — and this should be allowed at first, — or it is ; and then 
 its statements are absolute truth, and whatever does not 
 agree with them is false. 
 
 Sometimes this has been supposed to depend upon 
 whether we may consider the various human writers of the 
 Scriptures as mere copyists of words which God uttered in 
 their hearing or placed in their memories, without thought 
 of their own, or not. The former seems at one time to 
 have been the general impression of Christian writers, as 
 shown in their often speaking of Moses and the Prophets, 
 the Evangelists and Apostles, as ' the s3.crQd penniefi.' They 
 certainly did not get this phrase from the Holy Scriptures 
 themselves, nor, as it seems to me, any suggestion of it. On 
 the other hand, some rejecting this, and noting how the indi- 
 viduality of the writer appears so plainly in Moses or David, 
 in St. Paul or St. John, as much as in other compositions, 
 drew the conclusion that they were like the other composi- 
 tions, in being a mixture of the true and the false, which the 
 reader must use his judgment to separate. But this does not 
 follow of necessity. That would be so only in case it were 
 self-evident or really proved that God could not use men 
 with various characteristics of style and spirit, with the 
 clififerences of language and information of various ages and 
 countries, to write pure truth as He would communicate it to 
 mankind. But why can He not ? Is there anything in the 
 garb, voice, language, habits of life or of thought of a Hebrew 
 who has grown up in the Egypt of 3000 or 4000 j'ears ago 
 to make it impossible for GOD to put into his mind certain 
 true thoughts, and direct him to write them for the infor- 
 mation of other men in the way in which he would naturally 
 express his own thoughts (that is, as God Himself had 
 created and guided him so far in life), and also ensure that 
 there should be nothing untrue in those words ? If we think 
 so we are surely forgetting that He is the Almighty God. 
 So again, if the prophet be a Hebrew priest or king in a 
 much later age, when the language has undergone consider- 
 able verbal changes ; so, if one of Greek education, and who
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 73 
 
 wrote in that language. The very striking dififerences of the 
 individual men, as well in those strongly-marked shades of 
 intellectual and spiritual temper, which we find always in 
 our fellow-men, as in the local and historical tints of their 
 expressions — however interesting and worthy of attention in 
 Christian study, and thus of admiration of God's work in all 
 this and in all else, — have nothing whatever to do with our 
 seeing (or not) the perfect Word of God in the Holy Bible, 
 
 The difficulty, as urged by some, is like what troubles 
 some minds as to believing the Deity of Our adorable Lord, 
 because in all the New Testament He is so plainly also * the 
 Man Christ Jesus.' A wise, healthy, humble ' obedience of 
 faith' simply believes both. For another view of the matter, 
 to clear our minds of any such prepossession and confusion, 
 let us consider for a moment that great promise of His, that 
 the Holy Ghost would 'guide' the Church 'into all truth.' 
 No one supposes that this meant that the individual men 
 would not be the same persons, with the same temperaments 
 and habitual ways of thinking and expression as before. 
 Would it have been wise or right in any Christian of the 
 Apostolic age to deny this guidance through the preaching 
 of St. Peter because he still had those personal characteristics 
 by which he was recognised by all who knew him ? Precisely 
 so with what he or others wrote * as they were moved by the 
 Holy Ghost' By a sublime mystery in the human author- 
 ship of the Holy Scriptures, ' the Word became flesh and 
 dwelt among us.' Yet though for all else, ' they that are in 
 the flesh cannot please God,' Our Lord in Person, and in 
 His Written Word, is the sole exception to human error. 
 
 The Christian might also properly seek the answer to this 
 great question where he receives the Book itself, — that is, from 
 the Church ; from the general consent of the Christian 
 society in all ages from the beginning. It is quite certain 
 that this sustains the very highest view of the dignity 
 and authority of our Holy Scriptures as the Word of God. 
 But treating this now as only establishing a fair presumption 
 in favour of that view in our understanding of other evidence, 
 let us go at once to the highest direct authority — that of Our 
 Lord in the Gospels. He often cited the Old Scriptures, 
 simply as Divine truth, in a way which implies that God has
 
 74 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 spoken in those words, and that is an end of questioning. 
 He never qualifies this, or counsels His disciples to do so. 
 Evidently this is not done, as some have claimed, for a mere 
 device of argument to silence those who admit those Scrip- 
 tures to have such authority. Allowing that this might be 
 properly done in any controversy between men, one who 
 believes in Our Lord can hardly think it of any of His 
 teachings. Why should we not rather suppose that He 
 always said that which was true in itself to instruct them 
 — and us? For those words were, as no one knew better 
 than He, to reach ten thousand times as many souls through 
 all these ages. And according to the other view, they have 
 been misleading all the most believing and obedient ever 
 since. 
 
 But in fact (and this not only otherwise sets our question 
 in the clearest light, but, as it seems to me, forbids the notion 
 just noticed) He cited those Scriptures as decisive authority, 
 to the Evil One, who denies all God's Word, and to His own 
 very dear disciples when, in confidential privacy and with all 
 completeness, it was given to them, as He said, ' to know the 
 Kingdom of God.' He taught them the greatest new ' things 
 of God' out of the Old Scriptures, as Divine proof The 
 passages already cited in this chapter in the other part of the 
 inquiry are very plain to this effect. For instance, one such 
 is in St. Matthew, xxii. 31, 'Have ye not read that which 
 was spoken unto you by God ?' etc. So also this in St. Mark 
 xii. 36, 'For David himself says by the Holy Ghost,' etc. 
 At another time (St. Mark vii. 6-15) He rebukes the 
 Pharisees for ' making the Word of God (the Scriptures) of 
 none effect through your tradition.' Notice the contrast. 
 Just here was the occasion, (or He would have found some 
 such occasion,) when Our Lord and Master would have 
 delivered us from the bondage of superstition, if it be such, 
 of regarding the Holy Writings as pure truth to be obe- 
 diently received by us. He would have commanded us to 
 exercise boldly our right of ' free handling ' in adjusting 
 these to our times — in rejecting as of no authority whatever 
 in them did not, to quote Mr. Coleridge's phrase, 'find us ;' 
 or, interpreting them otherwise than according to what had 
 always seemed their plain words, by the growing intelligence
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 75 
 
 of mankind. He does on this occasion notice an adjustment 
 to the later thoughts of men of what had once been Divinely- 
 written, and He censures it with the greatest severity. 
 
 It was only the perverse errors of the Pharisees which 
 He condemned as ' commandments of men/ do you say ? 
 But why did He never encourage His disciples to * teach for 
 doctrines' other and better commandments of men ? Let 
 all w^ho wish to follow Our Lord's Will and words ponder this 
 — whether it does not of itself suggest plain entire obedience 
 to the plain and simple meaning of what ' is written,' without 
 any new deviations or discoveries? Or study this remarkable 
 saying in the Gospel of St. Luke (xi. 38), in which, with an 
 apparent allusion to some sayings of the old prophets, He 
 gathers all this into a mightier and more terrible prophecy 
 of His Own, calling Himself by one of His great Names of 
 dignity and mystery ; ' As saith the Wisdo7n of God, I will 
 send them prophets and apostles, . . . that the blood of all 
 the prophets that was shed from the foundation of the world 
 may be required of this generation, from the blood of Abel,' 
 etc. Then also His last counsels and revelations to the 
 twelve Apostles, after those greatest events of our redemption 
 had revealed Him fully as Lord and Saviour, that * then 
 opened He their understanding, that they should understand 
 tJie Scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it is written,' etc. 
 (St. Luke xxiv. 45, 46.) 
 
 Now let us pause for a moment at this stage of our 
 inquiry and consider. Beside all else that He is to us, He 
 is the pattern Man. Surely, if it be the noblest matter 
 of human intelligence to know God, and what God would 
 teach us, we shall find Our Lord's footprints to follow in 
 that. And where do they lead ? To ambitious speculations 
 of ' free thought ' ? to the suggestion that by such a treatment 
 of the Holy Scripture rather than by the 'quiet mind' of 
 simple obedience to 'what is written,' we shall find truth ? No ; 
 but throughout all His words and acts, in uniform consist- 
 ency, the opposite. In every act humble obedience (yes, 
 even this, as He ' was made man '), — ' to do Thy will ' — in 
 belief and thought. ' Thy Word (yes, " word," \0709, " what 
 is said and written ") is truth.' Surely if our profession ' to 
 follow the blessed steps of His most (wise and) holy life' is
 
 76 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 sincere, this will not be without force as to what we will 
 think of the Holy Scriptures, we who have in them not only- 
 Moses and the Prophets, but also Christ Himself and His 
 Apostles. Can I be mistaken in thinking that in this direc- 
 tion, rather than the other, we shall find the true dignity of 
 human nature? 
 
 All that we have of the sayings and doings of the 
 Apostles in the Acts and Epistles is to the same effect. 
 There are fifty such instances, and not one that I know of 
 to the contrar}-. If there were any such, so as to make an 
 apparent conflict, the wise thing would be to get a correct 
 impression upon the whole by a complete reading, with care 
 as to this, and a candid desire to find what was in the 
 writers' minds. Such a reading I have tried to make, with 
 this end in view ; and, as the result, I do not know how any 
 one can fairly doubt that the Apostolic Church had what 
 would now be called 'a high view of the verbal inspiration' 
 of all Holy Scripture. St. Stephen, that great and splendid 
 (though so brief) instance and witness of the lofty spirit of 
 Christian liberty, thus uses and names 'the lively oracles.' 
 St. Paul, who so strangely succeeds the Martyr as the 
 prophet of the ' free spirit ' of the Gospel, proclaims the same 
 through all his long career. At Thessalonica, with 'both 
 Jews and Greeks,' he ' reasoned with them out of the Scrip- 
 tures' (Acts xvii. 2). At Athens, where, if ever, he would 
 teach an opposite doctrine, we have no such suggestion. 
 Before the Pagan Roman, and the fierce though powerless 
 hatred of persecuting Jews, he declares himself ' believing all 
 things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets.' 
 Yet it would have been entirely safe for him, and have 
 rather recommended him to the governor, to have shown less 
 subser\'ience to that Hebrew ' superstition,' to use the very 
 expression of Felix's successor.^ When one speaks in that 
 way now of the Holy Bible, does not every one know that 
 he 'holds a very high view of verbal inspiration'? He 
 repeats this confession of faith before King Agrippa, made 
 even more emphatic by that personal appeal to the king's 
 own heart. At Rome itself, even when he has to pronounce 
 that Law and Prophets are forfeited by Jewish unbelief and 
 
 ^ Acts XXV. 19.
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 77 
 
 transferred to Gentiles, they are a Divine treasure of 'the 
 salvation of God.' (Acts xxviii. 28.) 
 
 To this give he and all the other Apostles constant and 
 consistent witness throughout the Epistles. A very few- 
 instances must represent all the others. In the Epistle to the 
 Romans, which certainly involves the most free and profound 
 treatment of the spirit of our religion, this is repeated in 
 several places, as, ' What advantage then hath the Jew ? . . . 
 Much every way : chiefly, that unto them were committed 
 the Oracles of God' (iii. i, 2). Beyond any question this 
 means the Sacred Writings ; and no greater expression of 
 their entire sacredness and truth could have been used in 
 that generation to either Jew or Pagan than to call them 
 'oracles of God' — (St. Stephen said, 'living oracles'). In 
 the same way he described what he and the other prophets 
 of the New Testament were then writing by inspiration of 
 God, which forms that most precious part of Holy Scrip- 
 ture now in our hands (i Cor. ii. 13): ' Not in the words 
 which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost 
 teacheth.' To this exactly corresponds what St. Peter says 
 (2 Pet. i. 20, 21),' that no prophecy of the Scripture is of 
 any private (that is, individual, for each one to make of the 
 sacred words what he pleases) interpretation. For the pro- 
 phecy came not in old time by the will of man : but holy 
 men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost' 
 The more these remarkable words are examined to find all 
 of their meaning, the higher idea do they give of Scripture. 
 But for the present occasion only add to them the designa- 
 tion of it as used in the Epistle to the Hebrews : ' As 
 the Holy Ghost saith' (iii. 7) ; 'the Holy Ghost this signify- 
 ing ' (ix. 8). Recall also Our Lord's Own words in quoting 
 from one of the Psalms : ' For David himself said, by the Holy 
 Ghost,' etc. (St. Mark ii. 36). Nothing is more plain in the 
 New Testament, even to those who are not fully persuaded to 
 acknowledge and adore the Third Person of the One God, 
 than that to speak of anything as said or done ' by the Holy 
 Ghost ' means by God Himself How, then, can there be a 
 reasonable doubt that, to say the least, these persons by the 
 words just cited meant that God was the real, and, so to 
 speak, the responsible Author of those writings ?
 
 78 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 The great book of the 'Revelation' is in perfect accord 
 with the others. We may well believe that it is a part of 
 the same Divine Inspiration that we find it placed at the 
 very end of all the Writings, uttering such solemn and 
 sublime warnings against ' whosoever shall add unto ' or 
 ' take away from the words of the book of this prophecy.' 
 
 And finally, there is (see supra, p. 73), the understanding 
 and acceptance of this by the Christians of all ages since. 
 In modern times, indeed, some who claim that name have 
 argued differently. But, to say the least, those who thus 
 disparage the authority of Holy Scripture are almost always 
 those who maintain opinions which are against the plain 
 words of that Scripture ; and all of them are too few and of 
 too recent date to be of any historical weight in this inquiry. 
 Any one who will take the pains to read with careful refer- 
 ence to this all the extant writings of the first six Christian 
 centuries, cannot but be struck with this frequent and un- 
 varying reference to the Holy Scriptures as the highest and 
 ultimate authority for all belief, — as the perfect Word of 
 God to man, that ' high view of its verbal inspiration' which 
 some now disparage. These writers may differ with one 
 another and with our convictions as to various matters of 
 Christian opinion, but they all agree in this. Let two quo- 
 tations represent the thousand to the same effect which 
 might be given to prove this : — Clement of Rome at the end 
 of the first century : ' Look carefully into the Scriptures, 
 which are the true utterance of the Holy Spirit. Observe 
 that nothing of an unjust or counterfeit character is written 
 in them ' {ist Epistle to the Cor., c. 45) ; Gregory (the Great) 
 at the end of the sixth : ' For what is the Holy Scripture 
 except a sort of letter of the Omnipotent God to His 
 creature?' {Ep. 31). 
 
 Certain expressions from the Epistles of St. Paul have 
 by some been cited for a different view — as, for instance, 
 from the Epistle to the Romans, ' that we should serve in 
 newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter' 
 (vii. 6) ; * Who hath also made us able ministers of the new 
 testament ; not of the letter, but of the spirit : for the 
 letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life' (2 Cor. iii. 6); 
 'Prove all things: hold fast that which is good' (i Thess.
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 79 
 
 V. 21). This, it is said, shows that 'Christianity' is a 
 'reasonable service,' free and spiritual, emancipating us 
 from bondage to the exact words of Scripture, so that 
 we are to judge for ourselves at last what God would say 
 to us. And with this, and as equivalent to it, is often 
 coupled the great saying of Samuel the prophet, * Behold, 
 to obey is better than sacrifice.' Yes, truly ; but do we not 
 see that the very question is, whether we will obey ? — accept 
 God's Word written with simple and prompt obedience — 
 or claim a spiritual right of departing from that, according 
 to our own thoughts ? Was not that a reproof of Saul for 
 departing from the letter of a Divine command, according 
 to his ' private judgment,' the other way ? Did the Prophet 
 mean that when an Israelite read the command of God to 
 sacrifice, he might refuse to do it, and say that, by his ' private 
 judgment ' of ' the spirit,' to obey was better ? 
 
 We have already seen how St. Paul, in accord with His 
 Master's words and way, cites the old Holy Scriptures as 
 final authority, and claims the same (in substance) for the 
 New. Does he then qualify, not to say contradict this, by 
 what is said of * spirit and letter ' in the places noted ? Is 
 he in those places speaking at all of the Scriptures ? No ; 
 in neither place, and nowhere else where such a meaning 
 is sought to be placed upon his words. In the first passage 
 cited he is showing the different position of the Jewish 
 Christian under the Gospel from what it had been under 
 the Law of Moses — how much more free, enlightened, and 
 spiritual. In the course of this argument (in which he has 
 himself cited the Old Testament Scripture more than a dozen 
 times as the highest and conclusive authority for all men) he 
 reminds them of the great truth already treated of in this 
 chapter, that the Gospel is the substance of which that Law 
 was the shadow : the real ' spirit,' of which that was the 
 * letter ; ' the circumcision of the former, writing, as it were, 
 on the flesh, what Christ's salvation now writes upon the 
 heart, ' that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not 
 in oldness of the letter.' It is therefore an utter misappli- 
 cation of this to apply it in the other way. 
 
 So also the other passage. It is in a second letter, written 
 to the Corinthian Christians, whom in the former he had
 
 8o BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 warned against the Greek philosophy (and whatever else 
 tempts us to substitute our ambitious thoughts for a humble 
 and obedient faith in God's Word), exalting ' the testimony 
 of God,' and disparaging' man's wisdom.' But is this Epistle 
 in the opposite direction, recommending to them to try the 
 ' letter' of what comes to them from God cither in the old 
 Scriptures of Law and Prophets, or by the spoken words of 
 the ' Word of God' and His Apostles — to try all this by their 
 thought, and only believe and obey it according to what they 
 thus believe to be its ' spirit' ? Not at all. He was not giving 
 them any rule about their reading of Scripture, not mention- 
 ing it at all (unless in the way of making frequent quota- 
 tions, which imply that its words are the truth of God which 
 is decisive of any question). He is only (as the heading of 
 this chapter in our Bibles wisely says) * entering a com- 
 parison between the ministers of the Law and of the Gospel;' 
 that these are ' ministers of the new testament (or cove- 
 nant) ; not of the letter (see above as to Rom. vii. 6), but 
 of the spirit : for the letter killcth, but the spirit giveth life.' 
 That is, for an Israelite to reject the Gospel when it comes, 
 and adhere to tho mere law of Moses, is to be blind to the 
 real meaning of the latter : — as it were, to repeat the mere 
 sound of the words, or gaze at the written characters, without 
 seeing the meaning of them. It is death to that man instead 
 of the new life of God in the soul of man by faith, obedience, 
 and love. Read on after this, and wc follow that very thought, 
 as in the 15th verse, about the unbelieving Jews (ah, how 
 true now !), ' but even unto this day, when Moses is read, the 
 veil is upon their hearts. But we all (as Christian believers) 
 with open face beholding,' etc. Is it not a strange perversion 
 of this (making of it a ' letter that killeth '), to take it as St. 
 Paul's counsel, that we are to subject that mighty and glorious 
 Word of God, not only of the Old Scripture, but as written 
 by His Apostles and Evangelists (including His Own personal 
 sayings), ' not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth,' 
 but which ' the Holy Ghost teacheth,' to subject this to such 
 'man's wisdom' as each of us has? This is St. Paul's own 
 account (i Cor. ii. 13) of his own words in his Epistles, and, 
 by most just implication, of those of the other writers of the 
 New Testaiiient.
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 8r 
 
 If any one should ask whether it is not said after express 
 mention of the ' new testament ' that ' the letter killeth,' I 
 need only remind him that there was then no zvritten * New 
 Testament' such as he has in his mind. This veiy Epistle 
 and other later writings were by slow degrees coming to 
 form that most sacred part of the written Word of God. 
 The only possible and the actual contrast in the writer's 
 mind then was between the two covenants^ for the word 
 means either. Of these the old, by which a devout Israelite 
 of former days used to draw near to God, and seek His 
 pardon and grace, was but a ' letter ' or figure of the other, 
 a dim dawn of the bright day which had now come. To 
 refuse this light of life, and draw back into the other, was to 
 make that a ' letter that killeth.' Here was no injunction or 
 permission to us to set aside the plain meaning of the Old 
 Scriptures (or of the New), because we fancied that we knew 
 their ' spirit' otherwise. If St. Paul had wished to say that, 
 he would have found an occasion and very plain words for 
 his purpose ; as he never did. I would not have believed it 
 necessary to treat this objection seriously if I had not seen 
 it put forth with positiveness in a journal of my own Church, 
 which has much reputation (and thereby influence), as being 
 learned, judicious, sound in the faith, and altogether safe 
 from rash novelties of doubt with which our time abounds. 
 But this shows how many good Christians may be persuaded 
 by such arguments. 
 
 Nor is the ' proving all things ' any such suggestion of 
 our presumptuous subjecting of what ' the Holy Ghost saith ' 
 to our reasoning. It was what the Christians of Thessa- 
 lonica were to do, then, in judging as to such utterances of 
 their fellow-members of the Church as claimed to be some 
 of the miraculous ' prophesyings ' of that age, which ceased 
 soon after, and have never since been known. Here also we 
 may notice the assertion which has been sometimes made, 
 that the Church in its first ages was without Scripture, and 
 therefore does not so much need it, or at all depend upon it 
 now, even if Christians should cease to regard it as all 
 Divinely true. The assertion is certainly contrary to all 
 history. As we have seen, all the Christian writers from the 
 first are full of references to Scripture as the sacred and con- 
 
 F
 
 82 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 elusive authority in all teaching and in all controversy. That 
 at first this is said only of the Old Testament makes the case 
 yet stronger. The special truths of the Gospel and of the 
 Church of Christ were then made known by word of mouth, 
 and these passed from one to another. But when, as with 
 ' Moses and the Prophets,' what, as only spoken, was liable 
 to be lost or changed in such transmission, was committed 
 to writing, it was acknowledged as the perfect Word of 
 God by the people of God, and kept among them by His 
 providence and grace, just as the Old Testament had been. 
 And this now complete revelation of God was understood in 
 all the ages after as the invaluable and indispensable treasure 
 of the Church. It is this in substance of which even one of 
 its chief human authors said, 'If I or an angel from heaven 
 joroclaim unto you any other gospel, let him be accursed.' 
 
 Where, then, is the spiritual freedom of each soul ? 
 Certainly not in a right to deny plain words of rightful law. 
 Is no one a free citizen who has to take the law of his 
 country according to its letter? The 'glorious liberty of 
 the sons of God' has its true exercise. But is nothing fixed 
 and plain in our religion ? is ever)'thing to be questioned, 
 and argued about, and doubted ? When God has given us 
 His Will in words, can anything be more useless, more mis- 
 leading, more fatal to poor, bewildered sinners like us, who 
 need all this knowledge at once, than to reserve our obedience 
 until we may satisfy ourselves in this sort ? 
 
 The true religion, the Book itself, is all in the direction 
 of humility, reverence, and faith ; to promote and increase 
 these, and to diminish their opposites. St. Paul always 
 urges these as the conditions of our knowing God. We 
 may give the substance of this in two of his sayings : 
 'What hast thou that thou didst not receive.?' 'That 
 no flesh should glory in His presence' (i Cor. iv. 7, i. 29). 
 This is the spirit and tendency of one of the two views 
 of Holy Scripture which are here in contrast ; the other 
 is exactly opposite. By the one I may most humbly 
 'bow myself before the High God;' the other conducts 
 me towards intellectual pride and self-sufficiency. And 
 reverence is not merely the absence of positive irreverence. 
 Or, to test the matter in another way, that we do not use 
 contemptuous and disparaging words about Holy Scripture,
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLO WED. 83 
 
 does not make us reverent toward it. Indifferency about its 
 authority, cold and critical doubt, surely exclude due rever- 
 ence. Which of the two views is the more likely to promote 
 indifference and doubt ? In that direction, then, are we least 
 likely to find the Christian idea, the true meaning of what 
 is said in God's Word written concerning its own character. 
 
 And this simple acceptance of the Holy Writings as God's 
 Word, is so far from not being rational, that the contrary of 
 it is irrational. Apply a like test to any human law. 
 Suppose this at first made known only by the voice — by a 
 herald. Could any one claim to set aside the ' mere words,' 
 or find another meaning than the apparent one, by his ' private 
 judgment ' of their ' spirit ' .-' But suppose them written and 
 posted up, or printed and circulated, and that any one 
 were then to say, ' It is unworthy of my free thought to 
 be governed by printed words ; all definitions of the truth 
 are narrower than the truth itself. I must prove all things, 
 and find a sense in the words which fits me (or finds me) ; 
 and besides, in my investigations, I find that there are little 
 differences of spelling of some words in some copies ; and I 
 claim that this shows beyond doubt that each one has a 
 right to decide for himself that where the words apparently 
 say that one shall not do such and such a thing they 
 mean that he may do it.' This is not a caricature of the 
 reasonings sometimes used about the ' words which the Holy 
 Ghost teacheth ' (r Cor. ii. 13). What is monstrous in it is 
 the actual false thought to which such arguments tend. Or 
 will it be said that the cases are not parallel, because in 
 human law men use language with a precision which other 
 men cannot mistake } And do we mean that God, Who 
 made language as one of the details of His all-knowing 
 creation of us, cannot use human language with precision .'' 
 
 Or is this because such are man's nature and necessities 
 that he cannot at once believe what is told him ? And 
 where shall we go for the most wise and sure knowledge of 
 our nature in regard to this .? Shall it be to human experi- 
 ence and speculation, even if we could be sure to have the 
 real result of all the thought of our race until now } That 
 must still be imperfect ; — and what of all the generations 
 before us } The case is indeed hopeless unless God Him- 
 self tells us what we need. We are certainly abundantly
 
 84 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 informed by His loving care of where lies the greatest danger 
 that we will reject truth, namely, from pride of intellect. 
 And as to one kind of truth, the very Saviour of mankind 
 and Light of the world has told us this most important fact, 
 that ' men love darkness rather than light, because their 
 deeds are evil.' In matters mundane — not relating to the 
 choice by our wills of either good or evil toward God and 
 man — that danger is so small (at least comparatively), and 
 the things themselves of so small account, that the correction 
 of this misleading from truth may be left to those very 
 personal ambitions which with rivalry scrutinise and expose 
 the errors of one another. But in these spiritual things not 
 only is error much more serious and disastrous, but the same 
 wrong tendency being in all alike, prevents their correcting 
 one another. This man has that same aversion to humility 
 and to a loving obedience of God as the other whose errors 
 he might detect. So he may ambitiously vary from the 
 other man in the detail of his variance from the truth ; but 
 this will bring neither of them nearer to that truth. This is 
 really implied in the story of man's fall in the Genesis, which, 
 whatever we may think of it otherwise, is the only profound 
 and truth-resembling account of the present state of mankind, 
 — that is, of an ideal man, who has great and good thoughts, 
 and sometimes struggles towards them, and even fancies that 
 he is what he knows he ought to be ; and an actual man, 
 who is far, very helplessly far, from this great and good ideal. 
 Why should the test by which the first man failed, and lost 
 all for us all, have been his craving a ' knowledge of good 
 and evil,' which was forbidden him .? And what is man's 
 attitude toward this knowledge now that he has made the 
 wrong choice, in which each individual soul of us, besides the 
 inherited mischief, repeats the evil choice as a matter of course, 
 and needs Divine deliverance from the consequences of it .-* 
 
 It does not at all accord with this to assume that all men 
 habitually (I do not say naturally, for that would be con- 
 fusing the difiference between the original nature and that 
 which we have since this fall) love all truth, and only need 
 to persevere in their own ambition after it to attain a perfect 
 knowledge of true religion and all spiritual goodness. On 
 the contrary, in fact, as implied in the doctrine of both New 
 and Old Testaments, they thus go further and further from
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 85 
 
 such truth. They cultivate self-confidence ; they grow in 
 ambitious delight in their own thoughts ; they do just the 
 opposite of what God's Word recommends. Therefore every 
 step they take must be, not toward, but away from, that 
 truth, — at least that is what our Lord and His Apostles say 
 in substance in the New Testament. Now, if a remedy is 
 provided for this by the Great One, Who is love and truth itself 
 — if ' He so loved the world' as to send His Word among 
 men, by inspiration of several of their fellow-men, and 
 finally as a human Person Himself, could we reasonably 
 expect this Word to be left for almost all of mankind mingled 
 in an indistinct way with very much of fallible human 
 thought — the Divine truth to be separated from the human ^ 
 error by men's own reasonings as to what part of this so- 
 called ' Word of God ' was really such .'' Would not this at 
 once again expose them to the very danger of their intel- 
 lectual vanity, from which it was meant to save them } 
 Would there not then be just as many different accounts of 
 the Word of God thus ascertained as there were ingenious 
 leaders of thought ? — why not, indeed, as many as there are 
 human souls, for this 'dignity of human nature' — not 
 merely of a few favoured persons — must, for that in which we 
 are all concerned alike, allow a like independence and liberty to 
 all .'' And we should certainly find in such a supposed ' Word 
 of God ' (once secured by written language for all, completed 
 and compiled in one ' Book of God,') plain instructions to 
 this effect : — ' Look here, saith the Lord God, to separate by 
 your thoughts and "private judgment" the mistakes and 1 
 trivialities of these prophets from that which I really say. 
 Let each successive age, let each soul for itself, take the 
 Book up anew for this purpose, for, after all, this is not all the 
 Word of God, but in it the Word of God " is contained " ^ 
 for each one of you, as he shall in his own way and upon 
 his own responsibility find it out from the rest.' 
 
 Then also the Divine Society, as ' witness and keeper ' of 
 the Book, would have always been saying the same, instruct- 
 ing its members that such was their duty and right. 
 
 Finally, when the Sovereign Teacher and Incarnate Word 
 was upon the earth, ' going about doing good,' for one 
 thing, in this great work of teaching men what we may now 
 read in the Gospels, He surely would have told us this
 
 86 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 most precisely and beyond mistaking. He would have said, 
 * If any man will be My disciple, let him read the Law and 
 the Prophets with discrimination, to separate the real Word 
 of God from the rest of the words of those writers. Come 
 unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden with per- 
 plexities of belief, and I will give you rest by showing you 
 how to throw off the yoke of a blind obedience to that which 
 is written.' He would have broken the charm of the super- 
 stitious habit of allowing a 'verbal inspiration' by Himself 
 departing from it in His manner of naming and using ' the 
 mere literary record.' On the contrary, though this was 
 the inferior part of it, the ' shadow ' of the perfect ' good 
 things ' of God's Word yet to come — now, Jiaving come in 
 His Person and Church, — everything He said or did about it 
 was in the way of simple reverence, obedience, and faith ; 
 and nothing whatever did He say to suggest that the grow- 
 ing intelligence of any individual or of any age needs or 
 would allow of any other treatment of * what is written.' 
 
 This negative argument, if it stood alone, would be almost 
 (if not quite) conclusive to one who wished simply ' to be 
 His disciple,' — to follow in thought and will exactly where 
 He led. But, as we must feel at once from the recollection 
 of other sayings of His already cited in other parts of this 
 inquiry, it docs not stand alone. If He had said absolutely 
 nothing bearing upon this matter, some might have thought 
 that He had left it entirely free to men — in fact, their duty — 
 to claim and use such libert}- in finding in Holy Scripture 
 Avhat they judged Divinely true, and rejecting the rest. They 
 would have supposed Him thus to have silently recognised 
 this as part of the essential liberty of the human soul, made 
 in the Divine image, and seeking truth by its own instinct — 
 a part of its necessary responsibility and discipline, and so 
 of personal liberty and nobility, enlarged just in proportion 
 to its activity in thinking, and abridged by every act of mere 
 belief, obedience, or submission. But did the Light of the 
 world and the Saviour of men give this account of their 
 nature ? Nowhere that I know of Is it not He Who said 
 that men 'loved darkness rather than light'? that 'he who 
 exaltcth himself shall be abased ' ? and that ' he who 
 humbleth himself shall be exalted'? — in this (St. Matt, 
 xviii. 4) comparing them to little children, who simply and
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 87 
 
 obediently receive knowledge, instead of those ambitious and 
 self-confident explorers who conquer it. Nor does He 
 suggest an exception as to this when we come as learners to 
 the Holy Writings. On the contrary, to say nothing of His 
 Own invariable example of quoting from them as conclusive 
 authority in the supreme questions — ^just as one who holds 
 the highest view of their inspiration would do now — He said 
 some things most distinctly and emphatically, which have 
 seemed to His people in all ages (until this late questioning 
 by some) to be the exact opposite. How can we think that 
 if He did not mean us to take all this Holy Scripture as 
 God's Word, He would not have said something to that 
 effect, if it were only to keep us from the misapprehension 
 of His other words (if it be such), which was so likely, and 
 in fact has been all but universal ? Not one word have we 
 to this effect, nor from His Apostles in their inspiration to 
 further show forth His doctrine. 
 
 And now do these actual sayings of His admit of any fair 
 doubt of their meaning ? Are they prescribed only for a 
 class of persons ? — for the few very ignorant or least thought- 
 ful ? for the many, as such, while the very few who can be 
 learned and acute, and can ' think for themselves,' are not 
 amenable to them ? Certainly not. They are for all — with 
 this qualification only, that they are more directly addressed 
 to this latter class as the most exposed to the danger in 
 question. 
 
 He said — and I know nothing in all writing which in all 
 its circumstances deserves more silent and concentrated 
 attention to what is said, as giving us the best glimpse of 
 how mankind need to learn truth about religion — nothing 
 more emphatic and solemn, more commanding and con- 
 clusive, addressed immediately, not to men, but to God 
 Himself, and therefore the most pure and exalted truth : ' I 
 thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because 
 Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and 
 revealed them unto babes. Even so. Father, for so it seemed 
 good in Thy sight ' (St. Matt, xi, 25, 26). 
 
 Look at this long and attentively, as a great pillar of 
 thought and speech, with its base upon earth, and its head 
 rising into Heaven. Go around it and survey it from all 
 points. Stop and meditate upon its possible meanings
 
 88 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 and applications. The more one does this, the more it will 
 appear that the highest truth we can know is that which 
 God utters to us directly in words, and which is least the 
 product of our reasonings or imaginings. 
 
 It is in exact opposition to a thought which might arise 
 in a man's mind to this effect : ' God has revealed truth to 
 mankind about Himself as well as all else. But this must 
 all come through our minds. He has surrounded us with 
 objects which suggest thoughts, and through these thoughts 
 we must learn all that we need to know. But for the greater 
 part of our race, who are otherwise occupied, or of feebler 
 intellectual force, and of less aspiring and ambitious dis- 
 position that way, all this must be done by us, the philosophic 
 and intelligent (words exactly corresponding to <TO(f)oi koI 
 avveroi, which are not really represented to us by 'the wise 
 and prudent,' in our usually excellent A.V.). Most of all is 
 this so in regard to the highest and most spiritual truth, — 
 that is, as to God and goodness. Thus through the thoughts 
 of mankind, in degree as they are acutely and ambitiously 
 thoughtful, does He reveal Himself to them. This in sub- 
 stance we might think as belonging to the intelligence and 
 freedom of the human mind.' 
 
 If it had been the purpose of the Speaker to contradict and 
 forbid this thought, nothing could be more to the purpose 
 than the words of Our Lord last cited. And therefore 
 beyond doubt that was His purpose. The one Man Who 
 alone (as being indeed Himself the Eternal Creator) ' knew 
 what was in man ' (wonderful saying !) addressed God with 
 a thanksgiving in behalf of us all, that He had ' revealed ' the 
 most vast and yet most urgently necessary things to men. 
 But to whom primarily and representatively for all ? — To the 
 very {e.\N who have most capacity and most opportunity of 
 elaborating in their minds what shall afterwards be imparted 
 to the rest ? Exactly the opposite of this. To those who 
 represent the simple and ready reception of what is told 
 them ; to those who have not yet begun the ambitious 
 search of all that is around them for new discoveries, which 
 is useful enough in lower matters of knowledge ; to those 
 who represent, as some would make the distinction, the 
 blind believers, as opposed to the intelligent investigators. 
 But can we yet suppose that it does not quite mean this,
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 89 
 
 plain as the words are, but the more childHke of the 
 philosophic and intelligent class, the more candid and 
 believing of them ? No ; this understanding is impossible. 
 In fact, it is not the ' revealing ' at all for which our Lord 
 first thanks the Father, but for a 'hiding' of these things 
 from the ao^oi koI avveroL Every possible escape from 
 the force of this, as being inadvertent or figurative, or a 
 rhetorical exaggeration, etc., is cut off by considering the 
 Speaker, the Listener, and all the incidents. No, surely. 
 He says — and there is an end of doubting by Christians — 
 that what God thus reveals comes most directly and 
 effectively to those who are disposed simply to believe the 
 words and act upon them at once ; and less clearly and 
 usefully to those whose habit of mind is to be critical and 
 discriminating about everything that is offered to their belief. 
 And the great force of this is even heightened by its being 
 an occasion of thanks and praise to God, and afterwards 
 exulted in as being His mere good pleasure. 
 
 At other times also does He use this illustration of being 
 like a ' little child ' in order to enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven. And while in those other passages the more im- 
 mediate reference is to simplicity, humility, and an obedient 
 spirit, all that agrees in spirit with this great passage in 
 reminding us that such obedience and submission of mind 
 is a condition of our having the great things of God ' revealed' 
 to us. Even in one of the old prophets there is a beautiful 
 disclosure of this same great truth (Isa. Ixvi. 2) : ' But to 
 this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a 
 contrite spirit, and trembleth at (hears with awe and prompt 
 obedience) My word.' A beautiful allusion also there seems 
 to be in the First Epistle of St. Peter (ii. 2) : 'As new-born 
 babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word,' where, if our 
 A.V. be not literal enough in rendering the adjective XoyiKov, 
 the ' Revision ' has altogether lost the verbal felicities and 
 allusions to X6709 just before (i. 23), and pi^jjia as its 
 equivalent in ver. 25. 
 
 In pursuance of this same thought the holy Apostles in 
 the Scriptures which they wrote urge men, as they would 
 learn of God and please Him, to receive what knowledge He 
 sends them in the Gospel and by His messengers with simple 
 and prompt obedience, and warn them against mingling
 
 90 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 their own thoughts with this or modifying it by them. They 
 bear steadily and uniformly against that, as there lying all 
 the danger for us. Such are the very plain and powerful 
 sayings of St. Paul in his First Epistle to the Corinthians 
 as to man's wisdom. If, nevertheless, we could think that 
 possibly he did not mean just this, but, on the contrary, meant 
 to allow of our trying the ' Word of God ' when it came to us 
 either in speech or writing by our own ' verifying faculty,' 
 he would have said that too most explicitly, as he never does. 
 
 The great saying of St. Peter (2 Pet. i. 20, 21) also, 
 already cited, as to the general idea of Holy Scripture found 
 in the New Testament, is very clear as to this : ' Knowing 
 this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private 
 interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by 
 the will of man : but holy men of God spake as they were 
 moved by the Holy Ghost' Thus the ' prophetic Word ' 
 ("TTpocjiTjTLKov Xoyov) of vcrs. 19, and this 'prophecy of the 
 Scripture' are exactly equivalent to 'God's Word Written,' 
 which is declared to be never ' of private,' i.e. individual, ' inter- 
 pretation,' or for any one to find in it a meaning other than 
 that of the plain words, and as the Church has always under- 
 stood them. Just so it was no ' will of man,' no mere human 
 thought and purpose which first uttered it. The men may 
 have been only conscious of such a purpose ; but in fact, 
 borne along ((j)ep6fievoi) b}' the Holy Ghost, they spoke as 
 ' men of God.' It is of no eficct upon this whether we retain 
 or omit the adjective dyioi. But the 'Revision' is no- 
 where less fortunate in its departure from the Authorised 
 Version, not only as to elegance of language, but as to clear 
 and faithful rendering of the original. Yet to adopt the 
 later translation would not lessen the substantial force of 
 the passage in this connection. 
 
 In this, as throughout the New Testament, in all it says 
 of men's treatment of the Word of God to them, whether 
 written or spoken, if there is anything which is expressly 
 excluded, it is addition to or change of it by human thought. 
 Doubtless God could have — and then it would have been for 
 us to receive f/iat with humble gratitude — communicated all 
 which He wished men to know through their minds, without 
 any ' Word ' at all, prompting them to t/iink in such a way 
 that from the objects and occasions of thought in which He
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 91 
 
 placed them they would ' come to the knowledge of that 
 truth.' Or He might have given them a ' Word,' and also 
 bidden them elaborate this and adjust it by their own 
 thoughts, so that the joint product would be what they 
 
 * ought to know and believe for their souls' health.' 
 
 The former method, we may reasonably believe. He has 
 made the chief means of inferior knowledge for us. But that 
 which is the most lofty, the most difficult for us such as we 
 now are, and yet the most incessantly, universally, and 
 urgently necessary for each soul, He gives directly by ' Word.' 
 And, as we have just seen, so far from at all making that 
 depend upon our intellectual ambition, He forbids such a 
 thought, and warns us against it as one of the very great 
 dangers from which His Gospel rescues us. 
 
 If we obey this voice of our Lord, and apply His counsel 
 of humility and obedience to our own time and case, we find 
 that it applies specially to our use of the Holy Bible. We 
 must think of it and treat it with the belief that we are 'babes,' 
 and most carefully beware of the false position of the ' wise 
 and prudent.' But once receiving its words with entire humility 
 and obedience, we may then well use all our power of think- 
 ing to make the best use of this most valuable knowledge. 
 Now which of the two views of ' inspiration ' does this 
 Christian method best agree with ? Does it not really ex- 
 clude the one, as that by which the Word of God would be 
 
 * hidden ' from us, and require the other by which it will 
 indeed be ' revealed ' } 
 
 It is not impossible that this may still seem to some 
 a * hard saying,' — so contrary to ' facts ' that it cannot and 
 must not be true, — that no argument and no authority can 
 prove it. But let us discriminate as to what authority we 
 can set aside, and let us make sure that we do not mistake 
 our own obstinate and wrong prepossessions for a true under- 
 standing of the nature and needs of mankind. Do these 
 ' facts ' come in the shape of a belief that the Scriptures con- 
 tain errors of fact, even self-contradictions, which forbid you 
 and me to believe that they are the entirely true Word of 
 God ? Yet for one thing, I, having considered all these sup- 
 posed * facts,' still have, in fact, no doubt of those Scriptures 
 being inspired as here maintained. Allowing to the ' facts ' 
 the most that can be fairly, the wise and reverent attitude of
 
 92 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION 
 
 the Christian believer is that all things belonging to his faith 
 in God are of a higher order than they, and cannot be 
 affected by them. They are liable to the misinformation 
 and misjudgment which are possible in all our lower know- 
 ledge ; the things of faith are not. At the most, he has 
 some perplexity as to the slight errors in his copy of the 
 Bible, whether from the trivial mistakes of a copyist or 
 printer, or really from his own misunderstanding of the 
 details. For the sufficient answer of common sense to any 
 demand that he shall renounce faith in this Word of God 
 is that there is not a discrepancy or difficulty of them all 
 which would at all affect what we should know and believe, 
 or any question which is to be decided by the authority 
 of Holy Scripture. Suppose the printed copy of the laws 
 of the State which you read misspells an unimportant 
 word, and you say that this error makes you doubtful of 
 all its authority, and so refuse all obedience. Will this 
 prove anything but your disloyalty .-' Suppose that Baruch, 
 reading from the roll of Jeremiah, had mispronounced a 
 trifling word, would that have justified the haughty Jews of 
 the Court and the Temple in saying ' For this we reject 
 this burden of the Lord ; at least, this compels us to 
 discriminate as to what part of it we will receive, and as 
 to whether we will save Judah and Jerusalem from the 
 coming destruction by repenting and turning to the Lord 
 our God ' "! Would these have been any safer from that awful 
 judgment when it came than those who had disbelieved 
 without that pretext ? Had I no higher reason for believing 
 this Book to be the Word of God in the sense now maintained 
 than would be seriously affected by the question whether 
 both or which of the copyists of Kings or Chronicles were 
 right as to a certain numbering of the Israelites, or such 
 things as that, my faith would not be of much account. 
 But, in fact, it remains undisturbed by this and all the other 
 * difficulties.' They certainly will not persuade me of a 
 ' theory ' of inspiration v.-hich is against the whole tenor of 
 the Book and the very spirit of our Lord's and His Apostles' 
 doctrine. But this prepossession seems to lurk in other 
 minds in the shape of a feeling that the necessary discipline 
 of free, intelligent choice in a 'state of probation,' of the 
 growing intelligence of the individual as well as of the race,
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 93 
 
 of the conflict with doubt and evil desire, and final victory 
 over them — that all this is opposed to simple faith in words. 
 They assume that such faith must cramp, degrade, and dwarf 
 the minds of men ; that it is also wrong, because subjecting 
 them to the tyranny of other men. 
 
 But to argue thus rests all upon a false assumption. 
 Simple truth would teach us that our Most Wise and Loving- 
 Lord knows all these things better than we do ; that all 
 which is really good and noble must lie in that path of 
 humility and obedience in which He requires us to walk. 
 Let us recur to His Own illustration of little children. We 
 must not weary of this, or take it as a childish trifling with 
 us. The more we study it, the more comes out of it its deep 
 meaning and practical use. Nor must we at all resent this 
 comparison as an attempt to belittle and enslave those whose 
 right and duty it is to be great and free. We may not say, 
 ' But we are not children merely to obey our betters ; we are 
 men and women, with the freedom, dignity, and responsibility 
 before God of seeking His truth and following it for our- 
 selves.' Yet this is some of that certain truth which we 
 should only wrong and disgrace ourselves by refusing to see. 
 It is that same great God Who says this, ' and with Whom 
 we have to do ' in the matter, the only question being 
 whether, when He teaches and commands in words, we are 
 not all of us alike simply to believe and obey. What, then, is 
 the little child before his elders to illustrate this "i He is 
 their helpless inferior as to all he most needs to know. It 
 depends upon them whether he will ever survive long for 
 growing intelligence and increasing knowledge. The use of 
 language itself and the art of reading, the very key to all 
 human learning, he must get from them. And these very 
 rudiments (' letters,* * elements,' o-rot^eta. Gal. iv. 3, etc.), he 
 can gain only by faith in his teachens, by obedience, with- 
 out at all understanding iv/iy this sound or that letter repre- 
 sents such or such a thought rather than another. This is 
 of necessity, as we may say, 'arbitrary.' It is not his inde- 
 pendent judgment which he must use, but an obedient 
 memory — no sort of reasoning, only simple ' faith.' And 
 so with his first knowledge of facts beyond the very little 
 range of what he can see or touch. He may soon know 
 something of his own country far beyond his own eyesight ;
 
 94 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION 
 
 of the lands across the sea, and all 'the round world ;' of 
 sun, moon, and stars. How ? — By his investigations and 
 * free thought ' ? Certainly not. By mere faith in what he 
 is told. (Indeed I do not know that we, any of us, feel 
 much disgraced, because, in fact, a great part of what we 
 know comes to us by mere faith in what others tell us, or 
 we read. We would rather be ashamed to be without the 
 supposed knowledge.) 
 
 Yet, after all, the child is of the same nature as his elders. 
 He is all the time growing towards equality of intelligence 
 with any of them, perhaps to become their superior. And 
 this may and ought to qualify our idea of his inferiority. 
 
 But as an illustration of what we are before God, that 
 qualification disappears. So far from the comparison making 
 too much of our inferiority, it is only vastly inadequate. We 
 never can outgrow the relation, and in our turn become such 
 as can reveal this truth to mere ' babes ; ' we are rather thus 
 in actual danger of getting among the ' wise and prudent,' 
 from whom it is ' hidden.' No maturity of man or woman, or 
 long time of thought, ever makes us any nearer in knowledge 
 to the Great Revealer. It is by keeping this in mind by 
 simple obedience and faith that we shall best walk in the 
 light of His truth. We are thus always ' learning our letters ' 
 directly from Him. A thousand successive generations of 
 us (and there ha\-e been only some hundred in all) could 
 never elaborate and lay up so much truth that we could 
 any more dispense with this direct teaching of God than 
 could Adam have done, or the generation of the Gospel. 
 
 Why, then, not take this comparison and lesson in all its 
 plain force ? why not see that in this abasing of ourselves 
 God will exalt us .-^ why may He not have — has He not 1 — 
 plainly given us His perfect written Word for our entire 
 belief and obedience } And then, as with the little child, 
 this subjection is really the first and necessary step to the 
 noblest thought. Who really makes the best use of that 
 power of thought — he who spends years of toilsome doubt 
 and reasoning as to whether there be the Great Eternal Al- 
 mighty Love, or he who, simply and promptly accepting this 
 as God Himself tells it to him, goes on to meditate upon it, 
 to see God continually in all things, and thus continually to 
 love and adore Him .'' And so also, which uses his power
 
 PRINCIPLES AXD METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 95 
 
 of thought to the best purpose — he who, receiving a verbal 
 communication from God of the greatest and most urgent 
 truth, employs it in puzzling and arguing as to how much of 
 this he will thus accept, or he who, receiving it ' as a little 
 child,' loses no time in that way, but goes on at once to think 
 about this revealed truth, and make the utmost use of it ? 
 There have been many of the most profound and acute 
 thinkers, who, taking all the Holy Bible as truth of God, 
 have spent all their lives and minds upon it as such, to their 
 own great advantage, and that of their fellow-men, and to 
 His great glory. And what is of more importance yet, there 
 is a vast multitude, ' whom no man can number,' of all sorts 
 of plain people, who, by the same faith and diligence, have 
 lived happier and wiser than any doubters that ever were. 
 
 Is not this use of Holy Scripture by a Christian far more in 
 accordance with the words and general spirit of teaching of 
 Our Lord and His Apostles than the other t If there are any 
 who still do not like to admit this, I would present it now in 
 the form of this dilemma. Either those to whom He said 
 these things, subjecting human thought to what is simply 
 revealed — that is, all the Jews of His own time, and His 
 Church afterwards — were right in the 'high view' they 
 actually held of the verbal inspiration of Scripture, or they 
 were not. If they were, why do you not also allow it, thus also 
 following Our Lord's own example of entire obedience to 
 what 'is written' "i If they were not right, why did not He 
 (the great Deliverer from all bondage, especially from every 
 sort of religious error and tyranny) reprove them for it, and 
 give them just such a lesson of freedom from that misleading 
 superstition as you now put forth .-' Why did not He, with 
 His all-seeing glance over the future, and His all-powerful 
 authority over 'all things in heaven and upon earth,' say 
 that the growing intelligence of mankind needed such ' free 
 thought ' and ' free handling ' of all ' which is written,' so that 
 they might thus see more of the Divine truth .'' Or does the 
 rejector of the ' high view ' of inspiration require a low view 
 of His courage, wisdom, and authority, as the great Instructor 
 of mankind ? And what does that suggest .-' 
 
 Fellow-Christians, let us make no mistake here. Far better 
 — is it not .'' — to err on the side of humility and love than on 
 the opposite. If we were to insist that from our own inherent
 
 96 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 freedom and respect to our own intelligence, we must be less 
 subject to the letter of God's Word written than this authority- 
 has shown us to be, and take this strong persuasion of our own 
 for overruling authority, would not that be exalting our self- 
 will against His righteous Will ? If that be an 'inspiration,' 
 too, is it not a different and a hostile one, against which that 
 inspiration which is of Divine love warns us as being 
 abroad in the world ? 
 
 'Must' is a very strong word to use in resistance of what 
 even seems to be His Will. At least this much is due to the 
 humility which becomes us toward these Holy Scriptures, 
 that we subject to them our mere idea of the rights of man 
 toward God (the insignificant and guilty creature toward 
 Him), and, however strong our mere prepossessions of 
 thought, relinquish as a mistake whatever is against their 
 plain words. May we not possibly be mistaken ? Suppose 
 we yet find out that we were so, how inexpressibly silly 
 will this obstinate adherence to our self-conceited mistake 
 then appear ! — all the more absurd because our reason for 
 this was only our sentimental notion (the most perverse and 
 selfish sort of sentimcntalism) of our individual rights, 
 resisting truth which the love of God was teaching us, and to 
 abase ourselves before which would have brought us to the 
 highest exaltation. 
 
 Any one may wisely say : ' The written Word is far above 
 my best thoughts. To substitute them for it by any sort of 
 self-persuasion would be a great misfortune to me. All 
 probabilities are for the literal correctness of what I read here. 
 And if I venture at all to think that human copying or print- 
 ing has erred from the perfect original about some unimpor- 
 tant incident, it must always be with a humble reservation of 
 judgment that even in this I may be mistaken.' 
 
 Beyond doubt, the two views of inspiration are contra- 
 dictory of one another. One or the other we should choose 
 and firmly adhere to. Which shall it be ? To avoid dangers } 
 On the one side are said to be those of human tyranny, of 
 the few over the many — and of slavish subserviency on the 
 part of the latter, and losing the discipline and improve- 
 ment, both mental and spiritual, of such ' liberty ; ' on the 
 other, of losing the Divine ' light and truth ' given to us, and 
 wandering off into our own mistaken fancies (or other men's).
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 97 
 
 of the self-deceptions of pride, of the disobedient, selfish, and 
 self-willed spirit. Which are really the greater dangers for 
 us ? against which does the Divine wisdom and love warn 
 us most ? But, in fact, we do not need to make this choice. 
 The former dangers are imaginary and unreal as stated. 
 They belong really on the other side. There cannot be 
 a greater guaranty for the rightful personal liberty of thought 
 for Christians than in a plain letter of law to which all are 
 alike amenable as the highest authority. It is one aspect 
 of the old question as to human government, whether 
 * personal ' or by law. All history shows that an * open 
 Bible' in all hands, and submitted to by all alike as the voice 
 of God, is both the greatest preservative of true doctrine from 
 artful or oppressive perversions by the powerful few, and the 
 best means to make well-taught and well-grown Christians of 
 a whole people. If either it is withdrawn from such general 
 knowledge or not regarded and used with such reverent 
 faith, neither liberty nor truth will be maintained. 
 
 And the same is true of each soul's spiritual life and 
 growth in all that purifies and ennobles it with all good 
 knowledge (knowledge of good .''), — with the love of God and 
 man. Our Master has provided all we need for this. He 
 has given Himself to us as the Word of God, and set up His 
 Church as the home for our souls, and 'caused all Holy 
 Scripture to be written for our learning,' and given it to us in 
 and through the Church, that ' we may in such wise,' with 
 obedient faith in it all, ' read, learn,' etc., as to live a happy 
 and godly life, grow in this grace and knowledge, and become 
 more suited to our greater and better everlasting life. 
 
 Has He ever said or implied that we would be the better 
 or wiser in this for thinking ourselves above the words of 
 Holy Scripture ? or that in the future the advancing intel- 
 ligence of mankind would expand beyond the limits of the 
 verbal Gospel } Has He, or any one in His Name, told men 
 that they were, or would ever be, endowed with such humility 
 and spiritual sagacity that they might safely and wisely use 
 this in rising above the ' letter ' of Scripture } Shall we 
 indeed, in spite of all this, stand upon our imagined ' rights,' 
 and say to such love and authority, ' You cannot and you 
 shall not degrade me to the level of these babes ' } 
 
 G
 
 98 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Rather if, by our position among our fellow-men, we seem 
 to belong among the ' wise and prudent,' let us beseech of 
 His tender and gracious majesty to allow us too, by humility 
 and obedient faith, to sit at His feet with those who believe 
 every word that ' is written,' and only use all our powers of 
 study and thought to receive this ' revealing ' of truth and 
 glory, to find and use all its power. This equality of us all 
 before Him is the truth itself, and the greatest real honour 
 for us all, as 'heirs together' of an everlasting life — a holy 
 and spiritual life in the love of God with all the heart, 
 finding our chief joy in His glory. Thus, too, ' the rich and 
 the poor meet together : the Lord is the Maker (and the 
 Teacher) of them all.' 
 
 If we will look attentively and candidly, we shall see that 
 for our case, in all likelihood, a Divine Scripture would not 
 have been given, leaving us in any doubt whether some part 
 of it was not merely the fallible thoughts of some of our 
 fellow-men, or tempting us to intellectual pride ; nor, on the 
 other hand, full of sayings which most people would take for 
 the (in that case) wrong view, that it was all the perfect truth 
 of God, and without a word to the contrary. 
 
 In much lower knowledge, of far less real authority and 
 probability as certain truth, of much less urgent necessity 
 for us all to know, he who, for instance, aspires to the higher 
 mathematics, yet will not take the Principia of Newton as 
 so much truth already ascertained, and from this go on to 
 further application, but must spend all his time in a 
 doubting ' verification ' of that, is counted a fool. We are 
 impatient of like folly in those who in matters of law will 
 insist upon always arguing first principles, and go over and 
 over "all the ground of res adjudicata;, as if nothing had ever 
 been settled. And cannot our God and Saviour have given 
 us this much certain knowledge, unmixed with what is 
 doubtful, from which we may go on to perfection, for us 
 simply to learn, and in its use find all we need for using our 
 power of thought .? 
 
 When this Divine Word began to be among men in 
 writing, is rather a question of the history, as we shall now 
 follow that. It is, however, well to say here that we are not 
 bound to think that this must have waited upon the
 
 PRINCIPLES AND METHOD TO BE FOLLOWED. 99 
 
 tardy invention of some men of false religion. It is in its 
 nature one of the most reasonable questions whether a matter 
 so great for man's spiritual good, and about to enter so largely 
 in fact into all the grace of God to him, was not directly 
 supplied in times long before any of the first very rude 
 inventions of Egyptians, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Indians, or 
 Chinese. To sneer at this as ' bigotry,' is really a very narrow 
 feebleness of thought, which takes for granted that the Chris- 
 tian idea of History cannot be true. The soul of that idea is 
 in the belief that the Eternal and Almighty God does His 
 Will in all the history of mankind, they, with their entire free- 
 will, being nevertheless (oftenest unconsciously) the agents 
 of that Will. And a written Word from Him being so great 
 a part of (or bearing so great a part in) His Will, might well 
 be earlier provided for, and that among the people where His 
 truth best survived by oral tradition from the first. In fact, 
 as connected and complete early history, at the lowest esti- 
 mate of this which we can reasonably make, nothing from 
 any of those other sources bears any comparison with what 
 we have from the Book of Genesis. 
 
 The results of our inquiry are, then, that, upon the Chris- 
 tian ' theory ' of the earliest history of mankind in the Book 
 of Moses (' Genesis ' as the first part of that writing, for the 
 common division of it into the five books is a late and rather 
 arbitrary one), (i) the history is all to be looked at and 
 understood from the point of view of the Gospel of Our Lord ; 
 (2) that it is received by us from His Church as its witness 
 and keeper ; (3) that the whole Bible is so received as one 
 Book, the various parts being understood and interpreted by 
 one another ; and (4) that of this one Book God Himself is 
 rather the real Author than the various men who wrote its 
 parts by His inspiration, so that it is His Word — and truth 
 unmixed with error, — therefore of higher authority upon 
 everything it does say than any or all other evidence. 
 
 Let us, then, as Christians (and those who, disdaining the 
 obligation implied in that title, are yet willing to go with us 
 in a trial of this ' hypothesis ' as to its explanation of all the 
 facts of History) proceed to trace the story of man and his 
 religion as recounted in that Book.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 
 
 This history begins with one family, the man Adam and 
 his wife Eve. They talk together of God, and of what He 
 has said to them. Our Lord recognises this account (St. 
 Matt. xix. 4 : ' Have ye not read that He Which made them 
 at the beginning,' etc.), and St. Paul alludes to and makes use 
 of it in his revelations (i Cor. xi. 7-12, xv. 45, etc. ; i Tim. ii. 
 13, etc. etc.). We are therefore at once upon firm ground 
 of historic fact. This shuts off from our inquiry all that 
 at any time, and especially in these later ages, has been 
 reasoned or conjectured by men as to ages preceding the 
 creation of mankind. Whatever be the merits of all that, it 
 has nothing whatever to do with this history of Religion, 
 In like manner it excludes all the conjectures, wise or other- 
 wise, as to certain creatures having by degrees of change 
 from four-footed brutes, or even very far back of this — from 
 mere lumps of sea-mud, jelly-fish, or the thinnest gas — 
 improved by slow degrees into these upright beasts, all but 
 men. If any one can believe all that, and also believe that 
 this anthropoid (that is, ina7i-o\d) became at last a man and 
 woman (though, whatever others may accomplish in the way 
 of such belief, I do not see how a Christian can), that has 
 nought to do with our inquiry, which begins with mankind. 
 
 Here is religion already and at once of a very elevated 
 (and refined) sort, certainly as compared with that of a vast 
 number of mankind even now. There is nothing super- 
 stitious, silly, unhappy, gloomy, or cruel about it. Is it not 
 indeed in some respects practically above any religion of our 
 own now — with no thought of a guilt which needs expiation, 
 no distressing fear of the object of worship ? The One Only
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. loi 
 
 and True God is alone adored, and He personally communi- 
 cates with His worshippers in words. He graciously com- 
 mands and they cheerfully obey. What He thus says is of 
 course the Word of God, to say the least, as much as any 
 Scripture we now read, or anything of which a holy prophet 
 ever truly declared, * Thus saith the Lord.' In this we have, 
 as it seems very plain to me, one of the great things involved 
 in the sentence : ' In the beginning was the Word.' (^6709 
 is commonly the very term used for all the Word of God 
 whether by voice or Scripture.) The Greek of the Old 
 Testament (LXX.) uses the very same words (eV «p%^;) in 
 Gen. i. i. And Our Lord (as noted before, p. 100) vouches 
 for this as the true history, using this very word «p%?7, — when, 
 condemning a certain practice of the Jews about marriage, 
 He says that * from the beginning of the creation God made 
 them male and female ' (St. Mark x. 6), 
 
 But the greatest light thrown upon this was when He chose 
 out from the latter part of this book of Moses one sentence, 
 which had before been relatively unnoticed, and declared it 
 to be the substance of all the written Word, and of all true 
 religion, thus : ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
 thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This 
 is the first and great commandment. And the second is 
 like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself On 
 these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets ' 
 (St. Matt. xxii. 37-40). 
 
 The very highest authority for Christians, the chief voice 
 in all the Word of God, has therefore informed us of what 
 God first commanded, and that this involves all religion and 
 virtue ; that all else which was spoken or written for men by 
 His inspiration ' hangs upon ' — depends for its meaning and 
 its force upon — these two laws. It is somewhat curious that 
 in all the books written by famous Christians or their 
 imitators upon ' Moral Philosophy ' or ' Ethics,' these laws 
 have never been stated as the basis, the substance of those 
 matters. Many other things have been so laid down, and 
 some of these only differing from one another in the use of 
 another word. Sometimes the second of those great laws 
 has been barely mentioned as thus inclusive. But if there is 
 any instance in which what He said, as He said it, has been
 
 I02 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 made the basis and method of treatment of ' morals,' I do 
 not know it. 
 
 It is also in substance the only right answer to the question 
 of the purpose of man's existence, — what we were made for, 
 and should adjust all our thoughts of ' duty ' around. The 
 force of the word ' first ' in fixing this is very great. We 
 need not lose the idea of time in this by referring the sense of 
 * first ' only to importance. That has its mention in the 
 other adjective, 'great' In fact, to admit it to be first in 
 importance would compel us to think that it could not have 
 been left to come later in time to our knowledge and 
 obedience. (As upon this we must build all right under- 
 standing of the whole subject, we must now give it most 
 careful consideration.) 
 
 In the history we are shown the simple and wonderful 
 picture of two persons of our race, alone in the world — innocent 
 and religious, knowing and loving God, — speaking of and to 
 Him, and being spoken to directly b)' Him. But we have 
 voices all around us now, of great influence upon the opinions 
 of others, which say (or impl)-) that this cannot be literally 
 true, that it must mean something else than its plain words, 
 etc. This is assumed upon the ground of certain theories of 
 the nature of man, of his past history, and of the purpose 
 of his existence. All this was of necessity somewhat anti- 
 cipated in Chapter III. p. 51, etc. But there' it was needed 
 to show upon the ground of all reasonable probability that 
 the history in the first of Genesis ought not to be turned into 
 an allegory to support the notion of ' Natural Religion.' 
 Here it is the simple question of God's Word interpreted by 
 itself, according to the principles established in Chapter IV. 
 
 Ah, if He Who does know it all would but speak Him- 
 self and tell us what this purpose is ! He has. He does now 
 in the Gospel. We are to read the Genesis in the light of 
 His words. Many such wonderful and most valuable words 
 there are there. But in its place, and supremely for our 
 purpose, there is not one saying greater than this, ' Thou 
 shalt love the Lord thy God,' etc. Surely those who were 
 made to do that, and really once did it, are to be looked up 
 to by us all with the greatest interest, admiration, and honour. 
 
 Then, too, we look into the Scriptures of the Apostles, and
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 103 
 
 we learn from them that *in Adam all men did die; ' that so 
 great was his position to all our race that his mischoice and 
 misstep afterwards was fatal to all the thousands of millions 
 of human souls ; that he holds towards us a relation in some 
 sort corresponding to that of our most glorious and Blessed 
 Lord Christ, one of Whose titles is ' the Last Adam.* 
 Everything thus suggests that we should rather in some 
 sense look up with an exulting sense of honour to this great 
 first man, than fancy any one of us to be at all his superior. 
 
 There was at one time, and perhaps still survives in some 
 quarters, a technical theology, which had much to say of 
 Adam as the ' federal head ' of mankind, for whose acts we 
 were in some way responsible. The phrase is not of Holy 
 Writ, nor the thought either, it seems to me, as thus insisted 
 upon. It is one of those attempts to define and state better 
 than God's Word does a great mystery, which it is far the 
 best for us to leave where He left it, and say no more than 
 He says. 
 
 One thing is certain to begin with, that of all that lives 
 upon the earth, this being God made ' in His own image.' 
 That is a most wonderful distinction, which we can only 
 understand at all by carefully thinking of God and of the 
 human nature according to the best understanding we can 
 gain of that, and consulting all else in His Word which may 
 help in that way. Of course it does not mean that we are 
 eternal and almighty persons, as He alone is or can be. We 
 must even confess that evidently we have suffered some 
 degradation from what man was then at the first, because, for 
 one thing, we ought to be in our actions much better than 
 what we really are. What is there, then, possible to man in 
 regard to which he might have been and was ' made in the 
 image of God ' ? 
 
 For one thing, to be a spirit ; to have an immaterial mind 
 which thinks and knows ; a will to choose, and to act upon 
 that choice ; to be a ' person.' And is that all ? — all for which 
 God created him ? the chief law for his life ? the purpose of 
 Him Who knows and does all ? and with that purpose has 
 made this wonderful creature 'in His Own image'? How 
 shall we sound the depth of this glorious mystery ? 
 
 Or because we confess it a mystery, should we make no
 
 I04 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 effort to know it ? ' All things pertaining unto life and godli- 
 ness/ are in their nature mysteries, i.e. they are beyond the 
 mere discovery and apprehension of man by his reason. Yet 
 in so far as they are at all ' revealed,' they not only allow 
 but require us to try and understand them. That is why 
 God has disclosed those things. But what He still keeps as 
 ' secret things,' it is useless for us to attempt to understand ; 
 it is even presumptuous and dangerous. Has God revealed 
 Himself to us that we may know Him .'' Certainly, in many 
 of these sayings ; and therefore we should search them out. 
 This is the most noble use of thought possible, and is its own 
 great reward. Has He revealed to us His purpose in Crea- 
 tion — especially in the creation of us } Yes ; for one thing 
 in that most vast and profound saying, ' For Thy pleasure 
 they are and were created ' (Rev. iii. 9, the same thing most 
 plainly declared in various places of the Holy Book), a 
 mystery itself of the most sublime character, which adoring 
 love feels to be full of truth and joy. But has He said this 
 more definitely as to what we are to do to this end .'' I think 
 that any one searching the Book through for such informa- 
 tion — careful, thoughtful, and alert — might pass on steadily 
 through much which commanded his attention, as touching 
 upon this, until he came to that ' first and great command- 
 ment,' etc. Then, pausing upon that passage as just cited at 
 length (p. loi) for much consideration of its substance and 
 of its various words, going about to survey it from various 
 aspects, and to compare it with all else which he had noted 
 in the Book so far, he might say at last, ' I have found it.' 
 Yet he would do well to complete that reading, not unready 
 to entertain anything else thus suggested which ought to 
 change that impression, }-et in fact finding all the rest 
 concur in and support it. 
 
 I think too — but here I confess to not being on such firm 
 ground of certain truth as the other— that if there were no 
 such disclosure in the Book, any of us seeking together for a 
 theory of the chief purpose of God in creating us such as we 
 are, and the chief purpose which we of our choice should have 
 in living, in proportion as we thought wisely and deeply, 
 should award the palm of most brilliant and profound con- 
 jecture to him who maintained that this purpose was to love
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 105 
 
 the glorious Creator Himself with a devotion that subjugated 
 and absorbed all other purpose. 
 
 I believe (if one may be allowed or forgiven this further 
 illustration also) that if there were no possible approach to 
 known tnitJi in this, so much even as by conjecture, but a 
 great reward were offered to him who by any masterly in- 
 genuity could invent the belief and practice of some first 
 principle and purpose in all men's lives — organising the 
 hearts and habits of all to give the utmost steadiness and 
 strength to everything which we all think good and true, and 
 most repress all evil — that this of loving God with all the 
 heart would in any practically wise and fair judgment receive 
 the award over anything brought in competition. In fact, 
 were we in that case without that ' first and great ' of the 
 Coinvmndnietits of the God of love, we should be upon much 
 more solid ground as to those results to adopt this as our 
 principle rather than anything else of the wisest thought 
 or the most magnificent and felicitous conjecture of human 
 genius. For, recurring to that other great revealed mystery 
 of man, as made in the image of God (see p. 103, etc.), we 
 should seek to understand our nature and purpose by 
 that, — by research and study of what the One Who is * All 
 in Air has been graciously pleased to tell us of Himself 
 Among such sayings we find this very remarkable one, alone 
 and in some aspects unparalleled, which it is not rash, indeed, 
 for us to consider the greatest of those revelations — ' God is 
 love' (i St. John iv. 8). Set this highest vision of God as 
 revealed to men alongside of this first and great command- 
 ment of God to men, and then as we hear the voice of the 
 Creator say, * Let us make man in Our image, after Our like- 
 ness,' may we not the better understand the nature of this 
 creature and the purpose of the Creator? He makes him 
 with heart, soul, and mind, and he must use these entirely in 
 loving Him Who is love. 
 
 But returning to the Great Commandment as such, and 
 happy to find in it all that we need to know and do, let us 
 carefully examine its words, and get from them the utmost 
 possible of their real force. The w^ord ' love ' is not an un- 
 certain or arbitraiy term. It is primary and simple. Its 
 very ' atomic ' and elementary simplicity baffles definition.
 
 io6 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 for the words we would have to use in definnig it are less 
 plain than itself. It can only exist between perso7is^ and in 
 the person loving finding his pleasure in the other, and in 
 giving pleasure to the other. No doubt the word is in fact 
 often used of what denotes merely one person's enjoyment 
 or liking ; but in these cases we know that to be an inexact 
 and improper application of it. As it is one of the sacred 
 words, we should be scrupulous as to this. When applied to 
 that which is really selfish or corrupting, most of all to any 
 ungodly baseness, it is a sacrilege. Selfishness, indeed, is its 
 opposite, so that even the term ' self-love ' (not ' as thy- 
 self,' for a repression of our selfishness, which is quite 
 another thing), now so rooted in all our ' Ethics,' seems 
 awkward, if not even absurd and mischievous, used as de- 
 noting something natural and necessary to mankind. 
 
 According to the relations of the loving and loved, and the 
 incidents that may arise, it may involve exquisite pleasure of 
 thought, gracious goodwill, pity, condescension, tender sym- 
 pathy, generous and resolute action, admiration, awe, grati- 
 tude, hope, self-devotion, and joyful obedience. Which of 
 these love manifests, or their proportions, will depend upon 
 the character and relations of the loving and loved. 
 
 To ' love with all the heart ' never means anything less 
 than a very high degree of this affection, and is most natur- 
 ally applied to the one chief object of personal devotion. 
 If, however, even this very energetic expression were yet 
 heightened in force by adding ' and with all thy soul, and 
 with all thy mind, and with all thy strength,' we could not 
 mistake the meaning of the utterer. He would thus exclude 
 all approach of rivalry in any other love. Thus we might 
 say in almost any given application of the phrase, 'It is 
 absurd for one of us to have such an overwhelming and ab- 
 sorbing passion for another. It must invade, it must over- 
 throw other sacred duty. It limits to one what should be 
 extended to many. It degrades the one who loves from the 
 dignity of manhood. It deifies a fellow-creature, whose per- 
 sonal merit cannot be equal to such self-abasement of the 
 other. Yes ; if a man can rightly love another ' with all his 
 heart, and soul, and mind, and strength,' this does require a 
 devotion of himself to the other which he can never regard as
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 107 
 
 excessive, or even sufficient — to which all else good in him or 
 for him will adjust and subject itself — indeed, will be good 
 only as it may be thus adjusted. We must therefore take 
 those words in poetic hyperbole, and not in their actual sig- 
 nification. But shall we thus interpret them as we find them 
 in that sentence of Holy Scripture ? To answer this correctly, 
 we do not even need to resort to what is a true principle — 
 that we have no right ever thus to qualify the sayings of Our 
 Lord, or even anything in Holy Writ. But the very reasons 
 for not taking the words literally in any other case are absent 
 here — are, in fact, reversed. This is not fervid and figurative 
 poetry, but the sober answer to a question as to laiv. It is 
 not a case where any dignity of ours or of our kind is in 
 danger. The Person for Whom such love is demanded is 
 equal to and, in fact, far above our greatest, our absolute 
 devotion. He can have no possible rival or competitor for 
 this. And the greater our love for Him, the better for the 
 love we owe to any other person. It excludes nothing else 
 which is good ; it essentially includes all that. 
 
 It is also essential, if not to any existence, at least to any 
 continuance or any considerable degree of love, that it should 
 be reciprocated ; that there should be at least a hope or 
 possibility upon which imagination can work, that the one 
 who is loved will know and value the affection bestowed, and 
 in some way love in return. It may be very unequal, and 
 with quite different manifestations on either side. Anything 
 like equality between the parties is indeed far from neces- 
 sary. The very greatest personal devotion may, and often 
 does, exist with a conscious or imagined sense of great 
 inferiority to the person beloved, — admiration, tender 
 subjection, and the utter sacrifice of self for the honour or 
 pleasure of one who is looked up to as far above, and even, 
 as it were, as of another order of beings. Everything which 
 in such an instance, real or imagined, admiring and wondering 
 love feeds upon and delights in, is actually in the case before 
 us. There the loving eye does not need to shun any aspect 
 not so favourable to its purpose, while it searches for what 
 to enjoy. Wherever it turns there is wonderful beauty and 
 glory. Every moment has its instance of greatness and 
 graciousness. As to the exquisite pleasure and reward of
 
 io8 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 love in being noticed and loved in return by such a superior, 
 all comparison fails with Him Whose loving words are only 
 to be compared with His absolute power to grant anything 
 He pleases to promise. All other beauty and felicity around 
 us not only furnishes us with comparisons to utter our 
 admiration of Him, but they are all literally only little 
 glancings of His glory and love. And thus no exaggeration 
 of language is possible on our part in the expression of such 
 an affection, none of the self-reproach of silliness and love- 
 sick extravagance. 
 
 The occasions, however just, of love to any other person, 
 are only more reasons for loving Him Who has made these 
 beautiful things as a part of His goodness to us. Where 
 else can there be another such really unapproachable object 
 of admiration .'' where else any such reasons for the most 
 tender and devoted gratitude .<* where such gracious pity and 
 condescension towards us .-' where such magnificence of time 
 and power? such glorious beauty in exhaustless freshness? 
 such faultless purity, justice, and truth, so trusty and trust- 
 worthy, so firm without hardness, so merciful without any 
 weakness .-* 
 
 One might carefuU)- pursue this true thought for a long 
 time in its just applications, and find the conviction growing 
 all the time. It is according to all our best thoughts, that, 
 taking mankind as they are, it would be a noble conjecture 
 that, however otherwise their life had begun, God might have 
 made it the chief reward of goodness in them to be allowed 
 afterwards to love Him with all their hearts, to find this the 
 most glorious possible consummation of the best life one of 
 us could live here. Surely the power of loving other persons — 
 of loving ' with all the heart ' some one person — is in our 
 nature .■' It may be the occasion of great happiness to 
 the one who loves. It may cause a sense of nobleness in 
 that heart. How came there to be this great enjoyment at 
 all .'' By whose will and action also was this object of my 
 devotion, whatever it is, known to me, and thus loved .^ And 
 in like manner He is the cause of such high delight to a vast 
 number of others besides myself W^hat an assemblage of 
 all things that excite love He may, or rather must, then be 
 in Himself! Why may I not love HiM '^ And then, too, in
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 109 
 
 what I am told of future, better, and endless life, I am to 
 have just such a love of God, and which will be my perfect 
 happiness. (What a suggestion of my highest nature !) 
 Why may I not begin this now 'with all my heart,' in a 
 more high and true sense than is ever possible toward any 
 other person ? Yes ; any one else upon whom I may 
 attempt to fix such love, cannot, however passionately I may 
 insist upon it to myself or others, caimot but fail such a 
 supreme affection. They may go very far (or die) from me, 
 or I from them. One or the other of these fates is certain 
 some time or other. They may possibly, however desper- 
 ately I may deny that possibility, become estranged. My 
 own great and noble love may then become as keen a passion 
 of pain as it can be of exquisite pleasure now. But this 
 love of God cannot die, or grow cold, or prove false. It 
 cannot be thwarted by a more fortunate rival. It cannot 
 perish either unknown, unappreciated, or unrequited. 
 
 ' Thy God.' Those words are very plain. It is a command 
 to each human soul in the secret heart. He is for thee, 
 ' Thy God,' with a wonderful personal appropriation and 
 affection. This is the simple and self-evident meaning as 
 Our Lord declared it in the Gospel, as Moses spoke and 
 wrote it in the Deuteronomy, and if anything even more 
 plainly in a 'first' Commandment, as we now suppose it. It 
 implies a mysterious and glorious possession of God by a 
 human soul, an appropriation of Him by our love and His 
 love of us which justifies this love in us. No other religion 
 that ever I heard of involves this thought. Some writers 
 have maintained that the Israelites of old time had no other 
 thought of the Lord (Jehovah) as their God other than as a 
 national deity, the awful and glorious Champion of their 
 race, in this triumphing over the various other ' gods ' who 
 were patrons of the nations that in turn oppressed or con- 
 tended with them. Thus He was 'thy God' to the 
 Israelites, only just as Dagon was to the Philistine, or Bel to 
 the Babylonian. This was the common idea of Pagans — of 
 many gods, each of whom took some nation under his special 
 protection. It seems inseparable from false religion in some 
 shape or other, perhaps in the modern guise of 'patron 
 saints.' Apparently thus to the Jews of Our Lord's time
 
 no BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Jehovah was ' the God of the Jews only.'^ But this was only 
 one of the instances in which they were, as He declared,- 
 ' blind ' to the plain meaning of the very holy words which 
 had been before the eyes of all Israel for a thousand years. 
 Their whole religion denies throughout that there is any other 
 than this true God. A very few other passages which have 
 been claimed to countenance the other idea will be noticed 
 in their places in the course of the succeeding history. As 
 for this appellation of * Thy God ' in the words now before 
 us, let any one read it in the Deuteronomy as Moses wrote 
 it, and he will see that it went with simplicity to the soul of 
 each Israelite who listened, with the assurance that the 
 Great God of Israel, Who had done such wonders for them 
 all, was for Jiis secret heart ' thy God,' to be loved in and 
 with all that heart. That this glorious truth was lost from 
 sight by most of that people in perhaps every following age 
 (and degraded to the heathen notion of a national deity) is 
 only in accord with all the rest of their history (and this 
 fact has always had much to correspond with it in the 
 history of Christendom). 
 
 This will seem less strange if we will but recall the 
 strangely small, imperfect, and temporary part of that Israel 
 in the transaction of the true religion. The Psalms, as well 
 as passages in the Prophets, furnish most splendid proofs of 
 how such a love of the One and Only God did burn in certain 
 choice souls among that people. And these very words of 
 the Commandment may have struck many another thoughtful 
 and very devout Israelite as having a depth far beyond the 
 general spirit of his people, or even his own conjecture. 
 There is also that true thought to be kept in mind (which we 
 Christians all need, to allay the bitter self-reproach and fear 
 with which we consider how imperfectly at the best we now 
 fulfil that law), that the love of God did really though very 
 feebly exist in all devout and penitent souls, even the many 
 who unhappily did not think of it and strengthen it by such 
 meditation and prayer. 
 
 So when this supreme law was proclaimed in the 
 true ' Israel of God,' and by the glorious ' Word of God ' 
 Himself in person, it is to be understood by its own very 
 great and yet most simple words, and not at all by the stupid 
 
 ' Rom. iii. 29. - St. Matt. xv. 14, etc.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 1 1 1 
 
 and bitter conceit of those Jews of His time. And when, 
 as now, by His express authority we carry it back to * the 
 beginning,' all pretence for such a misunderstanding of it 
 falls away. The words come to two innocent and candid 
 souls, between whom and their meaning none of these mists 
 of mistake could intervene. There were no rival nations 
 with their different ' gods ' ; no ' errors in religion, or vicious- 
 ness of life ; ' no gloom of shame and guilty fear in their very 
 worship ; no distraction by pain or by the selfish struggle with 
 one another for need or greed, or pride or lust ; no conceited 
 ambition of thought or rivalry of argument. In this law of 
 all their life, however made known to them, the thought of 
 ' thy God ' was no doubt at least as simple, as well understood, 
 and as welcome to them as it is to any devout soul now. 
 
 We must think that this exceedingly energetic amplification 
 of the not so unusual phrase, ' with all thy heart,' is much 
 more than a powerful use of words for impressing the mind. 
 It must be meant to teach us that the matter in question is 
 of a far higher order than other instances in which we may 
 not inaptly speak of loving something or some one ' with all 
 the heart' But beside their rhetorical force, as a whole — to 
 say that this affection must be the main purpose of our 
 life, we shall do well to look for special meaning in each of 
 the particulars of 'soul,' 'mind,' and 'strength.' In the 
 Word of God, and especially in whatever came from the 
 lips of Our Lord Himself, we may well, without fanciful 
 straining of the sense, believe that every word has its own 
 special force as in no other use of words. We need not 
 insist that this of necessity involves any of the profound 
 reasonings of some Christian scholars as to a threefold 
 nature of man being implied in the Holy Scriptures, though 
 this is more deserving of notice than some are disposed to 
 allow. But as to the words now before us, it is plain that 
 as ' with all the heart ' fairly includes our entire personal 
 devotion, so to add ' with all thy soul,' or principle of life, 
 * and with all thy mind,' or power of thought, and finally, as 
 St Mark more fully gives it, ' and with all thy strength,' i.e. 
 every force of will, that this binds our life together into one 
 supreme and all-including choice and purpose. That, as 
 in St Mark's account (St Mark xii. 30), Our Lord should 
 have used two Greek terms — hiavoLa<;, la'xyo<;, 'mind' and
 
 112 BEGINNINGS OF RELTGION. 
 
 ' strength ' — for the one Hebrew (DeuL vi. 5, nso), for 
 which indeed as an adverb of intensity, used only once 
 beside this as a noun, no other language has a single 
 equivalent, — is a part of the same sublime mystery by which 
 the 'Son over His Own house ' (Heb. iii. 5), citing the words 
 of the ' servant,' removes them from the place of comparative 
 obscurity and inferiority, amplifies the language, and sets 
 them in their primitive greatness above ' all the Law and 
 the Prophets,' even as these contained the Ten Command- 
 ments, though these Ten Commandments are so far above 
 anything else in the Old Scriptures, as having been uttered 
 with a mighty voice from the top of the great mountain, in 
 the midst of the most sublime scene that a vast assembly of 
 men ever beheld, and after that ' written with the finger of 
 God upon stone.' And the sentence, as Moses spoke and 
 wrote it, is far from being all that Our Lord said. He added : 
 ' This is the first and great Commandment' That is alto- 
 gether another thing from His citing a somewhat neglected 
 and misunderstood saying of the Old Law. Nothing like 
 this did Moses add or suggest anywhere else in his writings 
 as to the love of God, — ' This is the first and great Com- 
 mandment' These words have no parallel in all the rest of 
 the Holy Writings. They are sui getieris, with a distinct and 
 positive supremacy as to the nature and duty and purpose of 
 mankind to which nothing else can aspire. They disclose the 
 great Commandment as reaching far beyond the limits of those 
 Israelites to whom Moses spoke, and their descendants, and 
 including all mankind. They carry it far back of the Exodus, 
 or of Abraham or Noah, to the veiy beginning of human life. 
 Much of the force of this applies also to the other part of 
 this great saying of our Lord : * And the second is like unto 
 it. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself To each of 
 these two persons, still remaining ' very good,' as God had 
 made them in His glorious ' image,' there was then but one 
 neighbour, to love whom as one's self there might seem to 
 us no need of any commandment whatever. Certainly there 
 could be no application as for us now in its manifold 
 adjustments and distinctions, while the all-including love of 
 God was as completely a necessity of life for them as for 
 any of their descendants. Yet that this too was in substance
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 113 
 
 a part of the primitive religion ^ will appear plain upon a 
 careful examination. There is the same mystery of the 
 Word of God (see p. 104) in them both. Our Lord takes 
 this sentence from yet another part of Moses,^ where it lay 
 comparatively neglected and overlooked for many other 
 precepts, and sets it with that primitive and supreme law of 
 the love of God, as ' a second, and like unto it' Any second 
 must of necessity be far below that first. It must be really 
 included in it, and what is a part of the infinite is im- 
 measurably less than tho.t whole. Yet He calls it ' like.' 
 In some things it is very unlike. It has not the one, simple, 
 definite, and very great Person as an object. It does not 
 look far above to One Who is incomparable and unchangeable 
 for ever, and Who calls forth from us all of love which 
 addresses itself to a superior, all admiration and adoration. 
 It may be (with us, must be) distributed among many objects 
 and in various degrees, none of them much above us, for, in 
 
 •^The distinction commonly made between religion and 'morals,' as that the 
 one can really exist among men without the other, or that they can be rationally 
 treated of without constant reference to one another, I consider, at least as 
 regards true religion, so artificial, false, and misleading that I do not believe 
 that any supposed ' scientific ' necessity or prevailing fashion of thought and 
 argument should impose it at all. It may be harmless, and even useful for some 
 purposes, thus to denote and distinguish ' my duty towards God and my duty 
 towards my neighbour,' but not in the manner referred to, in history or 
 argument. Both these duties alike have their force in the Will and Word of 
 God, and in our nature according to that Will. As the one is ' first and great,' 
 we may conceive of religion without * morals ; ' but as the other is only ' second,' 
 we cannot rightly conceive of ' morals ' without religion. The utter neglecter 
 of religion, or even the atheist, in a Christian country, who is of exemplary 
 * morals,' is what he is by force of the beliefs, usages, traditions, and general 
 opinion around him, in which he has lived from childhood, and which are a part 
 of his own life, however unconsciously. All careful study as to how ' character ' 
 is formed shows this. No ' fact ' to the contrary can be produced until there be 
 some instance shown where a human soul has grown to maturity, just, truthful, 
 chaste, unselfish, patient, and gracious, without any thought whatever of Divine 
 existence or authority in the minds of any who came in contact with the growing 
 character. 
 
 By the method which I refuse, we only, for a delusive * philosophic ' purpose, 
 give countenance to the miserable practical atheism (far more mischievous in 
 effect as in amount than the ' theoretical '), which is the great misfortune of us 
 all alike. I propose in this inquiry to follow the actual truth without any 
 reference to such fashions, however prevailing or by what great names upheld. 
 I am quite sure that the history thus pursued with simplicity will be itself the 
 most accurate test as to which of these positions is the true one. 
 
 ^ Lev. xix. 18. 
 
 H
 
 114 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 the nature of the case, they are ' near ' us — our fellow-creatures, 
 and of the same order. On the contrary, some or all of 
 them may rather look up to us. Whether or in what degree 
 any are thus near to us does not in the main depend upon 
 our will, but upon various ' circumstances,' as we say — really 
 upon the Will of God. Yet it rests in no small degree upon 
 our own judgment and responsibility to decide as to this 
 nearness. They may be very near for a while, and so the 
 constant occasions of love, and then utterly disappear out of 
 our life. But He is always near and in sight (though always 
 unseen). 
 
 These unlikcnesscs are so great that we need to give the 
 more attention to that in which this Commandment ^ is like 
 unto ' the other, and which is surely something very great. 
 We must also keep in mind that we have the Commandment 
 as it comes to mankind in the midst of general selfishness, 
 and after a hundred generations of such habit and tradition, 
 and not as it did to the innocent and loving souls of the first 
 creation. Yet as undoubtedly it was God's Will for them, 
 so in effect it was His Commandment, however made known; 
 and thus most joyfully and happily obeyed, as an action of 
 that love — a part of the primitive religion. Thus it is ' like 
 unto' the other, as a constant principle of life applying at 
 all times to the details of actual duty. Like that it is at 
 hand every moment, and in every doubt or puzzle as to how 
 to obey other commandments of God, ' to make our way 
 plain before us.' 
 
 It is ' like unto it,' in being of the very ' nature ' of man- 
 kind, according to the purpose of God in making them ' in 
 His Own image ;' and as it should be their purpose and 
 choice to live, each of them loving the others, as He ' is 
 loving unto every man.' Thus as God, making man what He 
 did, in so doing says to him, ' Love Me with all thy heart, ' 
 so also making him what He did, He also says to him, 
 * Love every one of thy kind in degree as he is near to thee 
 by My Will in providence and commandments, as thyself.' 
 It is thus ' like ' the other in being a very spiritual and heart- 
 searching test of our obedience, as against self-deception as 
 well as hypocrisies toward other men. 
 
 The occasion upon which Our Lord used it toward the Jews
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 115 
 
 of His time was their affecting to be devoutly obedient to all 
 the Commandments of God (and thus loving Him) by doing 
 various outward acts (not only of mere ceremony or the 
 smaller matters of detail in the law of Moses, but the 
 greater duties — even the Ten Commandments) in the most 
 bare performance of the letter — really a bare-faced pretence 
 of that and a mere play upon the words. In this they are a 
 striking representation of a like tendency of all men in all 
 ages. And since their hypocrisy lay more in the direction of 
 religious pretence (as that of modern times does in the way 
 of 'moral' pretence), so that they would be altogether 
 pleased and satisfied with themselves because punctilious in 
 many little things of religious ceremony. He shows them 
 how utterly unreal this is, by their neglect of one of the chief 
 of God's Commandments — a matter for which almost every 
 moment of life afforded its opportunities of duty or dis- 
 obedience, — thus the most frequent and various occasions to 
 act from the love of God. The way in which this teaching 
 was at once followed by the man's question, * And who is 
 my neighbour?' and the answer he received in the parable 
 of the Good Samaritan, show this most plainly. It dis- 
 closed to all those men the fatal j^^-deceit of such false 
 religion. For our age, and in Christendom, the more common 
 instance is still ' like unto ' that. It is to do some outward 
 acts of ' good morals ' or kindness to other men, and then 
 fancy that this is all the love which is the fulfilling of the 
 'law' of God, the 'charity'^ {w^ainq, the very same 'love' 
 which is in the Lord's ' first and great commandment ' as 
 well as in the ' second ') surviving prophecies and knowledge, 
 and even greater than faith and hope, yet utterly omitting 
 and despising the first of such duties, and thus really missing 
 
 ^ One of the few instances in which the Authorised Version does not give the 
 true meaning, partly from our language inheriting the mistake already beginning 
 in the early centuries in the Latin mind and translation of d7a7ri7 by c{h)aritas, to 
 avoid the sensual associations of Pagans with amor ; and carried still further away 
 from the simple idea of ' love ' in the artificial theology of the Middle Ages — 
 perhaps in even greater part from the entire transformation of meaning since, in 
 the modern English use of the word ' charity.' (Perhaps the Latin false notion 
 was suggested in great part by the morbid aversion to marriage and conjugal love, 
 as being repugnant to the purest love of God, which began so early and grew to 
 such vast proportions.)
 
 ii6 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 the genuine love of our neighbours, which is a part of loving 
 obedience to the chief Object of human love. Thus there 
 are many men who abhor ingratitude, and despise any one 
 to whom they impute it (especially if he be one who does fiot 
 utterly neglect religion), while they themselves are guilty 
 of most icy and stony ingratitude toward the tender and 
 gracious Giver of all they have. They fancy themselves 
 patterns of justice and truth, while they are every moment 
 defrauding the noblest Person of what they owe Him in 
 some return for His gifts of the very things which they are 
 most pleased with themselves for possessing — that is, in fact, 
 of all they have and are. 
 
 As to the object of love in this second great Command- 
 ment, we must confess that in no other of the modern lan- 
 guages is the original of God's Word less exactly rendered 
 than in our English 'neighbour.' That has the one precise 
 and positive force of local nearness of place, without any sug- 
 gestion of sentiment or even of likeness in kind. But the 
 Greek TrXija-tov, and Hebrew y^, and its Latin, French, 
 and other such equivalents does mean far more than that.^ 
 They are predominantly personal rather than local, and 
 readily embrace all that is plainly meant in the Command- 
 ment. We need therefore the more carefully to consider the 
 sense as separated from the natural verbal suggestion in our 
 own language. 
 
 Read it, then, thus : ' Thou shalt love thy fiear one as thy- 
 self Then the question, ' Who is my near one .-* ' seems more 
 natural. And so too, according to the great parable story 
 which shows us how we are to apply this law to all occasions 
 of duty, this near one might be an utter stranger and in a 
 strange place (in no actual sense my actual 'neighbour'). 
 But God brings us near to one another this once, and thus 
 arises an opportunity and duty of my doing him good with a 
 warm and tender heart and hands prompt to do and to give. 
 As each of my fellow-men may be thus near me at some time, 
 or in some way or another, I am to have a loving interest in 
 each one of them as the occasion arises. As I love my God 
 with all my heart, I am to be on the look-out for these occa- 
 sions of His dear service, and search for them eagerly, lest 
 
 * Vta'fius = voisi'n — ' neighbour, ' and not proximus =proc/iaht.
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 117 
 
 my selfishness make me dull of perception and sluggish in 
 such action ; that this love may by the * golden rule ' keep 
 me just and kind to all with whom I have to do, careful not 
 to make them unhappy by any passion or heedlessness of 
 mine (or of others, when I can prevent or remedy that), but 
 to add to their enjoyment. And as God's Will brings the 
 bleeding stranger to me only now and then, but puts some 
 in constant and closest nearness and special dependence upon 
 me, in that greater degree am I to love them in the natural 
 relations or closer personal affections of life. 
 
 And there is also likeness and unlikeness in the degrees of 
 love commanded : unlikeness, because the object of love in 
 the second is far below that in the first. We have already 
 seen what exaltation, energy, and, as it were, exclusiveness 
 there is in saying, 'with all thy heart,' etc., which are not at 
 all in 'as thyself The one will not admit of any com- 
 parison or approach ; such comparison is the very rule of the 
 other. The one summons me to forget myself utterly in 
 another Person ; the other reminds me to think how I regard 
 and treat myself, so that I may do its duty. 
 
 An unthinking mind — indeed any of us who are used to 
 setting our own will and pleasure above everything else — will 
 not see this. To such an one 'as thyself will seem to be an 
 extravagant and impossible rule, than which nothing could 
 make a greater demand upon our affection. It is indeed a 
 noble and simple measure for our kindly affection toward 
 fellow-creatures ; it has upon it the stamp of a truth far above 
 human invention. Nevertheless, as a measure of love, it is 
 far below the other. 
 
 In this respect then, also, this second 'is like unto' the 
 other, in being a heart-searching principle, leaving no excuse 
 or device of selfishness to obscure it, in meeting every occa- 
 sion that arises, and showing us just what to do to another, 
 by bidding us consider what we would have him do to us in 
 a like case. It is like it in this greatness of including in one 
 sure and plain rule all the many kinds and occasions of duty 
 to fellow-men. This also fairly implies the sanction of God 
 to the love of ourselves, as being also a part of His Will in 
 our nature. Some would smile or even scoff at this as a 
 needless and affected thought. Not so. Our ' instincts ' or
 
 ii8 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 supposed necessities in this or like things are suggestions of 
 truth only as they suggest the blessed Will of God as He 
 made us. If we find no response or correspondence to any 
 such thing in His Word, we shall be wise to doubt whether 
 our supposed ' reason ' about it was not one of the many 
 intellectual illusions which beset us in all such thought when 
 selfishness may at all inter\'ene. And so far from this being 
 to degrade our intelligence, never is man so exalted as in the 
 ardent search to find anywhere the most dear Will of Him 
 to love Whom is in itself incomparable honour. 
 
 If this great saying of Our Lord ended here, it would, as it 
 seems to me, be fairly conclusive as describing the nature and 
 purpose of mankind and the first Word of God as it came to 
 them, to teach them the primitive and original religion. But 
 He added also : ' On these two commandments hang all the 
 Law and the Prophets.' There is nothing else like this as 
 to emphasis and exclusiveness in all His sayings, or in all 
 the Holy Scriptures beside. If it is elsewhere declared in 
 them of some one (other) duty or truth, that on it ' hangs,' 
 i.e. is dependent, or subject to, or in substance contained in 
 (for all these are included in the original word used), what- 
 ever had as yet been written for men by holy prophets under 
 inspiration of God, it has escaped my most careful search. 
 Of course I except from this assertion what is self-evidently 
 in substance the same declaration. But I re-affirm — with a 
 challenge to any one to show it erroneous, whereupon I will 
 promptly confess my mistake — that not only in terms, but in 
 substance, there is nothing like this elsewhere in Holy Writ, 
 which will allow us to call in question that here the Lord 
 Himself sets these two Commandments above all else in our 
 religious knowledge and duty, and as including all else. Let 
 them therefore be allowed that place in the theory and 
 practice and history of our religion. 
 
 It is very true that in * the Sermon on the Mount,' at the 
 beginning of His teaching (some two years before this, for it 
 is generally agreed that this discourse in presence of the 
 Pharisees, in which the two great Commandments occur, 
 was spoken at Jerusalem in the very last days of His life), 
 and in speaking only of conduct toward our fellow-men, He 
 gave the same test and guide as to goodness in such things,
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 119 
 
 in the golden rule : ' Whatsoever ye would that men should 
 do to you, do ye even so to them,' and adding, * for this is 
 the Law and the Prophets' (St. Matt. vii. 12). He thus al- 
 ready anticipated in part what He afterwards so much more 
 fully and solemnly declared of all our life. And even then 
 He distinctly set this above all else in the Old Scriptures 
 as to such duties, in this including all that part of the Ten 
 Commandments which it includes. But just before His 
 Passion and Death, in His last teaching as to all the Word of 
 God to man, when He describes all religion. He first most 
 emphatically distinguishes our duty toward God as ' first 
 and great,' and adds, as to the superiority of the two over 
 what else was * written,' the very significant word ' all' 
 
 Thus His Apostles afterward ' went forth and proclaimed ' 
 His Word. St. Paul accordingly says, with his accustomed 
 force and energy (Rom. xiii. 8-10), ' For he that loveth 
 another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not 
 commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, 
 Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet ; 
 and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly com- 
 prehended ' in this saying, Thou shalt love thy neighbour 
 as thyself Love worketh no ill to his neighbour : therefore 
 love is the fulfilling ^ of the law.' (See also Gal. v. 14; Col. 
 iii. 14, as well as St. James ii. 8, with his citing it as ' the 
 King's (" royal ") law.' 
 
 In St. Paul's justly celebrated description of love (' charity') 
 all that Our Lord declared is of course intended, certainly 
 not excluding what He called ' the first and great' A like 
 union of the two is to be found in the very simple and 
 beautiful and yet very profound words of St. John (i Epistle 
 passim), as to the love of God and of one another. It is 
 also to be noted that the most plain and strong promises 
 of eternal heavenly joy are distinctly for ' those who love 
 God' (i Cor. ii. 9 ; St. James i. 12). 
 
 That we can even now so much aspire to and advance 
 toward this all-mastering love of God, with the sure hope of 
 
 1 dvaKe<f>a\aLovTai, rather, ' summed up.' 
 
 2 Tr\Tjpu3/j.a, rather, 'completeness,' or 'perfection.' My impression is that 
 we generally assume ' fulfil ' as to law, to mean merely perform, thus missing 
 the power and depth of TrXrjpdw as illustrated in the Gnostic errors about 
 Pleroma, etc.
 
 I20 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 completely achieving it in that other life, is proof how 
 entirely natural it was for innocent man. So also is the fact 
 that, together with the other ' like unto it,' it is the one 
 master-key to every actual duty, great or small — a solvent 
 of every practical puzzle of this, ' Ought I to do this or that ? ' 
 But I admit that no one can really believe this who thinks 
 that, in the nature of things, love cannot be really commanded. 
 And that is a very common sentiment, generally accepted 
 as a self-evident truth. But how can we be so sure of that? I 
 suppose the prevailing idea comes, for one thing, from our all 
 being aware that none of us can absolutely know that secret 
 sentiment of another in which love consists. So all that one 
 of us can exact of another by authority is some words or 
 outward acts, to which the heart may not at all correspond. 
 Such constraint may even react to cause dislike, and the 
 .sense of oppression may create loathing instead of love. 
 With this goes also the thoughts of ' rights * and individual 
 ' freedom,' which is supposed to be invaded by such a 
 ' command.' In what does any true freedom consist ? and 
 what are our ' rights ' ? Each of us has indeed a ' sense 
 of right,' which, whether we suppose it a mere instinct, 
 like the timidity of a sheep, or the general result of what 
 we have been told or thought out for ourselves as to 
 justice between men, is very strong. Our real 'rights' must 
 be according to our nature ; and, according to that nature, 
 others have no more right to invade our * rights ' than we 
 theirs. 
 
 But how came this to be our nature and theirs? Neither 
 we nor they made it such. Or .shall we think that no one 
 made it — that it existed by succession eternally and of 
 itself, as God does; 'just so,' as some unintelligent persons 
 will obstinately insist upon something for which they can 
 give no reason ."* To say this in effect is precisely the same 
 as to say it in so many words, i.e. it is the irrational 
 and monstrous obstinacy of atheism. 
 
 No, certainly ; our ' nature ' is what our Maker chose to 
 make us. Men have rights and duties toward one another 
 simply as it was the Will of God to create them so. But 
 these rights have no possible existence toward Him, and as 
 against His Will. There is then really nothing of that kind
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 121 
 
 whatever to stand between us and any expression of God's 
 Will by a commandment. 
 
 It may be possible for us (though I doubt it) rationally to 
 conceive that He made the creature man with some personal 
 
 * rights ' which He Himself must not invade. Yet that would 
 be at the best a mere conjecture, some men's inference from 
 what they suppose to be the nature of our free-will, but 
 more likely one of the sophisms of human pride. There is 
 nothing like it in the Book of God. Many of its plain 
 sayings, and all of its spirit, are quite against the notion, as 
 it seems to me (the great book of Job throughout). For, 
 utterly unlike what we may insist against the tyranny of 
 
 * personal government ' by fellow-men, to which we must 
 oppose personal rights, our far better and perfect safety is in 
 the justice and grace of His righteous love. 
 
 Yet even then it could not be one of those ' rights,' that 
 a man need love God only as he ' spontaneously ' chose to, 
 and might refuse it if commanded. In this case the 
 opposition is supposed against that very commandment of 
 God which expresses His whole will and purpose in creating 
 us at first or at all continuing us in existence. 
 
 Therefore no man has any such liberty not to love God, 
 which is invaded by a commandment to do so. He has 
 liberty in that sublime and awful sense of responsibility, that 
 he can perversely choose to do just what he was made not 
 to do, and may so ruin himself But that is no 'right' of 
 his. I suppose that no one will say that a man has a ' right ' 
 to take his own life because he has that physical power, or 
 that his ' liberty ' is infringed by a law which forbids that ? 
 nor that he is wronged by a Higher Power, in that, when he 
 desires to be almighty, he cannot have his way about that ? 
 If it be said of both these things that his ' nature ' is against 
 them, that is true in just the sense that God did not make 
 him to do this or to be that. But on the other hand, as we 
 have seen. He did make each man to love Him with all his 
 heart, and this not merely as one of many purposes of his 
 existence, but as the one only one. 
 
 How senseless and even how base it would be, then, to 
 revolt against this necessity, and to insist that our unchained 
 and indomitable souls shall not be forced to love this despot ;
 
 122 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 to say that if He would ask our love we might accord it, 
 but not if commanded ; our thoughts and affections are free, 
 and will resist and defy Him for ever. The meanest insolence 
 of an ungrateful little child was never so ridiculous and 
 detestable as such rejection of 'the first and great Com- 
 mandment ' upon the ground of liberty and right. 
 
 But this repugnance to the Commandment of love does 
 not lie after all so much in any reasonings of men thus to be 
 met by argument, as it does in a pervading feeling. Yet 
 general feeling among men about such things is no such 
 proof of our ' nature ' teaching us truth, as it is common to 
 assume. We shall soon see that this feeling may be altogether 
 a morbid after-growth of what was not in man as God first 
 made him. Much of such fictitious and unwholesome 
 sentiment promoted by some poets and romance-writers has 
 helped to obscure the judgment of mankind with the notion 
 that authority is the natural enemy of love ; that the latter 
 is always at least enhanced and beautified by revolt against 
 the other. Of the ' many inventions ' which men have ' sought 
 out' in all the generations after the first, this might, for its 
 ingenious malice and seductive mischief, have been first 
 suggested to them by those unhappy enemies of God and of 
 us, who, even before the fall of man, ' kept not tJieir first 
 estate.' 
 
 But in any case, and as suggested in whatever way, it is 
 promoted by the fact already alluded to, that the unloving 
 selfishness of men does often attempt to exact love from 
 another by force, as a gratification of pride and selfish desire, 
 whether sensual or intellectual. Yet that does not prove 
 that love may not be rightly commanded even as between us 
 fellow-creatures. (With the greatest inconsistency, those 
 who object most to that which is ' first and great ' as a 
 commandment will quite commend ' the other ' as a law — 
 the supreme and entire law for mankind. Yet all the 
 instances of objection to any commandment of love must be 
 drawn from that. And who made that law or gave that 
 commandment ? Or is the concealed fallacy in a repugnance 
 to being commanded by some one to love Jiivi ? — absurdly 
 supposing that there is any parallel between the self-will of 
 one of our fellow-creatures and such a command of the
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 123 
 
 Eternal Lord Who is love itself.) There is surely something 
 exaggerated and unwholesome in the growing spirit of indi- 
 vidual self-government — ' liberty,' it is called — in our time, 
 in secular matters and social relations. Is not this in great 
 part mere pride and self-assertion, which calls itself a noble 
 spirit of independence, and affects to prefer being miserable 
 without a superior to being happy in any state which requires 
 obedience ? 
 
 Yet, however excusable this may be (or even praiseworthy) 
 in some cases, as the reaction and recovery from a servile 
 spirit toward oppression by our fellow-men, it is only less 
 irrational than it is wicked as to God. Indeed, if we all 
 simply accept and obey these two Commandments, that will 
 put an end to all this arrogance and oppression, and every 
 sort of injustice between men. Such obedience is the only 
 thing that ever did in some measure control those evils, or 
 that ever will or can entirely remove them. 
 
 But only to hear that Voice say, ' This is the first and 
 great Commandment,' should decide us to reconsider our 
 opinion, however positive, that love cannot be rightly com- 
 manded. What voice is that ? — Of false sentiment ? of 
 inexact rhetoric? of the guesswork of ambitious theory? 
 of selfish or wanton injustice armed with power ? Certainly, 
 unless we mean to insist that we cannot be mistaken, even 
 when our opinion (call it 'conscience,' or 'moral sense,' or 
 'reason,' or ' sense of justice,' or 'verifying faculty,' or what 
 not) is exactly opposed to what God tells us — certainly, if 
 we may be possibly mistaken in this, it becomes us to pause 
 and reconsider that opinion. 
 
 Upon what is it founded ? Upon a comparison of what 
 one of us creatures has to do with the others, and often not 
 a wise understanding of that, because mixed more or less 
 with that unhappy pride and spirit of restless disobedience 
 which somewhat infects all our judgments as well as conduct. 
 As an illustration, what is plainer in the w^ay of positive 
 command than this: 'Husbands, love your wives'? Yet 
 what passes now in Christendom (extensively, if not generally) 
 for the most refined sentiment, assumes that in this relation 
 any great love exists only for a little while after marriage, as 
 the lingering warmth of an ardent feeling, which was natural
 
 124 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 between two young persons before marriage, this afterward 
 subsiding into a tepid kindness toward the house-keeper and 
 ' house-mother,' whose greatest possible success will be in 
 keeping the husband from not really loving some other 
 woman. (At least, any demonstration of more than this on 
 the part of either husband or wife is to be taken by others 
 for artifice, or, if really sincere, must hide itself with shame- 
 faced care from the derision of all quick-witted people.) It 
 supposes that to really command in this case would of course 
 react to turn indifference into dislike, and would almost 
 compel the unhappy man to take refuge in an unlawful 
 passion. Plainly the New Testament knows nothing of this. 
 It has this simple command, ' Husbands, love your wives ; ' 
 and, as any real, noble love which there was at first would 
 construe it, ' love them more and more, as time adds to all 
 the memories and associations most worthy of a man.' Our 
 common sense, if wc would really consult it, approves this. 
 For we know that we are no such noble creatures as have a 
 right to be affronted at commands of duty, excused from 
 doing what we ought to do, or less likely to do it because we 
 are by an unquestionable superior told to do it. 
 
 [In this I am not speaking of those miserable corruptors of 
 society, and the many who are in fact influenced by them, 
 who, in the guise of exalted sentiment, by poetry or romance, 
 disparage the sense of duty in personal love as * cold and 
 hard,' 'conventional,' and the like, whereas duty in love is 
 the only safeguard against universal selfishness, against the 
 most cold-hearted trifling, and the fiercest brutality and 
 rapacity. I am expostulating with those who, while they 
 recoil from this, yet suppose the merely ' spontaneous ' and 
 sentimental in love to be much above what finds its highest 
 excellence in God's Commandment Let them think again. 
 Is not all that is most beautiful and true in romance exalted 
 by love of the Author of all beauty ? will not any noble 
 affection be the safer from fitfulncss, fickleness, forgetfulness, 
 and inconstancy — will it not be the more sensitive, delicate, 
 and tender in sympathy and in demonstration — the more 
 strong, patient, and fearless in act, for being constantly and 
 consciously included in the obedient love of God ?] 
 
 In general, this written Word of God has no allowance
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 125 
 
 whatever for such a thought on the part of men. It is full 
 of the noblest spirit of dignity and courage in refusing to 
 cringe before the ' proud and haughty scorner,' or the terrors 
 of an oppressor, whether of a bad government or of the rich 
 or ' influential ' who may exercise such tyranny among what 
 we call a 'free people.' It has, in fact, raised men to more 
 greatness of soul in that way that all other writings extant. 
 But it does simply command us to love. Take another plain 
 instance of this among many such. Our Most Gracious 
 Lord and Saviour says distinctly, ' A new commandment I 
 give unto you, That ye (all Christians) love one another.' 
 This is a very striking instance to show that, so far from a 
 duty to love being one that should not be commanded, we 
 might reasonably wonder if it were not. Such as we are (all 
 of us, and not merely the weak and dull, whom we may 
 fancy to be so unlike us as to high thoughts), a command- 
 ment of God is the very form in which what is so necessary 
 all through our life will come in the way most for our good. 
 
 And will any mortal of us all, when He gives this Com- 
 mandment, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,' reply, 
 ' Great sir — for I cannot deny that in some respects you are 
 great — I cannot love you in obedience to a commandment. 
 Withdraw that, and you may secure my spontaneous affection. 
 Ask me, allure me, coax me by various motives. Attack 
 my gratitude. Or Thou, as Word of God, touch my pity by 
 an eloquent account of Thy sufferings here as " a Man of 
 sorrows." Who knows what sentimental emotion may then 
 begin, and, as our proverb says, pass into the love which is 
 akin to pity ? But I am too noble and high-spirited to be 
 driven into it, or commanded about it. That rouses my 
 resistance, and deprives you of the desired feeling on my 
 part.' 
 
 Yet this very preposterous attitude of a man before God 
 is what so many think, if they do not say, is to be admired. 
 And they think that, if to surrender this position is necessary 
 for his safety, it is an abject and dishonouring necessity. 
 
 ' But love is not a matter of mere choice : just as, if I am 
 very wretched, and you command me to be happy, I cannot 
 obey you ; or, if I have a cruel toothache, you can no more 
 expect to stop this by commanding me not to suffer than
 
 126 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 you can make water wine in the same way.' Nay, but that 
 suggests that there is One Who can, and it is of His com- 
 mandments that we are inquiring now. Yet in truth that 
 was not a real command to a person who had a will to 
 choose, and so really to obey. But however self-evident this 
 may have seemed to you, that love cannot be a matter of 
 obedience ; and however true may seem the comparison of 
 our not ceasing to suffer because commanded not to suffer, 
 there is certainly somewhere in that argument a great un- 
 truth. It is a fact that any good father or mother ought to, 
 and can, cultivate mutual love among their children by 
 commanding it, not merely by commending or recommend- 
 ing, by arguments and illustrations of its excellence and 
 usefulness, but, besides all this, and most effectually, by 
 insisting upon it with authority. That puts a check upon 
 the thoughtlessness and a curb upon the selfish passion, which 
 nothing else can supply, to form those habits of affection 
 which build up a great and beautiful character. This turns 
 the balance in favour of the naturally good, struggling 
 against the natively bad in that character, as it is 'setting' 
 its form in the fresh mould. Love is not a mere involuntary 
 sensation like pain. In its very nature it is bound up with 
 our freedom of choice ; will is of its very substance. And 
 as it is of man's true nature to love God, which he himself 
 has somehow come to thwart by a perverse will, so he now 
 has the opportunity by the penitent choice of his will obeying 
 this Commandment, to be saved from that destruction. 
 Indeed, if there be no question of will in love — of obedience 
 or disobedience to God's Commandments, — why have not 
 mankind always perfectly loved God ? how came they ever 
 to their most wretched degradation, into this woful plight of 
 not loving what is altogether lovable ? 
 
 ' Yet,' may some one say, * though it be no " right " which 
 we could demand, would it not be a more noble and 
 beautiful thing for us, and more to the honour of God, that 
 we should love without command ? ' This, too, is an illusion 
 of thought. Why should that be so ? Such love is either 
 according to God's Will or not ; yes or no. If no, it is bad ; 
 if yes, then God's Will made known to us as to our acts is 
 commandment. It is our honour and joy to know that Will ;
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 127 
 
 * For this is the love of God, that we keep His Command- 
 ments ; and His Commandments are not grievous.' 
 
 If we are not more than content — quite overjoyed — at 
 this all but incredible privilege and felicity of any one below 
 the Great God Himself, then we ca7i insist upon being 'as 
 gods ' ourselves. But this, so far from being a strong and 
 noble aspiration, is the wild weakness of delirium. It is, if 
 I understand him, what Goethe means to represent by Faust, 
 especially in the wonderful soliloquy at the beginning, a 
 thought which the poet secretly admires, as well as expects 
 his reader to, and which does speak for some of the most 
 admired intellectual ambition of our age. By all means let 
 us keep ourselves free from such a silly and wicked in- 
 fatuation. Though with this grotesque but horrible strabis- 
 mus, a man may fancy that he is looking and pressing upward, 
 while he is in fact pushing from one lowest deep of dishonour 
 to another lower yet — let us really look upward and listen to 
 the Voice from above. By a most sublime mystery of 
 graciousness God does now ask men to love Him. And 
 these are not innocent men, just made in the freshness and 
 perfection of His Own image, but degraded, perverse, and 
 guilty men, saturated with the sins of many successive 
 generations of ungodly life. Yet that does not cancel the 
 law of love written in the heart of man by the first Com- 
 mandment, and his nature answering to it, and by tradition 
 and memory ever since — by His later Word of the Old 
 Testament, and the * gracious words ' of the Gospel which 
 fell from those very lips. Such loving 'service is perfect 
 freedom,' but it is none the less our humble service. Its 
 glory, indeed, consists in humiliation before Another, instead 
 of gratified pride. But is not that the right position for us ? 
 In fact there are men who with loftiness of soul would 
 neither in thought nor act swerve before any human or 
 devilish tyranny or terror, who yet listen with loving joy for 
 any 'commandment of God.' Above all, they give most 
 prompt and happy obedience to this, of loving Him with all 
 the heart. 
 
 ' Then you would make man at his best but a loving 
 machine ? ' Yes, if you will have it so. And is not this 
 nobler than for him to be a ' free ' monster of self-will and
 
 128 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 ingratitude, for this is the necessary alternative ? They who 
 prefer that would ascribe to men (or rather to themselves 
 and perhaps a few others, for the mass of us are of no account 
 in their thought), an absolute will — which is impossible — and 
 really deny all Will to Him Who alone is absolute, making 
 of Him the mere name for a huge machine upon which such 
 men (and devils) may try their ambitious ingenuities. 
 
 The great saying of St. Paul, ' Ye are not your own, for ye 
 are bought with a price,' excludes this notion of our dignity 
 in independence of God. To be sure he is speaking then of 
 a redemption — buying us out of a bondage to Satan, in which 
 man was not at first as God made him. And so we belong 
 to Him Who paid that ransom. But this did not transfer us 
 from one wrongful servitude to another, but restored us to 
 our original freedom. And that freedom is in belonging to 
 God in the perfect, obedient love for which we were made. 
 To each of us this obligation is indeed heightened now by a 
 new gratitude to the Divine Redeemer. And so (in a won- 
 derful mystery) may that primitive and all-including love 
 toward God, full of thanksgivings for incessant blessings, 
 have now added to it an even greater gratitude. 
 
 We ought to be very careful of keeping close to all this 
 truth just as our Lord teaches it, and returning to it in sim- 
 plicity from any erroneous notions of ourselves or others ; 
 otherwise, what was first said with a pious intention, yet in 
 error, and afterwards repeated or imitated in a like spirit, 
 may be fixed by hallowed associations in our minds as that 
 truth. I have now in my mind two such instances in the 
 words of two of our most Christian poets. The one is where 
 Milton speaks of doing all as under ' the great Taskmaster's 
 eye,' and the other Wordsworth's ' Duty, stern daughter of 
 the voice of God.' The one was meant, and is often quoted, 
 to remind us that we are in the very sight of God our Lord 
 and Saviour in all our doings ; the other of the lofty and 
 noble authority of that voice which tells us what we ought 
 to do, even when other voices, of pleasure or desire, call else- 
 where. Yet each of these is aside from and far less useful or 
 beautiful than the simple Divine truth. 'Taskmaster' is 
 certainly a very infelicitous word, not only implying a stern 
 vigilance exercised upon the indolent eye-servant, but even
 
 THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION. 129 
 
 injustice and oppression toward him. For, to say nothing 
 else, the only use of the word in that which is our real pattern 
 of religious language is as to the ' cruel bondage ' in Egypt. 
 In this 'glorious liberty of the sons of God' under the true 
 law, we read,^ ' Wherefore thou art no more a slave,'^ but a 
 son ' — to love with all the heart, therefore to 'serve with all the 
 heart and both the hands.' Not an equal indeed, graciously 
 and generously exchanging affections with the other ; for 
 neither could we so love our equal, nor can He have an equal, 
 
 A like mistake is involved in speaking of ' Duty ' as the 
 ' stern daughter,' etc. Such an apostrophe to the word is, no 
 doubt unconsciously, a part of that Paganism which still 
 lingers in English poetry, and even common thought. Duty, 
 so far as it has a Christian — that is, any true — meaning, is what 
 we ought to do; and in its highest, simplest, and truest 
 thought is equivalent to the Will of God, as we should obey 
 that with love. It is at least a question whether we do not 
 deviate and descend from that truth for the sake of a sup- 
 posed verbal prettincss in calling it a ' daughter of the voice 
 of God ' ; ^ whether what in one way is taken for a mere figure 
 of speech, suitable or not, may not be rather in effect the 
 notion of z.x\o\\\(tx person — a daughter goddess. But any way, 
 the description of true duty as ' stern ' is far beside and below 
 the truth. It would promote the tendency, much too com- 
 mon, of separating the thought of duty, whether public and 
 patriotic, or of personal justice and truth, or of home affec- 
 tions, from personal service of God. The 'voice' of rebuke 
 to our weak perverseness may for our good sometimes well 
 need to be stern. But to apply this term to our true duty in 
 the love of God is most false and mischievous. That in its 
 nature, and as ever to be kept in our thoughts, is the very 
 opposite of stern — is sweet, tender, and gracious. 
 
 The arguments and illustrations so far used are, I admit, 
 and of necessity, almost entirely drawn from the present state 
 of mankind, very different in many ways from that of the first 
 
 1 Gal. iv. 7. 
 
 • Unquestionably the equivalent of SoDXos. The 'bond-servant ' of the Revision 
 seems a sort of sentimental evasion. 
 
 ^ Whatever that may possibly mean — hardly in allusion to the Rabbinical 
 Hebrew ' Bath-kol.' 
 
 I
 
 130 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 two, as well as we can understand that now. But I think 
 that the after-history will, as we follow it, show that, a for- 
 tiori, their application to this inquiry is just. (Other such 
 might be added to make it yet plainer that the only reason- 
 able opinion as to the primitive religion is, that it was em- 
 braced in these two commandments of love. For instance, 
 it may be asked whether the love of children for parents, or 
 of parents for children, is any the less real love, or any the less 
 admirable as such, because in its nature it cannot be 'spon- 
 taneous,' as separated from obligation, and a necessity of our 
 life and nature. Will any one reply that this is ' natural.' and 
 so does not come within the scope of freedom .-' And is an)- 
 love excellent that is }iot natural } And is not the relation of 
 each one of us to the great Creator at least as ' natural ' and 
 necessary an one.' This is just as true in the love of that 
 relation in which, though individual choice by the Divine 
 mystery of human free-will enters as a part, it is expressly 
 between 'those whom God has joined together.') 
 
 The notion really opposed to this, as already noticed, 
 threatens all the securities of social order. Even now it 
 revolts against conjugal and even filial obedience as a de- 
 grading oppression. But be that as it may, objections of this 
 kind to the first and great commandment of God can only 
 come from that wretched distemper of the soul — pride, — com- 
 mon enough to us all, and to be cured by wiser thoughts. It 
 is a disease that is only aggravated by an)' indulgence. Thus 
 those who are themselves too wise and devout to be misled 
 in this way are very unwi.se in trying to allure other men to 
 piety by any concessions of this truth to human pride. Even 
 so spiritual and profound a commentator as Olshausen is 
 carried off by the ' philosophic ' tendency into saying (/;/ loco 
 Matt. xxii. 37, etc.), ' Under the form of a comviand, which 
 appears contrary to its nature, since it is the freest activit}- 
 of life,' etc., and ' whilst love to God on the part of man ap- 
 pears negative, love to man appears positive,' etc. For my 
 own part, I cannot imagine anything less negative or more 
 positive than a true love of God. 
 
 There is nothing in the words of the original languages, 
 either the Greek or Hebrew, to take off from the direct force 
 of our English, or to suggest a vague figurative .sense instead
 
 THE PRIMiriVE RELIGION. 131 
 
 of the simple one of love. It is just the contrary. The terms 
 used by Our Lord and His prophets are the same as those 
 which denote the youthful and romantic, the ardent conjugal, 
 the mother's or child's love. It was long after this inspira- 
 tion ceased that, as already noted, the Latin distinctions (from 
 avior, amare) of cJiaritas and diligere began to appear, and 
 their modern imitations. 
 
 Then, as Christians, we must accept and believe Our Lord's 
 words. We must take them in all their breadth of applica- 
 tion, and from the very beginning, and without end. They 
 are as broad as all our life, without any qualifications or ex- 
 ceptions. They begin when man begins, and will cease only 
 if he ceases to be. 
 
 x^ll these considerations arc conclusive as to what the 
 nature of man is, as God made him for a certain purpose. 
 To reject this conclusion, we must deny that man was made 
 to love at all — which denial by all experience would be false, — 
 or that he can thus love God at all — which is equally evidently 
 untrue in fact, for some men do love Him. Yet allow any 
 such love as having possible existence, and it must be rightly 
 supreme over all other personal affections (for what can com- 
 pare with it either in the object or the obligation .-*) yet would 
 exclude no other good love, but include and even exalt all 
 such, as they could not be apart from it. 
 
 Yet all these reasonings are the least of its claims to our 
 belief The great and all-sufficient proof is this : ' Hear also 
 what Our Lord Jesus Christ saith : Thou shalt love the Lord 
 thj' God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
 thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And 
 the second is like unto it : Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
 and thyself On these two commandments hang all the law 
 the prophets.' Is there anything else like this in all the terms, 
 of supreme authority and of universal application .-•
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. 
 
 Some insist that it is so much more reasonable to think that 
 whatever man needed to know must have come by some slow 
 process of observation and thought, that wc must have most 
 explicit historical information of any other beginning of 
 knowledge, or even that any such proof is, in the nature of 
 things, impossible ; that whatever we take for this is an 
 illusion of thought or prejudice of weak bigotry. But is 
 there any such reasonable presumption .' Upon what is it 
 founded ? Is it suggested by anything in the lower life by 
 which we are surrounded — though, if so, that would be far 
 from conclusive — or by any analogy in our own physical life .' 
 Is it so from the fact that the personal life of each of us 
 begins in helpless ignorance, and proceeds to all knowledge 
 by slow steps of thinking and experience ? But no. The 
 more usual rule is quite to the contrary, and is to this effect — 
 that whatever is necessar)' to any such life, to its immediate 
 purpose, is supplied to it at once, as the instincts of move- 
 ment and feeding to the new-hatched chick, and of suckling 
 to the infant mammal. That he should love God being what 
 man was made for — all other things being only incident to 
 that, — whatever was essential to that would be at once sup- 
 plied. That the actual human infant is not so supplied with 
 this knowledge is no objection to this, for his infant state is 
 not of the essentials of human nature : witness these first two 
 of our kind. It is of the conditions under which other genera- 
 tions were to follow ; (the infant is not yet completely in that 
 nature, but in transition to it.) In fact, he is analogously so 
 supplied by the religion of the former generation communi- 
 cated to him, by degrees, as his mind and spirit develop for it 
 So if it were at all a matter of present speculation as to how
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. 133 
 
 this knowledge of religion came first to men, it would be a 
 wiser hypothesis that it was supplied to them at once by 
 Divine teaching, as it has since passed to each following 
 generation by means of human teaching. 
 
 Without now pursuing this view further, though every 
 successive step would make it more certain, we may assume 
 that the wonderful creature man was at once informed by his 
 Creator about himself and his own nature, so far as such 
 knowledge was necessary to the purpose of his existence. 
 The unreasonableness of the other assumption will appear, 
 for one thing, in that it would virtually require of the first 
 pair precisely the same beginning of life as to each of us ; 
 whereas, by the very fact of their being first, there could be 
 no such beginning for them. Or if we release it from that 
 absurdity, and allow it to assume their life as beginning like 
 the new-born child's, we arc met by a like absurdity, that 
 there was for them no parental nourishment and care for the 
 years that must in that case intervene for the passage from 
 infancy to self-maintenance. Equally absurd, if not really 
 more evidently so, is the assumption, utterly gratuitous as to 
 history or reason, that the full-grown man and woman must 
 begin with the infant's, or rather the brute's, ignorance of the 
 very things without knowing which there can be no full 
 human life. If we could with any reason concede this as a 
 fact, we should be no nearer connecting this with the actual 
 human life around us.^ If such huge infants, looking at one 
 another without any more thought of the Creator and of what 
 they had to do with Him than the brutes around them, were 
 ever to get this knowledge by their own thoughts, tvhcn 
 would they ever do so ? or how ? As a matter of fair infer- 
 ence from what we do know, I should say, Never. I cannot 
 see the first step possible in that direction, or any progress. 
 In fact, those who suppose the thoughts of religion to be the 
 achievement of men's notice of Nature around and within 
 them, when they undertake at all to describe the process, 
 make it one of very remote and feeble beginnings and slow 
 
 ' See Leland's View of Deistical Writers, etc.. Let. xxx., including an admis- 
 sion by Lord Bolingbroke, that "supposing the world to have had a beginning in 
 time, etc. ... we must of necessity assume that the first man and the first 
 woman . . . were produced in full strength and vigour of body and mind. "
 
 134 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 progress. Such as try to be more precise about it assume 
 many successive generations of such advance before any 
 actual religion appears, and many more yet for that which is 
 generally recognised as at all rational. In this we have a 
 partial admission of what is more probable yet, namely, that 
 if religion were not directly taught to the human being, the 
 conception of a superior spiritual person for him to worship 
 were not first put in his mind from without, he never would 
 bethink him of this at all. 
 
 For we are not left (and never were) to such a beginning 
 of religion, or to such conjectures and hypotheses about it. 
 We have direct information, — positive histor)-. It is not in- 
 deed human historj', in the nature of the case ; not even the 
 very best of that. But none the le.ss is it better histor)' yet. 
 An African savage would not be wise to doubt and reject all 
 accounts of his own people in former ages, because not 
 coming to him from one of his tribe, but from the great 
 scholars of civilisation. Much better for us, then, if we might 
 have it — far better than this comparison can represent, is a 
 history of man given him by God Himself And such we have. 
 
 According to that histor)-, man did then know (not merely 
 know of, but personally kiioiu) God. Our English tongue, 
 for a language usually so distingui.shed for its clearness of 
 common sense, is strangely deficient in having only this one- 
 word ' know ' to represent two quite distinct though kindred 
 thoughts : of knowledge of things in general, and of acquaint- 
 ance with persons. The German wissen and kcnncn, even 
 the French savoir and connaitfe, make this distinction clear!)- 
 enough. But we can escape from ambiguity of language 
 (such an almost certain cause of erroneous thought) only by 
 continually observing and stating the difference. In nothing 
 is this erroneous tendency greater and in effect more harmful 
 than as to knowing God. One way to correct the ambiguity, 
 when it is at all a question as to knowledge of persons, is to 
 say, for the one case, ' I know of him,' and for the other and 
 higher instance, simply ' I know him.' Thus, in order to love 
 a person — above all, for that essential of human life, to love 
 God, — it is far from enough to know <?/Him — to have infor- 
 mation of there being such a Person, without that personal 
 acquaintance and intercourse which, while in fact needful to
 
 LANGUAGE AXD ITS ORIGIN. 135 
 
 any accurate knowledge of any other person, is so above all 
 for one of us as to Him. Here is where all ' philosophy,' even 
 in the form of a Christian theology, utterly fails as knowledge 
 of God. There is a coldness of unreality about it, which 
 makes the ' Great Name ' scarcely more than one of the 
 pawns in a game of dialectics, or the x or y in an algebraic 
 formula. Such ' Theism ' as that is almost as * agnostic ' as 
 any professed Atheism, and in fact works even more mischief, 
 for it seems to satisfy the needs of religion without really 
 doing so. 
 
 The Divine history has nothing of the sort. It does not 
 represent men as coming at this abstract knowledge of the 
 Divine by mental processes, either swift or slow. It intro- 
 duces us to the first of our kind as beginning life with a 
 personal knowledge and intercourse of the Eternal Lord and 
 Maker. This is evidently the direct communication and 
 introduction of Himself to them, according to His purpose in 
 making them creatures to love Him. Thus we hav^e the 
 greatest religion at once. Of course this involves some idea 
 of what He really is ; that He is the One and Only Eternal ; 
 existing of Himself, without cause, without beginning, and 
 without end ; that He is the cause of all else by His Will, 
 which is the only absolute will that can be, for any other 
 would only begin and continue as He chose ; that He is all 
 power, beauty, life, and goodness — everything else being what 
 He chooses to make and keep in existence ; and also, that 
 of all this mundane creation, we of mankind stand in a 
 special relation to the Creator, in being made to know and 
 love Him with that free choice in which He has made us, as 
 it were, 'after His Own likeness.' 
 
 I know no phrase which better comprehends this primary 
 thought of true religion than that in which our worship 
 addresses Him, in its most solemn appeal to His mercy, 
 'Maker of all things, Judge of all men.' In this He is 
 beheld as the sole Creator of us, and all we know, and as 
 observing our use of free-will, and awarding our final destiny, 
 according as we ' love Him and keep His commandments.' 
 
 It is altogether reasonable to suppose that this primitive 
 knowledge included some apprehension of that truth about 
 God, which we now know as ' the Holy, Blessed, and Glorious
 
 136 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Trinity, three Persons and one God.' We have indeed a view 
 of this through the redemption of sinners, which was impos- 
 sible for them. But we have no right, for that reason, to be 
 sure that they had not another glimpse of this, such as they 
 who have never known (or known of) sin, may have. How 
 of the Holy Angels, to whom surely there are Divine mys- 
 teries, as we know in that wonderful saying, ' which things 
 the angels desire to look into ' .'' We should be exceedingly 
 irrational to allow the thought that there was no Trinity 
 until man fell, and needed ' a Saviour, the Man Christ Jesus.' 
 So when the glorious spirits of Heaven, and the innocent first 
 of our line, just made in His image, knew and loved God, 
 they knew Him as the One in Three and the Three in One. 
 And this is the only reasonable conjecture for the original of 
 this tradition of a Trinity in God, which survives in so many 
 false religions more distinctly even than in the one which 
 afterwards best represented the true. 
 
 Such a gleam of this truth there seems also to be (without 
 pressing this too far in positive argument) in the mysterious 
 words, ' Let Us make man,' etc. Made known even more 
 distinctly then, it seems to be, in that most venerable name 
 of the Great One as ' Elohim ' or ' the Mighties,' a common 
 plural noun in occasional use, yet by all tests as distinctly a 
 proper personal name as any in that language. Neither of 
 the other conjectures as to this mysterious solecism some- 
 times given seems so rational as this : either that which 
 supposes it to have begun as one of those affectations of 
 human speech by which persons in high places of power 
 speak and are addressed in the plural number (as now 
 in all the modern tongues every one is thus addressed), or the 
 other, which supposes this Name of God to have come by 
 transition from an earlier polytheism. Both of these are 
 unsatisfactory in themselves — for one thing, which is sufficient 
 by itself, as being contrary to historic fact. They reverse 
 the probable and actual order of these very things in time, 
 and make that which grew out of later inventions the cause 
 of what was simple and primitive. We shall see this fully in 
 its place in the subsequent history. 
 
 This also brings forward another fact as to the primitive 
 religion, viz., the power and use of language as a part of it.
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. 137 
 
 The history in Genesis implies this primitive use of speech 
 as plainly as if it said in so many words, ' And Adam and 
 his wife began to use language, and to understand it when 
 heard by them.' Precisely equivalent to this is its account 
 of God's speaking to them, and their speaking to Him and 
 to one another. I make no account of the theories of some, 
 that all this is an 'allegory' of something else. (See supra, 
 p. 51, etc.) The Book of God itself does not tell us that 
 it was such an allegory, hut gives it as the beginning of a 
 literal history, which continues afterward without any sug- 
 gestion of transition from what is imaginative to what is 
 actual. Besides this, no one can give an account of what the 
 allegory, if such, does mean, which can command general 
 assent, and would make it of any use for our instruction. 
 The history, received in its natural meaning, is not altogether 
 within our comprehension in all of its details. And this is just 
 what we should reasonably expect in such a history. Within 
 five or six pages of any ordinary book is a relation of the most 
 momentous things that happened in all the first 1600 years, 
 affecting ten thousand millions of mankind, and involving 
 the most profound and yet the most practical questions of 
 all human life. They are matters which have engaged and 
 yet altogether baffled the ingenuity of the most intelligent 
 and acute men ever since. Without doubt, this brief story 
 has incidents which mean far more than we are any of us 
 able now to see. If that is just what any one means by saying 
 that this relation of the events in Eden is allegorical, he may 
 be but uttering a truth which I also recognise. But his error 
 is in supposing that our want of comprehension of every detail 
 makes it all a puzzle set before us to baffle plain people, and 
 to call out the guesses of the more ingenious, and thus denying 
 the historic truth of the facts which are plainly given for our 
 knowing. Why not gratefully know that much, and also 
 acknowledge the simple truth that we cannot now understand 
 the rest, because God has not pleased to make us with such 
 power of comprehension. This gives us a noble and sweet 
 lesson of humility. It is the constant folly of philosophy 
 virtually to deny this, even when in the form of ' Christian 
 philosophy ' it allows it. These plain facts are revealed in 
 the history, and ' belong unto us and to our children ' ;
 
 138 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 the others are ' the hidden things,' and ' belong unto God.' 
 Perhaps they may be by us Christians searched out in a 
 humble and reverent use of the later and complete ' revela- 
 tion ' of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in harmony with, as the 
 extension of — certainly 710 1 to contradict — those other facts 
 which He has been graciously pleased to reveal ' from the 
 beginning.' 
 
 Suppose we tr>^ and imagine a religion without language. 
 I do not comprehend in this the really unimaginable and 
 (to use one of their own new-coined terms) * unthinkable ' use 
 of the term ' religion,' as some vague sentiment, without any 
 personal object (or subject either, for that matter), which is 
 more consistent with atheism than with devotion. That is 
 of necessity a mere unwholesome verbal fiction, used by some 
 to deceive and quiet their own or others' souls. But we are 
 to try and imagine an actual religion, without prayer or 
 praise ; without the social union of worshippers, or even the 
 expression of its adoration by the solitary soul, and without 
 any ' Word of God ' to the worshipper ; probably without any 
 possible thought of God, or of spirit, or of love. For I hold 
 it to be next to demonstrated, if not quite so, by those who 
 have best considered these things, that no thought above 
 that of the brute as to what he sees and feels is possible 
 without the use of words. (See the whole unanswerable 
 argument of the Nominalists, and really of Plato before 
 them, as well as Berkeley after them.) So if we try to 
 conceive of the first human pair as without language, we 
 inevitably degrade them for the time (even as to their con- 
 verse with one another) to a place far below the rudest 
 savage men now living. Of course, whoever looks to the 
 current notions of the ' evolutionists ' of our day for the 
 highest truth about our race sees no harm in that. But it 
 will as much of course be rejected by whosoever firmly 
 believes that God made Adam in His Own image and like- 
 ness, and that the Genesis gives a true account of the first 
 human life. 
 
 In like manner, this history of God speaking to them and 
 of their own use of language, alone agrees with their being 
 made to love and worship Him. It is safe to say further 
 that if the history did not relate this, profound thought might
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. 139 
 
 well be puzzled at that silence, and would find it a far greater 
 difficulty of reason in the primitive religion than any which 
 are objected to this. It is a strange illustration of the weak- 
 ness and narrowness of human intelligence, that we find it 
 so hard to believe that God made man at once with the 
 power of speech, and both uttering and understanding words 
 necessary for his life, as even more spiritual than intellectual. 
 What an absurd contradiction is this of our professed belief 
 that He is the Almighty Creator of all ! 
 
 Just what those primary communicated words were, of 
 course, we do not know. We may be sure that among them 
 were the Names of God and man, of Heaven and earth, as 
 also the verbs to be, to know, to love, to fear, to speak, to obey, 
 etc., and all else necessary to the uses of speech in his essen- 
 tial life and nature. Thus only, as all other analogies show, 
 with such 'a start in the business,' as it were, and small 'stock- 
 in-trade,' of words, could man begin those processes of thought 
 by which language is enlarged and varied. There is, in fact, 
 far less difficulty of connecting this in thought with the later 
 process of changing and combining words, or of inventing 
 new ones as the uses of speech extend, than of adjusting 
 it to the gratuitous and irreligious fiction that human life 
 began without any more speech than the horse. The order 
 of the facts about language in the Divine history suggests 
 the same. 
 
 It is after God has spoken to man that names are first 
 given to the animals. We might reason that, whatever the 
 beginnings of speech, man, surrounded by other livdng crea- 
 tures, would soon contrive names for them. But we have the 
 very remarkable fact related, that God ' brought them unto 
 Adam to see what he would call them ; and whatsoever Adam 
 called every living creature, that was the name thereof 
 Thus much, at least, these words inform us, that the first man 
 did fix names — words of appellation — upon each kind of 
 living creatures which he saw. As this, too, if it stood alone, 
 explicitly informs us of the possession of language, then so 
 also, I think, it fairly implies, besides the evident reason of 
 the thing as already stated, that the other names known 
 before were not in any way of man's devising, but given to 
 him by his Maker, as much as such names now come to a
 
 I40 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 child just beginning to talk; the names, e.g. of God and of the 
 man himself What corroborates this is that while the first 
 mention of Adam is in the saying of the Creator, ' Let Us 
 make,' etc., that of the woman is in the maji's saying, ' She 
 shall be called Ish-ah' ( = man-ah), implying that he was 
 already in possession of the word ish (man) as a common 
 noun synonym of his proper name, Adam. So also he after- 
 wards gives her a proper name Havah (Eve), corresponding 
 to his own. 
 
 This understanding of the Divine history as informing us 
 that language was given directly to man by God was ac- 
 cepted by the greatest Christian scholars until the present 
 generation. But it is now confidently and positively dis- 
 missed by those who represent accepted results of learning 
 and thought as one of the mistakes of the past. They are 
 so certain of this that they treat It as no longer a matter of 
 discussion. If I thought so upon a careful reading of what 
 they say, and weighing the reasons they give for it, I should 
 not, of course, state the matter as I have. But I shall now 
 give my reasons for not accepting theirs. 
 
 It does not follow, as a matter of course, that the one con- 
 clusion is true because it is the later, any more than that the 
 Koran is, for the same reason, the book of God rather than the 
 Gospel. Leibig's chemistry we fairly enough accept rather 
 than Black's, because vastly more facts and researches have 
 been added to what was known by the former, to set aside 
 many of his results, valuable as they were then. But is that 
 true as to the question of the origin of language between such 
 scholars and thinkers as Plato, Eusebius, Bochart, Gale, Locke, 
 Berkeley, Beattie, Magee, etc., on the one side, and the later 
 German philologists, with Professors Max Miiller and Whitney 
 on the other } I think not. The cJiief grounds of a decision 
 of this question may have been as well known, or better (at 
 least better considered) by the former. The conclusions of 
 the latter may be their rash deduction from supposed new 
 facts, while the old and greater grounds for the judgment are 
 overlooked. And such I am persuaded is the fact. 
 
 The data upon which to build a right judgment in this 
 matter are (i) history ; (2) analogous present facts (processes 
 of human thought and learning) ; and (3) an analytical study
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. 141 
 
 of actual languages, either ' dead ' and existing only in ancient 
 writings, or still written and spoken. The new opinion ex- 
 cludes the first of these, makes a partial use of the second, 
 and depends mainly upon the third. This last, indeed, as 
 almost all based upon the study of Sanscrit, is entirely 
 modern — the work of the last half-century. That is some 
 excuse for an exaggerated and all but exclusive devotion to 
 it on the part of its special students, and for all who ' love the 
 latest thing out ' in what is read and talked about, as well as 
 in fine clothes. But is it an excuse for us, as we faithfully 
 seek truth, if we neglect the other though older elements of 
 this inquiry .-' 
 
 On the contrary, the reasonable presumption is altogether 
 in favour of a different method, viz., first, to examine whether 
 we have any historical statements or implications which may 
 give us facts as to the origin of language } if so, what grounds 
 of respect and confidence we have in the authorship or other 
 incidents of this history } what is of the personal knowledge 
 of the author } what given as (or otherwise evidently) tradi- 
 tional, and its probable value as such } Then, secondly, to 
 adjust this as well as we may to such present analogies as we 
 can observe. And lastly (or, the others utterly failing us, 
 simply) to resort with caution to such suggestions as we can 
 draw from words and forms of speech in the most ancient 
 languages, and their subsequent changes. 
 
 Upon carefully examining anew the modern method in 
 question, as it is given by Prof Max Miiller and my country- 
 man. Prof Whitney, I find that they begin with the last and 
 weakest evidence, do not even pursue that carefully, inasmuch 
 as they pass by the study of the very language which is by 
 far the oldest according to any trustworthy history, and 
 begin with, not even the Sanscrit, but some conjectural and 
 hypothetical language older yet, they say. Around this they 
 arrange whatever they find to their purpose in certain other 
 languages. By this method, having formed a theory of the 
 beginning of all language, they proceed to argue out of 
 some partial analogies, as of the infant and growing intelli- 
 gence of each human soul, and the history of other arts 
 and faculties of men, to support this. But of history, in 
 this very matter of the beginning of language, they have
 
 142 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 not one word to say. The}- make no account and take no 
 notice of it whatever. 
 
 YroiWhxtney {Sttidy of Language, p. 251) calls his state- 
 ment of the ingenious conjectures of Sanscrit study ' our his- 
 torical analysis,' etc. Whether this is a rightful application 
 of the adjective will be examined later. But surely some- 
 thing of the kind, which is ' historical ' or semi- or quasi- 
 historical, is not actual history, a truthful narrative of events, 
 or even a statement as to such events, transmitted by any 
 oral tradition. 
 
 And yet by all fair self-evidence this should be the first 
 step of such research. Here are all mankind using, as a 
 matter of course, a power which separates them from the 
 brutes, and includes all their other best knowledge. Have 
 we any record or tradition, any suggestion or trace of how 
 or when it began ? 
 
 I suppose that they would meet this now by saying that 
 we have no such history (probably adding that, in the nature 
 of the case, we could not ; but I take no notice of that now, 
 as a being mere begging of the whole question) ; therefore 
 they waste no time upon the thought. But why are they so 
 sure of this .-* Those older thinkers whom I have mentioned 
 at least thought they had such historical ground. Why are 
 the}' not examined and refuted, if so much mistaken .'' Prof 
 Whitney seems to me entirel}- unacquainted with those 
 writings, and does not allude to them in any way, apparently 
 assuming that any such notion is a mere prejudice of mis- 
 taken religious bigotry, dimly floating in some honest but 
 very narrow minds. Prof Miiller does notice them, but 
 merely in the way of caricature and sarcasm, as if somebody 
 had long ago so utterly refuted them that they had been 
 ' exploded ' (not indeed buj'st np, as some people do evidently 
 fancy the phrase to mean, — that is, that obsolete errors are 
 like air-balloons or soap-bubbles, suddenly collapsing, or 
 even 'casemates' of prejudice which have been blown up by 
 the projectiles of ' modern thought '), but hissed off the stage 
 of common sense by common consent of all reading people. 
 I rather infer from this that he himself may never have read 
 them attentively. Be that as it may, we will now hear the 
 other side of the question.
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. 143 
 
 There is one part of the historical material which so far 
 exceeds the rest in value that it is as well to confine our- 
 selves to it ; that is the Holy Scripture. It is not indeed 
 alone. The venerable traditions of all the ancient nations 
 have something of the same which may be worth more for 
 wise conjecture than all our eager deductions from mere dis- 
 connected words. One thing is certain, that nothing really 
 historical gives us any account whatever, or most dim tra- 
 dition, of men's emerging from a wordless state into the 
 other. Whoever will fairly consider this, and the more he 
 does so, will see that it alone should be a strong check 
 upon the positiveness of such theorists. On the other hand, 
 Socrates (in the Cmtylus of Plato, p. 269), says, ' The first 
 names were framed by the gods ; . . . the imposition of names, 
 etc., belonged to a nature superior to man;' and the writer of 
 Ecclesiasticus (xvii. 5), ' The Lord created man, ... in the 
 sixth place, understanding . . . and in the seventh, speech' etc. 
 (see also Eusebius, Prep. Evang. 1. iii. chap, vi.) are fairly 
 the representatives of a traditionary thought, which is deserv- 
 ing of respect and study now, even if they did live more than 
 two thousand years nearer to the events than our Professors. 
 But all this is the very least of our historic material. The 
 Book of Genesis, in its first three chapters, is such real history, 
 very distinct, detailed, and definite. 
 
 The answer given to this, with more or less impatience, 
 would be that we must treat it scientifically, and not mingle 
 religious belief with the investigation of Nature. But I reply 
 that we must examine it truthfully ; and if scientific method 
 will not allow of that, so much the worse for the scientific 
 method ; but we who love truth \\\\\ persist in the truthful 
 method. This antithesis is, however, most displeasing to 
 such objectors. They say that ' science ' is equivalent to 
 truth ; that to be ' scientific ' implies being truth-loving and 
 truth -seeking. But if it 'rigorously excludes' what we 
 believ-e as Christians, from the truth as so used and sought, 
 then it says positively that what we know by Christian faith 
 is not true, and that it is a necessary condition of the pur- 
 suit of truth to allow this. But surely to one who does believe 
 these things upon the faith of God's Word, that is essentially 
 false and blasphemous, tending directly to the missing instead
 
 144 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 of the achieving of what is true. 'Would you then try a 
 question of astronomy by the words of Holy Scripture ? ' 
 That has nothing to do with the matter now before us, as to 
 whether it is the way to find the truth upon this question of 
 religious history, viz., when religion began, and what was its 
 first thought and action, by discarding the Divine history in 
 Genesis. I either believe that this is a true history, or I do 
 not. If I do, and as I do, it is utterly senseless in me to dis- 
 card it in an inquiry into the very matters of which it directly 
 treats. It would be just as senseless if some one else were to 
 insist upon my so doing because he did not accept this as 
 true history. May I not search for myself? Cannot a New- 
 tonian mathematician pursue his calculations because some 
 belated Ptolemaic does not believe what the former knows to 
 have been demonstrated long ago .-' At another time I may 
 try to reason him out of his perversity, but now I am in pur- 
 suit of truth for its sake and for my own sake. Thus our 
 present inquiry is as Christians, and not a polemic with those 
 who deny what we fully believe. 
 
 You may ask me if it is not yet entirely within the limits 
 of that Christian belief to doubt whether these words of the 
 Genesis as to the speech of the first man, of God to him, etc., 
 are so literally true as to bear upon the present question. I 
 answer, first, that if I were to allow that doubt, it would still 
 remain true that this non-historical sense (if you can tell me 
 what it is) must self-evidently have some bearing upon the 
 earliest exercise of speech by man, and therefore could not 
 be neglected by us in the present inquiry. A Christian who 
 takes the history in such a non-literal sense should be prompt 
 to ascertain that sense, and to apply it with the mighty force 
 it must have to the question before us. If he tells me that 
 he has no assured conception of it — certainly none definite 
 enough to help him now, — I can only say that I do not see 
 how he can rationally proceed with the inquiry from the in- 
 ferior data until he has acquired some such fair and clear 
 conception of the superior. And I suggest whether his want 
 of any definite sense of this part of Holy Scripture is not 
 quite an indication that a more simple and literal sense is the 
 true one. I remind him that such has been the undoubting 
 conclusion of a long line of devout and truth-loving men in
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. 145 
 
 all ages of the Church, and that there are such men still. 
 More definitely, I refer him to these words of Archbishop 
 Magee, a strong thinker, a most devout and diligent student 
 of the Book, a very learned scholar, and a most careful 
 reasoner : * That which Scripture so obviously and unequi- 
 vocally asserts, namely, the Divine institution of language ' 
 {On Atonement and Sacrifice^ \. 376). 
 
 The writers to whom I have alluded may say for them- 
 selves that I may pursue this my religious or Christian 
 method if I choose, but they are engaged in a purely 
 scientific study of language, without reference to religion ; 
 and one of the conditions of that is the rigorous exclusion 
 of religious dogma, etc. Now, with my Christian reader and 
 me, here is a question directly of religion — of primitive re- 
 ligion. In this, as such, for us the Word of God in Genesis 
 requires to be rigorously zwcluded. I have fairly shown 
 from this (and from reason) that the use of language, as given 
 to man directly by His Creator, is one of the essentials of 
 this primitive religion. But here comes the supposed ' purely 
 scientific ' result, that this is not true. I cannot believe both 
 of these results. I must decide that one or the other of them 
 is false, and which. I so decide of the ' scientific' Then, of 
 course, I judge its supposed process of proof to be erroneous, 
 and I do truth and all my fellow-men a service in showing 
 where it is at fault. This is very valuable, for one thing, as 
 illustrating a great fact, much overlooked now — that it is 
 often quite impossible to separate questions of ' science ' from 
 those of religion. 
 
 It seems always to pass for very wise to dismiss all the 
 controversies of this kind in which physics, geology, biology, 
 etc., are involved, by saying that 'all difficulty would be 
 avoided if neither science nor theology would invade the 
 sphere of the other,' and the like. Let this go for what it is 
 worth in those matters (and no more, for it deserves even 
 there as * rigorous ' a scrutiny as anything else). But what 
 must be its application where the matter of inquiry like this 
 lies in the very domain of Scripture authority (if there be any 
 such thing) ? Is it a question of ' Nature ' ? Yes ; of human 
 nature. And has our religion nothing to do with that ? Is it 
 of how man began his life ? And had his Creator nothing to 
 
 K
 
 146 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 do with that? Is it of 'the beginning' of his thought and 
 speech and rehgion ? And has the Genesis nothing to do 
 with that ? It is plain by this very instance that if, in order 
 to be scientific, we must exclude the use of God's Word 
 Written from this investigation, then ' science ' has no rights 
 in this investigation. I do believe that in another generation 
 it will seem astonishing that any sort of Christian scholars 
 ever neglected these most curious and interesting chapters 
 of history in any research of the kind. They would be 
 such even if we thought them no more divine than Hero- 
 dotus. But I suppose none of whom I speak would say 
 that. The Oxford Professor will not admit himself an 
 anti-Christian, and the Yale Professor would think himself 
 wronged not to be named a Christian. They mean to 
 follow the truth everywhere, and by all means. Why, then, 
 should they refuse this assistance, this really indispensable 
 part of the material at their hand, for use in some way, 
 because some one says that for him the Mosaic history is 
 ' unscientific ' } 
 
 Let me suggest what is the path which has perhaps con- 
 ducted to this false position, and then they and their 
 numerous readers who have followed them in it may see the 
 deviation and retrace their way. Having hastily and con- 
 fidently (and so inadvertently) neglected the historical re- 
 search at first, and then upon the very insufficient ground of 
 verbal resemblances, etc., formed a theory of the human in- 
 vention of language, when they are in any way reminded 
 of an older and different belief drawn from the historical 
 investigation, they assume that their work has itself de- 
 monstrated that the other cannot be true. So that, if they 
 decline to utterly discredit the history in the Genesis, they 
 are sure that its literal and obvious meaning is not the 
 true one. One thing is plain, that Prof Whitney did not 
 begin his inquiry as to the origin of language with any 
 sort of study of this Divine history. Nor even when he 
 has determined his own theory (demonstrated a truth, he 
 would say), does he then compare it with that history. He 
 gives a mere glance at the belief which so many great men 
 have drawn from that, only to say coldly (and yet rather 
 impatiently) that 'language is a Divine gift only in the same
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. 147 
 
 sense in which man's nature is a Divine creation ; it is human 
 in that it is brought about through that nature by human 
 instrumentality.' ^ 
 
 He says that ' our historical analysis brings us to the 
 recognition of elements, which we must regard as, if not the 
 first actual utterances of men, at least the germs out of 
 which their later speech has been developed.' Now I have 
 followed attentively what he calls this 'historical analysis.' 
 In this I have read a great deal of ingenious and interesting 
 talk about certain words in our language and their probable 
 connection with older languages. This seemed fairly to 
 imply a certain progression and enlargement of those 
 languages as there were new conditions of social life and 
 accumulations of knowledge. I found also some conjectures 
 as to how men, if they had had no words to begin with, 
 might have gone on for a long succession of generations 
 advancing toward that use. But I have not at all been 
 brought by this to accept these conjectures as true in fact, 
 much less to see how they could be true, and a certain history 
 of how the first of our race were talking with God or were 
 having any sort of religion could also be true. Nor can I 
 see any allegorical sense of that history which would suggest 
 his theory, or in any way agree with it. Therefore, as I do 
 believe the history, I do not believe his theory. 
 
 This notion of men slowly inventing language is indeed 
 not a new one. It has been considered and argued for ages 
 by the most acute of men. But it is also a fact worth con- 
 sidering that in general they took sides either way, as they 
 were religious or irreligious in opinion. Thus we have 
 Socrates on one side, and Lucretius the Epicurean atheist on 
 the other, and in the last generation Dr. Johnson on the one, 
 and Cond iliac the French ' freethinker ' on the other. And 
 in the great struggle of strong minds of the past over this 
 question, the critical point was precisely as to how a being 
 like man, with no instruction as to speech, would ever make 
 the first step in that direction. They indeed who thought 
 most deeply saw most plainly that in this emphatically 
 
 1 Rather an obscure and clumsy sentence. In what sense, pray, was the first 
 * man's nature a Divine creation,' so that ' He l^rought it about by human instru- 
 mentality ' ?
 
 148 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 ' Cest le premier pas qui coUte ' (It is the first step that costs). 
 That once passed, the rest was comparatively easy of ex- 
 planation. For example, once grant a highly intelligent, social, 
 and thoughtful being, such a being might struggle with all 
 ingenuity to contrive and then to improve some method of 
 expression and communication with other such beings. But 
 how can we conceive of a man as intelligent, and social, and 
 thoughtful, if he has no language and never had ? Or how 
 would he continue such for a year, or a lifetime, to say 
 nothing of the many generations supposed before any real 
 language is evolved .'' The substance of the best thought 
 about this is well expressed by the great Dr. Johnson — that 
 remarkable combination of reverent faith and profound 
 common-sense — as to man's power of speech, * which I think 
 he would no more find out without inspiration than cows or 
 hogs would think of such a faculty.' Can Prof Whitney 
 have ever given any thought to this aspect of the question, 
 which induced even Hobbes to say, though well acquainted 
 with the other notion, that ' the first author of speech was 
 God Himself, that instructed Adam how to name such 
 creatures as He presented to his sight ' .-' {Leviathan, chap. iv. 
 p. 12.) 
 
 Thus Prof Whitney assumes that the passage of the 
 speechless man, to where the first ' scanty roots ' of his Indo- 
 Germanic are found — the other side of that vast chasm, — is 
 the easiest thing in the world. He even gives us as it were 
 a mathematical demonstration, thus : ' Nineteen-twentieths 
 of the speech we speak is demonstrably our own work ; 
 why should the remaining twentieth be thought otherwise ? ' 
 {Study, etc., 398.) This would be something as if a solitary 
 castaway on some little island in the South Seas, being 
 found by a chance vessel with a crop of twenty bushels of 
 maize, which he had secured during the year since he alone 
 survived shipwreck there, and the question being asked 
 where his seed-corn came from, it should be replied that, as 
 nineteen-twentieths of it was demonstrably his own work, 
 why should the remaining twentieth be thought otherwise. 
 
 Another great gap in this argument is its necessary 
 assumption that man has been going on in a constant im- 
 provement from his beginning, so that if we trace him back
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN 149 
 
 a certain distance, e.g. by the changes of his language (even 
 granting this to be a certain gauge of his condition for that 
 period, and that we make no mistakes in our process), and 
 the process comes to an end short of the actual beginning of 
 man, we are sure that if we could continue it we should find 
 his thought and language growing less and less until we 
 came to zero at that very point of beginning. Whereas 
 there is an alternative which must be taken into account, 
 and removed out of the way by reason or proof, or it will 
 make the conclusion in question doubtful, or even utterly 
 overthrow it. This is the belief, as held for ages, and still, by 
 many of the most intelligent of men, that man is a being 
 who in that very period back of the * historical analysis ' of 
 words in question, was degraded from his 'first estate,' 
 intellectually as well as morally. This, I say, must be 
 either allowed and taken into account in the conjectural 
 inferences as to his first language, or disproved and dis- 
 allowed. Neither of these has Prof Whitney or any of his 
 side even attempted to do. 
 
 But far the most serious thing in regard to this is that 
 this early degradation of man is not merely one of the 
 possibilities of the past, which must be disposed of to leave 
 the ground clear for a true conclusion : it is a positive 
 truth, of which God Himself has informed us, and to which 
 all true History responds. To say that this means only 
 moral degradation does not take it out of the question before 
 us. For this in itself must have an immediate effect upon a 
 large class of zvords. But still more, it is not only rational 
 to suppose that a moral (or rather spiritual) degradation 
 would affect badly all man's intellectual state, and his use of 
 speech, but the highest source of knowledge we can possibly 
 have informs us plainly that it did so in fact, as, e.g. Rom. 
 i. 21, 22, ' They became perverse in their reasonings, and their 
 foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be 
 wise, they became fools,' etc. To trace the present speech of 
 men some distance back, and then, taking no note of this 
 earlier degradation, to infer from that alone their primitive 
 language, is altogether misleading. This brings us naturally to 
 examine what use Prof Whitney makes of present analogies. 
 One such of considerable value, if rightly used, is that of the
 
 I50 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 acquirement of speech now by the child. He says (p. 442) : 
 ' Learning to speak is the first step in each child's education. 
 ... So it was also with the human race.' The comparison 
 of ' the human race ' and its ' education ' to the little child's 
 is a favourite one with some writers. But it does not help 
 us to find actual truth, unless some proof is given that the 
 processes are like. As a mere figure of speech or piece of 
 
 * fine writing,' it is more likely to divert us from our object 
 in matters like this. If of use now, it must be as to vidividual 
 man at the beginning of language. I have already shown 
 (p. 133, etc.) how absurd is the assumption, so common now, 
 that the first man was in fact an infant,^ either in body or 
 mind. But to pursue the illustration as given, how does 
 each child learn to speak.'' By inventing 'scanty root- 
 words,' or by any of the slow and laborious processes by 
 which we are told that the ' Aryan ' languages, etc., were 
 built up? Certainly not. He learns words directly from 
 those who already have them in possession and use, and who 
 acquired them from others before them in the same way. 
 The whole process is one of hearing, memory, and applica- 
 tion in use. Then, if the comparison is good for anything, 
 thus was the first man taught (by the only One Who could 
 teach him) words, which he in turn was to communicate 
 to his children as they were born, and so on with all the 
 following generations. Thus, after all, this very analogy, 
 rightly used, brings us back to the conclusion that man- 
 kind did not slowly invent language, but received it direct 
 from God. 
 
 But are there any other present or historic facts in regard 
 to speech which suggest the reverse } Do its advocates, or 
 can they, produce any instance where men have actually 
 begun without a language, and elaborated it, so that it was 
 
 * demonstrably their own work ' or anything like this ? 
 None whatever. On the contrary, all the facts we have of 
 those who have been born deaf and dumb, of young children 
 left to grow up wild and alone, or of others of our race en- 
 tirely without language, point the other way, to the same 
 conclusion, that no instincts of human nature, social or intel- 
 lectual, can bridge the chasm between the speechless and the 
 
 ^ Infans. What a suggestion in the very etymolog}' ! — non-speaking.
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. 151 
 
 speaking until some words can be actually taught. (See 
 further as to speechless men, Diod. Sic. i. iii. 19, p. 187, 
 torn. i. ; Wessel, Lord Monboddo, Kaspar Hauser, etc. ; and 
 examine again what Whitney says of such cases.) 
 
 There is another analogical fact which may be of use to 
 us. The many actual languages do not differ only in using 
 different words or grammatical constructions, but also in 
 the very sounds and articulations, so that some of these are 
 found in one language which are not in another, with mani- 
 fold variations of the kind. Now it is a well-known fact that 
 some of these sounds cannot be uttered perfectly by some if 
 by any adult persons in whose mother tongue they do not 
 occur. The vocal organs are (or seem to be, which is the 
 same in effect) incapable of the action necessary, this even 
 with the most persevering effort, and with most careful in- 
 struction and example of those who have used these articu- 
 lations with the ease of nature ever since they can remem- 
 ber, to whom it seems strange that there should be any such 
 difficulty. How this might come to be in the migrations, 
 etc., by which lingual changes are brought about in the 
 course of ages, is quite conceivable. But that grown men 
 and women should ever come to practise these sounds with 
 one another, which they had never even heard, is not con- 
 ceivable. The slow process of the child's learning by imita- 
 tion the mother tongue which he hears continually around 
 him, and is taught every day by his elders as well as by his 
 own necessities, has no resemblance to this. 
 
 Condillac seems to have observed and admitted this dififi- 
 culty in saying (as quoted by Magee, i. 372) that ' the organ 
 of speech, for want of early use, would be so inflexible that 
 it could not articulate any other than a few simple sounds ; 
 and the obstacles which prevented them from pronouncing 
 others would prevent them from suspecting that the voice 
 was susceptible of any further variation.' He tries to escape 
 from this by an assertion that the pliant muscles of the chil- 
 dren will invent words which the parents will apply to 
 thoughts. But a moment's consideration that it needs all 
 the maturity of thought possible, as a previous condition of 
 seeking the utterance, will answer that. 
 
 Yet Prof Whitney is ' sure ' that if two human beings were
 
 152 BEGINNINGS OF REIIGION. 
 
 thrown together without any previous language, their social 
 necessities would compel them to begin it. But his being 
 ' sure ' of it does not at all alter the fact that they never would. 
 Many people are just as * sure ' of things which he and I 
 know they are mistaken about. WJiy is he sure ? That is 
 the real question. Is he reasonable in this, when not a 
 single y<3'^/ of the kind can be shown, and all facts point in 
 the opposite direction .■* He might as well insist that two 
 persons born dumb would speak to one another in a like 
 case, because their social nature required it He says in- 
 deed elsewhere : ' And why do we speak .-' what is the 
 final cause of the gift of language to man .-'... The gene- 
 ral answer ... is this : that it enables men to be, as they 
 were intended to be, social,' etc. Here is a positive state- 
 ment of what we ' were intended to be,' and which is 
 the ' final cause ' for our receiving a ' gift' If true, it is by 
 all agreement an important truth which belongs to the pre- 
 sent question, and is not to be excluded from it by any ne- 
 cessity, ' scientific ' or otherwise. Yet it is my fellow-man's 
 statement, which is entitled to just so much authority as that 
 implies, and no more. But who was the ' intender ' of all 
 this, and the giver of the ' gift ' } I would rather know 
 about it from Him than from my fellow-man. 
 
 And I have it upon this higher authority ; it is neither 
 his nor my opinion, but I know from God Who made us 
 that men were intended, above all and including all else, to 
 be religions. This is the ' final cause' of God's ' gift ' of lan- 
 guage to them ; and as man needed it at once for this, so I 
 am sure at once it was given. And does not this also make 
 it more and more plain that the other reasoning is fatally 
 defective, in making no account of the Divine history of the 
 first man ? It has to resort at last to this account of the 
 purpose of language, that ' it enables men to be what they 
 were intended to be.' Yet when this comes to be stated, 
 then that very love and worship of God, which is in truth 
 first and all-including, is all ^;ircluded ! 
 
 Finally, as to the imaginary case in which Prof Whitney is 
 safely ' sure ' that what he says would occur, let us remem- 
 ber that his ' two persons ' would be the progeny of one or 
 two hundred generations in unbroken succession of speech-
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. 153 
 
 using mankind. What efifect of heredity this might have in 
 making speech easy and ' natural ' to them — though I see 
 every reason not to expect the result he is 'sure' of — is 
 one thing. What the first of our race — without any heredi- 
 tary tendencies whatever — could do, is quite another. Is 
 not this of Dr. Blair {Rhetoric, i. 71) much wiser in the way 
 of such conjectural reasoning .-^ — 
 
 ' One would think that in order to any language fixing 
 and extending itself, men must have been previously gathered 
 together in considerable numbers ; society must have been 
 already far advanced ; and yet, on the other hand, there 
 seems to have been an absolute necessity for speech previous 
 to the formation of society. For by what bond could any 
 multitude of men be kept together, or be made to join in the 
 prosecution of any common interest, until once, by the inter- 
 vention of speech, they could communicate their wants and 
 intentions to each other .-' So that either, how society could 
 form itself previously to language, or how words could rise 
 into a language previously to society, seem to be points 
 attended with equal difficulty. And when we consider, . . . 
 difficulties increase so much upon us on all hands, that there 
 seems to be no small reason for referring the first origin of 
 all language to Divine teaching or inspiration.' 
 
 I find the same unreflecting^ positiveness of asserting what 
 we have now seen to be so inconceivable in Chambers's 
 Encyclopcsdia, article ' Philology.' Let us see what title 
 this writer has to dismiss so contemptuously all the best 
 thought of the past ages, especially the careful conclusions 
 of almost all the great Christian writers (he calls them 
 'some theologians).' In the outset he says: ' In opposition 
 to the philosophers who attributed the origin of language to 
 human invention, some theologians claimed a Divine origin 
 
 ^ For if not this, it would have to be characterised as a few men's insolently 
 dictating their false opinions to all others. It should also be understood by the 
 many who go to such books, not for the assertion of partisans, but expecting to 
 find the best results of wise research and thought as accepted by all intelligent 
 people now, that Chambers's Encyclopaedia — which I mention specially because 
 actually furnishing to many persons all their information about such matters — 
 while valuable as a book of reference for many facts, is full of the many mistakes 
 of those modern writers who have discarded the wisdom of God's Word, and 
 only think of it when an opportunity seems to occur to disparage it.
 
 154 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 for it, representing the Deity as having created the names of 
 things, and directly taught them to Adam. Both these 
 theories may now be considered as given up by all who are 
 entitled to speak on the subject. Everything, in fact, tends 
 to show that language is a spontaneous product of human 
 nature — a necessary result of man's physical and mental 
 constitution (including his social instincts), as natural to him 
 as to walk, eat, or sleep, and as independent of his will as 
 his stature or the colour of his hair.' 
 
 Now, though I am, by venturing to differ from this, rele- 
 gated to those ' who are 7iot entitled to speak on the subject,' 
 I will proceed without any such title to test the truth of 
 these assertions. And first, after looking carefully and 
 patiently into all that has been said on both sides, it is plain 
 to me that ' everything, in fact, tends to show that language 
 is NOT ' any such 'spontaneous product of human nature.' 
 Does the dumb man, does the infant child, did Kaspar 
 Hauser or Laura Bridgman — do these, even with their hun- 
 dred generations of inherited practice in speech, tend to 
 show this 'spontaneous product' and 'necessary result' of 
 man's ' physical . . . constitution ' .' Does one single fact or 
 trace of a fact support it .'' 
 
 But this is not all which the writer has to say. After dis- 
 missing in this way the whole matter of the origin of lan- 
 guage as of no real consequence, he goes on to discuss, as 
 the only thing really worth attention, some of its changes 
 afterwards. Yet with a sort of unconscious consciousness 
 that there is a fatal void in his science at that point, he comes 
 back at last to that great question, thus : ' The positive part 
 of the science of language having pushed inquiry back until 
 it arrives at monosyllabic roots that admit of no further 
 analysis, there stops, as at the legitimate boundary of its pro- 
 vince. It assumes the existence of a certain store of crude 
 or primary matter, and merely concerns itself with how out 
 of this matter the structure, as we know it, has been built or 
 has grown up. But a question yet remains, which, although 
 it can never receive but a conjectural answer, has a won- 
 derful fascination for the speculative mind, and was, in fact, 
 the question with which all inquiries into language began — 
 the question, namely. How did language take a beginning
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. 155 
 
 at all ? how came this primitive material of language, these 
 significant roots, into existence ? ' 
 
 Now if all this is outside the 'legitimate boundary' of 
 his science, why did this writer begin it with such a positive 
 assertion about that very matter of the origin of language as 
 we noted before ? If the question ' can never receive but a 
 conjectural answer,' why did he so absolutely (and con- 
 temptuously of certain other answers) affirm what the only 
 true answer could be ? The affected moderation in this 
 second statement, its vagueness in form (and real unmean- 
 ingness in effect), does not make it any the less in fact of 
 evident intention as positive as the former. Thus : ' The 
 answer may be thus conceived : To speak is a necessity of 
 man's rational and emotional nature ; he speaks because he 
 thinks and feels,' etc. Of course this means the same as the 
 other statement, of speech being ' a necessary result of man's 
 constitution,' ' as natural to him as to walk or to sleep.' Yet 
 on the very next page we read : ' Another speculative question 
 regards the length of time that language must have taken 
 to advance from the rudimentary stage to the state in which 
 it is found in the earliest records, Bunsen assigns 20,000 
 years as the lowest limit,' etc. What! a 'spontaneous 
 product of human nature,' which requires at least 20,000 
 years to reach a stage far below that of any of the negro 
 languages now ! A ' necessary result of man's physical and 
 mental constitution (or " a necessity of man's rational and 
 emotional nature "), including his social instincts,' which may 
 not have grown to what we find now in the lowest savage 
 after mounting through a thousand generations ! What do 
 these men mean by ' spontaneous ' ? what by ' necessities of 
 our nature ' ? Suppose our ' eating or sleeping ' had had 
 such a history. 
 
 It is we only who in any just sense can speak of language 
 being at first ' as independent of men's will as their stature 
 or the colour of their hair' (not, indeed, its subsequent 
 changes). For if it all began with the ' workings ' ('conscious ' 
 or unconscious) ' of his intellectual nature,' it most self- 
 evidently was not * as independent of his will as his stature,' 
 which most certainly did not 'grow out of these workings of 
 his ' intellectual nature.' Yet all this inconsistency of state-
 
 156 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 ment and contradiction of facts must be accepted for truth, 
 in order that we may beheve that it took the soul of man 
 two or three times as long (by the most ample chronology 
 within the limits of sober judgment) as it is now since the 
 days of Adam to get those ' few scanty roots ' — a language 
 (if it can be called such), even then, according to them, with- 
 out a word for God, or Spirit, or anything religious. Indeed 
 this is all an amazing specimen of the credulous looseness of 
 thought in which these men indulge who are too rational and 
 truth-loving to believe in the Divine history of Adam. 
 They think that our forefathers, after a thousand generations 
 of slow improvement, were only just emerging out of that 
 speechless, unreasoning, and unspiritual existence. What 
 then, must they imagine of the first man ? Yet as a part of 
 this sagacious and consistent ' conjecture,' we have this : 
 * It seems reasonable to assume, as it has been well put by 
 Steinthal, that " at the origin of humanity the soul and the 
 body were in such mutual dependence that all the emotions 
 of the soul had their echo in the body, principally in the 
 organs of respiration and the voice. This sympathy of soul 
 and body, still found in the infant and the savage, was 
 intimate and fruitful in the primitive man : each intuition 
 woke in him an accent or a sound." ' 
 
 Anything more fanciful and ' assuming,' in contradiction 
 of all suggestion of facts, it would be hard to find anywhere. 
 None of the ' theologians,' even the most imaginative, could 
 surpass it in their way. If it could have any remote trace of 
 probable truth in it, that would be an attempt to represent 
 what we do know for fact, that God gave speech to ' primitive 
 man ' at once with his life, as a part of his nature, and an 
 immediate necessity of that life.^ 
 
 To recur now to that inexhaustible treasury of suggestion 
 — God's creating man ' in His Own image,' — it is not conceiv- 
 able that this should be meant to represent a being who had 
 merely the faintest rudiments, if even that, of anything 
 spiritual — no capacity of knowing and loving God, but 
 whose progeny, after a vast succession of slow-advancing 
 
 ^ Otherwise it ascribes to him a spiritual sensitiveness far above ours, yet 
 supposes the whole race to have sunk into brute stupidity as soon as speech was 
 achieved.
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. iS7 
 
 generations, should begin to approach that state. If we had 
 this said only of mankind, as we know them now in general, 
 it would be a painful wonder of contradiction, as it were, of 
 what we see all around us. What ! this unhappy and dis- 
 tracted being, with some noble thoughts and many consci- 
 ously mean and unworthy ones, with such vast and countless 
 varieties of character and condition and fate, — here one who 
 seems in comparison admirable and felicitous (the very one 
 to have the deepest sense of being far below what he ought 
 to be, and depending upon the mere mercy of his Creator to 
 restore him to his true nature), — and there a dirty, stupid, 
 sensual, unspiritual, and yet selfishly cruel savage, with all 
 sorts of intermediate varieties, the vastly greater proportion 
 being of the more miserable and bad. If this were all we 
 knew of man ; and then we read, ' And God said, ' Let Us 
 make man in Our image, after Our likeness.' It is because we 
 do have this story of the innocence and dignity of Paradise, 
 and even more the glorious Gospel of the Last Adam, 
 our restoration, and new creation, that we can so firmly 
 believe those wonderful words of the beginning. But try to 
 imagine at all the beginning of man according to this new doc- 
 trine. I will not state it as its own necessity does force those 
 who, after once accepting its process of thought, proceed to 
 think further in the same way, going back through every pre- 
 ceding stage of animal and vegetable life to the formless 
 ' protoplasm ; ' so that they cannot stop at any intermediate 
 point and say : ' Here man begins.' But suppose the begin- 
 ning, as related in the Book of Genesis, to be with a creature 
 of our present anatomy and physiology, but with no spiritual 
 thought and no language, that to be ' evolved ' through many 
 successive generations. Can we conceive of this being the 
 Divine account of such a beginning — ' And God said. Let Us 
 make man in Our image, after Our likeness, and let him have 
 dominion,' etc. ? In what imaginable sense can we think of 
 an animal, which as yet has no speech even with one of his 
 own kind, to express love or to exchange thought — no actual 
 thought or sentiment as yet above the ape (or the really 
 nobler dog, as now taughtby man), only a possibility of this 
 after what must, by all admission, be a very slow process of 
 development — as being ' in the likeness of God ' .'' Dare any
 
 158 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 one think of God Himself as being such an ' evolution ' from 
 the inferior and rudimentary ? As the very essence of 
 thought about Him is of the perfect, is not the lowest sense 
 conceivable of that which He now makes 'in His Own image,' 
 that it is now complete in its kind ? Let us then conceive of 
 our ideal man by all that we now know ; and that is ration- 
 ally what we must think appeared when God spoke those 
 great words of His creation. Now is this ideal that of the 
 tall biped, without any more words or thoughts — especially 
 those most exalted ones of a spiritual religion of love — than 
 the other animals had ? or is this true idea the exact opposite, 
 and to which even the best of the present men is far inferior, 
 instead of what the other theory really requires — that the 
 basest of the present mankind are a great improvement upon 
 that beginning ? It may be that the emphatic and repeated 
 saying of the Creator after His work, that ' it was good,' nay, 
 after man was made, that * it was very good:' and His 
 ' resting,' as from what was complete, was a great prophetic 
 contradiction of any future false science which should say that 
 this was only the faint beginning of a long ' evolution.' 
 
 This truth of a primitive language with which God at once 
 endowed the creature whom He had made in His Own image 
 does not at all involve the question whether that language 
 survives now, or even any considerable or recognisable frag- 
 ments of it. That is a fair question of the later history. As 
 it was apparently a mistake of some former learned writers 
 to identify it with the Hebrew, so it is a still greater error of 
 some present ones to confound these questions. There is 
 surely nothing proved and nothing gained to truth by ridi- 
 culing and caricaturing those who assumed that the Hebrew, 
 just as we have it in the Old Testament, was the original 
 language of all mankind, and sought to show that all other 
 languages were directly derived from it ; or those who also 
 sought to prove that all that was true of history or religion 
 in other writings must have been got from that Book of God. 
 Allow the arguments to be quite inconclusive — many of them 
 evident mistakes — and their results untenable, it is still 
 quite another question whether the Hebrew is not far the 
 most ancient tongue which we can really trace in writing, 
 and whether the best traditions and beliefs of all other races
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. 159 
 
 were not originally derived from the same sources with what 
 we find in those Scriptures. 
 
 Thus such scholars as Selden, Bochart, and Gale were 
 plainly mistaken in treating the Word of God to mankind 
 before the Gospel as simply identical with, and nothing else 
 than, the holy writings of Moses and the prophets. This 
 was really assuming that no man or people could have re- 
 ceived from the Divine Father any command or other revela- 
 tion of truth until Moses wrote, an inadvertent absurdity 
 (for what, by their own belief as to Adam, Enoch, Noah, or 
 Abraham, etc.), which could not but mislead them, and 
 more or less vitiate the results of their work. Yet refute 
 their arguments from this false premise as clearly as you 
 may, and you do not at all prove that the Hebrew language 
 is not the most ancient of all, nor even that it is not the 
 primitive one. It might be all that, though the thoughts 
 which passed from it by oral tradition through the first ages 
 into other races and tongues w^ere earlier than any of its 
 extant writings. 
 
 Yet Prof Max Muller is never weary of referring to this 
 theory as such a ridiculous error, that of itself it shows beyond 
 question to any one of common sense that none of the re- 
 searches of those scholars are now of any value ; that the 
 Sanscrit is the only ancient language of much account ; and 
 that all the speech of man was built up in India from his 
 imaginary * proto-Aryan ' language, beginning with those 
 whose descendants after a vast succession of generations 'first 
 began to get the idea of " I AM " — those earlier men (shall we 
 call them ?) being separated from us, it may be, by hundreds 
 of thousands of years.' ^ 
 
 Is it not a pity that one so intelligent and ingenious, and 
 who knows so well how to express himself in clear and pleas- 
 ing English, should fancy all this the simple pursuit of truth.-' 
 or, what is far more unfortunate, that he should use this talent 
 and influence to undermine that wise faith in the Word of 
 God, which is surely worth far more to our race (and to him, 
 and to each one of us) than ' to know whether the ancient 
 Aryans before their separation knew the mouse,' etc. etc. ? 
 
 In regard to the age of the Hebrew Scriptures, there is 
 
 ^ See What can India teach us ? 
 
 I
 
 i6o BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 altogether sufficient proof, even to any candid person who 
 did not admit their Divine inspiration, that the writings of 
 Moses are at least ten generations older than the most 
 ancient remains of Sanscrit. Indeed, those who claim that 
 much antiquity for the latter cannot bring anything like the 
 evidence for it which exists of the other. The only com- 
 petitors in this way which the law of Moses could have, 
 would be the Assyrian and Egyptian remains lately dis- 
 covered. And for these it is rather in appearance than in 
 reality. For their age is all a matter of conjecture, however 
 ingenious, after a total blank of three thousand years or 
 more ; whereas the other has been in actual keeping and 
 contemporary reading from each generation to its successor 
 ever since. They are but disconnected fragments, the value 
 of which to history is not yet determined ; and, strange to 
 say, evidently to all, very much depends upon their being 
 connected with the Book of Moses. It is history itself, of 
 the most precious kind, and linked to succeeding and never 
 interrupted histor}'. Even all this is the least of its immea- 
 surable superiority to all such competition for us who know 
 that God Himself is more its author than Moses. 
 
 It is thus quite probable, though perhaps not quite 
 demonstrably certain, that some of its words are of those 
 which God gave directly to the first man. For, granting that 
 in the two or three thousand years between this and when 
 we find these words used by those who spoke the Hebrew 
 language as great changes of speech had occurred as since, 
 it is more likely that even though that primitive language 
 would have been, in the mam, as unintelligible to Adam as 
 the Teutonic of two thousand years ago would be to us now, 
 some cardinal words, such as the names of ' God' and ' man,' 
 etc. (see a7ite, p. 139), would have survived among those to 
 whom the greatest purity of religion had come down by 
 tradition, than that they would have utterly perished from 
 memory and use. 
 
 And besides this, as the Maker of all and the Master of 
 all history had Himself given such words for the greatest 
 purpose of man's existence, and then afterwards had pro- 
 vided to have His Book of this history and of the highest 
 truth written for the use of man, it is most reasonable to
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. i6i 
 
 suppose that He would have preserved for it these remains 
 of that ' beginning.' I can myself hardly conceive the con- 
 trary of this, e.g. as to the word Adam, when I read in the 
 perfect truth, 'And God said. Let us make Adam,' etc. ; for 
 that is the very word used in the original.^ However, the 
 relation of our words to the absolute true may contain mys- 
 teries which we should not assume at all to measure in that 
 way. But, on the other hand, the study of any such most 
 ancient, interesting, and in their very employment here 
 sacred words, cannot but be of use to us, for one thing, as 
 some counterbalance to the presumptuous mistakes made in 
 the opposite direction, in assuming that everything in lan- 
 guage is man's most slow and clumsy device. 
 
 Much has been theorised and written by students of 
 Hebrew about the word Adam, and what will now be said 
 of this will apply in a corresponding way to many other of 
 the Hebrew words. Every genuine trace of ancient tradition 
 deserves careful notice. But the Rabbinical writings so- 
 called are in general worthy of far less attention as furnish- 
 ing these than is often accorded to them by Christian 
 scholars. As for anything historical in them, they are all 
 separated from what they profess to record by such a vast 
 gulf of ages and revolutions ; and what is more, their stories 
 have upon them such a plain stamp of puerile invention, 
 that what can be reasonably thought to have any trace of 
 fact is very little in the midst of a great mass of fictions 
 and speculations. 
 
 The first thought may be that the Jews now must be the 
 great authority for the Hebrew, as the English are for that 
 language. But a little consideration qualifies this very much. 
 The critics of the Lower Empire are of very little account 
 as to the classic Greek and Latin ; yet they were much 
 nearer to those times than the Talmudists, etc., to the 
 Hebrew Scriptures. Then, too, those were still their living 
 languages, while the Jews for more than two thousand years 
 have been Syrians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs, Span- 
 iards, Portuguese, Germans, Poles, and English — but not 
 
 ^ Gen. i. 26. Perhaps even more conclusive a little later in the record 
 (Gen. V. 2), ' Male and female created He them, and blessed them, and called 
 their na>?ie Adam, in the day when they were created.' 
 
 L
 
 1 62 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Hebrews — as to their mother tongue and common language. 
 The use of Hebrew in their synagogue service does not take 
 away the force of this. We have a parallel case all around 
 us. Does the use of a Latin liturgy make all its adherents 
 Latin scholars ? Does it prevent a very great part of its 
 ministers being utterly ignorant of the classic literature of 
 that tongue, even of its construction — only just able to read 
 aloud their service words with a sing-song iteration } The 
 same precisely is true of most of the Jews of our day. The 
 very training for their * ministry ' which young boys undergo, 
 as it has been described to me by some who have gone 
 through it, is enough to cramp for life all useful thinking 
 about the words. Some few learned scholars in this they 
 have. But as for the comments upon Scripture, and remarks 
 upon particular words contained in all their literature, the 
 credulous and superstitious fictions with which all these are 
 mingled only illustrate the more of how little value it is for 
 understanding those originals. 
 
 But even all this is far from being the strongest reason 
 why we should not make much of their sayings in any of 
 these matters. We know from the very highest authority 
 that they of all men least understand those ancient ' oracles 
 of God,' which were first committed to their ancestors to 
 preserve and understand them, but were taken away from 
 those who rejected the Messiah, Who was the fulfilment of it 
 all. And to all who succeeded the men of that generation 
 in that rejection we must ascribe the same ' blindness,' 
 that, ' seeing they do not see, and perceiving they do not 
 understand ' the Law and the Prophets, as Our Lord declared 
 of them.^ 
 
 I am aware that a contrary notion is now generally 
 allowed by Christian writers, and fancied to be a part of the 
 wise fairness of our age, that the Jews are the true guardians 
 and interpreters of the Old Testament, as the Christians are 
 of the New. But I believe this will no more bear a sober 
 
 ^ Of great force with us to the same effect should be what Our Lord said of the 
 Rabbinical learning even of His day, (this before that rejection of Him in which 
 the 'branches' were finally 'broken off because of unbelief,' Rom. xi. 20) — 
 'making the Word of God of none effect through your tradition,' etc. (St. 
 Mark vii. 13).
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN 163 
 
 Christian scrutiny than will the modern sentimentalism 
 which in novels, poems, newspapers, and sermons makes of 
 that unhappy people a sort of ' consummate flower ' and 
 illumination of the human race. Besides its contradiction of 
 fact and of true religion, nothing, I believe, could be worse 
 for them. It flatters the vanity of race, which is one of 
 their great misfortunes, and encourages them in the same 
 cunning and unscrupulous love of gain and of power by 
 means of it, upon which they have concentrated almost all 
 their energy and industry now for some 2000 years. 
 
 It has been taken up by some who are in deep earnest to 
 
 bring this people to faith in Our Lord — a noble work, in 
 
 which may God prosper them and give us all a heart to do 
 
 what we can to help. But this cannot be helped — will only 
 
 be hindered — by our departing from any of that truth as we 
 
 have received it ; and a part of that truth it surely is that 
 
 those who ' would not have this man ' — the Messiah — * to 
 
 reign over them,'^ as the Lord and Saviour of all the people 
 
 of God in the world, by that choice ceased to belong to ' the 
 
 Israel of God,' and fell further away from it, as then 
 
 completely set up for all mankind, than those who had 
 
 not had the privileges of their race. How any one can 
 
 question this as a Christian, I cannot understand. Is it 
 
 because St. Paul speaks so lovingly and generously of his 
 
 kinsmen after the flesh } because he says that ' blindness 
 
 in part has happened unto Israel,' and afterwards, 'and so 
 
 all Israel shall be saved ' } etc. I confess that I never read 
 
 this passage without a profound sense of a great mystery, 
 
 which no one now can interpret, which perhaps must be its 
 
 own interpreter in future history. It may well kindle our 
 
 hearts with loving zeal to bring the unbelieving Jews to the 
 
 Lord and Saviour of all. But that is no reason why we 
 
 should forget what we are so plainly told in God's Word, 
 
 or confound with that truth any ambitious sentimentalism 
 
 or philosophy which really contradicts it. Let us consider 
 
 that we do not know how much of St. Paul's prophecy then 
 
 was limited to that very age, to that ' day of salvation ' for 
 
 the Jews (' for He limiteth a certain day '), during which 
 
 Saul the Persecutor himself became Paul the Apostle — a 
 
 1 • We have no king but Cresar ' (St. John xix. 15).
 
 164 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 day perhaps lasting until the destruction of Jerusalem, — 
 after which the Divine recognition of them as a people 
 ceased. A considerable portion of them then belonged to 
 the one true people of God. The rest, as a separate race, 
 all adopted for themselves the terrible cry at Jerusalem — 
 * His blood be upon us and upon our children ' (St. Matt. 
 xviii. 25). 
 
 Let us remember also that it was some years after writ- 
 ing the words cited before that St. Paul came to that very 
 city of Rome to which they were written ; and then, having 
 a conference with the Jews living there, it concluded with 
 his saying to them : ' Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias 
 the prophet unto our fathers, saying, Go unto this people,^ 
 and say. Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand ; 
 and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive : for the heart of 
 this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, 
 and their eyes have they closed ; lest they should see with 
 their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with 
 their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal 
 them. Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation 
 of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it * 
 (Acts xxviii. 25-28). 
 
 After this we have not a word addressed to them or said 
 of them in the New Testament, as Jeivs, so far as I can find. 
 What silence as to them in the great Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 in which only Hebrew believers in our Lord are so much as 
 alluded to ; in that of St. James, in every sense an Israelite 
 indeed, and probably ' a dweller at Jerusalem ' from the 
 Pentecost until his death ; most profound and impressive in 
 those of St. John and in the Revelation. To avoid con- 
 fusion of thought, we must confine the term ' Jew ' to its pre- 
 sent general sense — that is, to those of the race of Israel who 
 in that generation finally rejected the Divine ' Hope of 
 Israel,'^ and their descendants who have followed them in 
 it ; while we designate as Israelites all of that race while 
 they were still heirs of the promise, and those of them who 
 have at any time become penitent believers in that great 
 mercy of God, and been happy to lose the distinction of 
 
 ' Emphatically the Jewish race as such — * the people ' (not ' a nation '); Xa6s, not 
 iOvo%. See p. 295. 2 jgj_ xiv. 8.
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN 165 
 
 race in becoming, with those of ' every kindred and tongue,' 
 a part of the glorious * household of God ' in His Son Our 
 Lord. (See also Eph, iii. 11-22.) The former term is, in- 
 deed, sometimes used in the latter part of the Old Testa- 
 ment, and in the New, for' all who professed the religion of 
 Israel. But in the actual language of our day the Jew is 
 not a Christian ; and the distinction proposed will be very 
 useful. 
 
 For the first three Christian centuries we know of them 
 only — what no one seems now to have the courage to say — 
 as the most bitter and bloody persecutors of the patient 
 Christian Martyrs. I challenge any one to find, from Nero 
 to Julian, one instance of Christian persecution of Jews, 
 while these, though themselves fellow-subjects of the Pagans, 
 are incessant in hatred and cruelty toward the holy and 
 harmless ' true people of God.' Afterwards, in the dark days 
 of the Church, there was a terrible reaction of cruelty toward 
 them. Then in modern times we have another reaction 
 yet — not to Christian pity, like St. Paul's, but to one form of 
 the worldly indifference and unbelief which prevails. Thus 
 Lessing's Nathan the Wise — the main thought of which is 
 that a good Jew is a little wiser and better than a good 
 Christian — is generally credited with beginning that literary 
 fashion, which continues to this day, and has its latest exhi- 
 tion in the novel of Daniel Deronda. History and Politics, 
 Art, Science, and Mammon-worship have each its phase of 
 the same. One tries to outdo another in demonstrating 
 (what none of them really believe) that the Christian 
 nations are all a dull set as to Arts, Sciences, Poetry, Music, 
 Politics, and what not, but for the incomparable genius of 
 this or that Jew. 
 
 But perhaps the most mischievous of all is that critical 
 and philosophic fashion of ' damnable iteration,' that we 
 owe so much to * Jewish thought' What is ' Jewish 
 thought ' .'' For anything of long existence among, and 
 characteristic of, that people, it is substantially the Talmud. 
 What do we owe to that ? For anything actual in ' Jewish 
 thought ' now, it is the boasting of their Rabbis and writers, 
 that ' Judaism ' has been the enlightening and elevating 
 principle of all mankind. Is that so }
 
 1 66 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 But it may be said that this means that we Christians 
 owe our very religion to ' Jewish thought' This may be said 
 with some consistency by those who dislike and despise — or, 
 without any sort of sentiment, reject — that rehgion ; but it 
 cannot be said with truth by any one. As for the Christian 
 who adopts the phrase (and the thought ?), does he really 
 believe that the knowledge of the One God, ' the Father 
 Almighty, Maker of all things and Judge of all men,' of the 
 eternal life, and of the supreme laws of love to God and man 
 — in effect, of all that is fairly contained in these — that 
 this knowledge is the product of ' Jewish thought ' ? Even 
 to lay aside, in part, the just distinction before made, and 
 take the ancient Israel and all the Old Testament within 
 the scope of what is Jewish, do we owe the knowledge of 
 true religion as found in them to the people who are living 
 among us as Jews ? Did Moses himself or the prophets in- 
 vent or elaborate this, as one of these Jews now does his 
 finest productions, of whatever kind ? They themselves 
 never say such a thing. They incessantly proclaim the 
 opposite. That whole religion, as such — that whole Book — 
 is full of penitent humility toward God, receiving the truth 
 direct from Him. In the entire Old Testament, from begin- 
 ning to end, there is not a particle of the ' Jewish thought ' of 
 our day, or of twenty centuries past. It is of altogether a 
 different range and quality. We might apply to the super- 
 human simplicity of heavenly truth stamped upon it all, 
 what the great Christian Israelite said of the Gospel — its 
 completion and yet far higher revelation of God to us, — 
 ' Where is boasting, then ? It is excluded ' (Rom. iii. 27). 
 
 Do we even owe our receiving the Old Testament to the 
 Jews } Not at all. It is they who, as anti-Christian, have 
 no right to it. The true Israel kept these ' oracles of God ' 
 for that great Kingdom of God, which was to entirely termi- 
 nate and absorb it. When that ' fulness of time ' (Gal. iv. 4) 
 came, all that was great and sacred of * thought ' within it 
 passed to that Divine society, which, beginning with those 
 true sons of Abraham, who had his faith, and gathering like 
 souls out of all the world, shall have no end. To insist upon 
 calling this ' Jewish thought ' is therefore simply one form of 
 denying the Gospel. Of course those who choose to do that
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. 167 
 
 can do it, in this or any other form they choose. But we to 
 whom it is the most certain and the supreme truth can have 
 no part in that. 
 
 More exactly still, those primary religious truths which 
 are generally allowed in Christendom are, as we have already 
 seen, neither a ' natural religion,' which is the slow invention 
 of all men's thoughts, nor a gift to the rest of us out of ' Jew- 
 ish thought,' but a part of that primitive religion which God 
 gave to man from the first. Nor is it at all suitable to call 
 this by the latter phrase, as having been revived and com- 
 municated to the rest of mankind by that people. The his- 
 tory of all this we shall see in its place. But nothing is more 
 contrary to fact than to assume that the Jews, as such, were 
 ever the converters of the rest of mankind from false religion. 
 Is it they who have effected the change of the last nineteen 
 centuries .'' Or even, going back of the Advent of our Lord, 
 that people in general (as to be distinguished from the pro- 
 phets of His Kingdom), according to that Divine description 
 of some of them, * trusted in themselves that they were 
 righteous, and despised others,' and left them to their false 
 religion. Who was it that organised this work, and gave His 
 orders to His servants (and has urged and animated and 
 prospered them in it ever since), ' Go ye iiito all tJie zvorld, 
 and proclaim the good news to every creature ' ? 
 
 Does ' Jewish thought ' actually now, or has it in all these 
 ages of the glory of those words, ever included them within 
 itself? Does it have any part in the ceaseless homage and 
 love which rise to that Great Converter of mankind .'' Or, 
 for another view of this, will any one say that ' He was a Jew 
 in fact, and so named even now by some of His most ardent 
 admirers,' and therefore His sayings and doings are rightly 
 included in the phrase in question .'' I answer that none of 
 His people ever thoughtfully speak of Him in that blunt 
 way, or without such qualifications as would remove all that 
 concerns Him from such associations as that phrase implies. 
 All they think of Him shrinks from such an implication. 
 
 Nothing can be more untrue. The Jew is the anti- 
 Christian descendant of Jacob (or Esau).i Is there any 
 
 ^ It is strange that some notice has not been taken of the /aci that after the 
 conquest of Edom, and incorpoi-ation of its people with the Jews under the Mac-
 
 1 68 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 actual 'Jewish thought' which at all resembles Him as we 
 know Him in the Gospels ? What a wonderful difference in 
 the whole spirit — as it were, in the very air — which the Lord 
 breathes ! Some ' Jewish thought ' is around Him — in the 
 scribes and priests, the Pharisees and Sadducees. It is, in 
 fact, one of the elements of the Divine simplicity and incom- 
 parable superiority of this Son of David to all others of our 
 kind, that there is absolutely nothing of the Jew in any of 
 His words or acts. 
 
 Another mistake which has crept into Hebrew study in 
 our day is that of making so much of kindred Arabic words. 
 It is very true that the Hebrew and Arabic are cognate 
 * Semitic ' tongues, have many words and constructions in 
 common, — in effect are hardly more, at least in certain forms, 
 than dialects of one actual language. I do not know enough 
 of Arabic either to deny or affirm that, as is often said, it 
 contains a vast and varied literature, and, as such, has a rich- 
 ness and variety of forms far surpassing the Hebrew. Ad- 
 mitting this all, it does not begin to prove, what is now com- 
 monly assumed, that the Arabic is the original Semitic 
 tongue from which the Hebrew words got their primary 
 meaning. The exact reverse of this is far more likely. For 
 that same Hebrew literature which we are trying to inter- 
 pret, all of it, was complete, and had become old and locked 
 up in a dead language before the Arabic literature began. 
 The modern Italian holds somewhat the relation to Latin 
 which the Arabic of those writings does to Hebrew — in some 
 respects rather as daughter to mother than as of two long- 
 separated sisters. But what would we think of the common 
 sense of one who should insist upon interpreting with cer- 
 tainty all the Latin classics as to the primary meanings and 
 constructions of words by the diction of Alfieri and Manzoni, 
 or even of Macchiavelli and Tasso.? It would hardly be taken 
 seriously, or, if so, as the all but insane conceit of some ill- 
 balanced though ingenious mind. It would be said, ' These 
 men wrote in another language 1500 or 2000 years after 
 Livy and Virgil, under another order of things, and after 
 great revolutions of life and ideas.' Precisely the same thing 
 
 cabees, the Jews of later times are largely descendants of Esau, and no one can 
 tell where the mixture has not gone.
 
 LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN. 169 
 
 is true as to the Arabic writings from the Koran down to Ibn 
 Batuta or Ibn Khaldun, as compared with the Old Testa- 
 ment. The earliest Arabic literature (or even alphabet) is 
 a thousand years after the latest Hebrew, and about 2000 
 years after Moses. 
 
 If it be said that the Oriental peoples and languages have 
 a traditional stability which removes them from the com- 
 parison, then, with all reasonable allowance for this, the gulf 
 between the two is too wide to be lightly bridged in that 
 way. And we know that Arabic writing is, on the con- 
 trary, much further apart from Hebrew, as to any continuity, 
 than Latin and Italian ; has been subjected to the greatest 
 forces of political and religious revolution — of commerce, 
 war, trade ; of the mixture of foreign populations — Greek, 
 Egyptian, Persian, Turkish, Moorish, etc. 
 
 The only justification for this kind of subjection of 
 Hebrew to Arabic is that we have no other comparison of 
 language to help us out with the difficulties of the former. 
 But this is no reason whatever for such bold positiveness of 
 insisting upon altogether new meanings of those most vener- 
 able and august writings which were given complete to man- 
 kind, by inspiration of God, many generations before the 
 first word of this Arabic literature was written down. We 
 have never been in need of any such desperate guesswork 
 for the main and practical meaning of it all. We have 
 always found this plain sense upon its face, and witnessed to 
 also, by the true witness and keeper of it, as well as of the 
 Gospel — the understanding of the whole Church from age 
 to age. Along with this we have also had for more than 
 2000 years a remarkable translation of it into Greek, to some 
 parts of which, at least, the Supreme Word of God gave His 
 sanction in person. We have also other such versions, both 
 ancient and modern, to fix and transmit this original mean- 
 ing ; among which stands the admirable one in our own lan- 
 guage, of which I am sure that each one who fairly compares 
 it with the Divine original, whatever little defects here and 
 there he may think he finds, sees more and more cause for 
 ^'.hanks to the Lord of the Church and of all that our people 
 have had such an English Bible now for nearly four hundred 
 years.
 
 lyo BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 The original language of the Old Testament is therefore 
 in a position sui generis as to its interpretation. It has not 
 only ceased to be a living language for two or three thou- 
 sand years, but those who, by descent of blood, might be 
 otherwise supposed the best preservers of its sense, are — as 
 God our Saviour, Whose Book it is, plainly tells us — per- 
 versely blind to its true spirit and meaning, and therefore 
 most unsuitable guides in that study. And with this agrees 
 what any one can fairly see for himself, as to the great folly 
 of very much which they say in interpretation. If it should at 
 first seem to any one that this had nothing to do with the 
 derivation, primary meaning, or grammatical construction of 
 particular words, he would be quite in the wrong as to the 
 interpretation of any writings whatsoever ; as the whole sense 
 of a passage will often turn upon just such particulars, and 
 then any wrong bias of opinion might pervert them. But 
 this is especially true of the Book which, according to the 
 celebrated saying of Mr. Locke, ' has God for its author, sal- 
 vation for its end, and truth without anj' mixture of error for 
 its matter' {E. 201). And yet, with this constant precaution, 
 he may avail himself of such useful suggestions as he finds 
 in the Talmudist or later Jewish writings, and in the parallel 
 Arabic diction. What the Assyrian or Chaldee remains — or 
 still more the Phoenician, upon further exploration and study 
 — can furnish, may be much more useful yet. 
 
 What is wanting in these others is far more than made 
 up to us by the wonderful quality of self-interpretation which 
 belongs to the Book itself. Thus he who, receiving the sub- 
 stantial meaning of it in the Church, the sensus receptus of 
 all the ages, diligently studies it alone, by comparison of its 
 parts and of the uses of the words of these different parts, 
 will get a fairly correct knowledge of the whole language, an 
 increasing reverence for the whole Book, and confidence in it 
 all as the Word of God. He will not penetrate all its mys- 
 teries ; for none ever can by this or any other means. But he 
 will escape from such a foolish confidence in his own wisdom 
 as would otherwise rob him of a wise confidence in the 
 wisdom of God's Word,
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS OF RELIGION — HEBREW AND ITS COGNATE 
 
 LANGUAGES. 
 
 The Talmudic writings have a great deal to say of the 
 name 'Adam' and of the man himself. Their so-called tra- 
 ditions about this are such preposterously silly fables that it 
 seems strange some Christian writers will repeat them/ — in an 
 apologetic way, to be sure, yet as though they w^ere of some 
 value in history. These traditions show, indeed, that there 
 was never a question among the Jews of this man by name 
 having actually lived. What the Talmudists say of ' Adam' 
 meaning ' red,' and why the first man was so named, is of 
 little value. The same is true of what is conjectured about 
 this by modern critics from Arabic uses. Taking the 
 natural method of examining the word and its cognates in 
 all the Old Testament (using any other helps also for what 
 they are really worth), and in any such adjective uses, it 
 evidently means 'ruddy,' — that is, with the high colour of 
 healthful beauty, which is now seen in the races of finest 
 mould, both physical and spiritual. There is thus no need 
 whatever of that painful inference drawn by some, that this 
 only perfect man had the complexion, any more than any 
 other characteristics, of our'savages. The history also plainly 
 tells us, as before noticed, that this w^as his proper name, 
 while another name, isli {isliah for woman), meant man in 
 general. 'Adam' itself became afterwards one of the 
 common nouns for man. But this seems very natural. It 
 was by speaking of men as his descendants that it easily 
 grew into a custom to call a man a 'son of Adam' (even 
 now in English the expression is not uncommon), and then 
 briefly an 'Adam.' The earlier phrase survives literally in 
 ^ For example, Geikie's Hours with the Bible.
 
 172 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 both the singular and plural forms in the poetical diction of 
 the Hebre\t to the last, as ben- or but- Adam, translated 
 always ' son,' or ' sons of man.' What a suggestion of 
 dignity in the former, that its corresponding phrase in the 
 New Testament was to be one of the titles of 'the last 
 Adam' ! Sometimes such nouns of descent are a sort of 
 adjectives, formed from the name of the ancestor, as ' Israelite, 
 a descendant of Israel.' But it is really more according to 
 the method of Hebrew to use the noun without change for 
 its corresponding adjective, as thus, 'Adam, an Adamite, or 
 descendant of Adam.' This of itself might have made our 
 scholars more cautious in following the affectation of the 
 Talmudists in distinguishing the meanings of the two words 
 ish and adam, that the former denotes a man of rank, the 
 other a man of mean position. Thus our English translators, 
 according to this notion, have so rendered these terms when 
 found together in five places : Ps. xlix. 2, Ixii. 9 ; Isa. 
 ii. 9, V. 15, xxxi. 8. I do not venture to reject something, 
 which has been accepted by all our lexicographers, each from 
 his predecessor (inadvertently, I suppose), without very care- 
 ful examination. But as the result of such an examination, I 
 have no doubt whatever of the mistake. The first trace of it 
 is in these Rabbinical interpreters, long after the Christian 
 era. Even the Vulgate, in its present form, after centuries of 
 influence that way, does not consistently follow that inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 For even in the instance first cited it renders both these 
 words homo — 'adam'' being used three times and ' isJi' twice. 
 And the English Psalter in the same Psalm uses 'man' 
 simply for each of them in verses 7, 12, and 20, while in verse 
 16 'ish' is rendered even more indefinitely ' one.' Indeed, if 
 in verse 2 any such distinction is intended, it is the reverse 
 of the one in question. And so the English Psalter honestly 
 gives it thus : 'High (bni-^^^w, sons of Adam) and low' 
 (bni-M, sons of ish). Yet in the A.V. they shrunk from this 
 contradiction of the accepted notion, and actually reversed 
 the order of the words thus, ' low and high,' and thus fell 
 into the absurdity of destroying the evident parallelism of 
 ' rich and poor.' So in Psalm Ixii. 9 the Vulgate translates 
 both bni-adam and bni-ish z.s filii hominum.
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC. 173 
 
 The passages in Isaiah are rendered by Jwiiio and vir 
 respectively. And this suggests how the false rendering in 
 question began at the late period mentioned above. The 
 Jewish scholars, finding in the literary languages of that time 
 (both Greek and Latin, though in the former it seems to 
 have been of later introduction) such a distinction of the 
 words avrip, dv0pco7ro<i, zn'r, Jiomo), it occurred to them to 
 assume this as the distinction of these two Hebrew words. 
 And the derivation of homo from /minus, 'ground,' corre- 
 sponding to that of Adam and adamaJi, that was taken as 
 the designation of inferior man. This, too, was accepted 
 from them by later Christian scholars, to whom the classic 
 languages were even more the standard of all grammar. 
 
 But a very careful study of all the uses of these words 
 from Moses to Malachi, not a single one being passed over, 
 or not studied in its relation to this question, entirely over- 
 throws that notion with me. The general result is, that 
 these words are used convertibly and interchangeably. 
 Sometimes the word ^ isli^ does appear in designations of 
 honour; but, on the other hand, sometimes it xs'adam' in 
 such uses. And sometimes ' ish' is used in denoting baseness 
 of any kind. What, for instance, can be made for the notion 
 in question by any sort of twisting of ' ish-ha-Belial,' ' this 
 man of Belial,' used of Nabal the * fool,' or as used by 
 Shimei reviling David in his flight before Absalom — 'thou 
 ish-Jia-Beliall '■ Xhow ish-dammim' (^ radin of blood'), and the 
 historian himself describing the rebel Sheba as an ' ish-Jia- 
 BeliaV ? 
 
 Often and often the two words are used in the same 
 passages as of exactly the same force, which I could show 
 by the citation of nearly 2000 instances, scattered through all 
 the ages and authors of the Old Testament. For example, 
 take King Solomon — surely one of the most lettered and 
 thoughtful of them all, — and with rather a royal bias toward 
 distinctions between nobles and princes and common people. 
 (The Holy Book is, indeed, alone among all ancient writings 
 for its simple, spiritual superiority to all such distinctions 
 among us creatures before God, whatever may have been the 
 personal tendencies of any of its writers the other way.) In 
 that part of it of which he is the human author, there are
 
 174 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 some two hundred words for ' man,' nearly equally divided 
 between these two. Throughout these the equivalence and 
 interchangeability of the two is plain — the place of honour, 
 if any, being rather given to adani, as in that very thought- 
 ful and profound Book of Ecclesiastes, where for instance 
 (ii. 12, 1 8) he surely would not have spoken of his own son and 
 royal heir as low-born. The real difference of the words, for 
 doubtless no synonyms are entirely such, at least originally, 
 I should suppose, from a careful comparison of all the uses, to 
 be what is indeed strongly suggested by this first employ- 
 ment of them in the history of the Creation. Adam, being 
 the proper name of the first man, and ancestor of all the 
 others, the word came easily enough by the process already 
 described to be used for the whole race, and each person of 
 it, whether male or female, high or low. '/r//,' as the 
 common noun, designates the individual generally ; and if a 
 man is to be described by his employment or character, the 
 noun for that is added to this. Thus we have ' ish-milhamah,' 
 
 * a man of war or battle ;' * ish-Elohim,' ' a man of God ;' ' ish- 
 ha-Belial,' ' a man of Belial ;' ' ish-dammim,' ' a man of blood.' 
 Adam is never used in this way. This is indeed suggested 
 by the probable affinity of ish to the verb * ishl ' is.' What 
 exactly agrees with it also is that the one word for woman 
 and wife, whatever her degree — even if a slave — is * is/ia/i.' 
 Is not this of itself almost, if not quite, conclusive of the 
 whole question ? 
 
 But there is another like fact in the language of equal 
 force. There are two other words in Hebrew for fua7i, used 
 quite a number of times, though neither of them nearly as 
 much as either of these. The one is * enosJil whose primary 
 meaning is undoubtedly and by all agreement sick or %veak, 
 liable to disease or death. The other is ' geberl — that is, 
 strong ; as one of the old lexicographers says, ' Quasi Lat. vir, 
 a viribus dictus.' Now ' ishl lacking a plural of its own 
 (there are only three instances of ' ishim'), and taking it from 
 one of these last mentioned, according to the supposed dif- 
 ference in meaning, which must that be? Certainly geber. 
 Thus ish, 'a man ;' geborei, ' men.' But the fact is just the 
 reverse: it is ish, ' a man,' anashini (the plural oienosJi, ' feeble'), 
 
 * men.' Is it not a wonder that this alone, so plain, has not
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC. 175 
 
 long ago shown the mistake ? Then also ish is very early 
 (Exod. XXV. 20, etc.), and not by some late figure of speech, 
 used of individual things, thus showing plainly that its 
 primary thought is of mere individuality, and not of honour. 
 
 And as to this very point of the more ancient and 
 primary meaning, the remarkable saying of Balaam : ' God 
 is not a man, that He should lie ; or the son of man, that He 
 should repent' (Numb, xxiii. 19) is most worthy of notice. 
 This prophet represents, not merely the Hebrew of the 
 Israelites in Moses' day, but the common speech of these 
 people of the East, from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean. 
 What he says is therefore a very curious and precious relic 
 for the study of early language. [I am well aware that those 
 who can see nothing which does not favour their theories 
 may say that this is merely the diction of the historian 
 recording a fact (even if they will admit it to be such) in 
 his own language, and, as some of them will boldly insist, 
 many ages after the supposed occurrence. Nevertheless, it 
 is worthy of study in this connection by all those who are 
 simply in search of truth.] Both the words in question are 
 used in the original, thus : ' God is not ish (a man), that He 
 should lie ; . . . or the son of Adam, that He should repent,' 
 etc. Can any sort of consistency be shown between this 
 use of the words and the notion in question ? 
 
 As for the passages first noted (Ps. xlix. 2, Ixii. 9 ; 
 Isa. ii. 9, V. 15, xxxi. 8), we have only to read the 
 original in the light of what we have now seen, and it all 
 appears a natural poetical amplification ; as if they were 
 thus rendered : * Both man and mortal, both rich and poor ;' 
 ' Surely mortals are vanity, and the sons of Adam are a lie,' 
 etc. ' The man boweth down ; the mortal humbleth himself,' 
 etc. Indeed, the very last of the passages (Isa. xxxi. 8), 
 carefully studied, would bring out its really powerful sense 
 much more clearly by this change : ' Then shall Assyria 
 fall by the sword, not of a mortal ; and the sword, not 
 of a man, shall devour it : but it shall flee from the sword,' 
 etc. The Prophet declares that God will overthrow that 
 terrible nation, but not by the sword of human war, as 
 wicked Judah was ambitious to accomplish this by alliance 
 with heathen Egypt, but by inward terrors of soul. The
 
 176 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 translation, as we now have it, is an (^////-climax, an absurd 
 repetition in weaker form, ' not of a mighty man, not of a 
 mean man.' 
 
 If a devout reader, whether a Hebrew scholar or one to 
 whom the English Bible is his only resource, merely follows 
 the rendering in question, he may silence his disappointment, 
 and with ingenious zeal try to frame one or another account 
 of what this transition from the ' mighty man ' to the ' mean 
 man' can mean here. But if he had been carried along by 
 the mighty poetry and piety of the Prophet in all this 
 rebuke of the impious ambition and presumption of his own 
 people (beginning with the thirtieth chapter, ' Woe to the 
 rebellious people,' etc.), and his abhorrence of the alliance of 
 the Egyptians, yet with a vision of the High and Holy One 
 overthrowing the common terrible enemy, he could not 
 but be perplexed when he came to this sentence. He would 
 naturally say to himself, ' If the sword of the mighty man 
 will not avail, and must not be trusted in, what need to 
 repeat this as to help from a mean man ? If that terrible 
 power of battle which certainly will destroy Assyria is not 
 the " mighty man's," whether Egyptian or Jew, why should 
 the Prophet fear that I might yet give the honour to " a 
 mean man " instead of to my God ? ' The moment, however, 
 that this is seen to be simply an amplifying repetition of the 
 same thought, all is natural and powerful as before.^ 
 
 This correction was due to simple truth, in so great a 
 matter as the right rendering of some of the most important 
 words in the Book of God. But it has,' besides this, an 
 important bearing upon our view of these great events at 
 ' the beginning.' It removes what would be a puzzle of the 
 history, if so glorious a personal name as that of the only 
 one of us all who was once perfect, as made in the very 
 ' image of God,' should have come to be a term of contempt. 
 (Very contrary would this have been also to all the thought 
 and usage of patriarchal times). It ought to be well 
 weighed as one of the marks of superior antiquity in the 
 Hebrew, that it almost alone (in the other Eastern languages 
 not near so plainly) preserves the personal name which 
 
 * Only here, at last, the ' Revision ' seems to catch a glimpse of this error, and 
 attempt to correct it, but only with a false plural of QTX-
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC. 177 
 
 God gave to man at his creation. This may seem ridiculous 
 to some, but it must be quite otherwise to Christians. We 
 all accept this as the Divine Genesis ; and even no theory 
 of an 'allegory' here requires us to doubt the genuineness 
 of the name Adcwi. 
 
 We may return, then, to the use of these two words in 
 the primitive language, unhampered by the artificial notion 
 which has here been disproved, and which indeed could be 
 convicted of absurdity by this first use of them. Imagine 
 Adam, alone upon the earth, calling himself ' zs/i,' as not one 
 of the common people, and this to the disparagement of his 
 own proper name ! Or if this be explained as a later change, 
 then the proper name was chosen in disparagement. 
 
 There was another and greater name in his language. 
 There was a person, whom he knew personally, who was more 
 to him (and so the knowledge of that other more to him) than 
 himself This paradox indeed could be true only of the One 
 by Whom and for Whom he was made. But of Him it is 
 certainly true, as any careful thought about this creation in 
 the image and for the love of God would show us, and as 
 we also know by His Word, that (according to that deep 
 saying of i St. John iv. 7) * Every one that loveth is born 
 of God, and knoweth God,' and v. 20, ' This is the true God, 
 and eternal life,' and as in his Gospel he repeats the very 
 words of Our Lord (xvii. 3) as to those who by His redemp- 
 tion regain what was lost in Paradise, ' And this is life 
 eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and 
 Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast sent' 
 
 This had been already briefly noticed when the dis- 
 cussion of the 'beginning of language' necessarily inter- 
 vened. But it needs now to be thoroughly considered. To 
 all appearance nothing could be more plainly self-evident 
 than that to love any one we must have some personal 
 knowledge of him, and that only a person can be really 
 loved. We have but to think of loving what we know 
 cannot know of our love, or have any thought of it, what 
 has no thinking existence, no memory or affection of its own 
 to recognise or return ours, to feel that this is impossible. 
 And so no one who does not believe that there is such a 
 great and glorious Person ever speaks of loving Him, or 
 
 M
 
 178 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION 
 
 urges this upon others as their duty. (The transcendental 
 and rhapsodical discourse of Spinoza is, in fact, no excep- 
 tion to this.) 
 
 It is true that some men now, who have a sort of profes- 
 sion or opinion that ' there is a God,' question whether He 
 is ' a Person.' As to some such there is ground for doubt 
 whether it is a genuine and serious question with them, and 
 not merely a matter of puzzling others by argument, for 
 their own entertainment or ambition. But granting the 
 actual doubt to any now, it evidently did not trouble the 
 two in Paradise. Not that they were persuaded out of it 
 by a metaphysical argument ; for instance, that first they 
 believed tJieviselves to be persons, by their consciousness of 
 thinking, remembering, choosing, and the like ; and therefore 
 thought it not unreasonable that the Maker of all was 
 such also, etc., but because at once, and as a matter of 
 course, in knowing God they knew that He was a Person. 
 That they were persons too, was rather the . secondary 
 thought, and an inferior reflection of the great idea of Him. 
 I am persuaded that the dimness and confusion of meta- 
 physics in all this arises from the blind reversing of the 
 actual process of our thoughts. We do not naturally begin 
 with thinking about ourselves, and of God afterwards, by 
 musing over ' consciousness,' etc. But (and with the first two 
 persons all thought was more wholesome and really natural) 
 our thought in healthful nature goes out first toward others — 
 and first of all toward Him Who is the First and the Last, 
 by Whom all things, including ourselves, exist and consist. 
 So evidently it was with the first human thought. It is this 
 morbid bent of our present selfish condition which argues 
 about these things in ' philosophy ' in the reverse way. (This 
 is also involved in the Divine saying that ' The fear of the 
 Lord is the beginning of wisdom.') 
 
 It may be, though that is not so certain, that the meta- 
 physical process is a needful medicine now for some be- 
 wildered souls, to help them back to a healthy faith. But 
 even then it no more proves that every soul of us must be 
 dosed with these toxological preparations (as, e.g.. Dr. 
 Mozley's paper in Faith and Free Thought would seem to 
 imply) than some men's need of strychnia proves that it
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC. 179 
 
 ought to be used by all. Still less does it impair at all the 
 evidence of this simple truth of primitive religion, that man 
 then knew God with entire faith and love. 
 
 As thus known to be Eternal and Almighty, He was 
 indeed to them beyond all comprehension and reasoning ; 
 but the truth was all the more reasonable for that. For if 
 He were not all that, He would not be God at all. This first 
 truth was that God was the incomparable and all-including 
 glory and beauty ; that He was all purity and truth and love ; 
 that He was their joy and life, their hope and love ; that 
 to know anything which He wished became at once a great 
 joy in doing it with love. So that a ' new commandment' 
 was a new honour and delight. 
 
 For such a religion, language was as necessary as thought 
 or memory. To say nothing of addressing Him with praise 
 and prayer, they must 'speak often one to another' about 
 Him. The very first words, then, would be His Names. 
 (That there should be more than one such is according to 
 the nature of all love, which finds pleasure in new terms 
 of affection.) 
 
 Certainly to love a person, some name for that person 
 seems indispensable. And surely two persons could not 
 express to one another their common devotion to a third 
 without any name for Him. Indeed it is quite inconceivable 
 that God, giving a language to the first of our race, along 
 with knowledge of Himself, and of their supreme duty to 
 love Him, should not have made His Own blessed and 
 beloved Name one of the first terms of that language. This 
 alone would be in accord with that great principle of the 
 true religion, which runs all through the Holy Scriptures, by 
 which the 'Name of the Lord thy God' is so great a thing 
 for each soul of us. Without it, even in this simple history 
 of Paradise, how could we have Eve saying, ' God hath said,' 
 etc. ? (iii. 3.) 
 
 These facts should suggest much to those who delight in 
 the study of words, their changes and changed applications, 
 as being full of the traces of history. For neglect of this 
 some Christians now receive as truth in their reading what 
 some say of all the Divine Names being only very late appro- 
 priations of words long first used for objects of sense. Of
 
 i8o BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 course this cannot be true if, as already shown, man was to 
 begin with a pure and true religion. When those confident, 
 and, in some things, ingenious writers begin to tell us that 
 the words long used for ' air,' or ' sky,' or ' fire ' are at length 
 taken to represent the idea, first dawning upon human in- 
 telligence, of something to be worshipped, I look for proof 
 on their part that some Names of God have not been in use 
 by men before that. But I never see any such proof or 
 any attempt at it. 
 
 Yet why not ? Why should I accept this (as it seems to 
 me now) new and false notion, as soon as it is proposed to 
 me, without something to remove my former firm conviction } 
 The older belief not only commcxids itself to all my best 
 thoughts, but rests, as I suppose, upon a ground of certain 
 history. How can I at once substitute the other opinion 
 without some reason given } Is it because a resemblance 
 can be noticed between the earliest words for air and sky 
 and God ? or between those for zuiiid and spirit ? But for 
 all that, why may I not as reasonably suppose the last-men- 
 tioned thoughts to be first in time, and that if we are sure 
 (which indeed no one can be) that the one was transferred 
 to the other, the process was not the exact reverse of what 
 has been so much assumed .-' Take thus the term for spirit 
 (in either of the most ancient languages), the invisible person 
 that knows, thinks, remembers, and loves ; that we find this 
 word in use also for breath or wind is to me plainly the 
 secondary or derived meaning, so applied because the breath, 
 as invisible, represents the life, and the wind too, like spirit, 
 is mighty though unseen. 
 
 The other could be true only if we were certain that the 
 first generations of men had no religious knowledge or 
 thought whatever. But we know that the exact reverse of 
 this is true. Therefore we may be fairly sure that among 
 the first words uttered or understood by Adam were those 
 for ' spirit,' ' heaven,' ' love,' and the great Names ' El,' or 
 ' Elohim,' and ' Jehovah.' That the former of these Holy 
 Names, surviving also with its cognates in several other 
 Oriental languages, has the adjective meaning of ' mighty ' is 
 a like transfer of thought (just as we have the English word 
 ' godlike '), because God is the Mighty One. Of this we have
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC. i8i 
 
 even a strong suggestion in the phrase in the later Hebrew 
 by which a great object is sometimes described : ' a trembHng 
 of God' (A.V. 'a very great trembling'), 'a cedar of God' 
 (A.V. 'a goodly cedar'), i Sam. xiv. 15 ; Ps. Ixxx. 10. So 
 also the great Name, commonly rendered in English 'Jehovah,' 
 about the etymology of which much discussion and many 
 different theories have been made, is best taken as primary, 
 and the verb 'to be ' as rather its derivative, He being the 
 One absolute and self-existent Being. (After attentively 
 considering the other and later conjectures as to the mean- 
 ing of that most august word, I recur to this as the true 
 one, as so revealed to us in Exod. iii. 13-15 : 'I AM THAT 
 I AM,' ' I AM hath sent me unto you,' etc. See the admir- 
 able note of Bishop Patrick on this passage.) It may be 
 that even ' Baal' was at first one of the names of worship in 
 true religion, and afterwards perverted to the false. Its uses 
 in Chaldee, Phoenician, and Arabic accord with this sugges- 
 tion, as well as its later Hebrew significations, first of master, 
 and later of husband ; for those lexicographers who reverse 
 this order seem evidently mistaken. It is even used of the 
 Holy One by one of the prophets (Nahum i. 2), where He 
 is described as ' Baal-hemath,' ' a Lord of wrath ' (A.V. ' is 
 furious'). We may, I think, be sure that if the word had 
 never been used in religion, except as to false and vile 
 worship, its use as to the One, Only, and Most Holy God 
 would have been avoided with abhorrence. 
 
 (But compare with this Professor M. Miiller's remarks 
 [ What can India teach us f] about ' I AM' as being the inven- 
 tion of his 'proto- Aryans' through countless ages. 'What 
 would other languages give for such a pure concept as " I 
 AM " ? No work of art has required greater effort than this 
 little word I AM.' He seems to know so little of the Holy 
 Writings of his own religion that he is entirely unaware that 
 'I AM' was said by the One God Himself to Moses, ages 
 before the first word of Sanscrit was written ; and then, as a 
 long-used form of speech, which He now referred to a Name 
 of Himself used in true religion for thousands of years before, 
 and, in fact, given directly to man at first as a part of his 
 primitive religion and language. 
 
 It is not strange, then, that we have this learned scholar
 
 1 82 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 'walkino- on in the vain shadow' of his self-confidence, and 
 exclaiming : ' This is what I call history in the true sense 
 of the word;' and afterward telling us that when all this 
 wonderful knowledge began to dawn upon him, 'all one's 
 ideas of Adam and Eve, and the Paradise, and the tower of 
 Babel, and Shem, Ham, and Japhet, etc., seemed to be whirl- 
 ing round and round, until at last one picked up the frag- 
 ments, and tried to build a new world, and to live with a new 
 historic consciousness.' Alas ! that is so with many beside 
 himself now. But let us rather turn from these vain imagin- 
 ings to the old world which God built, and to His Word as 
 the true and certain history of it.) 
 
 As to the alleged discovery by Astruc in the last century, 
 — of the Genesis, and, in fact, all the Book of Moses, not to 
 say the entire Old Testament, being made up of 'Elohistic' 
 and ' Jehovistic' parts, to be entirely distinguished as to author- 
 ship, age, etc., by wise criticism, — this may be the most appro- 
 priate place to speak of it. After a careful scrutiny of what 
 has been said to this effect, and reading all these Scriptures 
 through with an eye to seeing what may be naturally 
 observed of the kind, my own judgment is that almost all 
 this so-called criticism is altogether artificial and far-fetched. 
 In fact, these two great Names of God are used by almost all 
 the Scripture writers, often in the same sentence ; nor can any 
 fair inference be drawn from them as to the time of any 
 particular writing. The early parts of Genesis, in reading 
 which Astruc is said to have fallen upon this discovery, may 
 be from more than one hand. But if so, the only fair infer- 
 ence is that they are of even much greater antiquity than 
 Moses. They may be surviving parts of the first word of 
 God to Adam, passing down in exact verbal tradition 
 through the patriarchs, each devout father carefully printing 
 them upon the memory of his descendants. Such things 
 have been even in later ages, and were more likely still in 
 those days. They may have been even written down by 
 those prophets of God (for we do 7iot know that writing was 
 not known by them long before what we know positively of 
 it), and preserved by Abraham's family, until Moses should 
 begin this sacred history by an inspiration which assured 
 him of the perfect truth of that earlier history. There is
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC. 183 
 
 nothing in his words which contradicts this or suggests such 
 contradiction. 
 
 This is far more rational than to fancy them parts of that 
 'wisdom of the Egyptians' in which he was learned. Let us 
 leave the French physician to his, we may presume, well- 
 deserved eminence in the specialty by which he is known to 
 his own profession, and not follow him as a newer Moses in 
 this fanciful exodus from that received historic sense of the 
 Word of God, which its true 'Witness and Keeper' has held 
 for now more than 3000 years. 
 
 Another part of Adam's knowledge was that God was 
 the Creator of him and of all else. We may reasonably 
 suppose that this revelation to him was in substance what 
 we have in the first two chapters of Genesis. Professor 
 Tyndall and others not infrequently speak of any such 
 'cosmogony' being an evident impertinence in a book of 
 religion. Not so. If they looked deeper they would see 
 that any religion which does not contain an account of ' the 
 beginning' is essentially defective. It is a needful part of 
 man's equipment for his ' duty toward God.' By a necessary 
 instinct of this, or rather a clouded reminiscence of that first 
 lit knowledge, all other ancient books of religion contain such 
 ' cosmogonies.' The difference is that they are childish, and 
 evidently false ; that in this Genesis is sublime and most 
 worthy of the faith of every man, though he may choose to 
 despise it. That it is any annoyance to later science should 
 be a suggestion by the same deeper thought of the defects of 
 that science, and of the reverent caution with which it should 
 at any time approach the confines of religion. And if this 
 in the Book of Moses troubles any scientific men now, what 
 must be the disgust of them all for the Vedas, the Zend, etc. 
 Yet some of them show much more respect for the so-called 
 ' Scriptures' of the Hindus and ancient Persians than for 
 the true Word of God which their education as Christians 
 puts in their hands. 
 
 Try and imagine the history in Genesis not to mean that 
 this wonderful story of the Creation was given to the first 
 man. Suppose it (according to the careless notion to which 
 our age seems wholly given) to have been kept from human 
 knowledge until Moses was inspired to write these words.
 
 1 84 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 But why then, if never before? Why to only a hundredth 
 part of the human race, to be locked up among one small 
 people for 1500 years more, while forty or fifty generations 
 of as many other nations should have come and gone on the 
 earth before this began to be told to the rest (and has not 
 yet after another as long period reached the greater part of 
 them) ? And what of the first man (and his descendants) 
 for two or three thousand years ? Was he indeed made to 
 know God, and to love Him supremely — yet without any 
 information (which was to be given to his remote descend- 
 ants) of how he himself, and the world and stars around him, 
 had come to be ? Could he know God without knowing Him 
 as the Creator ? And if he was told that much, why not 
 with all that information of what had just ushered him into 
 being, which we now have in the Book ? All this implies 
 plainly that God gave this knowledge to Adam as a part of 
 his religion. We do not get these thoughts at all from the 
 poetic fancies of Milton, as some are so fond of scornfully 
 telling us.^ They are much older than he ; simpler, but 
 really much more beautiful, as the pure truth, which God was 
 pleased to tell us all, without the sometimes glaring colours 
 and artificial forms (to say nothing of the absurd heathen 
 classic allusions) in which his splendid fancy dresses them, 
 with its wonderful richness of sublime words in exquisite 
 melody of verse. 
 
 That very poem of old Caedmon — the resemblance of 
 which to the later Paradise Lost is so striking that we 
 cannot help thinking it must have been read by Milton, as 
 some suggest — is but one instance of the ancient common 
 sense of both Israelite and Christian in understanding what 
 we are taught in the Genesis of the condition of the first 
 man, and his knowledge of the Creation. 
 
 This revelation to Adam is involved in the incident of 
 the animals being brought to him to be named, as also of 
 the other things which ' God said ' to him (see Gen. 
 i. 28-30, ii. 16, etc., iii. i. 5, etc.) And his understanding of 
 
 1 Milton is not the inspired authority for religious doctrine, or for moral or 
 political truth. He was a great poet, but certainly a man with the prejudices of 
 his party and his age, and yet no little of the presumptuous self-confidence in 
 his own opinions which characterises the worst side of our own times.
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS- HEBREW, ETC. 185 
 
 ' Creation' we must suppose to have been that of all believers 
 in this Book from the first, as that all else beside God owes 
 its existence entirely to His Will. This has always been 
 one of the clearest lines of distinction between the Divine 
 doctrine of Creation and any heathen or infidel theory of 
 ' emanation,' or of an equally eternal pre-existent matter, 
 upon which the Divine power is only exerted in giving 
 form. I can but regret that a Christian writer like Dr. J. H. 
 Gladstone, and in the very act of defending the Christian 
 faith against opposers (see 'Points,' etc., in FaitJi and Free 
 Thought), should (at least seem to) give countenance to the 
 latter notion, under the pressure of Mr. Darwin's theory of 
 * evolution.' Such is the effect of his criticism upon the 
 meaning of the Hebrew word '■ bara' (created), in which he 
 sets aside its well-established primary sense of ' to cause 
 that to exist which had no being whatever before ' (' out of 
 nothing,' does not do justice to the idea ; for it seems to 
 imply that nothing is some sort of material used in the 
 work). He gives for this the very insufficient reason that 
 he * has failed to discover any philological reason ' for the 
 ancient meaning. 
 
 What an overturning of all facts as to words would such 
 a method conduct us to ! That a word, after at least three 
 or four thousand years of accepted use in a distinct primary 
 sense, should be removed from that by some critic of another 
 race and language, because he ' fails to discover any philo- 
 logical reason ' for that meaning, is astonishing in itself That 
 this is the primary verb in God's Word about * the begin- 
 ning,' and witnessed to in this sense by all ages of God's 
 Church, of which he himself is a member, increases the 
 strangeness. Shall we reverse the sense of ' love,' or of any 
 other primary word, because we ' fail to discover philological 
 reasons ' for the old meaning .'' 
 
 That in other passages secondary or figurative uses of 
 the term appear does not touch that primary meaning. 
 This is just as true of ' create ' in English — though we all 
 know that its primary sense in our language (even if that 
 were the statement of an unreal and impossible thing) is 
 to cause that to exist which had no existence before. Yet 
 it will be sometimes said that one man is the ' creature ' of
 
 i86 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 another, and the like. The true meaning of ' create ' has no 
 more to do with the idea that after the ' beginning ' God 
 retired from His power, and left all this to move of itself 
 as an automatic machine, than the other. In truth, it is 
 more contrary to it.^ In a profound sense He is always 
 creating all things as much as then ; our idea of time past 
 is only one of the limits and conditions of human thought, 
 and does not apply to Him. 
 
 If Dr. Gladstone does not mean to imply favour to the 
 notion of eternally existing matter, that surely should have 
 been distinctly said. The other impression will be left upon 
 the minds of every class of readers, whether inclined or 
 otherwise to receive that notion. It seems quite out of the 
 question to accept the theory of ' evolution' (not merely the 
 fact that God does some things by processes of time — as 
 we know He does with the successive generations of men, 
 etc., — but that of the ' universal law ' so called, like that of 
 * gravitation,' that all variety of life and being is one con- 
 tinued and developing process, of which we can know 
 neither beginning nor end), and believe that God alone is 
 self-existent, and all else His will and work. 
 
 He does not find in any of the uses of bara ' any sug- 
 gestion that the Divine action was exerted upon nothing.' 
 One might think with a smile that this very statement 
 answers itself But perhaps he is a little confused by the 
 not infrequent, though, as before observed, needless and 
 really inaccurate statement of Creation as a ' making out of 
 nothing.' No, surely ; the Word of God contains no such 
 absurd suggestion as that ' the Divine action is exerted 
 upon nothing.' But we sometimes in the paucity of our 
 speech, and because we can make anything only out of 
 something already existing, may say this in our effort to 
 describe that most transcendent wonder and verity, of God 
 by His Will causing that to be which had no sort of being 
 until then. That truth, indeed, alone accords with our best 
 and deepest thought about these things, and is really the 
 only alternative of atheism. 
 
 If our own ' philological reasons ' are not quieted by all 
 this proof of what bara actually means, the judgment of 
 
 ^ See ' T/ic Reign of God,' etc., by T. S. B., chap. xi. p. iSo, anil/<xfw«.
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS-HEBREW, ETC. 187 
 
 Gesenius most distinctly, for the old received meaning (and 
 his bias was not at all ' theological,' but decidedly ' rational- 
 istic'), might be wisely allowed to do so. History ought to 
 go for something in such a question. And its voice is the 
 same through all the ages. Take, for one instance of this, 
 the sublime praise of the Eternal Lord by the hero, king, poet, 
 and prophet in Ps. xxxi. : ' By the word of the Lord were the 
 heavens made. . . . For He spake, and it was done,' etc. 
 And for another, the words of St. Ambrose {^De Sac. lib. iv. 
 chap. 4) in comment upon this : 'Jussit Dominus et factum 
 est coelum ; jussit Dominus et facta est terra. ... Si ergo 
 tanta vis est in sermone Domini et inceperunt esse quae non 
 erant. . . . Coelum non erat ; . . . sed audi decretum David. 
 Ipse dixit et facta sunt ; ipse mandavit et creata sunt.' So 
 too Tertullian, the whole of whose book Against Herniogenes 
 is to this effect ; Irenaeus, Against Heresies^ bk. ii. chap. 
 10. In fact, most of the Christian writers of the first five 
 centuries have occasion to mention this doctrine of Creation 
 as opposed to those of Pagans, philosophers, or heretics — of 
 a pre-existent matter, out of which the world was formed. 
 Greatest of all such instances, that article of the Nicene 
 Creed, ' Maker of all things, visible and invisible,' which was 
 always understood to declare that God alone was self-exist- 
 ent, and all else what He brought into existence by His 
 sole Will and according to His sole 'good pleasure.' 
 
 And without this revelation to Adam we are utterly un- 
 able to account for the remarkable traces of it which are to 
 be found in the remains of the Chaldees, Phoenicians, Persians, 
 Egyptians — indeed, of the most widely scattered races of the 
 earth, — even some of the North and South American tribes. 
 (See Faber, Origin of Pagan Idolatry, \. 103, 104, 201-253 ; ii. 
 1 30- 1 5 7') Lenormant {Orighies de I'/iistoire, etc., Paris, 1 880, 
 pp. 38, 42-47, 49, 58, 59, 62, 67, 71, 101-118, etc.) also gives 
 a very interesting account of these, collected from Berosus, 
 George Smith, Oppert, Brundeleschi, the Zend, etc. These 
 legends are very defective, and much disfigured and changed 
 for the worse. But there is no mistaking their connection 
 with the Divine story of Creation. They certainly were 
 not taken from the Book of Moses (though some Christian 
 scholars once could only draw that inference). Evidently,
 
 1 88 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 then, they are fragments of the common tradition from the 
 first man, who could know the same only by revelation from 
 God. 
 
 What he knew and thought of all around him was thus a 
 part of his religion. Evidently it was not precisely what 
 men now think of ' Nature ' — either the least or the most 
 intelligent of them. But it does not follow, as a matter of 
 course, that this thought was of an inferior kind, or may not 
 have been much more true and great than that of even the 
 latter class. True, he knew nothing of a ' Nature,' but only 
 of the vast, glorious, and multitudinous creation around him, 
 as ' the works of God.' ' Nature,' as ail of our books and talk 
 and thought are full of it now, is in fact — and, strange as it 
 may seem at first — entirely artificial. It is an abstraction, 
 for which the speech of man at first contained no term. 
 Because he never observed the world outside of himself.' — 
 and it was only after ages of intellectual improvement that 
 he began to do so. By no means. For, beside the im- 
 possibility of such inattention of men to what was all around 
 them, not only do some of great name now tell us that men 
 began their religion with ' Nature-worship,' but certainly the 
 true worshippers of God were, as it is now often expressed, 
 'great observers of Nature.' Witness many of the Psalms 
 of David, etc. Yet they say nothing of ' Nature,' and have 
 no equivalent word for what w^e thus speak of continually. 
 This idea, therefore, is a later invention of men, and there- 
 fore, as I have said, artificial. 
 
 The earlier conception, in its purest form, was of all this 
 vast array of matter and life, this world, and the far-off sun, 
 moon, and stars, as ' the works of God.' Afterwards it was 
 more or less confounded with the Divine Power itself. Our 
 later men of science in general treat this all as a lower stage 
 of human intelligence, which they call the ' religious period.' 
 But as regards all these ideas, we are too hasty if we apply 
 their tests to the first man in his innocence. May we not 
 now be at our best rather struggling upward to regain what 
 was then lost intellectually as well as spiritually, than by so 
 much in advance of the first man proportionally as to time 
 as we are above the early Greeks > Indeed, may not our 
 prevailing thought in this boasted escape from the ' religious
 
 PRIMITIVE iVORDS— HEBREW, ETC. 189 
 
 stage ' be less true even than theirs — in this, that a mistaken 
 application of power in ' Nature ' to false gods is wiser than 
 any view of it in which, while we wisely reject false religion, 
 the true God is not seen at all, or, at least, very feebly and 
 rarely ? 
 
 And this is implied in the common speech, not only of 
 the anti-Christians, but of us all in Christendom, about 
 ' Nature' ' doing ' this and that : ' choosing,' ' providing,' etc., 
 being ' irresistibly powerful,' having ' laws, which cannot 
 be disobeyed with impunity,' and which even ' reign ' over 
 us and all else. 
 
 Of all this Adam evidently had no idea whatever. To 
 his healthful and powerful mind what we call ' Nature' was 
 what God had made, and was perpetually doing around him, 
 in a vast (and yet most complicated) order, which might 
 employ him, and those after him for ages, in learning it with 
 delight, and with increasing admiration and adoration of 
 the Maker, and in accumulating this knowledge. We cannot 
 reasonably conceive of his then thinking the world around 
 him to have become what it was by a vast process of im- 
 measurably slow degrees. For instance, when he afterwards 
 observed the growth of trees, and recalled these words of 
 the revelation, ' whose seed is in itself,' his thought would be 
 that this related only to the continual reproduction of such 
 plants, as the first grew old and decayed. If it meant that 
 the very first plants began their life in that way of ' develop- 
 ment ' from the little seed, the formula would have been : 
 ' the seed, whose tree is in itself Yet this is what is coming 
 to be insisted upon as certain ' science,' to which the Divine 
 words must be subjected, or rejected. 
 
 Is it a more rational thought for 21s, because some very 
 ingenious persons of our day have traced out a multitude 
 of instances, in which all indications point one way, namely 
 that everything is moving slowly from the less perfect to 
 the more complicated and complete ? But is this even now 
 a natural and true thought ? Do we in beholding a great 
 oak, with all its wealth of limbs and leaves, its broad bulk 
 and shade, and a great corresponding part beneath the soil 
 and out of sight, of which we also know — do we then at once 
 of necessity think of this as developed from an acorn, —
 
 I90 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 perhaps the hundred milHonth of it in bulk ? Is not the 
 more ready and rational thought that the acorn is a little 
 part of what proceeds from the oak ? Would Adam, after 
 he had lived long enough to witness the process of growth 
 from the seed to the full-grown tree, have thought of the 
 first oak as having begun in that way? If this had been 
 suggested to him, would he not have rejected it as revers- 
 ing the real order ? Is it not for us, when we insist upon 
 this, a morbid process of thought, rather than a natural 
 and healthful one ? In regard to the vision of ' Nature,' 
 compare Adam and the most admired naturalist of our 
 day — say Mr. Charles Darwin. Suppose the former alone 
 upon the earth, endowed not only with the knowledge 
 and love of God in perfect innocence, but also with all 
 the intellectual penetration, patience of investigation, and 
 entire devotion to the pursuit of truth ascribed to the 
 latter by his greatest admirers (and even fully accorded 
 to him by me, so far as is compatible with my conviction 
 as to his actual erroneous method of thought about these 
 things, which necessarily arises from failing to see and love 
 the glorious God above all in them all). Suppose also, for 
 the sake of the illustration, that he was in possession of all 
 the accumulated observations of facts by other men, with 
 which Mr. Darwin started in his researches ; and that to this 
 first man, not as yet directly told anything of the Creation, 
 had been presented in contrast, and for his choice, the two 
 ideas — the one, that as this great oak had grown to maturity 
 before his eyes from the little acorn, so the entire world, with 
 all its variety, had ' evolved ' by correspondingly vast lapses 
 of time, from the simplest existence ; the other, that the 
 Creator, by His personal Will and word, had directly 
 caused this vast complication to be, with its march of power 
 and life, and its processes of incessant reproduction ; the 
 tree with ' its seed within itself '—not the seed with the tree 
 within it ; that precisely in this sense ' He spake, and it was 
 done.' I think that in this case Adam would reject the 
 former idea as false and unwholesome, coming from some 
 suggestion of darkness and unhappiness, and accept the 
 other as the simple and beautiful truth. I suppose that the 
 clear, healthful intelligence of the knowledge and love of
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC. 191 
 
 God would so illuminate the whole matter that this would 
 seem at once the true choice. 
 
 And in like manner, if Mr. Darwin had begun and 
 pursued his studies, with all his own actual advantages, but 
 also in the position of Adam, as to knowing and loving God 
 perfectly, he would have seen and announced the same con- 
 clusion, and for the same reason. As it is, all such research 
 and reasoning is carried on now upon no such firm ground 
 of truth, but, as it were, while drifting upon a restless sea of 
 imperfect knowledge, with an unseen current setting away 
 from the truth as to God, the consequence of the universal 
 loss of perfect love to Him. Unless this ' leeway' be allowed 
 for in all our calculations of the results of our thinking, it 
 will make these results untrustworthy. 
 
 One or two questions will assist us further in a fair 
 judgment between these. Did these supposed achievements 
 of truth, which set aside the older belief as to Creation, ever 
 proceed, in the first instance, from those in whose minds this 
 true thought and love of God was fixed as the primary and 
 supreme truth? If the truth, it is to just such persons that 
 we would be likely to owe its discovery. Is each one of its 
 discoverers and first maintainers pre-eminently a religious 
 person (not merely not an aggressively irreligious one, an 
 express rejector of the Christian faith) — one who, in his 
 ' passionate' (if we like that word) love of truth, is so far from 
 blindness or indifference to the brightest and largest truth 
 that any one of us can apprehend, that he steadily gives 
 to it its supreme proportionate place ?^ If not, he is not 
 — and no combination of other qualities can make him — a 
 safe guide to others in such great matters as how we shall 
 understand the very Word of God about Creation, or such 
 suggestions about it as we might wisely gather from the 
 facts around us. To follow such leading would be a plain 
 instance of another great saying of the Light of the world : 
 ' If the blind lead the blind, they shall both fall into the 
 ditch.' 
 
 Thus while all we really learn and know of these things 
 now should promote in us an adoring love of God, as 
 
 ' Every Christian acknowledges this to be a voice of supreme authority : 
 ' Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice ' (St. John xviii. 37).
 
 192 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 before shown, we may be certain that the first of our kind 
 were directly taught at their creation the two great com- 
 mandments of love, as including all they ought to do. But 
 we may either suppose this all that was told them of their 
 duty — they to apply it to each occasion by their thoughts, — 
 or we may suppose they also had some more particular 
 instructions as to different duties. The latter is more 
 according to our present experience and to all history 
 from just after this. Yet we must be careful in applying 
 that as the measure of the state of innocence, and not be too 
 confident in any inferences from the comparison. To man- 
 kind, as they now are, many commands of God have been 
 given, which (especially some that say, ' Thou shalt noi^ 
 etc.) could not have precisely applied to primitive innocence. 
 Others would have had no meaning, then, for the two who 
 were alone together in the world. Yet the subsequent 
 Divine History, as we may understand it by the Gospel, is 
 the only true guide as to this, — the suggestion and the limit 
 of all our conjectures. 
 
 There was certainly one such specific commandment 
 given to them, and, singularly enough, that is both one 
 which merely forbids the doing a certain thing, and not 
 one which, according to what we know of our nature, would 
 by the best natural thought have appeared to be duty. That 
 is, it is rather what some call a 'positive' command than a 
 ' natural' duty. It would be but a reverent and judicious 
 caution for us in all reasonings of the kind not to assume 
 with positiveness that there is any less dignity, authority, or 
 essential goodness in any given command of God than any 
 other, because we cannot see in our nature and surroundings 
 the occasion of this duty. From one true point of view we 
 might with reason reverse this order, and suppose that what 
 God commands, which we can fully understand, is not of so 
 high dignity as that w^hich altogether transcends our intelli- 
 gence. We may suppose that the former might have been 
 left to our observation and reasoning, while the latter was 
 quite above these, and absolutely needed a revelation from 
 God. But the wiser way is probably to make no distinction 
 in what God commands. It is His Will, and that is enough 
 for all our loving obedience. There is no higher reason for
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC. 193 
 
 right-doing ; nothing else can increase the goodness of the 
 action. 
 
 For these plain reasons I altogether reject the frequent 
 distinction made in Christian morals of some commands of 
 God being merely 'positive,' and so of inferior force to others, 
 which are ' natural.' Is it not certainly in contradiction of 
 that notion that God gave one such so-called ' positive' 
 commandment first, to be the very chief test of love for 
 Him, and to determine by the action of these first two 
 the spiritual condition and destiny afterwards, not only of 
 themselves, but of all mankind as their descendants? For 
 in any such distinction I suppose that without doubt we 
 should so place this command : ' But of the tree of the 
 knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it : for in 
 the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.' 
 
 The Church of God under the Gospel, and as illuminated 
 by the Holy Ghost, has always held that the Ten Command- 
 ments given to Israel were a general publication of the 
 duties of all men, and do not belong to that part of the law 
 of Moses which was to pass away when Our Lord came. 
 We may therefore most wisely look into them to find what 
 God commanded the first of our race in their innocence, only 
 leaving out from this what belongs evidently to the sinful 
 condition, or not to their actual relations. Thus, as there 
 was then no thought of * other gods,' as there was no image- 
 worship or other superstition, as there were no father nor 
 mother to be honoured or children to honour them, as there 
 was as yet no suggestion or apparent possibility of murder, 
 adultery, or theft, of false witness, or even covetousness, — so 
 we cannot suppose their duty given to them in the form of 
 those Commandments. But we may well think that the 
 obedience, spiritual worship, kindness, justice, purity, and 
 truth, which are the soul, and so the main sense, of all those 
 laws, as Our Lord Himself expressly pointed out, were in 
 words enjoined upon them. That most of the Ten Com- 
 mandments are in the negative form, forbidding acts which 
 had not yet been done, would not of itself decide this — as 
 though no such command could be given until there had 
 been already some instance of the wrong act. The 
 Sovereign Lord might anticipate this, if He so chose, in that 
 
 N
 
 194 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 love and power which are His infinite wisdom, and forbid in 
 advance what had not even yet been thought of. For so 
 in fact He did (as we have noticed already, and will soon 
 have occasion to consider more fully) in one matter, which 
 became the crisis of human destiny. 
 
 There remains, indeed, the Fourth Commandment, which 
 no theorist will suppose to have been 'evolved' from the 
 thoughts of men about their relations. If this was not first 
 given to men by God in words, it was not then given at all. 
 
 And this is exactly what some infer from the facts as 
 they state them, that, as they would say — unlike any other 
 of these ten great laws of God, wh'ch contain the duty of all 
 human souls as such from the first, only republished with 
 special circumstances at the great revelation before Mount 
 Sinai, — this was one of those positive and temporary' institu- 
 tions of the people of Israel, and even less ancient by ten 
 generations than that of circumcision. 
 
 Yet if, upon comparison of it by any with those other 
 Commandments, it docs not seem to them in its nature, like 
 them, one of the universal laws of man, on the other hand, 
 it has this point of superiority to almost all of them, in not 
 being negative. It thus has not in it the slightest sug- 
 gestion of not having been given until after men had begun 
 to ' have other gods,' to murder, and the like. And it has 
 this superiority to the only other positive one of these Com- 
 mandments, that it did not need to wait for the develop- 
 ment of other relations, as of parent and child, like the 
 Fifth, — this, indeed, not as to the details of its observance 
 given at Sinai, but the general principle of a holy seventh 
 part of time. 
 
 If, as is by some argued, this is evidently only one of the 
 particular and temporary institutions of the people of Israel, 
 to separate them from other peoples until the Saviour of all 
 mankind should come, because there is no mention of it in 
 the Divine history until the Exodus, this is not of itself such 
 proof The same might be said of some of the others — 
 certainly of the Third. No one can find the slightest allusion, 
 until after the giving of the law at Sinai, to there being any sin 
 of taking the Name of God in vain. Would we infer from this 
 that it only began to be a sin then, and only as one of those
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC. 195 
 
 '' ordinances' of that people, which were to be 'blotted out' 
 by the Gospel ? 
 
 Certainly not, it might be said, since that is one of the 
 self-evident principles of true religion for all men, whereas 
 the regarding one day more than another is an arbitrary 
 designation. For no principle of piety and no * dictate of 
 conscience' would of itself suggest the distinguishing of 
 every seventh day more than of every second or every 
 tenth — or indeed of any one day more than another, — the 
 perfection of piety being to consecrate all our days alike to 
 God. 
 
 I have already suggested the danger and folly of our 
 distinguishing between any commandments of God, accord- 
 ing to our judgment of the reasonableness of them, or of 
 their being founded in our nature, or the nature of things 
 around us. If His words of command are plain, the 
 supreme law of love then gives them the highest possible 
 authority, whether we 'see a reason' for this or not. What 
 greater possible reason can ' love with all the heart' toward 
 such a Lord have for instant obedience? the great fact 
 being always in our sight that we cannot 'know the mind' 
 of this Lord — what greater reason than His command ? 
 
 As to questions of 'casuistry' — for our duty in a given 
 case of an apparent conflict of God's commandments, — these 
 are rather matters of unprofitable speculation than anything 
 actual. They are quite as likely to appear between two 
 * natural ' duties as between any of them and the ' positive,' 
 so called. The honest soul that means to obey, and asks 
 God for the practical wisdom it ' lacks ' in any such case, 
 will, by this means, succeed far better in the obedience than 
 by making this artificial distinction between His commands. 
 A strong light, but of a different kind from what is often 
 assumed, is thrown upon this by the great saying of Samuel, 
 so often quoted against its plain intention, ' Behold, to obey 
 is better than sacrifice,' etc. (i Sam. xv. 22). 
 
 Without doubt, if this Commandment as to the Sabbath 
 Day stood among the other details of the religion and law 
 of Israel, like that of the seventh year, of the Passover, etc., 
 and without any earlier reference, we would reasonably 
 regard it as we do them. But it does not. And so who-
 
 196 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 ever wishes candidly to ascertain its due place for us in God's 
 Word is bound to consider well these questions, viz., Why was 
 this placed among the 'Ten Sayings,'^ which were first uttered 
 with a very awful voice from the top of the mountain Sinai, 
 covered with black clouds, and every word heard by that vast 
 multitude of some two million people assembled before it ? 
 All those other sayings were, as no one questions, the duties 
 of mankind ' from the beginning.' And not only are they thus 
 distinguished from everything else in that sacred * Law,' in 
 being heard by every one from the voice of God, but also, 
 when these came to be written down for exact and sure 
 transmission to after-time, it is not, like all the rest, by the 
 hand of the great Moses. But it is said again and again 
 that these were written upon tables of stone 'with the 
 finger of God.' ^ It would be a trifling evasion of the 
 plainest words to confound this, as if it were a mere figure of 
 speech, with the writing of the prophet by inspiration. 
 
 Again, when we come to examine the words in detail, 
 we find this distinguished above all the other Command- 
 ments by a reference to * the beginning.' Why is that so ? 
 It is a remarkable fact. It cannot be without any signifi- 
 cance or purpose. It is among the ' things which belong 
 to us,' and are ' revealed ' for duty ; and so it is our right 
 
 ^ Not * Ten Words,' as some affect with great precision to render the term as 
 found, e.g. in Numb, xxxiv, 28, making nonsense of it, as it seems to me. What 
 was uttered from heaven and written on the tables of stone certainly was not 
 ' ten words.' Nor does the term ' deharim ' require to be so translated to be at 
 all accurate. (The Revised Version makes a weak and unwise concession by 
 putting in the margin, « Heb. loords.') It quite corresponds to \670y in Greek ; 
 like it, derived from the verb ' to saj>.' Thus its primary sense is of sentences, 
 propositions, or sayitigs, rather than of the separate words which make them up. 
 Just so the LXX. uses X670S for the Hebrew debar, in the very sentence out of 
 which this question arises (Exod. xxxiv. 28). No doubt it is good English to 
 render it 'the words,' meaning all the words which make up those ten great 
 sayings of God in which He declared His chief Commandments. And so the 
 Greek and Hebrew versions alike repeat the word, where ours uses two 
 different terms ; it might have been (it is not necessary to say, it should have 
 been) thus rendered : ' And He wrote upon the tables the sayings (A.V. words) 
 of the covenant, even the ten sayings ' (A.V. commandments). But the decisive 
 authority is that of Our Lord caUing them ' the Commandments ' (ejroXds).— St. 
 Mark x. 19, etc. 
 
 * Exod. xxxi. 18; Deut. ix. 10 ; also Exod. xxiv. 12, ' WTiich, ' says God, 
 'I have written,' and xxxii. 16, 'and the writing was the writing of God, 
 graven upon the tables.'
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC. 197 
 
 (and our duty) to search out its meaning. I have never 
 seen any attempt to account for this in the reasonings of 
 those who distinguish this one from the rest of the Ten 
 Commandments as a mere Jewish law. 
 
 The record of the wonderful mystery of God resting 
 from His work of creation has this very remarkable fact 
 added, ' And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.' 
 What are we to learn from this revelation to us ? — what that 
 concerns our work and duty ? Whatever we may think of 
 ' the creative days,' for us was now begun the succession of 
 such days and nights as we have had ever since. For 
 God not only to ' bless ' one in seven of them, but to 
 * hallow it,' was to distinguish and consecrate it in some 
 way for us men, to whom He reveals the fact. Thus even 
 for innocent man a frequent division of his days was now 
 established, so that when six had been passed in his 
 ordinary avocations, the next was hallowed and sanctified 
 to God. In some way he was to spend its time more 
 exclusively in the thought of Him than the ordinary days. 
 And so the next day he was to begin his own common 
 life, to be interrupted again by another holy seventh day 
 in its place. Thus, if there were no * Fourth Command- 
 ment,' this passage, standing alone, would suggest to any 
 thoughtful and reverent student of the Book that there 
 was such a primitive institution of a holy seventh day of 
 religion, even if it had been utterly lost in the later corrup- 
 tions. 
 
 And this is the only reasonable way of accounting for 
 the early traditions even among men of false religion 
 of a sacred division of time by seven days (Lenormant, 
 etc.). The particular day may have been lost among them, 
 or even everywhere before Abraham, or while the Israelites 
 were in Egypt (and is, in fact, of impossible certain obser- 
 vation all over the world at the same time, on account of 
 the loss of time as we proceed west), and not literally 
 restored with the law of Moses. But that in no way 
 affects the principle, and the use of it. And now in the 
 Church of God it is fixed for us on a yet higher principle, 
 and by yet higher authority. 
 
 As for the difficulty some find, that no mention of this
 
 198 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 observance is made in the history of the Patriarchs, nothing 
 until the Commandment was given at Sinai, I have already 
 noticed that this is as true, for instance, of the Third. If 
 it be said that there is this great difference, that the keep- 
 ing of every seventh day holy as a part of primitive true 
 religion would have been an observance so frequent that 
 it is more reasonable to expect some mention of it in the 
 details of life of such men as Abraham, and his son and 
 grandson, if not of their ancestors, than any allusion to 
 the sin of blasphemy, — that is a fair suggestion in the com- 
 parison. 
 
 But, on the other hand, let us never forget that faith and 
 reverence are indispensable conditions in our study of the 
 Word of God. This history was not written subject to our 
 criticisms, with a purpose to anticipate and escape all our 
 objections to its details or omissions. It was meant for humble 
 and reverent souls, who might find good discipline for that 
 penitent faith in God even in its silence, when He chose 
 to tell one thing rather than another which we might be 
 curious about. It is not an account of everything that 
 occurred in those 2500 years, but a very brief sketch of so 
 much of the history of mankind for that vast period as He 
 saw best to give, as a preparation for the law of Moses, which 
 was merely a preparation for the Gospel, 1500 years 
 later. When we consider that the history of this vast tract 
 of time is compressed within half the space which the con- 
 cise Tacitus takes to relate that of one hundred years of the 
 Roman Empire, we should not think of demanding such a 
 mention as is in question, as the condition of believing what 
 God has otherwise given us to understand. 
 
 But indeed this historical objection seems to me on other 
 grounds quite mistaken. The keeping a holy rest on the 
 seventh day by the Israelites is distinctly mentioned in the 
 history before the giving of the Ten Commandments, or 
 anything else of the ' Law ;' and all the more conclusively 
 as to this from that mention being incidental. (See Exod. 
 xvi. 22-30.) And in agreement with this, the phraseology 
 of the Fourth Commandment is unlike that of any of the 
 others, in its beginning with the word ' Remember,' — an 
 implication of something well known before. In fact, as we
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC. 199 
 
 have seen already, it has the very earliest and most plain 
 historical mention of them all. 
 
 In the history, when the crowning of the Creation by 
 that of man is complete, we have the record, * And God 
 blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it' This surely is 
 historical. If not, nothing of the Genesis is. That of course 
 is just what the anti-Christian would say. But zve believe 
 the history as the Word of God to us. This, indeed, is not 
 a command of God to men, but it is the record of a fact. 
 Standing there alone, it might be merely a profound mystery, 
 — doubtless, in any case, like all else that is Divine, it does 
 involve a great mystery. But have we any clue why it is 
 ' revealed ' to us ? any connection of it with the life and duty 
 of mankind ? Certainly in the Fourth Commandment — for 
 the Commandment refers itself directly to the mystery ; 
 most certainly in nothing else. The connection of the two 
 is therefore beyond any question. The great fact cited in 
 the Commandment is not by any means something which 
 relates only to Israelites — something connected with their 
 exodus from Egypt, and separation from the rest of man- 
 kind. On the contrary, its occurrence and record are exactly 
 suited to mail as such — to the first of them, just created in the 
 image of God, and all alike who were to come after them. 
 It is therefore most reasonable not to except this one of the 
 Ten Commandments from the others, as regards their being 
 a statement of the duty to God and man of every one of 
 our race, from the beginning to the end. 
 
 Perhaps it would have been made easier for each one of 
 us to believe and obey this (though no one can be sure of 
 that) if there had been mention made of its observance in 
 the history of the Patriarchs. But that cannot change the 
 conclusive probability upon the face of this history, as we 
 have now examined it, that this, like the rest of the Com- 
 mandments, was in substance a part of true religion from the 
 first, not unknown even to the Israelites (though neglected 
 and almost forgotten), as they went out of Egypt after their 
 living for many generations in a ' house of bondage ' and a 
 land of false religion. Then indeed it was, like the others, 
 proclaimed anew, and the additional personal appeal made 
 to this people, that God had instituted the ' remembering ' of
 
 200 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 it (as opposed to the forgetting, and at last utter loss of it, 
 among all other peoples) as a sign and memorial between 
 them and Him. 
 
 Thus, too, at the second proclamation of the Ten Com- 
 mandments forty years after by Moses in the Deuteronomy 
 (v. 12-15), each one of the people is bidden to ' rejuefnber 
 that thou wast a slave in the land of Egypt, and that the 
 Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty 
 hand, and by a stretched-out arm : therefore the Lord thy 
 God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath-day.' It is 
 notable that here the language of the Commandment is 
 changed. It is no longer : ' Remember the Sabbath,' etc. — 
 that is, ' Recall what had begun to be much out of mind,' 
 etc., — but, ' Keep the Sabbath-day,' etc., as they had now 
 been doing steadily for a whole generation. The ' remem- 
 bering' is transferred in the later appeal to their awe of, and 
 their gratitude toward. Him Who had done such great things 
 for them as a people, the very chief of all this being to recall 
 them to His holy Commandments, and to separate them 
 from the false religion of all the rest of the world. 
 
 This is what the history, as God inspired Moses to write 
 it, fairly teaches us. Without doubt, we now have greater 
 teaching yet. That ancient and august covenant of Israel 
 no longer exists for those who had Abraham for their father, 
 much less for us. But that Scripture has been exalted instead 
 of degraded by this. It has their Lord and ours as its Illu- 
 minator, and to Him we must promptly go for the final 
 and best understanding of it. 
 
 Our Lord and Saviour gave great honour to the Ten 
 Commandments. That is their very highest sanction in 
 His Church. So they are recognised by it as His law for 
 all mankind under the Gospel. Now it is to be noted that 
 He made no such distinction of the Fourth from the others, 
 as being inferior to them — only Jewish, and now obsolete, 
 — which has been made by so many Christians in later ages. 
 We have even a saying of His, which to me seems quite 
 decisive against that, in His distinctly assuming authority 
 over it, to decide the details of its observance, without 
 reference to the words in which it was given at Sinai, 
 for nothing else can be fairly made of this : ' The Son of
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC. 201 
 
 man is also Lord of the Sabbath ;' and also at the same 
 time declaring that it ' zvas made for Diafi.' How any of 
 us can interpret this as meaning that it was only a Jewish 
 rite, about to cease with the setting up of this * kingdom of 
 heaven' for all men, I cannot understand. After many 
 times repeated study of the words, I cannot see how they can 
 be fairly understood otherwise than as I have now showed.^ 
 
 And so His Kingdom, as He has been always with 
 it, has used His delegated lordship over these details, in 
 leaving the mere seventh day in numerical order to the un- 
 believing Jews as one of their peculiarities, and using for 
 the hallowed seventh part of time the day of Our Lord's 
 glorious Resurrection. 
 
 It is indeed the same Moses the prophet who records 
 both the Creation and the Commandment. One who could 
 think of him only as of a mere human writer of history 
 might then, if he so pleased, guess that he had made 
 the one to suit the other, i.e. invented the statement in 
 Gen. ii., and inserted it there to accord with and give 
 authority to the Commandment. But we Christians cannot 
 say that. It is not a true thought. We could not, then, any 
 more believe the giving of the Commandment upon his 
 authority. We regard his history as written by him from 
 inspiration of God, Who is therefore the real author of 
 both statements. 
 
 This is equally true whether we treat his account of the 
 Creation and of all before his own time as first placed in 
 his mind by this inspiration at the time of writing, or as 
 coming to him in earlier tradition and records from the 
 first days when God did communicate it to men, and which 
 He kept pure and true, to be thus at last by His inspiration 
 adopted and recorded by His prophet Moses. No sugges- 
 tion of * allegory ' can affect this at all. What does it mean 
 then allegorically ? What is the relation of this allegorical 
 signification to the Commandment ? None can be seriously 
 imagined which does not make the duty in the Command- 
 ment as ancient and as general for all men as their creation. 
 
 ^ See also St. John vii. 22-44, where He seems to imply a greater sanctity 
 and a greater antiquity for the Sabbath than for circumcision, though that is 
 older than Moses.
 
 202 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 This, then, was told to the first of our race in their 
 glorious innocence and love of God, as one part of their 
 religion, that every seventh day they were to rest from all 
 labour, and regard their time as specially ' hallowed,' — that 
 is, consecrated to the thought and worship of Him. As we 
 would naturally enough think, there was no such need of this, 
 as we can see now. The selfish worldliness which is prone 
 to forget Him in our comparatively innocent labours and 
 cares, not to say mere amusements or wicked self-indul- 
 gence — and needs the weekly pause ; the oppressions of 
 injustice and of poverty, to which religion opposes this 
 respite from toil ; the need of penitent prayer, and of the 
 teaching of God's Word by His Church to both young 
 and old, that we may truly believe on Our Lord and be 
 saved, and for our own conversation with one another, and 
 private reflection on these things — did not exist then. But 
 it is enough that the Divine History thus tells us that the 
 religious consecration of one day in each seven was * made 
 for man,' as such, from the very Creation. We can even 
 conjecture that it was observed by those who as yet were 
 not ' sinners,' and would have been so observed by all inno- 
 cent men after them, in a pause from their usual work, in 
 which they could have even more than their usual lofty and 
 happy thoughts about the Most Glorious One, and more 
 frequent acts and songs of adoration. 
 
 The substance of the Second and Third Commandments 
 was also contained in their duty of loving God as a Spirit — 
 the Unseen, Almighty, and Eternal — with spiritual awe and 
 devout reverence. 
 
 Under the second general law, of loving our neighbour as 
 ourselves, they had then each but one such object. Yet its 
 spirit required also a self-forgetting love of all other creatures 
 of God who might be the more or less happy for their con- 
 duct : thus to be kind and just to the brutes ; to admire, 
 please, and be grateful to the holy Angels of God, whom they 
 (in all fair probability) knew to be sent to them for society, or 
 information, or any other good. To others of their own kind, 
 who, they were told, were to succeed in increasing numbers, 
 to fill the world with the praise and love of God, they would 
 have great duties of love, arising as the occasion took place.
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC. 203 
 
 In this lay all the germs of actual kindness, justice, and 
 truth, and of self-forgetting and self-denying personal love, 
 snch as fills all our present ideal of human goodness. Its 
 one immediate application was in tender and generous love 
 of one another, as we now sometimes see it (alas ! that we do 
 not always) in conjugal devotion on both sides ; and this 
 with that holy purity of thought and act, which is one chief 
 part of human virtue now. 
 
 When we compare this whole of human nature and life 
 then with that whole now, does it not seem wonderful, 
 beautiful, and great ? Why any the less so really that it 
 has no terrible exceptions, no contrasting foil of a dark, 
 ungodly, and selfish wickedness ? Are we the ones to 
 despise its 'insipid' goodness.'' Nor can we reasonably 
 suppose that it had not, as well as we, 'a better country' and 
 life in prospect. To love God, Who is love itself, is even for 
 us a title to such glory and joy as no eye here has seen. As 
 they perfectly loved God, so doubtless too they looked 
 forward to His 'Presence, where is fulness of joy.' But most 
 distinctly, too, they were free thus to love God with obedi- 
 ence, or to choose otherwise with fatal consequence. And 
 in fact we know that such a test was given them as to 
 eating the fruit of ' the tree of the knowledge of good 
 and evil.' 
 
 However, some modern Christian writers of great note, 
 intoxicated, as it seems to me, by the poisonous fumes of a 
 notion which is in all the air now, of a universal 'evolution' 
 (p. 157, etc.), to which they fancy all things we know must 
 be adjusted, give a different account of even innocent and 
 primitive man. I refer now particularly to the article 
 'Gradual Development of Revelation' in Modern Scepti- 
 cism. The learned and pious author is first taken with a 
 theory of an 'evolution' of 'Holy Scripture,' which I think 
 can be clearly shown to be erroneous (see p. 70, etc.), and by 
 this he seems constrained to argue that the first man's intelli- 
 gence and religion must have been quite contemptible. He 
 ingeniously introduces this with an amusing account of the 
 other idea, as set forth in the Genie du Christianisfne of 
 Chateaubriand, by which means it is made to appear that 
 this is all a piece of French poetry, with the characteristic
 
 204 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 artificial prettiness, yet also the absurdity, of French poetry 
 or sentimental prose. 
 
 Yet he need not have gone so far for illustration. He 
 could have found, not indeed the conceits of Chateaubriand, 
 but the noble idea of greatness in primitive man in 
 Augustine {Civ. Dei, iv. ch. lo, ii, 12 et passim), and 
 all the great Fathers ; and in an English divine who was 
 never thought to be cither dull or silly, either an ignorant or 
 a fanatical enthusiast ; in Dr. South's sermon upon the 
 creation of man. Comparing that wonderful creature, fresh 
 from His great Maker's hand, 'in His Own likeness,' — with 
 the very intellectual Greeks at their best, he says : ' Aris- 
 totle was but the rubbish of Adam, and Athens but the rudi- 
 ments of Paradise.' 
 
 Compare with this the modern writer (p. 237) : ' The 
 revelation to Adam is represented as being of the simplest 
 kind possible. In fact, it is difficult to conceive how any- 
 thing beyond a vciy simple and partial revelation could be 
 possible in the very infancy of humanity. It amounts to 
 little more than the revelation of God as a personal governor 
 whose will must be obeyed. A command is given ; that 
 command is broken, and a punishment is inflicted ; and then 
 mankind is represented as cast out of Eden into the wild, 
 uncultivated world. It is necessary to realise the extreme 
 simplicity of this history, and the imperfect character of the 
 revelation ; the more so because there is some temptation 
 to imagine Adam and Eve as being in possession of more 
 knowledge than Scripture attributes to them. Scripture in 
 reality attributes no knowledge to them, but rather represents 
 the tree of knowledge as having been the cause of their fall. 
 Philosophically speaking, we may describe the condition of 
 things in Eden as being the dawn of man's religious con- 
 sciousness,' etc. 
 
 I am astonished at this, if I understand it. We have 
 already seen what of great and blessed knowledge of God 
 and of all good is implied in the Divine story of man's 
 creation and of the first days in Eden. It is a strange 
 suggestion from a Catholic Doctor that the tree which was 
 to tempt and ruin mankind meant all knowledge, and that 
 the first step of man toward distinct 'religious consciousness'
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC. 205 
 
 was to be his crime and degradation, and would hide God's face 
 from him by sin. 'Consciousness' (i-^/^-attention and self- 
 reflection) is, as to knowledge, far below knowing God. And 
 did he not know Him as we even in the light of the Gospel 
 cannot yet ? The knowledge of conscious aversion and 
 separation from Him, indeed, he had not. But was not 
 that other knowledge greater, which he had before, which 
 belonged to innocent love, and which he had now lost ? 
 How came it to be that, in passing out of that 'dawn' into 
 day, as this writer would have it, we have soon a brother's 
 murder ? and that in a few generations this was the actual 
 'evolution' — 'that the wickedness of man was great in the 
 earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart 
 was only evil continually'? Has not the writer, in his desire 
 to find a modus vivendi with the ' modern thought,' utterly 
 confused the true idea of a revelation made to man while 
 still in the undimmed ' image of God ' with that needed to 
 rescue him from so dreadful a fall ? 
 
 It is indeed necessary 'to realise the extreme simplicity 
 (exquisite and sublime) of this history.' But what of the 
 * imperfect character of the revelation'? Yes ; of the revelation 
 of this to us. We are not told everything in detail of what 
 this glorious man knew. But we do not 'realise' it at all if 
 we empty it of all its noble significance, according to the 
 mind of the Church in all ages, and interpret it thus : ' Man, 
 created a simpleton, and only beginning to be intelligent 
 when he began to be wicked,' 
 
 I find no trace of this notion in the early Christian ages, 
 except in the erring heretics, the Gnostics of various sorts, 
 and in Pelagius afterwards, and later yet in his partial 
 imitators in the middle ages, Scotus, etc., and still later 
 some of the Jesuits. And now it appears rather in the 
 shape of a timid concession to the popularity of the new 
 scientific notion, probably to be rejected with scorn by that 
 which will allow no compromise. 
 
 Or is the argument that, as few words are used to reveal 
 to us what was revealed to the first man and known by him, 
 therefore his intelligence was correspondingly small .-* To 
 state this is almost to refute it. But observe the actual 
 words : ' So God created man in His Own image.' Does
 
 2o6 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 that suggest so poor an opinion of his mind ? ' And let 
 them have dominion over all the other living creatures.' 
 Man, then, is to be not only the greatest of these, but also the 
 Maker's vicegerent in ruling over them. And this ^ ' And 
 Adam gave names to all,' etc. In this alone lies a suggestion 
 of such brightness and vigour of thought as none of us now 
 are equal to, with all the accumulated knowledge of these 
 six thousand years.^ 
 
 And this notion is equally out of place in the tremendous 
 tragedy of the Fall. Was it upon such a weak and empty 
 mind that fell the responsibility of the great choice ? Was it 
 for the mere blunder of a thoughtless boy that the voice of 
 glorious justice, and even greater and more glorious love, 
 uttered that sentence, ' Cursed is the ground for thy sake* ? 
 Does it any way agree with the terrible facts of human base- 
 ness and misery now, instead of the blessedness of Paradise? — 
 with the fact that it is only since that fatal attempt to know 
 more that men actually ' love darkness rather than lighf ? 
 — with the great summary by St. Paul of most of human 
 history from the Fall to the Advent, that ' the invisible things 
 of God from the very creation of the world were clearly seen, 
 . . . even His eternal power and Godhead ; so that they are 
 without excuse: because that, ivhen they knew God, they glori- 
 fied Him not as God, . . . but became vain in their reasonings, 
 and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to 
 be wise, they became fools'? Even they ' knew God.' And 
 that little and undimmed part of the glorious light, which 
 had survived and come down to them from Adam, was the 
 highest of all their knowledge, the most ennobling action and 
 discipline of man's understanding, though they would not 
 have it so. Or will any one say that innocent man was 
 ignorant of this, and that it was one of the achievements of 
 the Fall } 
 
 But least of all does the notion any way agree with the 
 
 1 How does the notion in question accord with the fact that man, above all 
 else created, is pronounced 'very good' (and even this does not convey the 
 powerful and splendid meaning of the Hebrew original)— as well as we may 
 comprehend this most grand and beautiful praise from the Maker,— which has 
 perhaps its highest interpretation in our generation in the glorious air of 
 Haydn, 'With verdure clad,' as sung with such a voice and transport of 
 devout rapture by Jenny Lind ?
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC. 207 
 
 glorious mystery of Redemption by Him Who was * born of 
 a woman,' to begin life with innocence, and to keep it such — 
 for one thing, as our example, — and to be ' the last Adam.' 
 
 Without doubt, there is a most profound, an awful mystery 
 in the fact that the turning-point of the destiny of mankind 
 was to be in the question whether Adam would prefer 
 knowledge of other things to love of God. Then, if we 
 insist upon interpreting this to mean that for the first of 
 them, the crown of all the great creation, to remain inno- 
 cent, men must always continue to be silly, the plain duty 
 and only sort of safety for us now is to know and think as 
 little as possible. What can we imagine, then, of the perfect 
 obedience and love of the holy Angels ? Would man have 
 defeated the gracious Will of his Maker by 7iot disobeying 
 Him? 
 
 But while to pretend to comprehend this all, may be in 
 the very direction of the first sin, we may fairly think that 
 the trial was in desiring to know what the Most Blessed One — 
 Whose Will should by love have been dearer to them than all 
 else— did nat reveal, and that in so choosing lay the possible 
 fall. And the like in us now is repeating that mistake, 
 under whatever fine words we may conceal it. 
 
 Does not this fairly include any of the ' schemes ' of 
 theologies, to 'justify the ways of God to man,' in what is 
 altogether beyond the comprehension of such small creatures 
 and wretched sinners as we, who should only too thankfully 
 and obediently receive His grace, without expecting to know 
 why man was ever created to undergo such a trial. All such 
 theories have been alike failures, and must be so. This one, 
 which suggests that wilful wickedness against God is a 
 higher step in life than constant obedience and love, and 
 assumes that man could not have the goodness and happi- 
 ness he was intended for until he had gone through a pro- 
 cess of disobedience and degradation, is perhaps the most 
 monstrous of all. 
 
 If it be asked in reply, What, then, is your account of the 
 origin of evil ? I have only to say that I have no account 
 to give of it more than the simple Divine history, which 
 follows after the account of the innocence and glory of 
 primeval man. Further than this, I believe the matter to be
 
 2o8 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 entirely beyond the comprehension of myself and my fellow- 
 men, and that for us to do what we can to be saved from 
 this ruin by the grace of God, and to help our fcllow-mcn to 
 the same, will require all our thought about it, which will 
 only be wasted upon these fruitless speculations to the 
 hindrance of that. 
 
 It is one of those fnlstances in which ' philosophy ' has 
 acted (and, in fact, the \ynole thought, while out of place in 
 Christian truth, is f^iuro in substance not only in Plato, but 
 in his predecessors in heathen philosophy) to obscure the 
 truth of religion as we have it from God Himself This, and 
 all of its ' evolution,' can only be maintained by virtual denial 
 of the fall of man. The rejection of the idea of sin in man, 
 and only reckoning him, such as he is, to be an irresponsible 
 result of the past, is a necessity of the new * evolution.' A 
 most true and glorious mystery it is that out of this tremen- 
 dous evil the salvation of God has wrought greater glory. 
 But was it good, and not "evil, that required such a redemp- 
 tion? Did man step from obscurity of imbecile innocence 
 into light of greater knowledge by that disobedience? Did 
 he rise in rank when he fell in goodness ? Was ' death by 
 sin ' ' a thing to be desired to make one wise' ? I thought 
 that was the dreadful Diistake of Eve. We must recoil from 
 such fallacies, and magnify the glorious grace of God to us 
 in our innocent first nature, while we adore the even greater 
 grace which has called us out of that darkness into which 
 we then stepped, and fell backward, — into ' the knowledge of 
 the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ' 
 
 There was, as we know, one command of God, which was 
 a very small limitation of their enjoyment of the good and 
 beautiful things of the world made for their dwelling, and 
 over which they were to ' have dominion.' For food was not 
 only a necessity of their life, but, by the love of God, made, 
 as it still is, one of its real pleasures. Many delightful fruits 
 of tree and vine were thus theirs to enjoy. Only one was 
 pointed out which they must not eat. No reason was given 
 for this but His Will, yet they were also told that the for- 
 bidden act would cause their death. I suppose that to all who 
 think about this there is here a great mystciy, and that we 
 may well conjecture that there is in the whole story a deeper
 
 PRIMITIVE WORDS— HEBREW, ETC, 209 
 
 meaning than we see in the mere words. And he who can 
 consider it only an allegory, and be sure that he interprets 
 it as such, according to the Gospel (without which he cannot 
 be right), may do so. Yet, on the other hand, the more I 
 think of it the more I am persuaded that we can only wisely 
 and safely take it as it reads, and wait until God shall reveal 
 to us more than thus appears. To pronounce it ' allegorical,' 
 and then transmute it into any of our fancies, even if we call 
 them philosophies, seems the very height of self-deluding folly. 
 And there is enough for us to learn in the literal story. 
 All other duties were then entirely easy for a healthful and 
 innocent pair, alone in the world. Why should they not love 
 God perfectly, and one another as themselves in all these 
 things ? Yet their chief glory and destiny was to do this 
 of free choice. So such an occasion of choice was made for 
 them. They would have had enough for all their needs 
 with but a little part of what was freely given them. But 
 only one such thing was reserved, so that they might please 
 God with cheerful love, in doing without this upon His com- 
 mand. And it was called (with a mystery which has only 
 been deepened by trying to explain it) ' the fruit of the tree 
 of the knowledge of good and evil' It does seem to point to 
 that great snare of disobedient pride and self-will in all ages 
 since, and which perhaps discloses itself in the very attempt 
 to explain it : the preferring to be independent of God, 
 by knowing something (or fancying we do), to the neglect 
 of His love, and of humility toward Him, if not in direct 
 disobedience and defiance. 
 
 If this be so, we now, by objecting to this test of loving 
 obedience as ' arbitrary,' or unreasonable, and making such 
 other interpretation of the words as satisfies our minds, the 
 condition of our believing it, would be simply another instance 
 of what had such vast consequences then. This would be 
 even far more senseless and ridiculous than for a little child 
 to set up * the rights of man ' against some command of 
 noble and loving parents, which was not, and could not be, 
 explained to him. Certainly there was no wrong done to 
 them, and none seen in it by them when the command was 
 first made known. 
 
 And how could they possibly disobey it ? One at least 
 
 O
 
 2IO BEGINNJNGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 of the answers to this question is that there now appeared 
 upon the scene another person yet, whom we know by later 
 revelations of God to have been a powerful and wicked 
 spirit — once a holy Angel of God, who, with others like him, 
 had in pride revolted against the Eternal and Almighty 
 King. Thus this guilty one sought to bring the new order 
 of mankind into his own case. 
 
 We may fairly suppose that this temptation to disobey 
 the one command, which was the actual test of their obedient 
 love, was in a misuse of that desire to know, which is a part 
 of the original human nature, good and praiseworthy if used 
 according to the true purpose of our life — to love and praise 
 God ; but in other cases — as of restless or selfish curiosity, 
 of pride or presumption — an unrighteousness like any other. 
 We may suppose that, when they are tempted with the know- 
 ledge to be thus acquired, the love of God in their hearts at 
 first repels it as being against His dear Will ; then the sug- 
 gestion is made that this ' arbitrary ' command is selfish 
 and jealous tyranny, and that the danger of death from the 
 disobedience is imaginary, an empty threat to scare them 
 from what they rightly desire. Loving faith in the Ever- 
 Glorious and Blessed starts back from this at first. Yet 
 desire recurs, and the suggested ambition of climbing to the 
 very heights of knowledge, on which the Maker has heretofore 
 seemed at such an unapproachable distance. So faith in His 
 truth wavers, and desire increases with every moment in 
 which it is now indulged, and that ' love of Him with all the 
 heart ' recedes before love of self, especially in an ambition 
 to know what He has expressly withheld from knowledge. 
 It was the wife who began this ' departing from the living 
 God ' by listening to a tempter, instead of, as long ages 
 after did one in descent from her, encountering the same 
 tempter in a far more strenuous and tremendous struggle, 
 drive him off baffled, by faith in God. And the husband 
 whose manly force of will should have even rescued her, 
 stood by, not resisting, and thus even half encouraging, the 
 temptation to both.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 
 
 And they made the wrong choice. She first yielded to 
 curiosity, desire, and pride, and sacrificed to these the 
 supreme love. Then he, weakly as well as perversely, 
 followed her in the sin, It was done. 
 
 From the Divine story of what followed we may in some 
 degree understand how they, while perhaps at first relieved 
 from fear of the threatened death, began at once to feel that 
 a chill of spiritual torpor and degradation had fallen upon 
 them. The sun shone as brightly as ever ; the trees, and 
 flowers, and living creatures all around them were the same. 
 Yet they felt that somehow it was another world, and began 
 to understand how in the day they did this they would 
 ' surely die.' They had a sort of new freedom — from loving 
 obedience to God ; but with this a sense of being in base 
 bondage to evil. Something more they knew ' of good and 
 evil ;' but it was to know that they had lost the ' sweetness 
 and light ' of good, and become entangled and bemired in 
 the evil. The new sensation of guilty shame came over 
 them. A voice in their hearts seemed to say, ' Your 
 iniquities have separated between you and your God, and 
 your sins have hid His face from you.' Despair and anger 
 and bitter pride rose in resentment, for the thought of 
 repentance did not come into their minds. How could it ? 
 The love of one another felt the crushing force of the dread- 
 ful blow which had broken them away from the love of God. 
 It was cruel reproaches, and not the sweet words of tender 
 pity, which they exchanged in their first great sorrow. The 
 joyful courage of innocence and love was gone for ever.
 
 212 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 They ' hid themselves' for the first time. (And from whom ? 
 From Him from Whom no secrets are hid ; from Him, away 
 from Whom there is no light of knowledge or joy or love ; 
 from Him Who, until then, had been their greatest love and 
 joy — even more than" they were to one another.) And then 
 came the inevitable encounter with the Holy One. ' And 
 the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where 
 art thou ? ' That voice has been thus questioning us — all 
 the generations of man, and each soul of us — ever since. 
 
 As for so much that is said, whether in reproach or 
 apology, of the ' anthropomorphism ' of this whole Divine 
 narrative, I see no real occasion whatever for such criticism. 
 If we accept the history, as we do, as God's Word to us all» 
 the reproach is only irreverent and silly. Nor to one so 
 believing can the apologetic be proper. Here is God's way 
 of relating this to man. It is an honour and a blessing to 
 us that it is done in such a form as we can best comprehend. 
 The idea of such a creature as I inspecting this, and then 
 expressing my dissatisfaction that the Creator did not inform 
 me of these events in a way more suitable, in my judgment, 
 to the Creator's Nature, is transcendently foolish. Pray, how 
 would we have it better done ? 
 
 For my own part, I am more and more lost in admiration 
 of the i^nergy and vivid reality with which, in these few 
 words, that vast transaction is related to us, as a part of the 
 knowledge we need for our repentance and salvation. See 
 the horrible wickedness with which the world of mankind 
 has been filled through all human history, and then com- 
 pare all the other attempts to account for this — whether in 
 the fables of the Zend and the Vedas ; the speculations of 
 Plato and his fellow-philosophers, either before or after him ; 
 the strange and tedious inventions of the Gnostics ; or the 
 dumb and senseless ' evolution ' of the Agnostics. How far 
 beneath the sublimity and self-attesting simplicity of truth 
 in this very brief account of how ' God made man perfect, 
 'out they have sought out many reasonings,' are they all ! 
 With a few strong and vivid strokes we have a picture, in 
 which all the actors live, and move, and speak to us, in a way 
 that all our most elaborate abstract words and metaphysical 
 distinctions could not approach. And this is what we need
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 213 
 
 to apprehend and feel what it was for man to fall, so that 
 we ' may be saved through Christ for ever.' 
 
 It would be a just punishment of those who are dissatis- 
 fied with this * anthropomorphism ' to be made to relate the 
 same things in their superior way, and to have such a faint 
 and feeble and utterly and essentially inadequate account of 
 primeval man and his fall — the weaker the more they 
 elaborated it — set here, in contrast with what we read in 
 Genesis ii., iii. Nor need we Christians apologise to one 
 another for it as being a hindrance to the most spiritual 
 religion, or warn the plainest people against the error (in our 
 apprehension) of thinking of the tempter of mankind as 
 really persuading them to sin, or of God as actually for- 
 bidding something as a test of obedient faith, and speaking 
 to them after the sin in just displeasure. The actual danger 
 is always altogether the other way — in men not believing 
 that Satan tempts, or that God is the Lord and Judge. I 
 inquire of my own experience, and I know that this narrative 
 never obscures, but rather makes the clearer my sense of 
 God's being a Spirit, and requiring me to ' worship Him in 
 spirit and in truth,' and of all the glorious and transcendent 
 truth of His Eternal Power and Godhead' and His Infinite 
 Love. I observe the same matter among my fellow-men, 
 and I note that it is the very ones who receive all this history 
 with the least qualification of the sort who have the most 
 reverence, spiritual apprehension, and obedient love of God 
 in their life. 
 
 The great fact for our present inquiry is that by these 
 events the religion of man necessarily underwent a great 
 change. The former religion of perfect and happy love is 
 destroyed by his own act. It might have been so without 
 any relief or hope. It might have been that there would be 
 no more a ' Word of God ' to man, no communication from 
 Him to those who had chosen to lose His love for them by 
 departing from their blessed love of Him. That is what 
 they risked, and deserved, and in a manner felt. But that 
 dreadful thing was not to be, thanks to the ' kindness and 
 love of God Our Saviour towards man.'^ He speaks to 
 
 ^ The whole of this remarkable sentence (Titus iii. 4) should be carefully 
 examined in the present study.
 
 214 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 them again. This first encounter is of necessity terrible to 
 them. (They try to fly from it.) Displeasure prevails in 
 His words. The death which was foretold is adjudged and 
 executed (as it had already, ipso facto, been in part), in their 
 fall, both from being then so near to Him in goodness and 
 felicity of love as also in some physical pains and dis- 
 orders. But there is a gleam of hope for the future — hope 
 for the penitent and humble man, who trusts in God and 
 waits upon Him, who submits to all His just punishment 
 of sin, and sets out to strive toward restoring his soul to 
 perfect and obedient love in every act and endurance. This 
 hope is given to him in a mystery of how ' the seed of the 
 woman ' shall ' bruise the head ' of the tempter. Like all 
 the other brief and powerful statements of this history, we 
 do not know how much of this may have been more under- 
 stood by those concerned then than is disclosed in the words 
 as revealed to us. But we do know for our own use that it 
 meant the great Redemption, which is our blessed knowledge 
 of God as Christians. Evidently the relief was to come by 
 degrees. But every soul could know enough to trust in the 
 mercy of God with penitence, and with patient attempts to 
 do His Will with love, and continual penitence and repent- 
 ance after each failure in this. 
 
 To begin with, they must leave the delights of Eden, 
 which belonged to innocent piety. There must be toil and 
 pain in life, such as they had not known before. But the 
 fear and care of all this were not to be compared with the 
 consolations and hope. They might (they miisf) be religious 
 yet. 
 
 In what did that possible religion consist, in the main ? 
 First, of course, as before — and because it was still the 
 mankind who were made for this, — it was the law to ' love 
 the Lord thy God with all thy heart,' and to ' love the one 
 near thee as thyself This was to be the new, imperfect 
 religion of attempt, just as it had been before the perfect 
 one of God's Will and image. It was to be now a religion of 
 trial, in both senses of that word. By their persistent honesty 
 in this attempt they were to make the choice again between 
 life and death — and this was to be, not by the constant, 
 perfect goodness of love, but by a trying to do this, with
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 215 
 
 humble faith in God's mercy to help the attempt and to 
 forgive the failures. 
 
 Of course, too, the rules in detail of the great law, and 
 its application to occasions as they arose, must now take 
 new shapes. The Commandments of God must be much 
 more in the form of 'Thou shalt not' And so all actual 
 duty becomes more like that later form of words, the Ten 
 Commandments. There is no better method of inquiring 
 into it now than according to the details of that great state- 
 ment of religious duty, as made some thirty generations 
 afterwards. 
 
 Take first, for instance, the Seventh. It is a most 
 profound and meaning incident that the very first demon- 
 stration of the change from innocent to sinful man was in 
 the shame of bodily decency. It therefore needs, in a true 
 history of religion, to be searched to the very bottom. Yet 
 the process, however necessary, is a very painful one — at 
 least to some minds. It is so in its own nature, and made 
 even more so now by the fashion of our age, which is, in 
 the main, divided into two extremes of treatment of this — 
 the one full of timidity, aversion, and evasion ; the other, 
 bold, hard (not to say shameless), shallow, unspiritual, and 
 false. The former may seem to be in the better direction, 
 but it really helps on the mischief of the latter. We cannot 
 do our duty as to that dangerous part of the common human 
 nature either by attempting to extirpate it or by treating it 
 slightly. It cannot be torn out of the bodily life of either of 
 the sexes, or separated from sympathetic effects upon all 
 other parts of our corporal existence in this world. It cannot 
 be loosened from its interlacings with all our other thoughts 
 and sentiments, and its place by God's Will, of one of the 
 chief occasions for our choice between good and evil. 
 
 It would therefore seem plain that it must receive pro- 
 portionate notice in religious thought, training, and action. 
 Yet, on the other hand, it is most true that all prevention or 
 cure of its evils needs the holy seriousness and reserve of 
 modest shame, and that these evils begin by the neglect, 
 and grow to fearful and fatal force by any discarding, of this. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is always care needed lest of the very 
 garment which decency throws over it, and of the very
 
 2i6 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 averted eyes of modesty, this sin should make an ambush 
 for its victims. Some good people who have to treat of 
 human life, from shame and aversion to all this (an abuse of 
 the true instinct of virtue) leave it out of all notice. But as 
 this is all but (or quite) impossible, they are forced at last to 
 say something of it. Then, fearful of doing harm by the 
 very suggestion, they speak of it in a very covert way, 
 almost hoping that they will not be understood ; and finally, 
 in effect, dismiss it as soon as possible as of little practical 
 importance, or as not concerning the 99-iooths of decent 
 persons, but only a few monsters of coarseness and shame- 
 less perversity. But as this is not according to fact, they 
 thus, in fact, do almost more harm than good, and cer- 
 tainly fail of the good that needs to be done. 
 
 In the opposite extreme, some lay hold of the matter 
 boldly, as affecting (as it does) all life in every soul of us. 
 (The actual exceptions to this must be rarer than those of 
 total colour-blindness, which every one supposes to be out- 
 side of complete human nature, and so not taken into 
 account in what is to be said to all.) They entirely refuse 
 to treat it as abnormal, or as one of the less important acces- 
 sories of all life, social and spiritual, as well as bodily. And 
 in this they are entirely right. 
 
 But then they proceed, whether as philosophers or poets 
 (even some of the chief of these last, if Goethe be reckoned 
 such, as being also one of the greatest of the philosophers, 
 and many of the most famous authors in all languages, and, 
 it is hardly too much to say all modern French literature), 
 or as mere naturalists, with the ' severe love of truth in 
 science,' — not merely the anatomists and physiologists, so 
 engrossed in the study of our bodily mechanism as to 
 absurdly subjugate all else to that, but also the metaphysi- 
 cal ' biologists,' who declare in so many words that the great 
 purpose of human life is the reproduction of other human 
 life, and so that all our other faculties arrange themselves 
 around this august centre, and should subserve it.^ It is 
 steadily disclosing itself as a principle of the new religion,- 
 which ' modern thought' is proceeding to impose upon all 
 
 ^ Even the refined and intensely 'literary' Matthew Arnold rather accepts 
 this, as demonstrated to him by M. Littre. — Lit. and Dogma, p. 19.
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 217 
 
 who are submitting themselves to it. It accords exactly 
 with one of its notions, that human 'immortality' is not at 
 all personal, but consists in the blessed thought that when 
 you and I no longer exist, our race will continue in other 
 like generations of souls, each of which in a few years will 
 utterly cease to be.^ Such as will do this, according to 
 Christian terms and exigencies of form, will assume that all 
 older Christian belief, to which this is utterly abhorrent, is 
 not the ' Word of God,' but our former apprehension of that, 
 which we are learning to understand better by means of the 
 ' book of Nature ' and all that. 
 
 However, they are wrong (and so was I) in assuming 
 that this is a nezv religion. There is indeed only one real 
 remedy for the perilous difficulty in our nature now in ques- 
 tion. God made the marriage of one man and woman as 
 the law, bond, and limit of this. He Himself then cele- 
 brating that marriage, every one since is that repeated, and 
 thus it is ' those whom God has joined together.' Every act 
 or thought which anticipates or otherwise profanes this is a 
 sacrilegious sin against Him. Truth and safety, then, lie in 
 confiding this matter chiefly to religion. However other sins 
 may be, in a measure, excluded or corrected by human morals 
 or human law, nothing but to be face to face with the holy 
 law of God, nothing but the penitent fear of Him, can 
 control this. Nothing but a lifetime of such ' nurture and 
 admonition' can fix a character of such steady purity ; 
 nothing but the deepest religious earnestness can bring 
 back a soul from any far wanderings that way. 
 
 That first shame of Eden is repeated now whenever a 
 youth that has grown up in what is the nearest to that 
 Paradise of anything now on earth — a Christian home — gives 
 its first look at some art galleries or shop windows of our 
 great cities, or even vvdien, in the chamber heretofore sacred 
 to the Eye that with gracious love ' seeth in secret,' reads 
 much of the m.ost-admired poetry and fiction. It learns then 
 what it is which this literature and 'culture' means by love, 
 and tells it that it is the noblest and sweetest thing in life. 
 And then it soon learns to blush at its own modesty, instead 
 of at the baseness w4iich insulted it. 
 
 ^ See Scotch Sermons, p. 11, etc.
 
 2i8 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 There never has been but one rehgion which really took 
 the other side, and that is the one whose beginnings we 
 now trace, and which we almost all in Christendom, after a 
 manner, profess. Yet what passes for the most refined and 
 liberal civilisation among us — including some in the com- 
 munion and even ministry of the Church — stares and sneers 
 at this ' severe' virtue, and puts it to shame with the reproach 
 of ' prudery,' or rustic ignorance and awkwardness. The 
 evil grows with our refinements, luxury, and science. He 
 who would resist it, even by mere silent example, by refusing 
 to smile at or admire its displays, i-^ spoken of with contempt 
 even by Christian men and women.^ 
 
 For many ages — whether in Canaan or Syria, on the banks 
 of the Nile or the Euphrates, in India and China — even with 
 the Persians, whose traditions kept nearest the primitive 
 truth, — with the intellectual and elegant Greeks, and the more 
 so the more they grew to be such, and the comparatively 
 severe Romans, as well as through savage tribes roaming 
 on the earth — religion actually made this impurity a part of 
 itself There are, to be sure, in them all traces of the 
 essential truth that religion requires purity of soul and body 
 in this very respect, and is the one chief hope of escape from 
 the evils of its loss for our kind. Such traces were some 
 rites of Diana and Vesta, and others like these among the 
 other Pagans, and the praises of female chastity and 
 punishments of adultery, which survived as a part of both 
 religion and law. Yet, with a fearful and fatal inconsistency, 
 none the less was this greatest danger to human goodness 
 made a part of religion, and its very rites and legends the 
 means to suggest evil passions and undermine virtuous self- 
 restraint. The very worst of this mischief has been in all 
 ages (and now as well as then) in making it a matter of 
 jests, and at the same time confusing it with the highest and 
 tenderest sentiments of human society. One religion only 
 has kept firmly to the office which God has given to it, of 
 being the salvation of men from all this self-defilement and 
 self-destruction. 
 
 'Comparative religion' indeed! Will those refined and 
 
 ^ This was written long before the terrible disclosures of this corruption in the 
 chief city of Christendom which lately (August 1885) startled the world.
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 219 
 
 fastidious people, made what they are in this (or in its 
 pretence) by Christian surroundings and education, go from 
 this severe plainness of our Scriptures to the * sweetness and 
 light' of Greek poetry — and indeed all ancient literary remains, 
 except the Christian Scriptures? If they have no heed for 
 History, let them go and see with their own eyes on the rock 
 walls of Ellorah, in the chambers of the Pyramids, the tablets 
 of Chaldea, and the remains of Pompeii, what the portrayed 
 scenes and the profuse emblems of all those religions will tell 
 them of this comparison.^ Is it not better to give up even 
 ' high art' and * breadth of view' than to pay such a price for 
 them ? I know well what a philosophic account the ancient 
 Pagans (and the modern ?) give of this sort of religion — how 
 they show with elaboration that 'fecundity' should be wor- 
 shipped and glorified in art and scenic presentation, with 
 emblems and processions. 
 
 Alone, and in absolute contrast with these (beginning with 
 the modest shame of Eden), the religion in question never 
 has (and never tolerates) any such mocking at the helpless 
 weakness of the one sex to resist the coarse violence or the 
 crafty seductions of its vanity by which the other seeks to 
 defile and ' humble ' it.^ Still less has it anything, in story or 
 ceremony, to stimulate the evil, or to deaden and overpower 
 the instinctive shame which first resists evil desire. While 
 the others — though still conscious that the Divine law con- 
 demns and forbids this — yet actually deify that which is thus 
 forbidden, and worship as a god (or goddess) what is an 
 ' abomination ' to the only true God, — this one, even in its 
 imperfect and temporary form, for one small people — to whom 
 some allowance was then made for ' the hardness of their 
 hearts ' in this matter, — with an elaborate ritual, has not one 
 such indecency, even the most disguised. On the contrary, 
 any suggestion of this is repelled with abhorrence from all 
 these holy things. That people were thus taught, as well as 
 in history and precept, that God was displeased at all such 
 
 ^ Among a multitude of references and authorities for this, if such are needed, 
 I give the place of honour to Mr. Darwin {Descent of Alan, vol. i. p. 96) ; and the 
 religious lesson which Chorea (in the Eunuchns of Terence) learns from such a 
 painting. 
 
 ^ The very contrast between this ancient Hebrew thought and all that corre- 
 sponds to it in other Classics is impressive.
 
 220 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 evil imaginations, as well as deeds. Did that people invent 
 this religion, or was it ' evolved ' among them out of their 
 different tendencies this way from the rest of mankind ? 
 Surely not. For both ancient and modern history show that, 
 as a race, they have at least the average sensuality of human 
 nature. One sort of religion makes this part of our nature a 
 reason for indulging ourselves (and so does much modern 
 poetry and science). The other sees here a degradation of 
 a true and primitiv^e nature, and an occasion oi denying our- 
 selves, in obedience to the Holy God. 
 
 And when we come to this religion in its full disclosure 
 of the Will and grace of God, it is even much more spiritual 
 and self-denying, not only as to acts, but as to ' the thoughts 
 and intents of the heart,' and of our living ' not by sight ' of 
 present and earthly things, but by ' faith ' as to spiritual. 
 Divine, and eternal things. Thus we have both those exquis- 
 ite teachings from the lips of the Last Adam, the perfect Man, 
 and His life among us as such, for us to imitate more and 
 more perfectly, ' till we all come to a perfect man, unto the 
 measure of the stature of the fulness ' of Him. And in this 
 example, so far from that part of our nature being the main 
 purpose and spring of action, it is utterly excluded, as being 
 only the inferior and temporary, at the best, and as altogether 
 abominable in its abuse. 
 
 That religion, then, stands from the outset in absolute 
 opposition to the others, in this signal respect, if there were 
 no other. It does not avert its eyes from an important fact 
 as to our life and conduct, after the manner of some sensitive, 
 fastidious, and timid sentiment. It looks straight at it all, 
 and takes right hold of it as one of the chief matters that 
 concern man. But it does this most seriously, and entirely 
 as to what is God's Will for our penitence and self-denial. 
 It allots the true place and purpose of this in our nature, 
 as God made man perfect. But it recognises our actual 
 degradation in this as well as other things, and our in- 
 clination to an utterly selfish and defiling use of it, both for 
 ourselves and toward others. It shows by frequent illustra- 
 tion and precept the thought and Will of God as to this. It 
 reminds man continually that his chief concern now is a 
 spiritual life, the love of God and man, and to ' look not
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 221 
 
 upon the things that are seen, but upon the things that are 
 not seen,' and at last, and that soon, to enter upon another 
 and eternal heavenly life, in which this thing has no part. 
 It warns him that God abhors and will surely punish all such 
 sins. It gives self-denial as to this one of the very highest 
 places in the discipline of goodness here. It covers all with 
 the robe of decency, watchful self-control, and lovely modesty. 
 It exalts, refines, mingles with the noblest, self-forgetting 
 love of others, and merges in holy religion itself that for 
 which this part of our nature was made, and at all exists. 
 
 The same is doubtless true in substance as to the rest of 
 the Ten Commandments, that their general meaning and 
 spirit, if not details, were the law of God for mankind from 
 this time forth. Violent anger also would be henceforth a 
 part of the depraved nature, and a careful self-denial of it 
 one of the chief duties. A terrible instance of this soon 
 occurred in the murder of one of the first two brothers by the 
 other. Very soon selfish greed would stir, and need watchful 
 self-control, or end in robbery, either by craft or violence. 
 In all these ways, and others, selfishness would tend to over- 
 power the noblest instinctive feelings in the family life, about 
 to develop, and to be so great a part of our conduct. Plain 
 and solemn commandments of God would then be a great 
 need of men, and we may wisely and gratefully believe 
 would be supplied to them. 
 
 I have taken for granted that all which we now call 
 ' morals ' was from the first, as a matter of course, a part of 
 religion, — that is, of the love and service of God. This I 
 think I have already made plain (see p. 113, etc.), and that 
 the later distinction made between these is artificial and 
 specially misleading in such an inquiry as this. (Matthew 
 Arnold is entirely right in saying that ' the antithesis between 
 ethical and religious' is 'quite a false one.') All good done 
 was what God formed and intended men to do, and so made 
 known to them. The first motive, then, for its performance 
 was the Will of God, and such loving obedience was never 
 then separated from the thought of Him. 
 
 For Religion in a more restricted sense, as to worship, 
 there is no suggestion in the history of the first ten genera- 
 tions that the true was displaced anywhere among men by
 
 222 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 any false systems of worship or belief. It may have been 
 so, and that these are only ?iot mentioned in that very brief 
 chronicle. But the more natural understanding of it seems 
 to me that the perversity of men in those days as regards 
 religion was only in the neglect of the true, and not the 
 invention of the false. 
 
 Be that as it may, selfish and passionate disobedience of 
 the Will of God, and estrangement from His love, soon pro- 
 ceeded from that first fatal act in Eden to most terrible 
 leno-ths. In a few generations this is the dreadful record : 
 ' And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in 
 the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of 
 his heart was only evil continually.' Nothing which the 
 most fervid imagination, transported with religious ardour, 
 has ever said of human sin, can equal the tremendous 
 energy and the sweep of these solemn word.s. The more 
 they are pondered, with reflection upon the fact that man- 
 kind began with this record, ' So God created man in His Own 
 image,' the greater they seem in description of what 
 followed as the result of a first mis-step from obedient love. 
 Yet this account is qualified by, and is to be understood 
 with, the other fact of this history, that some of the race 
 escaped so great degradation, and were able in some measure 
 to ' walk with God ' in true religion. Such, I think, we 
 may fairly suppose were both Adam and Eve, as penitent, 
 and trusting in that gracious promise of future recovery 
 made when they were sentenced for the first sin. Such 
 certainly was their son Abel (see Heb. xi. 4), and also 
 most emphatically Enoch — in the seventh generation after, 
 — whose piety was so great that he is one of only two of 
 our race who have been graciously relieved from physical 
 death, which every other soul of us — even that of the Last 
 Adam — had to suffer. And such also was Noah, in the tenth 
 descent, who by this time, however, with his family, seems 
 to have been left alone of men to love God, and, with 
 penitent struggling against this sinful nature, trust in His for- 
 giving mercy and promise of the perfect future deliverance. 
 
 In considering the primitive religion only in this more 
 restricted sen.se, as to belief in God and worship of Him, 
 we are much helped by two remarkable summaries of this
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 223 
 
 history in the New Testament. One of these — that of the 
 true Religion, as continued by tradition among the smaller 
 number — is in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ch. xi.) The other 
 — of false religion by perverse deviation from the true — is in 
 the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans (i. 18, etc.). Of this 
 latter account we may now observe that in the beginning 
 it very plainly means the period of our immediate inquiry. 
 For, introduced in proof that all men at Our Lord's coming 
 and the preaching of the Gospel — not merely Jews, who 
 had had the written Word of God in the Old Testament, 
 but all the souls of mankind, — were alike ' guilty before God,' 
 as having disobeyed His holy Will ('who hold' i.e. restrain, 
 resist, ' the truth in unrighteousness '), he says : * Because 
 that which may be known of God is manifest to them ; for 
 God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of 
 Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen (at first 
 plainly told, and ever after recalled or suggested) by the 
 things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead ; 
 so that they are without excuse : because that, when they 
 knew God, they glorified Him not as God,' etc. 
 
 The history which follows this is plainly that of the 
 invention of new and false religions, idolatry, etc., which I 
 suppose (see p. 221) not to have occurred until the later 
 period, which is treated of in Chapter IX. ; and so does not 
 belong so immediately to our present inquiry. Yet the 
 process there described is the same as had now begun. 
 Man was presumptuous, disobedient, selfish, and sensual, 
 instead of loving God with all his heart, with the reverent 
 and cheerful obedience due to such a Person, and according 
 to such love believing in Him for the greatest things that he 
 can either know or hope. The account of the true primitive 
 Religion is more full. ' Now faith is the substance of things 
 hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it 
 the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we (and 
 of course those elders of whom he was then directly speak- 
 ing) understand that the worlds were framed by the word of 
 God, so that things which are seen were not made of things 
 which do appear.^ By faith Abel offered unto God a more 
 
 ' An express contradiction of the ' evolution' theory of Creation, as being 
 only a chain of ' phenomena.' For we are here expressly told that the blepomena
 
 224 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 acceptable sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness 
 that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts : and by it 
 he being dead yet speaketh. By faith Enoch was translated 
 that he should not see death ; and was not found, because 
 God had translated him : for he had this testimony, that he 
 pleased God. For without faith it is impossible to please 
 Him : for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, 
 and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. 
 By faith Noah,' etc. But as the history of Noah belongs rather 
 to the succeeding period, I leave him for the present, as 
 indeed the last of that line of patriarchs, yet rather the first 
 of the next. 
 
 This remarkable passage upon close inspection discloses 
 several facts of great value to our present inquir}-. And 
 here let us recall (see p. 43, etc.) that important principle, 
 that the history in Genesis can only be really understood by 
 looking at it from the point of view of our Christian faith 
 and of the New Testament. So that whenever we can find 
 an allusion in that to this, or, what is still better, a retrospec- 
 tive glance over it, we are on firm ground as to the true 
 understanding of the more ancient chro!iicle. And of this, if 
 I am not very much mistaken, we shall find a chief instance 
 in the two passages now before us. To return to the former 
 (Heb. xi. 1-7), all we Christians are first associated with the 
 ' elders,' and specially and emphaticall)- with the eldest of 
 our race, as believing in God. This we are told meant, first, 
 a belief in Him as the Creator, according to His Own dis- 
 closure to the first man of these ' things which are seen.' 
 And so it was simply ' b)- faith the}- understood that the 
 worlds were framed by the ivord of God,' etc. The moment 
 we reflect upon this, it is inconceivable, either that the first 
 man should know this otherwise than by a direct ' revela- 
 tion,' or that he, once knowing it, should not pass it down 
 by true tradition to his children, and so in succession to all 
 the other generations. 
 
 or ' present things ' did not become such from the phaiiwmena, or ' things which 
 appear.' I was in hope that the rendering of the 'Revision' might here be 
 substituted with advantage for that of the A.V. , which does not quite give 
 the force of the original, but found it upon scrutiny not only less elegant, but 
 also less accurate in some points, and certainly less intelligible.
 
 { 
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 225 
 
 Otherwise we would have to suppose that Adam and Eve 
 never spoke in the hearing of their children of so wonderful 
 a matter of knowledge as this ; or that those children, in 
 succession, and so on with the succeeding generations, never 
 noticed it enough to remember and talk of it. But add to 
 this the certainty of its being positively cherished, and taught 
 as a part of whatever true religion remained among men, 
 and the conclusion is irresistible. With this also went the 
 memories of their own first life in Eden and its ending. 
 Even were these the dullest minds that many decaying 
 generations of evil passion, worldly cupidity and stupidity, 
 and the miseries of a toilsome and precarious life had 
 formed, they could have hardly failed to talk of these 
 great things, and to keep alive in some degree the thought 
 of the Great, August, and Unseen One, this ' Maker of all 
 things and Judge of all men.* But such a supposition is 
 gratuitously absurd. Far more reasonable is it to suppose 
 that mankind had then a bright intelligence, and for many 
 generations grew up with it, as well as with a soundness 
 and vigour of body, which the most favoured few in later 
 history have not enjoyed. 
 
 A very great help in resisting the decay both of their 
 native powers and of the true memory of that high know- 
 ledge of God was the keeping of the holy seventh day (see 
 a?ite, p. 194). That observance also, and of course, would not 
 cease at once with the loss of innocence. It would even 
 seem a greater necessity (as it is for us) for ' humble and 
 penitent sinners,' and a relief from the constant 'labour and 
 sorrow ' with which bodily wants must now be supplied. 
 It is very probable (what we see in our day suggests 
 this) that some soon began to neglect it, and that, with the 
 very large part of mankind who began to 'forget God' 
 entirely, it was perhaps before long utterly lost. But surely 
 not so with the others. That there is no distinct mention of 
 it in the four pages, which are the record of 1600 years, does 
 not at all contradict this probability. Indeed we have in 
 the mention of Noah's observing the division of time by 
 seven days an incidental notice of it that cannot be 
 mistaken. How else was this ? The attempt of some 
 modern writers to explain the week as a ' natural ' (that is, 
 
 P
 
 2 26 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 according to men's mere notion of what they see in ' the 
 heavens above') division of time by the 'quarters' of the 
 moon is a most strained and unsatisfying theory. The truth 
 is that these neither do coincide with the seventh day, nor 
 were ever talked of until long after the week was in use. 
 Any way, one who believes the third verse of the second 
 chapter of Genesis as a Divine record sees at once, without 
 any such far-fetched conjecture, what this means in the tenth 
 and twelfth verses of the eighth chapter. 
 
 Then we are shown the first separation ' between the 
 righteous and the wicked' in the different sacrifices offered 
 by Abel and Cain. This tells us plainly that sacrifices were 
 a part of true religion already. Various accounts and 
 theories have been given by modern writers of this remarkable 
 fact, that, from the earliest human history, in all actual reli- 
 gions, there have been such sacrifices, whether of gifts and 
 offerings for the maintenance of religion, or, more specially, of 
 living animals killed with ceremony as a part of worship. 
 None of these discussions is to be compared as to thorough- 
 ness and just conclusions with that of Archbishop Magee 
 On Atonement and Sacrifice, which remains a treasury of 
 references for all who follow him, to which later researches 
 only add fulness. In this he makes good the conclusion 
 that these rites must have been made known to the first man 
 by God, as a part of the mystery and prophetic disclosure of 
 our redemption by Our Lord, which was to be transacted 
 in the world some 4000 }'ears later. 
 
 It is certain that both of the brothers brought 'offerings' 
 to God as a well-understood part of their religion. But, as 
 we have seen, ' by faith Abel oftcrcd unto God a more accept- 
 able sacrifice' than Cain. Whether this was in that his 
 memorial sacrifice of a lamb was the outward act of a faith 
 in mercy to sinners — such as had already been commanded to 
 them as a figure of the great Lamb of God,^ while Cain's 
 was such an offering as was merely proper for innocent 
 gratitude, and therefore not by itself acceptable for man now, 
 as seems best in accord with all that is related — or in just 
 what this difference lay, has been much controverted. Any 
 way, acceptable religion was now to be founded in obedient 
 
 ^ "Slain from the foundation of the world." — Rev. xiii. S.
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 227 
 
 and penitent trust in God. Such was Abel's, and such was 
 not Cain's. So in the latter we see the beginnings and pro- 
 gress of irreligion. Still, he has not yet utterly discarded 
 religion, and God has not yet given him up to impiety, but 
 even graciously remonstrates with his lack of penitence and 
 with his angry pride, which is already scowling with resent- 
 ment at his brother. ' If thou doest well (like Abel, in sacri- 
 ficing that sin-offering which lies waiting for thee, too — there, 
 at the very door), not only shall that be accepted by Me as 
 his has been, but thou shalt have thy due place of honour as 
 the elder brother' (Gen. iv. 6, 7).^ Finally, in his dreadful 
 crime we have that inseparable connection of any departing 
 from the love of God with selfish and passionate wickedness 
 toward Jiis 'neighbour' indeed. 
 
 Another great part of this true religion doubtless was 
 prayer. Those who then knew God with some penitent and 
 humble love, would ' come to Him ' in words of worship and 
 supplication for what they needed of the Great Unseen. Nor 
 can I think of what would more probably represent these 
 prayers in substance than the wonderful form which the 
 Saviour of the world afterwards gave to us sinners. It is in- 
 deed all but certain that in just those words it was never 
 known until He gave it. The supposed discovery of some 
 modern writers that the Lord's Prayer is only a scrap of 
 some Jewish liturgy, well known to ' the scribes and Phari- 
 sees,' has no reason in it, as can be fully shown. But as 
 beyond doubt it briefly comprehended all that sinful and 
 penitent men have needed to ask of God, it probably in that 
 brought us back to the substance of what those who first 
 believed in God prayed for, when man were as yet not so 
 very far gone from 'original righteousness' as we have all 
 since become by the habits and tendencies of our fall. 
 
 Thus they still addressed Him as ' Father,' though they 
 had already begun their journey away from His house, and to 
 the ' far country.' The great parable in St. Luke is, in another 
 aspect, also a beautiful picture of the divergence, then begun, 
 and widening ever afterward, between ' them that (even so im- 
 perfectly) serve God and them that serve Him not.' And so 
 
 1 This, among the different senses and translations which have been given of 
 Ihis passage, seems to me, upon the whole, the true one.
 
 228 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 their first petitions were according to the immortal law of our 
 life — for His glory and service, — and not for their earthly, or 
 any sort of personal, advantage. Then they besought Him for 
 the supply of their bodily needs, which still, they well knew, 
 they must work and care for as diligently as if all only de- 
 pended upon that. Then they asked forgiveness for their 
 sins, and vowed meekness and patience toward those who 
 wronged them, and besought that their conscious weakness of 
 purpose might not be too severely tried, but that He would 
 give them spiritual strength to resist this evil, whether it came 
 upon them from their own passfons, the suggestions of the 
 world around them, or the terrible spiritual temptations which 
 had brought on the first sin. 
 
 This religion was, then, one of love of God by faith, ' seeing 
 Him Who is invisible ' in His eternal power and glory, and 
 trying to live for Him according to His Will in their creation. 
 They confessed to Him how by their sins His Will was in 
 fact fiot done on earth as it is in Heaven, but also with faith 
 in His mystery of promise of a future great salvation of all 
 men by means of One yet to be born of their race. With the 
 most clear and keen perception of the necessities of labour, 
 and of learning as to the world around them ; in order to get 
 daily bread, and all other worthy and needful objects of 
 desire, they were still far too wise to fancy that these powers 
 and this growing knowledge made them any way independ- 
 ent of the constant goodness of God. They must receive all, 
 after all, from His gracious bounty ; and as such they asked 
 Him for it. They did not pray 'after this manner' because 
 they were so ignorant and credulous, in comparison with 
 us, but because they were not so worldly, blind, and self- 
 sufficient. I suppose that, so far as any men of that age were 
 thus religious, they approached to the sort of life described in 
 a remarkable phrase of the historian as ' walking with God.' 
 
 But, as before observed, those who followed the pure re- 
 ligion were soon very few among many ; and, as time went on, 
 this disproportion increased. All except the descendants of 
 Seth, including doubtless many others besides the ' Cainites' — 
 at last including the greater part of the first mentioned — took 
 the other part. For it is recorded later, that when, by the 
 swift increase of numbers, there began to be multitudes both
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 229 
 
 of men and womcn,^ the surging tide of evil broke through 
 even among the noble family that had so far kept it out. 
 Until then, by that same common sense that has always 
 prevailed among the intelligently devout, the special intimacy 
 of marriage and the family had by them been carefully 
 guarded by making religion the ruling consideration in the 
 choice of a wife. To consider in this first, not beauty and 
 other like personal charms, even far less the low fierceness of 
 animal desire, but sympathy in the love of God, kept these 
 nearest alliances of the sons of Seth among their own pure 
 society. But numbers, and rivalry, and evil example around 
 at last broke over all this restraint, ' and the sons of God saw 
 the daughters of men that they were fair ; and they took 
 them wives of all which they chose.' Here we have already 
 a glimpse of the brutish fierceness to which our sex have in 
 this part of their nature descended from their noble original. 
 Perhaps it suggests also, as some think, the beginning of 
 polygamy, which is first mentioned of the fierce Lamech of 
 the line of Cain. 
 
 And so from this time on only a single household appears 
 to preserve and transmit this sacred deposit of truth and 
 love. Yet exactly here in history, where mankind seem at 
 last and altogether to have broken from all restraints, and 
 overpowered all their best traditions and noblest thoughts in 
 a headlong rush of evil passion, armed with strength of both 
 body and mind, and with very long life, — ^just here the merci- 
 ful love of God caused to shine the brightest spot of human 
 example between the Creation and the Advent. The account 
 is in the fewest and simplest words, yet it tells everything. 
 
 ^ ' When men began to mulliply upon the earth, and daughters were born 
 unto them,' etc. (Gen. vi. 4.) This, upon careful study of all the interpretations of 
 the passage which have been maintained by scholars of great fame, seems to me 
 clearly the only one which at all accords with the spirit of true religion. That 
 which makes it an account of fallen angels (such described as ' sons of God ' !) 
 cohabiting with women, belongs only to, as it doubtless came from, those dark 
 fables of magic which the later Jews got from heathen legends, and which have 
 always been captivating to the superstitious. But this is not only out of harmony 
 with all that bright and pure truth of God, but against the express words of Our 
 Lord as to the angelic, compared with the present human, nature (St. Mark 
 xii. 25). The suggestion of Lange in loco that nii-chol, ' of all,' denotes a 
 sacrifice of all higher considerations, in tiie forming of marriage, to those of 
 beauty and carnal desire, is very just.
 
 230 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 One man holds so fast to the love of God, and lives so much 
 in penitent faith and humble prayer, that this describes all 
 his life : ' And Enoch walked with God.' And thus while, 
 by the same tender mercy of God to us, there have been in 
 all ages since many who, notwithstanding the prevalence 
 of impiety around them, have ' feared God and worked 
 righteousness,' we cannot mistake in saying that no one of 
 them all ever equalled this man as such an example. As to 
 the great Saints of both Testaments, who have had much 
 more important parts in the events, that history, with its 
 beautiful truthfulness, never fails to tell us of some of the 
 imperfections of each one of them, of Enoch only is this 
 the whole account of his life, that he ' walked with God.' 
 
 And also alone in this, and in accord with it, was the end 
 of his life, — not that ' he died,' but that ' he was not, for God 
 took him.' There came no day when there was left of him 
 only in this world a lifeless body, which struck that awe and 
 sorrow into those who survived to love him (and which no 
 experience of ours ever lessens), and when that body had to 
 be hidden from sight promptly by burial. He did not indeed 
 ' live alway,' to bear without relief the * labour and sorrow ' 
 of surviving his vigour of body and mind. But he disap- 
 peared from among his people, and ' was no more seen.' Yet 
 they knew from God Himself that he had been taken by 
 Him to the rest which they, so far as they lived the same 
 holy life, hoped from the Divine Mercy after death. If any 
 one of old had raised doubts as to the meaning of the sublime 
 and mysterious account of this in Genesis, we can never mis- 
 take it. It is a part of the grace of God to Christians that 
 He tells them plainly that * Enoch was translated, that he 
 should not see death ' (Heb. xi. 5). 
 
 This also discloses to us very plainly that a belief of life 
 for a man in * the world to come,' after he dies here, was a 
 part of that primitive religion. Whatever we may think of 
 the religion of any people in any later age, these witnesses 
 and keepers of the first knowledge of God cannot reasonably 
 be supposed to have lost entirely so remarkable and practi- 
 cally valuable a part of that truth and hope. Otherwise the 
 translation of Enoch, after only a third part of the life of any 
 of his ancestors, would have seemed to them a terrible pun-
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 231 
 
 ishment inflicted upon the most admirable piety. But 
 any way, it is decisive for us that, as we have just seen, the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews says that he ' did not see death,' and 
 that ' God had translated him,' — that is, transferred him from 
 life in this world to life with Him. 
 
 Looking now away from these very few who pursued the 
 narrow way of life for God and in God, to the many others 
 who crowded the broad road that led to destruction, we find 
 among them, first and evidently, all the descendants of Cain. 
 Yet I do not see that it is not probable that there were many 
 other sons of Adam and their descendants. None such are 
 mentioned. But, on the other hand, neither is the birth or 
 life of any of his daughters, though I believe no one doubts 
 that there were such.^ According to the great, undeviating 
 purpose of this history, that is specially mentioned which 
 concerns the history of Religion. Thus Cain, Abel, and Seth 
 are named ; and the descendants of the latter as representing 
 the preservation of Religion ; of the former, as the chief repre- 
 sentatives of its neglect, and the consequence of that. 
 
 Cain, terrified at the awful judgment of God upon his 
 crime, withdrew with his own household from the rest, and 
 ' builded him a city,' far to the east.^ There, quite as well 
 as among their more religious kinsmen, they multiplied 
 rapidly — a bold and ingenious race. Nor did all degrada- 
 tion of spirit, any more than of mind and body, at once 
 extinguish religion, but corrupted and weakened it by 
 degrees. We see this in the very names of some of the 
 line of Cain — Mehuja-^-/ and Methusa-^"/. And so it is 
 among them that the arts had their most signal develop- 
 
 ^ The original marriage of brother and sister was not only a necessity of the 
 order by which all men should be ' of one blood,' or descendants of a single 
 pair, but had not then the slightest taint of the evil of such things in later gene- 
 rations, when this part of our disordered nature began to grow to a pitch of base- 
 ness that needed the holy law of absolute exclusion of those who are near in 
 blood. 
 
 " The objection one sometimes hears to the credibility of this, that there 
 were no multitudes of men to people a 'city,' is quite absurd when we con- 
 sider that the first * cities,' or gnarini, were not great Baby Ions or Londons, 
 nor even the little cardboard cities of our American backwoods, but the 
 smallest 'block-house,' which one or two families fixed for a protection against 
 wild beasts or evil men (as probably Cain, against any indignant avenger of 
 murder). Some of these doubtless grew into the greater cities of after-times.
 
 232 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 ment — of instrumental music by Jubal, and of working 
 in metals under Tubal-Cain, both sons of the proud and 
 violent Cainite Lamech. It was evidently among the 
 neglecters of religion that the greatest advance of worldly 
 success of every kind took place. This is most instructive 
 to all who will now wisely estimate these things. There is 
 a very great tendency in our age — not only for those who 
 oppose Religion, or those who, shrinking from this, only 
 neglect it, — but among many sincerely Christian people, to 
 make the most of arts, inventions, and all sorts of im- 
 provements in earthly things, rather than of the Divine and 
 spiritual ; so that these last-mentioned persons, especially 
 the more intellectual and accomplished among them, are 
 prone to maintain that Religion is true and great in pro- 
 portion as they can show that it promotes these other things. 
 
 But this is utterly false ground, and therefore does great 
 injustice to the truth of God. That stands upon its own 
 superior merits ; is just as true, necessary, and superior 
 whether it favours or hinders the others. And while I 
 doubt not that, upon the whole, mankind gain in all these 
 ways (so far as they are innocent, beautiful, and useful) by 
 the true knowledge and love of God, still this false method 
 exposes the faith of men to the vice versa argument, that 
 whoever thinks that, as a matter of fact, impiety has been 
 more favourable to arts and inventions must reject the 
 supreme truth. 
 
 This earliest history is therefore most valuable in secur- 
 ing us against that great delusion. All later history really 
 confirms this. The Egyptians, with the basest superstitions — 
 the Pagan Greeks, with their most miserable and abominable 
 false religion, had far more 'culture' than the Israelites. 
 The French and German^ peoples are instances of it in our 
 day, while even the nations of the English race are now 
 beginning to illustrate the same portentous lesson, — this as 
 to the most eager pursuit and quickest invention of these 
 things through neglect of the higher. But it is of the great 
 goodness of God then, as now, that these things can only 
 
 ' The nation that has Luther as its greatest name for the sixteenth century 
 now makes a demigod of Goethe, who has done more, with his splendid talents, to 
 undermine all faith and godliness, purity and truth, than any one else among them.
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 233 
 
 survive and accumulate for any enduring good, as true 
 Religion remains to keep alive what is best in our race. 
 Upon the wisest view of our life, there is nothing strange in 
 this. Those who concentrate their thoughts upon earthly 
 things more quickly arrive at their results than those who 
 now so much more nobly and happily give due thought 
 to the greater. How plainly Our Lord teaches us this in the 
 saying that ' the children of this world are wiser in their 
 generation than the children of light'! But what is the 
 ultimate result for both parties, even in this world ? The 
 one first lose the best things, and soon, with them, even their 
 poor grasp upon the inferior — while even these arts and 
 elegancies (they are but a part of the good things which God 
 has prepared for them by the vain, selfish toil of the others, 
 as He might by any other means) fall to those who have lost 
 their lives to save them — for ' the meek shall inherit the earth.' 
 
 So these discoveries also passed over among those who 
 walked with God ; or these arts, too, would have been 
 drowned and lost in the torrents which washed out the 
 abominations of their inventors. The history of the musical 
 art, explored with real comprehension of its uses, would show 
 that it belonged from the first to Religion. This part of our 
 nature, uniting, as it does, both the spiritual and physical in a 
 wonderful way, was surely created chiefly for the praise of 
 God. The very earliest mention of it is at the Creation 
 itself, Vv'hen ' the morning stars sang together.' This is 
 indeed wonderfully poetical, but none the less true in its 
 averment, according to our wisest thought and all history, that 
 the first and highest use of the voice in poetry and music is 
 in acts of religion. Whatever beautiful, moving, and delight- 
 ful uses it may have for human love, generous patriotism, or 
 mere entertainment, the art never reaches its loftiest flights 
 until it is consecrated to God Himself Thus while the 
 worldly Jubal first began the contrivance of instruments, 
 which by this time have become such a noble part of music, 
 not only was their religious use soon found among the 
 devout, but they came to the help of that * singing unto God,' 
 which we may believe began with the innocence of Paradise, 
 .and passed over into the religion of penitence and faith. 
 
 In this period also we find the striking record, ' Then
 
 234 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 began men to call upon the name of the Lord {Jehovahy 
 According to any of the best interpretations of these some- 
 what mysterious words, it at least describes religious profes- 
 sion and public worship. It also utterly excludes the notion 
 of some, that this Divine Name was unknown before Moses. 
 
 But the battle was fast going against Religion among 
 mankind. After the bright star of Enoch set, none like it 
 rose of such individual splendour ; nor, on the other hand, 
 did the one devout family multiply into more such. Thus 
 so lowering and despairing became the world (as made for 
 mankind)^ that 'the whole creation' might have seemed to 
 utter a deeper groan at this its sympathetic degradation, and 
 to cry out ' Help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth : for the 
 faithful (believing) fail from among the sons of Adam.' ^ And 
 in like proportion, it would seem, grew worse the passionate 
 selfishness, the pride, violence, cruelty, and lewdness of the 
 irreligious, until the righteous judgment of God upon it 
 needs to be expressed in these awful words : ' And it 
 repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and 
 it grieved Him at His heart' ^ Some fearful crisis surely 
 impended. Either the race of man was to be quite blotted 
 out, or deliverance and 'probation' for it under somewhat 
 new conditions must be made. 
 
 So to Noah, the great-grandson of Enoch, was now re- 
 vealed such a ' new departure ' of grace and hope for us all. 
 Religion, indeed, had not perished with Enoch, though, in this 
 second period of its history, it rose to its highest single char- 
 acter in him. His son Methuselah, his grandson Lamech, 
 and now his great-grandson Noah (though born long after 
 his translation), had kept fast hold of this truth. Of Noah it 
 is even specially recorded that he ' was a just man, and per- 
 fect in his generations ; and Noah walked with God' — plainly 
 not as this is said of Enoch, for later events disclose great 
 faults in his fine character. Him God informed that He was 
 about to bring a flood of water upon the earth, which would 
 drown all mankind, only saving him and his family, which he 
 
 ^ St. Peter (2 Pet. ii. 5) calls it then • the world of the ungodly.' 
 
 ^ Ps. xii. I. This is only a more exact rendering of the passage. 
 
 ^ Any who are disturbed at the complaints some may make at this as 
 
 ' anthropomorphic ' can recur to what has been already said of all such instances 
 
 on p. 212, etc.
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 235 
 
 was carefully bringing up in his own piety, and instructing 
 him how to efifect this escape from the general destruction. 
 
 We may, with due awe and humility, make some con- 
 jectures as to why this period from the Fall to the Flood was 
 to be the first part of that great wonder of man's history, by 
 which the disaster of the Fall was to be remedied. It is for 
 all the generations after an example of what man, once 
 disobeying the law of love, must naturally become. All the 
 circumstances then went to make this trial complete. Man 
 is at his best individually, in the fresh and healthful complete- 
 ness of body and mind. The powerful tendency of all 
 wrong-doing, as afterwards so plainly revealed to us in one 
 of the Ten Commandments — ' visiting the iniquity of the 
 fathers upon the children,' etc. (Exod. xx. 5) — had only just 
 begun its degrading process. The world outside of and 
 around him was nearest to its first perfection. All is 
 specially natural, and whatever knowledge of God and 
 spiritual things he can gain by this ' Nature,' be his capacity 
 that way quick or slow, he can then do better than in any 
 later period. 
 
 Nor is he even then left to feel his way toward the Great 
 Unseen in any obscurity, by such observation and thought, 
 were that the most natural direction of them, much less to 
 grope after it in stumbling darkness. He begins with great 
 knowledge of God, and of his own nature and duty towards 
 Him in all respects, and a recurring seventh day to be 
 hallowed for religion, and as perpetually reminding him of all 
 that truth. What will this favoured servant do with the 
 precious 'talent' thus intrusted to him by his Lord .^ Not 
 merely one such either, great as was its value. For beside 
 that intelligent nature of love in which he had been made ' in 
 the image' of the Supreme Good, and the 'Word of God' 
 given to him in Paradise while innocent, he has also the word 
 of promise to him of restoration after the Fall, the example of 
 some of the best of his fellow-men, and some certain words 
 of warning about a future judgment which some of them, as 
 prophets of God, addressed to all their fellow-men. 
 
 We know this of Enoch ^ and of Noah. The first of these 
 
 ^ As we have seen before, according to the only true and reasonable 
 Christian method, the New Testament best interprets for us the Old ; and any
 
 236 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 had a prophetic vision of the Judgment which is to close the 
 whole of this life, and allot the eternal future of each soul. 
 We may very reasonably presume that this great event was 
 revealed as a part of the original religion, at least after the 
 Fall. But now in the deepening shadows of general wicked- 
 ness it was proclaimed anew to all through that great and 
 holy man, 'the seventh from Adam' (St. Jude 14, 15), that 
 the Lord would come with the pomp of vast attendance, 
 ' with ten thousands of His saints, to convince all ' who had 
 chosen and persisted in the evil way — ' gone in the way of 
 Cain,' as he elsewhere expresses ii (ver. 5) — of their evil deeds 
 and evil sayings. For we have here an express mention that 
 those first sinners also added ' hard speeches ' about God and 
 His Will to their ' ungodly deeds.' 
 
 So also Noah for a long time besought his wicked fellow- 
 men to return into the way of righteousness — ' to believe in 
 God, and to serve Him.' And beside the other ' terrors of the 
 Lord ' by which he tried to persuade them, he told them of 
 a new danger — that of an instant (that is, in the earlier sense 
 of that word, as urgetit and then impending) purpose of God 
 
 supplemental incidents it mentions, which are not found in the older chronicle, 
 are of the highest historical certainty, coming directly from Him to Whom all 
 that past is better known than any memories or monuments of men can show 
 it to us. This has nothing whatever to do with the so-called ' Book of Enoch,' 
 which not only never was received for Holy Scripture in the Church, but, as 
 Mr. Bruce recovered it entire in Abyssinia, is upon its face so merely and 
 weakly human — one of the fantastic inventions of the Jews in that period 
 between the closing of true prophecy and their entire expulsion from Palestine, 
 — that one can but wonder that Christian scholars should ever have believed that 
 St. Jude 'quoted' from it. That his words coincide with one brief passage of 
 this strange writing is no proof of such quotation, unless we first assume that 
 one of the holy Apostles of God, writing by His inspiration, could not know 
 the truth he then utters, or find words to express it, unless he took them from a 
 writing of no authority, and of which we have no proof at all that it was not 
 written long after the Epistle, and so copied the words from that. We w ho 
 receive that Epistle, with the rest of the New Testament, as ' the Word of God,' 
 cannot without absurdity allow this. We have two other conjectures at our 
 service, either of which accords with that faith : firstly, that this was a part of 
 the genuine tradition from those very days, through Noah and his descendants — 
 which tradition is true, whatever other and false beliefs had gathered around it, — 
 but was now separated from these, and placed here by the perfect inspiration ; 
 secondly, that it was then directly revealed to the Apostle Jude. Both of 
 these may be true ; either, alone, is entirely reasonable ; the other notion is not 
 at all so.
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 237 
 
 to destroy all who persisted in this impiety by a great flood 
 of waters. And we also know how they replied to, and 
 repelled, these most kindly as well as awful warnings. This 
 is implied in Our Lord's Own allusion to ' the days of Noah ' 
 (St. Matt. xxiv. 37). But more circumstantially does St. 
 Peter, in three different places (i Pet. iii. 20, 2 Pet. ii. 5, 
 iii. 3, 4), illustrate the scoffing unbelief which some men were 
 to practise from the Lord's first Advent until His second 
 one, by the like conduct of those first sinners. Such an 
 allusion, I think, is very plain in this great passage : ' Knowing 
 this first, that there shall come in the last days (just as there 
 did in the first) scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and 
 saying, Where is the promise of His coming ? for since the 
 fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the 
 beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are igno- 
 rant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, 
 and the earth, , . . whereby the world that then was, being 
 overflowed with water, perished.' 
 
 The resemblance is very striking in the appeal from 
 God's Word to the ' Uniformity of Nature.' That also was 
 a time like ours, when no ' signs and wonders ' of Religion 
 are recorded (either to restore impaired faith, or, as some 
 would say, to suggest superstition). The simple question 
 then, as now, was. Would they believe what God had revealed 
 in the past, and what He gave warning of as to the future, 
 by some of their fellow-men as His prophets ? Thus the 
 history shows us that with these favouring opportunities, so 
 far was it from the fact that truth and good would of them- 
 selves from slight beginnings leaven and change to them- 
 selves a great mass of evil existing around them, that the 
 exact reverse took place. The evil once entering among 
 men by a single act, proceeds to assimilate all to itself So, 
 as we now follow this process until Enoch and his house 
 were left alone on the side of the goodness — that indeed 
 rising to such excellence in one man, — yet immediately after 
 this tremendous contrast we see that the one good family 
 does not hold its own against the evil all around it. Noah's 
 sons do not show the firm faith of their father. Even after 
 that most awful warning against evil (and reward of faith 
 in God), which they survived, has passed into history — the
 
 238 BEGINNhYGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 history has no such words of praise for them, — and what 
 followed in a few generations shows what that silence means. 
 It more expressly records the shameful misconduct of one 
 of them, and at the same time discloses a sad weakness even 
 in their father. What, then, might they have done, and 
 what become, to the utter extinction of true Religion, if 
 ' all things had continued as from the beginning' !^ 
 
 This history of man, as first most intelligent, innocent, and 
 happy, and then losing this by his own wrong choice, is the 
 only thing that at all accounts for the actual general wretched- 
 ness and wickedness of mankind. It does leave the incidents 
 of this in great measure a profound mystery, far beyond our 
 comprehension. But it is thus a reasonable- mystery, in per- 
 fect keeping with what is most noble and certain in all our 
 other knowledge, whereas all other attempts to explain 
 this by philosophy or mythology are not only in themselves 
 miserable failures to throw any light upon this, but confuse 
 and obscure what we do know otherwise of God by His Own 
 Word and our best thoughts. This account of * the origin of 
 evil ' deals with facts, not metaphysics. It has the strength 
 of simple truth, not the feeble struggling of human ambition 
 of thought after what is bej'ond its capacity. This simplicity 
 is indeed childlike, but it is not at all childish, as are the ' many 
 
 * Never were conditions more favourable in the main for Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold's reasonable religion. There was then the least Aberglaiibe and the most 
 Zeitgeist (and therefore 'Literature' would have been quite dispensable?). 
 No prodigies, or suggestion of them, interfered with the march of the Cosmos. 
 I have never seen this condition of that time noticed by commentators, though 
 it may have been, and is an implied fact of this history. The translation of 
 Enoch is no exception to this, for it was not an appearance (pJiaiuo'iieiion), but 
 to the irreligious at most a mere (//^appearance, which they could account for, 
 if they took any notice of it, by 'natural ' causes, as readily as such men would 
 now. Nor were those prophecies, or those of Noah, miracles to them. They 
 simply disbelieved them, as such men do now the warnings of Religion about 
 a judgment to come. Nor, as much as now, had the inheritance of a hundred 
 generations entwined the inventions of ' priestcraft ' with the laws, traditions, 
 customs, and early education of all. And in that pleasant part of the world 
 no hard conditions of extreme cold or heat, or any other such difficult struggle 
 for bodily existence, cramped and distorted their spiritual life. 
 
 - It can be shown that the only alternative of supposing that ultimately, 
 back of all such inquiries by us, there is a reasonable mystery which extends far 
 beyond our comprehension, is that we are naturally a/Z-knowing, and our in- 
 telligence at least co-extensive with the Divine. But as this is essentially un- 
 reasonable, the reductio ad absurdum is complete.
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 239 
 
 inventions ' of men when they try to be profound, and are 
 only confused and weak. But it alone can also tell us ' the 
 origin ' of good, not merely Who is the One Good, and 
 none else, but how man may again become good. In this 
 age of ours, after all the painful ethics which philosophy of 
 every sort has toiled at — from the flood of thin words in the 
 Hindu and Chinese writings, and the few glimpses of truth 
 in all the elegant talk of Plato, down to the very hard and 
 cold atheistic ' data ' of Mr. Herbert Spencer, — it has brought 
 forth at last what it fancies a less unsatisfactory account of 
 how we can be good, in the new term, ' Altniisvi' 
 
 One must translate this word into English for plain people, 
 and let them know that it is the same as ' OtJier-isml and 
 means to say that the greatest human goodness consists in 
 acting for the advantage or pleasure of another, instead of 
 ourselves. That is true, if we mean the true Alter, ox 'other 
 one ; ' but it is utterly false, as it is usually meant, to apply 
 to our fellow-men. Whatever sentimental prettiness of theory 
 or apparent good effect of practice it might seem to some to 
 have, it must end in either self-deception or hypocrisy, or 
 both. There is only One Person W^ho can be the supreme 
 Object of the devotion of our lives. The purpose of our 
 whole existence, its true, first, and all-including law, is in 
 those words, ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart' 
 
 This was a twofold ' probation.' First, of each individual 
 soul. Whatever others might do, would it, by good thought 
 and experience, overpower and banish the evil which by a 
 first evil choice had entered where all before was good — at 
 least hold its own against it ? — or, upon the whole, prefer the 
 wrong way to the right, and tend more and more in that 
 direction .'' 
 
 Second, of the race, as a whole. Would all men have a 
 penitent faith in the mercy of God to restore them to His 
 perfect love ? or, if not, in what proportion would the good 
 outnumber the evil, and give hope that at last all would 
 ' walk with God ;' or the opposite of all this } 
 
 And here was the result of the trial in both aspects. 
 With many a one it went wrong. But this is so included in, 
 and the real greatness of each individual failure is so lost in,
 
 240 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION 
 
 the other aspect of the probation, that this claims all our 
 attention. From the beginning numbers were on the side 
 of irreligion, increasingly so, until the probable issue was 
 the utter extinction of the love of God among men, and thus 
 of mercy from God to them, unless some great change was 
 introduced into the conditions of the trial. 
 
 So the Eternal Lord brought that trial to an end. All 
 of mankind but the one family in which piety still survived 
 perished by the great flood, about 1600 years after the 
 Creation.^ 
 
 I would here repeat (see p. 90, etc.) most earnestly the 
 qualification of reverence and humility in all such conjec- 
 tures as to why, in the grace of God to mankind, they passed 
 through this stage of their religious history just described. 
 Fair as I think the inferences drawn by me as to this from 
 the facts, I am very far from placing them for certainty of 
 truth with those facts, as we have them by the Word of God. 
 The disclosures of the better life may show us all, that we 
 misunderstood the processes of that great Providence ; or 
 some of my fellow-men may more wisely infer these, to my 
 own, as well as others' better comprehension of them ; or 
 they may be what is never to be known by us. 
 
 One thing, however, we do know now, and will for ever — 
 that in all this He has been, is, and will be for evermore, 
 most glorious and gracious. Nor can we mistake one pur- 
 pose that He has for us in this history, to teach us all a 
 most loving and confiding humility toward Him. This is 
 one of the indispensable conditions of our peace and happi- 
 
 ^ It is not at all necessary to the present inquiry to discuss the question 
 whether the Flood prevailed over the whole world, as now known to us. It is 
 enough for us to know that it submerged the entire oiKovfx^vri, or inhabited 
 earth, which in all probability was not the tenth part of its present extent. 
 
 But for fear that my silence as to this should be misapprehended, I would 
 say that this is a question fairly open to the devout students of God's Word ; 
 that even more than one occurrence within the range of human history suggests 
 that vast changes may occur upon the face of our globe within a few days' time ; 
 that there are very marked traces of just such changes in the region which 
 beyond doubt was ' the cradle of the human race ; ' and most of all that, in 
 any conflict of grounds of belief, it is really far more reasonable to believe the 
 Holy Scriptures of God in their more simple and natural sense than any 
 strained construction of them, in order to allow for the physical science of the 
 time — even that which is supposed to be most surely demonstrated.
 
 RELIGION AFTER THE LOSS OF INNOCENCE. 241 
 
 ness, ' that no flesh should glory in His presence.' He might 
 have done whatever else He pleased. He did this, and that 
 is best. ' For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that 
 He might have mercy upon all. O altitudo ! ' (Rom. xi. 
 
 32, 33-)
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE DISPERSION. 
 
 When Noah and his household issued from the Ark upon 
 Ararat, the world was again to be peopled from one family, 
 but under some new conditions. The first of these was that 
 mankind should all have the memory of a great catastrophe, 
 which had been the judgment of God upon all for the 
 general neglect of Religion, devotion merely to earthly 
 desires, and lawless and selfish passions as the result of 
 this. This event would remain to all the later generations 
 as a memory, a tradition, and, at the very least, a very deep 
 impression of the Unseen Power above them. It would 
 remind them that God is awfully displeased with wickedness 
 in men, and that He has the power to punish it in an irresis- 
 tible and overwhelming way. 
 
 But they were not to live in a constant terror (otherwise 
 very likely to prevail), lest this should be repeated upon 
 them. On the contrary, a promise that no such flood should 
 again all but annihilate the race was expressly given them. 
 More than that, a pledge and token of this — to strengthen 
 their trembling faith in this patient goodness of the Holy 
 One, even if the earth should again be almost as much ' the 
 world of the ungodly' as before the Flood — was to appear 
 frequently in the sky, when sunshine should pass through 
 rain, and paint a wonderful arch of colour upon the heavens. 
 Here was a new thing established in the ' order of Nature,' 
 for such is the plain statement of God's Word. He who 
 cannot believe this because he fancies that light cannot 
 exist unless composite, and must have always from the 
 beginning exhibited this phenomenon under like conditions, 
 merely befools himself with the very absurd notion that he
 
 THE DISPERSION. 243 
 
 understands the Creation better than the Creator Himself. 
 He may have never before brought about these conditions ; 
 or until then may have made light and water with other 
 incidents. But these 'natural' explanations, though easy 
 enough, are not necessary. One needs only by faith a more 
 profound and true thought of the Eternal One to believe the 
 words simply and without any explanation.^ 
 
 Yet it is also now for the first time that we have the 
 gracious assurance of the Supreme Maker and Lord that all 
 things of this world and life shall move on uniformly, so 
 that men may make their studies and provisions with 
 industry and forethought, and accumulate such knowledge 
 for succeeding generations. This is the plain meaning of 
 the record of His words : ' While the earth remaineth, seed- 
 time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, 
 and day and night, shall not cease ' (Gen. viii. 22). Upon 
 this purpose of His, and not at all upon any necessity of 
 things, or upon our * law of thought' that it must be so, do 
 we wisely trust in all our forethought. It has been very well 
 suggested by some profound thinkers that we have no assur- 
 ance that one phenomenon will follow another in the future 
 merely because it has in the past. 
 
 It is to be specially noted that this great promise to 
 mankind follows as a consequence upon the fact that Noah's 
 first act in going forth from the Ark was to ' build an altar,' 
 and make a sacrifice to God of penitence and faith in His 
 mercy to sinners.^ And this promise also contains those 
 beautiful words of pity, patience, and condescension 
 towards us all as such miserable sinners, if we will but be 
 penitent and humble : ' For the imagination of man's heart 
 is evil from his youth' (viii. 21). Compare this with what 
 was said but a little before, as the reason why He was about 
 to bring that great judgment upon the world, that 'the 
 wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every 
 
 ^ I regret to differ in this with one who is usually so wise and firm for the 
 plain meaning of God's Word as the late Professor Tayler Lewis ; see his note 
 in Lange's Commentary in loco. That he should quote the rationalising Rabbi 
 Maimonides as any authority for this seems most strange. See also The Reign 
 of God, etc. 
 
 2 This is what 'burnt-offerings' meant, as we know both by that of Abel, 
 and by them as continued afterwards, in the law of Moses.
 
 244 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil con- 
 tinually.' There is indeed the same inherited perversity 
 which He then beheld. But before, it was the bold con- 
 tempt of the ungodly for all good that was to be punished ; 
 now, it is the trembling frailty of 'whosoever will' trust in 
 His mercy and seek His face, which is to be helped. It is 
 they 'who will make a covenant with Him with sacrifice' 
 with whom He will be very patient and gracious. 
 
 To this was also added a blessing of God upon these 
 men and their posterity, of power, plenty, and increase 
 (Gen. ix. 1-7). This is also now established as a 'covenant' 
 (vers. 9-17) between God and mankind, of which the rainbow 
 is declared to be the ' token.' This covenant is a part of the 
 new conditions in which Religion is to be ob.served by men, 
 this 'everlasting covenant' (ver. 16), of which there is no 
 mention before, except when Noah was told to build the 
 ark, and prepare for this new probation. There is something 
 sublime and mysterious, with a graciousness, like all the 
 Divine, quite beyond our full understanding, in the thought 
 of the Almighty and Holy Lord making a ' covenant ' with 
 these fallen creatures. It is all for our comfort and hope. 
 
 There was also this other condition of the new period of 
 trial, in His new command as to blood, for better observing the 
 sacredness of human life. Very likely this may have been 
 because murder, as one of the great sins before the Flood, had 
 so often occurred, even before the eyes of Noah's family, that 
 they were less shocked at it than was natural and needful. 
 Now, too (vi. 3), whether or not as a natural result of the en- 
 feebling of all natural powers by our sins, by inheritance 
 through ten generations, or simply God's Will, henceforth 
 human life was to grow rapidly much shorter. Evidently to 
 restore and preserve the proper horror of murder, men were 
 forbidden to eat the blood of beasts, even of those which the\- 
 were allowed to use for food. And whoever should shed the 
 blood — that is, take the life — of man in murder, human 
 authority must take his life in punishment.^ 
 
 So our race begins again its trial, whether to be wisely 
 religious — to believe in God, with penitent faith in His mercy 
 to sinners, and try to keep His law of love ; or no. It is first 
 
 ^ This is the very first recognition of such public authority. See infra, p. 259, etc.
 
 THE DISPERSION. 245 
 
 one family, under the allowed magistracy of him who was the 
 greatest of its members, as well as the revered ancestor of 
 them all. This tended to keep alive the spirit of reverence 
 and obedience belonging to a good home. And it is not to 
 be left unnoticed that, though long before this the passionate 
 Lamech had had his two wives, and the selfish and sensual 
 ' majority ' of Enoch's generation had perhaps altogether 
 forsaken the pure idea of marriage that was ' in the begin- 
 ning,' yet in this new beginning there was no polygamy ; 
 Noah and his sons were observing the Divine law that ' they 
 twain should be one' 
 
 But we have also proof very soon that ' the evil imagina- 
 tion of man's heart,' which needs the patient mercy of God, 
 was in them too. Noah, proceeding to restore the cultivation 
 of useful plants and practical arts, as before the Flood, plants 
 a vineyard, and makes wine from its fruit. This gives us a 
 glimpse of much skill already, both in tillage and in artificial 
 preparations. Very likely this had been abused before the 
 Flood by intoxication and drunkenness. But the very first 
 instance of that noted is of this very wise and devout man 
 Noah. Even he did not use the good gifts of God in grateful 
 moderation, but was overcome by drunkenness, and lay upon 
 the earth, in shameful exposure of his person. Seen by one 
 of his sons (and a grandson .'') in this condition, this — so far 
 from being a shocking warning to them of the like danger, 
 and an opportunity of dutiful and loving modesty toward one 
 whom they all should have so much revered — is for Ham his 
 son (and perhaps Canaan, his son) an occasion of indecent 
 mocking at his grey hairs, and of that most immoral jesting 
 which has always been one of the actual sins against God's 
 law of purity, and the certain sign of a bad heart in this 
 respect. Yet, on the other hand, his two other sons at once 
 show beautiful respect for a father, and a noble, godly purity 
 of soul. Does this indicate that now at last, and for all the 
 future, the religious shall outnumber the others among man- 
 kind as two to one .-* We shall see. One immediate result 
 of the occurrence was a Divine prophecy that the descend- 
 ants of the low-minded Ham, and especially of his son 
 Canaan, should be degraded below their fellow-men in later 
 ages.
 
 246 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 This, however, does not appear at once. It is rather the 
 ' Hamites,' just as with the progeny of Cain, who at first show 
 most ingenuity and power. But in all this first period of, 
 say, 400 years after the Flood, the history is exceedingly brief 
 and scanty. Yet it is exceedingly valuable, for it is the only 
 history whatever which we have of this time. Nothing which 
 is ever brought in competition with it will bear the compari- 
 son. That of the Hindus which of late, under the patronage 
 of Prof. Max MuUer, is so much pushed upon us, is an utter 
 blank here as to real history. That of the Egyptians has 
 more body as to different facts of various degrees of credi- 
 bility, yet it is not history. It is not a continuous thread 
 of narrative, with an orderly succession of events, or any 
 chronology whatever. It is a great mass of lately deciphered 
 inscriptions and descriptions, which European scholars are 
 trying to arrange into such history, yet so far with little 
 success, as they do not agree among themselves ; and later 
 researches may show that none of them are right. Indeed, 
 the greatest reliance so far for such an understanding of them 
 is this very Hebrew chronicle. The same is even more true 
 of the Assyrian remains.^ Even less truth can be extracted 
 from the supposed Chinese records of this age. Whereas we 
 have here, in the Book of Moses, a continuous relation by 
 successive generations ; and in the tenth chapter of Genesis 
 far the most valuable, and even the only, summary of the 
 branching divisions of man by tribal stocks, by whom ' was 
 the whole earth overspread.' 
 
 As we now take leave of Noah personally, we should recur 
 to what is said (so briefly, and yet with so much meaning) in 
 that summary of the history of true Religion : ' By faith Noah, 
 by an inspired warning'^ about things not yet seen, with 
 devout prudence, constructed an ark for the salvation of his 
 house, by which he condemned the world (the Kosmos), 
 and became the inheritor of the righteousness which is by 
 faith.' How is this belief in God and His Word, and peni- 
 tent obedience of Him according to this, which is the sub- 
 
 ^ Under this I include all the Chaldean and Babylonian antiquities, 
 ^ Heb. xi. 7. In this quotation I venture to translate the original more closely, 
 and yet I think more truly, than either the A. V. or the ' Revision.' Ought the 
 waweofGod ever to be set in His Word where He has not directly placed it?
 
 THE DISPERSION. 247 
 
 stance of true religion, to fare in these following generations ? 
 We shall see. 
 
 Little is told of this in detail. In fact, about allVe have 
 of it is the story of another vast cataclysm in human affairs, 
 which indeed no way affecied the physical world, but was like 
 a great earthquake in the midst of human action. The re- 
 peopling of the earth had begun with greater rapidity than 
 ever. It has been unreasonably assumed by some Christian 
 writers, and allowed by others, that this could not have gone 
 on so fast that in, say, 400 years there should be nations and 
 cities on the Nile and the Euphrates, armies and wars. But 
 once dismiss from our minds the mere prejudice — for such it 
 really is — that the mass of mankind were in that beginning 
 what they are now, mere plodders after a bare physical living, 
 of food and shelter, while a few monopolise the real comforts 
 and powers of human life, all alike inheriting a certain ex- 
 haustion of vital force through ages of unnatural living ; once 
 remember that all these men and women, just after the Flood, 
 had a nearly equal division of what is provided for human 
 life, and lived close to the primitive ages of bodily force, 
 courage, and will, of which but traces are seen now, and that 
 only in a few — and it is all easy enough. Each generation 
 of thirty years may have multiplied tenfold. Why not ? 
 And thus in a hundred years we have them by thousands, and 
 in 400 years, even making great allowance for the lessening 
 of this now by wars and other adversities, by hundreds of 
 millions. 
 
 As yet we have no hint of false religion. Very likely its 
 beginnings were astir in the pride and self-will, which began 
 to revolt at authority of God, as well as of parents and 
 patriarchs, and the animal sensuality, which wished to evade 
 the holy laws of self-denying love. If such men did not 
 venture, like those before the Flood, to utterly defy all 
 religion — if that fearful testimony of Divine power was all 
 too fresh in the memories of the older, and in the traditions 
 of the rest, they were already devising to substitute for 
 that truth of God something more akin to their wishes. 
 The spirit of combination was also more alive among men, 
 as was seen in a very striking manner in a demonstration 
 against the Divine displeasure at their growing turbulence
 
 248 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 and neglect of true religion, when, as we would say now, 
 * it was moved and carried ' — among the thousands already 
 swarming in the plains of Shinar (Mesopotamia — the be- 
 tween-rivers country) — that they should build a very lofty 
 tower, as a rallying-point for their united force. There 
 may have been in this, as legend has told, so much fear 
 of the mighty power of God, with a lack of faith in His 
 promises not to bring another flood upon them, as to think 
 of having the top of this structure for a refuge against such 
 a destruction. We may rather infer from their expressed 
 purpose — ' Let us make us a name, lest we be scattered 
 abroad upon the face of the earth' — that Noah or some 
 other one of the devout had been inspired to prophesy that 
 God would overthrow their irreligious ambition (perhaps 
 some 'imaginations' and contrivances of a new religion, to 
 which they meant to make all conform) by scattering them 
 in diverging migration. This was plainly His purpose, and 
 far more for the multiplying and comfort of the race, that 
 they should set out east, west, north, and south, to explore 
 and settle new regions. This was the occasion for the 
 great Divine miracle of that Dispersion. 
 
 We may be quite certain that there were still a few 
 who continued faithful in the true Religion. Yet everything 
 indicates that it was 'by a great majority' that, with 'the 
 one language and one speech,' they said one to another, 
 ' Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may 
 reach unto heaven.' And then the Divine Voice says: 
 Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language ; 
 and this they begin to do : and now nothing will be re- 
 strained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go 
 to, let Jis go down, and there confound their language, that 
 they may not understand one another's speech. So the 
 Lord scattered them abroad upon the face of the earth,' 
 etc. 
 
 I shall no more attempt any apology for this than for 
 any of the previous ' anthropomorphisms.' The power and 
 picturesqueness of these few words (with the Divine irony 
 and the utter failure of human opposition), in which is 
 told what we should now spend pages of feeble abstract 
 terms in a vain attempt to relate, vindicate themselves.
 
 THE DISPERSION. 249 
 
 Real faith and reverence will never make the childish 
 mistake of thinking either that God was afraid of being 
 circumvented by His creatures, and therefore made an 
 outcry, and hurried down a stairway into the midst of 
 these formidable adversaries ; or that we may find fault 
 with the words in which He so well tells us this great 
 incident. Instead of that, we will be glad and grateful 
 to learn how, beholding with compassion this new pre- 
 sumption of men, the immediate tendency of which would 
 be to cramp and thwart their real development, to ' replenish 
 the earth, and subdue it' with their numbers, as well as with 
 occasions of His spiritual grace to them. He defeated this 
 then by the most effectual means. They ceased at once 
 to have that ' one language.' They could not understand, 
 or make one another understand, what was contrived to be 
 done in finishing ' the tower and city,' or otherwise carrying 
 out the great plan. 
 
 Not only is it not the natural meaning of this, as some 
 seem to have imagined it to be, that there was a new 
 language for each person ; but a little reflection shows 
 that this is not what occurred. That would have been to 
 defeat all use of speech, and in effectual tendency to turn 
 the whole human race into unreasoning brutes. The con- 
 founding of their language was as effectual for its purpose 
 by there beginning to be at once several quite different 
 languages. Each family may have had one such to itself. 
 Thus their speech to their immediate associates was as 
 natural as before, and so all the necessities of language 
 for thought and intercourse remained ; but the mischievous 
 combination of all mankind was broken up. And for this 
 it will be most reasonable to take the family in a larger 
 sense than that of single households. The whole race was 
 one family (and is still * of one blood ') in origin and 
 sympathy. Tribes and nations have been but multiplying 
 and branching families, the foundation of all social, popular, 
 and public life. This survives in a very plain way even 
 now in the patriarchal tribes of the Orient, the village com- 
 munities of India, and elsewhere. 
 
 Thus it seems natural to suppose that the confusion of 
 tongues first separated the main branches of mankind — that
 
 250 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 is, the three great families of Shem's, Ham's, and Japhet's 
 descendants. And while this was the instant and primar>' 
 shock, with it may have begun a tendency, working slowly 
 but surely, toward more variations in each of these, as the}- 
 separated into many tribes and diverged further in place. 
 This also corresponds in a very striking way with the actual 
 classification of languages, as they have been a matter 
 of study in our day. It is the only gleam of historical 
 light upon what is otherwise more than a mystery, an 
 utter 'confusion' of thought: how, upon any theory of 
 the independent inventions of languages by many different 
 tribes of men for their necessities of thought, there should 
 be such great diversities — the same instinct or necessity 
 having impelled them alike, — or, on the other hand, how, 
 with this difference, there should be such general marks 
 of unity. But greater still is the wonder that these differ- 
 ences should arrange themselves in three or four groups, 
 exceedingly unlike in structure, and tendencies to further 
 variations, yet having plain marks of an earlier unity — even 
 to certain primary words found substantially in all of 
 them. This was more like those great * faults,' or utter 
 dislocations of the strata of the older rocks, which Geology 
 has learned to understand by the sudden burstings and 
 upheavals of volcanic action. But who would have ever 
 discovered or even guessed at any such interruption of 
 the slow processes of language growth as we have been 
 able to observe them in our thoughts? So we have the 
 key of this difficulty given to us, with our other greatest 
 knowledge of history as well as of spiritual truth, by the 
 Word of God to men in the story of Babel. 
 
 The laborious and ingenious devotees of the new science 
 of ' Comparative Language ' should have recognised this 
 great assistance to their work with generous gratitude, not 
 to say as demanded by the simplest justice and love of 
 truth. But, alas ! for most of them, with a like perverse 
 self-will, they seem to prefer to this godly wisdom build- 
 ing their own Babels of ambition. With some of them, 
 even all their love of facts and of true inference disappears, 
 when these would lead them to do honour to the Holy 
 Scriptures.
 
 THE DISPERSION. 251 
 
 As we are now approaching the first traces of merely 
 human history, it is well to observe how these, fairly con- 
 sidered, touch upon what we have seen thus far. Some men 
 in our age think that, without history, they can go much 
 further back in time with the beginning and doings of man- 
 kind than we have thus done. And this, if allowed, must 
 not only discredit the account so far traced as to ' the begin- 
 ning,' but also especially contradict this history of their reli- 
 gioji. For it supposes human life to be of much earlier date, 
 and also very different every way at first. This must there- 
 fore be examined, so as therefore, if true, to modify our 
 results ; if untrue, to rid ourselves entirely of such erroneous 
 notions, since they could only confuse the ascertained truth, 
 and mislead us in further research. 
 
 The firm, intelligent Christian believer has of course at 
 once a just presumption against the correctness of opinions 
 which are any way not in accord with his faith. The least he 
 should do is to demand of those who maintain such thino-s 
 
 o 
 
 as demonstrated or even probable truth that they make this 
 good. He is not to be put upon the defensive. He ' knows 
 in Whom (and so in ivJiat) he has believed.' There are 
 several such supposed late discoveries of the earlier ages of 
 mankind, and which do not at all agree with one another. 
 One such tells of vast successive periods, in which our 
 whole race passed through a ' stone age,' a ' bronze age,' and 
 an ' iron age,' before it reached the historic period in which 
 we have monuments and writings to go by. I have atten- 
 tively examined the proofs of this, as presented by its 
 advocates, as to the finding of human remains, along with 
 other articles, in certain caves in Europe, in artificial mounds, 
 and in diluvial ground. Plainly enough, there have been 
 such men, with rude stone utensils ; others with those of 
 bronze or iron. But there is nothing in it all to show that 
 these men may not have lived long after Adam or Noah, 
 according to the Divine history as we have it. 
 
 To insist otherwise is no more reasonable than it would 
 be if, when we had never seen the living Esquimaux, we 
 should find frozen remains of them in their smoky huts, and 
 along with their furs and nets, and then at once conclude 
 that they must be the primitive men of 6000 (or 60,000)
 
 252 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 years ago. Or, if two Egyptian corpses are found in a 
 pyramid — the one of a feeble fellah of 1885, all of whose 
 surroundings denoted ignorance and poverty ; the other of 
 a Pharaoh of the days of Solomon, — and any one should be 
 sure that the inferior was the far anterior, simply because he 
 was the inferior. Evidently that is a question to be settled 
 on other grounds than those. And so I think good sense 
 understands these things by real history, especially that His- 
 tory which has God for its voucher — that these * stone-age ' 
 men, etc., are later generations, and rt'i^-generations, from 
 physical and other causes, after the earth began to be ' over- 
 spread ' by the swarming tribes, Egypt furnishes us with 
 another illustration of this truth, in that the oldest country 
 of art and of human memorial does not contain a trace of 
 the so-called ' stone age.' But our America, youngest in 
 civilisation, may furnish one as forcible, from another direc- 
 tion. I find two sorts of remains of human inhabitance in a 
 certain district of Ohio : one sort is of flint arrow-heads and 
 the rudest utensils, corresponding to these ; the other is of 
 weapons and vessels much more like ' civilisation.' I infer 
 from this that among the earlier inhabitants — all of whom 
 have entirely disappeared before a European people, — there 
 were successive stages of improvement : first the ruder, and 
 then the other. But some old man who came there into the 
 forest sixty years ago, with his axe upon his shoulder, and 
 has lived there ever since, tells me that the ruder remains are 
 those of a people whom he found there when he built his 
 log-cabin, while the others are of an unknown antiquity. 
 (See also Recent Origin of Man by Southall ; Primeval 
 Man, by the Duke of Argyll, p. 180, etc.) 
 
 Another such a theory of prehistoric history is that we 
 can trace the beginnings and doings of mankind far back of 
 any records by studying their languages. That there is 
 much that is ingenious and interesting, and in some respects 
 useful, in such research into the earlier forms of words and 
 the changes of structure, as well of whole sentences as of 
 single names, is true enough. But to make actual history of 
 this is another thing. However we may be at first carried 
 away with the interesting novelty and ' unexpectedness' of the 
 thing, and delighted with the freshness and boldness of a
 
 THE DISPERSION. 
 
 253 
 
 new intellectual diversion which seems to spread before us 
 without a limit, common sense must pause and ask whether 
 it is a safe and reasonable way to truth. And I believe it 
 must fairly answer this, in the main, in the negative. 
 
 If we want an illustration we have one at hand in that 
 delightful fanatic of Sanscrit literature. Prof Max Miiller, who 
 seems to have quite abandoned himself to the belief that 
 there is not much else worth knowing. To be sure, he once 
 in a while makes a kindly allusion to the classic Greek and 
 Latin. But as for the Holy Scriptures of the Christians, as 
 being to them one Book of God, he never mentions them 
 in any respectful way that I can see, though sometimes, in a 
 sort of compassion for our prejudices of education, making 
 reference to those of the Old Testament as some curious 
 old Hebrew writings. The whole tendency of his studies has 
 been to make him fancy that whatever he can ingeniously 
 extract from Sanscrit words (and another man with his 
 mlent could make something entirely different out of some of 
 the same words) is fact (* what I call history,' see India, etc., 
 Lect. i. p. 44), while the best monuments and records, not 
 excepting this Divine history, can be true only as adjusted 
 to that. Indeed, this history of ours cannot at all be adjusted 
 to his supposed results. It is a question, then, simply as to 
 which is true. And that is plainly decisive against him in a 
 really fair mind — of a Christian at least. 
 
 For our present purpose it is enough to say that his 
 deductions and guesses of this kind contradict what we have 
 seen to be the Divine history of the beginning of human 
 language. He assumes, without a particle of proof, that men 
 at first had no thought of God, and no word to represent this ; 
 but afterwards coming to have such a belief (or fancy), 
 applied to the new notion some words, as, e.g. of * brightness' 
 or what not, which they had already to represent something 
 physical, which they did know.^ 
 
 1 Yet {India, etc., Lect. iii. p. 180), speaking of the 'historical growth of 
 our language, — that is, of our t/ioitghts,' he really admits the great principle that 
 language is essential to thought, which contains the irresistible conclusion (see 
 chap. V. p. 356, etc. ) that God, making man in His Own image, to know and love 
 Him, must at the same time have given him language. But we have an admission 
 of this in a higher quarter of that science with which God's Word is no authority, 
 when William von Humboldt says (Lyell quotes and approves it, Antiqzdty of
 
 254 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 It seems enough to set aside all such fictitious ' research 
 that we have so far continuous history, that mankind had 
 the knowledge of God and spiritual things from the first ; 
 and therefore we have no need whatever for this theorising 
 in order to account for that, of which we have already the 
 certain account by facts. But if this were at all doubtful to 
 a Christian — or even utterly unknown through the Word of 
 God, — these far-fetched inferences from Sanscrit words would 
 leave us in greater difficulties and improbabilities than ever. 
 They cannot be made to fit with the most valuable remains of 
 the earliest human history by traditions or monuments, as could 
 be shown in detail. Nor do they aCCord with the suggestions 
 of the processes of human thought as we observe them now. 
 
 On the other hand, every genuine result of the study of 
 words fits into this true solution by history. The idea of the 
 Divine, especially in its aspects of power and judgment, was 
 still fresh in the minds of all men, even when the great 
 catastrophe of language at Babel took place. So it passed 
 into the new languages, and has never disappeared totally 
 from the speech of any man, so far as, and in proportion 
 as, they have retained their primitive intelligence. Thus, 
 in the oldest remains of those languages (as with this very 
 Sanscrit), the ideas of religion, and of all the spiritual, are 
 least debased and obscured.^ 
 
 Perhaps the most striking of •~mOl\ facts^ both as to legends 
 and languages, is in the universal traditions of the Flood. 
 If this stood alone among such facts, it would be the in- 
 soluble puzzle of all those who reject the Divine History, 
 because, as they say, it involves so much that is supernatural 
 and mysterious. All the attempts of such writers either to 
 disprove the facts, or to fit them to their notions, are failures. 
 
 Man, 468) : ' Man is only man by means of speech ; but in order to invent speech 
 he must be already man. ' 
 
 ^ Since writing the above I am indebted to my friend the Rev. W. R. 
 Churton, M.A. of King's College, Cambridge, for a copy of a sermon 
 preached before members of that University ' in behalf of the Universities' 
 Mission to Central Africa' by Rev. Chauncey Maples, B.A., which contains 
 valuable facts and suggestions as to the African languages — ' not the rude and 
 uncultured expressions of thought they are generally thought to be,' but ' with 
 elaborate grammatical structure ' and ' enlarged vocabular)',' utterly subversive of 
 the theory of improving evolution of language, and also disclosing a primitive 
 purer religion.
 
 THE DISPERSION. 255 
 
 As to these facts, they come to us from all kinds of inde- 
 pendent and spontaneous sources. They are self-evidently 
 not the dreams or the fictions of Christian or Jew, to give 
 corroboration to the history in Genesis. Among them are 
 the old fragments of the historian Berosus, and the Chaldee 
 tablets lately found to the same effect ; the classic myths of 
 the Greeks ; the Gothic stories in the Edda, and the tales 
 in the Persian and even Indian * sacred ' writings. With 
 various considerable differences of incident and of names, 
 these all agree in the main facts, especially that all mankind 
 except one family, having become very corrupt and obnoxious 
 to the Divine displeasure, perished in this catastrophe, the 
 righteous few escaping in a ship or ark constructed for the 
 purpose. But the Chinese traditions on one side — even 
 much more the American on another, — are perhaps still more 
 to the purpose, as showing that this was one event for all our 
 race. Grant that Plato,^ Lucian^ and Ovid^ got some details 
 of their accounts from the history by Moses (though this is 
 by no means certain, especially as to the first named, who 
 refers all to his own people's traditions). But how came the 
 Peruvians, the Mexicans, the Fiji islanders, the Esquimaux^ 
 — all of these — to have such traditions, which accord even 
 more exactly with the narrative in Genesis ? 
 
 Those who are unwilling to admit such a demonstration 
 of the truth of the Divine History, just at a point where its 
 opposers have thought themselves most in force, on account 
 of its supernatural ' impossibility,' have tried to escape from 
 it by the suggestion that these were different local floods, 
 which made each a great impression upon its people, and so 
 passed into these various traditions. But it is too plain upon 
 the face of them all that they are substantially one, especially 
 in the point of all mankind being reduced by the event to 
 one family (the Fiji islanders have the precise number of 
 eight persons), from whom all later generations are descended. 
 Common sense therefore judges that such ' explanations ' are 
 uncandid and perverse. How much wiser are these words of 
 
 ^ De Leg. I. iii., p. 627 ; 7>'w. 23. 
 
 " De Syria Dea, 882. s Metam. i. I. 
 
 * Sir John YxzxikXm., Jour7isy to Polar Sea, ii. p. 113. Even the rejectors of 
 this as an universal tradition admit these various local ones.
 
 256 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 A. von Humboldt, who certainly had no sort of ' prejudice ' 
 in favour of the wonders related in Holy Scripture ! — 
 
 ' Like certain families of the vegetable kingdom, which, 
 notwithstanding the diversity of climate and the influence of 
 heights, retain the impression of a common type, these tradi- 
 tions of nations display everywhere the same physiognomy, 
 and preserve features of resemblance that fill us with astonish- 
 ment. How many different tongues belonging to branches 
 that appear completely distinct transmit to us the same 
 fact! The bases of the traditions concerning races that are 
 destroyed, and the renewal of nature, scarcely vary, though 
 every nation gives them a local colouring. In the great con- 
 tinents, as in the smallest islands of the Pacific Ocean, it is 
 always on the loftiest and nearest mountain that the remains 
 of the human race have been saved ; and this event appears 
 the more recent in proportion as these nations are unculti- 
 v'ated, and as the knowledge they have of their own existence 
 has not a very remote date.' 
 
 Equally remarkable is it that many of these traditions 
 are strangely mingled and confused with those of the Creation 
 and the original innocent and happy condition of all mankind 
 (the Chaldean even with the story of Enoch). In some few 
 instances both these are found distinctly apart ; in some only 
 one has at all survived. This has seemed to some explorers 
 (Lenormant, etc.) especially true of the Egyptians and other 
 African nations, among whom, while there are clear traces of 
 the history of Adam and his first descendants, and of the first 
 and purest thoughts of Religion, no notice has }-et been found 
 of the Flood. This would not in the least affect the true 
 history, as otherwise established ; indeed, the wonder is rather 
 that it does so generally sur\'ive all the subsequent changes. 
 It may be that the very effective sovereign and priestly power 
 on the Nile early and carefully suppressed all memories of 
 what was so much against the religion it had determined to 
 establish for the common people (making that river a bene- 
 ficent deity, and of its annual flood the great festival), and the 
 connected events so disgracing their ancestor. Ham.' Yet a 
 
 ^ Notwithstanding it seems rather the latest fashion to assume that the first 
 Egyptians were nut 'ilamiiic,' I think the older view plainly the true one. 
 Dr. Goikie {Hours luith the Bible, l. ch. xvi.) adopts this fancy of Ebers, as he
 
 THE DISPERSION. 257 
 
 recent explorer has found a very old inscription in Egypt, 
 which seems to record this destruction of all mankind, 
 except a very few, on account of the general cor- 
 ruption — but not by a Flood. That all these traditions 
 of the Pagan world vary so much from the original and 
 from one another, that the names of the persons are 
 different, and that they have many fabulous additions, is 
 just what was to be reasonably expected. This all goes to 
 confirm the genuineness of their origin. We find them all 
 imbedded in false religions, made up of perversions of the 
 truth, and ' many inventions ' of poets and adroit leaders and 
 law-givers of men. This has taken place under a wide variety 
 of conditions of life, region, climate, and events. Sometimes 
 evidently a special turn was given to this by the masterly 
 ambition, boldness, and talent of a remarkable man ; some- 
 times by the combined force of a priestly or aristocratic order. 
 Nothing was more natural to all this, or more to the hand 
 of the cunning master-workers, than the popular vanity of 
 each race and people, ready to exaggerate numbers and dates, 
 to believe and repeat to their descendants what glorified 
 them above other people. 
 
 All this we shall find, in fact, in the earliest traditions 
 of nations. There is only one exception. We have a clear, 
 simple, natural (and yet all the more for this, with much of 
 the supernatural), and modest account of the same things — 
 which does not flatter any men, but altogether glorifies God, — 
 for ages in the keeping of one small people.^ How can we 
 account for the difference ? In only one way, and that suffi- 
 ciently — in the fact that this is the Word of God to all men. 
 
 All the descendants of Noah, like those of Adam, began 
 with the possession of truth in Religion — not only these 
 historical facts of the Creation, Fall, etc., but all that 
 
 does all the imaginations of that romantic scholar, as demonstration. Yet on that 
 very page he quotes from Genesis, ' Mizraim, the name of the second son of Ham,' 
 as given to Egypt from the first. This notion also contradicts the plain descrip- 
 tion of Egypt in Holy Scripture as ' the land of Ham ' (Ps. Ixxiii., cv., and cvi.), 
 as well as the judgment of Bunsen and most of the other 'Eg)'ptologists.' 
 
 ^ There is nothing in the special character of this people to account for this, 
 as being free from the vanity and arrogance of all other human nature. The 
 History itself tells us the contrary of that, and their own conduct ever since 
 they have been separated from that History is to the same effect. 
 
 R
 
 258 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 spiritual and Divine truth, which was of the chief import- 
 ance, and which also passed down to their posterity with 
 more or less purity. Evidently it was in substance the 
 knowledge of God as Creator of all things and Judge of all 
 men ; of the duty and true nature of man to love Him with 
 all his heart, and his fellow-man as himself — thus of piety, 
 reverence, sacrifice, justice, truth, kindness, and self-denying 
 purity ; the facts of the universal ' Fall' of man from ' original 
 righteousness ;' God's pity and promise of mercy for this, and 
 of each soul's duty of penitence, prayer, faith in this mercy 
 of God, and an incessant struggle of obedience to His com- 
 mandments, and self-denying improvement in goodness and 
 reverent worship. And another plain matter of this religious 
 faith was of a judgment, and a life to come after the death 
 of the body — of a spiritual life and world, of holy Angels and 
 evil spirits, of Heaven and Hell. 
 
 Thus it is only reasonable to suppose that Noah had 
 preserved, and now transmitted to his sons in substance, that 
 same religious knowledge with which mankind began the 
 actual human life after the Fall. It included the two great 
 commandments of love, the purport of the Ten Command- 
 ments, and all the spiritual facts of our nature and destiny 
 necessary to its responsible life. 
 
 The great events at Babel have already given us such a 
 glimpse of pa.ssionate self-will and worldly pride as may 
 suggest that mankind were already departing from the spirit 
 of the true Religion, and in their dispersions would soon go 
 further and further in divergent substitutes for it. The 
 terrible memory of the Flood seems to have guarded them 
 from the utter zrreligiousness of that former * world of the 
 ungodly.' It may have also early put them upon devising 
 such public authority as should protect all alike against the 
 violence and fraud of the more aggressive evil-doers. We 
 have thus a very early glimpse of ' civil society,' in the con- 
 sultation to ' build the tower and city,' in the power of 
 Nimrod, and in his founding the Babylonian cities. Here, 
 as before noted, it is the ' Hamite' who is foremost in mere 
 ' civilisation.' And thus, naturally enough, we find the same 
 race early upon the banks of the Nile, pushing their improve- 
 ments with a fertile contrivance and relentless energy which
 
 THE DISPERSION. 259 
 
 could in a few hundred years effect what those who in these 
 * ends of the world,' comparing it with the slow apathy into 
 which this same people sank for ever after, are disposed to 
 reckon by thousands or tens of thousands of such years. 
 
 But we also know that the formation of states and estab- 
 lishing of laws is not the mere contrivance of men, but 
 the ' ordinance of God.' The primary government, which 
 not only in time but also in enduring principle is the founda- 
 tion of it all — that of the father in his family, — we all see to 
 be by the Will and authority of God. He made us what we 
 are by nature, and in this natural relation of the child's 
 dependence upon and obedience to father and mother. Very 
 plainly also the first more extensive rule grew out of this, as 
 the first patriarchs were long the ancestors of a whole, though 
 very large, family, and so presided over the entire tribe. 
 This also naturally passed into the hereditary rule of the 
 eldest line. Exactly according with this, that sort of public 
 authority still exists in those same lands where the tradi- 
 tions of the kind are least interrupted, and the conditions of 
 life most primitive and simple. But mankind multiplied 
 into nations, and most of these — especially where they were 
 in a compact, settled life — needed stronger government and 
 fixed laws ; and so those laws were developed or devised 
 according to various exigencies. Then, too, by degrees the 
 Divine origin of authority and law began to be forgotten, 
 though it was very long before the primitive truth that all 
 right and authority belong with Religion was quite discarded, 
 even though distorted and inverted. 
 
 But in the great, perfect light of knowledge in Our Lord, 
 we find again the long-neglected and forgotten truths of 
 our nature and duty brought out in completeness, in order 
 that men may be in every way * wise unto salvation,' and to 
 all of a good life. So this shines over all the past. It restores 
 and explains the beginnings of History. Bewildered and 
 misled by the false notion that everything human must 
 be referred to human invention^ ingenious men waste their 
 labour upon false studies, and mislead others. Some things 
 about all these matters were, and still are, left to our mere 
 contrivance — such as many details of order and administra- 
 tion. Even then a modest and grateful wisdom sees that
 
 26o BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 God is the Giver of it all, by His giving us such powers 
 of invention. 'What hast thou that thou didst not receive?' 
 Yet whatever is plainly in itself beyond the power of human 
 invention — such as Religion, language, law and order, and 
 the like — we should most gratefully recognise as His direct 
 gift. 
 
 Therefore when one of the prophets of God in the New 
 Testament tells us as to government by human law and 
 administration, that it is ' ordained of God,' and that its 
 officer is toward each of us as a citizen, ' the minister of God 
 to thee for good,' we know for certain that He is the real 
 Author of all civil society. And the very instance given — 
 that this is an Epistle of St. Paul to Christians in Rome, 
 giving the commands of God to them (and to us) about 
 their daily duties — is not that of a 'theocracy,' as an ex- 
 ception to general rule, but an extreme case that can cover 
 all the principle — of a Pagan government, which was in 
 some degree hostile to the Gospel, and was soon to become 
 its most cruel persecutor. Therefore all human law is 
 the institution and the agent of God for good to us all, 
 though alas ! in fact, not seldom abusing this authority to 
 oppression. Such a Divine thing it must have been, even 
 more evidently in its beginning, and while it was most 
 inspired by the purer thoughts of justice and truth, which 
 are its very purpose. 
 
 A like mistake is made when theories are formed, and 
 facts marshalled to support them, as to how men first 
 came to have any thoughts of truth and justice, of property, 
 of family affection, of modesty, and of all the other virtues 
 which are the substance of social order. The simple fact, 
 as we have seen it, is that God gave men these thoughts, 
 as His commands, and as a part of human life from its 
 beginnings, in His love and service. Every 'science of 
 ethics' or 'theory of morals' which undertakes to tell us 
 how mankind gradually elaborated these ideas of right 
 and wrong is therefore a needless and misleading fiction, 
 even from that which is meant to be Christian, and claims 
 to refer itself to God's Word, down to the most atheistic and 
 utterly truthless ' scientific basis of morals.' 
 
 All these, and especially the last mentioned, are full of
 
 THE DISPERSION. 261 
 
 contradictions of history, as well of the merely human as of 
 this Divine record. We know that nowhere upon earth, in 
 the most remote and savage tribes of men — even those least 
 reflective and inventive, — are they without some traces of 
 these great thoughts. There is no past age of which we 
 have any monuments in which there are not memorials of 
 them — often the more plain and correct the further back 
 we go. This is a suggestion to all candour that the disap- 
 pearance of these thoughts in any measure from among a 
 people, whether in other respects more cultivated or barbar- 
 ous, is a proof of degradation from a better original, instead 
 of being the more primitive condition. Just this also we 
 know by the Word of God to be the real solution of all such 
 questions.! 
 
 ^ Sir Henry Maine's Ancient Lazv, etc., would be of far more value now, 
 and of far more enduring value, but for the great defect of taking no account 
 of the Divine origin of law, or of the most valuable historical memorials of its 
 beginnings in this Divine History. He, too, seems to have fancied that he 
 could derive it all from Sanscrit study. 
 
 Attention to this simple truth would also have saved that author much use- 
 less toil in writing, as surely many a reader in wading through, the Rev. vS. 
 Baring-Gould's Origin and Development of Religious Belief, and other such 
 imaginary investigations. This writer is quite intelligible and interesting upon 
 some themes. But if the book in question can be understood by anybody else, 
 it is vastly too profound for my comprehension, and leaves me with the impres- 
 sion of an ambition to explain — by a mass of words without any meaning what- 
 ever, unless it be a denial of what God has revealed to us in so many words — 
 what is entirely simple and clear to religious faith. 
 
 Dr. Geikie, who has done good service, and to whom I myself am indebted 
 for suggestions which escaped me in something of the same line of inquiry, 
 seems to have been much too ready to adopt every new guess that has any 
 plausibility about it, and thus has fallen into some confusion and self-contra- 
 dictions as to the ' Accadians, ' ' Cushites,' ' Hamites,' etc. It is with no small 
 reluctance that I must call attention to errors in a book otherwise of much 
 value. Yet, if not objected to, these things pass into general opinion as admitted 
 orthodox facts. 
 
 See also the Appendix, where it is more fully set forth why the author has had 
 to forego his wish to present the simple affirmative tnith as to the beginnings of 
 religion : — why he must notice somewhat in detail the misleading errors of some 
 great scholars and authors of our day (Ewald, Stanley, etc. etc.), not merely those 
 whose apparent purpose is to discredit the authority and the general traditional 
 understanding of our Holy Scriptures, but of some who have done partial good 
 service to that truth.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE PATRIARCHS AND THEIR AGE. 
 
 The Word of God in the Book of Genesis is still our only 
 real history for some centuries yet. It keeps a long silence 
 after the affair of Babel, for some three hundred years, before 
 we have any distinct and personal narrative, when it begins 
 to tell us of Abraham. Still unlike the confused and in- 
 credible myths which precede all other histories, the con- 
 nection with what was told before and the continuity of 
 record is complete. A precise genealogy leads us down from 
 Noah to this man Abraham, in the tenth generation after. 
 And what a space for mighty changes, in that age of energy 
 and adventure, was there in those 300 years ! Within one 
 century after 1492 A.D. that same European people — which 
 had been content for ages to know nothing west of the 
 Atlantic that rolls against their coasts, or even of the far 
 East, except in a dim and fabulous way — had sailed around 
 the world, and knew both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and 
 the ' new world ' of America between them, almost from pole 
 to pole. Such then was God's Will, setting in movement 
 men's restlessness and daring. So when, with all that courage 
 and ambition of human nature in its greatest vigour, men 
 pushed into all lands of the virgin world, they could easily 
 have reached its inhabitable parts the most distant from the 
 region of Ararat, to the farthest islands of the south (even 
 if those lands had then been as widely separated by seas 
 as they now are, which we do not at all know), before 
 Abraham was born. By that time also they might have 
 increased to almost as great numbers as now people the 
 world. However, neither of these conditions is by any means 
 necessary to the history as we now have it. For instance.
 
 THE PATRIARCHS AND THEIR AGE. 263 
 
 the peopling of America and of the islands may have been 
 much later. 
 
 How then had fared that greatest knowledge and interest 
 of them all, the very purpose of each soul's existence — the 
 love, knowledge, and service of God during this life, and im- 
 mortal life and blessedness with Him for ever after ? Alas ! 
 notwithstanding the lessons of the Flood and of Babel, much 
 as it did for the 1600 years before, at the end of which all 
 were destroyed from the earth but the one devout famil)-. 
 Yet now, as we shall see, the case was not quite so dark and 
 dreadful in blackness of utter irreligion, but in a certain 
 gloom oi false religions which had overspread the world. 
 
 Yet before we look into these, our first attention must be 
 given to the existence and the fortunes of the true Religion 
 still surviving. The great and gracious God now intrusted 
 this specially to one family. But it was not to be, as in either 
 of the former cases, the one first pair and their descendants, 
 left all to themselves with only the traditional truth, nor, as 
 afterwards, one sole family surviving a great judgment upon 
 all 'the ungodly' — the new increase of mankind being all left 
 again, as it were, much to themselves. From henceforth the 
 human race were to be, as to Religion, in two divisions: (i) 
 ' the world ' (/coV/ao?) at large, to be as they chose, ' without 
 God ' as the One to be loved with faith and penitence ; and 
 (2) the 'called out ' (eV/cXT/crt'a or 'Church'), to whom special 
 communications would be made by Him, to preserve and 
 increase the true knowledge of Him, and give spiritual 
 help to love and serve Him — all looking towards a more 
 glorious and quite complete salvation of all mankind yet to 
 be, in a wonderful and mysterious way, by the birth among 
 this people of a fellow-man, who should nevertheless be 
 enough greater than man to be the Divine Saviour of all. 
 
 Not that God would not be still looking with loving pity 
 upon the rest of mankind, just as He beheld our race when 
 it began its new trial after the Flood, and His compassion 
 observed that ' the imagination of man's heart is evil from 
 his youth' (Gen. viii. 21, and see p. 243). We have the same 
 thought (though there, perhaps, by a beautiful defect of 
 translation, as compared with the greater exactness of the 
 A.V.) in Ps. cxlv. 9 of the old Psalter, ' The Lord is loving
 
 264 BEGIXXIXGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 unto every man.' And thus one of the greatest prophets of 
 the Gospel said in his early preaching of it, that God was ' no 
 respecter of persons ' as to people or race ; and that ' in 
 every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness 
 is accepted of Him.' Yet plainly in none of our kind would 
 this be a perfect religion of truth and holiness ; and among 
 men of a very depraved and erroneous religion, both in 
 opinion and ritual, the likelihood of any true penitence 
 toward God and trust in His forgiving mercy — which en- 
 couraged them in endeavouring to do right according to His 
 holy Will, as they understood it — would be exceedingly small. 
 In the very instance of the kind which St. Peter recog- 
 nised, it was of one who had come to such a righteous and 
 reverent fear of God, by contact with the ' peculiar people,' 
 the small nation which had been until then the only 
 €KK\7]aia among men. For all alike it could only be in the 
 way of great forgiving mercy to very humble and penitent 
 sinners that any men were ' accepted of Him.' 
 
 Doubtless His Spirit and Providence was always holding 
 evil in check, and in ways that we cannot comprehend, much 
 less describe, saving every people from the utter loss of 
 Religion and virtue. In true history we can never leave out 
 of account the fact, that, beside the inherited perversity which 
 tended to increase with each generation, and thus, beside the 
 evil in each soul (' the flesh ') and evil influence upon one 
 another (' the world '), there was a mighty spiritual and unseen 
 force (' the devil ') which, having begun the mischief in Eden, 
 continued to aggravate it by suggestions, that were all the 
 more potent and dangerous because unperceived by the 
 subjects of them as such suggestions from another. 
 
 It is thus only grateful and wise in us to see in all events of 
 the world, outside of the chosen people, for the 2500 years 
 from the Flood to the Advent of our Lord — whether by the 
 genius of remarkable men, or by more general causes, which 
 tended to retain primitive truth, or to recall any people from 
 some of their degradations, or to prevent just such a swift 
 and fatal corruption as befel the whole race before — to see 
 in all these the mercy of God by His Son and His Spirit. 
 
 But the great salvation in all its mystery was to be pre- 
 paring now for some two thousand years in a very small part
 
 THE PATRIARCHS AND THEIR AGE. 265 
 
 of the race. Thus by far the most important person at this 
 time was one Abram, a chief of the wandering shepherd 
 people, descendants of Shem, living in the river-country 
 (Mesopotamia) of the Euphrates and Tigris, which, how- 
 ever, was mostly inhabited by the ambitious ' Hamite' people, 
 of whom Nimrod had been the supreme leader and hero. 
 The beginning of this great distinction for Abraham was 
 when (as one of the most high-minded and eloquent of that 
 Patriarch's descendants said in the senate of his people, 
 and just as he was about to be made by their murderous 
 violence the first martyr to true faith in God, after the 
 Passion of Our Lord, — Acts vii. 2, etc.) 'the God of glory 
 appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopo- 
 tamia, before he dwelt in Charran, and said unto him. Get 
 thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come 
 into the land which I shall show thee.' This migration and 
 exile of Abraham was to be the beginning of the iicKkif]aia, 
 by which, first only in one family, the true Religion was to 
 be kept apart, that it might not be debased and lost b}- 
 society with other men. 
 
 When we inquire what gained for Abram the exceeding 
 great honour of being chosen from among other men of his 
 time for this, we find that it was not merely that he still 
 maintained the pure religion in the main — for this was also 
 true of some others. But he was pre-eminent then {or faith 
 in God. The more we reflect upon this, the more we shall 
 see why such faith is in the New Testament, and especially 
 in the writings of St. Paul, made so much of as a great part 
 of true Religion — the representative, and sometimes, as it 
 were, the all-including substance of it, for which, more 
 strictly speaking, love is the one such word. The fall from 
 the original perfect love was ever afterward besetting men with 
 the tendency to ' forget God,' Whom they had not seen, and 
 to make all of themselves and of the visible world. Against 
 this Abram had of all men of his time so far most nobly con- 
 tended, in humble penitence and trusting love of the Unseen 
 One. So he is often presented to all men afterwards as their 
 example, and, as it were, the ' fatJier' of all believers after. 
 
 And for this he now receives the great reward of being 
 the one first ' called out,' and separated, for his own salvation
 
 266 BEGINA'LXGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 (among other things) from the opposite influences, against 
 which even he, hke Noah, and much less those to come after 
 him, might not have been able much longer to maintain this 
 faith for himself and all the coming ages of mankind. In 
 this very blessing, glorious as it was, he has another great 
 trial and victory of that faith. For to forsake all and follow 
 such a command of God is what we can none of us do with- 
 out great faith, and yet what each of us must ' do to be 
 saved.' Of course, even then and with him, in the ultimate 
 true and most glorious mystery, this faith ' is the gift of God,' 
 and all comes back to Him Who is All in All for our per- 
 fect lov^e. This view of the calling of Abraham, and of the 
 Israelites being thus the chosen nation afterwards, is very 
 strongly set forth by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans 
 and other writings. It is also one great theme of that 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, in which we find the chief clue to all 
 this history, and there are various allusions to it in other 
 parts of the New Testament. The mass of the Israelites 
 may have always fallen far below it — as they did in Our 
 Lord's day, and as the modern Jews do — in a conceited 
 notion of their natural superiority to the rest of mankind. 
 But not so with any of the prophets of God in the Old 
 Testament. In all of them there is one voice of humility 
 and gratitude to the ' God of all the earth.' 
 
 At the beginning of this people's career the great Moses 
 so taught them most distinctly in the Name of God. When 
 they were at last settled in their promised land, the heroic 
 Joshua as a prophet of God, just before he died, reminded 
 them of it. And so the entire succession of prophets taught, 
 until, near the end of the 'goodly fellowship,' Nehemiah 
 repeats it in that sublime prayer in the Temple, which con- 
 tains one of the most noble summaries of the wonderful 
 history (Neh. ix. 6-8, etc.). 
 
 But more especially we now recur to Abraham as the next 
 one of the great worthies of Religion ' by faith,' after Abel, 
 Enoch, and Noah, in that clue of its history given us in the 
 eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, vers. 8-19. 
 Several other great events of his after-life are there mentioned 
 as instances of this faith, thus giving him twice as much 
 space upon that roll of honour as any other one man, not
 
 THE PATRIARCHS AND THEIR AGE. 267 
 
 excepting Moses ; indeed, nearl)- half of it is emblazoned 
 with the faith of Abraham. The chief such incident is how- 
 ever the first, as thus stated in language much like that of 
 St. Stephen, quoted before : ' By faith Abraham, when he 
 was called to go out into a place which he should after receive 
 for an inheritance, obeyed ; and he went out, not knowing 
 whither he went.' We can see that again faith had almost 
 perished from the earth, and that the best one out of the few 
 really godly men left was now a childless old man, in danger 
 to his own piety from the evil examples of his neighbours, 
 including some of his own near kinsmen. It was much 
 better for him to go and live among far-off strangers, even 
 though almost all of them were men of the worst kind of 
 false religion, than to spend the rest of his days among the 
 idolatrous Babylonians and his own kinsmen, who were 
 beginning to mingle these rites with the pure traditions of 
 their 'own line. It is altogether likely that he would never 
 of himself have thought of making this removal, much less 
 could he imagine the great distinction which God was pre- 
 paring for him and for a posterity that was to be for number 
 'as the sand upon the sea-shore.' But when God did 
 command and promise, he instantly believed and obeyed. 
 Danger and loneliness were nothing to him compared with 
 the Word and Will of the Almighty God, Whom, and in 
 Whom, he entirely believed, though he had never seen Him. 
 So we have Abraham (which was henceforth to be the form of 
 his name), at the age of seventy-five, newly arrived in the land 
 of Canaan, which he had reached after a migrating caravan- 
 travel of many weeks across the barren country which 
 stretches between Mesopotamia and the narrow strip of 
 fertile land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. 
 He was rich in cattle and sheep, camels and slaves, but, for 
 real society, all around him were utter strangers, except his 
 wife Sarah and a nephew, who, under his patronage, yet as an 
 independent chieftain, with his own family, had alone of his 
 kindred come with him. There was as yet no such appro- 
 priation of all the land, that they were not allowed and 
 welcomed by the Canaanites to pitch their tents and pasture 
 their herds where they liked best. It was however necessary 
 for them, and it was entirely according to Abraham's princely
 
 268 BEGINNINGS OF REIIGION. 
 
 nobleness of character, to be peaceful and friendly with all 
 his neighbours, while he maintained that religious reserve 
 which was his greatest need and duty. 
 
 Of the primitive Religion (as thus still maintained, not 
 only by him, but by some others, — though some of them 
 were already mingling with it image-worship and other 
 superstitions) we may form a fair conjecture. They still 
 remembered, and taught their children after them, that 
 there was One Only True, Unseen, Eternal, and Almighty 
 God, ' Maker of all things. Judge of all men,' Who must 
 be worshipped in spirit, and never by any visible object 
 or image as representing Him ; that His first and great 
 commandment to men, and so their first duty, was to love 
 Him with all their hearts ; and next to this to love all 
 their fellow-men in unselfish justice and truth ; to deny 
 all impure passions, and not only to venerate marriage, 
 but to preserve it as the sacred union for life of one man 
 and one woman ; to keep holy each seventh da}^, as God had 
 sanctified it at the Creation ;^ to repent of sins, and strive 
 by continual self-denial and humility, trusting in the for- 
 giving mercy of God, to regain that innocence lost by 
 the first of our race for them all ; to offer sacrifices to 
 God — not only gifts of love for His continual worship, but 
 also sacrifices of atonement, as a figure of the great salva- 
 tion of God yet to be revealed and completed ; of a judg- 
 ment of all men, when those who have thus walked with God 
 while they lived in this world will have a spiritual life of 
 purity and happiness for ever. Less than this we can hardly 
 suppose to have remained from the first pure truth among 
 the true worshippers now. We shall have occasion to obsei-ve 
 in the subsequent history elsewhere, and even long after 
 
 ^ There is no mention of this in the very brief chronicle of the Patriarchs. 
 Yet I have no hesitation whatever in stating it as one of the probable usages 
 of those who kept up the other pure traditions. It would, on the other hand, 
 be extremely unlikely that something so definite, so closely linked to their 
 actual religious thoughts and usages, should have by this time utterly fallen 
 out of their practice and memory. And when we find it, in fact, mentioned as 
 a well-known thing among the Israelites just after they had come out of Egypt 
 (Exod. xvi. 22, etc.), before the giving of the Ten Commandments ; and its very 
 formula in the Fourth Commandment being 'Remember,' etc., it seems quite 
 unreasonable to give any great weight to the mere negative argument that it is 
 not told of Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. (See supra, p. 225, etc.)
 
 THE PATRIARCHS AND THEIR AGE. 269 
 
 this, traces of this truth, sometimes in quite unexpected 
 places, and very notably in the true thoughts which gleamed 
 in the midst of the darkness of Pagan error. 
 
 But it is important to note here particularly the instances 
 already alluded to, of true Religion among other men in 
 the very days of Abraham. There is nothing at all strange 
 in this, nor in itself improbable. On the contrary, if there 
 were no surviving proofs of it, nothing short of a distinct 
 statement in this history that Abraham was the only 
 man of his time with whom any of the primitive and 
 true religion remained would at all justify what seems 
 to be in effect the general belief — or, I should rather say, im- 
 pression — now^, among men of all sorts of religious opinions, 
 that this great man w^as alone in the world in faith in the 
 One Unseen and True God. No such statement whatever 
 have we in this history. On the other hand, while the 
 strange and terrible fact is plain, that most men of that 
 age had false religions of various kinds, it would still be 
 highly probable that in some families, and even considerable 
 tribes, the superstitions and guilty fictions of this kind 
 had not yet so far advanced as to quite expel the older 
 and purer belief, or utterly to displace the practices of 
 worship which belonged to it, and the sentiments of spiritual 
 faith, reverence, penitence, and holy self-denying virtue in 
 accord with it. 
 
 This was so of the brothers of Abraham and their 
 families, even after they remained behind him in their 
 fatherland. It is most distinctly implied in the beauti- 
 ful story of Rebekah's betrothal, her father and brother 
 answering to the statement by Abraham's messenger of 
 his master's anxiety to get a wife for his son who had 
 not been brought up in the false religion of the Canaanites 
 around, 'The thing proceedeth from the Lord (Jehovah)' 
 etc. (Gen. xxiv. 50, etc.), and in all else said at the time. It 
 is also as distinctly implied in the adventures of Jacob with 
 this same Laban two generations later (chaps, xxix., xxx.). 
 It is true that Laban on the last occasion mingles some 
 of the idolater's false religion with what he does — and 
 perhaps this had then become the main thing with him 
 and his, — as doubtless it so became entirely in after genera-
 
 270 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 tions. But that also exactly agrees with the influences 
 of the time. We also know from the remarkable words of 
 Joshua (as a prophet of God long after, Josh. xxiv. 2) 
 that the w^hole of that family were becoming infected with 
 idolatry before Abram's migration, though still, as we see, 
 not having lost the primitive truth in the main. 
 
 Even in Canaan we find a few such instances of more or 
 less of the true Religion still observ^ed. The most remarkable 
 is that of the chief and patriarch of a place called Salem, who 
 was not only a most religious ruler, but a priest of the One 
 True God. Abraham himself so recognised him in the most 
 solemn manner, giving him tithes, or a tenth part, of his gains 
 in the great victory over the Assyrian chiefs. This also 
 shows to us most distinctly that it was a part of the primitive 
 traditional Religion to have priests, or certain persons — the 
 most renowned and honoured among them (often, as in this 
 case, the highest officer of civil authority) — as ministers of 
 Religion, who offered the sacrifices of the people to God, 
 and pronounced His benediction upon the worshippers. 
 
 In Persia also, to judge fairly from the fact that in later 
 ages the religion of that people seems to have gone much 
 less far in the direction of superstition and the belief of many 
 gods than that of other Pagans, the old truth was still, in 
 some measure, maintained among many of this and of some 
 later generations. From various historical traces we may 
 conjecture the same of some parts of Arabia. Of this, how- 
 ever, we have also a wonderful monument in the Book of Job. 
 As a matter of 'criticism,' there is a great difference of 
 opinion among modern writers as to ivhen the book was 
 written, and by ivhoni ; and as to whether Job himself is a 
 historical character, and, if so, when he lived. For my own 
 part, after carefully and very patiently considering what has 
 been said on all sides of these questions — and especially 
 endeavouring to read the book itself in its own light and 
 separated as far as I could from any predetermined judg- 
 ment, — I have no doubt whatever of the extreme antiquity of 
 the writing, nor of the incidents considered historically. I 
 am astonished that even in this age, when so many acute 
 men without hesitation set aside all historical evidence for 
 conclusions which they draw contrary to this from the style,
 
 THE PATRIARCHS AND THEIR AGE. 271 
 
 diction, and contents of writings, there should be any such 
 who think that this book was composed in the later age of 
 Jewish literature, say, of Nehemiah or Ezra, or even as late as 
 that of Solomon. It would hardly be too much to say that 
 the style both of words and thought is so different that the 
 former theory is impossible, and the latter most improbable. It 
 is much as if some one were to insist now that the Canterbury 
 Tales of Chaucer were written by Sir Walter Scott, or at 
 least in the days of Pope. To take the less improbable of 
 these two theories, there is as great a contrast between the 
 Book of Job and those of the Song of Songs or of Eccle- 
 siastes, as between the Prior s Tale and the Essay 011 Ma}i. 
 In fact, the antique and very profound simplicity of the book- 
 is so peculiarly its own that a successful imitation of it (in 
 Mr. Pope's ingenious style of such things) in the days of 
 Nehemiah or Solomon would not only imply having the 
 original already before the imitator to copy, but would even 
 then bafifle him. Divine inspiration would of course be 
 superior to all such difficulties. But I have never seen this 
 suggested for a fabulous story, or to help impose upon men 
 a pretended antiquity. 
 
 As soon, however, as we recognise the very archaic and 
 patriarchal simplicity of this story and these sayings of an 
 Arabian chief, who had received from his forefathers, and still 
 held in purity, the primitive knowledge of God, and whom 
 He inspires thus to write a part of His Word, all is in beautiful 
 consistenc}'. That the book is so profound in thought and 
 majestic in imagery is only a difficulty for this belief so long 
 as we blind ourselves with the false and gratuitous notion 
 that the men of that time were stupid brutes, and that even 
 the inspiration of God could not raise them from their low 
 and feeble thoughts to such intelligence as some of us have 
 ascended to a thousand years or more after. Dismissing this 
 false assumption, we can best understand Job as a man much 
 like Abraham, and of about his epoch. [The utter absence 
 of allusion to circumcision is not only fatal to the notion of 
 late authorship, but quite decisive as to its root not originat- 
 ing with descendants of Abraham.] As such, he has the most 
 pure and noble ideas of the One Only and Eternal God, of 
 our human littleness, dependence, and guiltiness before Him ;
 
 272 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 and of His according pity and forgiveness to us, as we believe 
 and obey Him. He offers sacrifices, and makes prayers, 
 but regards any sort of worship (notably such as some then 
 addressed to the sun or stars), except to the One Unseen Lord, 
 as a great sin. He submits with deep humility to all troubles 
 that befall him, as a part of the righteous Will of God. 
 He believes that to serve God consists, beside reverence 
 and worship, chiefly in all just and pure and kindly life now, 
 and he looks forward to some great m)'stery of the salvation 
 of men yet to be revealed, and to a beautiful and blessed 
 life for each of us after we die here, and our bodies perish with 
 decay. Nothing can be more valuable to us for information 
 as to the earliest religion. But the book is also a treasury 
 of great and holy thoughts, which have never been equalled 
 since by the most ingenious and poetic writers of our race.^ 
 
 There is however nothing in all this which requires us to 
 suppose that the primitive truth was still kept by all, or by 
 any, of these men, with the proportion and the clearness with 
 which it was made known at the beginning. On the contrary, 
 everything (including our own consciousness now of our inade- 
 quate thoughts of this truth, as we Christians have it in such 
 glory of clearness and enlargement) suggests the contrary. 
 The Word of God, known to them, whether in memory or 
 writing, and as in the latter form it has come down to us 
 from them, was pure and certain. But their attention to it 
 and thoughts about it very likely, were somewhat defective — 
 to some of them in one way ; to others in another.^ As it 
 
 ^ It is not necessary to this to suppose that the Book of Job was written so 
 early. It 7Hay be as late as Moses, or even later, though its style and contents 
 agree best with an earlier date yet. To merely assume that the art of writing 
 was not known so soon would indeed settle this question adversely and at once. 
 But that is a mere assumption— a petitio pnncipii, — for the probable early 
 writing of this book is one of the facts from which to reasonably conclude that 
 writing was very early known. Another such fact, which cannot properly be 
 overlooked, is the Egyptian remains (and probably some Assyrian), from 
 before the days of Abraham. But this question will be more fully considered 
 hereafter. 
 
 * Unlike us, they had no authorised ' witness and keeper ' of that Word ; and 
 perhaps besides, as a greater difference yet, because ' the Holy Ghost was not 
 yet given,' though He may have even then blessed all mankind with spiritual 
 nfluences of an inferior order ; and for the chosen few, not only ' spake by the 
 prophets,' but also gave the words more spiritual power than they could have 
 had in mere human thought.
 
 THE PATRIARCHS AND THEIR AGE. 273 
 
 now came anew and personally to Abraham, it does not 
 appear to have added any new knowledge of God Himself 
 and of all men's duty to Him. It strengthens his old faith 
 and encourages this by promises of glorious personal distinc- 
 tion of him and his, in the future mystery of the Salvation of 
 all men. I know of nothing in Holy Scripture which is against 
 this probable view of the partial decline, and of the imperfec- 
 tion, of religious thought in the true worshippers, — as one 
 part of the deep mystery of Providence before the coming of 
 Our Lord. On the contrary, the whole tenor of the history, 
 as a lesson of humility and penitence to all men, is to this 
 effect. And there are some not obscure notices of this in 
 terms : as e.g. — Our Lord's saying of the Mosaic law of divorce 
 and of the permission of polygamy — ' From the beginning it 
 was not so ' (St. Matt. xix. 8). This very instance shows 
 that even Abraham did not understand one of the greatest 
 commands of God and duties of man, as well as Adam. He 
 begins his life and follows it to a great age with the one ' wife 
 of his youth ' according to the purest tradition. But after- 
 wards — and long after his ' call ' — he slips into the other 
 practice without any apparent consciousness of wrong-doing, 
 or any Divine rebuke noted. 
 
 The observance of the holy Seventh day may have been 
 somewhat neglected among the best of those men of true 
 religion : the same process having begun with them which 
 had gone among other families and tribes to the length of 
 utter perversion of its true purpose, as among the Chaldeans, 
 or utter loss of the tradition, as among the Egyptians and all 
 the tribes that had wandered furthest from the primeval home. 
 
 The thought of the Great Judgment and of the Future 
 Life, may have also been suffering like neglect among them 
 all, by which their faith in the Unseen future was growing dull 
 and even their religious thought limited much to the present 
 life. We shall have quite plain proofs of this in the Divine 
 history of the people of Israel from their very Exodus to the 
 Coming of Him Who again, more clearly than ever before and 
 with a new and mighty demonstration, ' brought life and 
 immortality to light through the Gospel.' For in all that 
 history of near 1500 years there is nothing like as much of 
 the expression of this truth by devout men as we would 
 
 S
 
 274 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Otherwise expect. Nor is there any such expression by Abra- 
 ham and those who came immediately after him recorded in 
 the history. Yet, as we shall have occasion to see hereafter, 
 this does not at all prove that they had no idea of human life 
 but the present, — no knowledge of that great part of religious 
 truth. On the contrary, as to all the true worshippers from the 
 Creation down to Abraham himself, — the men of ' faith,' — and 
 for him as the special instance, we know by this yet greater 
 history of them in the New Testament, that they did * desire 
 a better country, even an heavenly.' ^ (See also Our Lord's 
 exposition of ' I am the God of Abraham, etc.,' St. Matt. xxii. 
 25.) Yet even so spiritual and profound an expositor as 
 Ebrard turns aside from language as plain as this, to find 
 another meaning which will accord more with modern notions 
 of the early religion. Those who entangle themselves in the 
 supposition of the different parts of Holy Scripture and their 
 historical succession, implying a continually increasing light 
 of religious truth among men from Adam to the Advent, 
 make difficulties for our faith instead of lessening them. Such 
 writers as Kuenen, Robertson Smith, etc., take advantage of 
 this to start puzzles about the history of Israel, etc., that they 
 may solve them by undermining and ^z'j-solving all that 
 history. 
 
 I have noted (p. 203, etc.), in treating of the religion of 
 the first man, that even one of the able writers in Moderii 
 Scepticism has felt himself forced to construct an account of 
 early Religion, altogether different from this which we have 
 seen to be naturally drawn from the Book of Genesis, read 
 by the light of the Gospel. And when he proceeds to carry 
 this through the ages succeeding, and then to suppose a 
 ' further revelation of the being and character of God ' to 
 Abraham, it is necessary, at the risk of some repetition, to 
 examine the whole theory anew, and point out what has 
 probably suggested it. Whence then came this suggestion ? 
 Certainly not from the account of ' the elders ' in the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews. Read the whole Essay on ' Gradual De- 
 velopment,' and then the eleventh chapter of the Epistle, — 
 and how utterly opposite to one another! Nor is it what 
 any one reading the earlier chronicle at first, and without 
 
 ' Heb. xi. 16.
 
 THE PATRIARCHS AND THEIR AGE. 275 
 
 prepossessions, would ever find there. In no former age, 
 certainly by no Christian writers, was this thought of. It 
 has been read into the history by those who, drifting with 
 a certain current of thought in our age, found some such 
 adjustment of the history necessary, unless they would get 
 out of and even oppose that current, as they are, for what- 
 ever reason, disinclined to do. 
 
 Thus, as already quoted in part on p. 205 {Mod. Scept. 
 p. 238) : ' There is some temptation to imagine Adam and Eve 
 as being in the possession of more knowledge than Scrip- 
 ture attributes to them. Scripture in reality attributes no 
 knowledge to them, but rather represents the Tree of Know- 
 ledge as having been the cause of their fall. Philosophically 
 speaking, we may describe the condition of things which 
 existed in Eden as being the dawn of man's religious con- 
 sciousness ; he has no responsibility and no sin, but a law is 
 imposed upon him, and thus comes responsibility, and thus 
 by the breach of law comes sin ; man " was alive without the 
 law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived " 
 and man " died." ' 
 
 This is in effect the theory, as before examined, of inno- 
 cent man made ' in the image of God,' being a huge infant. 
 It denies that even then he knew God at all as what He is — 
 Great, Glorious, Almighty and Eternal ; Maker and Judge : 
 Beginning and End of all, as LOVE ; that man knew anything 
 of ' the First and Great Commandment,' and of the Second 
 which ' is like unto it,' or of his own dignity and immortality. 
 To sin against God was then his first necessary step to any 
 such illumination ; if he had remained innocent he would 
 have remained in more than childish ignorance. This re- 
 verses St. Paul's account of the process that, when they knezu 
 God they glorified Him not as God, etc., and their foolish 
 heart was darkened. It sets the transgression before the 
 knowledge, and as the only possible initiation into it. Even 
 some words of this very St. Paul (Rom. vii. 9) are quoted as 
 authority for the notion. But just what St. Paul said would 
 not have been quite so much to the writer's purpose as is 
 virtually admitted by the critical word ' man ' being not 
 within the quotation marks. For %vhat was this word substi- 
 tuted .'' Let us see. ' / was alive, etc., / died.' Most cer-
 
 276 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 tainly the writer was not speaking of the first man in his 
 innocence as such, or at all. It was his oivn experience as 
 representing the individual experience of each one of us, in 
 the changed nature since the Fall, whatever special theological 
 interpretation we may make of that.^ But can it mean that 
 to be 'alive without the law,' in the sense of having been 
 just made ' in the image of God,' and having never departed 
 from perfect obedience of love for Him is, to have ' no 
 knowledge ' of Him whatever ? 
 
 The same writer also just afterwards calls this ' the 
 primitive revelation.' A revelation, /^t?zt^ .^ and of tuhat? — if 
 ' Scripture attributes no knowledge to them, but rather repre- 
 sents the Tree of Knowledge as being the cause of their fall' ? 
 Then this ' revelation ' was no knowledge of good, or of God, 
 but only of evil. And so he goes on to say : ' I do not think 
 it can be said that the being and character of God are any 
 further revealed till the time of Abraham.' What then of 
 the great mj'stery of grace in those words spoken to the 
 Enemy, in the hearing of man : ' It shall bruise thy head '? 
 What of the 'faith' of 'righteous Abel/ of the glorified 
 Enoch, and of Noah } of the 'revelations' of love and grace 
 to Noah and his family in saving them from the general 
 destruction, and of the tender words of long-suffering to all 
 mankind, ' I will not again curse the ground for man's 
 sake ; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his 
 youth,' etc. 
 
 On the contrary, we might rather say that ' the Scripture 
 attributes no knowledge' of God to Abraham (as then speci- 
 ally revealed to him) or which all the 'elders' had not before, 
 and in even greater fulness and clearness than he. He was 
 called out from the rest of mankind in his day, to preserve 
 that waning knowledge from utter perversion if not extinc- 
 tion ; and in the still unfathomable mystery of Redemption, 
 as one of the great steps of that progress of ages. 
 
 ^ Olshausen in loco does notice among the wild guesses of his theological 
 countrpnen that ' Usteri supposes this state to be like that of Adam before the 
 Fall, which is surely against the Apostle's meaning, who considers this state of 
 the deadness of sin itself as a consequence c/the Fall.' Yet I am safe in saying 
 that no approved orthodox commentator ever before found in these words an 
 account of innocent primeval man.
 
 THE PATRIARCHS AND THEIR AGE. 277 
 
 It is with much reluctance tliat I suggest this correction 
 of a mistaken view on the part of one whose work for the 
 same great and sacred cause of Christian faith is of so much 
 higher authority and value than mine, and to whom I feel 
 grateful for kind personal attentions. But that truth in all 
 its completeness should be put above all personal considera- 
 tions. This precise question is of too much importance to 
 the history of Religion, to allow any such mistake to pass 
 into general opinion for lack of being corrected, no matter 
 how insignificant the corrector may be conscious of being, and 
 all the more for the high authority which inadvertently puts 
 forth the error. That indeed, if not derived from, is in accord 
 with, and will in general opinion be connected with, the false 
 account of Religion of which the famous Professor of Com- 
 parative Philology at Oxford is the powerful patron. Per- 
 haps it should be reckoned among the proofs of his fascina- 
 tion over many minds much wiser really than his in matters 
 of Religion. 
 
 Thus he gives quite a different account of Abraham from 
 what has been presented here. He says that Abraham was 
 the first man who ever had an idea of One Only, Unseen 
 God. And then, seeming himself to be struck with awe 
 at the greatness of such an original thought by any man, the 
 real impossibility of its being the result of human obser- 
 vation and reflection, he gives us a conjecture that it must 
 have been miraculously revealed to him. This itself is an 
 unconscious admission that there is nothing incredible or 
 improbable in the idea that God Himself first makes Him- 
 self directly known to man, — nay that any other theory is 
 the improbable and the incredible. But it does not occur to 
 him that the most natural instance of this would be in such 
 a revelation to the first man ; which we have seen to be the 
 fact which solves all the puzzles of History, so far as they 
 are of possible solution. 
 
 The theory of Professor Miiller is preposterous according 
 to this history of Genesis ; and if this is not history the 
 theory itself has no ground of fact whatever, for all he knows 
 of Abraham he gets from the Genesis. He requires us to 
 draw an arbitrary line across a continuous record, and throw 
 away all that leads up to what he will receive as facts. That
 
 278 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 might leave the history less in the way of his favourite 
 notion, — of referring the origin of almost all that is worth 
 knowing to India. It is positive proof that in all the 'antres 
 vast and deserts idle' of the Vedas, he has not been able 
 to discover anything out of which even his ingenuity could 
 make an Indian Abraham. Upon scrutiny the two cannot 
 be made to agree at all. However, it seems to pacify the 
 Christians in a measure, and it flatters the modern Jews 
 by conceding the origin of some great ideas to 'Jewish 
 thought,' of which Abraham is made the initial ; but it does 
 not agree with real history or good sense. 
 
 It casts aside entirely, and if it prevailed among us 
 would in the end utterly take away, the one clue we have 
 to this maze of all various religious notions, through the 
 midst of which the Divine truth has to make its way among 
 men, for the good of them all alike, displacing the false 
 notions which have mingled with the true for ages among 
 the most of them, and especially in order that the true 
 light of their salvation by the grace of God may shine into 
 all their hearts. 
 
 The history itself is simple and natural. Why should 
 not Shem's son have had much the same religion as his 
 father? — And so his son after him, etc..-' In fact, Noah 
 lived nearly until the days of Abraham, and quite probably 
 in that very region of the earliest settlement.^ In any case, 
 it would be the most unlikely thing that all true Religion 
 had utterly perished by this time, in this most devout and 
 virtuous family line, and which had the prophetic blesssing 
 of the patriarch — the remarkable words, ' Blessed be the 
 Lord God (Jehovah-Elohim) of Shem ' (Gen. ix. 26). 
 
 If, however, such a loss of all knowledge of God were 
 expressly related here, that would overcome all the im- 
 probability. But, on the contrary, everything in the history 
 
 ^ Though Faber and others mention a conjecture of some students of the 
 Chinese annals that he is identical with Foh-hi, and, if so, accompanied the 
 first migration which crossed the mountains of Thibet and began human life in 
 that separated land. This might account for the mysterious silence about his 
 long life after the Flood ; and the supposed earlier Chinese history is too 
 mythical to be of much weight in contradiction. Yet none of the later explorers 
 of those remains seems to take any notice of it.
 
 THE PATRIARCHS AND THEIR AGE. tjg 
 
 accords with, and implies what is most reasonable other- 
 wise. Evidently it was of one who still believed in and 
 worshipped Him, though in the midst of prevailing and 
 increasing false religion, that we have this record : ' Now 
 the Lord (Jehovah) said unto Abraham, Get thee out from 
 thy kindred and from thy country and from thy father's 
 house, unto a land that I will show thee' (Gen. xii. i).
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. B.C. 230O — l8oO. 
 
 But this account of Abraham's reh'gion and that of his 
 family after him, is very far from the history of all Religion 
 in that age. Indeed, if we are to estimate these things by 
 the numbers of adherents then, or even down to our own 
 time, it would be a very small part of it. It is only when we 
 take in the superior elements of truth, and immortality, that 
 this proportion is entirely reversed. In the former view we 
 may speak of ' ten great religions,' or twenty, — of which that 
 which had come down to Abraham from Adam was the 
 least. But nothing which is false is great, unless in mischief 
 to be deplored and remedied. On the other hand, for truth 
 and love's sake, we ought to be profoundly interested in that 
 which was then to almost all mankind in the place of the 
 highest truth, and in understanding, so far as we may, how 
 the substitution came about. 
 
 This inquiry is full of difficulties. We have to leave the 
 firm ground of Divine History, upon which true Religion 
 was, so naturally to itself, followed from step to step in the 
 preceding chapters. We have to go out into the ' waste, 
 howling wilderness,' of regions and ages in which, as men 
 made no real record of their false thoughts and doings, so 
 also it was aside from the purpose of God, by record and 
 revelation, to give such an account of the confusions and 
 follies of their ' vain imaginations,' as He has so graciously 
 given of His preservation and consummation of true Reli- 
 gion among us. 
 
 Nevertheless, we must use such materials as we have, to 
 get the most probable and reasonable account of how these 
 various religions came to be what they were about this time —
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 281 
 
 say, 450 years after the Flood ; and after that to gather up 
 the facts and hints, as these emerge from the obscurity, 
 until, some thousand years later, we come upon the ground 
 of actual human history. These results will therefore be, let 
 us frankly anticipate and acknowledge, rather probable con- 
 jectures than demonstrated facts. I am well aware that 
 some writers of note, — not even using all the materials we 
 shall have before us, — have published what they claimed to 
 be positive and proved truth as to the beginnings of these 
 religions. But they differ among themselves very much, — 
 which indeed is only another illustration of the doubtfulness 
 of the whole matter. These speculations are passed over 
 for the present, but will all be fully noticed after we have 
 pursued another method, — to more trustworthy results, as 
 I hope. And the causes of these differences and mistakes 
 may also be incidentally disclosed in the course of the 
 inquiry. 
 
 It should, however, now be noted and borne in mind as 
 we proceed, that all the materials for this investigation, with 
 one exception, must, in prudent common sense, be taken 
 with much allowance for the way in which they have been 
 transformed by later generations, from vanity or self-interest, 
 from prejudice, or from priest- or state-craft ; by poetic or 
 philosophic imagination ; or by mistakes in confounding and 
 confusing entirely different things. The same causes that 
 now impair the exactness of personal testimony, and require 
 strict rules of evidence, and the lawyer's sifting ingenuity, 
 are even more effective in matters so remote, and as to times 
 of such varying and energetic revolutions. For the moment 
 we begin to look for and use our materials in this inquiry, 
 we have to take the supposed facts at second or third hand, 
 as to the time, or to draw remote inferences from the 
 language or institutions of times long after. 
 
 Fortunately the exception before alluded to, in which all 
 can be taken in its immediate sense and widest extent, is a 
 most important one. It is what we can find by way of sug- 
 gestion and allusion to these religions, in the Divine History 
 of the True in both Old and New Testaments. Thus we 
 have already seen a general tendency in mankind within the 
 first century after the Flood to depart from the spirit of the
 
 282 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 true Religion as to humility and reverence — a tendency which 
 had probably already worked some deviations in beliefs and 
 rites. In Abraham's time we have idolatry, or image-worship, 
 already so much developed among most nations, and even 
 invading the families that had held most faithfully to what 
 was pure and spiritual, that in order to make sure of the old 
 truth having some secure refuge and perpetuation on the 
 earth for the ages following, that patriarch was ' called ' to 
 go from his own country, and live in a far-off land of 
 strangers. 
 
 But there, too, he is almost alone among men of false 
 religion. These were the very ' Canaanites,' who were in 
 some generations after, such a special example of that 'un- 
 cleanness ' of life (which St. Paul describes as one of the 
 consequences and characteristics of the ' vain imaginations ' 
 of false religion) that they were to be exterminated by his 
 descendants upon the express command of God. There are 
 suggestions in the History that already in these days of the 
 Patriarchs the Canaanites had fallen into such disgusting 
 immorality. In fact, in the very time of Abraham and before 
 his e)'es, several of these tribes (the ' Cities of the Plain ') were 
 made the most signal example of Divine justice upon such 
 sins in all history. 
 
 Abraham also goes into Egypt to escape from famine, 
 and lives there for a while. Here we come in contact with 
 the earliest monuments and other hints of merely human 
 history to assist us in this very inquiry. We must not forget 
 that this visit of Abraham is the first really historical notice 
 of Egypt. It is indeed a fair inference from those wonderful 
 remains of pyramids, palaces and temples, and from inscrip- 
 tions and writings so far as they have been deciphered of late 
 years and can be understood and trusted, that some of these 
 great buildings had been constructed before Abraham's 
 time, — that Egypt had then been for some generations a 
 populous, powerful, and wealthy kingdom. Abraham then 
 must have seen the pyramids with awe, and looked at the 
 palaces, guards and other glories of the Pharaohs with curious 
 interest ; but not with any such childish or slavish admiration 
 as would be unworthy of his own simplicity, nobleness and 
 piety. Yet not one word of this does the Genesis tell us. It
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 283 
 
 is therefore at the best, conjecture, and not history strictly- 
 speaking. 
 
 Or should we infer from this silence that all this'great- 
 ness of Egypt was of a later date ? That would be as some 
 now reason : that there could have been no holy Seventh day 
 known to mankind before the Exodus, because we are not 
 told that the Patriarchs observed it. The difference of the 
 two cases is, that we are expressly informed of God's estab- 
 lishing the day in the beginning ; and we have v^ery good 
 reasons for supposing that Egypt was a great country when 
 Abraham went down there. 
 
 Yet, naturally enough, neither of these things is mentioned 
 in this very brief record of what passed in two thousand years. 
 It remains still true that the Genesis is History ; while the 
 great antiquity of the Egyptian remains, and all which is 
 involved in that, is a matter of inference and conjecture. 
 Nor, on the other hand, does the wealth of Egypt, and the 
 greatness of its monuments in Abraham's day, require so 
 long an earlier history as some insist. We shall have a later 
 occasion to examine the supposed chronologies, derived from 
 the papyri, Manetho, etc. It is enough to say now that these 
 are far too uncertain to decide this question. 
 
 And as for a decision of it by an ' impossibility ' that 
 population can increase, wealth accumulate, laws and 
 languages be fixed, and buildings reared in less than so 
 many hundreds or even thousands of years, it seems to me 
 that this has been much too hastily assumed by some and 
 conceded by others. It is very easy to say so positively ; 
 but where is the proof that should command my belief? Is 
 it in the implied comparison with like things as they have 
 proceeded in really historic times ? Let us have it then in 
 detail. But even that involves the fallacious assumption that 
 the free vigorous men and women who set out from around 
 Babel to subdue and people the virgin world, unencumbered 
 by the physical, mental, moral and social disorders which 
 have been accumulating upon almost all of our kind by 
 heredity, in increasing ratio for say thirty generations, had 
 to proceed at the dull pace of the later time. It assumes 
 that these fellow-tribesmen of Nimrod had no more original 
 boldness of conception and execution when they came upon
 
 284 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 the fertile banks of the Nile, and threw themselves into 
 making this their rich country, than the Egyptians of 
 Herodotus' time, when this strong manhood seemed to be 
 only in a few priests and princes with the Pharaoh at their 
 head, while all the rest had sunk into submissive inferiors 
 of different degrees, — or even than the feeble and timid 
 Copts of our own time. 
 
 It is strange that it does not occur, to those who make 
 these assumptions, to trace this process backward, and to see 
 that, just as now Egypt is ' the basest of kingdoms ' by a 
 steady degeneracy of its people since at the headwaters of 
 History it ' sat a queen,' — so were its people at first of a 
 proportionate wealth of will and invention. 
 
 Even now, with all the prevailing inequality of condition 
 and engrossment of the best things of our life by a few, I 
 know of a people who, having remained barbarians some 
 2000 years after this wealth and wisdom of Egypt, within 
 300 years past, after crossing a vast ocean, and entering a 
 savage and silent land, — 'replenished and subdued,' peopled 
 and filled with fields and cities, a country fifty times as 
 large as Egypt, and spread over it a population already ten 
 times as great as that ever had, — and is still in the full current 
 of a like increase. Why, then, is it ' impossible ' that in those 
 300 years from when that people left the Plain of Shinar, 
 they should have done all that was done in Egypt before 
 Abraham's coming, even to the building of the pyramids and 
 the great temples, and turning the valley of the Nile into a 
 vast garden .-* 
 
 You will say that the European Americans inherited the 
 sciences and inventions of all the ages before 1 ^ Yes, and 
 also the many weaknesses and degeneracies which quite 
 balanced all those advantages. They have been ever since 
 replenished and multiplied by the mighty stream of over- 
 flowing population from their father-lands. Yes, but this 
 migration across the vast and terrible Atlantic, was far more 
 difficult than the caravan marches from the Euphrates to the 
 Nile, — to say nothing of the deadly, and for a long while 
 very doubtful struggle of the former, with men who were 
 
 ^ Yet, in fact, it is these last three or four centuries which have produced 
 most of our present sciences and inventions.
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 285 
 
 there before them. No ! the ' impossibility,' if any, lies in 
 supposing that the first men were brutes, or scarce above 
 that. To me it is a greater ' impossibility ' }iot to believe, 
 upon authority of God's Word, that they were in force of 
 will and in vigour of body and mind, the flower of the race, 
 nearest to its greatest glory as ' made in the image of God,' 
 but liable, through irreligion or false religion, to a swift and 
 steady degeneracy in all things, as their generations followed 
 one another. 
 
 Our principal interest in the history of the Egyptians, 
 and, indeed, the main importance of it anyway, is in what it 
 tells us of their religion, both for themselves and as regards 
 their influence upon other nations. From what we now 
 know, though our understanding of the Egyptian remains may 
 be greatly increased, and these now fair conclusions from the 
 present knowledge altogether changed, even in our own 
 generation, Abraham saw in that land many great temples. 
 These were dedicated to various ' gods,' and in them very 
 costly and quite splendid ceremonies of religion were cele- 
 brated. Other such rites were performed in the palaces, and 
 other public places, and at private houses. Grotesque images 
 of these gods were set up, and the worshippers knelt before 
 them or prostrated themselves, burning incense, chanting 
 praises and adorations, and making prayers for what they 
 desired. Sacrifices were offered to these ' gods ' of different 
 domestic animals. But the greatest of these offerings was 
 when a little human child or even a grown person was so 
 immolated. This religion was allowed in Egypt to be the 
 greatest thing which men could do, — the sanction of all laws 
 and authority, necessary to propitiate the displeasure of the 
 ' gods,' and to bring prosperity to each person, and to the 
 whole people. There was a hereditary nobility of priests to 
 preside over the rites and doctrines of the religion, at the 
 head of whom was the absolute monarch, king, or ' Pharaoh.' 
 But this Pharaoh was also, with a strange inconsistency, 
 identified with the chief god, and worshipped as such. 
 
 As for the different 'gods,' there was no real order or 
 consistent idea of them. It is even quite doubtful whether 
 they were few or many, — or very many, even to thousands, 
 — whether, for instance, at this very time, all the despicable
 
 286 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 animals and odious insects which were certainly, in some 
 early periods of Egyptian history, adored with abject awe 
 by the whole people, were then, — or first when, — so re- 
 garded. But there is no question that such an absurd, 
 inconsistent and idolatrous worship of many supposed 
 'gods,' was the actual religion of all this, the most wealthy, 
 ingenious, and powerful nation upon the earth. So much 
 confusion of thought was there in it, that we cannot now 
 distinguish whether some of the various gods were not 
 merely different names of the same supposed person ; as 
 evidently some of these deities were only worshipped in 
 some one city or region, while an hour's walk from there 
 they were not known at all in the actual religion. 
 
 The greatest of such contradictions and confusions is, 
 however, yet to be noticed ; and the more so, because 
 contrary to the general impression, it has really run through 
 all the many false religions of mankind. It is an idea 
 nowhere, and at no time, quite extinguished among even 
 the most superstitious idolaters, that there is One, Only, 
 Unseen, Divine Person. One might reason that it was 
 impossible for any mind to observe sincerely a religion 
 of many gods, and at all allow this thought of the Only 
 God. But the facts are against this reasoning. As for the 
 Egyptians, Herodotus and other Greek visitors of Egypt 
 mention with some surprise that the priests of that country 
 talked of a superior hidden doctrine of One, Only, True 
 God, which they had received by tradition from most remote 
 times. Yet evidently they did not mean by this to imply 
 the falsehood of the popular religion, of which they were 
 the ministers, or that they were insincere in practising its 
 rites. It might be a matter of pride for them to assume 
 that the people at large had no such superior thoughts ; 
 yet, as I think we shall yet see, they would have done 
 their countrymen some injustice in the claim. Of course 
 the mass of that people could not (as probably could few 
 of the priests) state this belief in precise terms, — might 
 even have been shocked as at a blasphemy, to hear it pre- 
 sented in opposition to their actual worship.^ But none the 
 
 ^ Just as the Athenian populace were at Socrates' or Plato's theories of the 
 kind ; which yet were no more the real religion of the philosophers than theirs :
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. -287 
 
 less it was vaguely in their minds as much as in those who 
 boasted of it as their 'esoteric' belief. It is somehozu or other 
 the primary and ultimate religious thought of man as such. 
 But it was not in this case joined with love or worship. For 
 all tJiat was given to these imaginary persons, or false 
 objects. When we come to examine the religions of Canaan, 
 Chaldea, India and Greece, we shall see this general truth 
 come out yet more clearly. But we may already begin to 
 apprehend the mystery of this contradiction the better by 
 calling to mind St. Paul's solution of it, that ' when tJiey knew 
 God, they glorified Him not as God,' but invented imaginary 
 objects for worship. 
 
 We must also note that part of the Egyptian religion 
 which is commonly (as we have already seen, in a false and 
 misleading way) distinguished from it as ' virtue,' or ' morals,' 
 or, as Mr. Matthew Arnold would rather say, ' conduct.' It 
 would have been impossible for that religion to have no 
 relation, or even not to have had a most important relation to 
 this. The ' conduct ' being simply and essentially one part 
 of our love and obedience of God, we might as well suppose 
 a man's body to have nothing to do with himself But we 
 should naturally think that in degree as Religion is perverted 
 from its truth, this part of it also would suffer great degrada- 
 tion, not indeed the utter destruction of all sense of right and 
 wrong, much less its utter reversal, but partial strange per- 
 versions of it, corresponding to those actual perversions as to 
 the obedience and worship of God. 
 
 Thus the thoughts of justice, truth and kindness toward 
 fellow-men ; of the family affections and duties ; and of public 
 order and authority, were a part of the religion of the 
 Egyptians, and also found expression in their laws and 
 proverbs. But in these, and still more in their actual life, 
 they had already fallen far below the primeval virtue. The 
 brotherhood and equality of all men, which we have already 
 observed as one of the very conditions of their early activity 
 and vigour as a people, had fallen before the selfishness of a 
 mastering few. Law, which God ordains for the welfare of 
 all alike, now made the thousand the mere possession of the 
 
 — while both alike often heard, as a matter of course, in the poetry of Euripides 
 or others, and even spoke themselves, of ' God,' — not of 'gods' or ' a £0c/.'
 
 288 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 one. Marriage had lost the dignity and purity of its ' begin- 
 ning.' The men were selfish and brutal in this, as they had 
 a chance : the women artful and immodest. The chief wife 
 of a rich man indeed might become quite the equal and 
 associate of her husband ; but the others (for polygamy, 
 that departure from the primitive order, which so soon and 
 suddenly invaded all the East, was common in Egypt for 
 those who could afford luxuries) were mere slaves. And so 
 to their husbands were all the single wives of the peasants 
 and slaves. Theft and falsehood were common. Nineteen- 
 twentieths of the people being mere toilers for the rest, with 
 insufficient food or clothes, dirty huts for their homes, and 
 pushed with tasks of labour which they evaded by every sort 
 of craft ; while the lords and soldiers, — the Pharaoh being 
 the dreaded chief-taskmaster of all, — spared no threats and 
 cruelties to enforce their will. (See Chabas' Voyage en 
 Egypte, I, 19, 136, etc.) 
 
 Without real history we have yet real information by the 
 late discoveries of written documents (papyri) and pictures 
 on the walls of pyramids and ruined temples. Yet as these 
 certainly are of uncertain date, however sanguine and posi- 
 tive their enthusiastic students now are of their guesses, — it 
 is matter of conjecture what period of Egyptian history 
 all this represents. If we were sure of the dates given, 
 we might well hesitate to accept them as pure truth, because 
 all good sense says deliberately and regretfully that ' many 
 men are liars.' But we have more than the usual reason for 
 this caution in the case of the Egyptians, from the marks of 
 exaggeration and vanity that appear in all their inscriptions 
 and writings, and from their general low moral tone as to 
 truthfulness and justice. 
 
 Among these writings we have two which some scholars 
 even think the most ancient of books, more so than those of 
 Job and Moses. One is called (as translated into English 
 by Rev. Dunbar Heath) The Proverbs of Aphobis, which 
 may show us the 'moral' teaching of ancient Egypt; the 
 other the Book of the Dead {\\h\ch. also may be found in full 
 in English in Bunsen's Egypt's Place in History), which gives 
 us more of the religion in its public ceremonies and its beliefs, 
 but also conveys a most full account of the theoretic ' morals'
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 289 
 
 of the people. For, as its title indicates, it is mostly taken 
 up with an account of what was done with the dead (that 
 is, the rich and noble only? — for who cared to spend time or 
 money on the poor carcass out of which toil and cruelty 
 had at last expelled its wretched life ?) ; especially of a trial 
 to which the deceased person was then subject, to decide 
 what had become of the soul, and therefore what should be 
 done with the body. Here indeed we have a most interest- 
 ing record of the religious belief (the ' morals ' being taken 
 simply, as they are essentially, for a part of that) of the 
 ancient Egyptians at some remote period, and whatever be 
 the exact date of this ' Book,' telling us much as to the 
 transformation which primitive Religion had very early 
 undergone among them. 
 
 And first we note very plainly the survival of the truth of 
 man's future life and of the judgment to come. No probable 
 or rational account can be given of this but as such an 
 ancient tradition. If there could be a plausible conjecture of 
 the kind, it is utterly gratuitous, when we have the original 
 truth in the primitive Religion. But those who, for whatever 
 reason, choose to discard, or, if that be anything different, to 
 neglect, the older fact, have set themselves to invent such 
 conjectures, and then to persuade themselves that these are 
 wise reasonings and even demonstrations of fact. Whereas 
 fair good sense must see that they have in this only added to 
 the mass of 'vain imaginations' by which this very perversion 
 of the first truth came about. 
 
 The Book of the Dead is generally allowed to give the 
 most full account we have of that 'wisdom of the Egyptians' 
 which was the privilege of priests and nobles, and especially 
 of the more eminent of the latter order, in their secret 
 doctrine. It no doubt contained, beside a careful tradition 
 of some of the great primeval truths, many acute reasonings 
 upon abstract themes, such as the Greek philosophers after- 
 wards acknowledged to have found in Egypt : — many correct 
 observations of natural phenomena, of medicine, embalming, 
 architecture and mechanics, as well as details of law and 
 administration. Yet in the book itself we find these things 
 expressed with much tedious excess of words, and still often 
 with great and perhaps purposed obscurity. But beside, 
 
 T
 
 290 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 there is also much which is utterly puerile and senseless. 
 The special part as to the dead prescribes a trial which each 
 of them must undergo before certain judges, forty-two in 
 number, who hear testimony as to whether the deceased has 
 been a good man or woman in forty-two different particulars 
 of virtue, and is therefore to be allowed honourable burial of 
 the body, and happiness of the soul in the place of spirits. 
 The idea of goodness of life contained in all this includes 
 many of the truths about our nature, duty and destiny which 
 the gracious God gave to man for his life from the first. But 
 it is very lacking in many others ; — while in their place loaded 
 down with artificial and absurd requirements. Thus to such 
 a man as Abraham it must have been strange indeed for a 
 people, who, for what was only of this world and life, were so 
 ingenious and rich compared with anything he had ever seen 
 before, to have such a religion. This is by no means too 
 severe a statement of what was all which this people had 
 left of the greatest truth, which belongs by sacred right 
 to every soul of our kind. For in this we have the best 
 account of their religion which could be given by the more 
 intelligent. What then must have been the 'gross darkness' 
 spiritually of the dwellers in huts, each of whom had the 
 same essential 'dignity of human nature' as a priest or 
 Pharaoh ? — and the aggregate of them was therefore far more 
 important than that of the luxurious few. It is also reason- 
 able to deduct from the apparent moral value of this trial of 
 the dead man ' of high standing,' that even judging by the 
 administration of justice in our day, the man's family were 
 very seldom mortified by an unfavourable verdict of the 
 forty-two judges upon the forty-two counts. 
 
 As already suggested, — whoever now so chooses can dis- 
 card the simple truth with all its self-evident reasonable- 
 ness, that the true things in this were relics of the first Word 
 of God to man : the others, men's own inventions ; and can 
 imagine theories of its being all the creation of the men. 
 But ive need not wander off in any such gratuitous and 
 misleading adventures. If we employ conjecture reasonably 
 as to why they had discarded, or how they had inadver- 
 tently lost others of the primary truths, while keeping 
 those of the religious requirement of truth, justice, humanity.
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 291 
 
 and pun't}', and also of future life and judgment, and of the 
 need of sacrifices to appease the Divine displeasure, and 
 even a vague recognition (in actual contradiction of the 
 practice of their religion) that God is One and Spiritual — 
 the following account is suggested. With the differences of 
 both mental and physical individuality, as well as language, 
 with which the various tribes set out from Babel, the 
 ' Hamites,' and especially those of them who went toward the 
 Nile, were most given to material gain and comfort. They 
 were especially what would be called in our day a ' money- 
 making,' as well as an ingenious people. When they 
 emerged from the burning deserts and came upon the rich 
 valley of 'the River,' they had found what they were in 
 search of. Here was what would reward their boldness of 
 adventure so far, and their toil and care in making the most 
 of fertile land and the exact regularity of seasons. For it did 
 not take them long to discover that this vast and deep flood, 
 rolling from the mysterious depths of a far South land, had 
 its yearly seasons of overflow and subsidence followed by 
 amazing fertility, almost (perhaps for a long time in their 
 experience then, quite) as regular as the sublime march of 
 winter and summer. Winter indeed with its bitter blasts and 
 death-cold snows as around Ararat, was really unknown in 
 this land of the sun, as little as on those Arabian sands just 
 crossed : while, unlike them, the sun was not the fierce life- 
 destroyer, but the life-bestower, as he smiled upon the River's 
 yearly gift, and made it rich with corn and gay with flowers. 
 
 All this both satisfied and aggravated the characteristics 
 of the people. Their chiefs — whether hereditary patriarchs, or 
 men of more than usual force of will and talents, who, as a 
 matter of course, took the lead, though as yet this was by 
 consent of all the free and high-spirited company — were 
 leaders as well of thought as of act. The selfish tendency to 
 ' forget God ' — to substitute some other thought of Him than 
 that truth which would be continually reminding them to 
 live for His love, and that of one another — that tendency was 
 at work in all. But it was guided and shaped by these 
 leaders, as it was firmly held upon the helpless multitude in 
 after times, by the small ruling class, when the former had 
 lost all power or even thought of resistance.
 
 292 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 They were now so far from the primeval home and in 
 scenes so different, that old associations did not so much 
 recall that truth. Thus, for one thing, the new religion took 
 shape in making of the vast and mysterious Nile a god, to 
 be adored for the greatest benefits : — upon whose favour in 
 rising, and fertilising their fields, each year's hopes depended — 
 to be propitiated lest his wrath at their conscious sins should 
 either withhold the blessed deposit, or, by an unusual flood, 
 turn the desired blessing into destruction. With this last 
 thought concurred to increase their awe the fearful memory 
 of ' the days of Noah.' It is a very ingenious conjecture 
 that the singular absence of any recorded traditions of the 
 Flood in this country is due to the purposed suppression of 
 it by the rulers of Egypt from a ver>^ early period ; as being 
 against this national religion, — that a great flood of water is 
 the chief divine blessing. And this is corroborated by the 
 late discovery of an inscription in which the primitive tradi- 
 tion of the destruction of almost all mankind for their wicked- 
 ness, but not by a flood, ^xs plainly described. (E. Navillc, 
 Trans. Soc. Bib. Arch. vol. i. pp. 1-19.) 
 
 That the sun, under various names and personifications, 
 is one of the chief ' gods ' of old Egypt, may be accounted 
 for in a like manner. That it, with the Nile, was the source 
 of life and wealth, made it the very object which the pro- 
 moters of false religion, — in whom I do not at all suppose 
 that this was only cold-blooded invention of fictions to 
 impose upon their fellow-men, but that all shared in the 
 need of a religion, and with great confusion of thought and 
 some consciousness of untruth, — in the course of generations 
 of both real superstition and ingenious priest- and king- 
 craft, — used to build up this huge and grotesque temple of 
 their mythology. Thus were brought about the inconsist- 
 encies, reduplications, absurdities, and indecencies of those 
 who all came in the end to 'believe a lie' of their own 
 making, and to have this in the place of the light and joy of 
 true Religion. 
 
 The worship of the sun, however, is not at all a peculiarity 
 of the Egyptians, but is found in some form or other in 
 almost, if not quite, all the false religions. Our account of 
 this would be very incomplete without noticing another like
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 293 
 
 quality of them all : that, while religion was from the first 
 (and^even in its perversions never quite loses this influence) 
 the] great check upon lewdness, still, with a horrible incon- 
 sistency, the actual religion of Egyptians, Syrians, Baby- 
 lonians, Indians, Greeks, and others made this kind of 
 wickedness one of the chief matters of ceremony and we 
 may even say of 'doctrine' (see also supra, Chapter I. p. 10). 
 The civilised investigators of this as a part of ' Science' in 
 our day, all recognise the fact. But it never seems to occur 
 to them as'^anything disgusting or strange ; unless as being 
 delightfully ingenious and profound in its inventors : — at least 
 as altogether natural and innocent in the advance of human 
 intelligence. (They may even now in reading this feel the 
 same pity and contempt for one whom it does shock and 
 disgust, as any anatomists have for one who is affected in 
 that way by their dissection of the wonderful network of our 
 nerves). Thus, in their view, it is allied with sun-worship as 
 that_ represents fertility and growth : it is a profound philo- 
 sophy as to the male and female principles of life : the 
 'generating' and the 'receptive.' It means the beautiful, 
 bountiful and benevolent forces of ' Nature ' — whatever that 
 may be. 
 
 Let us keep in mind that the true Religion (what some 
 of these writers call ' the Hebrew mythology ') has not a 
 particle of this ' philosophy ;' but, both by the virgin purity 
 of all its rites and symbols, and by most express commands 
 of the All-seeing God, forbids what the others practised, and 
 does all that is done to keep men from everything of the 
 kind 'both in body and soul.' It is also to be observed, that 
 real History (even when we leave out of view the Divine 
 History and have only what is left in the way of suggestion 
 by later tradition as to those earliest times) says nothing of 
 the kind whatever. This sort of ' philosophy' in India is an 
 after-thought, to allegorise a very immoral and indecent 
 religion, which had been practised for ages before. And so 
 that of the Greeks — much more natural and simple in its first 
 traditions — gathers all this filth of evil passion for centuries, 
 and only after that, finds a Hesiod ^ to inform his country- 
 
 * But see p. 20, that perhaps the ' Theogony' is of later date than Hesiod, 
 and falsely ascribed to him.
 
 294 BEG/iWMXGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 men that it all meant a parable of the forces of Nature. 
 Very long before any of the fictitious philosophy, there were 
 painted on walls in Egypt and on the sides of the rock- 
 temples of Elephanta and Ellorah in India, the words and 
 symbols of a religion which in this way does its best to 
 defile and inflame the souls of all its votaries by filling all 
 memories, from the little child to the maiden, matron and 
 man, with pictures which even most penitent and self-deny- 
 ing virtue could not erase in a lifetime. Will these 'im- 
 partial' investigators of 'Comparative Religion' be so good 
 as to tell me why the pious allcgorisers chose that sort of 
 symbolism, and why they do not themselves adopt, or at least 
 imitate, what they admire ? 
 
 And so when, in the history before us, we turn to the 
 religions of Canaan and the other Pagan lands, to compare 
 them with that of Egypt and with one another, the first 
 object we see is the flames of Sodom and Gomorrah. The 
 very fact that those who would trace the origins of religions 
 without making any use of that history, are compelled by 
 their theories to suppress these terrible facts, or to treat 
 them as natural and innocent, is of itself proof enough that 
 their method is all wrong. Thus following Abraham back to 
 Canaan and looking at what was around him there, we see 
 that not only ' the cities of the plain ' were thus corrupt — 
 doubtless then the most shameless of all — but that the fate 
 which befell the other Canaanites in the days of Joshua was 
 for the like 'abominations.' Those 'doings of the land of 
 Canaan,' as all such vile things are described in the 1 8th 
 chapter of Leviticus, for which the pure Religion has never 
 a jest or a smile, but always the frown of God upon the 
 offender, yet gracious pity for the real penitent and spiritual 
 grace to help his self-denials — these are actually suggested 
 and promoted by those religions. The cause of this of 
 course is not some profound philosophy of life to be taught 
 to the devout, but the indulgence and thus even the deifying 
 of evil desire. This gives us a glimpse of the meaning of 
 the terrible saying of Moses about this very Canaanite 
 religion: — 'They sacrificed unto devils: not unto God' 
 (Deut. xxxii. 17) ; and that of St. Paul about the 'beautiful' 
 Greek worship, in almost the very same words : ' The things
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 295 
 
 which the nations ^ sacrifice, they sacrifice unto devils and 
 not unto God' (i Cor. x. 20). Most certainly, according to 
 this, the Pagan religions were not holy or harmless matters — 
 not at all the Religion which man was made for, and which 
 was made for him. 
 
 We have in the later books of the Old Testament various 
 allusions and fragmentary facts as to the deities, and reli- 
 gious rites of Philistines, Amorites, Moabites, Phenicians and 
 others of these various, yet all-resembling peoples of Canaan, 
 which show that in other respects these were as confused, 
 senseless, superstitious and cruel, as those of the Egyptians. 
 Or else perhaps, it should rather be said that the inferior 
 wealth and ' civilisation ' of the former people seem to have 
 saved them from beings quite so elaborately and systemati- 
 cally absurd as the latter. I mage- worship {idolatry) was also 
 then common to all these religions, and a chief part of them. 
 It is in fact the particular thing which is used by the 
 Prophets of true Religion, specially to represent the false. 
 Of its probable origin we shall have occasion to inquire 
 later. 
 
 It is entirely reasonable in this inquiry to treat these 
 various tribes of Canaan as substantially one nation. The 
 Divine History ascribes to them a common ancestor, that 
 grandson of Noah upon whom the terrible malediction of 
 the patriarch fell. They were thus allied in blood to the 
 Egyptians on one side, and to the Babylonians of Nimrod 
 on the other. But unlike those who grew into compact 
 nations in the fertile valleys of great rivers, — they inhabiting 
 a small, isolated and mountainous country, with only some 
 patches of level land, continued the more primitive life of 
 separate pastoral tribes. A great deal of ingenious pains has 
 been taken by some modern scholars to show that they were 
 of entirely different races, who had strayed together from 
 East, West, North, and South : — that the Philistines were 
 Cretans : the Phenicians a people from the lower Euphrates, 
 
 ^ I simply replace here the literal and really only correct word for iOvr). 
 It is a great pity that our admirable translation is impaired in so many places in 
 both Testaments by using for this the somewhat unmeaning term ' Gentiles,' 
 thus losing the beautiful and significant antithesis to DV and XaSs, as 'the 
 people ; ' and a * Revision ' which merely repeats this ought not to be received as 
 what we need in this generation.
 
 296 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 etc. But the simpler idea is altogether reasonable, and alone 
 historical.^ The last-mentioned tribe, known first as ' of 
 Tyre and Sidon,' however, very early showed great courage 
 and enterprise, — availed themselves of their place on the 
 Mediterranean coast, and their few harbours, though by no 
 means of the best, to begin what became the greatest com- 
 merce in the world. Thus they connected their history with 
 that of the great Mediterranean nations of later times ; and 
 " so we have many traces of them in Egyptian, Greek, and 
 Roman annals, and fragments of their language, as well as 
 other hints as to their religion. (See Selden, De Diis Syriis, 
 etc.) 
 
 From these we learn that the religion of the Phenicians 
 was very superstitious and cruel : not made a bit less so than 
 that of the other Canaanitcs, by the ' humanising influences ' 
 of commerce or arts — some of which were carried to earlier 
 and greater perfection by them than by any other ancient 
 people. Human sacrifices were not infrequent. In this 
 evidently they did not differ from their neighbours. Nor 
 did they in the obscenities practised in the very rites of 
 religion, of which we have dreadful proofs ; but I know not 
 upon what sufficient evidence some say that the people of 
 the ' cities of the plain ' were of the same blood, and so of 
 the same precise religion with them. 
 
 On the other hand, we see remains of the true Religion 
 in all these Canaanites. When this Syrian stranger Abraham 
 comes among them, they not only understand his language 
 enough for any communication he needs to make ; but his 
 religion, though so unlike theirs in all outward obser\'ance, 
 and equally so in spirit, from its grave decency and spiritual 
 simplicity of thought, — while it must have astonished and 
 perplexed them, and even stirred some of the hatred which 
 the superstitious sooner or later feel toward those whose reli- 
 gion implies a contempt for what they venerate, — for some 
 reason does not so affect them at all. On the contrary, they 
 recognise with reverence the God whom he worships ; as 
 when Abimelech and Phicol say to him (Gen. xxi. 22.), ' God 
 is with thee in all that thou doest' An even more striking 
 
 ' Still, there may have been some small mixtures of other races with them — 
 a few Cretan adventurers in Philistia, etc.
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 297 
 
 instance is his meeting with the holy Melchizedek, king and 
 priest — when even the monarch of Sodom listens with awe 
 to the worship of the One God, and to His blessing upon 
 His servant, and to the oath of the high-minded and heroic 
 saint in the very Name of ' the Lord ' (Jehovah), that he 
 would have no compensation from these Pagans for what of 
 theirs he had rescued from the invaders. 
 
 All this and other like hints of the History show us that 
 here even more than in Egypt, survived the thought of One 
 Only Spiritual and Holy God, Whose Name (Jehovah), of 
 Eternal and All-creating Self-existence, was still understood 
 by them ; and to whom the very few among them like Abra- 
 ham and Melchizedek, gave the worship which they bestowed 
 upon a crowd of hideous images or base imaginary persons. 
 They recognised Him more readily and spoke of Him (as 
 did Abimelech, etc.) under the other ancient Name of ' God,' 
 the Mighties (Elohim), which mysterious plural they had 
 debased into a common noun in singular form {El), for each 
 of their ' gods.' It remained for ages afterwards, in many of 
 the Pagan languages under slight changes of form as the 
 name of some one deity of the many — (with the Phenicians as 
 the chief deity ).^ It seems even in the singular never to have 
 lost the primary meaning among the Pagan Arabs, until 
 taken by Mohammed for the 'holy name' in his religion. 
 
 The study of these words is indeed of the greatest value 
 and interest to the history of Religion ; — not in the irreligious 
 and unbelieving way which some affect ; but with reverence 
 and faith as the best guides to truth. Another such name is 
 Baal or Bel, which was, as we have already noticed, an inno- 
 cent enough word before its application to false gods, and 
 perhaps was then one of the glorious Names of the Holy One. 
 In its meaning of lord, or later, with more restriction, as 
 husband, it always kept its place in the Hebrew. In some 
 instances (Judg. ix. 23, etc.) our translators (I know not why 
 unless blindly following the dv8pe<; of the LXX.) have given it 
 quite another sense, as 'the men (it should be 'lords') of 
 Shechem.' But even as late as the Prophet Nahum it is used 
 of the One Lord ; ' Jehovah (the Lord) revengeth and is 
 (baal-hemah) a lord of wrath' (in A.V. 'furious,' Nah. i. 2.). 
 
 ^ See Selden, De Diis Syriis, tome iii. pp. 336-9, etc.
 
 298 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Here indeed the study of words may help us in the 
 history of Religion. All the facts point to an earlier common 
 faith in the One True God, Maker of all things, Judge of all 
 men. Job expresses this with a sublime purity and loftiness 
 of thought which later philosophy, with all its refinements, 
 falls far below. Abraham holds fast to this truth with a 
 courageous 'faith,' while all around him fall away. Yet it 
 still lingers dimly in the thoughts of all the 'nations' 
 (Gentiles), though they have transferred actual religion to 
 ' other gods.' The very phrase last quoted, and which occurs 
 all through the Divine history as to false religion, upon 
 being carefully scrutinised, means ' (7/?<?r-gods : ' such as have 
 been invented later, to supplant the primitive and only true 
 Religion. 
 
 This proof would be even the stronger, could we believe 
 what has been put forth with confidence by some late writers, 
 and even been taken up by a popular author who has no 
 question of the literal truth of the Genesis : — that Abraham, 
 when he came to Canaan, abandoned his mother-tongue and 
 took up that of the land. The History does not say this or 
 anything of the kind. It is a mere gratuitous assumption 
 for the sake of escaping a supposed difficulty in his under- 
 standing what his new neighbours said, and they him in turn. 
 But we have no need to play such tricks with history as that. 
 When a family of other and very different language moves 
 among us, they are not compelled to exchange it for ours. 
 He indeed had a supreme reason for not doing this : in 
 behalf of the following generations as well as his own ; not 
 only as a help to keep from those mixtures which were the 
 very danger to truth which had brought him to this strange 
 land, but because this language of his forefathers contained 
 the precious traditions of that truth in the greatest purity. 
 Language indeed, so far as it is made or modified by men 
 themselves, takes the colour of their usual thoughts, their 
 usages, their institutions. The language of men of false 
 religion would therefore of itself be not so good for the 
 expression and record of that truth. Even if it were, we all 
 know how thought always suffers some loss or change in 
 every transfer of it from the language of its first expression. 
 So that if this man, intrusted with so precious a deposit and
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 299 
 
 sent to live among strangers, expressly for its preservation 
 from any loss or contamination, had, for an}' supposed con- 
 venience otherwise, given up his own language for that of his 
 superstitious neighbours, it would have been a most unwise 
 and unfortunate step. 
 
 On the other hand, the check upon much intercourse 
 which a difference of language is in itself, would have been 
 no small help in that isolation and reserve which was his 
 policy otherwise. Nor was there any such necessity for the 
 change as is implied by Dr. Geikie {Hours with the Bible, 
 i. 381), when, adopting this altogether new and odd fancy 
 from Bunsen and some of the other German theorists, he 
 says that ' Abraham's ability to mingle freely with the people 
 around him, seems to imply that on entering Canaan he 
 abandoned his native speech, and adopted theirs, making 
 Hebrew for the first time the speech of his race.' Then, when 
 he went to Egypt, he must have done the like thing for the 
 like reason. 
 
 Men of quite different languages even now are able to 
 get enough words in common to make one another under- 
 stand such simple transactions as he had with the Canaanites. 
 But then, beside this, we must remember that the differences 
 of speech, begun 400 years before that, had not in regions so 
 near to the primeval seat proceeded so far, as in these 4000 
 years since. That first unity of language, of which, notwith- 
 standing some of our theorists, there are still evident 
 remains, made this so much easier. Of all those * tongues,' 
 the * Shemitic,' with which even the ' Hamites ' of Western 
 Asia were always in some contact, have remained most 
 unchanged. And to this class belong both the Hebrew and 
 the Arabic. Yet Dr. Geikie is fond of calling Abraham an 
 ' Arab' 1 And a sister-language of both these (we might 
 almost call the three only dialects of one) is that ' original 
 Aramaic ' or Chaldee, to which he tells us the Jews ' went 
 back,' and ' gave up the Hebrew as soon as they were carried 
 off to Babylon, Abraham's early land.' 
 
 And other incidental facts of this history do not allow of 
 the notion in question. For how, according to it, could 
 Abraham's grandson (Jacob) 150 years later, go to visit his 
 Syrian kindred, and at once speak the language of that
 
 300 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 country? But with me the chief and decisive proof is, that 
 the primitive Word of God containing His Sacred Names 
 and those of His faithful worshippers, has evidently come 
 down to us by careful tradition of speech, in the religious 
 use of the pure Shemitic tongue. 
 
 This also naturally introduces us to a question, glanced 
 at before (see p. 158), but the consideration of it then post- 
 poned, — and which may now be taken up, viz., Did the 
 original 'one speech' of men survive the Confusion of Babel } 
 and if so, where may we most reasonably look for most of its 
 remains now? Some great scholars and ingenious reasoners 
 of a former age^ took much pains to show that the Hebrew 
 was that very language. They maintained this not only by 
 the natural understanding of the Divine history, suggesting 
 this throughout, but by elaborate arguments to show that 
 everything like true Religion which is found in Pagan writ- 
 ings was got from the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament. 
 Later scholarship soon found this position untenable. For it 
 was not difficult to show that doctrines and traditions of the 
 sort were held where and when it was quite unreasonable, if 
 not utterly impossible to think that those writings had come 
 to men's knowledge. The solution of this was, of course, in 
 those oral traditions from the days of Noah and Adam, 
 which were far earlier than any writings, and descended in 
 some form or other, though usually much impaired, through 
 all the tribes of men. But these later investigators, and 
 especially the very latest, made the equally great, or greater 
 mistake of assuming that such truths and traditions were 
 therefore the original inventions of the various races. 
 
 Particularly when they came to compare and analyse 
 various languages, they simply treated with derision the 
 claim of the Hebrew to be the oldest or original language. 
 It was enough for them that it had been found in the 
 bad company of the other opinion just mentioned. But is 
 this ' scientific ' — to use their own favourite term ? For 
 my own part, after comparing the old arguments to prove 
 the Hebrew the primitive language of mankind, with the new 
 ones which are employed to glorify the Sanscrit, — I find 
 
 1 Bochart, Hierozoicon. — Selden, De Diis Syriis, etc., etc. ; Gale, Court of 
 the Gentiles, etc.
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 
 
 301 
 
 the latter far more inconsequential, extravagant, and fan- 
 tastical. 
 
 When we are willing to look at the question rationally, 
 perhaps the best statement of the result is (as Professor 
 Tayler Lewis in note to American edition of Lange, Gen. xi.) 
 that, ' the best argument for it (that ' Shcmitic was the 
 primitive Noachian speech ') is, that there is no good argu- 
 ment to the contrary.' But how much that really implies in 
 such a question as this ! Certainly there was one such 
 language first. Certainly there were several afterwards. He 
 who will not allow that the latter condition was brought 
 about by anything supernatural, has surely no ground for 
 denying that the earliest language migJit be one of the later 
 ones. And he who accepts the miracle of Babel in all its 
 scope has no reason for denying it either : — the later variety 
 of speech being most likely caused by the addition of some 
 new languages, while the old one also survived. But of these 
 divisions of mankind by speech, — which would we most 
 naturally suppose to retain the primitive, if not the one 
 which best retained the primitive Religion ? In that case. 
 Language and Religion would act upon one another inces- 
 santly and powerfully in a conservative direction. 
 
 The fact that the Hebrew preserved with reverent care 
 those holy Names, — and those of the great patriarchs in the 
 true tradition, would accord only with this. That of Adam, 
 as the common noun for each of our kind, early disappeared 
 from the other languages ; yet it has been of late quite 
 distinctly identified in the Chaldean inscriptions. That 
 language was indeed mainly Shemitic, as its strong resem- 
 blance to both Hebrew and Arabic shows. In the mixture 
 of the two races in Mesopotamia, it seems to have quite 
 prevailed over the Hamitic. Even in modern times {e.g. 
 England, with its German, Celtic, Danish and Norman 
 peoples), we have seen different languages so mingle, — and 
 one survive as the real tongue of the whole people though 
 much tinged with the others. Without doubt this partial 
 mingling of languages by war, commerce, and colonisa- 
 tion, is the solution of many puzzles in which our philolo- 
 gists involve themselves, by insisting that they can always 
 trace descent by speech, just as they could demonstrate that
 
 302 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 every Cornish man is of German stock, because he speaks 
 English. 
 
 Before we leave this subject of the true suggestions of 
 the History of Religion which may be found in single words, 
 we may observe how EloJihn continued for a long time a 
 link of History between the true and the false. When a 
 Pagan Shemite heard it used by a worshipper of the One 
 True, he applied it collectively to all the many ' gods ' he 
 worshipped. And so in turn, the Elohini of the Pagan was in 
 a manner equivalent to ' the Divine ' of the true worshipper, 
 — Him Who united in His Sole Self all that was Mighty — all 
 that should be adored and serv^d.^ Thus by the really 
 (though inconsistently) surviving thought, that the Divine 
 was One (see supra, p. 296), the Philistine chiefs and others 
 of the Canaanites understood Abraham when he talked of 
 ' God.' And so even, as the history fairly implies, recognis- 
 ing His other Name o{ Jehovah, did the Pharaoh of his day, — 
 when probably the primitive idea was fresher in all minds in 
 Egypt than later. Certainly that is the natural understand- 
 ing of the later history, e.g., of the young Joseph's speaking 
 of ' God ' to the Egyptians, and their replies to him. 
 
 Some writers have drawn a very different conclusion from 
 this : namely, that the thought of many gods came first, and 
 that of one later ; whereupon the old plural was applied by 
 the monotheist to the new idea. But this is not only the 
 reverse of what is usual with words, but it is against the 
 whole tenor of this history. If we search in the book of 
 Moses for its own evident meaning, as merely in any human 
 writing, we shall find Elohim always with a singular verb,^ 
 denoting One Person, except in the few cases in which it is 
 expressly used of false ' gods.' And among the sublime mys- 
 teries that must always be 'clouds and darkness round about' 
 human speech when it names the Most High, it may be that 
 the plural word was a suggestion of what was perhaps in a 
 
 ^ This is beautifully illustrated in Ps. xcv. 3 : ' For the Lord is a great God 
 [El), and a great King above all gods {ElohiiiiY 
 
 ^ Gen. XX. 13 is doubtful as to number ; but if we take the verb as plural, we 
 may understand it naturally enough as Abraham in his fear thus adjusting him- 
 self to the usual language of the Pagan Abimelech, who, for all that, saw well 
 enough that Abraham believed and meant only One ; or it denotes more than 
 one revelation of the kind made to him.
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 303 
 
 measure revealed in the primitive Religion, but lost out of 
 view in what was left of this by the Fall, — then at last fully 
 disclosed by the Gospel : the ' Hoi}', Blessed and Glorious 
 Trinity, Three Persons and One God.' Surely we cannot 
 wisely be so positive in denying this as most scholars of 
 our day are. (See also supra, p. 1 36). 
 
 Plural forms in many of our present languages have no 
 significance of number whatever: as the plural 'bellows' is 
 English for what is the singular 'sifflet' in French ; or as 
 'a means' to an end, which uneducated people would fancy 
 to be incorrectly spoken. 
 
 The main question is, how in this venerable writing, is 
 the * Elohim' from the very first plainly represented to be and 
 to act f Is this first as various deities : that use being after- 
 ward merged in the idea of One Only God : or at least One 
 chief, who is the patron of the family of Abraham, as others 
 are of other tribes and nations ? No. The exact reverse of 
 these : namely, that God is One from the beginning, is pre- 
 sented as the only truth : the other idea, as an abominable 
 and corrupting falsehood — the 'vain imagination' of men 
 themselves. Some writers have maintained the notion last 
 suggested above, of Jehovah being known merely as the 
 tribal deity of this people — as Baal was of the Phenicians or 
 Dagon of the Philistines — by citing two or three passages of 
 the Old Testament, as showing this to be the thought of 
 Israel and its Prophets. But in doing this, passing over 
 entirely the many places which prove the opposite, they 
 surely are not candid. How can we imagine this false notion 
 to be held by any one to whom God has said (and to him 
 as an individual) : ' I am the Almighty God'^ } (Gen. xviii.) 
 In regard to Israel as a nation, of which we will have better 
 occasion to speak by and by ; it may be well enough to say 
 now, that there are scattered all through its history, from the 
 first, sayings like this, in regard to the Pagan worship as quoted 
 
 ^ Or can there be any question in what sense he, who had always the tradi- 
 tions of all the Patriarchs, from Adam and Noah in his mind, would understand 
 this? And so we afterwards hear him thus address this 'Almighty God' — 
 • Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?' (Gen. xviii. 25), and name Him 
 ' Jehovah, the God of Heaven and the God of the Earth' (xxiv. 3), and ' the God of 
 Heaven, which took me from my father's house,' etc. (v. 7), and thus not as the 
 patron-deity of any tribe or nation.
 
 304 BEGIXXIXGS OF RE LI G 10 X. 
 
 before : ' They sacrificed unto devils, not unto God :' ' Their 
 idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands : they have 
 mouths but they speak not,' etc. (plainl}- meaning this not of 
 the image only, but that what they worshipped, the 'gods' 
 themselves,had no power or knowledge, Ps. cxv. 4, 5) — of Baal, 
 the chief cfod of the rich and lettered Phenicians : and when his 
 priests had been calling upon him all day long without an}- 
 response, this bitter scorn of any belief in his divine power : 
 ' Cry aloud, for he is a god !' etc. (i Kings xviii. 27.) 
 
 On the other hand, these are but a few out of a hundred 
 such things addressed to their Elohint ; ' Thou art great — 
 Thou art God alone' (Psalm Ixxxvi. 10): 'Thou art the 
 God, even Thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth ' 
 (2 Kings xix. 15). Now with many such sayings, scattered 
 through all their annals long before the Captivity of Babylon, 
 to which period the theorists in question refer the idea of the 
 Unity of God among the Jews, how can any one fairly think 
 that that people regarded ' Jehovah' as one of many deities, 
 preferring and serving Him, merely because He was their 
 patron, vv'hile they allowed the others to be just as real, and 
 entitled to like ser\-ice by those nations .'' The two or three 
 passages they cite, as before alluded to (p. 303), if they were 
 all, might be taken in that sense. But together with the 
 many others just noticed, they plainly do not mean that. 
 And not one of them belongs to the days of the Patriarchs 
 now before us, but to a later age, in the history of which 
 they will be fully considered. 
 
 There were also the false religions of Babylonia and 
 Arabia, of which the Divine History takes some notice inx-\bra- 
 ham's own family, and his 'call' to remove from among them. 
 It is rather from the wonderful Divinely-inspired words of 
 Joshua, five or six hundred years after, and which, if that 
 were mere human historj^, would be of little force to prove 
 these earlier things, that we do know the fact most plainly, 
 that then these ' fathers served other (after) gods.' By later 
 allusions, and then by definite history', as well as by the 
 Assyrian and Babylonian remains lately discovered, we 
 know, that this was an elaborate system like that of Egypt, 
 of cruel and indecent rites, with, at least in the cities and 
 rich lowlands, costly temples and sacrifices — and of the idols
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 305 
 
 of many 'gods.' With some difference of names and 
 characters for these deities, and of ceremonies, we may see 
 a very striking likeness in the general reh'gion- to that of 
 Egyptians and Canaanites, altogether unaccountable if these 
 were merely the separate inventions of races that had nothing 
 in common. 
 
 For one comparison, there was nothing with the Chal- 
 deans to correspond to the Nile as an Egyptian god. Also 
 in their buildings and ceremonies, while there are some strik- 
 ing resemblances, there was much such difference as seems 
 natural in what was elaborated later in detail by nations so 
 far separated, and in different local circumstances. Yet 
 there was in substance the same sun and star worship, with 
 like confusions, inconsistencies, and indecencies. 
 
 The place of the Nile god was fully made up by a 
 greater proportion of this astronomical false religion. And 
 then the king- or Pharaoh- worship of the one had its 
 counterpart in more of the deification of heroes or ' mighty 
 men of old,' like Nimrod. Yet there was also some of this 
 in the Egyptian worship. Of this element, more or less 
 confused in most of the false religions with a worship of 
 ancestors, we shall have occasion to speak more fully here- 
 after. 
 
 The Persian tribes farther to the north (and thus nearer 
 to the primitive land of Ararat) seem to have departed less 
 from the earlier truth than their wealthier neighbours. The 
 religions of many 'gods ' and of elaborate ceremony did not 
 prevail among them, at least not with those of their tribes 
 which later gave predominant direction to the whole people. 
 By this too they escaped most of the cruel and immoral 
 superstitions of the others. The thought of God as One 
 thus survived among them also, and even much more dis- 
 tinctly than with the others. Yet for all that, if we were to 
 take this for proof that they had preserved the pure true 
 Religion, we should be much mistaken. From the earliest 
 suggestions of their history they are found to have departed 
 from that to set up the notion of ttvo ' Supreme Beings ' — 
 one very good, the other very evil, between whom their 
 worship was divided, rather more being given to the one 
 {Ahriman) whose ill-will, as being the cause of all disaster 
 
 u
 
 3o6 BEGINIVINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 and fear, was thus to be propitiated, than to the good 
 {Ah2iri-7iiasda), to whom thanks and adoration were due. 
 This ' duah'sm ' of God, which would account for all the 
 strange mixture of hope and fear, pain and pleasure, good- 
 ness and wickedness that is in the world, by a perpetual 
 conflict of these two deities, is not difficult to understand as 
 a superstitious perversion of the fact that * sin has entered 
 into the world,' which God made so beautifully good, 
 'and death by sin,' and of the primeval tradition of the 
 part which Satan bore in this. The perversion of these facts 
 has also always had its place and counterpart in presumptu- 
 ous and self-confident philosophies which profess to account 
 for the ' origin of evil ' otherwise than as God Himself has, 
 in His most gracious salvation of us from all that evil, in- 
 formed us of this. So the Persian religion, as well as the 
 others, was a 'departing from the living God ' — from the life 
 of His love, and the penitence and hope of His salvation. 
 (If not so far gone as to 'many gods,' yet in one aspect 
 further — inasmuch as it distinctly turns towards the Evil 
 One for its chief devotions.) When that is so, it matters 
 little whether the objects we worship (or profess to) be a 
 thousand, or two, or one, as with the unbelieving Jews, the 
 Moslems, and the so-called ' Deists ' of our time. 
 
 We have a most curious and interesting book of the old 
 Persian religion, which, however, we cannot use for positive 
 authority as to this period, since the earliest date fairly 
 claimed for it is looo years later (after King David's 
 time) ; and some of the learned doubt whether it should 
 not be put 500 years later yet — say about the age of 
 the captivity of Babylon, and of Confucius and of Buddha. 
 This book is called the Zend or Zend-Avesta ; its author 
 Zerdusht or Zoroaster. It was claimed by these Persians 
 (and is so even to this day by their successors, the Parsees 
 of India) to be a holy and perfect book of true Religion, in 
 a manner corresponding to our Divine Scriptures (as is also 
 claimed of the Hindu Vedas and the Moslem Koran, 
 though the Zend may fairly claim in antiquity far to sur- 
 pass even the former of these). And though it has no such 
 sacred antiquity, much less Divine truth, for our purposes, 
 as the Book of Moses, it is of value as pointing back to
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 307 
 
 earlier traditions of its people. The Zend itself seems to 
 claim, not so much to be a revelation of new truth, as a faith- 
 ful record of what had come down from the far past of the 
 histoiy of men and the will of the Divine, and also to guard 
 that truth against neglect and forgetfulness on the part 
 of the true worshippers, and from the encroachments of 
 idolatry. 
 
 TJiis it forbids and denounces as a great sin. On the 
 other hand, the worship of the sun (and stars), and of fire as 
 representing that, is the substance of its ritual. With this 
 were joined many superstitions and cruelties, and it was 
 indeed a dark and cruel religion in which, instead of that 
 love for and faith in the One Only True, Almighty God 
 which Abraham had, fear of the Great and Evil casts a dark 
 shadow over all of life. But then the Zend, beside these 
 false and foolish things, has a great deal which accords in 
 an astonishing way with the history of the Genesis, and with 
 the institutions of Moses. This led some of the scholars of 
 200 years ago (Hyde, De Vet. Rel. Pers. ; Prideaux, etc.) 
 to decide that Zerdusht was only a crafty deceiver, who 
 made up his book from fragments of the Old Testament, 
 altered to suit his purpose, and absurd fictions of his own, 
 as Mohammed did his Koran 1000 years later. 
 
 But in this they do not seem to have looked enough at 
 all the facts for a true judgment. The evidence is rather, 
 and fairly, that in the main he set down what had been trans- 
 mitted from generation to generation for ages before among 
 his own people, — very likely with some growing incorrect- 
 ness of detail ; that, so far from attempting to invent a new 
 religion, he was trying to save an old one from passing away. 
 As a part of this plan, very likely he may have added some 
 fictions and precepts of his own.^ The differences and yet 
 resemblances of his record of tradition as to Creation, the 
 Flood, the Tower of Babel, clean and unclean beasts, circum- 
 cision, etc., etc., with the Word of God in Genesis, are a 
 very striking proof of the transmission of those facts by 
 tradition through all the tribes of men for ages afterwards. 
 
 ^ He would also seem, under the same mistake, to have been the first to 
 attempt a reform of false religion by ' philosophy.' And in this the Zend-Avesta 
 fails as signally as all others have. (See ijtfra, Ch. xxi.)
 
 3o8 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 If even as to the Persian religion at this time we are, after 
 all, left so much to mere conjecture and inference, this is 
 still more so as to China, India, and the European and other 
 nations yet more distant from the first abode of man. The 
 Chinese early history, of which much was hoped by the first 
 modern scholars who came upon it, turned out upon closer 
 inspection to be of very little value for the first looo, or 
 perhaps even 2000, years after Abraham. As we trace 
 it back we come upon a period of acknowledged de- 
 struction of records and monuments, the lack of which some 
 of their later writers have attempted to supply by fictions. 
 So of the same period in India. That land has absolutely 
 no history before the Christian era. 
 
 We have had for a half century now a school of very in- 
 genious and laborious explorers in all these languages, who in- 
 sist upon being able to restore this loss (or hiatus) in History, 
 by examining the older languages, the changes of words, etc. 
 I have no desire to depreciate anything true which can be 
 ascertained in this way, and doubtless something may be. 
 But he who works out unreal and fanciful things from this, 
 and sets them up for Histoiy, is not the promoter of truth ; 
 but he is so who helps to prevent such things from being 
 received for fact. Nor could we in this inquiry pass these 
 things by without either making use of their supposed results 
 as true, or else showing why they are not adopted, or why 
 2iX\Y part of them is discarded. Their chief advocate again 
 and again speaks of the study of Sanscrit words as the best 
 method we have for the study of all the history of all 
 Religion. (See India, etc., pp. 31, 274, etc.) He says 
 that ' the Vedas are the most ancient documents in the 
 history of the human mind,' etc. As these are, by his own 
 account, at the earliest, 500 years later than Abraham 
 — indeed later than Moses, — this involves a flat denial of 
 that Divine History, by the light of which we have now been 
 traversing 2000 years of that past. As the Oxford Pro- 
 fessor is allowed to be high authority by almost all Christian 
 as well as other readers, it is a necessary part of the very 
 work before us now to look into the grounds of his assertions 
 and conclusions. If he is right, we are bound to agree to 
 them. If he is wrong, he is very wrong ; and we must not
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 309 
 
 defer to them at all, but reject them as most serious and 
 mischievous errors. For the present our inquiry is whether 
 they can assist in our further search into the actual religion 
 of the time about 2000 years before Christ. 
 
 First, as already seen, it is allowed by their admirers 
 that the Vedas do not date so far back as that period 
 by 500 years. Five hundred years ! If I produced no 
 reason for believing something to have occurred in the four- 
 teenth century, in the days of Tamerlane, except a book 
 written last year, I would find no believers. But it is 
 admitted {India, etc., p. 224) that the Vedas were not 
 written for more than 1000 years later yet ! We are to 
 believe positively, without proof of it, but only from the 
 reasonings and conjectures of a few scholars, that these 
 sentences — more than twice the quantity of this book of 
 mine — were transmitted by memory alone, without change, 
 from master to scholar for 1000 years ! Well, this is not 
 impossible. And in the earliest ages, as we have seen be- 
 fore, the great words of God and the history of the greatest 
 events came down by faithful tradition through many ages. 
 TJiat might have been by a miracle of God, which no 
 Christian claims for the Vedas. 
 
 But we will accept this as fact. Are they, then, zvritings 
 made about the time of Our Lord's Advent, and preserved 
 safe until now? No; as is admitted {India, etc., p. 221), 
 the oldest of them now existing was zvritten 1500 years later 
 yet — only some three or four centuries ago. This of itself 
 would not prove them untrue copies of the more ancient 
 original writings. Our oldest MSS. of the Gospel go back 
 four or five times as far ; those of Old Testament Hebrew 
 twice as far, and yet we have no doubt of the substantial 
 correctness of that which we now have of ' God's Word 
 Written' for all mankind. 
 
 Yet this is the least of the difference. We could not 
 have the strong and certain confidence we do have that 
 these writings which we read in our Holy Book under the 
 names of the Prophets and Apostles were thus genuine, 
 except as they have been kept for us by God, as His Word, 
 in a society of men established by Him to sustain the true 
 Religion, which society has come down from age to age in
 
 3IO BEGINNIAGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 unbroken succession of officers and of ceremonies, under His 
 Almighty patronage. There is nothing of that kind about 
 these Vedas. Their own professions of Divine authority 
 are absurdly confused ; some important parts of their 
 'canon' utterly lost. Their European admirers do not 
 pretend for them that they have any such Divine author- 
 ship, or any such Divine preservation by human care. 
 They have fio accompanying and witnessing history. India 
 has been through all those ages the place of successive and 
 utterly hostile revolutions, of sweeping and devastating con- 
 quests. The Vedas in their contents, unlike our Scriptures, 
 are not at all historical. What a demand it is upon our 
 heedlessness and credulity to place these mere literary 
 remains upon a level with that 'Word of God Written' — 
 nay, to displace it for tJiem as authority in the History of 
 Religion ! 
 
 Or is this to be done on account of the 'internal 
 evidence' of their superiority? On the contrary, they are 
 confessed to be * full of childish, silly — even to our minds 
 monstrous — conceptions* {India, etc., p. ii8). 
 
 Yet, waiving all this, what shall we say when, tracing 
 them back the furthest possible — say to the days of Moses, 
 — they do not yet reach us at the point where we are by 
 500 years ? If it should be said that this is as true of 
 Moses, upon whom we rely, that is an utter mistake. For 
 Moses does give a history. He tells facts ^ and in him we 
 can read a record even for these twenty-five centuries before 
 him. But the Vedas give no history. They are poems, in 
 which among much which is very tedious and unmeaning, 
 as well as * false and silly,' are some flashes of poetic talent ; 
 but 7iot a date, a fact, or the doings of a single historic man. 
 As for those instructive yet most picturesque life stories of 
 Adam, Noah, or Abraham, or the table of genealogies and 
 races in Genesis, there is nothing like this in them. In 
 Moses we have, upon the lowest view, faithful tradition 
 stories of 2000 years past, which have come down from 
 father to son ; or, also with these, fragments of much 
 earlier writing than Moses ; or, best and most true of all, 
 unmixed truth from God to mankind, as He inspired some 
 of them to utter and to write it.
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 311 
 
 And upon what grounds would some who were bred 
 Christians now thrust this History aside for the other 
 writing, such as it is ? Because they say that they arrive 
 at more certain facts about Rehgion by studying the mere 
 words of the Indian writings than by attending to the 
 history in the Hebrew. This may be a very taking idea to 
 us, because it is new and strange. But is it true ? Would 
 we rationally act upon it in any other investigation of facts ? 
 If we had no clue to the existing things but what we could 
 divine from the form and relations of words in our own and 
 other languages, no history or documents — or only what 
 we had formerly thought such, but had now discovered to 
 be untrustworthy, — then we might make the best of such 
 other materials. 
 
 But is that the attitude of us Christians (for it is with 
 such only that I am now conferring ; other seekers of truth 
 in these matters I refer to pp. 100, 145, 146, etc.) toward 'the 
 Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments '? Do we 
 think that we have found occasion to forsake their solid 
 ground of truth from God to crawl upon the slender wires 
 of these light-hung and far-stretched conjectures? 
 
 But even then good sense would teach us to be very 
 wary of positive conclusions from the new data. The 
 process proposed is this. Remarkable resemblances and 
 evident relationship have been discovered between the ' dead 
 language' of ancient India, the Sanscrit, in which these 
 Vedas are written, and the Greek and Latin of 2000 years 
 ago, and also the German and English of to-day. From 
 this it is inferred — and not unreasonably, so far as facts 
 are now before us — that these are all variations of one ori- 
 ginal common language. To this, by ingenious conjecture 
 (and, let us not forget, only by that) has been given the 
 name of 'Aryan.' Then it is further deduced, with some 
 plausible suggestion from the traditions of the East, as 
 well as from this striking likeness of words and forms of 
 speech, that these peoples all — the Hindus, the Persians, the 
 Greek and Latin tribes of Southern, and the Germans and 
 Goths of Northern, Europe — were of one original 'Aryan' 
 stock ; that they went so far apart by early migrations, and 
 were afterward found, with all memory of their common
 
 312 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 origin quite lost, but for these wonderful traces of it in their 
 languages, only lately noticed. 
 
 Well, let us admit all this as highly probable, as 
 admitted truth, unless or until other facts prove it a mistake. 
 What then ? It has nothing to do with the History of 
 Religion. It does not change what we have learned so far 
 of that History. On the contrary, it agrees with that story 
 of the dispersion of mankind from a common centre in 
 Western Asia, which used to be one of the scoffs of the 
 enemies of true Religion. But now even those who do not 
 know all its Divine truth have to resort to this to arrange 
 their theories of race and language, — and then deny it ! 
 
 These Sanscrit words, allowing for the extreme demand 
 for their transmission by oral tradition for 2000 years, with 
 all that is curious and valuable in them for the history 
 of our language, do not reach back within four centuries 
 of Abraham, or seven of Babel. Many languages have 
 varied as much as all the 'Aryan' ones do now, in far less 
 time than that. How, then, can those words teach us the 
 beginnings and changes of all Religion, while the Divine 
 History cannot be trusted for that ? 
 
 The supposed process is thus given in one characteristic 
 specimen as to ' the study of the origin of Religion, the 
 entirely new aspect which the old problem of theogony, or 
 the origin or growth of the devas or gods, assumes from the 
 light thrown on it by the Veda' {India, etc., p. 235). And 
 it is added that 'we can see how the human mind arrives 
 by a perfectly rational process at all its later irrationalities. 
 This is what distinguishes the Vedas from all other sacred 
 books' (p. 236). 
 
 ' Let us take one of the oldest words for " god " in the 
 Veda, such as deva, the Latin dens. The dictionaries tell you 
 that deva means god and gods, and so no doubt it does. 
 But if we always translated deva in the Vedic hymns hy god, 
 we should not be translating, but completely transforming, 
 the thoughts of the Vedic poets. I do not mean only that 
 our idea of God is totally different from the idea that 
 was intended to be expressed by deva ; but even the Greek 
 and Roman concept of gods would be totally inadequate to 
 convey the thoughts imbedded in the Vedic deva. Deva
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 313 
 
 meant originally "bright," and nothing else.^ Meaning bright, 
 it was constantly used of the sky, the stars, the sun, the 
 dawn, the day, the springs, the rivers, the earth ; and when 
 a poet wished to speak of all these by one and the same 
 term — by what we should call a general term — he called 
 them Devas. When that had been done Deva did no longer 
 mean "the bright ones," but the name comprehended all the 
 qualities which the sky and the sun and the dawn shared in 
 common, excluding only those which were peculiar to each. 
 
 ' Here you see how by the simplest process the Devas, 
 the bright ones, might become, and did become, the Devas, 
 the heavenly, the kind, the powerful, the invisible, the 
 immortal, and, in the end, something very like the ©eot (or 
 dii) of the Greeks and Romans. 
 
 ' In this way one Beyond, the Beyond of Nature, was built 
 up in the ancient religion of the Veda, and peopled with 
 Devas, and Asuras, and Vasus, and Adityas, all names for 
 the bright, solar, celestial, diurnal, and vernal powers of 
 Nature, without altogether excluding, however, even the dark 
 and unfriendly powers — those of the night, of the dark 
 clouds, or of winter, — capable of mischief, but always destined 
 in the end to succumb to the valour and strength of their 
 bright antagonists.' 
 
 But as there are two other 'Beyonds' in the Indian 
 religion, we have next an account of one of these — the 
 worship of ancestors. There was something of this in the 
 Egyptian and other religions, already noticed. We have 
 {India, etc., pp. 237-262) that of the Vedas quite in detail, with 
 a theory of its 'natural' origin, of some of its ceremonies 
 (not the suttee ?) actually observed now, with this final in- 
 formation : ' They alone seem still to impart to their (the 
 Hindus') life on earth a deeper significance and a higher 
 prospect. I could go even further, and express my belief 
 that the absence of such services for the dead, and of ances- 
 tral commemorations, is a real loss in our own religion.' Is 
 it not vastly better for us, for ' a deeper significance and 
 
 ^ Upon this assei-tion the entire argument hangs. Yet though expressed 
 with such 'jaunty ' positiveness, it is a mere assumption, without any proof, and 
 against the strong probabiUty that such words first indicated objects of worship, 
 and by secondary use gained other meanings (see p. iSo).
 
 314 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 a higher prospect/ and would it not be better for them, 
 to know and believe in Him Who is ' the Resurrection and 
 the Life' ? 
 
 The last of the 'Beyonds' is thus introduced (pp. 262, 263): 
 'And thus as a thoughtful look on Nature led to the first 
 perception of bright gods, and in the end of a God of light, 
 as love of our parents was transfigured into piety and a belief 
 in immortality, a recognition of the straight lines in the world 
 without and in the world within, was raised into the highest 
 faith, a faith in a law that underlies everything, a law in 
 which we may trust whatever befall, a law which speaks 
 within us with the divine voice of conscience, and tells us 
 "This is rita," "This is right," "This is true," whatever the 
 statutes of our ancestors, or even the voices of our bright 
 gods, may say to the contrary. 
 
 * These three Beyonds are the three revelations of anti- 
 quity ; and it is due almost entirely to the discovery of the 
 Veda that we in this nineteenth century of ours have been 
 allowed to watch again these early phases of thought and 
 religion which had passed away long before the beginnings of 
 other literatures. In the Veda an ancient city has been laid 
 bare before our eyes, which, in the history of all other religions, 
 is filled up with rubbish and built over by new architects.' 
 
 The cruel insult to what every Christian holds most dear 
 and sacred which is thus rudely flung in the face of so many 
 of the admirers and flatterers of this writer, while it moves my 
 indignation, will neither irritate me into any injustice toward 
 him, nor terrify me from maintaining that truth by fear of 
 his contempt. But I marvel that any one who is in spirit, 
 as well as in form, ' signed with the sign of the Cross,' can 
 read it unmoved. 
 
 I quote this quite at length, and would prefer, if that were 
 possible, to set the whole of it before my readers, that they 
 might have the fairest possible representation of the argu- 
 ment. One effect of such assertions with many Christian 
 readers — the more general one, I suppose, — will be a confu- 
 sion of thought about this great matter of truth ; and that is 
 no small misfortune itself With the others, I fear the effect 
 will be the serious impairing of their faith in God's Word as 
 the true authority in all such questions. But wc must all
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 315 
 
 confront it sooner or later. Most distinctly it is a denial of 
 that truth which we have so far followed as to the beginning 
 of Religion. It assumes alone correctly to describe ' the 
 early phases of thought and Religion,' which, ' in the history 
 of all other religions (including, of course, that one which we 
 know has come down to us from God through these six 
 thousand years), is filled up with rubbish.' And it comes to 
 what is really a very ignoble and despairing conclusion — that 
 the History of Religion is one, not of the most glorious 
 truth first given to man complete, then perverted and lost 
 by him, but yet to be restored in greater beauty — but that 
 by this 'we can see how the human mind arrives by a per- 
 fectly rational process at all its later irrationalities.' 
 
 If we look for what proves all this, the most we can find 
 is a discussion of some Sanscrit words, especially that of 
 deva — that inasmuch as this ' meant originally " bright," 
 and nothing else' (if a Christian theologian spoke as per- 
 emptorily, and without any reason given, about the meaning 
 of a Hebrew word three or four thousand years ago, his pre- 
 sumption would be severely blamed), therefore man got 
 his first idea of God by noticing all the brightest things 
 and deifying them. 
 
 But why should this assertion — for that is all it is — per- 
 suade me to abandon a much better account of how Religion 
 begun, which is reasonable, and, as I suppose, actually 
 comes from God Himself? My Religion does not at all 
 depend upon this word deva, nor upon ©eo? or Dens, or 
 any man's conjecture of their origin, were that conjecture as 
 reasonable as this one is fanciful. I can only know of this 
 word deva as, at the utmost, three or four thousand years old. 
 But the true and first Names of God are some six thousand 
 years old. I can readily see how in many nations and their 
 languages the corresponding words were afterwards given to 
 many false deities, or debased to other uses, as when now in 
 English we often hear things carelessly called ' divine ' which 
 are not so at all. I can rejoice that later yet the truth was 
 restored among such peoples, and that @ed?, Dens, and God 
 were consecrated to the name of the Only True and Good. 
 
 Perhaps something in the nature of a diagram will best 
 illustrate to all our minds the contrast between the two
 
 3i6 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 methods as to a rational probability and a really wise and 
 candid seeking of truth : the one by the Hebrew history and 
 words, as given to us in gracious love by Him Who is the 
 Truth itself; the other discarding this, and seeking the 
 history of Religion only in our conjectures about Sanscrit 
 words. The upper line represents the period of, say, 6000 
 years past, as we know it by the former method ; the lower 
 line by the latter ; the breadth of shading being proportioned 
 to the certainty of continuous fact ; the blank spaces indicat- 
 ing the absolute lack of data, and the dotted lines the pro- 
 bable force of conjecture for those periods. 
 
 Yet Professor Miiller, after with scarcely civil contempt 
 dismissing the former, turns with delight towards the other 
 and exclaims : ' This is what I call History '! 
 
 We are, as already intimated, if anything, even more in 
 the dark about Religion in China at this time. A notion 
 was taken up by some of the popular French philosophers 
 a century, or more ago, that trusty records of history had 
 been discovered in that mysterious country, which would 
 carry us far back of any other such among men. But this 
 opinion has disappeared upon more knowledge of the facts. 
 That strange land, which seems to us the very home of 
 unchanging institutions and unbroken succession of records, 
 we now know to have been the arena of frequent revolu- 
 tions and wars, which have again and again broken off all 
 the clues of past history. W^e have nothing really earlier 
 than Confucius, who was not born for fifteen centuries 
 after Abraham. For the so-called annals and traditions of 
 the 2000 years before, we must trust as we can to what 
 these later writers tell us was recovered by tradition and 
 memory from books which themselves had utterly perished. 
 Even since Confucius, and long after the last of the Hebrew 
 prophets wrote, the greatest of the Chinese emperors made 
 a most strict search for all old books, in order that they 
 might be destroyed ; and it is only probable that a few of 
 them escaped this, and have come down to our time. But 
 from these later remains, and what we do know now of the
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 317 
 
 actual religion of the Chinese, some fair conjectures may be 
 made of what it was in Abraham's day. And in some 
 respects it thus appears quite different from, in others 
 strongly resembling, those pagan religions already described. 
 The very interesting discovery has lately been made of 
 evident connection between the early Chinese and the 
 Babylonians (see Quarterly Review, 1883). There are plain 
 traces also of intercourse and mutual influence of China and 
 India in those remote ages. On the other hand, their dis- 
 tant places, walled off from Western and Southern Asia by 
 the greatest mountains and cold sterile tracts of the world, 
 and their own ingenious, industrious, and yet unsocial char- 
 acter, have kept the earlier tendencies of Religion from being 
 at all modified by those of the bordering peoples. 
 
 Thus the real religion of the Chinese people, of the many 
 millions — not of the few thousands who are known to us as 
 rulers and ambassadors, literary men, or rich merchants, — is 
 a very superstitious idolatry and worship of their ancestors. 
 The smaller class mentioned practise much the same cere- 
 monies, but profess a sort of ' positive philosophy,' such as is 
 maintained in place of Religion by some Europeans now, 
 of which Confucius and Laotze are the prophets. And of 
 both classes alike, notwithstanding the superstitions, it may 
 be said that the religion of the Chinese is the least religious 
 in spirit of any nation's. While it retains more of the 
 ' moral ' part, it has lost more of the spiritual than that of 
 many a people less industrious, ingenious, peaceful, and 
 wealthy. The instinctive need of worship, and sense of 
 something beyond this world of our senses, and above our- 
 selves, is gratified by frequenting great and gorgeous temples, 
 burning paper and incense, bowing down to grotesque 
 images, and a sort of worship of the departed spirits of their 
 parents and other ancestors. Yet the idea of our future 
 life as being adjudged for us by the Great Eternal God and 
 Creator of all, the thought of such a Person at all, seems to 
 have been lost among them for all these ages. There is no 
 actual word in their language for Religion ; the nearest 
 approach to it is one that means teaching or doctrine. Those 
 who have been translating the Word of God into the 
 language of His Chinese creatures have hardly been able to
 
 3i8 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 find a word in it for His Name, or rather to agree upon which 
 of some other words was the best for this, and should be so 
 appropriated. The people themselves, and their chief 
 teachers (as Confucius and others), rather representing the 
 popular thought than inventing it, seem to have early chosen 
 to ' forget God ' for personal love and worship most effectu- 
 ally, by reasoning that this world and life are all they really 
 know of, and so that for men to make the most of these is 
 all there is of truth. 
 
 Yet they were not given up entirely to the natural result 
 of this — the worst mistake in ' conduct' — /. e. the cruel strug- 
 gle of fierce and false selfishness, by which they would at last 
 have been reduced to the smallest number of naked savages. 
 The Good One, though forgotten, did not forget them, and 
 kept alive among them (as we find in the writings of Con- 
 fucius, so much revered by them, but which are also doubt- 
 less rather than his inventions the traditional thought of 
 that whole people) some sense of the need of order, respect 
 for one another's rights, and the essential decencies of human 
 life. With this fixed in laws and customs, as well as, in 
 some measure, in such religion as they had, they became in 
 the course of ages one of the most numerous, peaceful, and 
 wealthy divisions of mankind. This I believe to be a fair 
 conjecture (and nothing more is attainable) as to the religion 
 of this great segment of our race in the period before us. 
 
 We are left even more to like conjectures as to their kin- 
 dred, the tribes who very early crossed into the other continent, 
 and in the course of ages overspread it from one pole to the 
 other. Yet here we find the most astonishing difference. 
 The American Mongolians, in their perverted and imper- 
 fect religion, took a reverse direction. They, most of them, 
 neglected that side of the primitive truth which calls for peace- 
 ful submission to authority, for quiet industry, and honesty 
 in providing for the needs of this life. Thus while the 
 Chinese gathered into a great, compact nation, with law and 
 order, they wandered apart into small and jealous tribes of 
 idle hunters and fierce ' warriors,' But, on the other hand, 
 they preserved more the true thought of God Himself, and 
 of a future life for man. And so though there is nothing 
 whatever historical as to them through all the ages of our
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS. 319 
 
 race until some three or four centuries ago, they were found 
 then with ideas of the ' Great Spirit,' and eloquent words 
 about the souls of the dead, that must have survived from 
 the days of the one true Religion ; while China, with its in- 
 genious arts and luxuries, had been given up to a base, 
 worldly, and selfish blindness to all that is really great in our 
 nature and destiny. 
 
 The nations of the North Mediterranean shore, whom we 
 are probably right in supposing to be of the same great 
 branch of mankind as the Indians and Persians, have no real 
 history so far back. What we do know of their earliest 
 religion by lingering tradition is, as with all the others last 
 mentioned, of a far-off past, in which men were more inno- 
 cent and happy than ever since. The earlier rites and belief 
 were also simpler and less superstitious than afterwards.^ 
 The same is true of North Europe, as well as we can gather 
 from the oldest German and Gothic legends, the Eddas, etc. 
 It is a fact in all these, explain it as we may, that the more 
 just and spiritual ideas of God and of our life are not in 
 proportion to the wealth, inventions, ' civilisation,' or litera- 
 ture of any people, but usually in the reverse order. There 
 are some instances, as of the Polar tribes, or those of the 
 farthest migration and greatest isolation in some parts of 
 Africa and the South Sea, in which men are both brutish 
 and most superstitious. But it was the Egyptians, Persians, 
 Babylonians, Chinese, and Indians whose religion was most 
 unworthy of man. The barbarians of America and those 
 of Northern Europe and early Greece were much less 
 un spiritual. 
 
 ^ See Plato, Leg. 680 ; Gladstone, Jtiventus Mnndi ; also infra.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CAUSES AND PROCESS OF THE GREAT DEFECTION. 
 
 These are the simple facts, in the main, as to the actual 
 Religion of mankind about 500 years after the Flood. 
 They are none the less facts that they are humiliating to 
 us as a race, or that we have a sentimental repugnance 
 to believing that it was only the very few among whom the 
 truth and beauty of Religion survived, while for all the rest 
 it had been perverted into gloomy and cruel, or else sill)- 
 and vicious, superstitions. We might as well deny that in 
 Egypt the only fertile and habitable land was the narrow 
 strip on the Nile banks, because it could not be that nine- 
 tenths of that country was a sterile desert. We also see in 
 the religions of the Pagan nations considerable differences, 
 and yet greater resemblance of thought and sentiment. This 
 resemblance also holds as to the remains of primitive truth, 
 which they all contain, and the general tradition that man- 
 kind had once been happier and better than ever since. 
 
 Can we in any way understand the causes and process of 
 this terrible change ? It is a proper matter for our stud}-. 
 It may be most profitable for the great work of restoring the 
 truth of Religion among all mankind to trace, so far as 
 possible, how men began to have this and that form of the 
 false. Much such research has already been attempted. It 
 has a fascinating and yet a rightful interest for the strongest 
 minds. But the first reasonable step in this inquiry is (and 
 if this should be neglected by us now, or has been by any 
 former explorer, the result of all the work would very likely 
 be of no value) to see whether the Word of God, in its 
 account of true Religion, and as an incident of that, gives us 
 any suggestion of the history of the false.
 
 CA USES AND PROCESS OF THE GREA T DEFECTION. 321 
 
 Such suggestions we have in the Book of Moses of the 
 ' strange gods ' and ' other (after-) gods ' of Egypt and 
 Canaan, and later on in the Old Testament, when so often 
 the distinction is made between ' the nations (the bulk of 
 mankind) that forget God ' and a certain small ' people ' who 
 alone remember Him. If it were only that powerful verse 
 (ver. 17) of the ninth Psalm that said this, it would be a sug- 
 gestion to be much pondered. But in substance this repre- 
 sents many like passages ^ in which, even from the days of 
 Job (viii. 1 3), to ' forget God ' is to forsake the true Religion, 
 as to remember Him is being faithful in it. 
 
 Still, for that great, terrible, and mysterious question, How 
 came these all to forget — and so not to know — the true God } 
 our chief guide is in that very Gospel in which we found the 
 clue to the history of true Religion. It is so especially, as 
 St. Paul was ' moved by the Holy Ghost ' to write in the 
 Epistles to the Romans and Hebrews (or whoever was the 
 author of the latter, if any make a question of that). 
 
 And taking our first lesson from the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, we may understand that, as it was ' by faith ' that 
 ' the elders' — the patriarchs of holy truth — stood fast in it and 
 taught it to their children, so it was by want of faith that 
 the rest of men ' forgat God.' Being averse to obedient love 
 of Him, they chose to ' walk by sight ' in life — to ' love the 
 world,' to hide from His commandments of self-control 
 and self-denial in pride, selfishness, anger, and ungoverned 
 animal passion. They would not humble themselves before 
 His invisible presence in penitent prayer for forgiveness and 
 spiritual grace, and His loving care for all their wants. They 
 hid from the thought of Him in false worship of ' the things 
 which are made': 'they chose new gods.' Thus, as 
 Abraham's ' faith was counted to him for righteousness,' so 
 their want of faith was counted to them for unrighteousness. 
 
 But it is in the famous passage at the beginning of the 
 Epistle to the Romans that we find the direct account of 
 
 * Including the 120 places where the A.V. has 'Gentiles' for Q-iij (see 
 supra, p. 296). It is worth notice that in this very ninth Psalm that same word 
 goim is twice translated ' nations,' and three times ' heathen,' with nothing what- 
 ever in the general sense to indicate a difference of meaning. The ' Revision ' is 
 better here, but with much retention elsewhere of the mistranslation 'Gentiles.' 
 
 X
 
 322 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 this process, as God has been graciously pleased to reveal it 
 to us ; and the passages we have already noticed will now 
 disclose more of their force to us, and thus be the better 
 understood from them : ' Because that, when they knew God, 
 \hey glorified Him not as God ; . . . but became empty in their 
 imaginations (rather, reasonings, contentions, arguings, — in 
 substance, all ^/leir ozun cogitations, as distinguished from His 
 teachings^, and their foolish heart was darkened ijiot illumin- 
 ated, as men fancy they always are by such self-confident 
 and disobedient thoughts). Professing themselves to be 
 wise, they became fools, and (as a part of that irreligious folly 
 inventing a religion more to their minds than what is true 
 and spiritual) changed the glory of the incorruptible God 
 into an image like to corruptible man. . . . Wherefore God 
 also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their 
 own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between them- 
 selves : who changed the truth of God into a lie, and wor- 
 shipped and served the Creation rather than the Creator, 
 Who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave 
 them up unto vile affections,' etc. 
 
 We have here an account of the beginnings of all false 
 religion quite clear and strong upon the mere reading, but 
 which also needs, and will much reward, careful study. 
 There was especially in the writer's mind at the time one 
 variety of 'Aryan' religion — that of the Greeks. But it 
 applies in principle to all the other departures from the 
 primitive, as we have already observed them. And it is 
 altogether different from — in fact, utterly contradictory of — 
 the 'natural' and 'philosophical' accounts of the 'origins' of all 
 such, to which I have already alluded. If they are true, it is 
 not. If it is the truth, as we have it direct from God, the 
 Christian must at once reject the other with abhorrence. 
 
 ' When they knew God.' They began with the greatest 
 and most blessed of all truth. It is the purpose of man's 
 life, it is that life itself, to love God with all his heart, 
 and to act according to that love, — that is, to 'glorify' Him. 
 The two words 'love' and 'glorify' in this sacred use always 
 have that express relation. As we are to love Him ' with all 
 the heart,' so we are to ' do all to the glory of God.' But 
 these men would not. They preferred the love of self, and
 
 CA USES AND PROCESS OE THE GREA T DEFECTION. 323 
 
 its gratification in love of the world, and in desiring what He 
 forbade. They wished not to have Him in mind as a check 
 upon such thoughts by constant gratitude and obedient love, 
 but to 'forget' Him as much as possible. 'They glorified 
 Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in 
 their cogitations, and their foolish heart was darkened.' 
 Some, doubtless, set themselves up as specially wise 
 leaders of the rest in what all preferred to spiritual, humble, 
 and penitent piety toward the Holy and Good One ; 
 and the others thought themselves very wise in following 
 this, instead of the fears and prejudices of the few devout. 
 ' Professing themselves to be wise, they became (really) fools, 
 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an 
 image,' etc. 
 
 This is what the wise Egyptians, foremost in arts, literally 
 made haste to do in Abraham's day ; what the Greeks and 
 Romans, most elegant and intellectual of 'Aryans' in St. 
 Paul's day, had done with their treasures of beauty in the 
 human form for idols, and of architecture for temples, and 
 were then copying the most debased superstitions of Egypt. 
 It was what the Indian 'Aryans' did, and do still, with idols 
 more hideous than were almost anywhere else invented, to 
 express the glory of the Divine ! So had even the Persians 
 in their dreadful worship of the Evil, and their disobedience 
 (in pretence that the sun represented Him) to God's com- 
 mand to have no visible object of adoration. For we may 
 fairly infer from the rejection, by all the true worshippers, of 
 idols (though all around them practised idolatry), and any- 
 thing else upon which the senses could fasten in worship— 
 from the very words of the Third Commandment, as given 
 afterwards, and quite decisively from the very passage now 
 before us, that from the first men were ' warned of God' not to 
 use any natural object to represent Him in their worship. It is 
 only the 'image' that is represented in terms first (ver. 23). 
 But the later and more powerful sentence (ver. 25) is as much 
 against any moon- or star-worship, or \\\^fire of the Persians 
 to represent that, as it is against images. It is the worship 
 of the ' creature, instead of the Creator.' 
 
 Thus true Religion is represented as the blessing and 
 honour of all mankind at first. Every sort of the false came
 
 324 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 by a perverse departure from that, in quite various ways,— 
 from want of love and faith : of love, in grateful worship and 
 self-denying obedience to the Will of God in His Command- 
 ments ; of faith, in ' seeing Him Who is (and though He is) 
 invisible/ and trusting in His mercy to humble and penitent 
 sinners. They preferred their own thoughts and inventions 
 to His words for truth. Thus while, as a general thing, they 
 dared not give up all religion, and believe in nothing above 
 themselves, and beyond their own world (for never have 
 but a few of any company of men enough for a tribe or 
 nation descended to that foUy),^ they contrived false ones as 
 substitutes for that truth. In place of the bright glory of 
 the Blessed and Almighty, * the incorruptible God,' they 
 made images of men or beasts, or even hideous and mon- 
 strous figures, uglier than anything natural, to kneel before, 
 and pray and sacrifice to, or else gave the like false worship 
 to the ' host of heaven,' or other natural objects or forces. 
 
 This wickedness, like all other, had one part of its pun- 
 ishment in their being ' given up ' b}' God to those degrading 
 vices from which true Religion would have been their best 
 protection. They even, naturally enough in such a case, 
 made these a part of their religion. 
 
 Thus Religion, which was the most beautiful and precious 
 ' truth of God,' they * turned into a lie.' As they did not like 
 to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a 
 debased (or senseless, aSo/ct/xo?) mind, etc. The intelligence 
 was degraded as concerned matters of Religion and conduct, 
 so as, however ingenious otherwise, to receiv'e and practise 
 the most absurd and contradictory things (the more intelli- 
 gent and ' civilised ' being often the worst instances of this) 
 and the most disgusting immoralities. This terrific picture 
 is concluded by repeating the judgment that they are not 
 innocent because of their inherited errors and false education : 
 ' they are without excuse : for, knowing the judgment of 
 God,' etc. This false religion, which was better than none, 
 had still reminded them of a Divine Power which was for all 
 good, and against all evil ; and to this responded in their 
 hearts the wonders of the world around them, and the 
 
 ' If the French Repubhc of 1792-1800 be an exception, its brief career is the 
 strongest illustration of this truth.
 
 CAUSES AND PROCESS OF THE GREAT DEFECTION. 325 
 
 mysteries of their own souls' life, and the thought of its 
 endless future. Therefore they were still conscious of 
 choosing evil rather than good, and of Divine displeasure for 
 this. 
 
 All of this is in direct contradiction of the opinion put 
 forth by some writers, and allowed on sentimental grounds 
 by many Christian people now : that the Pagan religions 
 were accepted by God as true worship of Him. Even some 
 sentences of our Holy Scriptures are quoted to that effect. 
 But beside that which we have just seen to be explicit and 
 conclusive to the contrary, so is also the whole tenor of 
 them. There are twenty passages of that kind to one of the 
 two or three of which such use is attempted. Even the fair 
 meaning of the^n is to the same effect, though, if it did not 
 seem so at first, the candour of those who take this for the 
 Word of God would seek some other construction of them 
 than one which is against that truth. The one (as quoted 
 from Kuenen) by Prof Miiller (see India, etc.) is a pitiful 
 twisting of one of the most glorious prophecies of the future 
 prevalence of the truth. All other worship is regarded, as 
 of ' after-gods,' inventions of a later perversity. So does St. 
 Paul soon after, in this very writing, quote David's descrip- 
 tion of the Pagan nations as applying also in his day (and 
 now) : ' There is none that understandeth, there is none that 
 seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way,' etc. 
 (Rom. iii. 11, Ps. xiv. 1-3, etc.) And Solomon's great 
 sentence is the same in substance, ' God hath made man 
 (D*1K) upright, but they have sought out many inventions.'^ 
 
 In all this is implied a like guilty responsibility of the 
 later generations in receiving this false religion from their 
 ancestors, as being also their choice and act. This is 
 the express ground upon which these Pagans of the first 
 Christian century, as well as all before them, are adjudged 
 ' guilty before God,' as the whole matter is summed up at 
 the end (ver. 32) : ' Who, knowing the judgment of God, that 
 they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only 
 do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.' In 
 this are as plainly included the acts of false religion de- 
 
 ^ In the LXX. SLa\oyicTy.oi!'t, reasoning.';, imaginations, as in St. Paul to the 
 Romans, i. 21, etc.
 
 326 BEGIA'NINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 scribed in vers. 23-25, etc., as what is immoral. Thus a 
 man's having received a false reHgion by education does 
 not make him innocent in the practice of it. He has still 
 a secret consciousness,^ more or less obscure, that he is in 
 this doing evil instead of good. It comes from the dim 
 survival in every soul of us of the original Word of God to 
 man and his responding nature, witnessed to him also by 
 all things around him, ' visible and invisible,' that he ought 
 to 'love God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself 
 And this inheritance of guilt was especially instanced as to 
 false religion in the Second Commandment, as afterwards 
 given : 'visiting the iniquit}' of the fathers upon the children 
 unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me, 
 and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me,' etc. 
 False religion is especially the hating God, the refusing the 
 love which is due to Him. So they who observe true Reli- 
 gion are those ' who love Him and keep His Commandments,' 
 beginning with the ' first and great' But even in this most 
 lofty aspect of His holy justice His grace still prevails 
 (justice ' to the t/n7-d and fourth generation, mercy to thou- 
 sands') to observe and accept any little act of true Religion, 
 by whomsoever performed, even by one who had never known 
 any form of it but the false. 
 
 Doubtless this history of mankind, in which for long ages 
 it was only the veiy few who really ' knew God,' is in its 
 details a vast and terrible mysterj' which we cannot, and 
 need not, fully understand. So far as God gives us a clue 
 to the general understanding of it we may and should 
 
 1 It is greatly to be lamented that from Platonism or other Greek philo- 
 sophy has got among speculative Christians the deification of an imaginary 
 something called 'conscience,' which, for what we ought to do, takes the place 
 of God, or of our own minds, or both ; and thus the simple truth of these 
 matters is quite confused. Not only almost all our books, but the ordinary 
 speech of Christians in these later ages (for there was nothing of the sort at 
 first), is full of this notion, so that the simple truth and common sense of God's 
 Word are obscured. ^Yhere in those wiser times can we find the phrase now so 
 common, or anything equivalent to it, that ' a man ought to obey the dictates of 
 his own conscience ' ? The only such * dictates ' then allowed were God's Com- 
 mand^netits. There is surely nothing like it in the Old Testament, and all 
 supposed verbal suggestion of it in the New is from misconception of the word 
 ai'vd5r](7i.^, which can easily be shown to have no such meaning. (See also The 
 Reign of God, p. 378, etc.)
 
 CA USES AND PROCESS OF THE GREAT DEFECTION, yi-j 
 
 pursue that. But our part, then, is to learn of God His 
 gracious truth ; not to decide by what we call our reason 
 what part of His Word ought to be, and therefore is, true. 
 For common sense in matters like this is at least as much 
 violated by a lack of humility and reverence as by supersti- 
 tion and credulity. Wherever it is at all a question of what 
 God has revealed to us, it is neither humble nor reverent for 
 us to refuse to accept any facts as thus revealed until our 
 minds are satisfied with them. 
 
 So in the present instance we should only strain and 
 distort our intellectual capacity by making it the measure 
 of the facts of this mystery, deciding that, if this is true, 
 that cannot be, and the like. The greatest of these facts is 
 the love of God, Who will never do anything but what is 
 just and gracious. But if upon such grounds we insist that 
 He has not done this or that which He says He has, or, 
 what is the same thing, that His words cannot have their 
 plain sense, we are, for one thing, guilty of ridiculous self- 
 conceit. The voice comes from above (in this same Epistle 
 to the Romans, ix. 20), ' Nay but, O man, who art thou that 
 repliest against God } ' It is our wisdom and honour to 
 believe all His words of grace to us ; to act according to 
 them as we understand ; what of them we do not understand 
 to receive with loving awe. 
 
 For the present inquiry we know that in the unfathom- 
 able wonder of His long-suffering grace and purpose of 
 salvation for ' all nations,' He had in Abraham's day (and 
 this was to continue for 2000 years more) preserved His 
 truth from these perversions in only a very small part of 
 mankind. If, with humility and reverence, we ask whether 
 He has told us how He regarded the rest — the Wvr) or 
 nations (' Gentiles '), — and whether some, at least, of these 
 countless millions may not have in fact (as St. Peter says, 
 God would have accepted them if they had) ' feared God 
 and worked righteousness ' in that imperfect way that any 
 of us actually ever do in this debased life, we must be 
 content with the Divine words which describe His general 
 attitude toward all those nations and generations. St. Paul 
 himself is that one of His prophets whose mission was 
 mostly to such people.
 
 328 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 There are related in the Acts of the Apostles two inci- 
 dents of this, which took place long before this Epistle to 
 the Romans (formerly Pagans themselves) was written. In 
 the first (Acts xiv. 11-18) some simple country people at 
 Lystra, in Asia Minor, were so struck by a miracle of healing 
 performed by him that they took him and his companion 
 for two of their ' gods' come down to earth — as, according to 
 their mythologic legends, they had done in long-past ages. 
 They gathered to do them sacrifice and other worship. The 
 Apostles, shocked at this, ran among them, protesting in 
 these powerful words : ' Sirs, why do ye these things } We 
 also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you 
 that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, 
 Which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things 
 that are therein : Who in times past suffered all nations to 
 walk in their own ways. Nevertheless He left not Himself 
 without witness, in that He did good, and gave us rain from 
 heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and 
 gladness.' The only God had for ages ' suffered all nations 
 to walk in their own ways' of false religion. Yet all that 
 time the blessings of sky and earth, which they had ascribed 
 to their false Jupiter and other such, were testifying to men 
 the truth about Him. Now His messengers had come to 
 proclaim to them that they should ' turn from these vanities 
 (false and silly things) to serve the living God.' 
 
 Next we see the one who thus warned the Lystrans, at 
 Athens, in the midst of the most splendid temples and cere- 
 monies of that religion, and also of the most intelligent and 
 acute-minded of Pagan philosophers, claiming either to give 
 a rational account of the popular religion, or ' professing to be 
 (too) wise' to believe it really (though they practised it), and 
 in their belief replacing it by mere ' imaginations' about 
 ' eternal principles,' which were, if anything, less truly reli- 
 gious than the superstitions of the people. To them all 
 alike he proclaims the same truth of the One Only God, 
 challenging them by their very false religion as an acknow- 
 ledgment that there was a Divine Person above man, and by 
 one of their altar-inscriptions, ' To the (or " an " — the argument 
 is the same) Unknown God,' that they did not know the 
 True Divine, the One Only God, the ' Maker of all things,
 
 CA USES AND PROCESS OE THE GREA T DEEECTION. 329 
 
 and Judge of all men,' the only true Deity for all races and 
 souls of men alike. Their mythologies and philosophies 
 were alike the false inventions of men. He had come with 
 a message from the True One to call them from these 
 ' vanities,' and show them the good and right way. God had 
 been always ready to help any who would have groped after 
 Him again in that darkness, which was the fault of their own 
 perverseness ; and, in fact. He was always before their eyes 
 in goodness and glory, if they would have opened their eyes 
 to see. This unknowing (dyvoia, 'Agnosticism') of Him 
 by all the great nations of men He had with wonderful 
 forbearance 'overlooked'^ for ages. But now His summons 
 came to all to believe in the Divine Saviour and Judge of 
 all, and in Him to receive light and salvation of true 
 Religion.^ 
 
 It is plain from all this, and all the rest of the Word of 
 God concurring, that whatever we may reasonably think as 
 to /lozv iHa7iy, in this feeling after God in the darkness, ever 
 actually found Him, the right solution of that question is not 
 in the notion that the worship of false gods was true 
 Religion for those people, as much as that of Jehovah was 
 for Abraham. That He may have accepted this in place of 
 that, in some cases, seems to me possible in the wonders of 
 His grace to us all. But that is another thing. Yet Chris- 
 tians (if Professor Muller would allow me to count him 
 among them ; or, if not, at least many good Christians who 
 do not dare to differ from anything which appears in his 
 
 ^ virepibwv, ' winked at,' is certainly an incorrect and unfortunate transla- 
 tion. 
 
 ' It is a curious instance of our time that a learned and able clergyman of 
 the English Church, doubtless altogether engrossed in a supposed verbal advan- 
 tage of argument, has maintained lately, as against the ' Agnostics,' that 
 all Christians ought to claim that title for themselves. And he proceeds to 
 quote for this, not only the ' Fathers' as ' Agnostics to a man,' but Our Lord's 
 and other words of Holy Scripture. Of course one can so manage words as 
 to do this with a certain ingenuity. But it is at the expense of the plain 
 sense. The Word of God says indeed that we cannot know Him entirely. 
 But it also does say, most expressly say, that we can know Him, — nay, that we 
 must, at the peril of eternal death. Again and again it describes that state 
 of fearful peril as the ayvoLa GeoO, with this (His Own words) as the only 
 alternative : ' And this is life eternal : to know Thee, the Only True God, and 
 Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent.'
 
 330 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 name, as, e.g. see India, etc.,) sometimes accept this as the 
 only wise and 'liberal' view. 
 
 The general result of our inquiry so far is that Religion 
 did indeed survive among all the nations of men in the idea 
 of unseen superior Power to which they must render worship 
 and sacrifice ; in laws, customs, and thoughts of good con- 
 duct ; in a dim, confused, and variously perverted idea that 
 our life does not end with death here, but that a more lasting 
 future, which is adjudged according to the 'deeds done 
 in the body ' now, begins then ; that all mankind were in 
 some far-off past much more innocent and happy than now, 
 and that the Divine is really One Good and Holy Person. 
 But the reverence and worship were, in fact, given to many 
 imaginary persons who were not really as good as some men 
 and women. The religious rites were generally gloomy or 
 silly, cruel and indecent. Justice, purity, and sweetness in 
 human life were often rather the more outraged than pro- 
 moted by Religion, of which they should be a part. And all 
 this inversion, and, as it were, travesty of the greatest truth, 
 had come about by mankind having generally preferred 
 what was false to the Divine and true — forsaking a Religion 
 which would ennoble and save them by the self-denial of 
 obedient love to God and keeping His Commandments, for 
 inventions of their own, which would, in some degree, indulge 
 and palliate selfish worldliness, while they had something to 
 satisfy, in a measure, the mastering sense of Divine power 
 and the instinct of worship. 
 
 This tremendous transformation of the truth of God 
 about Himself and men's relation to Him is distinctly de- 
 scribed as their false invention, their ' changing that truth 
 into a lie.' That is so plainly the true, the only rational and 
 credible account of the origin of Pagan worship, that it would 
 seem as if any honest seeker of truth would accept it with 
 grateful promptness as soon as it came to his knowledge, 
 and at once abandon any theories which he might have 
 taken up before, of men's first discovering the idea of 
 Religion by means of these superstitions. That so many 
 well-informed and keen-witted men do actually reject this 
 truth, and insist upon those theories, is itself only to be 
 accounted for as a like instance of men, ' when they knew
 
 CA USES AND PROCESS OF THE GREA T DEE EC TION. 33 1 
 
 God,' becoming ' vain in their imaginations, and their foolish 
 heart darkened.' 
 
 We must not refuse this truth for fear of being called 
 ' blind and bigoted.' It is none the less a fact because these 
 hard words are used of those who accept it. That so many 
 well-meaning Christians are now ready to concede, or at least 
 afraid to dispute, that any man who is eminent in a literary 
 way, or for research in Natural Science, must have some good 
 reason for his questioning the plain meaning of such passages 
 of God's Word as this, is a part of the false philosophy that 
 has got mixed in with all the literary opinion of our age. 
 Whether we call the postulate that the soul of man loves 
 truth for its own sake, and only needs to know more to quit 
 all error, — whether we call this Platonism, or recognise in it as 
 much the work of many other ancient (as well as modern) 
 reasoners — or, better yet, the self-sufficiency and vanity of 
 all mankind alike, it is itself a most mischievous error, 
 which taints all that it touches. The Truth Himself has 
 said, ' Men loved darkness rather than light, because their 
 deeds were evil,' 
 
 When the theories come to arrange and account for the 
 details of fact, they are, in any of their variant and contradic- 
 tory shapes, utterly powerless to adjust those facts. That 
 the * scientific ' observers, while they agree in denying the true 
 account, disagree with one another as to the process, is of 
 itself most significant. In this they resemble the confusions 
 and inconsistencies of the false religions themselves. Some 
 will have it that 'Nature-worship' is to account for all; some 
 that it is ' Hero-worship,' with various varieties of these two 
 theories ; and there are others yet. If they could all be 
 right, and the differences of the several religions come from 
 the entirely separate inventions of different races — this does 
 not accord with the fact of the original unity of mankind, — or 
 that of their having a like nature^ which would be sure to 'work 
 out ' (if that were the process) what was, in the main, alike, 
 just where, in fact, we find the differences. For it is another 
 fact that the differences are such as no ' general law ' of 
 advancing intelligence can account for. On the other hand, 
 the resemblances (and the differences) are precisely such as 
 would be when a great primary and primitive truth had been
 
 332 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 perverted by the erroneous 'imaginations' of different tribes ; 
 in some instances by the mastering talent of a few men (or 
 even of only one), who pretended to Divine suggestion, 
 making use of some striking local event or object (as of 
 the Nile in Egypt). 
 
 As an instance of this discarding of facts for the sake of 
 false SiaXoyicr/jbOL,^ take this fact of the general consent in the 
 earliest traditions that they had received their religion from 
 their ancestors, that no such earlier age was credited with this 
 as a first invention — indeed, that ' the gods ' (or Divine 
 Power) themselves had first instructed men in this, which 
 they taught their children in turn. 
 
 Now, if we had no information about this which was 
 better yet, we might be excused for conjecturing that there 
 had been a first human discovery or invention of the idea of 
 Divine Power and what we had to do with it, but that the 
 deep policy of these founders of Religion had successfully 
 extinguished this fact for the sake of striking awe into the 
 people, and ensuring a superstitious, obedient faith. When, 
 as now, we have the true solution before us, how can we 
 discard it for the false ? 
 
 Take, for instance, the Sanscrit variety of the theory in 
 question, as perhaps the one most in vogue now. Read 
 with attention the latest and best setting forth of it (cer- 
 tainly with the highest authority) in India, etc. And what 
 have we at the utmost ? The slenderest basis of fact and the 
 widest leaps of conjecture, leaving common sense quite un- 
 satisfied, and wondering whether this clever writer is himself 
 at all pleased with the result. If we, too, are ' Aryans,' with 
 all our language and intelligence built into one another in 
 that wonderful way from those far-off ages, how has it come 
 about that these ' Aryan ' thoughts now seem to us repulsive 
 and senseless, and need to be apologised for by their great 
 admirers, with the intimation that it is because we have 
 other sorts of minds than those Indians that we do not 
 
 ^ We may take this remarkable word in either of the more limited senses in 
 which we may render it in Y.Vi<^\^—}-easonings, cogitations, or imaginations, this 
 last involving that profound truth that false reasonings, especially those which 
 are unspiritual and irreligious, are largely made up of mere imaginings or self- 
 sufficient conceits.
 
 CAUSES AND PROCESS OF THE GREAT DEFECTION. 333 
 
 relish the Vedas, while the ' Shemitic ' sayings that date 
 further back go to our hearts and hold such Divine mastery 
 of our belief? 
 
 Let any one try this by setting the few finest passages 
 (as their admirers distinguish them) of the Vedas by the side 
 of a hundred from the Old Testament — say the first part of 
 Genesis, the Song of Moses, the eighth and fifteenth Psalms, 
 etc. As a fine 'evolution' or (devolution) of the human 
 intelligence, how do the Indian writings compare ? We 
 should in simple fairness continue the process, and set the 
 Ramayana by the Prophets, and the Puranas by the 
 Gospels.^ First we have a confused personification and 
 adoration of ' all things bright' (and dark ?), with some 
 expression of spiritual ideas, in the midst of much more 
 of the very opposite ; then most disgusting superstitious 
 observance and worship of hideous images, selfish and 
 sensual tyranny of a priesthood, and abject immoral slavery 
 of the people. What is the next step in such a history of 
 Religion, after this has reigned over a hundred million people 
 for one or two thousand years .'' 
 
 Is this the 'bright consummate flower' of the 'Aryan' 
 genius .-' Yes ; that is the fair conclusion. But the theorist 
 does promise some further and future development of the 
 Indian religion, surpassing all our past (the 'Jewish thought' 
 and all). For there is now a considerable and increasing 
 number of the Brahmins who are devising a new metaphysi- 
 cal religion, made up out of the sayings of the Vedas, with 
 some ideas from our Holy Scriptures, and a considerable 
 supplement of ' modern thought' Even my own country, 
 the most altogether modern of all, is to contribute largely to 
 this. For one of the enthusiastic young Hindu leaders 
 quotes from the writings of Mr. R. W. Emerson a rhapsodi- 
 cal prophecy of the ' new Church founded on moral science,' 
 etc., as being the best account of their hopes. Now, it is 
 somewhat the fashion to say that Mr. Emerson is ' the great 
 American philosopher.' Perhaps he is. But that is one of 
 
 ^ This is an irresistible necessity for all who insist upon necessary ' evolu- 
 tion ' or ' development ' in these things. Yet all critics agree that the oldest 
 Indian writings are the most spiritual and have the largest proportion of fine 
 passages.
 
 334 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 the severest things that could be said of all that ' philosophy' 
 can do in the domain of Religion. For, with all his poetic 
 talent and felicity of elegant expression of whatever he really 
 knows anything about, he is one of the most blind and 
 foolish men who ever, while the glorious and beautiful light 
 of heaven had been shining over the land of his birth and 
 so much else of the world for ages, ' by wisdom (ao^ia or 
 philosoph)) knew not God,' and of those who, instead of 
 seeing and loving Him in all things, — to the sound of their 
 own ' cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all 
 kinds of music,' have fallen down to worship ' the nameless 
 Thought,' which was really their own intellectual vanity. 
 
 This society of the Bra/i;uo-So7/iaj does not even now count 
 the hundredth partof the caste of Brahmins — always the small- 
 est and tyrant class, who, with profession of sublime thoughts 
 of which they kept the monopoly, held all the rest of their 
 countrymen, except the princes and soldiers — and even they 
 were in abject fear of them, — in a slavery of superstitious 
 forms and miserable poverty. But whence came even the 
 suggestion of this new wisdom, these high religious thoughts, 
 which are yet to enlighten and ennoble all mankind .-' From 
 the Christian missionaries ; as when Ram-Mohun-Roy, the 
 acknowledged founder of the new religion, first received the 
 Gospel from them with delight, and then fell into the mis- 
 leading ambition of inventing something better. Meanwhile, 
 spite of all great difficulties — one of the chief being that there 
 are born Christians in England and America who reject its 
 power of love and humility to save us all, — that Gospel 
 pushes on its way, having already brought (not a few thou- 
 sand Brahmins to as much spiritual self-conceit as the 
 apostate Christians of Europe, but) hundreds of thousands 
 of a/l ranks of the Hindu people — each one of whom is as 
 important in the real history of Religion as the ' philosophic' 
 man — into the light and purity of the ' holy fellowship.' 
 
 Were we able now to trace in detail the various theoretic 
 accounts of the other false religions, — Greek, Chaldaean, 
 Egyptian, etc., as beginning with ' Nature-worship,' etc., we 
 should find them, while not at all agreeing in their accounts 
 of the process, alike unsatisfying. Whenever, as in the case 
 of Heslod {T/ieo£-onj/, but see p. 294), or what we know of some
 
 CAUSES AND PROCESS OF THE GREAT DEFECTION. 335 
 
 such sayings of the Egyptian priests, all the adventures of 
 ' gods,' ' goddesses,' etc., are resolved into an ingenious alle- 
 gory of the 'operations of Nature' — suns and stars, clouds, 
 winds, seas, seasons, etc., — we will find that the allegory was 
 invented long after the substance of the mythology was a 
 literal religion to the people. Some additions to the legends 
 may have been made afterwards by poets, and received 
 then with the rest. But most of the pretended parabolic 
 truths can be fitted to the old superstition only in a very 
 far-fetched way, and as some bright poetic genius used its 
 ' licence' very boldly. 
 
 The ' Nature-worship ' is so evident a failure to account 
 for some of these religions (or for all or any of them) that 
 the theory of some others is, that the idea of worship began 
 with admiration for heroes and other ' mighty dead ' of the 
 various tribes. Other writers yet impute the first thought 
 of an unseen spirit — afterwards of ancestor-worship (as does 
 Professor Miiller, as a supplement to the ' Nature-worship'), 
 even, in some cases, of ' the great gods ' — to men's thoughts 
 of their kindred who had died before them, and of whom 
 they came by a very slow process to think as still existing 
 — though the dead tree, or even the dead ox, gave no such 
 suggestion. Others yet (Professor Whitney r/«/.) are certain 
 that it was by dreaming, and afterwards remembering the 
 unreal persons of the dream, that mankind began first to 
 conceive of any real persons who were invisible, and so at 
 last of spirits and deities. For each of these notions some- 
 thing could be alleged and ingeniously set forth as argu- 
 ments. Yet each of the parties can adduce many facts 
 which the other's theories will not fit. And besides, there is 
 the utter failure to account for the bewildering confusion and 
 contradiction, the puerilities and hideous cruelties and 
 indecencies in which all these religions abound, if they were 
 the wholesome rising ' evolution ' of man's mind and heart. 
 
 But as soon as we leave all these fancies, and make use 
 of the_/ac/ that the growth of such religion was not the dis- 
 covery of higher, and hitherto unknown, truth, but a perverse 
 departure from what was already known — from truth higher 
 than our powers of discovery by thought, and from the 
 beginning essential to our true life, — all is simple and clear.
 
 336 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Their very confusions and absurdities, their preposterous 
 jumble of notions which have nothing in common, their 
 immorahties, their cruelties, are just what we should reason- 
 ably expect. We can then go on to inquire, with due caution 
 and reserve, as to how probably the false religions took the 
 forms they did, as they appear more or less alike in all ; 
 and the peculiarities of race or place in each of them ; as 
 also how the primitive truth survived in various parts or 
 degrees in one and another of them. 
 
 Yet we need not spend any great thought upon this fear- 
 ful mystery any more than it is for most men to undergo 
 the weariness and disgust of long study in a museum of 
 morbid anatomy.^ Some, perhaps, as messengers of the 
 Lord and Saviour to heathen people now, should do so, in 
 order to understand the education and habitual thoughts of 
 those to whom they are sent. Yet St. Paul himself, and all 
 those greatest ' missionaries,' do not seem to have needed 
 more of such information than the general truth which he 
 gives us, as I have quoted it, and then to go on directh' to 
 their 'glad tidings ' of the true Religion. 
 
 The tendency and purpose of this being once in action, it 
 was easy for men to find other objects of worship than God ; 
 first, perhaps, upon the pretence of greater reverence in not 
 addressing Him directly, but through representatives, or that 
 He Whom no man could see must be kept in mind by visible 
 
 ^ Among the strange things over which a future wise Christendom (if the 
 world ever sees that — or, better yet, as there will be such after He comes under 
 Whose rule ' truth shall spring out of the earth ') will surely wonder, is the cus- 
 tom of our generation to educate even the young Christian maidens in the filthi- 
 ness of the Greek mytholog)'. To understand poetic allusions in our own or 
 ancient languages is small compensation for defiling the memories and imagina- 
 tions of those who will have hard work, at the best, to keep their thoughts clean 
 in this evil world and life. I have seen a ' text-book ' of the sort, some 400 
 octavo pages, giving quite a full account of the delightful household of the 
 Greek and Roman Pantheon, evidently most carefully prepared by a -voman, 
 who accepted entirely the theory that this was all an allegorj- of ' Natural 
 Science,' though a really learned Doctor of Divinity, in an 'introduction to the 
 book,' deprecates this view, and gives profound and powerful arguments for the 
 true idea of a primitive revelation, of which these religions were corruptions. 
 The author's work is done as circumspectly and euphemistically as the matter 
 allows of. Yet one cannot but wonder whether she thought all these doings of 
 her heroes and heroines to be so innocent and decent, and that her young sisters 
 would see it in the same pretty way.
 
 CAUSES AND PROCESS OF THE GREAT DEFECTION. 337 
 
 objects. The glorious sun, the fair moon of evening, the 
 vast multitude of mysterious stars crowding the sky of 
 night on the one hand ; the great Angels of God, of whom 
 they knew by tradition, on the other ; and also in the growing 
 confusion of thought, what seemed mighty unseen forces 
 around them, — fire, storm, and cloud ; the wonderful march 
 of seasons and years, and the ' great and wide sea,' to such 
 as came in sight of it. This process once begun, there seems 
 no limit as to how far it might be pursued, or with what 
 absurdity of combining in the thought of these deities, and in 
 the actual religious rites, notions that had no sort of con- 
 gruity. Thus by degrees, as generations succeeded one 
 another, engrossed in the needs, struggles, and ambitions of 
 selfish life, and in migrations and wars, this ' departing from 
 the living God ' would proceed so far that almost all thought 
 of the Only True Divine would have perished. 
 
 We must always keep in mind that the aversion to 
 obedient love of God, and the revolt from His command- 
 ments of love to their fellow-men, was also thus increasing. 
 All the forms of selfishness were developing. The tyranny 
 of the stronger or more cunning few, and the slavery of the 
 rest, were taking shape. These ' rulers ' gave such colour in 
 various ways to the unfolding ' imaginations ' of false religion 
 as suited their purposes — sometimes, no doubt, according to 
 the useful and necessary purposes of order and law. 
 
 The sentiment of slavish and guilty fear having displaced 
 in Religion that of penitent and self-denying love, the sacri- 
 fices and other rites took on that hue. It was the evil 
 angels rather than the good who were thought of as the 
 deities. They were to be propitiated by what was cruel. 
 In this, I conjecture, is a glimpse of that terrible mystery by 
 which God's Word, in several places of both Testaments (see 
 Deut. xxxii. 17; Ps. cvi. 37; i Cor. x. 20; 2 Cor. iv. 4; 
 Eph. vi. 12, etc.), gives us to understand that in some way, 
 while these Pagan gods were really nothing, only empty 
 names and imaginations, still their votaries in them wor- 
 shipped ' demons ' or ' devils,' and that Satan himself is ' the 
 god of this world,' as it has forsaken the True. 
 
 Death itself would never suffer men utterly to lose all 
 idea of Religion after they had once known it. That part 
 
 Y
 
 338 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 of it which tells us of our spiritual life as the main thing, 
 of our future judgment and destiny, was recalled to every 
 man by his seeing the death of another. The fear and 
 anxiety, the bitterness of this loss of the beloved, and the 
 longing to see them again, — these things also would have 
 their expression in the new religions. Very easily this, in 
 some instances, passed into the 'ancestor- worship.' It seems 
 also to have been an early contrivance of tyranny, as in 
 Egypt, to make the absolute king a representative of the 
 chief god, or to feign that he was that god in person. So 
 from this or the ancestor-worship, or more probably the two 
 in conjunction, began the deification of former kings, heroes, 
 or other public benefactors.^ All this was indeed profane 
 and absurd, but false religion is naturally full of absurdity 
 and profanity. 
 
 It is not a part of the present discussion to apply these sug- 
 gestions in detail to the various Pagan religions. Otherwise I 
 would gladly subject my argument to this further test. Indeed 
 I will do so yet, if this is asked or challenged, and time and life 
 allow of it. Nor has he who undertakes that task the question- 
 able honour of originality. Perhaps the present generation 
 needs to be reminded that it is not merely certain brilliant 
 men of our time, nor only, beside them, the laborious scholars 
 of Germany of a former generation, lately becoming known 
 to us, who have explored the history of ancient mythologies. 
 Selden, Gale, Bryant, and Faber are English scholars who 
 spent great research and thought upon these very matters. 
 Our contemporaries have had some considerable advantage 
 over them as to Indian, Egyptian, and Assyrian remains. 
 But, on the other hand, they have made nothing like the 
 acute and laborious search into what was then within reach, 
 have quite neglected this, or rummaged a little in theui 
 for what suited their purposes. And what is more, the 
 older writers, though somewhat hindered by an assump- 
 tion that whatever was true in the religious tradition of 
 antiquity outside of Israel must have been got from the 
 Scriptures of Israel, made their inquiries by the light of 
 
 ^ Not that the king or hero was always a benefactor. But arbitrary and 
 hereditary power would have it so. As Our Lord said, ' They that exercise 
 authority are called benefactors. '
 
 CA [/SES AND PROCESS OF THE ORE A T DEFECTION. 339 
 
 God's Word as certain truth — as it is ; while the others 
 have begun and continued with the mistaken notion that 
 they were finding out by other means how mankind first 
 invented Religion for themselves. And this primary false 
 assumption has misled them in research, and vitiated their 
 conclusions. Mr. Faber's work, The Origin of Pagan Idolatry, 
 though it appeared at the beginning of this century, seems 
 to have passed quite out of notice. He was so rapid and 
 voluminous a writer that it was probably impossible for 
 him to be as accurate as is most to be desired in work of 
 this kind. And so also he repeats and involves himself 
 at times, thus confusing his argument and adding to the 
 labour of the reader. 
 
 For all that, the book is a treasure of research in some 
 details. Its main thought of identifying much of the 
 mythology of the Pagans with the perversion of true tradi- 
 tions of the first of our race, deserves far more attention than 
 it seems to have received. It contains a very full argument, 
 with valuable citations and comparisons, going to show that 
 the remarkable appearance in most of those mythologies, 
 Greek, Indian, Egyptian, etc., of a trifiity of chief gods, is 
 the confused memory both of Adam and his two sons (Cain 
 and Seth) and of the three sons of Noah. That the two sets 
 of events so far apart, and of persons so different, were thus 
 confounded, does not detract from the force of the argument 
 otherwise. For absurdity is one characteristic of all these 
 ' imaginations ' of those who, ' professing to be wise ' in 
 abandoning the true Religion, ' became fools ' in what they 
 substituted for it. Let no one be sure that Mr. Faber is not 
 right in his conjectures, at least until after he has read him. 
 I think him wrong in saying positively, as he does, that the 
 true Trinity of God had nothing to do with the notion of 
 these heathen trinities. It seems far more probable that 
 some knowledge of that high mystery was a part of man's 
 primitive Religion, and that this was the perverse applica- 
 tion of it to the great forefathers of us all, whose figures 
 floated dimly in the memories of all the tribes. 
 
 He also makes it quite probable that the notion of an 
 endless succession of worlds through past and future eter- 
 nities, which the Brahmins teach, and which has been found
 
 340 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 more or less in some of those other religions, came from dis- 
 carding- the tradition of Creation as an event, when the 
 worship of the Creator was abandoned, and the Creation 
 (His work) put in His place, whereupon also the tradition 
 of the Flood, and of ' the world before the Flood,' was turned 
 into this fancy of a series of worlds appearing in endless 
 succession (much like the ' Nature-worship ' and ' Evolution ' 
 of some of our men of science now). He also shows that 
 the very name of Noah appears in the form of Ma-nu, Nous 
 (reason), etc., as when in some of those ' imaginations ' the 
 whole world {Kosinos) was said to be the bod}- of the deity, 
 and Noiis the soul. 
 
 Probably that very misleading tendency of human specu- 
 lation about Religion later, called ' Philosophy,' was also 
 at work in those earliest days in some of the minds that 
 governed the rest. This would have given, even then, some- 
 thing of a metaphysical cast to the SLoXoyiafioi. Most of this 
 speculation, however, we shall find at a much later period, as 
 well in India and Persia as in Greece. And it may be, as 
 some think, that this did, with a few men in Greece (or 
 India, yet earlier .-•), four or five centuries before Our Lord, in 
 some lines of thought work a little back toward the truth, 
 but not for any considerable or enduring effect. Its inevit- 
 able tendency in the main, from first to last, has been toward 
 intellectual vanity, misleading man from humility and faith 
 in a Word of God. In any case the ' wisdom of God,' teach- 
 ing us by faith in His direct Word, is plain as to all this. 
 It uniformly sets 'the wisdom of the world,' the direct 
 reference being to the 'philosophy' of the time, as its 
 opposite, and as that by ivJiich (let us mark this well) ' the 
 world knew not God.' And here, where the original devia- 
 tion from true Religion is described, it was by reasonings 
 (ScdkoyLa/jiOL), in which, ' professing themselves to be wise 
 {aro(f)OL), they became fools.' 
 
 This is naturally connected with such an inquiry as can 
 be made within the limits of the present research into the 
 origin of two particulars of the false religions, viz., s?/n- 
 ivorship and iniage-ivorsJiip, or idolatry. Some ' philosophy' 
 now, as ' Comparative Religion,' argues that to adore the 
 sun, moon, and stars was a natural and rational step toward
 
 CAUSES AND PROCESS OF THE ORE A T DEFECTION. 341 
 
 a discovery of Religion (so far as it allows that there is any- 
 thing true and rational in that). But there are others who 
 approach the historical question from the right point of view, 
 as to how those who knew the true religion afterward began 
 this sun-worship, who resolve it thus : that these men at 
 first innocently used some visible objects as representing the 
 One God ; and that no other such so well suited this purpose 
 as the magnificent and mighty illuminator of the world. And 
 so they proceeded to have, as other like representatives of 
 Him, the great light of evening and the rest of the splendid 
 ' host of heaven,' in their march through the sky of night — 
 whether the brighter planets with their mysterious wander- 
 ings, or the fixed stars, of such vast numbers and various 
 brightness, moving in the most exact order through lives and 
 generations of men. 
 
 It is very certain, by all later experience, that if this was 
 innocently done at first, it was most unwisely done. All the 
 later Word of God — all the History, in fact — testifies that this 
 tended at once and inevitably to the forgetting instead of the 
 remembering of God. As it was hy faith, by direct spiritual 
 apprehension, that the true worshippers, from Abel to Abra- 
 ham, continued in the true Religion ; so it was by deviating 
 from this — whether with a mistaken purpose of assisting 
 faith by sight, or what not — that the others departed from it. 
 It would seem therefore from this consideration alone that 
 it was probably a part of the primitive Word of God to man 
 to forbid such ' representative ' worship — a ' commandment ' 
 in substance identical with the Second at Mount Sinai, and 
 which was directly transgressed in the first step of 'sun- 
 worship ' (or idolatry). 
 
 Thus when historically, as now, we come upon the first 
 traces of the contrast between the false and the true in Reli- 
 gion, it is the interposed worship of something visible to 
 represent God, already invading Abraham's own family, on 
 the one hand, and the rejection of this by him. Nor does 
 he look at sun or stars in his devotions. It is the ' Great 
 Name' alone which represents God to him, to Whom, as 
 unseen, he offers sacrifices and prayer. God shows him 
 the starry sky, but only as an illustration of His promises 
 to him, the reward of his faith in the Unseen.
 
 342 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 In the same way, but more full)% the later Word of God 
 in the Gospel tells us that all false worship began by ' chang- 
 ing the truth of God into a lie, and worshipping and serv- 
 ing the creature (Creation) rather than (instead of) the 
 Creator.' It would seem from this also more probable that 
 mankind were from the first warned against this danger, and 
 forbidden such a fatal perversion of worship, rather than left 
 to discover it by the awful experience, the very working of 
 which itself blinded them to the lesson. Certainly it was a 
 wicked and forbidden thing for all mankind long before the 
 Exodus. The same fatal notion was involved in all image- 
 worship ; and that was a great sin before Abraham. When 
 can we reasonably suppose that the Commandment of God 
 was given, of which this was the disobedience, unless from 
 the beginning of men's disobedience ? 
 
 In the Book of Job, however, we have a yet more positive 
 proof of this. There is nowhere else, in the finest literature 
 or the most refined civilisation, a grander and more beautiful 
 picture of a good man's life than in the thirty-first chapter 
 of that book. Has any moralist, philosopher, or poet of later 
 ages ever equalled it t Do any elaborate ' ethics ' of our day 
 approach it in condensed sweetness, purity, and greatness of 
 soul ? How utterly unlike all the ' Talmudic ' literature, to 
 which some would in effect assign it ! It breathes the free 
 and pure air of primitive, simple, dignified, solitary life, far 
 from the ambitious vanities and luxuries of cities — from 
 Babylon, old or new. It sets us in the midst of a people 
 among whom just authority punishes those who transgress 
 the Word and Will of God, whether (vers. 9-1 1) in selfish 
 passion, which invades the purity of families, or false religion 
 (vers. 26-28), which debases the spiritual worship of God. 
 They are a people also among whom (ver. 33) is still well 
 remembered the tradition of Adam's Fall. 
 
 In the second of these references (vers. 26-28) is plainly 
 recognised a false religion as already begun — perhaps upon 
 the pretext of a 'representative' worship of the Only God — 
 of adoring the sun and moon. However prevalent and 
 powerful this may have already become among the richer 
 and more 'civilised' descendants of Ham, or even invaded 
 some tribes of his Shemitic kindred — with the people of Job
 
 CA USES AND PROCESS OF THE GREA T DEFECTION. 343 
 
 it was ' an iniquity,' and as thus ' would have denied the God 
 that is above.' So then true Religion from the first absol- 
 utely forbade the adoration of anything visible. ' The things 
 that are made' are to reinhid us of *the Eternal Power and 
 Godhead'; they are never to be adored as representing it. 
 
 Some modern writers will have it that the beginnings of 
 the great science of Astronomy, as we find them in the 
 Egyptian and Babylonian remains, were naturally and of 
 necessity the beginnings of sun- and star-worship, — as if the 
 first observers of the wonderful appearances and movements 
 of heavenly bodies, being very ingenious and thoughtful 
 men, and not yet having any idea of anything religious or 
 Divine, concluded that these were ' gods,' and forthwith began 
 to adore them, and set up temples and rituals for this worship. 
 Now even if we did not already positively know the con- 
 trary of what is thus assumed, if God Himself had not told 
 us that it was they who already knew of Him and the duty 
 of spiritual worship who thus ' cJianged the truth of God into 
 a lie, and worshipped and served the creature instead of the 
 Creator,' it would be very foolish to put much confidence in 
 this theory, upon the grounds given by its maintainers-. 
 
 I have endeavoured to examine these with candour, and 
 have been astonished at the insufficiency of them, were we 
 left merely to such conjectures about all this. That they do 
 satisfy men who cannot be satisfied by the truth of God's Word 
 can only be accounted for by their fatal bias against that, and 
 their eagerness to believe anything which may seem to dis- 
 credit it. The same is true of their way of accounting for 
 the ancient division of time by periods of seven days. Once 
 that was dismissed as a mere Jewish superstition. Now that 
 this ground is no longer tenable, but the Babylonian remains 
 show that the week was well known among that people from 
 the first, instead of acknowledging that ' God blessed the 
 seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it He had 
 rested from all His work which God created and made,' and 
 so this became the Divine and sacred division of days for 
 men, however perverted and afterwards lost among most 
 of them, they set to work to 'prove' by most gratuitous 
 guesses and assertions, without a particle of historical fact, 
 that it was an invention of superstitious star-worship.
 
 344 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 But how natural and plain the truth is, that in the sinful 
 perverseness of men, instead of being reminded of God, and 
 kept in His truth by ' all things visible as well as invisible,' 
 just as, to the believing and devout, ' the heavens declare 
 the glory of God,' they made use of them to forget Him, 
 and also fastened upon 'the lights in the firmament of 
 heaven,' which He had given us ' for signs, and for seasons, 
 and for days, and for years ' the fantastic devices of their 
 false religion, not only as to their annual and monthly 
 celebrations, but by giving the names of their star-gods to 
 the different days of the week !^ 
 
 Of course the same principle of spiritual Religion, with at 
 least equal force, forbade image-worship. That, indeed, might 
 be thought the most senseless of all such ' imaginations.' It 
 seems now only necessary to show it to us in its actual 
 thought — as, for instance, in the powerful words of 
 Psalm cxv. or Isaiah Ixiv. Yet this was one of the very 
 earliest developments of false religion, and the most endur- 
 ing. Here, in Abraham's time, already it is the representa- 
 tive of all the rest ; and so it is used all through the Book of 
 God. St. Paul presents it at the first step of all departing 
 from God : ' and changed the glory of the incorruptible 
 God into an image', etc. 
 
 How came intelligent man ever to think that ' the God- 
 head is like unto anything graven by art and man's device,' 
 even — for these were among the earliest and most honoured 
 idols — those coarse figures of beasts and reptiles, or most 
 grotesque and hideous shapes of what no one had ever seen ? 
 Such were the ' gods ' of the wise Egyptians and of the pro- 
 foundly spiritual Hindus. How came the highest thoughts 
 to express themselves in the most monstrous and repulsive 
 forms ? For precisely in this should the love of beauty have 
 found its best opportunity. If the later Greeks be instanced 
 as having devoted the highest art in this way to religion, 
 
 ■* It would seem a curious suggestion as to which was originally the Divine 
 day of the seven, that they gave the name of the Sun to the chief day. In all the 
 incongruities and absurdities of 'gods many,' there pervades a tendency to use 
 the sun as representing the chief, and even only real, deity. Bryant has shown 
 as a most ingenious conjecture, if not conclusively, that the word Helios, and its 
 equivalent in various languages, was a transfer of the sacred El to the false 
 worship.
 
 CA USES AND PROCESS OF THE ORE A T DEFECTION. 345 
 
 that was long after the tune with which we are now con- 
 cerned, and will have its due notice later. But let us 
 consider now that it was to thein that St. Paul made these 
 very appeals as to the absurdity and real irreligion of 
 their worship. To ' change the glory of God into an image 
 like to corruptible man ' is his very first instance of the 
 monstrous and wicked folly of false religion. Why, indeed, 
 should we turn away from seeing the glory of God by fait/i, 
 to use such an ' image ' of it ? Even the most hideous beast 
 might be thought to tell us only of the Creator, while the 
 human form represents and stimulates the foolish pride of 
 our rebellion, and the perverseness of sin against God. 
 There is nowhere in the Gospel the slightest hint that Our 
 Lord's Incarnation was meant to change this principle. If 
 it had been, here would His most loving worshipper have 
 plainly said so instead of the Divine condemnation of any 
 ' image made like to corruptible man,' which he so plainly pro- 
 nounces. Nor was such a thought known among Christians 
 for 400 years. Some Christian writers of our day (see 
 Lenormant, etc.) seem to favour the notion that image-worship 
 too was at first a mere innocent device of true Religion, to 
 assist our dulness of faith, by sensible objects to represent 
 God. There is not the slightest countenance for this to be 
 found in the Holy Scriptures. There is throughout them 
 every opposite suggestion. These words in the first chapter 
 of the Epistle to the Romans absolutely forbid it. Perhaps 
 practices have crept into the worship of some Christians 
 which need that sort of extenuation. 
 
 The other view is all natural and consistent. In the 
 Second Commandment we have (in its somewhat local and 
 temporary form, yet in substance) the Divine principle of 
 worship by faith alone. No departure from this is ever 
 expedient, or safe, or lawful. The moment we venture that 
 we are beginning to ' become vain in our imaginations.' But 
 how precisely the Jirst step was taken toward men's making 
 images, and then ' worshipping the work of their own 
 hands,' must probably remain always a dark mystery. Some 
 think that meteoric stones, which fell from the sky — as they 
 sometimes do now — were regarded with religious awe, and 
 so were the first stone idols, and suggested the making of
 
 346 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 others. There seem to be some very ancient instances of 
 such local superstition. Yet the transition from this to 
 'graven images' is not so very probable. Or was it from 
 effigies of ' the mighty dead,' and in the way of hero- or 
 ancestor-worship t 
 
 The pretended account of this in the so-called Book of 
 Wisdom is not only not to be reckoned in Holy Scripture, 
 but it seems to be of no value in this inquiry. It is a char- 
 acteristic specimen of ' Jewish thought,' at a time when some 
 of that people, by their long residence in Pagan countries, 
 though adhering more exclusively than ever to the words 
 and forms of their religion, were yet so penetrated and elated 
 (not to say inflated) with a mixture of the Oriental and 
 Greek ' philosophy ' with that, that this displaced the spirit 
 of the true Religion. Compare this very passage with the 
 corresponding ones either of the Prophet Isaiah before, or 
 the Apostle Paul afterwards, and the evident difference is 
 that between the philosophy of men and the Word of God 
 to men. 
 
 Yet any account of the rise of false Religion would be 
 imperfect which failed to notice one great force and contriv- 
 ance in it all — that of ' the devil and his angels.' For as 
 these were concerned in the first defection of man from the 
 love of God, so surely they would not have remained inactive 
 in whatever opportunities of mischief it offered afterwards. 
 Here was a vast field for such work. Our Lord also said 
 that the chief of these evil ones is ' a liar, and the father of it' 
 They have been ever since assiduous in whatever can be done 
 to make men more wicked and unhappy. It is almost incon- 
 ceivable that they have not done their part by way of sug- 
 gestion and temptation to those who were ' changing the 
 truth of God into a lie.' In some dreadful way they have 
 been not only turning religion away from God, but diverting 
 it to themselves, as we see in the passages cited on p. 295, 
 etc. Even one of those wonderful and terrible temptations 
 of Our Lord is in Satan's saying to Him: 'All these 
 things will I give Thee if Thou wilt fall doivji and worship 
 me' (St. Matt. iv. 9). 
 
 We may reasonably conjecture that the very early and 
 continuous prevalence of sorcery and witchcraft are parts of
 
 CA [/SES AND PROCESS OF THE GREA T DEFECTION. 347 
 
 the false religion most directly connected with the work of 
 evil spirits. When men once perverted the true thought of 
 the Divine, spiritual, and invisible, from God to other objects — 
 even if at first they proposed to adore the holy Angels, — this 
 more naturally passed into fear of the terrible Satan and his 
 associates than continued as grateful love of the messengers 
 of God, and to imaginary evil spirits, to the ghosts of dead 
 men, etc. Around this soon gathered the cruel deceits of 
 necromancy, magic, and sorcery, which had been found in all 
 false religions, but are only and always forbidden by the 
 true.^ (See Deut. xviii. 9-14 : 'Thou shalt not do,' etc.) 
 
 We are here, in the days of Abraham, upon lofty ground 
 for a survey of the world so far. The religion of the greater 
 part of mankind, though so degraded, is sincere in one sense — 
 it is not a mere pretence of words. But it is not at all sincere 
 in the highest sense. They fear and yield some obedience of 
 fear to the Unseen Power. Yet they try to bribe, or deceive, 
 or otherwise elude its laws. They twist the very religion into 
 some gratification of baser desire — of gain, or of selfish and 
 even cruel wrongs to their fellow-men. Lmv, which begins 
 and belongs with Religion, after a while subjects and corrupts 
 it, and is in turn perverted further from justice by the false 
 religion. The consciousness^ of men, into which the true 
 
 ' It is not uncommon to find in respectable books of reference recommended by 
 Christians \Ch3.mbQrs's Encyclopo'dia, etc.] statements attributing all the cruelties 
 of superstition to the doctrine of God as to Satan and other evil spirits. This is a 
 detestable falsehood, however disguised, contrary to all History, both ancient and 
 modern, as well as a blasphemy against the Gospel — as much so as to say that 
 the Gospel teaches us to be cruel to any of our fellow-men. There was a strange 
 period from the Middle Ages down to within two centuries past, when, as with 
 the notion of religious persecution, a childish y^ar of mischief to be done to the 
 innocent by magic arts, caused things to be done in all Christendom to those 
 accused of such arts at which we now shudder. But this has long since entirely 
 passed away, and the more religious one is among us now, the less he fears such 
 evil. But it always has prevailed in other religions, mixing the greatest cruelties 
 and miseries with their very rites, and does now everywhere, except where the 
 Gospel is free and powerful. 
 
 ^ That is, what we are aware of in our own thoughts, — not conscience, in the 
 artificial and fictitious sense in which this has made its way from ' philosophy ' 
 into all that is said of duty in our day, and is taken for granted by Christian 
 writers, and even by every one of us in our ordinary speech, as if it were a part 
 of God's Word to men that each of us had under this name another self within 
 himself, which was, in fact, God Himself speaking to him all the time, but which 
 any way He had directed each man to obey first — sooner even than any other of
 
 348 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 thought of God and of our life had once entered, never en- 
 tirely lost this. The thought of what is good or bad, true or 
 false, just or unjust, pure or vile in their conduct, never ceased 
 to be some check upon evil desire, as shown in the laws, 
 customs, and even religion, however corrupt. In some aspects 
 this lingering twilight of a past seemed to grow more dim 
 with the succeeding ages. In others it would at times brighten 
 a little with the thoughts of some men wiser than the rest, 
 who saw more of the obscured truth, and had the courage 
 and capacity — as princes, poets, priests, or other leaders — to 
 influence some of their fellow-men in this. Yet that can only 
 really be accounted for as a part of the mercy of God, Who 
 was preserving the truth still more effectively in one family 
 and people, according to the great mystery of His future 
 redemption of all. 
 
 His commands, saying, ' Above all things, obey the dictates of thy conscience,' 
 which teaching, if any one will fmd for me in the Holy Scripture, or anything 
 equivalent to it, ' I will be a bondman unto my lord [the finder] for ever.'
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ABRAHAM TO JOSEPH. 
 
 That there should be such a family and people, God now 
 made a ' covenant ' ^ with Abraham, of gracious promises on 
 His part, of faith and obedience on Abraham's, for himself 
 and all his family. Each male of them, to all their genera- 
 tions, was to be circumcised as a token and pledge of this. 
 The promise of this favour and glory by which all the rest of 
 mankind were in some future generation to be ennobled and 
 made happy was to be fulfilled especially in a son of Sarah 
 yet to be born, against all the ' laws of nature,' or probabili- 
 ties, or apparent possibility. For Abraham to believe this is 
 one of his acts of ' faith,' which are especially noted as proofs 
 of true Religion in him. This alone utterly overthrows the 
 assumption of some writers {e.g. Mr. Matthew Arnold, Liter- 
 ature and Dogma) that faith in God, according to the Holy 
 Bible, is only attending to what is otherwise reasonable. But 
 so far as men's reason went, apart from belief in this promise 
 only upon what God said, nothing could be more unreason- 
 able. Yet Abraham refused all attention to reason in this 
 case. He did not stop so much as to take any notice of it, or 
 have so much of a passing doubt as this would imply. God 
 had spoken, and there was no longer place for his own 
 thoughts except to know by perfect faith what was told him. 
 It may be that some have said too much of faith as opposing 
 and overcoming reason. True faith in God will not allow of 
 such a conflict, because it will allow of no such competition 
 as to certainty of truth ; of no common level upon which 
 the two may contend. It rises to the lofty height of the 
 
 1 This is of itself a wonderful mystery of gracious love of the Great One 
 toward His creatures.
 
 350 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 certain truth of what God says, and leaves the other below 
 and out of sight. 
 
 But there was an even greater proof and triumph of that 
 faith, after the promised child had been born, in spite of the 
 ' laws of Nature,' and the father's faith had been rewarded by 
 seeing him grow up to a healthy lad of fourteen. Then He 
 Who had promised and given this son to this father, com- 
 mands Abraham to take the boy Isaac to a distant place 
 alone, and there kill and burn him upon an altar, as a sacri- 
 fice to God, just such as he was used to make of a lamb or a 
 bullock. 
 
 Let us look at this transactioii with directness and sim- 
 plicity, waiting to learn from it just what God teaches us 
 thereby — not merely that we may construe it so as to support 
 our previous notions, or to accord with our habitual feelings. 
 It is a plain, detailed narrative of the Old Testament, corro- 
 borated and recognised by the New, as especially in the 
 eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews (vers. 17-19) : 
 ' By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac : and 
 he that had received the promises offered up his only be- 
 gotten son, of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy 
 seed be called : accounting that God was able to raise him 
 up, even from the dead ; from whence also he received him 
 in a figure.' 
 
 We cannot treat this as an affair of mistaken judgment 
 on Abraham's part, for he is praised and rewarded for it by 
 the Great and Holy One as for a noble and godly act. Yet 
 if the best we can ever do is to obey ' the laws of Nature ' 
 and 'the dictates of conscience,' it was a bad choice and 
 deed. What could be more contrary to all those 'laws,' 
 whether, as the fashion of saying is now, ' in the material or 
 the spiritual world'? what more against those ' dictates,' as 
 they really come to us by what we take for our best feelings, 
 ' eternal principles of right,' or the probable consequences of 
 our action } But his faith consisted in choosing, instead of 
 all these, to do what God commanded, even to the point 
 of apparently defeating the greatest and dearest promises 
 of everything good which God had ever made to him, and 
 in which was involved great blessing to all his fellow-men 
 and glory to God.
 
 ABRAHAM TO JOSEPH. 351 
 
 Now we cannot doubt that Abraham had in him some- 
 thing of that ' philosophic ' spirit which is in all the actual 
 human nature — that is, the disposition to try by our reason- 
 ings whatever is merely told us, — a tendency not only innocent, 
 but excellent in perhaps everything except what requires 
 entirely faith and obedience, as of a child to a good father ; 
 but then, and above all in what we have directly from God, 
 merely irrational and mischievous. This might have come 
 into Abraham's mind, in resistance of what was so much 
 against his wishes (not the worst and consciously evil ones, 
 but the very best of his hopes and desires), by appealing to 
 ' general principles,' etc., against this commandment. He 
 might have said, ' Certainly I must not — I dare not — refuse 
 this if God really commands it. But does He ? Can He com- 
 mand that which is against my sense of right and against 
 His Own promise .-' There is some illusion about it.' 
 
 Once had Abraham thus philosophised in objection to 
 what God said He was about to do. When the Supreme 
 Lord told him of His purpose to destroy the ' cities of the 
 plain,' he had fancied himself not only more merciful, but 
 more just, and ended his remonstrance with this protest, 
 ' Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right } ' But even 
 then he had recoiled in deep humility from that presumption. 
 Now, however, he is wiser at once. The vision and know- 
 ledge of God by faith has grown upon him to that sweet 
 perfection that not a word or thought of the kind appears 
 when, as now, there was more occasion. The message seems 
 to have come to him, as usual, in his sleep at night. At once 
 this account follows : ' And Abraham arose up early in the 
 morning, . . . and took . . . Isaac his son,' etc. And so 
 the story goes on with his obedience, until, at the instant of 
 sacrifice, ' the Angel of the Lord called unto him out of 
 Heaven,' and saved Isaac from death. 
 
 The more I reflect upon this, the plainer it is to me that 
 all the lofty lesson of fait/i in these examples from Abel to 
 the Christian martyrs was meant to teach us that direct, 
 unreserved, loving obedience to God's Commandments — that 
 is. His Will expressed to us in zvords — is the greatest good- 
 ness in us. But especially this event in the life of 'the 
 father of the faithful ' tells us that the words of God must
 
 352 BEGINNINGS OF REUGION. 
 
 be promptly obeyed even against what we call our reason, 
 our ' eternal principles of right,' our * moral sense,' or ' dictates 
 of conscience.' All these are liable to be — are, in fact, in 
 some degree — the echoes of our own cogitations. We can 
 never tell how much of them is ignorance, pride of party or 
 of opinion, prejudice, self-will, or secret selfishness. He who 
 loves God with all his heart, or in degree as any one of us 
 does, will joyfully set aside all these to do anything which 
 God says, and he will not refuse to believe plain words to that 
 effect on account of any such thoughts of his own. His very 
 mistakes in practice thus — if there were such — would be more 
 virtuous than another's correctness by the opposite method. 
 
 Will you say that this is fanaticism t — for thus did the man 
 of Massachusetts who murdered his child five years ago ; 
 and so have done all the cruel self-torturers and persecu- 
 tors of others in the name of Religion. Not so. That 
 would be as if any good act was not good if any madman 
 did what he said was in imitation of it. Perversely to dis- 
 obey God in evil passion of any kind, and then to say that it 
 was done by His commandment, would be a terrible sin, 
 which He will judge. But is a disobedience any the less 
 such because we say that we followed the ' dictates of con- 
 science ' .'' 
 
 Alas ! it is because we have not enough of this intrepid 
 faith in God that so many good people are afraid to stand 
 firmly by what is the plain teaching of His Word, and to 
 which all that is best in our reason does respond, that simply 
 to do His words and Will is the loftiest range of goodness in us 
 of thought or act. Even Mr. Matthew Arnold, to whom in his 
 attempt to pull down all real Religion and yet preserve a 
 ' literary ' admiration of the Bible, and profit by its lessons of 
 ' conduct,' this conscience- worship is much more suitable 
 than to Christians, forgets himself in the power of that 
 truth, and quotes (see Lit. and Dogma) with admiration that 
 saying of Our Lord : ' If thou wilt enter into life, keep tJie 
 Conimaiidjnents! Here, and in all the other sayings of that 
 Teacher, there is not the slightest suggestion that we are to 
 approve the Commandments of God because they require 
 that which we otherwise know to be good. The whole 
 tenor of His doctrine, and of His example for us, is that
 
 ABRAHAM TO JOSEPH. 353 
 
 these things are good because they aj^e God's conunandnients, — 
 that is, statements of His Williox us. To be sure Mr. Arnold 
 does elsewhere make much of the occurrence of the word con- 
 science in our EngHsh Bible. But none of those whom he so 
 often ridicules for their metaphysical phrases, their ' literary 
 inexperience,' and consequent want of ' tact ' in understanding 
 the Scripture writers, was ever guilty of greater blundering 
 than he is in this instance. He ought to know (for I will not 
 suppose that he purposely misrepresents this) that avveiS'r]at<i 
 never meant in Greek writing what he thus makes of it, 
 never meant anything but consciousness, or the knowledge of 
 our own thoughts, or reflection upon these, and self-judgment. 
 So I challenge him or any one else to produce a single 
 instance in the Holy Bible when this conscience is given as the 
 highest test of truth about God and our duty. 
 
 It will be generally allowed in our day that this best man 
 of his time then did not understand his duty to his fellow- 
 men as well as any Christian may now, since he was both an 
 owner of slaves and the husband of more than one wife. 
 This is another proof of what has been shown before, 
 that, so far from the light of true Religion growing brighter 
 among the true worshippers in all points, by steady de- 
 velopment from the first, it rather suffered a diminution in 
 some things. This is another of the facts which we must 
 not quarrel with or deny, but ' receive with meekness.' In- 
 deed it is a fact that Abraham is the first polygamist after 
 the Flood of whom we have certain historical knowledge, 
 though it is quite probable that he had seen the like in the 
 harem of Pharaoh. Hagar, indeed, was an Egyptian slave, 
 whom very likely Sarah had received as a present from that 
 king, and brought her with them on their return to Canaan. 
 Perhaps even the chiefs of that land, so sensual otherwise, had 
 their many wives, though we have no mention of it. 
 
 For this (nor for slavery) no direct censure is passed upon 
 him in the Scripture history. But on the other hand, it is 
 plain from all that history, and, if we could doubt that. 
 Our Lord's words about * the beginning ' are decisive to the 
 same effect — that this was not the original idea of marriage. 
 In doing this also the patriarch acts according to his own will 
 (at his wife's suggestion), and without asking counsel of God. 
 
 z
 
 354 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 The consequences are also at once unhappy. The glory and 
 happiness which God has promised are not promoted, but 
 rather hindered. A first-born child by the new wife is not 
 the son of promise and the ancestor of the holy people who 
 are to be, but a wild, lawless man, who marries heathen women 
 (himself a polygamist, as Isaac never was), and whose de- 
 scendants became in after ages, and are to this day (witness 
 the latest events in Egypt and Arabia) the fiercest perse- 
 cutors of the Church of God. [Here it seems worthy of notice 
 that it is a careless error to suppose all Arabs, or even all 
 Bedouins, to be descendants of Ishmael. These Ishmaelites 
 doubtless became the governing element of all those tribes, 
 mingled with them all by marriage and blood, furnishing 
 them with their leaders (as Mohammed many ages after), and 
 so representing all the Arabians. But under that collective 
 name were included Amalekites, Midianites, and others, also 
 descendants of x\braham (by Keturah), Edomites, Ammon- 
 ites, and Moabites, and some of Hamitic descent in S.-E. 
 Arabia — one people as to language, made up of little inde- 
 pendent tribes of wandering, pastoral, and plundering Bedouins 
 — along with some communities of agricultural and even sea- 
 faring people on the shores of the Red and Indian Seas.] 
 
 Thus they are quite mistaken in fact, and are with their 
 imagined * scientific ' treatment of the Divine history only 
 constructing new and gratuitous perplexities for faith, who 
 assume a constant progress of evolution of what God has 
 been pleased to say to mankind of their duty, from the very 
 first of it until the perfect ' Light of the World.' On the 
 contrary here, in Abraham's case, was retrogression as to 
 thoughts of what a man should do and be from the time 
 when he was made perfect in ' the image,' or even from 
 what good men knew of this long after the fall from that. 
 For instance, Enoch's life was nearer that primitive truth 
 than Abraham's. 
 
 So also in those earliest ages there is no sign of such a 
 thing as one man's owning another, who was as much his 
 rightful property, which another must not covet from him, as 
 ' his ox, or his ass, or anything that is his.' Nor is the proof 
 of this merely negative — the failure of such a brief history 
 of 2000 years to note what was otherwise probable. What I
 
 ABRAHAM TO JOSEPH. 355 
 
 assert is altogether natural, since all mankind were then of 
 the same honourable birth and blood. It alone accords with 
 the primitive law of love. How, then, came this new thing 
 to be? Of that we really kiwiv nothing. We may fairly 
 conjecture, but that is all. 
 
 And such conjecture will be wise and trustworthy just so 
 far as it is founded upon, or at least is not contradictory of, 
 the truth from God. From the very days of Cain, as the 
 earth began to be ' filled with violence,' we can suppose this 
 slavery a natural enough result of bold violence joined with 
 cunning, and yielded to by the growing timidity of some 
 submitting to the fierceness of the others, instead of resisting 
 with equal violence. Yet, in the same way, we must suppose 
 that there was none of this oppression among those of the 
 holy line of faith, from Abel to Noah. Certainly slavery did 
 not cross the Flood, if it had existed before, for none of our 
 kind came out of the ark but the one man, and his sons, and 
 their wives. 
 
 Yet here, in ten generations more, we find the good 
 Abraham moving into his new country with flocks and herds, 
 and also slaves — men and women who were his servants, not 
 freely for hire, but belonging to him as property. Somehow, 
 and at some time in that interval, it had begun to be common 
 — not only among bad men and tribes of false religion, but with 
 the best — to own some of their fellow-men, and for these to 
 consider themselves the property of the others. The thought 
 was .so fixed on the side of the slaves, as well as of the 
 masters, that it required no force of cruel punishment to 
 secure this service, nor vigilance to prevent escape. And, on 
 the other hand, the slave did not complain or resist. This 
 was evidently so in the case of a good master, like Abraham. 
 Doubtless among the cruel Babylonian or Egyptian nobles 
 and other pagan masters, there was, on the part of many of 
 them, fierce sensuality and passionate, impatient, and unjust 
 anger, even to wanton cruelty ; and on the part of the slaves 
 every sort of attempt at escape, or of evading their tasks by 
 lies or other contrivances. How slavery began among bad 
 men is easy enough to conjecture, but why it should have 
 prevailed among men of the pure Religion is not readily seen. 
 No doubt it came on by slow steps through several genera-
 
 356 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION, 
 
 tions. Perhaps at first, as the pure patriarchal chieftainship 
 of one man over his descendants passed into a larger govern- 
 ment, some men of different inferior tribes became attached to 
 the stronger tribe by hire, or by helpless dependence upon the 
 rich and compassionate. Then they or their children not un- 
 willingly sunk into the permanent condition of dependants 
 upon the opulent and good, sure of food and needful clothing 
 and shelter, choosing this rather than to share the poverty of 
 their own kindred with independence. Some may have 
 wisely made this choice to keep within the true Religion, and 
 away from persecutions or temptations to which they would 
 have been subject in their own tribe. So their children, ' born 
 in the house ' of the master, grew up as such inferiors, and 
 accepted this for their lot as a matter of course — to be the 
 slaves of Abraham rather than free tribesmen among the 
 Pagans. Who can wisely say that this was an ignoble choice ? 
 that it was not rather the exact opposite } And besides these 
 there were others — perhaps all of a good man's slaves at first 
 — who were 'bought with his money ' from others who had 
 taken them captive in predatory war. If such a thought as 
 of then dismissing them free to their own homes could have 
 entered his mind, it might have been utterly impossible or 
 most unkind. It was certainly no little gain for these men 
 to pass over to such a master. There can be — for there often 
 has been in this relation — the most just and careful affection 
 for the inferiors, and devoted, grateful love in their service, as 
 we see in the later law of Moses, and in the echo, long after, 
 of the Divine Epistles (Exod. xxv. 5 ; i Tim. vi. i, etc.). 
 
 We shall all now agree in thinking that slavery is not the 
 most perfect instance of the law of love to our neighbour. 
 But is any actual social arrangement which we know of now, 
 even in our most Christian lands ? For my own part, I do 
 not doubt that any one of Abraham's slaves was more happy 
 and noble — even more free — than any member of a tribe of 
 Pagan Bedouins then or since ; or even than many poor 
 neighbours of ours now, who have to put up with such a 
 wretched, toilsome, and anxious living as the very unequal 
 division of possessions now enforces. When the Saviour of 
 the world has come to judge it in righteousness, this will no 
 longer be so. Now that He has come to teach us such lessons
 
 ABRAHAM TO JOSEPH. 357 
 
 of humility and love, it ought not to be so. But Abraham 
 was then perhaps a better neighbour to these dependants than 
 we sometimes are to our fellow-Christians. In this very 
 generation there were some African slaves in one part of my 
 own country who were I'ving a happier and better life, and 
 were treated more according to that law of love by their 
 Christian masters and mistresses, than some were by their 
 neighbours (of their own blood and race) in another part of 
 the country where slavery was regarded as the worst outrage 
 upon human right. 
 
 So let us simply accept \}iv& fact that it had already come 
 to be allowed among all men that one could have the same 
 right of property in a fellow-man that he had in his beasts 
 of burden, with this qualification, however, that with good 
 men this did not impair the sacredness of all human life or 
 dispense with the duties of justice and kindness. 
 
 All we have of this history for the next four or five hundred 
 years is very briefly told. Every incident is interesting, and de- 
 serves much study in its place. But for our purpose we must 
 confine ourselves to a few of them which have the most direct 
 bearing upon the progress of Religion both true and false. 
 The first of these is the flight of Abraham's nephew. Lot, and 
 his family, from Sodom, at the destruction of the ' cities of 
 the plain.' These survivors took refuge in a mountain fast- 
 ness at no great distance. Lot himself had during his resi- 
 dence in the wicked city used some expostulations with his 
 neighbours as to their conduct. But he seemed to have been 
 more successful in keeping their false religion and bad morals 
 out of his own house. Yet some of his daughters had 
 married men of Sodom, and become like them. Two, how- 
 ever, remained at home unmarried. So while their elder 
 sisters, though with their husbands sharing in the gracious 
 warning, did not believe it and escape, these, with their 
 father and mother, made their way out of the city in time. 
 Yet even in spite of this terrific judgment upon such things 
 before their eyes, and their own narrow escape, these wretched 
 young women almost outdid the Sodomites in their profane 
 impurity. Their father's steadfast piety for himself, and 
 other care of them, could not prevent the natural result of 
 his rashness in choosing, for whatever worldly advantage, to
 
 358 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 live among such a people. (Abraham escapes from such 
 danger at any sacrifice.) The wicked ways of Sodom had 
 penetrated somehow even into the seclusion of these young 
 virgins, — perhaps by the visits and conversation of their 
 married sisters.^ And so in this awful solitude of their salva- 
 tion from that ' fiery overthrow,' — in the mountain cave where 
 Lot would now rather crouch than have the society of any 
 fellow-men, their governing thought was, not of loving 
 and obeying the All-seeing God, but — of doing ' after the 
 manner of all the earth.' So they too became one of the 
 terrible examples of such degradation, and two more tribes 
 of Pagans were to be added to the Canaanites. 
 
 There is another accession to false religion, even from 
 Abraham's family. Hagar's son, Ishmael, as we have already 
 noticed, goes off among the wild tribes of the desert, marries 
 wives, and becomes a chief and patriarch of a long line of 
 Arabs. So do the sons of Keturah, whom Abraham marries 
 after Sarah's death. Isaac alone remains the true fruit and 
 germ of ' the holy people.' And he is also a faultless 
 example (better in this than his great father) of pure and 
 primitive marriage to ' the wife of his youth' ' until death them 
 do part,' and until his own death. Yet even from him a 
 branch shoots off, in his first-born, Esau, to increase (by the 
 Edomites) the vast hosts of false religion. 
 
 The story of Jacob, the other son, as the heir of the great 
 promise, is told to us with masterly picturesqueness and 
 simplicity. Yet he does not at all appear in it as a perfect 
 man. It is a strange thing how some Christians now receive 
 this quite impatiently, and are much disgusted with the 
 patriarch's supplanting of his high-spirited (and yet really 
 low-minded) brother, and his outwitting his very mean and 
 unjust father-in-law, as if they were sure that they would be 
 described by such a perfect pen as quite superior persons to 
 him — of which I am much in doubt. Would they — do 
 they — have as much intrepid faith in the Unseen God and 
 His promises, while all around is so much against this } 
 
 ^ Probably in that way the fear of God as to such sin, and the shame of true 
 modesty, had become to them as much a ' narrow prejudice ' and ridiculous 
 ' prudery ' as to any physiologico-moralist of our time. They would have 
 admired M. Renan for saying, ' Les frivoles ont peut-etre raison.'
 
 ABRAHAM TO JOSEPH. 359 
 
 This faith sustains him in a lonely journey on foot across 
 strange lands and desert tracts to kinsmen whom he had never 
 seen, or probably heard from ; and through this exile from 
 father and mother for twenty years. The false religion had 
 evidently been gaining upon the true among his kinsmen, for 
 the seventy years since his mother left them, a betrothed virgin. 
 Yet he did not yield to that powerful influence, but probably 
 rather brought back the holy worship among them. Certainly 
 he did 'command his household and his children after him' 
 in this. His young wives did not, as with the others from 
 Ishmael to Esau, impose their false religion upon him or 
 upon their children. And God blesses and speaks to him as 
 His true servant, and at last commands him to return to his 
 father and the land of promise.^ 
 
 Then as the next generation comes up we have, instead 
 of one child through whom the holy people are to continue, 
 one family of twelve sons, with very various characters. 
 Two of these are much the most prominent in the history — 
 Judah and Joseph. In them all we see that order of the 
 hnman nature which God has given us, by which the varieties 
 of character pass from father to son, or sometimes strangely 
 leaping over the intermediate links, reappear in the grandson 
 or a yet later generation. At the same time, this is not by 
 some ' reign of law,' as the tendency of thinking is in our 
 age, which is thus made really the absolute sovereign ; but 
 as a part of God's usual Will, while He is entirely free to do 
 otherwise than in this usual way (more so than we ever are 
 in our most simple acts of choice) as He chooses, and so in 
 fact does upon some occasions.^ By events altogether out- 
 side of human choice or forethought, and by spiritual grace 
 acting directly upon the individual soul, each of us is before 
 Him as 'clay is in the potter's hand' (Jer. xviii. 6) — even far 
 more at His disposal than this or any figure of our speech can 
 
 ^ It is to l)e noticed that it is not only as to sincerity and generous fairness in 
 his dealings that Jacob fails in the good life of true Religion. But he falls back 
 from the good example of his father as to marriage (though perhaps at first it 
 was not his fault that Rachel did not become to him just what Rebekah was to 
 Isaac)— even fell further below this than his noble grandfather, and so became, as 
 it were, an authority and example of polygamy for all his descendants. 
 
 2 See The Reign of God — not The Reign of Law {passim) for a very full dis- 
 cussion, and, I think, unanswerable proof of this.
 
 36o BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 describe. So also, on the other hand, evil desire and 
 spiritual temptation yielded to by any of us may aggravate 
 inherited faults of character, or supplant like characteristics 
 of the better kind. 
 
 This mystery is no less a truth that we cannot possibly 
 fathom it by our reasonings. The denial of it is really most 
 incomprehensible and irrational. Nor is it against the truth 
 of Divine love, but a great and necessary part of that. It is 
 really denying that God is love to deny this, for love 
 implies free-will, to which that sort of 'law' in either 'the 
 natural or spiritual world' is contradictory. So, both as to 
 the rational possibility and its imagined opposition to 
 Divine goodness, the one conclusive answer in behalf of His 
 Word is : 'Who art thou, O man, that rcpliest against God .■'' 
 Let this be our refuge of truth when any intrusion of 
 ' Philosophy' into these things, as against God's Word in 
 teaching us Religion, at all disturbs the quietness and 
 strength of our faith in it. 
 
 Thus Judah seems to have had more of the openness and 
 nobleness of his great-grandfather Abraham than his father, 
 or even than appears in what we know of his grandfather. 
 Yet he is most unlike to them all in occasional bursts of 
 low passions, which are far more like a Pagan Canaanite 
 than one of the chosen people of the One True and Holy 
 God. As the Divine History, corresponding to the Divine 
 Providence, tells nothing amiss, we should learn from this 
 that the chosen seed was often to degenerate instead of 
 developing in increasing excellence as the many generations 
 succeeded one another through the wonderful interval from 
 Abraham to ' the Last Adam.' As a great instance of this, it 
 was through this very line of the impure Judah, instead of 
 the chaste Joseph, that the glorious Son of Man was to 
 derive His human generation. 
 
 Thus was the evil example around always conspiring 
 with the 'old man' of evil passion, contending against the 
 new life of God's grace in those who are thus again His 
 children by adoption, and with the toil and craft of the unseen 
 evil ones. The Church has alw^ays seen in these pictures 
 and examples of its history, and so of the trials and vicissi- 
 tudes of each of its members, one purpose of God in this
 
 ABRAHAM TO JOSEPH. 361 
 
 long and wonderful history that leads up to the Advent of 
 the Lord, to illustrate that history and our individual life. 
 Even before Judah's folly, Reuben, the first-born, had been a 
 shocking example of base animal passion — in his case that 
 of the thoughtless and ' impulsive' sort of men, who com- 
 monly pass for 'generous.' Thus he follows 'Nature' in a 
 way which even most Pagans have supposed to be basely 
 unnatural. 
 
 The cruel violence of Simeon and Levi in the affair of 
 their sister Dinah has some relief in showing that the nobler 
 ideas of human virtue were not with them altogether 
 benumbed by that dreadful downward tendency of our 
 earthly life, though it had gone so far among all the people 
 around them. Alas for any people who are the Canaanites 
 of our day, no matter how scientific, literary, or civilised they 
 may be, or how unscientific and ridiculous the contrary 
 scruples may appear to them ! Li all Christendom this is 
 really the most loathsome and deadly ulcer of society, not 
 only among so-called ' low people,' but as it is disguised and 
 stimulated among all who read, palliated and aggravated by 
 poetry, romance, wit, and ' biology,' which is sure that the 
 only raisoii d'etre of one-half of mankind, and the really 
 main and most enduring purpose of existence of the other, 
 around which all else revolves, is the succession of genera- 
 tions on this earth. So entirely has this notion taken 
 possession of one of the most intellectual nations of 
 Christendom (and the others seem only saved from it so far 
 by the power of Religion) that M. Renan, who appears to 
 be himself in this particular one of the rare men of his 
 people in self-mastered virtue, admits to the profligate that 
 ' Nature cares nothing for chastity,' and that perhaps these 
 ' triflers are right' in their contempt for all religious scruples 
 of the kind ! (See Matthew Arnold in Nineteenth Century, 
 1 884)1 
 
 ^ I rejoice in according to Mr. Arnold my admiration and tlianks for this 
 powerful protest against a tendency of thought so fatal to all that is noble in 
 man. His Christian education stands him in good stead in having fixed in his 
 own character such virtuous wisdom both of thought and conduct. But if he 
 could succeed in his attempt to pull down true religious faith in his own country, 
 there would soon be at least as much brutal lasciviousness in England as in 
 France.
 
 362 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 From a child Joseph shows a superior character, and 
 excites envy and disHke in his brothers by this, or per- 
 haps rather by the notice which their father takes of it. 
 The so well-known story of his being sold by them into 
 slavery in Egypt is told by Moses with a beauty and tender- 
 ness which no paraphrase of mine could approach. Nor is 
 this needed here for our purpose. For that we only observe 
 the Syrian boy as the house-slave of an Egyptian noble, 
 quietly keeping to his religion of love and service to the 
 Only God. He could not but be amazed and impressed by 
 the lofty temples and splendid ceremonies of the Egyptian 
 religion, and its absolute power over him for comfort and 
 safety — even for life or death. Such a thought as that of 
 saying or doing anything of opposition to this vast and 
 terrible power probably did not enter his mind, though all 
 he had learned at home suggested horror of the image- 
 worship, the ' gods many,' and the gloomy superstitions. 
 He may even have had in his master's serv'ice to take some 
 part in those rites. But nothing is plainer than that he 
 quietly continued in the religion of his father. For to say 
 ' The Lord was with Joseph' (Gen. xxxix. 2, 3, 21, 23), and 
 the like, involves the meaning, 'Joseph served the Lord.' 
 And on this account the Lord blessed the Egyptian heathen 
 Potiphar, his master, and all his affairs, as if /le had been the 
 true worshipper, as has been not seldom His gracious way 
 of showing favour to a whole family from love to the 
 humblest member of it. 
 
 And now from this very prosperity befell Joseph a greater 
 trial, and yet also, as not seldom happens, a greater blessing 
 of the God Who is most loving to those who love Him, than 
 the former prosperity. His master's wife, with the idle pas- 
 sionateness of many of the women of high rank in her country, 
 took a vicious fancy to the Hebrew slave. This handsome 
 young fellow, going quietly about the house, with such faith- 
 fulness and good judgment as had won all her husband's con- 
 fidence, seemed just the opportunity for an exciting intrigue, 
 such as she had perhaps read of in the novels of the time, or 
 talked of with those of her set in their eager gossip and 
 scandal. So she let him know her thoughts, and that so 
 repeatedly and so plainly that he could not have shrunk from
 
 ABRAHAM TO JOSEPH. 363 
 
 the temptation merely from fear of being misled into fatal 
 presumption by his own vanity or passion. She was doubt- 
 less astonished, but not at first overcome in her purpose, by 
 his positive and persevering refusal. And what he said to 
 her (though his conduct in this affair has ever since been one 
 of the greatest jests of ' les frivoles,' and alas ! also of such 
 Christians as are more afraid of being despised as ' prudish ' 
 than they are of Joseph's mind about these things) is the 
 noblest saying of the kind that ever fell from the lips of sin- 
 ful man : ' How can I do this great wickedness, and sin 
 against God ? ' Nothing shows more plainly the purity 
 of true Religion than that he does not think of the danger 
 to himself, or the real dishonour to her, but speaks of the 
 wrong done to another — not merely of her infamous and 
 dangerous treachery to a confiding husband, but of his own 
 to a kind and trusting superior, yet most of all — what is 
 always the greatest thing in this, — its disobedience to that 
 Holy One Who is the Lord of true love, and is Love itself 
 
 This true Religion of humble and penitent faith in God 
 is maintained by Joseph in the further, and in some respects 
 yet greater, trial of his piety being apparently now rewarded 
 by a most wicked, false accusation, his master's change from 
 such favour before to violent rage and disgust, putting him 
 into a loathsome prison with criminals, at first in chains and 
 fetters (Ps. cv. 18), and doubtless by his being to all ap- 
 pearance in great danger of instant punishment by death. 
 That this last did not befall him can hardly be accounted for 
 but by doubt on the part of Potiphar whether Joseph's firm 
 and quiet denial of any guilt was not the truth — the false- 
 hood and guilt to be looked for in another quarter. His 
 piety, patience, gentleness, and fidelity in whatever is com- 
 mitted to his care soon wins for the prisoner the same favour 
 from a hard jailor that they had in the slave from his power- 
 ful master. He becomes just such a trusted manager of 
 everything in the prison as he had been in Potiphar's house. 
 He continues still, by the loving goodness of God to him, to 
 love and serve that ' Lord ' in all things, and receives the 
 same gracious reward from Him of favour with men.^ 
 
 How long his imprisonment lasted we do not know, but 
 
 ^ Gen. xxxix. 21-23.
 
 364 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 when two men of high rank were sent to this place under 
 great displeasure of the Pharaoh, and there to await his will 
 of life or death, they were placed in Joseph's care as their 
 attendant. And when they knew that the king's birthday 
 was close at hand, and their fate likely then to be adjudged 
 by him, they both had dreams, which seemed to them to 
 foretell that fate — but whether favourably or unfavourably 
 they could not decide. Dreaming is certainly one of the 
 most wonderful things of our nature. Physical science can- 
 not give the least account of it. It is therefore not at all 
 strange that superstition has been much engaged about 
 dreams in all ages and nations ; and those who try to over- 
 reach others by means of superstitious fear have used them 
 among their chief opportunities. Nor has the regard to 
 dreams been by any means lessened by mere civilisation or 
 by worldly irreligiousness. On the contrary, true Religion is 
 the only thing which has ever really delivered men (through 
 loving confidence in God and His Word) from irrational at- 
 tention to their own or others' dreams. 
 
 But, on the other hand, that Religion plainly informs us 
 that God has upon some occasions made use of dreams to 
 communicate with men through His prophets. Thus with 
 Joseph himself, long before, as a pure and devout boy — though 
 these prophetic dreams, while impressing all the more reli- 
 gious who heard of them at the time, were not really believed 
 in or remembered until their great fulfilment long after. It 
 is as unreasonable to deny this on account of the prevalent 
 superstitions about dreams as it is to disbelieve any other of 
 the Divine miracles^ because there have been ' lying wonders ' 
 of false religion, or because it is foolish to believe everything 
 a miracle which we do not understand. Unless we accept the 
 absurdity of Atheism for truth, it is common sense for us to 
 believe without questioning whatever God tells us — of how 
 He is pleased to tell us anything. If it be by an audible 
 voice from the sky, we are not to doubt that, because some 
 artful impostor has pretended such wonders, or some super- 
 stitious multitude mistaken a peal of thunder for a voice from 
 Heaven. Whether it be a dream of the prophet of God, or 
 
 1 For example, because every other instance of a burning bush was probably 
 caused in a natural way, so was that which Moses saw at Mount Horeb.
 
 ABRAHAM TO JOSEPH. 365 
 
 the prophetical interpretation of another's dream, it is the 
 same. 
 
 In this case it was none the less the word of God by the 
 prophet Joseph, whether the dreams of the chief butler and 
 the chief baker were ordinary dreams, which might have 
 occurred if no devout young Joseph had been their fellow- 
 prisoner. It was when he, with his true faith in the True One, 
 whether by conscious or unconscious inspiration for the occa- 
 sion, said to them : ' Do not interpretations belong to God .-' 
 tell me them, I pray you,' that we know this was from 
 Him. No doubt they knew that the young Syrian slave was 
 very religious, in a different way from them — though how far 
 they understood that by the word ' God ' {EloJiini, with its 
 plural form in his dialect, which they understood, or in a corre- 
 sponding Egyptian word which he used) he did not mean the 
 'many gods' of their worship, but the One Only real Divine, 
 of Whom, too, they had some thought (see p. 286), we have no 
 suggestion. They could not but recognise his beautiful 
 purity of conduct in all things, as well as this loving sym- 
 pathy in their anxieties of the poor, friendless victim of in- 
 justice. This gave them confidence in all he said, and even 
 a certain reverence for him. 
 
 That, of course, was much increased in all who knew of 
 this affair when, three days after, upon the high day looked 
 for, Joseph's interpretation was exactly fulfilled. One of the 
 two was restored by the king to his place of honour, and the 
 other executed. But what a wonderful touch of the usual 
 human nature (as in all the rest) there is in the incident that 
 the fortunate man never gave a thought afterward to the 
 noble-minded Joseph ! And yet when the latter had turned 
 the other's dreadful apprehensions into such hope by his ex- 
 planation of the dream, he had expressly added : ' But think 
 on me when it shall be well with thee ; . . . and make men- 
 tion of me unto Pharaoh. . . . For indeed I was stolen away 
 out of the land of the Hebrews ; and here also have I 
 done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon.'^. 
 
 But after two more years in the sad * dungeon,' there 
 were two other miraculous dreams. This time it was the 
 mighty and dreaded Pharaoh himself who was the dreamer. 
 
 1 Ger. xl. 14,
 
 366 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Twice in one night, with an interval of waking, did he have 
 very striking dreams, which were quite alike and yet quite 
 unlike, — their very absurdity and unreality, such as is wont 
 in dreams, seeming to suggest a great reality beneath 
 them. It is certain that in fact, by the Will of God, they 
 were to bring to pass great events as to His chosen people 
 for the preservation of true Religion.^ But neither the king 
 nor his ' wise men ' could at all guess the great meaning 
 which he was sure did lie in them. Was this anxiety 
 of his mere superstition ? and would he have done wisely, 
 as the science and reason of our time would say with entire 
 positiveness, to give his dreams no thought ? 
 
 Surely we who adhere to the true Religion cannot say 
 that. Yet this faith of ours must be in exact opposition to 
 the belief in a ' reign of law,' which is now the prevailing 
 fashion of thought. For no one can suggest the most 
 remote connection of cause or of indication between the 
 dreams of the king and the risings of the Nile for the next 
 fourteen years, or any other natural occasions of fertility or 
 famine in Egypt for that time. Thus, according to science, 
 he was all wrong in wishing to have his dreams interpreted ; 
 according to the Word of God, he was right. 
 
 It was in the midst of this trouble, and out of the utter 
 failure of 'all the wisdom of the Egyptians' to meet it, that 
 the chief butler bethought himself of Joseph, and of his 
 wonderful interpretation of dreams in the prison. The 
 whole scene at the Court of Pharaoh is wonderfully lifelike, 
 and is in all its details ' corroborated,'^ as we would say, by 
 what has been learned of late years from the pictures and 
 other remains of the Egyptian monuments. The great 
 officer's lucky recalling of what took place in the prison, his 
 adroit account of it to the king, the instant summons of the 
 Hebrew slave and prisoner, his prompt appearance (and yet 
 
 ^ It is really gratuitous folly for men at any time to be sure that any given 
 event is not a part of the Will of God. Wliat do we know of the details of that 
 Will (according to His love) which authorises such positiveness of ours? Both 
 our deepest reflection and much in His Word suggests the contrary. But cer- 
 tainly what He tells us as such is certainly His Will. 
 
 2 Though to one who believes as I do, without reserve, that this is the 
 Word of God, it is these monuments, and still more our understanding of them, 
 which rather need explanation and corroboration by it.
 
 ABRAHAM TO JOSEPH. 367 
 
 not without due care as to his appearance) before the 
 absokite, dreaded Pharaoh, himself adored as a 'god,' yet 
 now troubled and angry at these menacing dreams and the 
 failure of all his philosophers and priests to interpret them.^ 
 Nothing can be further from either artifice or presumption 
 or from barbarous superstition, on the part of the young 
 Syrian, as compared with all these 'cultured' people, than 
 Joseph's instant reply to the king's demand, ' I have heard say 
 of thee, that thou canst understand a dream to interpret it ' — 
 ' It is not in me : C^^;/ shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace.' 
 
 Then as soon as the king has related his dreams the con- 
 scious prophet of the Almighty replies at once : ' God hath 
 showed Pharaoh what He is about to do.' And then pro- 
 ceeding to explain that the two dreams mean one prophecy 
 about the next fourteen years — the first seven of great plenty, 
 to be followed by as many of cruel scarcity, — he adds his 
 advice about this, which had not been asked (and therefore 
 this would usually have been taken for great presumption in 
 the poor slave), but which was evidently to them all as much 
 the Word of God to the king of Egypt as the solution of the 
 dreams. 'And for that the dream was doubled unto 
 Pharaoh twice ; it is because the thing is established by 
 God, and God will shortly bring it to pass. Now therefore 
 let Pharaoh look out a man discreet and wise, and set him 
 over the land of Egypt,' etc., — this great officer to have the 
 power and responsibility of storing up during the years of 
 plenty what would be otherwise wasted, and thus saving the 
 whole people from starving in the terrible seven years of 
 famine that were to follow. 
 
 So far from taking offence at this gratuitous counsel of 
 the poor young stranger in the highest matters of state, to the 
 king and lords of great Egypt, they were all struck with awe 
 and admiration of him. There may have been something in 
 his voice, air, and attitude, as well as the mighty aptness of 
 his words to the whole matter, which revealed him to them as 
 a messenger of the King of kings and Lord of lords. Yet 
 
 ^ There is a striking resemblance between this scene and that of Daniel 
 summoned before Belshazzar to read the handwriting upon the wall, as it also 
 has a parallel in that of the later Pharaoh and his ' magicians ' around him for 
 a while with some success imitating the miracles of Moses.
 
 368 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 doubtless the severe simplicity and modesty of his words 
 were reflected in his manner — neither of them however the 
 less grand for that.^ ' And Pharaoh said unto his servants, 
 Can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit 
 of God is ?' Then, turning to him, ' Forasmuch as God hath 
 showed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as 
 thou art : thou shalt be over my house, and according unto 
 thy word shall all my people be ruled : only in the throne 
 will I be greater than thou.' At once he puts upon him all 
 the insignia of a royal vicegerent, and commands shouts of 
 acclamation to him, which were doubtless rendered by all 
 the Court and people with all their hearts. 
 
 The most astonished person was no doubt Joseph himself. 
 But we may be quite sure that he bore it throughout with the 
 same strong calmness and quiet, loving faith in God as he had 
 kept in his cruel exile and slavery, and even in the dungeon 
 awaiting death. He goes at once into his vast, royal work 
 with the same faithfulness to these duties as to the slave's 
 — with none of the foolish elation nor of the fierce insolence 
 of fortunate youth, — but ' serving the Lord (Whom he loved, 
 and Who loved him) with all humility! 
 
 This was one of the great triumphs of true Religion over 
 superstition, upon its own strongest ground. The rich, 
 lettered land of Egypt is saved from most fearful calamities 
 by wisdom from God given to a Syrian slave, who quietly 
 adheres to that Religion in the face of the greatest difficulties. 
 This wisdom of God, as soon as uttered before a great as- 
 sembly — more representing the wealth and wisdom of this 
 world as ' enmity to God ' than anything then upon earth, — 
 commends itself as true to all the listeners by its solution of 
 the threatening mystery, and its insight and foresight of 
 what must be done. All these proud men of false Religion 
 — and foremost he who is one of its ' gods ' — bow before the 
 word of the Only True God, and accept His grace to them as 
 offered, — not indeed in ' turning from these vanities ' of their 
 worship and belief, for that ' fulness of time ' was yet far 
 
 ^ Can any one who has become at all familiar with the Egyptian style in the 
 inscriptions, papyrus writings, etc., fail to notice the entirely ;/(3«-Egyptian style 
 of Joseph, and in great measure of Moses, long after ? Nothing fictitious, 
 nothing of mere human authorship could have done this.
 
 ABRAHAM TO JOSEPH. 369 
 
 off, — but in this deliverance from a dreadful danger, yet 
 seven years away. 
 
 Here is another of the great lessons for us in these days 
 of the History of Religion. It shows the falseness of one 
 of the popular notions — at least in my own country — that 
 'every man is the architect of his own fortune.'^ It is true 
 that God allots^ to different men various powers suited to 
 various action. But what right have we to be so sure that 
 men always succeed according to those natural powers and 
 their own will ? Do we know that it is only the seeds which 
 germinate that ever had original fertility? Do not a thou- 
 sand facts indicate the contrary, and show also that some 
 of the greatest powers of mind and will are by Him allotted 
 to a life of obscure humility and patience in this world (or 
 of obscurity without these virtues, if we are so unwise and 
 unhappy as not to take His Will in that way)? 
 
 So when a man does rise to great power and fame, this 
 is evidently always brought about by various events with 
 which he has nothing to do, any of which taking another 
 turn, his career would have been quite different — no matter 
 what his force of talents or of will. The actual result is evi- 
 dently the doing of Him Who not only gave him those powers, 
 but brought about those events, to Whom all is due. 
 ' What hast thou that thou didst not receive V 
 
 Joseph was indeed great in wisdom — the wisdom both of 
 judgment and of conduct, — disposing others to commit their 
 affairs to him, great or small, and giving him success in 
 those trusts. But the best part of that wisdom was his 
 humble patience and trust in God for all things. His good 
 sense, firmness, purity, and diligence were all steps to his 
 exaltation. Yet they would never have made him the great 
 man of Egypt, or anything more than a Syrian chief like his 
 brothers, unless there had been these other steps, — the dread- 
 ful cruelty of those brothers, the baseness of his master's 
 wife, the displeasure of Pharaoh with the two courtiers, and 
 God's warning that king of the coming famine. 
 
 ^ Thus one of our great orators (Mr. Wirt), himself really wiser as a humble 
 Christian, renders an old Roman saying, ' Quisqiie faber sua fortuna,'' into the 
 actual language of the thoughts of the emulous and self-confident of our people. 
 
 '^ No doubt as much according to 'general laws' as the other things, yet 'all 
 alike by His absolute personal Will. 
 
 2 A
 
 370 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 We have now an instance of the contact of the false and 
 true religions even more interesting than that of Abraham's 
 short residence in Egypt (p. 286). The contact is in some 
 respects much closer. For Joseph was now no mere sojourn- 
 ing stranger, whose religion might pass at most unnoticed, 
 as Abraham's probably had (and his own even more 
 obscurely until now). He was a great person of state, — prac- 
 tically the greatest, so far as actual contact with all classes of 
 the people went. He was also now allied by marriage to 
 the priestly nobility. Yet there is no suggestion in the 
 History that he joined in the religion of the country. Per- 
 haps that first awe of him as a prophet of his God, by Whose 
 warning this salvation from famine was being prepared, and 
 was afterwards accomplished, remained, to cause them all, 
 from the Pharaoh down, to respect his firm and quiet 
 Religion, and leave him entirely to it in his own family.^ 
 
 Meantime he goes on about his great work with his 
 habitual patience, diligence, and practical wisdom. And 
 this work, no doubt, with that great, steady, heroic faith in 
 God, which could have been maintained only by constant 
 prayer and worship and loving service of Him in all things, 
 kept him from the sad longings after his father's face and 
 house, by which his tender and constant heart would other- 
 wise have been overpowered. 
 
 When the days of famine came, Syrian faces began to 
 mingle with those of the Egyptians who came to buy food. 
 For the same causes had made sore famine in the other 
 
 ^ The later incident of the cup, ' in which my lord drinketh, and whereby 
 indeed he divineth ' (Gen. xliv. 5), is not opposed to this, as implying his follow- 
 ing the superstitions of Egypt as to magic, etc. Joseph did not so describe the 
 cup in his first command to the steward (ver. 2), as he would have most naturally 
 done, if that were his real thought. This was meant to heighten the anxiety 
 and terror of the brothers. Perhaps Joseph intended to keep up this illusion, in 
 saying to them when Benjamin is brought before him as the detected thief, ' Wot 
 ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine ? ' (ver. 15), overpowering them 
 also thus with the power over them for life and death of Egypt's strange religion. 
 But this does not tell us that it was his belief. For the very word (tJ'nj), there 
 rendered ' divine,' had another altogether innocent sense, as used by Laban 
 once, and well translated in our Bible : ' For I have learned by experience that 
 the Lord hath blessed me for thy sake' (Gen. xxx. 27). It meant at first and 
 in general to find out, but came later (as the very word divine in English has 
 reversed this process) to be limited to superstitious, and therefore unlawful, 
 searchings and findings of the future, in false religions. 
 
 «
 
 ABRAHAM TO JOSEPH. 371 
 
 lands far and near, and which had neither the vast fertility 
 of former Egyptian harvests to fall back upon, nor still less 
 any wise Joseph as a prophet of God to foretell, and as a 
 minister of God to prepare for, the coming evil. When the 
 first of these Syrians came down to Egypt, did Joseph look 
 wistfully to see whether he could recognise any of the faces, 
 or long to ask if any one of them knew aught of Jacob, the 
 rich patriarch in Canaan ? 
 
 At last that, to wait for which was perhaps a part of his 
 lot as God's prophet, came to pass. With the wise thorough- 
 ness and careful justice in all details which belonged to his 
 wonderful wisdom, he attended in person to all sales of 
 bread-corn from the public storehouses. So when one day 
 ten foreigners appeared, and with the great demonstrations 
 of honour awarded by all to this mighty personage, ' bowed 
 down themselves before him with their faces to the earth,' 
 he instantly knew them for his brothers. Those twenty 
 years had made little difference in them. But nothing in 
 the lofty bearing of the great Egyptian lord, of whose more 
 than human wisdom and great power the fame had come 
 through all the land around, reminded them of the beauti- 
 ful, trembling boy whom they sold to the Bedouin slave- 
 merchants long ago. Whoever reads this now may do well 
 to pause and imagine for a while what were then the 
 thoughts and emotions of Joseph. 
 
 For our object we must rather imitate the silence of the 
 Divine History as to this, only noting, as it does, that as he 
 saw the profound reverence of their salutations, he recalled 
 those dreams about the sheaves and the stars, and that shout 
 of theirs once : ' Behold, this dreamer cometh !'^ 
 
 All that occurs from this on until he finally makes him- 
 self known to them is a wonderful mixture (told with 
 exquisite simplicity and naturalness) of human emotions 
 and conduct, — on the noblest, and yet also on the imperfect, 
 side of our common nature, in which Joseph appears to us 
 as one of the best and greatest of men, and yet is still a 
 man ' of like passions' and imperfections with us all ; this 
 mingled with the inspiration of God as one of His prophets, 
 both to know and to do great things in the history of the 
 
 ^ Gen. xxxvii. 511.
 
 372 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 true Religion. It is thus one of the chief of those examples 
 of conduct provided for us in the Book of God. 
 
 Nor is it only Joseph's example of generous and tender 
 love, and yet firmness, self-control, and endurance in all 
 duty of inducing and of testing the genuine ' repentance and 
 better minds' of the others. This deep repentance, humility, 
 love and sorrow for their father in his grief, and respect for his 
 preference of the surviving favourite, the youngest son, Joseph's 
 own brother, — these are beautiful examples for us. And 
 among them Judah is pre-eminent in that eloquence of sym- 
 pathetic love for their father and ready sacrifice of himself 
 to save Benjamin in which it all culminates, when Joseph 
 cries to all the Egyptian attendants, * Cause every man to go 
 out,' and is left alone with them to overwhelm them at once 
 with awe, wonder, shame, and joy, when the great prince — to 
 whom Judah had just acknowledged in utter submission, 
 and waiting upon his lips for their fate, ' Thou art even as 
 Pharaoh' — bursts into weeping, and says, ' I am Joseph! 
 
 The chief matter for us to note is that Religion is the 
 main thing in all these transactions. It may be that at the 
 first interview with his brothers some resentful sense of 
 justice sharpened Joseph's words, when he accused the 
 strangers of being spies, and to their alarmed protestations 
 and explanation of their home-life (which was just what he 
 wanted to hear something of, but could not venture any 
 direct questions of his own, for fear of setting them to 
 observe and recognise him) answered that he would test 
 this by having them produce that younger brother, who they 
 said had been left at home. So when — after they had been 
 kept in prison for three days, and were brought before him 
 again — he announces that he will mitigate his first judgment 
 of sending one of them home for the youngest, and keeping 
 the other nine as prisoners and hostages, by detaining one 
 and releasing the others, he gives this as his reason for the 
 milder sentence, ' I fear God.' 
 
 It was perhaps a check to his own indignation, and an 
 acknowledgment to himself that in all this he must simply 
 do the Will of Him Who — as he was conscious, and as he him- 
 self soon after plainly declares (xlv. 5, 7, 8) — had appointed 
 him by all these great events to preserve the sacred family
 
 ABRAHAM TO JOSEPH. 373 
 
 from perishing by famine, and to bring it into Egypt for 
 greater things yet to be. But it was also a solemn pledge to 
 them of truth and mercy in his exercise of his absolute power. 
 It is the true, noble saying and thought for any man who has 
 power over others. Yet this must have sounded rather strange 
 to them from an Egyptian, who was not at all likely to 
 qualify his conduct to them by regard to the Name which 
 was sacred to them, unless they took it, as translated to 
 them, to mean the ' gods many ' of that land. What he over- 
 heard them say after this— though, as they supposed, not 
 understood by the Egyptian magnate — showed him also that 
 their Religion had set them to take this distress and danger 
 for what it really was — God's call upon them to repent of 
 their actual sins, especially of that dreadful one against their 
 brother Joseph. 
 
 Then the nine brothers on their way home, finding their 
 money returned, are struck with religious awe and fear, and 
 say, ' What is this that God hath done to us .'" When Jacob 
 at last overcomes his fears for Benjamin, and sends again to 
 Egypt, his hope is in this: 'And God Almighty give you 
 mercy before the man.' Even the Egyptian steward (as in- 
 structed to say this, or as) having caught the spirit and usual 
 sayings of his noble master, reassures the sons of Jacob about 
 the money they found by replying to their account of it, 
 * Peace be unto you, fear not ; your God, and the God of your 
 father, hath given you treasure in your sacks.' 
 
 When the next agony of this trial of their spirit comes, 
 and the nine elders, though conscious of their innocence in 
 this, while not so certain that poor Benjamin may not have 
 purloined the precious cup, yet taking it all for (what it was) 
 what they had deserved for their cruelty to his mother's son 
 twenty years ago, and that bereavement of their venerated 
 father, make this submission through Judah as their spokes- 
 man — resolved to share the ignominy and slavery of their 
 youngest brother, it is — ' God hath found out the iniquity of 
 thy servants.' And therefore when Joseph puts the last test 
 of their feeling, by refusing this, and adheres to punishing 
 Benjamin alone, and sending them away free, Judah makes 
 his very noble and beautiful speech, insisting upon sacrificing 
 himself for his brother, — and then Joseph knows for certain
 
 374 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 that this is true repentance of that past, not mere shame 
 and sorrow as a sentiment, but ' repentance unto life,' of a 
 ' new heart ' — ' repentance toward God' and f^'om God} 
 
 In the swift rush of feeh'ngs and words with which he 
 discloses himself, declares his love and forgiveness, and with 
 all tenderness reassures and consoles them in their alarm 
 and shame, he says at once, and keeps repeating that 
 truth in several of its aspects (Gen. xlv. 5-7) : 'Now there- 
 fore be not grieved nor angry with yourselves, . . . for God did 
 send me before you to preserve life ;' * And God sent me before 
 you to preserve you a posterity in the earth,' etc.; 'So now, 
 it was not you that sent me hither, but God,' etc. ; and in 
 his eager message of love to his father, entreating him to 
 remove at once from that land of famine to one of plenty, 
 ' Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all 
 Egypt,' etc. So Jacob, as soon as he recovers from the 
 chilP of dread which the first announcement of such an 
 incredible happiness sends over him, and consents to the 
 summons, begins his journey with a most solemn act of 
 worship, and with a vision and message /r^w God — ' I am 
 God, the God of thy father : . . . fear not to go down into 
 Egypt,' etc. 
 
 Arrived there, and presented at court to the king, the 
 venerable Patriarch blesses tJie king — yet, as Holy Scripture 
 says elsewhere (Heb. vii. 7), 'and without all contradiction, 
 the less is blessed of the better.' Whence, then, this silent 
 acknowledgment by the greatest king in the world of the 
 greatness of this old Hebrew chief .^ Most plainly from a 
 religious awe of him, as a prophet of the One Unseen God 
 (of Whom, as we have seen before (p. 287), even the Egyp- 
 tians always had a sort of thought), the God of Joseph, 
 through whom, as also being His prophet, their land was 
 being saved from ruin. And this was Joseph's father and 
 revered superior. 
 
 This presence of the true Religion in these events is 
 also brought out, and a link of the faith of the Patriarchs 
 to that of the Gospel disclosed (though this was afterwards 
 for a long while, even in ' the commonwealth of Israel,' some- 
 
 1 Acts xi. iS. 
 
 2 Verse 26 — ' And Jacob's heart fainted,' etc.
 
 ABRAHAM TO JOSEPH. 375 
 
 what lost to view) in some words of Jacob's answer to the 
 king's question about his age : ' The days of the years of 
 my pilgrimage ... of my fathers in the days of their pilgrim- 
 age,' etc. (xlvii. 9). For no one who accepts the great truth 
 (as shown, stipra, Chap. IV.) that the Old Testament is to 
 be understood throughout from the point of view of the New, 
 can doubt that the writer in the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 (xi. 13) had this very saying of Jacob in his mind, and shows 
 us what it meant for him and the other patriarchs. Thus 
 though they could not have our clear vision of the ' life and 
 immortality brought to light in the Gospel,' it was a plain 
 part of their Religion to regard life in this world as only a 
 pilgrim's journey toward his real residence after death. 
 Observe this, too, in Jacob's joy and content when he first 
 meets Joseph now, ' Now let me die,' etc. (xlvi. 30). Why 
 this, if all he knew of or hoped for were our present life } 
 Why not rather, ' Now let me live '? 
 
 Pharaoh is very gracious to Joseph's kindred, and offers 
 them their choice of any lands in Egypt. But they do not 
 traverse the country to find the richest fields in the fertile Nile 
 valley. They halt and settle in the very district which they 
 first enter, — a pleasant pastoral land, suited to shepherds and 
 herdsmen, but not like the deep, damp soil of the delta and 
 river-banks, which made Egypt so famous for fertility. 
 Here Joseph at once counselled them to ask a home, frankly 
 declaring that they knew only how to take care of sheep and 
 cattle, though that was considered low business in Egypt. 
 Whereupon the King bid them make themselves content in 
 that ' land of Goshen ' (or ' of Rameses '), if it suited them ; 
 and even had them put in charge of his own herds pastured 
 in that region, instead of on the river-lands, which could not 
 be spared for such inferior uses. 
 
 In this Joseph managed for them not only to avoid irri- 
 tating the prejudices and envy of the Egyptian people in 
 general, and that they might quietly observe their own 
 Religion, but also, as a prophet of God, with the further 
 thought that they would thus be best prepared for a future 
 return to the land of His promises. That such a return to 
 Canaan was never out of his mind or his father's we have 
 plain proofs afterwards.
 
 376 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Seventeen years later, while he is still governing all Egypt 
 with the wisdom and power which left marks of his admini- 
 stration upon that country for looo years, Jacob, drawing 
 near to death, sends for his great son. The old patriarch 
 speaks as a prophet of God, in gratitude and faith, and looks 
 across the far future. He foresees that nation of Israel which 
 is then to be the ' people of God ' in the land of Canaan, 
 each of his sons (Joseph's two sons being for this set upon a 
 level with their father's brothers) the ancestor of a great 
 ' tribe ' of that people. As a mark of faith in this future, he 
 requires that his body shall be carried at once for burial to 
 Canaan, though they are all to return from this ceremony to 
 Egypt, for their home of many generations yet. 
 
 Joseph not only sees that this is done with great pomp 
 and reverence, but long afterwards, when he knew his own 
 death to be not far off, repeats the prophecy of the return of 
 the Israelites to Canaan, and exacts a solemn vow and pro- 
 mise from their chief men that his body shall be carried for 
 burial to the Holy Land — not then, when he dies, perhaps 
 for fear of exciting suspicion and hatred toward his people, 
 the occasions of which may have been begun already to show 
 themselves a little, — but when ' God visits ' them for this 
 return. So his body being embalmed, as the custom was 
 for all the rich, the chief men of his people made a record 
 of this sacred charge of their great kinsman. 
 
 Evidently they had even then grown into a great ' tribe,' 
 made up perhaps of thousands of households. Joseph's last 
 words to them, and the very first words we have about them 
 afterwards, show that, so far from adopting the Egyptian 
 religion, they quietly continued in that of their fathers — their 
 residence together, and apart from the other people, saving 
 them both from the dangerous contact of false custom, and 
 from the collisions of prejudice and persecution. That after 
 Joseph's death they did not persevere in as much faithfulness 
 to the pure traditions of their forefathers, is quite likely. How 
 much they may have begun to neglect the holy seventh day ; 
 how much less frequent their sacrifices were ; the holy 
 Name less reverenced, the domestic virtues sinking before 
 passion and selfishness ; the lessons of humility and peni-
 
 ABRAHAM TO JOSEPH. 377 
 
 tence toward God, and the thoughts of a future judgment 
 and life forgotten, we do not at all know. Yet even in the 
 Exodus, before ' the Law ' was given, they had their regular 
 ' priests ' (Exod. xix. 24), and the Sabbath Day was still 
 well known (xvi. 23). They were not (not even entirely 
 during the greatest oppression) under the orders of Egyptian 
 local officers, but had the old patriarchal rule of the 
 chief men (or ' elders ') of their various families (Exod. 
 iii, 16, etc.). 
 
 How long after Joseph's death their prosperity lasted, we 
 do not certainly know. Perhaps for an ordinary generation. 
 It is not unreasonable to suppose that the impression of his 
 wisdom and goodness and of his great services to the whole 
 nation outlived him, at least during the reign of that king 
 who survived him. The History does not say that 'as soon 
 as Joseph was dead there arose up a new king, which knew 
 not Joseph.' Nor is it reasonable to assume so positively, as 
 is the fashion now, that this means a change of dynasty or 
 great revolution, such as is said to have been caused by the 
 expulsion of the so-called ' Hykso ' kings. It is natural 
 enough to suppose that, as the great Israelite's influence and 
 memory began to fade, the native Egyptians grew envious of 
 these prosperous men of another race and religion, and 
 afraid of what they might yet do, in some dangerous contin- 
 gencies, from like alienation.^ 
 
 \ Much is conjectured by modern writers, and, as might be expected from the 
 very slender and confused ground oifact upon which it is all built, without agree- 
 ment among them, about a reign of ' shepherd kings ' or ' Hyksos ' in Egypt in 
 those early days, and its date as related to the times of Abraham, Joseph, and 
 Moses. My own judgment, after comparing the various arguments, is that we 
 know nothing as yet by which to decide these disputes of chronology ; that any such 
 detailed chronology must be almost more mythical — I was going to say, — certainly 
 rather hypothetical — than historical ; and that it is of very little consequence for 
 the real purpose of our history. At least, simple love of truth must for the 
 present leave these questions as to how far the fragments of Manetho are history 
 at all, or valuable material for history, and what credit is to be allotted to the 
 various interpretations of them by the lately discovered Egyptian remains — rather 
 to the disputes of those zealous ' specialists,' — than adopt any of them into its con- 
 clusions. For the illustration of various arts, and of social life, the latter are 
 indeed very valuable, — for as early dates as these, as yet of small account. 
 
 As for supposing the Pharaoh of Joseph to have been one of those ' shepherd 
 kings,' the utter silence of Genesis (chap, xxxix. to the end) about any such
 
 378 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 difference between the king and the people, seems to me quite against this. If 
 there were atiy actual proof of the supposed fact, this mere negative would be 
 nothing. But in the actual case it is a great deal. All is pure Eg}'ptian on one 
 side. Joseph alone (and his family afterwards) represents the Shemites. There 
 are points in the narrative when this ' Hykso ' power, if existing, would naturally 
 have been alluded to, e.g. the complaint of Potiphar's wife (where, indeed, Joseph 
 is indicated as the OTtly Shemitic foreigner), the elevation of Joseph, the coming 
 of the strangers to buy, the removal of Jacob and his family. On the contrary, 
 the clear antithesis between these Shemites and all the Egyptians — king, court, 
 and people — is always the same.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE EXODUS. 
 
 It was about 1570 years before the Advent of Our Lord, 
 while Greece was as much a barbarous country as Central 
 Africa is now, and when we have still no real history in 
 the world — apart from this Book of God, — except such as can 
 be guessed out of the Egyptian remains,^ that Moses the 
 Israelite was born. And then it was in circumstances which, 
 according to 'the laws of Nature' (so far as anybody could 
 have known of such things then, or indeed can now ; for 
 what can we understand in such a case of the inherited vital 
 force of any infant, either for its future bodily or spiritual 
 life ?) indicated anything but a long life, much less a famous 
 and powerful one, to this feeble little spark of human nature. 
 On the contrary, the parents had little hope that he would 
 live many days. For the Israelites were no longer favourites 
 in Egypt ; they were not even neglected and despised. 
 They were now all the suspected, hated, and unhappy slaves 
 of the king. This suspicion and hatred went so far that, 
 unlike most owners of slaves, who see gain for themselves in 
 the increasing numbers of them, all the public authority of 
 Egypt was put forth to stop this increase, and in a way that 
 must in the end exterminate them, at least as a distinct 
 people. 
 
 The King's decree was that every male child was to be 
 killed as soon as born. To disobey or evade this was of 
 course the instinct of every Hebrew mother. But how could 
 that long succeed .-' Tyrants and their spies and soldiers 
 
 ^ At least as long before the Vedas or Zerdusht the Persian as it is now since 
 the discovery of America. This is so if we adopt any of the other chronologies, 
 instead of Usher's as above, which, upon the whole, seems to me the safest.
 
 38o BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 care little for the instincts or rights of their victims, and 
 have the actual power. The growing child, with its cries 
 and its wayward ways, would soon thwart all the artifices of 
 affection. Certainly, according to 'the laws of Nature' for 
 everything except what we knozv better by ' faith,' the 
 Hebrew boy's career was like to be short. So it was by 
 unusual faith (Heb. xi. 23), according to the still strong 
 tradition of their people, in God's promise of future pro- 
 sperity to them in Canaan, that his parents, seeing him a 
 child of unusual promise of beauty and vigour, took such 
 care to conceal his birth, that he was three months old when 
 it became plain that the secret could be kept no longer. 
 But even then, instead of waiting for the inevitable discovery, 
 they had faith in God's preserving the helpless infant when 
 they could no longer watch over him. And so, twisting 
 together some of the broad rushes of the Nile banks into a 
 little box, and coating it with pitch and river mud, the 
 mother hid her child in it, and set it down among those tall 
 weeds on the marshy edge of the great river. This was 
 what faith did. The ' laws of Nature' would have suggested 
 that if the hungry crocodiles or other like haunters of the 
 place did not soon find it, it would almost certainly perish 
 by hunger or thirst. 
 
 But how this brought about the saving of that wonderful 
 life, and the preparation of it for deeds not surpassed in all 
 history, we have all read in the incomparable words of the 
 Divine History itself — that he grew up as the adopted child 
 of that dreadful king's daughter and sister of his successor, 
 recognised by all as the only surviving one of those doomed 
 children of the Hebrews, and as having escaped through a 
 freak of compassion in one of those who alone could make 
 such an exception. Probably his own bright and noble 
 qualities as child and youth made this grow into great pride 
 and affection on the part of his preserver. He seems never 
 to have adopted, or been required to adopt, the religion of 
 Egypt. Or else it was in just such a great crisis of life, 
 having this choice before him, and deliberately resolving by 
 adhering to the True God Whom his fathers had worshipped, 
 to sacrifice his high place, and to choose the lot of the poor, 
 oppressed sons of Israel, that by this preference o^ faith he
 
 THE EXODUS. 381 
 
 ' chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than 
 to enjoy the pleasures of shi for a season' (Heb. xi. 25). 
 The main question was of true or false religion : that of race 
 or mere sentiment was of far less account.^ Out of this 
 doubtless grew the occasion of his taking the part of an 
 Israelite whom he saw thus abused by an Egyptian, in conse- 
 quence of which he had to flee for his life into the desert of 
 Arabia, was heard from no more, given up for dead, and 
 forgotten by both enemies and friends. 
 
 Forty years more went on these wrongs and miseries of 
 the Israelites, both as field-slaves and toiling in gangs under 
 severe ' taskmasters ' — making the unburnt bricks of that 
 country for public works. Meanwhile the first cruel Pharaoh 
 died, but his successors had no more mercy upon the Israel- 
 ites, At last their kinsman Moses suddenly reappeared 
 among them with a message from God. Very few of his own 
 people could possibly have remembered him enough for 
 recognition. But he did not come alone. His brother Aaron 
 was with him, who also, by a sudden command of God, which 
 must have seemed v/onderful and awful to him, had gone out 
 into the desert a little way to meet and accompany him, and 
 be his chief spokesman. So they gave a message from God 
 to the chief men of their people assembled for the purpose, 
 of compassion upon their sorrows, and of summons to follow 
 Moses into the land of Canaan, where they should be free and 
 happy, and be His people. And they believed this, and wor- 
 shipped this Lord God. How senseless and impossible this 
 would have been if they were a people without any religion, 
 or with that of the Egyptians, or any except the pure and 
 true one of their forefathers ! 
 
 But to understand this so far, and what follows, we must 
 consider more fully the character of Moses now. It was far 
 from the same sort of person who fled from Egypt forty years 
 before, that entered it now. To the character till then shaped 
 by such an easy and elegant life: by teachers and documents, 
 and in constant sight at least of the splendours of false 
 religion, had been added almost a lifetime of stillness, simpli- 
 city, and thought ; of sorrowful yearnings after his own people, 
 yet new, peaceful, domestic affections; of spiritual worship of 
 
 ^ Just the opposite with the Jews of our day.
 
 382 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 the Only Eternal and Unseen Lord, and much meditation in 
 the solitude of his shepherd's work, especially perhaps when 
 that kept him for weeks together in the valleys around the sub- 
 lime Sinai mountains, which to this day strike all travellers with 
 awe by their terrific precipices and thunder-echoing heights. 
 
 His new home, let us remember, had been with Reuel the 
 Arabian, a shepherd chief, who, so far from being an idolater, 
 was evidently one of those, like Job and Melchizedek — beside 
 Abraham and his descendants — who continued in the primi- 
 tive tradition and Religion. His family may have been the last 
 survivors of such in Arabia. So would Moses' talk with them 
 by the evening fire, or on the sacred rest-day of the week, 
 have been of the true history of Adam and Enoch ; of Noah 
 and the Flood ; of Babel and the Dispersion ; of the gracious 
 Word of God to men for the commandment of love and 
 truth ; for the promises of future redemption and grace ; 
 for the present duties of humility, repentance and sacrifice ; 
 for the judgment and better life to come. 
 
 From this discipline of almost a lifetime, compared with 
 which all that ' wisdom of the Egyptians ' in which he had 
 been once instructed could have left but a small impression 
 upon his character and thoughts, he was one day suddenly 
 called to be a great prophet of God. He was many miles from 
 the more permanent home, with the flocks, in one of the little 
 valleys of that tongue of the Arabian desert between the two 
 northern bays of the Red Sea — now commonly known as the 
 peninsula of Sinai, — when he saw a wonderful thing — a bush 
 suddenly in a blaze of fire, for which there was no apparent 
 cause. This was strange enough of itself. But what was 
 stranger still, that which must have been destroyed in a few 
 minutes continued burning for a long time, and still entirely 
 unconsumed. When at last he went toward it to look more 
 closely, a voice came out of the blaze, calling him by name, bid- 
 ding him not approach, but remain at a distance with reverence. 
 The voice then told him that the speaker was the Great Only 
 God, Whom he and his people worshipped ; that He was now 
 about to deliver this His people, the family of Israel, from 
 their distresses. He would therefore now send him to 
 Egypt to the court of Pharaoh, to demand this in His Name, 
 and then to conduct them from that land to Canaan.
 
 THE EXODUS. 383 
 
 The wonder and awe, the fear and hesitation of Moses 
 at all this as related at length (Exod. iii., iv.), are very natural. 
 So far as we know, there had been no word of God direct 
 to men for at least 150 years before this. But in the end 
 Moses believes and obeys, and goes on his sublime and 
 dangerous mission. 
 
 Some of his doubts had been as to what proofs of his 
 authority for this his kinsmen of Israel would exact ; how 
 much religious faith in God, in opposition to the actual power 
 of the terrible Egyptians, they would have ; what they still 
 knew or believed of the God of their fathers after all these 
 generations of calamity and of bad influences. In answer 
 to all this God not only gives him the power of ' doing great 
 signs and wonders ' before Egypt as well as Israel, but de- 
 clares more fully than ever before (in the Book) His great 
 Name of ' The Lord ' or Jehovah, — its real meaning, ' I am 
 that I AM,' He Who exists absolutely, whether anything 
 else does or not, anything else only existing by His Will. 
 ' Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, ' I am hath 
 sent me unto you.' 
 
 This alone is the answer to all atheistic nonsense (see 
 Matthew Arnold, Lit. and Dogma, passim), which would 
 try to persuade us against our common sense that the Old 
 Testament does not represent God as ' a person.' If He is 
 not a Person, then there are no persons {we are not such) and 
 no things. Imagine what would have been the effect upon 
 the Israelites of a different answer to their question — such a 
 one as Mr. Arnold now offers to us : — Thus {the people) 
 'What is His name?' {Moses) 'A power not ourselves that 
 makes for righteousness.' They could not but have thought 
 him either a madman or a mocker, who could thus describe 
 the Mighty Deliverer out of such hopeless and helpless misery, 
 in Whom they were now to believe, in the face of all they could 
 see — thus virtually to describe Him as the ' I Am Not.' 
 
 But zvitk faith Moses sets out upon an undertaking 
 which was madness, if it was not God's Will and command- 
 ment. With what emotions must he have emerged from 
 the silent sands of Arabia, and again walked in fertile and 
 populous Egypt ! The fear for his life which hurried his 
 steps at that border forty years ago was gone before faith.
 
 384 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 God had not only sent him, but had also assured him that 
 all the men were dead who then sought his life (Exod. iv. 4). 
 Those who had succeeded them, from the king down 
 might remember having heard of all that, when it was 
 reported that the Moses of forty years ago was alive and in 
 Egypt again. But all personal interest in such a long-past 
 matter had been crowded out of attention by later events. 
 No allusion to it whatever occurs in all which this Pharaoh 
 and his officers have to say, though, if it had been in their 
 thoughts, we can hardly conceive of its not being brought up 
 in such a way as to be told in the Exodus. 
 
 To resume the narrative (from p. 382) : Moses and his 
 brother go at once to the very presence of the dreaded king, 
 and deliver him this message : ' Thus saith the Lord 
 {Jehovah), the God of Israel, Let My people go, that they 
 may hold a feast unto Me in the wilderness.' A very extra- 
 ordinary message, both in the bearers, the receiver, the Sender, 
 and the purport of it ! So indeed it must have sounded to 
 all the Egyptians. It was not a message from the Israelites ; 
 the brothers did not profess to be sent by their people. 
 That people seem to have been known already among the 
 Egyptians by that name (Israel) of their ancestor who 
 brought his family there more than two centuries before. 
 But it was now merely the name of a servile class, of a 
 different race and religion, not only despised but suspected. 
 And this was a demand in their behalf upon their absolute 
 master. Who was it that ventured to send such a message } 
 'The Lord' or ' Jehovah 'Mvas, as Pharaoh well knew, the 
 object of worship in their mean way of these Hebrew slaves. 
 But he knew no such person as being anything to him, least 
 of all to send him messages of command. 
 
 ^ Through this passage of the history, for the sake of clearness of narrative, 
 I shall now use the latter translation, though I am by no means of opinion that 
 our English Bible would be improved by such a change throughout. The new 
 term would not mean anything to us corresponding to Hin^. in the Hebrew — 
 would be to us a mere arbitrary name of the Jews, as Dagon of the Philistines. 
 Nor is VEternel of the French translation a happy rendering, if the great critic 
 Matthew Arnold does so in effect decide for his purposes, nin^ is not an adjec- 
 tive with the essential feebleness of that part of speech for such a name, but a 
 verbal noun, with a power and majesty of its own for which we have nothing 
 adequate. 'I AM,' as the great Name, would approach nearest. Upon the 
 whole, the term ' Lord,' with its hallowed associations, is best retained.
 
 THE EXODUS. 385 
 
 ' And Pharaoh said : Who is Jehovah, that I should obey 
 His voice to let Israel go ? I know not Jehovah, neither will 
 I let Israel go.' We have seen the true Religion before in 
 contact with the false in Egypt. Now, for the first time, we 
 see them in collisioii. 
 
 For our purpose, within the limit of details which must be 
 fixed for it, I assume that the whole story of this great 
 struggle between human power and prestige on the one side, 
 and the Will of God to remove this people of Israel to the 
 land of their fathers on the other, is familiar to every one 
 of my readers, as they have it in the Book of Exodus, 
 chaps, v. to XV. It is a wonderful story, each particular 
 of it worthy of deep study, and so useful in its sugges- 
 tions as to this very history of Religion, that it is only thus 
 passed over because to treat it adequately would require 
 more minuteness and fulness, and more of the reader's time, 
 than is now expedient. Therefore (only reserving such 
 allusions to the incidents of the Ten Plagues, the Passover, 
 the Passage of the Red Sea, etc., as may be necessary here- 
 after) we will pass at once to the march of the great host as 
 it leaves the Red Sea behind and plunges into the Arabian 
 wastes. 
 
 Since that first summons to Pharaoh a new nation had 
 been, as it were, * born at once ' (Isa. Ixviii. 8). This saying 
 has been applied to many other cases ; notably by the 
 orators of my own people to what took place on July 4th, 
 1776. But without stopping to make all the comparisons 
 suggested, that figure of the prophet belongs to the Church 
 of God. Yet for that very reason it also looks back to the 
 event by which, for the first time, the cause of true Religion 
 was to become for ages the sole and special trust of one 
 nation as such. 
 
 Until then there had been on^ family, a line of patriarchs 
 and chiefs, who had this charge. The last of these had died 
 many generations ago. The sacred trust had not perished. 
 It had passed in a general way to all their descendants ; and 
 these, though in a strange land, had ' increased abundantly, 
 and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty ' (Exod. i. 7). 
 They now numbered hundreds of thousands of souls. Was 
 the true Religion in this proportion advanced in the world ? 
 
 2 B
 
 386 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 We cannot say that. On the contrary, it was in some re- 
 spects rather as if a precious taste and fragrance had been so 
 diluted in a great mass as almost to be lost beyond any per- 
 ception. There had been no prophets of God such as those 
 patriarchs were, until this Moses. There are no signs then 
 in the History of that mighty * faith,' by which those fathers 
 ' walked with God ' ; though doubtless it was the beginnings 
 of a return to this which He was moving in their hearts (and 
 responding to with His pity), that now they ' sighed by reason 
 of the bondage, and their cry came up unto God,' etc. (ii. 23). 
 They could not keep from «// contact with false worship and 
 its bad morals as the patriarchs had done in Canaan. They 
 were all slaves of the idolaters ; and the wiser of them must 
 have been troubled for the probable effect of this upon their 
 children, if continued much longer ; and which they knew to 
 be a more dreadful evil than even the ' cruel bondage.' 
 
 I have already shown (see p. 376, etc.), how the whole 
 narrative implies that they had continued the Religion of 
 their fathers, though no doubt in a continually increasing 
 negligence and imperfection. But we have a striking cor- 
 roboration of this in that very first message of God to 
 Pharaoh (v. i): 'Let 3Ty people go, that they may hold a 
 feast 7i72to Me in the wilderness': that is, ' perform their ac- 
 customed religious rites, but in retirement in the desert 
 country, where they will neither offend the Egyptians nor be 
 annoyed by them.' So Pharaoh and his officers also under- 
 stood it (vers. 8, 17) as equivalent to their saying : ' Let us go 
 and sacrifice to our God.' (See also chap. x. 7-1 1, 24-26.) 
 
 It was the Will and purpose of God that His Word to 
 men should not be utterly lost among them by this process of 
 decay. He would now have a 'people' to preserve it. But 
 a people with such a charge needs to be a nation, with its own 
 government, rulers, and laws, — certainly not a mere swarm of 
 people who are the bondmen of powerful idolaters. The 
 multitude of Israelite families in Egyptian Goshen must 
 become ' My people Israel,' in a land of their own. Moses 
 was the prophet through whom He would send this new 
 Word. He must lead them out of Egypt with Divine 
 wonders that overawed and overwhelmed their powerful 
 oppressors. He must rule them with supreme power from
 
 I 
 
 THE EXODUS. 387 
 
 God, in gradually turning these abject subjects of tyrants 
 who worshipped false gods, into a free courageous nation 
 able to fight its way into its own land, and to maintain 
 there a nation, laws, and Religion for ages after this leader 
 had died. A great beginning of this had now been made. 
 Their ' faith,' their thoughts of the Unseen God, and courage- 
 ous trust in His promises of success in all this, had been 
 wonderfully raised by the mighty miracles of their Exodus, 
 especially that crowning one at the Red Sea, when, before 
 the eyes of the terrified fugitives, all that riches and numbers, 
 military resources, discipline, and accustomed courage could 
 do against them, had been utterly vanquished by their God. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact needing to be much pondered 
 and studied, that from this time forth that 'chosen nation' 
 of Israel is not in these Holy Writings usually called a 
 * nation,' but ' tJie people,' as distinguished from ' the nations,' 
 meaning all other such, and who all had false religions, 
 
 Moses now leads them first a little way down the east 
 shore of the Red Sea, and then in through the rock valleys 
 eastward to the foot of that Mount Horeb or Sinai where 
 God first spoke to him. In quite a wide and level valley, 
 between great mountains, which spreads out to the north of 
 that lofty and awful mass of treeless rocky steeps, they fix a 
 camp, the whole silent space at once turned into a swarming 
 city, as populous as any, after London, now existing. Here 
 indeed they are to 'serve' (worship) God as He had foretold 
 (iii. 12). 
 
 But now came a new charge to the prophet, more impor- 
 tant even than his leading the escape from Egypt. This 
 was to receive from God, and deliver in Hjs Name, to all the 
 Israelites, a system of Commandments and Laws under which 
 they were to be a nation, the 'holy people' of God. Theirs 
 then was to be the main history of true Religion for the 
 next fifteen centuries, though they would be perhaps not 
 more than the fiftieth, or even the hundredth, part of man- 
 kind for all that time. How this could be, and many other 
 things which belong with it, must of necessity be to us (as 
 to 'the elders' of all those ages) in the main only known 
 by faith in God. But all the more for this, we need, in order 
 to maintain such faith against the perplexities and the cavils
 
 388 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION 
 
 of others, in these last days, not to encumber it by any 
 mistakes which may have become the tradition of all our 
 writers, — to receive it simply as God has revealed it, and not 
 under the conditions of any such theories and assumptions. 
 
 If this new 'dispensation' of Moses is not according to 
 its own history a 'development' and enlargement of all that 
 God had taught mankind before, but in some points an 
 actual contractio?iy to correspond to the general loss of primi- 
 tive truth, then let us take it so, and not try to stretch the 
 historical facts, or distort them to fit the theory of * develop- 
 ment' I can but wonder that it has not long since 
 occurred to all students of this, what a suggestion of this 
 fact there is to us all upon the very highest authority, when 
 Our Lord expressly remarked upon one detail of the Law of 
 Moses : ' From the beginning it was not so,' and that ' Moses, 
 because of the hardness of your hearts,' had in this departed 
 from the earlier and better law of God, to which the perfect 
 religion of Our Redeemer would now bring all men back. 
 This lowering of the primitive Religion as it was in the first 
 Word of God to men, had been going on before, even from 
 the very Fall, as we have already seen (see p. 272, etc.).
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF WRITING. 
 
 We have thus reached the first historical mention of 
 Writing. Most of us do not find it easy to appreciate the 
 greatness of this fact. Supposing any language spoken, we 
 think that, of course, the words must have come to be 
 written down to prevent things being forgotten or mistaken, 
 and to send messages to the absent. But observe the amaze- 
 ment of any savages when they first meet with the use of 
 writing by more civilised people, though speech is a matter 
 of course to them, and used by them often with much 
 quickness and strength of thought. It is not merely a new 
 idea received with delighted surprise, yet comprehended and 
 used at once by them. On the contrary, it is most mys- 
 terious, magical, and incredible for a long time; can only after 
 much explanation and insistance be made practical to them. 
 Surely this is at once a good reason for not believing what 
 some have conjectured, and then insisted upon, — that men 
 invented the use of letters : a strong suggestion that the 
 chasm between spoken and written language may be so vast, 
 that it never would have been crossed by human ingenuity ; 
 that, like speech itself, it needed a communication from God 
 — at first not unlikely in very simple form, but which the art 
 of man could enlarge with use and need, and so build its 
 later and larger fabrics. All tradition, so far as I can under- 
 stand it, points that way. The Greek legend of Cadmus 
 bringing letters to Greece from the Phoenicians (by which 
 was fairly meant the whole Syrian people, including the 
 Hebrews), is in accord with this. It is but fair to ask of 
 those who would reject with ridicule this supposition of the 
 beginning of letters, to justify their positiveness by some
 
 390 BEGIiXNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 sort of positive proof ; for, so far, it is at least as rational to 
 think it given by God, Whose writing to men is, as we see, at 
 least almost the first distinct historical instance of it which 
 we have, as to attribute it to a man's invention, of which and 
 of whom no instance like this can be given. And if the con- 
 dition of a sufficiently great occasion for miraculous ' interv^en- 
 tion' be also demanded, it is indeed a nodus digtiiis tali vindice. 
 For just then just such a written language was needed to set 
 down in clear and permanent form the laws of the * people of 
 God,' and to record these events of their history, as until that 
 time, and for ages after, no other real history would be written ; 
 thus making, not only the most venerable, but far the most 
 august and authoritative book in the world, no less than the 
 first part of 'God's Word Written.' I do not state this view 
 of the origin of writing as any necessary part of the history 
 of true Religion. So far as that goes, this art might have 
 been as plainly the invention of men as that of building, 
 which was now also about to be employed by the Israelites 
 in Religion. I was myself not at all averse to finding that, 
 e.g.^ it had grown by improvement from the use of hiero- 
 glyphics among the Egyptians, or first been invented by 
 other Syrians or Assyrians. But upon examining the argu- 
 ments and supposed proofs, I have been struck with the 
 utter failure of all such attempts, even those that are now so 
 positively put forth as the final, demonstrated science of the 
 gradual improvement of the Egyptian picture-writing into 
 the Alphabet. I would be glad to show this fully, but that 
 would require a book of itself The following summary of 
 the facts must suffice : — 
 
 I. Before Moses we have no actual writing. The hiero- 
 glyphics of Egypt or the so-called hieratic or demotic 
 characters of the oldest papyri are far from such alphabetic 
 writing as a real History and Law could have been recorded 
 in.^ In fact the gap is so wide between the best of these 
 hieroglyphics and the rudest alphabet, that until very lately 
 all the most ingenious men have agreed that there was no 
 bridging it by conjecture, nothing in common that indicated 
 any natural relationship. 2. After Moses we certainly Jiave 
 the alphabetic writing. But this is far from all the facts in 
 ^ See Ewakl, i. 51 ; Gesenius, Scr. Phccn. Moti., i. 14; Wall, Pt. iii. 20, etc.
 
 THE ORIGIN OF WRITING. 391 
 
 this direction. For us, at least, who have no doubt that this 
 story of the Exodus is God's Word, we have such writing 
 with Moses (Exod. xxiv. 4, etc.). 
 
 On the other side there is no other instance of it for 500 
 years later. Yes ; those oldest inscriptions of Phoenicia and 
 Syria, upon which the other argument is all built, are later 
 than the writings of Moses by a far longer time than it is 
 now since the discovery of America. 
 
 Yet while sundry other theories of the origin of the 
 Alphabet are zealously argued, curiously enough, no one 
 now even notices the possible solution which common 
 sense would suppose should be tried first, i.e. that the other 
 peoples got the Alphabet from Moses and the Israelites. 
 Indeed, so far from this, some of them, in defiance of facts, 
 assume that this proves that Moses did not write at all. 
 The question is even raised to a much higher plane when 
 we have an exact historic fact, from which we may perhaps 
 infer that even Moses was not the first writer,^ for he records 
 — ' And He gave unto Moses when He had made an end of 
 communing with him, upon Mount Sinai, two tables of testi- 
 mony, tables of stone written with the finger of God ' 
 (Exod. xxxi. 18), and 'the tables were the work of God: 
 and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the 
 tables' (xxxii. 16). 
 
 Here is a fact of the first magnitude in the inquiry 
 before us. It cannot therefore but reasonably impair in our 
 minds confidence in any supposed results of a research 
 which takes no notice whatever of this. Even upon the 
 ground that it is no fact as recorded, it surely is a fact that 
 these sentences occur in the Hebrew writings. He who^ (as 
 I think, in utter violation of fair judgment) assigns the date 
 of this book to 500 years later, that is, to the time of the 
 very earliest Phoenician inscriptions, is still bound to inquire 
 what historic value and significance this remarkable state- 
 ment may have then. I am sure that if it had been dis- 
 covered in Herodotus, or even Plato, so far from being 
 
 ^ I defer to a later place noticing the bearing of the Book of Job upon this 
 question, also as to Gen. xxxviii. 18 ; Exod. xiii. 9, 16, xvii. 14 (see p. 402, etc.). 
 
 2 Ewald and all his adherents, as well as the perhaps more destructive criti- 
 cisms of the school of Kuenen.
 
 392 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 upon any ground whatever passed over without notice, it 
 would have been most carefully and minutely discussed, as 
 to what historical force and sense or suggestion it might 
 have in the main contention. That no one of these later 
 writers, e.g. Rev. Isaac Taylor, The Alphabet, etc., 1883,^ so 
 much as even alludes to it, must, as I have before suggested, 
 greatly impair the force of his conclusions, not to say render 
 them utterly worthless. But to us who have no doubt 
 whatever of the historical and literal truth of the Book 
 in question, the defect is at once fatal. 
 
 This seems the more inexcusable, because we have had 
 in English, for thirty or forty years past, a very extensive 
 and thorough discussion of the same questions, which turns 
 mainly upon those words. That it was written by a British 
 scholar, a Professor of Hebrew in the University of Dublin, 
 should hardly deprive it of all attention of our investigators. 
 (Is this another instance of the fascination of all German 
 scholarship over our later writers, which makes them confide 
 more in that strange combination of research, imagination 
 and intellectual self-sufficiency, which, with all its attractive 
 merits in some ways, does seem the characteristic of the 
 Teutonic genius of our day, than in the less laborious yet 
 more judicious and reverent English- mind?) Thus I 
 cannot find in Mr, Taylor, and the other writers of the same 
 school, any notice whatever of the Exaviination of the 
 Ancient Orthography of the fews, etc., by Rev. C. T. 
 Wall, D.D., etc., London, 1841-56. On the other hand, 
 upon myself comparing the two, I find much in Dr. Wall 
 which is by no means refuted or superseded by the later 
 Egyptian researches, taking them at their fair results ; but, 
 on the contrary, much of his argument is not in any way 
 answered by these later writers, but seems to me, so far, 
 unanswerable from their point of view. This is a singular 
 response to the suggestion of his title-page motto, Trard^ov 
 — dW dKovov. Or rather, those who have since represented 
 the opinions he controverts, have failed either to 'strike' in 
 
 1 In all that follows I shall take this, the most recent investigation and argu- 
 ment upon that side, as representing it all, though I have also endeavoured to 
 give a thorough and candid attention to all that Gesenius, Bunsen, Lenormant, 
 Ewald, etc., have said to the same effect. 
 
 ^ In which I include the American-English.
 
 THE ORIGIN OF WRITING. 393 
 
 refuting his arguments, or to 'hear,' in taking any notice of 
 them. If this could happen so lately to an eminent person, 
 I must not be surprised at like treatment of myself by some 
 who claim to be the only courageous seekers after truth. 
 
 Dr. Wall's contention is, that the art of alphabetic writing 
 was then first communicated to mankind by God in the 
 writing upon the two tables of stone. In this he may be 
 too positive, and indeed, not allowing enough for the facts 
 which indicate an earlier possession by some men of the 
 art of writing. Yet, as between his argument and that 
 which is now commonly given out upon the authority which 
 will be generally followed (see, for instance, Eiicy. Brit. art. 
 Alphabet, 9th ed.), that 'Egypt must be credited with 
 having originally invented the alphabetical system,* I should 
 have to decide for him. But returning again to the whole 
 question, more largely, and as still a question (see p. 272, 
 supra), we have to choose between these four alternatives : 
 Firstly, that the Phoenicians invented it ; secondly, that the 
 Egyptians are the real inventors, the Phoenicians or some 
 other ' Shemites,' who are not Hebrews, having given some 
 assistance in improving the hieroglyphics into an alphabet ; 
 thirdly, that no reasonable account of its beginning can be 
 conjectured ; or fourthly, that it has come to all the rest of 
 mankind first from the Hebrews, who most probably had 
 received it by direct gift from God. 
 
 Now why, as I have suggested before, should we not 
 begin the investigation according to the common-sense view 
 of the facts ; that, as the Hebrew writings, which are, most 
 probably, any way, and, I suppose, really without any reason- 
 able doubt, ascribed to Moses, are far the oldest alphabetic 
 writings extant, the first inquiry should be in that direction? 
 When and if we can come to no safe conclusion there, it will 
 be soon enough to attempt any one of the others. And let 
 us note once for all, that if we cannot precisely fix the date 
 of that beginning with the Hebrews, that does not decide 
 against it ; for we should be no worse off than we are sure 
 to be in our results elsewhere. Those who are now so sure 
 of the Egyptian origin cannot fix the initial point of the 
 alphabet within many hundreds of years. 
 
 It does not seem to me to have been noticed how much
 
 394 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 more authority in this should be allotted to a book than to a 
 number of disconnected inscriptions, even if some of them, 
 or even if we were sure that all of them, were of as early- 
 date. Far more in the latter case has the meaning to be 
 made out by conjecture. Whereas the connected thoughts 
 of a book of law, or probably still more of a history, through 
 60,000 words like the Pentateuch, or even 1000 words of 
 some small part of it, interpret one another in a way that 
 the other cannot approach. Nor is that all. The one is a 
 collection of widely scattered fragments, necessarily local and 
 temporary in their meaning, of which the real certain clue 
 has been lost for thousands of years. The other is one con- 
 nected series of thoughts of enduring value, the meaning of 
 which has been kept alive by continuous and connected use 
 through all that time. 
 
 This vast inferiority is far from compensated by these 
 monumental stones and metal plates being the originals^ 
 while we know that the books are only copies. Do I not 
 rightly have more confidence of reading what Shakespeare 
 wrote in a good copy of this year's imprint, than in some 
 torn and bleared anonymous scrap, just found in an old 
 chest,^ which may possibly have been of his time } And if 
 we have reason to believe (as we have abundantly in this case) 
 that it was the Will and care of God that the writings should 
 be accurately transmitted, there is no room left for doubt. 
 
 Was the art of writing with Moses then part of that 
 * wisdom of the Egyptians ' which he had learned in his 
 youth? We cannot reasonably so conjecture (there is, of 
 course, no proof of it). For the Egyptian writing was then 
 hieroglyphic, which could not possibly record words in 
 another language ; — nor that variation of this found in the 
 old papyri, and now commonly called hieratic or demotic, — 
 which also from its derivation cannot well represent any 
 sounds but those of its original language. What is still 
 more decisive, as Lenormant admits (and in this sub- 
 stantially all the profound students of language agree), ' no 
 abstract idea' (rather, no spiritual one), 'could by its very 
 
 ^ Yet that would be for the purpose of far more vahie than the brief discon- 
 nected and obscure Phoenician or Moabite inscriptions, compared with the Book 
 of Moses as to date.
 
 THE ORIGIN OF WRITING. 395 
 
 nature be expressed in that sort of writing.' — {L Alphabet 
 Phenicien, p. 12.) He even says (p. 10) that it ' cannot be 
 called writing.' It is equally incapable of recording History 
 in sequence — can only present disconnected scenes. 
 
 On the other hand, as it was God's gracious Will that 
 true Religion was now to be recorded in writing, both as to 
 Law and History, it is reasonable to suppose that He had 
 either supplied His prophet and His people with real, i.e. 
 alphabetical writing by other means already, or would do 
 it immediately now. In either case, like all else we have 
 that is good, it was and should be regarded as His gift. Is 
 it partly from repugnance to this thought of God as the 
 Giver of every good, that there is now such a prevailing dis- 
 like to allow a supernatural origin of language, — as forcing 
 it upon men immediately? I am not aware of seeing in any 
 account of language, as human invention, a devout and grate- 
 ful acknowledgment of its being the loving gift of God. 
 
 Or is it probable that the Israelites had already received 
 it from the people of Egypt during their stay in that 
 country, the Egyptians having slowly evolved it from their 
 hieroglyphics ? It seems to me, on the contrary, highly 
 improbable. The fact that the Egyptians themselves had 
 no alphabetic writing for many hundred years after, alone is 
 fairly decisive of this, notwithstanding some attempts (see 
 The Alphabet, etc., by Rev. I. Taylor) to account for this by 
 their revolutions and wars. Why has that very civilised 
 and ingenious people no written history for a thousand years 
 after, while the barbarous Hebrews have? We should 
 expect the reverse of this, — that those inventors, having 
 already found the wonderful idea, which even their ignorant 
 fugitive slaves had learned from them, would have gone on 
 to perfect and use it far more effectively. What has been 
 said of the struggle and antagonism of ideographic writing 
 against the alphabetic (see I. Taylor) points far more in the 
 direction of the impossibility of the former ever passing into 
 the latter, and shows that an alphabet was an altogether 
 un-Egyptian idea. Did the Israelites then invent it among 
 themselves in their bondage? This also is not probable. 
 But the greatest element of that improbability is in the fact 
 of its transcending all human ingenuity, as History through-
 
 396 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 out goes to show. There is a vast chasm between the 
 ideographic or picture-writing and the method of repre- 
 senting all words by the combination of a few characters 
 (letters) that stand for the different vocal elements, i.e. an 
 alphabet. The ingenuity of man has done the former, and 
 carried it to quite a pitch of refinement. It was so not only 
 with the Egyptians, but also the ancient Mexicans. And 
 then, perhaps (for the reading of demotic sentences is by no 
 means so certainly discovered), the need of abbreviating this, 
 brought the former by degrees to representing some sounds 
 or syllables by pictures that were rather arbitrary. We who 
 have the alphabetic secret might now mistake this for an 
 approach to the alphabet. It is not. It proceeds in a 
 different direction. The principles of the two are quite 
 opposite. The one is to call up an object into the mind by 
 some picture of it ; the other is to tell through the sight 
 certain elementary sounds of the voice, which form spoken 
 words. The compressed and refined sort of Egyptian hiero- 
 glyphics called demotic or hieratic, might therefore have gone 
 on for ever without suggesting an alphabet. The amusement 
 called a rebuSy then, so far from being such a process of 
 advancing from picture-writing to letter-writing, well con- 
 sidered, goes to show the impossibility of that supposed 
 process. Even now the rebus cannot work without being 
 helped out by alphabetic letters, syllables or words. It could 
 only apply to one language. Thus : ■<2>- "^-««- u r "^ 
 I fancy yoii are well. That is quite plain in English. But 
 imagine a Frenchman who knew only his own language, 
 trying to make it out {ceil ^ventail mer tt, r pints). Any 
 alphabet can, in the main, write the words of any language. 
 The Chinese characters also, whether at first picture-writing 
 or not, never at the best got beyond signs for syllables, 
 which is altogether another thing than an alphabet. How 
 plain this is, if only from the fact that this ingenious people 
 never did improve it into an alphabet in thousands of years, 
 even when more or less in contact with other peoples who 
 already had the art, and gave them the suggestion.^ Thus 
 
 ^ Nor do we at all know when or how they got the first idea of this syllabic 
 writing ; not unlikely from the Syrian alphabet, preferring this inferior invention 
 because singular and exclusive.
 
 THE ORIGIN OF WRITING. 397 
 
 my own clear judgment upon the facts, even as presented by 
 the Eiicydopcedia Britmmica^ Lenormant, and Rev. I. Taylor, 
 accords with what Dr. Wall says (ii. 300) : ' Man cannot 
 construct an alphabet by his own unaided powers of intellect 
 till he has discovered the principle of its construction ; and 
 he cannot find out the principle until he gets under his 
 observation a system of signs selected according to this very 
 principle, of which he is ignorant.' 
 
 There is in this and other particulars some analogy of 
 this question to that of the power of speech (see p. 138, etc.). 
 The main difficulty, the great gulf between the non-writing 
 and the writing man, as between the non-speaking and the 
 speaking, is in the first conception and attempt. After that 
 all is possible, and even easy, in the way of gradual perfection 
 of the art. The case is indeed much stronger as to speech^ 
 for that is essential to any religious and real human life. 
 The latter belongs to its great recovery and enhancement in 
 the mystery of the Redemption of all mankind, when it 
 pleased God that His Word, both as to Law, History, and 
 Grace, should be written. But there is also a double 
 analogy, in that the attempts to express thought by hiero- 
 glyphic figures and the like, are to real writing something as 
 inarticulate cries of feeling or thought are to real speech. In 
 each the first may be the vague aspirations after the other ; 
 but they never could conceive of it, much less achieve it 
 until a Divine secret is imparted. 
 
 As to the resemblances, rather faint and few — yet admit 
 them real, — of some of the Egyptian ideographs to alphabetic 
 letters, they are naturally enough accounted for by the 
 contact of the Israelites and other Shemitic peoples with 
 these rich and ingenious Egyptians. The idea and principle 
 of an alphabet once communicated to one people (the actual 
 forms of letters were of course more or less arbitrary, and 
 subject from the first to any sort of choice or change), such 
 imitations would he natural enough. 
 
 Then, utterly abandoning the notion of an Egyptian 
 origin, even by suggestion, what more reason have we to 
 suppose that other Shemites, temporary rulers of Egypt 
 (' Hyksos ' or what), in a like way, or in any way, discovered 
 the alphabet and communicated it to the Israelites ? None
 
 398 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 whatever. Common sense still requires us to look for the 
 origin among the people whom we know of as having the 
 art for hundreds of years, during which we have no proof 
 whatever that the others had.^ 
 
 We do find among these nations a most ancient tradition 
 which should be fairly weighed as one of the facts, namely, 
 that * the gods,' or Divine power, first taught the art of 
 writing to men. 
 
 It is indeed such a brilliant and wonderful idea — this of 
 representing the articulations and sounds of all our words 
 by a few simple marks, — that the first notion of it was not at 
 all likely to occur to more than one man in any age, if to 
 any one. And then he, as the inventor, would have never 
 ceased to be remembered and honoured for it. Yet instead 
 of this we have the humbler acknowledgment of it as a gift 
 from beings superior to all men. If it were ascribed to some 
 one of those who were believed to have once been men, and 
 then raised to Divine honours, we might suppose this the 
 gratitude given to a great inventor. But the tradition, on 
 the contrary, is simply the general one of a Divine gift. 
 Taking this with the mysterious difficulty of its first concep- 
 tion as already shown, it is an argument of no small force for 
 ascribing it to the direct loving gift of God. 
 
 This naturally carries us to consider the ancient tradition 
 of the Greeks, that the Alphabet was brought to them from 
 Phoenicia by Cadmus. (It makes no difference as to this 
 whether or not we allow the ingenious notion ^ that Cadmus 
 represents no person, but the sons of Kedem or the East.) 
 From this some would assume (they do not even take the 
 pains to infer) that the Hebrew writing also was derived 
 from their neighbours of Tyre and Sidon, as its inventors, or 
 as having themselves got it from Egypt in their commerce. 
 
 ^ This is the very bold, not to say desperate, conjecture to which some late 
 investigators (see The Alphabet, etc.) seem to have been driven by the 
 evident difficulty of connecting the hieroglyphical Egyptians vi^ith an art which 
 they never practised until taught it ages afterwards by some of these other 
 peoples, but which was known to all the Syrians, Assyrians, and Greeks long 
 before. But as they will not accept it from those in whose possession it was 
 then and continuously afterwards for ages (see even Ewald, i. 49, etc.) the very 
 convenient and elastic legend of the Hyksos, etc., is brought in to build a 
 scientific result upon a mere conjecture. 
 
 ^ See Stillingfleet, Origines Sacrae, i. 18, etc. etc.
 
 THE ORIGIN OF WRITING. 399 
 
 All that has been lately collected to support the new 
 theories, fairly goes to show that the Phoenician alphabet is 
 later than the primitive Hebrew, and derived from it. The 
 former, according to the legend, having been brought to 
 Greece about Moses' or Joshua's time, though it may have 
 been as late as Samuel's, 400 years after, may have been 
 simply the Hebrew, or one copied and a little varied from 
 it in those ages of considerable intercourse between the 
 Israelites and Phoenicians. From Mr. Taylor's own compari- 
 son of the Moabite Stone and the earliest Phoenician inscrip- 
 tions I should infer that the Hebrew alphabet was older 
 than the Phoenician. 
 
 • Returning then to the Israelites encamped before Sinai, 
 and now in possession of ' two tables of stone written with 
 the finger of God,' which Moses and the whole people — for 
 this is the necessary inference from all the incidents — could 
 intelligently read, we have still the question. How came 
 they first to have this great art of alphabetic language ? 
 Not from the Egyptians. Not from their own discovery. 
 Not from the Phoenicians. We are to choose then between 
 leaving the question altogether without solution or con- 
 jecture, or else, which to a devout and grateful mind is of 
 necessity almost the same thing, thinking of it as a direct 
 gift of God. Whether first by His writing upon the tables 
 of stone, as Dr. Wall maintains, or at some earlier time, is 
 another and inferior question. That the former is so precise 
 in time and august in circumstance is certainly in its favour, 
 but, as will be objected by some to the whole idea, it is not 
 so told precisely as we might suppose so great an event 
 would be. On the contrary, there are some things in the 
 Divine History which do not seem quite in accord with it. 
 
 But before we notice these it will be well to notice again 
 (see p. 147, and also 364) what will occur to many minds 
 as a fatal objection to this account of the origin of writing 
 in either view ; namely, the assumption that there was no 
 occasion for this miracle as the same thing could be effected 
 by human invention. This repugnance to crediting a Divine 
 miracle, and demanding what men will allow to be a sufficient 
 occasion (or necessity) for it, meets us at every point in our 
 age. But is it as reasonable as it is commonly allowed to
 
 400 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 be even by Christian writers ? Is there not something in it 
 which is very presumptuous in one of us toward God, than 
 which nothing can be more ?/;2reasonable ? It is indeed a 
 part of the common sense of Religion, in the way of rever- 
 ence, to consider that God does nothing out oi the usual 
 order of Nature except for a great purpose, and in some way 
 for our spiritual good. This, of course, rejects the supersti- 
 tions of magic, or of looking for miracles in what is trivial, 
 or neglecting the study of the vast and beautiful order in 
 which He keeps ordinary things in movement, and gives us 
 opportunities for science and for forethought. But it is a 
 mere abuse of this truth to insist upon it as one of our 
 intellectual rights, that we shall be satisfied as to a sufficient 
 occasion, before we will believe a miracle of God. This turn 
 of mind is exactly contrary to that spirit of humility and 
 faith which is alone reasonable in us toward Him. And it 
 is very misleading as to the discovery of what is true. It 
 would be more in that direction to presume, that whatever 
 He chose to do supernaturally must therefore be believed 
 to have a sufficient occasion. The other notion is very likely 
 to blind us to the most important facts. We then reject 
 what is plainly before our eyes, because we assume that it is 
 impossible. 
 
 The common argument, if it can be called so, is, that 
 all men in former ages, and vast numbers in our own time, 
 superstitiously believe that everything they do not under- 
 stand is the immediate act of Divine power. So in a great 
 sense it is, as well also in what we do understand in regard 
 to its ordinary causes and consequences, or, as we say, 
 ' general laws.' To see God in everything is the highest 
 wisdom, as to see Him in nothing (and in degree as little 
 as possible) is the worst ?/«reason. (See The Reign of God 
 ?iot the Reign of Law, p. 222.) But it is an utterly false 
 deduction from the follies which men commit in false reli- 
 gion, to the truths in true Religion. Thus : ' Because men 
 in a perversion of the greatest truth, thought that their 
 many imaginary deities caused thunder or pestilence by 
 their arbitrary will, therefore it is superstitious for those 
 who know and worship the only true God to believe that 
 He literally caused His voice to be heard from the clouds at
 
 THE ORIGIN OF WRITING. 401 
 
 Sinai, or then first gave men the lesson of written language 
 for them to improve upon further ; or that they cannot 
 reasonably believe this wonder of God until they jealously 
 examine it to see whether, in tJieir judgment , there was a 
 sufficient occasion.' In trath, without such faith in God as a 
 little child has in a good father, we never can really begin to 
 know the greatest truth ; and with such faith these objec- 
 tions vanish. 
 
 And yet, so far as this can reasonably enter into our 
 inquiry, there never was a plainer instance of such an 
 adequate occasion. It was now that written Law was to 
 begin ; that written (that is, real) History was to begin. 
 Then He Who bestowed these gifts upon men would give 
 with them their necessary condition. He would not leave us 
 to 'feel after' this for uncertain ages 'if haply we might find' 
 it (for all experience had suggested that man never would 
 in fact, by his gropings, lay hold of this master-key of 
 assured and accumulating truth). Alas, it is much used by 
 them now, many of the more intellectual of them, to obscure 
 that greatest truth 1 
 
 Then too a notion that the One Who made this contriving 
 man for a purpose, and to Whom all that he can or ever will 
 do is always known, that He could only avail Himself for 
 His purposes of what this wonderful creature would happen 
 to do, and when he would do it, is the weakest sort of that 
 ' anthropomorphism ' about the Divine, which these very 
 objectors think so foolish. 
 
 The supernatural in its place being then just as rational 
 and credible as the natural, is vastly more so where by the 
 facts and fair probabilities the other is out of its place. And 
 that seems to be the case before us. That God might, if He 
 had so chosen, have so made man that he would have con- 
 trived language by an improving process in the lapse of 
 time, until it was needed, as at this time, is certainly true. 
 But that He did not, in fact, seems the more probable. That 
 He was then under any sort of compulsion to wait any 
 longer, or at all, as soon as we consider the notion, we see 
 is absurd. It is virtually denying that the Absolute and 
 Almighty One can do anything except what certain of His 
 creatures have found out (or think they have), to be His 
 
 2 c
 
 402 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 usual way with them, than which nothing can be more 
 against the common sense of humility and reverence. 
 
 Therefore if this wonderful fact (for to treat such plain 
 words as not a record of fact, because we have made up our 
 minds to the absurd assumption exposed above, is only 
 another instance of that absurdity), if the writing on the 
 tables of stone with the finger of God, was absolutely the 
 first writing mentioned in History, I should think Dr. Wall's 
 conclusion almost irresistible. 
 
 But we have in the narrative preceding several notices 
 which perhaps exclude that condition. On the way from 
 Egypt to Sinai, the Bedouin Amalekites had interposed and 
 attacked the company of Israel, but been driven back and 
 routed. Then we have this record : ' And the Lord said 
 unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, etc.'^ We 
 may suppose that this writing was not then done or to be 
 done, and therefore waited for the discovery of that art a few 
 days later. Yet that is not the most direct implication. 
 Even as to the general assent of almost all writers now, that 
 there is no trace of writing among the descendants of 
 Abraham until after their stay in Egypt, the * signet ' of 
 Judah (Gen. xxxviii. i8, etc.) shows that they had the use 
 of some sort of significant engraved characters at least 250 
 years before Moses.^ This indeed may have been in the 
 * ideographic ' way. Dr. Wall also meets this quite inge- 
 niously. Ewald and his school have a shorter way with all 
 such difficulties by assigning whatever is against their 
 notions to a ' Third,' ' Fourth,' * Fifth,' or other ' narrator,' 
 who altered the original history. The mere negative evi- 
 dence, i.e. nothing being told of writing before, is far from 
 conclusive. In fact, those who are so sure that the Book of 
 Moses is made up from earlier 'documents,' testify to earlier 
 writing, though / suppose this may as well have been by 
 oral traditions as by ' documents.' 
 
 But then there is the Book of Job, which, as we have seen, 
 bears plain marks of being as old as Moses, and probably 
 older. Dr. Wall is confident that this was first ideographi- 
 cally set down, and then rendered into alphabetic writing 
 by Moses. That is ingenious, yet not altogether satisfactory. 
 
 ^ Exod. xvii, 14. ^ Also Exod. xiii. 9, 16 — 'a sign,' ' a token.'
 
 THE ORIGIN OF WRITING. 403 
 
 We must probably be content always to leave the origin of 
 the Book in a sublime obscurity. The 'newer criticism' (and 
 some of the old) has that short and easy method of despatch- 
 ing such difficulties, by deciding that whatever was, from its 
 antiquity, in the way of some notions, was to be set down for 
 a modern fiction. But, as we have already seen, this is not 
 according to the common sense of these facts. 
 
 And besides this very fact of its early authorship, there 
 is a passage in the Book of Job (xix. 23, etc.) which must be 
 taken into account : ' Oh that my words were now written ! 
 Oh that they were printed in a book ! that they were graven 
 with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever ! ' If we had 
 only the latter clause of this sentence, we might interpret, 
 according to Dr. Wall's conjecture, that Job had heard of 
 the curious art of the Egyptians in cutting inscriptions with 
 hieroglyphics in their great monuments, some probably of 
 as early date as this, and which might have been seen by Job, 
 — being discovered now by travellers upon the Arabian rocks, 
 where it is supposed they were made when the Egyptians 
 had garrisons in those parts. (The impossibility of so noting 
 just such a sentence as Job had in mind, being no other than 
 that great saying about the Redeemer of Jus soul from death, 
 which follows immediately after, of course did not occur to 
 Dr. Wall.) But the first part of the sentence as to ' words 
 written ' and ' in a book ' (the very words always used in 
 the Books of Moses for alphabetic writing) is not so easily 
 adjusted to this. Yet Job might even have heard of the 
 papyrus rolls, and had them in mind as to 'writing.' Still, 
 the more natural reference is to this very art of alphabetic 
 writing (the Shemitic), as being known already in those ages 
 among a kindred people. This being so, all these his words 
 may in fact have gone down by tradition and memory, as 
 long compositions may with wonderful exactness pass down 
 for generations (witness the first transmission of the Vedas 
 in India — see M. Muller's India) ; or, there was alphabetic 
 writing even then among the men of true Religion in Arabia. 
 
 We may therefore reasonably leave these minor ques- 
 tions undetermined, while we accept, as the most reasonable 
 conjecture of the beginning of alphabetic writing, that 
 God gave it to that chosen people to whom He would intrust
 
 404 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 for all mankind that great gift of His love and mercy to our 
 race, — His Word Written.^ 
 
 • The more I study this method of Christian writers of our age, of always 
 dealing in argument with the critics who believe the least — by surrendering to 
 their assumptions, and never returning to the other ground, — the plainer it is 
 that it involves a latent fallacy. That is, unless we mean by this a covert 
 acquiescence in their position ; and if so, why not say so at first ? 
 
 Thus I have to understand the Rev. Mr. Taylor {The Alphabet, etc.) when he 
 says : ' Without making any assumption as to the authorship of the Pentateuch, 
 and avoiding disputed questions as to the date and composition of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures,' etc., and then proceeds in all his argument upott the 'assumption' 
 that Ewald and his school are right in their 'assumptions' of a late date, etc. 
 Why is he who assumes the negative of any postulate in Religion, of course 
 upon the right ground of reason, to which we are bound to descend and force 
 him by argument, if we can, to admit the positive? If that is right, the utter 
 sceptic who denies everything — not only God's being, but the world's, ours and 
 his own, — is the only true reasoner to begin with. Yet allow this, and there is 
 no reasoning. 
 
 We have to assume something or other. The sceptic assumes the negative as 
 much as I do the positive ; the only difference is, that I assume the truth, and he 
 a falsehood. That is common sense, which if we do not begin with, all our pro- 
 cesses and conclusions are worthless. I do not deny that when we set out to 
 recover the few who have so lost themselves in the quagmire of doubting every- 
 thing, that they must have a special treatment, like the persuasion which must 
 be used with a lunatic for his good, that a little different treatment is necessary. 
 But for general investigation of facts, which I understand to be the Rev. Mr. 
 Taylor's object, we ought not to assume that he is on the safest ground of reason 
 who denies the most of what we have learned to believe in our religion, but 
 exactly the opposite. 
 
 This is the result of my own attempt to examine honestly and patiently as to 
 the facts, that criticism of the Divine Writings and History which assigns to 
 them the lowest date, and denies the old belief as to their authorship. And 
 how indeed is the other view, which Mr. Taylor does not decide against, treated 
 fairly by him, when it is excluded from the investigation, and the other 'as- 
 sumed ' to be correct, with an instant and necessary effect upon all the argument 
 that follows? His first volume is largely occupied with this very question of 
 the beginning of alphabetic writing (with the rest we have nothing to do). He 
 is very positive that the Hebrew, Phoenician, and all other writing came from 
 the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians, who improved upon these until out of them 
 came alphabetic letters. I have read his argument carefully, but it entirely fails 
 to convince me. 
 
 Yet at least one might well expect a minister of the Christian Church to give 
 great weight to the Holy Scriptures in matters of the earliest history. And so I 
 suppose he means to do. There are in the main three views of this to choose 
 between. One is to treat the Book of Moses as of no, or of very slight, value. 
 Another is to accord it the very highest such value, as not only the best of such 
 human writing, but more unqualified and certain truth than any other history we 
 have. Another is to yield to others who will not allow it this value (though we 
 do), and so to use it as history of much less value than it is according to our 
 religious convictions. But that is not what this study so far has conducted us
 
 THE ORIGIN OF WRITING. 405 
 
 to. If we thought the so-called writings of Moses a recent, and therefore 
 unauthentic composition or compilation, then of course we should treat them 
 as such. But if we do think otherwise, then, whatever others may think, we 
 must reason from the whole facts as we understand them. This seems but 
 common sense. 
 
 Thus Mr. Taylor's whole investigation proceeds upon the supposition of 
 none of the Hebrew writing being earlier than the days of David. He assumes 
 that the Moabite Stone is the first historic writing — say 800 years after Moses, 
 Conclusions drawn from this are quite preposterous to those who have no doubt 
 that Moses wrote these books many ages earlier (or who believe, indeed, that he 
 wrote anything, as even Ewald allows that he did). 
 
 Nor is this all. He makes no mention of or slightest allusion to the express 
 statement of Moses that the Ten Commandments were ' written with the finger 
 of God.' One might allow what we have in the first books of Scripture to be 
 the Word of God, and yet suppose that it was not written down until long after. 
 But that he should take no sort of notice of this, is in the circumstances exactly 
 equivalent to saying to other investigators : ' I concede that this is no fact of 
 History. It is a myth or a superstitious fable ; at best it is not historic fact, and 
 has no bearing upon the facts of this case ; it is not even such a respectable myth 
 as we sometimes study for suggestions of History ; it is not worth alluding to in 
 any way.' 
 
 The more I consider this the plainer it is. We, at least, to whom that is a 
 fact, must give it all the attention which such a fact deserves.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 BOOK OF MOSES — TEN COMMANDMENTS. 
 
 Going back a little (see p. 387), it is evident that the 
 great multitude who had travelled out of Egypt under Moses 
 as a leader, and a pillar of fire and cloud as their guide, had 
 never in all their lives before thought so much about their 
 religion as within the three months past. The power and 
 glory of God — the True and Only, ' the God of all the earth ' 
 — had been continually before their eyes, in His messages 
 to them through Moses, and His great miracles to terrify 
 Pharaoh and to liberate them. All the true traditions had 
 been revived in their hearts ; all that had come down to 
 them by father and son, from Jacob and from Abraham, 
 from Noah and from Adam ; all these things were brought 
 out in their thoughts. We need not suppose, and we cannot 
 well suppose, that the greatest of this truth was fully in 
 their minds ; that it was more than very partially and 
 feebly there. Yet neither, on the other hand, can we reason- 
 ably doubt that much of it was in their memories. Thus 
 they knew, in contrast with the corrupt religion of Egypt, 
 that the sun was not God, nor the moon, nor any of the stars, 
 nor beasts, however useful or terrible, nor departed souls of 
 powerful men, nor (as the real Egyptian religion also taught) 
 the absolute king of the time, the terrible Pharaoh. Him 
 they had even seen drowned with all his mighty army in the 
 Red Sea, by the Will and Word of the Only True God. And 
 that God had been naming Himself and showing Himself 
 every way ' their God' ; hearing their cries of helpless distress, 
 pitying and delivering them. Now they were no longer 
 slaves in a strange and cruel land, but a free nation marching 
 back to the land of their fathers under His command and
 
 BOOK OF MOSES— TEN COMMANDMENTS. 407 
 
 favour. Yet that land they knew was full of fierce tribes, of 
 false religion and wicked life, whom they as soldiers of the 
 true God must dispossess. 
 
 And now to this tradition, putting much of it upon record, 
 and yet in a measure quite superseding it, is to be added 
 a nation's religion and laws. On the very eve of their 
 Exodus a great public rite of the kind was established, the 
 Passover — the sacrifice to God by each family of a lamb : 
 this to be eaten by them as a feast that night, and on every 
 anniversary of it after. That solemn mystery of bloody 
 sacrifices, as an appeal to the mercy of God for the forgive- 
 ness of our sins, had come down to them from the Religion 
 of the Patriarchs (see p. 268), and is really the great thing 
 in the Hebrew Passover. We Christians know this better 
 than they could, when we continue it in its greater form in 
 the Sacrament of Our Lord's Passion and Death. 
 
 Even during the march to Sinai God had also given them 
 certain rules for the Sabbath-day. But in arriving before 
 that mountain we have also arrived at a great epoch as well 
 as event in the History of Religion. For now the Voice of 
 God is to be heard, not in a dream or vision, or even directly 
 by one man, but by a vast multitude. He speaks not merely 
 to a patriarch, nor even Prophet, but to a nation. Even more, 
 He writes His words of the Ten Commandments for their 
 reading, and has them laid up in an ark of covenant among 
 them. And He has His great Prophet Moses to write in 
 books the very words which He speaks to him at length — of 
 religious rites and of political law. 
 
 It is wonderfully interesting to us every way that these 
 books have come down safe to us through all these genera- 
 tions. That which literary men are so enchanted with in the 
 conjectural, and in every case somewhat questionable, anti- 
 quity of Chinese or Hindu books, they may be sure of in the 
 books of Moses. And thus this is a great epoch in the His- 
 tory of Religion, as the beginning of having the Word of 
 God in the enduring and historical form of Holy Writings or 
 Scriptures. As we shall see later, other religions have had 
 their ' scriptures.' But those are at least later in time, if not 
 imitations, more or less conscious, of these. Discarding mere 
 critical conjectures, and treating the facts with common
 
 4o8 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 sense, we have now one Book of Moses. It became, long 
 after, a fashion, which has its convenience, to make a division 
 of this into five parts, and call them the ' Five Books of 
 Moses,' or ' Pentateuch.' 
 
 The first of these, commonly called Genesis, considered 
 by itself, is altogether unique and incomparable ; among 
 other things in this, that no man could write it (unless it 
 were a ' blasphemous fable ') except as ' moved by the 
 Holy Ghost ' to know things that God only can tell. Apply 
 the theory and conjecture of earlier records and tradition to 
 the utmost, and they cannot reach the first part of it. Who- 
 ever finds in it a true history of this world from its very 
 first, as to which all other like writings are folly and fable, 
 has a treasure incomparable. He, and He alone, can under- 
 stand mankind and all subsequent history. Therefore 
 Genesis is a very valuable part of ' God's Word Written.' 
 
 But the most interesting part of the writing of Moses, at 
 the actual time of that writing, and to its first readers, was in 
 the other ' books.' It by no means follows from this that 
 those parts concern us now in the same proportion. To us, 
 whose chief light is that of the Gospel and the Church of 
 Christ, they still are of great use. But to those Israelites, 
 and to the ancient world for long after, they were almost 
 all. 
 
 Thus this Word of God, * as He spake unto Moses,' has 
 two distinct parts, the one of laws and ceremonies for the 
 nation Israel, the other of what was, and always had been 
 and always will be, true for all men. (And this division is 
 also plainly taught us in the New Testament.) The whole 
 is so far superior in truth, purity, and dignity, to what we 
 can find in all other so-called sacred books of antiquity, that 
 it would be a sort of miracle if it were a mere human compo- 
 sition. There are no silly fables mingled with its serious 
 precepts ; no filthy suggestions to or allowances of human 
 baseness ; no pompous and empty declamations. What it 
 tells us of God is always spiritual, lofty, and beautiful. 
 What it bids us do to our neighbour is just what would 
 make men happy with one another. 
 
 Yet the immediate purpose of organising and keeping 
 a nation, which, in the midst of powers that were all against
 
 BOOK OF MOSES— TEN COMMANDMENTS. 409 
 
 this, and in spite of the common human nature with the 
 same opposing tendency, should not be idolatrous and super- 
 stitious, but should for many generations yet preserve the 
 knowledge and worship of the Only True God, and the 
 honour of His Commandments, and the (still undisclosed, 
 though suggested and promised) mystery of His pardon of 
 men's sins, and salvation from them by Sacrifice and Grace, 
 — this purpose was not at all neglected to give prominence 
 to the primitive and universal truth. 
 
 So the Polity and Ritual of the Israelites is something 
 altogether sui generis. Men elsewhere never invented any- 
 thing like it. They did not here. Moses was a wonderful, 
 a very great man ; but this invention was evidently far 
 beyond his powers. Here I may notice a theory of some 
 writers — which even Christians have caught up as if it were 
 supported by the Divine saying, ' And Moses was learned 
 in all the wisdom of the Egyptians ' (Acts vii. 22), — that the 
 Jewish Law was only an adjustment of the religious and 
 political precepts of the priests of Egypt, — the wisdom and 
 refinement of thought which was preserved among them, 
 notwithstanding the low superstitions of the public religion. 
 
 But nothing could be less in accord with the facts. ^ At 
 almost every point there is a striking difference between the 
 Hebrew and the Egyptian ideas, while the resemblances 
 are of the fewest and most faint. The whole general effect 
 is in strong contrast. To see this one needs only to read 
 the text of the two side by side — the Book of Moses and 
 ' the Book of the Dead ' — with such parts of the inscriptions 
 and papyri as treat of such matters. The latter sometimes 
 express a vague notion of a Supreme Something which is 
 over all else ; but actual prayer and adoration are not 
 addressed to this, but to the persons of Ra, Osiris, etc., 
 whose images and exploits are kept always in sight. 
 
 On the contrary, the former knows only One Divine 
 Person, to Whom all worship is to be given, and calls any 
 other object of worship 'a lie ' and ' an abomination.' The 
 latter repeats various abstract proverbs about what men 
 ought to do to one another, while in fact the many were 
 cruelly oppressed by the few, and the private morals of all were 
 
 ^ See also supra, p. 285, etc.
 
 4IO BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 filthy. The latter, without any such boasting professions, 
 provides practically for justice between men, and announces 
 very plain laws of God as to purity, honesty, and kindness, 
 as spoken from the cloudy and thundering Heaven above 
 in the ears of all, and such thoughts about God as knowing 
 all their thoughts and judging them thereby, as have far 
 more power to keep men from evil than mere fine sayings. 
 
 The most striking instance of this religious goodness is 
 in that very express law, that the Israelites should ' love the 
 Lord their God with all their hearts,' etc. Nothing like 
 this appears in all Egyptian or other heathen morals. If it 
 were the invention of Moses, it would be the most wonderful 
 contrivance in all History to make a people good. This, if 
 not recognised here as the original law of all human life, but 
 regarded as merely a national institution, that the Israelites 
 should have this devotion to their special deity on account 
 of his special favour to them — take it as that, if one will — 
 and there is nothing like it in all History. Such a supreme 
 devotion to one person, and he imagined to be all-powerful, 
 perfectly just, pure and gracious, is an unequalled means of 
 restraining men from the faults opposed to this goodness. 
 However Moses came to put forth this law, he certainly did 
 not get it from ' the wisdom of the Egyptians.' 
 
 There is another striking point of difference in them. I 
 do not at all understand — it remains to me a great mystery — 
 why so little is said, or even implied, in ' the Law and the 
 Prophets ' about our future and principal life. This fact — 
 for such it is — does not at all prove that the people of Israel 
 had had no thought for a thousand years before this of 
 any human existence except in this world, or that God 
 at this time taught them to regard only ' the things which 
 are seen and temporal.' We may say that we know the 
 contrary of that, and that the traditional religion of the 
 Patriarchs which the Israelites inherited contained this 
 truth of the future life. It is quite unreasonable to suppose 
 that so great a matter of the primitive Religion absolutely 
 disappeared from among the Hebrews at this time. It 
 survived, as it does even until now, in a distorted way, in 
 all the false religions. Observe how this was so among the 
 Egyptians in their rites of burial (see supra, p. 289).
 
 BOOK OF MOSES— TEN COMMANDMENTS. 41 1 
 
 And so, had Moses contrived his law out of what his 
 Egyptian education had done for him, the most prominent 
 matter of all would have been this of judgment upon a man's 
 destiny after death. The silence of his book about all this, 
 may have been, for one thing, to separate more plainly 
 between Egyptian and Israelite religion. 
 
 Further, as to the notion of some writers, that the Old 
 Testament religion excluded the idea of future judgment and 
 life, we should consider that, beside the allusions to this 
 great truth scattered all through those writings. Our Lord 
 Himself, its best Interpreter and real Author,gives us tounder- 
 stand that the true Religion always had included it. When 
 He quotes from the Book of Moses the saying, ' I am the 
 God of Abraham,' etc., as implying our greater future life, He 
 says in effect that it was so meant and so understood then. 
 
 Take with this the thought of man learning his first 
 Religion in Eden, and from the voice of the Lord God. Con- 
 sider Enoch taken (whither ?) by God, because he ' walked 
 with Him.' Read the great saying of Job : ' I know that 
 my Redeemer liveth,' etc. Remember the soul of Samuel 
 reappearing to Saul. Hear David saying of his child : ' I 
 shall go to him ' ; and Solomon saying that when the dust 
 returns to the earth, ' then shall the spirit return to God Who 
 gave it' Even more : listen to David singing in the Temple, 
 and the Prophets proclaiming in the Name of God such things 
 as : ' When I awake in Thy likeness, I shall be satisfied ' ; 
 ' Thou wilt not leave my soul in the place of the dead,' etc. ; 
 and Isaiah's predicting of the mighty king of Babylon, 
 that after death his soul should meet those of his vanquished 
 enemies, and hear them say, ' Art thou also become weak as 
 we ? Art thou become like unto us ?' (xiv. 10.) 
 
 And yet there does remain the great mystery that so 
 little is said of the other life in all the Old Testament. 
 There is nothing to be said by us of that, but that it is 
 like the very delay of Redemption for four thousand years, 
 — a mystery of the Gracious Will of God of the first magni- 
 tude ; and there we leave it. 
 
 The great day at Mount Sinai, one of the most sublime and 
 solemn transactions in all history, is best told in the Divine 
 words (Exod. xix.-xx.). It is well called ' The Giving of the
 
 412 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Law.' Yet the words of law then given, as written in the 
 Holy Book, are not near the hundredth part of ' the Law that 
 came by Moses,' as that was known and described to all the 
 Israelites from his time to Our Lord's, and as it is in our 
 hands now as a part of God's Word Written. In the midst 
 of that which is all from God, we all recognise a great 
 supremacy in those very words, uttered then with a voice not 
 man's from among black clouds which hung around the 
 mountain top, and which were first written^ not even with 
 the great prophet's hand in a book, but on slabs of stone 
 ' with the finger of God.' And all believers in God since, and 
 down to our time, understand that the supremacy of the Ten 
 Commandments is not merely or mainly on account of this 
 exceeding honour in the manner of the revelation, but that 
 such honour was meant to mark the superior importance of 
 this part of the Law of Moses. For this reason it alone 
 survives in the Gospel as part of the law of Christians. 
 
 Yet there would be a great defect in this last statement 
 if we were to omit a certain exception, inattention to which 
 has perhaps caused the general misapprehension to which 
 reference was made just before. There are certainly two 
 brief sentences, in widely separated parts of that merely 
 written law, and given rather in an incidental way, which are 
 greater, older, and more general in authority than the Ten 
 Commandments. In fact, those Commandments, and all else 
 in the Word of God and the duty of man, are included in 
 them. Of this as a fact there can be no question among 
 Christians as soon as they attend to the words of their Lord 
 in the Gospels (St. Matt. xxii. 38-40, etc. etc.). 
 
 This is without doubt one of the profound mysteries of 
 what is all a Divine mystery transcending human under- 
 standing. But it is conclusive as to the law of Moses 
 being (in that Will of God which was preparing through 
 all this history the Advent of the Saviour of men) in 
 some respects a narrowing and lowering of the primitive 
 and perfect Religion. It is really no more so in this than in 
 the very fact of its being the religion for only one small 
 nation, instead of for all mankind, while ' the nations sit in 
 darkness ' so long ; or than the considerable obscuration and 
 neglect of the life to come in this same religion of the
 
 BOOK OF MOSES— TEN COMMANDMENTS. 413 
 
 Israelites. It is altogether unreasonable to reject the fact 
 because it is mysterious (or rather because it runs counter 
 to a presupposed theory of 'development'). All such 
 objections fall at once before the principle, well established 
 in Chap. III., that we are to understand everything in the 
 Old Testament from the point of view of Our Lord's words 
 in the Gospel. 
 
 It seemed good to Him at this step in the History of 
 Religion to leave the two cardinal laws of love, as it were, in 
 a sort of aside position, and to place before this chosen 
 people's eyes, with most sublime and awful emphasis, as the 
 centre and soul of their religion, ten great rules of conduct, — 
 His chief commandments then. Each of these had always 
 been indeed one of the main matters of good life according 
 to God's Will (see p. 222). Yet even in the very form of 
 them now was set something which indicated that they were 
 not limited to that people and that age of the world. Still 
 it was His purpose that when the spiritual kingdom of the 
 Gospel, of which Israel was only a foreshadow — and to be 
 of most importance as a historical illustration of that in its 
 day — was set up, even in all its greater light and power, 
 these Ten Commandments were to be taught and kept as 
 one of the great lessons of duty. 
 
 The event which was now in one aspect to enlarge the 
 true Religion from a family to a nation, was in another, for 
 the time, to contract it from the common blessing of all 
 nations to the special privilege of one. In this mysterious 
 adjustment to ' the hardness of men's hearts,' great emphasis 
 was placed upon the Only and True God being ' tJie God of 
 Israel,' which really did not deny, or even obscure, His 
 being the ' Maker of all things— Judge of all men', but was 
 a further appeal to the devotion of those of whom He says 
 that He is 'not ashamed to be called tJieir God,' for whom 
 He does special ' wonders ' of favour, gives them better laws 
 than any other nation had, and for many ages keeps them in 
 this favour, in spite not only of their weakness of good 
 purpose, but of their frequent perverse and obstinate dis- 
 obedience. 
 
 In the First Commandment we have this set in great 
 prominence : ' I am the Lord (Jehovah) thy God, Which have
 
 414 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of 
 bondage : thou shalt have no other gods before Me.' As 
 this was that same 'Jehovah ' Whom they and their fathers 
 had before worshipped as the Creator and only real God, 
 they of course knew that this no more implied that He was 
 only a patron-god of this new and small nation — while Apis 
 and Osiris were in like manner the true gods of Egypt (or 
 Dagon of the Philistines) — than / mean this now, when I 
 call Him ' My God.' This appropriation of Him by every 
 devout soul has a great and beautiful meaning, which 
 entirely agrees with His being the Only God, and the God 
 of all. 
 
 The Second Commandment has less that can be observed 
 as local or temporary. So far from being any concession to 
 the actual associations of that people, or to any growing 
 habits, ' hardening their hearts ' against earlier and nobler 
 thoughts, it is set in most direct opposition to all that 
 notion of representative worship by which any sort of religion 
 of or with images can be excused. This of itself shows the 
 falseness of some men's theory, that Moses used the religious 
 notions of the Eg}'ptians in framing a religion for the 
 Israelites. On the contrary, this Voice from Heaven refers 
 them to their own old Religion and that of their fathers, and 
 to what they had long known by tradition of the displeasure 
 of that Only God Whose Voice they now hear, as the reason 
 for their avoiding with abhorrence this religion of * graven 
 images,' which prevailed in all the rich and powerful nations. 
 
 The special warning given in this Commandment against 
 its transgression is so far from being meant only for that 
 people, that this is the greatest announcement we have in all 
 the Holy Scriptures of a most important fact as to all man- 
 kind. We are reminded that men's wrong acts do not injure 
 only themselves, or those of their own generation, but de- 
 scend by a kind of unhappy inheritance to their later posterity. 
 Yet, while this Most Majestic, Only, and Almighty God is so 
 severe in that way to men as sinners. He is far moj'e gracious 
 to us and our children^ in degree as we leave this hatred of 
 Him (which all evil-doing implies), and try to return to 
 loving Him in keeping His Commandments. While He 
 * visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the
 
 BOOK OF MOSES— TEN COMMANDMENTS. 415 
 
 third and fourth generation,' He 'shows mercy unto thousands 
 (of generations?) of them that love Him.' His punishing 
 justice in that way is very terrible, but His sweet gracious- 
 ness to humble and penitent souls, and those dear to them, 
 is as a tJioiisand to three or four of the other. Let us reflect 
 that we now have the Divine word LOVE, uttered most 
 powerfully from the clouds, flames, and thunders of Sinai. 
 This Commandment is therefore a very spiritual one, sur- 
 viving in all its force as the law for Christians. 
 
 The Third might seem to a thoughtless reader of our 
 time merely Jewish, and now obsolete. It tells only of a 
 word ; and what are words ? But in degree as one is 
 deeply and wisely religious, with such penitence, humility, 
 and reverence as become us in any of our thoughts about 
 God, we shall see that this is far otherwise. While any- 
 thing which we can see used to represent Him in our 
 worship would degrade that worship, and is strictly for- 
 bidden us in the preceding Commandment, there are certain 
 words which are holy, and even Divine, which do rightly 
 represent Him Whom we adore. The whole religion of 
 Israel is full of glory to the Name of God. The Gospel 
 accepts this, and in fact greatly exalts it in the mystery of 
 the ' Holy, Blessed, and Glorious Trinity.' It is 'attheTV^;//^ 
 of Jesus ' that ' every knee shall bow.' It is a part, the 
 greatest part, of that deep wonder, of the conjunction of lan- 
 guage and thought in all that is greatest in human life. It 
 was therefore a right tradition of the Jews which understood 
 this Commandment always as not a mere prohibition of false 
 oaths, but as requiring such reverence for God as present in 
 every mention of His Name. So this is an eternal law of 
 religion. It is the bulwark of all real reverence. Show us a 
 man or a people by whom that Name is not uttered with 
 more reverence of thought and act than other words, and we 
 have one that is ' without God in the world ' in that degree, 
 as to real thought and real love of Him. There is no limi- 
 tation of this Commandment in its nature to the Israelites 
 and their age. To each of us, to every soul, He is ' the 
 Lord Thy God.' 
 
 The same thing is true in a very high degree of the 
 Fourth. It is certainly from want of sufficient consideration
 
 4i6 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 that some otherwise thoughtful Christians have taken this 
 to be the one of the Commandments which was then new, 
 arbitrary, national, and temporary, for the people of Israel, 
 to cease with the Gospel, or at least not to survive for Chris- 
 tians. For if there were nothing at all in the history preceding 
 to suggest this, any one of us would be wise to ponder the 
 question, why it was that God's Voice should utter from 
 Heaven, among the few great principles of piety and virtue 
 that were as a whole to survive in the Gospel, when all that 
 was limited to the nation Israel passed away, a matter of 
 mere weekly ritual. In this view we might far rather expect 
 the great feast of the Passover (if not the other yearly solem- 
 nities) to be so honoured. But actually finding in the 
 sublime words of the Voice of God a reference of its occasion 
 to what the Lord did in the Creation, and to what is written in 
 the Divine History of that, he would be quite decided that 
 this was probably something 'made for man,' as such, and not 
 merely enjoined upon Israelites in their temporary polity. In 
 fact, this is the one of the Ten Commandments which has that 
 supreme stamp of the primitive and universal truth. It is the 
 one of them that refers back to the beginning of mankind, and 
 gives us the ' reason why ' they should keep holy a certain part 
 of their time; that then — when He had completed this univer- 
 sal world, and crowned all the rest of that Creation by mak- 
 ing man in His own image — He hallowed each seventh day. 
 On the other hand, that which was national for Israel, 
 and so temporary, though not surviving in the great ' people 
 of God,' 'out of all nations and kindreds and tongues 
 and peoples ' in the Church, would seem to be the sole men- 
 tion here of rest from labour, and describing this among an 
 agricultural people, and one among whom slavery was a 
 matter of course — ' thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant,' 
 etc. etc. The idea of God's hallowing ixvae must surely mean 
 much more than ordering the mere cessation of toil. When 
 He Who made us to love Him in all we do consecrates a cer- 
 tain part of our time, and commands us to ' keep it holy,' our 
 reverent thought must be at once of worshipping Him — of 
 thoughts and words about Him — for which this pause in the 
 toil of ordinary life for its needs, gives us the precious oppor- 
 tunity, which might otherwise be continually snatched from
 
 BOOK OF MOSES— TEN COMMANDMENTS. 417 
 
 US by what seem the needs, and certainly are the temptations, 
 of worldly care or of the hope of gain. 
 
 It is, I believe, a traditional fact that all the best of the 
 Israelites in their best days understood that the ceasing of 
 labour on the Sabbath was not for mere idleness or amuse- 
 ment, but in order that this might be above all a day of re- 
 ligion. And then there is a remarkable passage of the prophet 
 Isaiah (Iviii. 13) which was not the Word of God only to the 
 men of Judah, or of that time, but also, though it may have 
 been pressed out of its due sense and proportion by some 
 zealous Christians, is a valuable proof of how this part of 
 God's law was always to be understood by His people. In 
 describing that righteous life of a true Israelite, which would 
 bring the favour of God upon His people, He says this of 
 the Fourth Commandment : ' If thou turn away thy foot 
 from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day : 
 and call the Sabbath a delight: the holy of the Lord, honour- 
 able ; and shalt honour Him : not doing thine own ways, 
 or finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words,* 
 etc. That this describes keeping the Sabbath holy with a 
 fervent love of God, in a devout use of that time for special 
 worship and thoughts of Him, seems beyond any candid 
 question. 
 
 The Fifth Commandment is allowed by all to be universal 
 and perpetual, — as much God's Word to Christians as to the 
 Israelites then. Yet it has a local and temporary reference 
 which the Fourth has not. Without the deeper sense of all 
 the Commandments, as subject both to the primitive truth 
 and to the subsequent Law of God in the Gospel, we might 
 reason that this one had to do only with that promised coun- 
 try of Canaan, first beginning with it now in prospect before 
 the host of Israel, but ceasing for those (that is almost all the 
 true Israel of Our Lord) whose days have nought to do with 
 that land. For does it not give, as all the reason for its obedi- 
 ence, ' that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord 
 thy God giveth thee ' .'' Yet, as we know that this honour 
 to parents is the duty of all children ' from the beginning,' 
 so it was and is for those to whom that literal promise has 
 no application since. But, retaining now in the Church 
 every word of its original form, we may rightly transfer those 
 
 2 D
 
 41 8 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 last words to the greater ' land flowing with milk and honey,' 
 — the heavenly rest of our eternal life. 
 
 The Sixth to Eighth are evidently laws which began with 
 mankind, and belong to them always and everywhere. The 
 Ninth is also such in substance. In form here it is only 
 against false testimony in public justice. It is however the 
 just understanding of it, that it forbids all falsehood. This is 
 a principle of true Religion. All attempts to uphold genuine 
 truthfulness in its sanctity, as merely a matter of ' morals,' 
 fail. It is only by a sense of the all-seeing truth of God, and 
 obedient love to Him in this, that the insidious temptations 
 of falsehood — for selfish advantage, to escape harm, or to gain 
 credit with others — can be really overcome. All religions 
 contain some trace of the primitive truth in precepts about 
 this. But these sayings are all overborne in the main by 
 evil examples and allowances of falsehood even on the part 
 of the ' gods,' or by acts of worship that nullify the few 
 words of law. This fact has sometimes been untruly 
 accounted for by ' the genius of different races,' as that the 
 German and Gothic stock is more truthful, the Latin races 
 less firmly so, though more amiable, while the Orientals 
 and others are the lowest of all in this, having little 'moral 
 sense ' of truth for its own sake. But this is fanciful and 
 false itself How came it that these Hebrew writings, alone 
 before the Coming of Our Lord, maintain from beginning to 
 end the only high, spiritual, unwavering, religious idea of 'truth, 
 in the inward parts ' ? The mere genius of the race among 
 whom these writings first appeared is rather artful — fruitful 
 in falsehood for selfish gain. The only explanation, and the 
 truth of this all, is that mankind ' fell ' from the love of truth 
 in God, as in all other things ; and that, except as by His 
 Word and grace we are restored from this, ' we all go astray 
 as soon as we be born, speaking lies.' ' Philosophy,' in the 
 few whom it can influence, is no match for this tendency : 
 witness Plato. ' Enlightened self-interest,' pride of honour, 
 indeed all other ' bases of morals,' ' scientific ' or senti- 
 mental, give way to the strain — except so far as there is 
 some actual thought, even if denied by the subject of it, 
 of the ' One Lawgiver,' Who is truth itself, and Who has 
 commanded men to be truthful. The true Religion is alone
 
 BOOK OF MOSES-TEN COMMANDMENTS. 419 
 
 consistent and spiritual about this. As suggested above, it is 
 a gratuitous lowering of this Commandment to limit its force 
 to the false stvearing which it specifies. That is in the false 
 direction of a like error noted as to the Third (see p. 415), 
 and which in fact w^ould destroy all distinction between those 
 two. The actual lowering in it now is rather in the term 
 ' thy neighbour ' (near one), in this Commandment as well as 
 in the Tenth, which that people would then naturally enough 
 understand, at the utmost (and did so in fact, most of them), 
 of their own nation. The Egyptian oppressor of the past or 
 the Canaanite enemy of the future did not seem to them near 
 in any such sense. Not that God's words in His Command- 
 ment or elsewhere told them that. But, on the contrary, in 
 Moses largely, and in all the later prophets, were written 
 things to remind them that their Lord was also the God and 
 Father of all men, to whom, for this reason, they were to be 
 just, kind, and truthful. Still, here we have another mark of 
 that temporary limitation of His truth in the Ten Command- 
 ments, which He chose to show, even in this most spiritual 
 part of ' the law,' until He should come to restore the com- 
 plete ' grace and truth.' Then we have Him, even in some 
 of His earliest teachings, extending the term ' neighbour' to 
 all its primitive breadth (see St. Matt. vi. 42, vii. 12 ; St. Luke 
 X. 36, etc.), and just before His Passion restoring the two 
 ' great ' Commandments to their fulness and supremacy (St. 
 Matt. xxii. 38-40, etc. etc.). 
 
 The same things may be observed in the Tenth Com- 
 mandment, though in some respects the most spiritual of 
 all those which regard our fellow-men (so St. Paul reminds us, 
 Rom. vii. 7), and the guard against the attempt of a mere 
 worldly compliance with the words. For in this is even such 
 a specification of the objects of desire as would sound 
 strangely out of place to almost all men now, except for the 
 spiritual and evangelical extension of those words which the 
 Church of God has always taught.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS — B.C. 1800-I500. 
 
 In what position, then, does religious thought stand 
 among mankind for this period from the Patriarchs to 
 Moses ? As to much the greater part of them, it is not 
 at all changed. They proceed, in their different religions 
 and nations, in the same general process as before. For 
 almost all their people the primitive truth of the One God, 
 and of men's need to seek His mercy, is more and more 
 perverted and obscured. Mere guilty fears join with guilty 
 passions to invent more ' gods,' who are a compound of the 
 imaginations of men and the actual unseen power of demons 
 (see p. 337). When art develops, it finds religion its chief 
 subject, not only in the building of temples and in adorning 
 them with pictures and symbols of its thoughts, but in 
 actual images of the deities adored, most of the worshippers 
 thinking of nothing beyond the very image, making prayers, 
 and sacrificing to it as a Divine person. 
 
 In this, and so affecting the religion of all, mingles the 
 ambitious talent of painter, sculptor, and architect, as also 
 of poet and priest, who devote themselves to these subjects. 
 The lawgiver and the monarch join their imperious or 
 kindly power with it. The necessary alliance of Religion 
 with all public order and private peace is thus observed, 
 though it is not understood. Great nations have great 
 religions, in pomp and costliness. The more intellectual 
 nations give it a tinge of that quality. Smaller countries 
 and wandering tribes or coarse barbarians adjust it to their 
 cases. With some it seemed to travel fast and further away 
 from pure truth, and fell into horrid cruelties and despicable 
 follies of belief Wars and conquests were causes of this.
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1800-1500. 421 
 
 and in turn results from it, and forces giving it new turns 
 and combinations. Some of the nations went so far from 
 their original seats that they were lost in others quite 
 strange to them, or got quite out of reach of all human 
 neighbourhood, and were found, after ages of such isolation, 
 to have developed strange extravagancies of religious fancy 
 quite unlike anything elsewhere. In some tribes where life 
 in all its other needs was precarious and scanty they went 
 down fast in the scale of Religion, as well as of all that 
 was physical, and seemed to the first civilised discoverers 
 to have no thought of worship, of spiritual goodness, or of 
 right and wrong. 
 
 We may fairly conclude that the like causes were at 
 work as described in the account of the preceding age 
 (Chapter XI.) If we had any real history of the Pagan 
 nations, or any of them, for this period, then we should go 
 directly there. But absolutely we have none such. From 
 the first of our kind down to Moses we have had the 
 Hebrew history to follow. In this we have found allusions 
 and episodes as to some other tribes, races, countries. Put- 
 ting these with some remains of buildings, inscriptions, laws, 
 and traditions, we get glimpses of their religion. But our 
 main resort after all must be to the inferences from a com- 
 parison with these of later facts when real history begins, 
 and in following that clue of the general process of change 
 from primitive truth, given to us by the Word of God, 
 specially in the first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the 
 Romans (see also supra, Ch. XII.). Like all great deserts, 
 that awful waste of History has its impressiveness in its 
 silence. 
 
 But if we try and add such conjectures of the details of 
 religious thought and observance in some of those nations 
 as are at all reasonable, we may notice among these the 
 Egyptians, Chinese, Hindus, Assyrians, Phoenicians, etc. 
 Everything goes to show that the Egyptians continued in 
 the main the same absurd religion as Abraham found among 
 them. If there was any change in the knowledge of spiritual 
 primitive truth, supposed to be still retained among some of 
 the priests and nobles, it was probably growing less distinct. 
 Of the Chinese we can still only take the state of their
 
 422 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 present religion, and for the later centuries of the Christian 
 Era, as European discovery has recorded these, and so much 
 of their very doubtful ancient history as accords with these. 
 So their characteristic in the general degradation is, we 
 may suppose, still (and increasingly so) to have more phy- 
 sical comfort and less spiritual elevation, more law and less 
 worship, more morals and less religion than the other Pagan 
 nations. 
 
 The Hindus have, if anything, even less history for 
 this period, notwithstanding the high and confident assump- 
 tions of the Phil-Sanscrits of our day. The difference of 
 fact between anything inferred from the Vedas, or argued 
 out of some Sanscrit words, and the actual religion of any 
 considerable part, if any at all, of the Hindus, in the period 
 from Abraham to IMoses, will probably amuse some future 
 generation quite as much as the notions of Selden about 
 the Hebrew language now do amuse Professor Max Mijller. 
 
 Buddhist religion, however many adherents it now has, 
 was not invented for a thousand years yet. The religions 
 of the Assyrians, Phoenicians, and other Syrians, are only 
 known by their remains (of only conjectural date) and the 
 incidental mentions of the Hebrew history, that they con- 
 tinued in the former superstitions, idolatries, and immorali- 
 ties, as a part of their religion. Doubtless in the lapse of 
 these ages some changes took place. Older deities were 
 sometimes supplanted by new ' imaginations' ; often it was 
 really but a change of name. State- or priest-craft, poetry, 
 ambition, war, and trade, brought in novelties, some of 
 which became fixed and perpetuated in the popular worship. 
 On the other hand, some of the primitive truth remained, 
 not by chance or inertia, but by that same incessant loving- 
 kindness of God which ' waited,' not only ' in the days of 
 Noah,' but also of Abraham, Moses, David, and the Prophets. 
 For while in the wonderful redemption of all mankind, one 
 family and then one nation are kept from that dreadful 
 development of ' vain imaginations,' the rest are not for- 
 gotten or left to abandon all religion and righteousness. 
 
 In the same way, what we know of the Persians in this 
 period, is very little. We infer rather from much later 
 events than anything else, that the thought of God as One
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1800- 1500. 423 
 
 and as a Spirit to be worshipped spiritually (yet not without 
 much gloomy superstition as to an evil Lord, other malignant 
 demons and magic), was lasting longer among them than 
 with the environing nations. That conjecture as to the 
 time of Zoroaster, which makes it earliest (with any shade 
 of reason), does not make him to have lived until long 
 after Moses. So that the Zend is a much later writing 
 than the ' Pentateuch' ; and Zoroaster's thus or otherwise 
 restoring in any degree the older and purer Religion, against 
 the encroachments of idolatry and other superstitions, must 
 have been long after the period now before us. 
 
 Of course we are left even more to mere inference from 
 what was known later as to the nations around the Mediter- 
 ranean Sea, and in Northern Europe, South Africa, the 
 Americas and the Islands. 1 
 
 ^ Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World is a valuable summary of 
 research into this subject for general reading. Yet it utterly omits the Chinese, 
 Japanese, and other Buddhist nations, which are as ' ancient ' as India, if they 
 have no Oxford Professor to transmute their legends and language into fictitious 
 history ; and besides, they probably included many more of mankind then, as 
 they do now. I am far from finding fault with the learned Canon, to whom I 
 am much indebted for facts, and whose purpose in writing did not require the 
 universal range which the present inquiry demands.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ISRAEL, THE ' PEOPLE OF GOD ' — MOSES TO SAMUEL. 
 
 From this time on, say 3400 or 3500 years ago, and for 
 many ages after, the true religious tradition proceeded in a 
 quite correct if somewhat narrow channel. It could now be 
 read, as well as talked of from father to son. It, as well as 
 the corrupt religions of great nations, has now a priesthood, 
 a solemn and costly ritual, and civil laws and government 
 adjusted to the Religion, forming indeed one system. It is 
 not the invention of one man, or of all the great men of 
 the people combined. It is not even in its details the growth 
 of generations, in which experience, accidents, public events, 
 and personal ambitions work out a system. This might be, 
 and probably was, true of all other national religions as to 
 their peculiar forms. But because God Himself provided this 
 to be a protest against all such follies — a barrier placed in 
 the midst of History against these tendencies destructive of 
 the truth, — it was provided complete for one people, and set 
 up among them with great miracles to attest it as Divine. 
 And then, too, such miracles were performed among them 
 afterwards from time to time, to renew among them the 
 memory of this great fact, of God's authority for their 
 religion, and to vouch for other Prophets whom He sent. 
 For in the following generations He added to His Word 
 given by Moses, as Moses himself had foretold should be. 
 Sometimes these later Prophets only declared God's Will 
 about public events of their time. Or, in some such cases, 
 if their teachings were in substance more moral and religious, 
 we do not know of these ever having been written down. 
 But others of them were inspired as much as Moses was, to 
 write this Word of God for all time to come. And so we 
 have the rest of the Old Testament.
 
 ISRAEL— MOSES TO SAMUEL. 425 
 
 In all this range of a thousand years, anticipating for the 
 latter half of this what belongs rather to Chapter XIX. 
 (during which the Hebrew is the only real history, some- 
 thing like its complete and continuous records then only 
 beginning to be found elsewhere), there is no superseding of 
 the Law of Moses in its substance, and scarcely in any detail 
 of ritual or public law. (Of course I do not in this deny what 
 that History most plainly tells — much disobedience of that 
 law by its subjects, and sometimes general revolt, even con- 
 tinuing for a long time. But its authority, even in the worst 
 of such defections, is maintained at least secretly by a de- 
 termined few,^ and is afterwards as generally acknowledged, 
 and without the suggestion of a right to alter any of its details 
 upon any pretence whatever.) After a while there is an 
 entire change in what we now call the ' form of government ' 
 (civil), from an aristocratic democracy led by God's Prophets 
 and hereditary Priests to a monarchy only limited by that Law 
 and Religion. And afterward there is a complete conquest 
 of the country by great heathen nations, after which the 
 people never again have a real national self-government. 
 Yet the religion remains the same, and the laws of Moses 
 are as rigidly insisted upon as ever 1500 years after him, 
 that is, as long as it is now from the days of Constantine. 
 This is even now kept up in all parts of the world by little 
 companies of Jews by race, though for nearly 2000 years it 
 has ceased to be a true religion, God Himself having dis- 
 missed it to make way for His complete Word in the Gospel. 
 The true Israel is the Church of Jesus Christ, and the only 
 lawful inheritors of and true believers in the Old Testament 
 now are those who use it as the introduction to the New. 
 
 While the Holy Scriptures in Hebrew which were added 
 to the Book of Moses did not change that Law, they were far 
 from being small in amount or importance. On the contrary, 
 they make up now two-thirds of the Old Testament, and are 
 as valuable in that proportion. They disclosed more and 
 more to the old Israel the spiritual meaning of that Law, and 
 prophesied of the great Religion and Salvation for all mankind, 
 for which this was only a preparation. In the nature of the 
 
 ^ E.g. 'I have left me seven thousand men in Israel' (i Kings xix. 18). 
 ' Even also at this present time there is a remnant,^ etc. (Rom. xi. 5).
 
 426 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 case, no one then could apprehend that meaning as we who 
 have received that last and complete Word of God, the 
 Gospel, may now find it throughout the Old Testament, but 
 especially in the Psalms and certain parts of the Prophets. 
 The Book of Job, the writings of the kings, David and 
 Solomon, and of the Prophets who are usually so specially 
 named, as well as the Books of History after the death of 
 Moses, containing many like lessons, do thus expound and 
 expand the spiritual teachings of the Law. Yet they by no 
 means contradict it or change it in any point. 
 
 This is another disclosure of what has been already 
 shown (see p. 354), that the religion of the Old Testament is 
 not at all a ' development ' or ' evolution,' as some fancy, 
 according to a universal spiritual ' law,' by which a lower life 
 is always of itself proceeding to something higher than itself 
 On the contrary, nothing else in the writings of these 1000 
 years ever exceeds, if it ever quite reaches, the height of a 
 sentence written by Moses himself (see supra, p. 412). We 
 have absolute authority for saying all this (beside the intrinsic 
 grandeur of the words, which the more they are studied, and 
 the more points of view taken to survey them from, the 
 greater they appear) in their citation by the Most High Word 
 of God Himself when He was in the world to ' bring in ever- 
 lasting righteousness ' (Dan. ix. 24). That they were pro- 
 bably taken by the journeyers to Canaan then, and by the 
 nation afterwards in a much narrower sense than really 
 belongs to them, does not detract from this. They believed 
 — they knew that Jehovah, their God, was the Only God, and 
 so the God of all the nations. If anything had brought them 
 to consider whether really this love of God was not also a 
 law for the heathen, they would have had to admit it. But 
 nothing ever did lead them to think of this. They were all 
 absorbed in their struggle as a people against 'peoples 
 greater and mightier than they,' in which they represented the 
 True God, and their adversaries the abominable and deadly 
 corruptions of religion which had come in with the Fall. So 
 He was ' their God,' something as the hideous demons and 
 idols of their enemies were theirs ; and their only thought 
 was to love Him as the One Who gave them victory over the 
 rest of men. This also helped to keep them more apart from
 
 ISRAEL— MOSES TO SAMUEL. 427 
 
 those false religions, and to preserve the true one in the world 
 until He should come Who is altogether ' the Way and the 
 Truth and the Life ' of all men. 
 
 The Book of Job also, which, as well as we can judge, is 
 even earlier than Moses, is full of such refined and elevated 
 thoughts which are far above anything of Plato or Cicero. 
 Even leaving out the noble discourses of Job and his friends, 
 the very story at its beginning thus describes the thoughts and 
 words of a good man who had suddenly fallen from the greatest 
 wealth and hope into terrible poverty and bitter bereave- 
 ment. 'Then Job arose, etc., and fell down upon the ground, 
 and worshipped, and said, Naked came I out of my mother's 
 womb, and naked shall I return thither : the Lord gave, and 
 the Lord hath taken away ; blessed be the name of the 
 Lord.' This was 500 years before the Iliad or Odyssey. 
 Is there any poetry of Homer's equal to it ? It is more 
 than a thousand years back in ' barbarism ' before The 
 Dialogues. Is there anything so sublimely and spiritually 
 wise in all Plato ? Some who have followed that notion 
 of Holy Scripture being a ' development ' seem also to 
 have carried along with it a desire thus to account for the 
 strange vicissitudes of true Religion as related in the Book 
 — the wrong notions at times of the ' people of God ' — and 
 their mistakes of the meaning of His Word ; their utter 
 defection from it at other times. But, apart from the 
 general folly of our insisting (as a condition of our belief) 
 upon understanding all this, is it not all meant as a history 
 of facts * for our learning ' by example ? Yet this does not 
 imply that it is an example for imitation. Some of the older 
 and in the main very sound expositors of the History may 
 have given this erroneous turn to the thoughts of their suc- 
 cessors, by fancying that the instructive example of the old 
 Israel was to be one of perfect obedience to a Divine law, by 
 which we were to learn how with like exactness to follow the 
 better law of the Gospel. 
 
 Yet there is no suggestion in the Old Testament of such 
 a lesson, but quite the contrary. And the New in like way 
 implies this, and even, as we shall see, directly says so (see 
 p. 428). We are not told that the need of a 'new and 
 better covenant,' between God and man, was shown by the
 
 428 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 failure of the old to serve that purpose, though perfectly 
 observed. But a wonderful picture of History for fifteen 
 centuries is unrolled before us, in which is shown in practice 
 the continual failure of almost all this favoured people to 
 love God and keep His commandments — shown with a 
 variety and power of illustration, both for societies of men 
 and for each several soul, that is full of profit to us all, — as 
 fresh and fruitful now as it was in the first ages of the 
 Church, 
 
 This being so, is it not a great mistake to insist upon 
 rejecting the history as we now have it in the Book, and 
 making a new one adjusted to the theory — that whatever 
 was commanded at the first was always done exactly? If 
 that were so, we should have no such instructive history as 
 we do have. This is as true of general and long-continued 
 neglect of some of those commands, as of the more striking 
 instances given in the History itself of some such offences 
 which were punished by public authority or by miraculous 
 judgments of God. So that, for instance, to raise doubts 
 about the Law of Moses having been known in the time of 
 Samuel, because of some general neglects of it, which are 
 rather implied by the History, is contrary to the whole 
 purpose of the History as example. With these chronicles 
 of the people of Israel, and their evident uses in these ways, 
 the vast stream of illustration of all matters and questions of 
 Religion, with which it has been flowing for ages, and is 
 now in every Sunday's sermons and other instructions in 
 the Church, it is fair to judge that a wise and devout man 
 reflecting upon it would have inferred that such a strange 
 and varied history of the former * people of God ' was meant 
 by Him to teach His greater people by example of warning. 
 But when we also have that express statement, and much 
 else like it, in which the whole of the Old Testament, but 
 especially the general defections of Israel, is evidently in the 
 view of the writer : ' Now all these things happened unto 
 them for ensamples ; and are written for our admonition, 
 upon whom the ends of the world are come' (i Cor. x. ii), 
 etc., it is decisive. 
 
 If any one still inquires : ' Why then is it not said in 
 the History, of every such general neglect of anything in the
 
 ISRAEL— MOSES TO SAMUEL. 429 
 
 old Law, which appears, say in the days of Samuel, that it 
 was such a transgression ?' — apart from the transgression of 
 reverence and humility on our part in such demands of what 
 God's Word shall say — we have but to consider that this in 
 itself would be a departure from that artless way of narrative 
 which is such a charm in those histories, and, what is also a 
 part of the teaching for us, that we are to learn the great 
 lesson by thought and with obedient faith. 
 
 The other notion is not unaccountable. It is one of the 
 natural effects of trying to adjust religious faith to Philo- 
 sophy. In our times this attempt follows the general 
 notion of a * development ' and ' evolution,' which is to be 
 discovered and understood by us in all things. So there 
 is supposed to be a need of applying it to the Divine 
 History also. 
 
 That is a very important matter as to our present in- 
 vestigation. Therefore we must now again, for what is yet 
 before us, take time and pains sufficient to have a clear 
 understanding of it. By that means we shall go on in- 
 telligently in the use of this History, and not be drawn aside 
 to doubt its genuine meaning, and to invent more or less 
 plausible theories of its authorship, and of some other 
 meaning in the facts related. I do not see how any one can 
 otherwise fairly use that History for instruction as to the 
 Church in general, or as to the events of our own individual 
 spiritual life ; as in fact we all do use it so much to our 
 profit. But still less do I see how the plain words of St. 
 Paul in the tenth chapter of his First Epistle to the Corin- 
 thians (verses 6 and 11), and other passages of the New 
 Testament quite equivalent, can be otherwise fairly con- 
 strued. So that all the supposed omissions and incon- 
 sistencies of that History, upon which some unthinkingly 
 seize as grounds for their guessing out another history than 
 that which we read, are just such mysteries as the common 
 sense of reverence and faith ought to expect in that wonder- 
 ful instruction of History. 
 
 ' No,' says some one, ' that would not be a development. 
 Therefore the true history must be thus and thus — e.g. that 
 some one long after Moses invented what is related in his 
 Books as we simply read them in our Bible.' And so the
 
 430 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Prophets were not trying to recall their people to the old 
 truth neglected and disobeyed, to the old spiritual meaning 
 unnoticed, but were bringing in altogether new ideas in 
 advance of the old,' etc. etc. So much the worse, then, for 
 the misleading notion of a ' development' 
 
 As we now rapidly follow the history of true religious 
 thought, we thus have it almost entirely confined to the 
 Israelites. And among them it is almost all fixed upon 
 maintaining that there is only One True God, and that He 
 is to be worshipped with great awe, ' in spirit,' without 
 images, as altogether unseen, and as a holy King, Who 
 commands us to be truthful, pure, just, and merciful, will 
 not accept worship from the selfish, perverse, and impenitent, 
 * and will by no means clear the guilty.' Other great parts 
 of the true Religion — as the thoughts of a general Resurrec- 
 tion and Judgment after death, and a future life, to be 
 determined by that Judgment — seemed left rather in abey- 
 ance, implied rather than enforced. But the thought of all 
 men's needing the pardon and grace of God, as sinners 
 against Him from their very birth, was kept more constantly 
 than ever before their minds by their Ritual ; in that the 
 sacrifice of beasts — which had begun with the first of the 
 race, as a figure of some great atonement for the sins of 
 mankind, and had been kept up through all the ages of the 
 Patriarchs — was made more frequent and solemn. At the 
 very same time it was more and more perverted in all false 
 religions into silly or bloody superstitions. 
 
 But it would not be possible for us to learn well this far 
 greatest matter of the history of Israel — the preser\'ation of 
 primitive religion in the world until the Redeemer of all man- 
 kind should come — without some attention to its political 
 history. That God has given us that lesson interwoven with 
 the other facts is reason and need enough for the study. If 
 we tried to discard the political history in exclusive devotion 
 to the religious, we should only weaken and confuse our 
 apprehension of the latter. 
 
 And beside this, it is itself a lesson of the essential con- 
 nection of Law and Religion, of men's duties as Christians 
 and as citizens. So he is the wisest reader of the Old Testa- 
 ment history, and will learn best what it was meant to teach
 
 ISRAEL— MOSES TO SAMUEL. 431 
 
 a Christian who takes it literally and simply as a record of 
 facts, yet never forgetting that its truth is best seen from the 
 point of the Gospel. 
 
 For our present purpose, however, there is need of a brief 
 mention of the secular side of the history of Israel. God 
 gave also to that people — inspiring Moses to reveal this with 
 the Commandments of righteousness and rules of religion — 
 a civil government and laws. As this is far the most ancient 
 body of such laws extant, so it far exceeds in justice and 
 practical advantage to the people any other such of antiquity. 
 Its principle is throughout the one true one for legislation, of 
 the love of God and man. And while it is an agreed part of 
 Christian doctrine that its authority was only for that people 
 and age, and terminated by its own limitation with the end 
 of the Jewish nation as such, wise modern legislators have 
 often studied it for suggestions in matters with which they had 
 to deal. And all thoughtful students of its provisions have 
 been struck with the more than human wisdom of its details. 
 
 The * form of government ' also then set up was also with- 
 out an example or a suggestion elsewhere. Nothing could 
 be less Egyptian. It is commonly called a * theocracy ' or 
 God-government. No one man had absolute and despotic 
 power of laws and penalties, war, taxation, and every other 
 private as well as public affair — as a * Pharaoh ' — and even 
 worshipped as a ' god.' And no thin layer of superior 
 families stood just below the sovereign, engrossing from 
 generation to generation all that was left of wealth, honour, 
 and power. The One God, great, awful, holy, and unseen, 
 was King. The people were all alike honourable, as being 
 of kindred and equal birth. But first Moses himself as a 
 Prophet of God administered these just laws with the help of 
 the heads of all the families, and sometimes with special 
 counsels of the priests of the Holy King. 
 
 Then Joshua succeeded to that presidency by God's 
 appointment, as the heroic soldier and prophet who led them 
 into Canaan for the conquest of the Pagan tribes, and distri- 
 bution of their lands equally among all the families. After- 
 wards for some three or four hundred years, no one man seems 
 to have been recognised in that lofty place, except as occasion- 
 ally in great general distress from adverse war, some such
 
 432 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 prophets and heroes arose among them for the emer- 
 gency. 
 
 This period of ' the Judges' is indeed one of the most 
 mysterious parts of the history of Israel. It seems for one 
 thing to be a lesson of the evils of anarchy — that is, the lack of 
 responsible, vigorous, and acknowledged authority executing 
 laws, without which the laws, however good, do not of them- 
 selves make a people good and happy. This people of Israel 
 certainly were perverse and ungodly ; and without doubt 
 their subjugation and oppression by Pagan nations around 
 were caused by their unfaithfulness to the Great One Who 
 had chosen them out to be specially His people. It is not 
 possible to conceive of anything of the sort more mean, silly, 
 and disgraceful. 
 
 The Israelites were indeed to be as a people, from that 
 time forth until the Coming of the Great ' Son of Man,' the 
 only true priests and Kingdom of God among men. But 
 they were suffered, if they so chose at any time, to depart 
 from this great blessing and 'be as the heathen' around them. 
 They were to learn (and still more to teach all men by the 
 example of their history), by a bitter experience of such sin, 
 of punishment and repentance for it, to be firm and faithful 
 in religion. They went through one such experience even 
 just after the Law was first proclaimed to them, and 
 before all its details were given.^ They seemed then suddenly 
 eager to imitate the bad religion of their Egyptian oppres- 
 sors, but received a terrible and effectual cure for that. Other 
 like things occurred while Moses was still their commander 
 and prophet, and before they were fairly settled in Canaan. 
 
 Then for hundreds of years afterwards there were many 
 such apostasies and repentances. False religion was con- 
 tinually tempting them by means of the tribes of idolatrous 
 Canaanites, who still kept a foot-hold in various parts of the 
 country. The true religion resisted these influences with the 
 Book of Moses, and the rites and laws observed according to 
 it. But God also, from time to time, and especially when 
 their enemies greatly oppressed them, made some great men, 
 heroic or eloquent, to be His Prophets to them. The Holy 
 Ghost inspired them to give His messages to their country- 
 
 ^ Exod. xxxii.
 
 ISRAEL— MOSES TO SAMUEL. 433 
 
 men, and sometimes to be their military heroes, in defeating 
 the heathen oppressors and expelling false religion from 
 Israel. The last and greatest of this class of prophets, Samuel, 
 was not a soldier, though the leaders in war acted under his 
 directions. But he was a man of heroic courage, and of spot- 
 less public and private virtue, and devoted to true religion. 
 When he was an old man the ' public opinion ' of the Israel- 
 ites demanded a king, such as the neighbour nations all had, 
 to be their leader in war and ' fountain of honour ' in peace ; 
 and to transmit this supreme power to his eldest son. This 
 the Prophet of God granted in His Name ; and so came 
 about a great change in the civil order of Israel. The first 
 king, Saul, though in personal appearance and qualities all 
 that would gratify the popular wish, did not have a happy 
 reign in any sense. He was brave and generous, but very 
 proud and self-willed ; and so disobeyed the Will of God as 
 made known to him by the old Prophet. Naturally enough 
 then he became envious, bitter, and rash. And so he perished 
 with the flower of his people in a disastrous battle with 
 heathen enemies. A son succeeded Saul over part of the 
 kingdom, and for a short time. But the real second king ol 
 Israel, and founder of a long and famous line, was David, 
 whom God had been for some years bringing and training 
 from his boyhood as a shepherd in the hill-country (south 
 of Jerusalem), to be one of the great soldiers of Israel. Saul 
 came to notice his exploits and merits, and at first to honour 
 him greatly. Afterwards he became the chief object of that 
 king's bitter jealousy — a fugitive and an exile. Yet at Saul's 
 death he was at once hailed by many of his countrymen as 
 their true champion and king. After some years all the 
 people came to recognise David as the one whom God 
 meant for this. 
 
 2 E
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS — B.C. 150O-IOOO. 
 
 For the same lack of real history as we have noted in the 
 period before this (see Chap. XVII. p. 421) this chapter can 
 be but a brief repetition of that same ' sitting in darkness ' of 
 false religion of all the nations except Israel. We have only 
 to keep the general process in mind, — to recur especially to 
 the Divine disclosure of it in Romans i. 18, etc., and to note 
 the allusions to Pagan religion in the history of Israel and 
 the Psalms of David. All these suggest a deepening of that 
 darkness as the ages roll away. The traditions of primitive 
 truth grow more faint, or are more perverted. Thus that 
 of sin and sacrifice is made the occasion of more and more 
 laborious and burdensome yet senseless ceremonies, and 
 of gloomy and bloody or else obscene superstitions. The 
 Egyptian remains show this for that most 'civilised' of 
 nations. False religion was even more cruel and filthy 
 among the Canaanites, who were such shameful examples of 
 its bad morals that they were made a dreadful example of 
 God's abhorrence of sins ; — first the horrible Sodomites and 
 Gomorrahans, and afterwards the other tribes of Canaan, 
 expelled or even exterminated to make place for Israel. Of 
 them the Phoenicians (' they about Tyre and Sidon ') were not 
 disturbed, but left to develop in that busy and daring com- 
 merce which has its monuments all around the Mediter- 
 ranean,^ and to be the allies of the great kings of Israel, 
 and assist in the building of the first Temple of God. 
 
 A few of the other Canaanites long remained more or 
 less mingled with the holy nation. This was a part of its 
 
 ' And in which future explorers may yet find even more useful remains of 
 the history of language and of ' Gentile ' religion than have yet been traced.
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1500-1000. 435 
 
 discipline, as even then ' whom the Lord loved He chastened' 
 by afflictions and by trials as to whether they would prefer 
 the evil ways of their neighbours to His blessed command- 
 ments. Often they did ; but He loved them too well not 
 to bring them back by severe punishments. Rather He 
 went on with His great purpose of love to all mankind, for 
 which He was keeping this * a peculiar people.' 
 
 As we look out upon the rest of the world from this little 
 fastness of true Religion, we see other nations who were not 
 quite so far gone astray as the old Canaanites. The North 
 and East Syrians, the Edomites or North Arabians, the 
 Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Persians, were all 
 idolaters, but not so coarse or corrupt as the filthy tribes 
 whom the Israelites dispossessed. Perhaps the Persians 
 should be mentioned entirely apart, as retaining more of 
 the original truth. As we have had occasion to notice, 
 there seems to have been among them, from very remote 
 tradition, a belief in One Good God ; but, along with this, a 
 religion of one evil Lord of equal or greater effective power 
 in this world always warring with the other. The former 
 may have been the only one of the two to whom they 
 actually prayed. But the other was as much feared and pro- 
 pitiated. 
 
 This of itself was a great departure from the true 
 Religion. And then, too, they adored the sun and fire, — the 
 more speculative of them said only as the representatives 
 of the Unseen One. But the second of the Sinai Command- 
 ments shows that He will not allow this, so that doing it is 
 one sort of ungodliness. And all experience shows that 
 not only will almost all such a people thus directly ' worship 
 the creature rather than the Creator,' but that these philo- 
 sophers themselves will really do much the same. Any way, 
 the better part of the Persian religion faded away, and the 
 false worship absorbed almost all. 
 
 It is possibly before the end of this period (but more 
 probably in the following one) that what some think a great 
 movement in Religion began among the Persians. It was 
 caused by the appearance of Zerdusht (Zoroaster) and his 
 writing the Ze^td. This has been already somewhat antici- 
 pated in Chapter XL, p. 305, etc., to which I again refer my
 
 436 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 readers. It found a place there as necessary to show 
 what was probably the religion of the Persians, then 
 (B.C. 2000) to be inferred, for one thing, from the older 
 traditions of his people, which that reformer thus tried 
 to maintain against the encroachments of a religion 
 of many gods and of images, which wars and intercourse 
 with the Assyrians and other neighbouring people were 
 introducing among his countrymen. The only thing at all 
 fairly credible is that such true primitive principles of 
 religion still survived among the Persians, and were 
 struggling with surrounding tendencies toward idolatry. 
 The influence upon all this of philosophers and reformers 
 belongs more naturally to the next period (see Chap. XXL), 
 and will be found treated there. 
 
 It may have been also during this period that the Persian 
 ideas came into India, whether brought by a conquering race 
 who drove the older inhabitants, men of more gross religion, 
 into the wild mountain tracts, where they perished, or sur- 
 vived to this day in some small, very barbarous tribes,^ or 
 conveyed only by travel and trade. Yet we cannot be sure 
 how far these wiser thoughts of the Vedas and the laws of 
 Menu were not the surviving traditions of the first men 
 in India. If what is now read in those writings was then 
 among that people, it is admitted by their European admirers 
 (see M. Muller, hidia, etc.) to have been only by oral 
 tradition. And in that was already mixed much super- 
 stitious folly. 
 
 So the early Chinese evidently kept some of the truth 
 which was known among all at the dispersion of Babel, but 
 more on the moral than the religious side, so far as that 
 distinction is at all proper. It is also not amiss to notice 
 here that while some of the tribes of men which have lost 
 all historical continuity with these ages, — of whom indeed 
 
 ^ Stillingfleet, Origines SacrcB, Book iii, chap. 5, 'Origin of Heathen 
 Mythology, ' contains whole paragraphs worthy of quotation for this. It would 
 have been, and would be now, a very valuable statement of this whole matter 
 but for the fault, if (see Pref. Note, p. x., etc.) I have rightly apprehended it, 
 of all former writers in treating this subject of primitive religion, and the 
 traditions from it among all mankind, as only an incidental and probable sug- 
 gestion, instead of its being, as it is, the great fact in all such history, and the 
 key of the whole question of the Beginnings of Religion.
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1 500-1000. 437 
 
 nothing was known in the historical nations until within 
 a few hundred years, are so debased as to seem to have 
 almost no sort of religion — some of them, as, e.g.^ certain of 
 the North American tribes, have more true and spiritual 
 thoughts of the 'Great Spirit' and a future life than the 
 elegant Greeks and strong-minded Romans in their best 
 days. All this agrees with (and only with) this truth of an 
 original Religion.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 ISRAEL — DAVID TO DANIEL. 
 
 David is one of the greatest characters of history. With 
 much the same personal attractions as Saul, he was far more 
 just, wise, and generous as a king. And, what was much 
 greater, he was one of the most beautifully religious men that 
 ever lived, and used all his royal power and personal influence 
 to promote this among his people. Yet it is an even greater 
 fact in this history of religion that David was a great Prophet 
 of God. He is eminent among those who have had the ex- 
 ceeding great honour, not only to speak in God's Name, but 
 also to write what He would say to all mankind. The Psalms 
 of David are such lofty and spiritual expressions of true 
 religion, that they are even a great part of the best worship 
 of Christians. They are full of tender consolations for all 
 sorts of distress. They express true repentance towards God, 
 and the need and longing of each human soul for His forgive- 
 ness and gracious help to love and obey Him. They remind 
 us of His vast and ceaseless goodness to us — of His incessant 
 care and power in all events — of His holy justice, truth, and 
 purity — of the littleness of our present life, and of all its 
 desires and cares, compared with what we are to know and 
 to be in another life. In all this, and if possible even more, 
 in expressing that love of God with all the heart which Moses 
 taught to Israel, and which is the very and all-including thing 
 for which Adam was made, and all his sons, David's book 
 is far above all the Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Chinese, or 
 Greek writings which have been discovered. While here and 
 there in them can be found floating — 
 
 ' in vasto gurgite ' 
 
 of trivial or misleading notions — some fine sentences which
 
 ISRAEL— DA VID TO DANIEL. 439 
 
 sound like those of our Scriptures — the Book of Psalms shines 
 all through with exquisite truth and beauty, and some of its 
 sayings, far above man, and drawing him up toward God, 
 none of these other writings even approach. Why is this ? 
 Is it because the second King of Israel is such an astonishing 
 genius that Sankyamuni, Plato, and Cicero, with all the 
 gathering refinement of thought for ages afterwards, could 
 not approach him ? (For that admired Buddha was the 
 flower of at least four previous centuries of metaphysical 
 thought in India, and there had been a like long preparation 
 for the others named. It was indeed a great genius whom 
 God, Who makes all men as He will, made the chief author 
 of the Psalms.) No ; but simply because David was a 
 Prophet of God ; and what we read of his is the Voice from 
 Heaven to us all. 
 
 This preserving of a peculiar and holy nation to Himself, 
 with a * Word ' from Him, spoken, written, and celebrated in 
 Ritual, and added to from time to time by new prophets, went 
 on for several hundred years longer. The history of Israel was, 
 as before, full of vicissitudes. It was no part of God's Will 
 for the great purpose that this people should be all pure and 
 devout, nor even always faithful in their outward religion. 
 We of the later age of the Gospel were to have in them a 
 picture of all human weakness in this world — even in God's 
 Church. The astonishing perversity of this most favoured 
 people — their defections not only from the spiritual purity of 
 God's law, but from the regulations of worship, of national 
 honour and order, and of justice between men, which He had 
 given to them — is a wonderful picture of the obstinate folly 
 of all mankind. Wise humility sees this now, and can profit 
 much by it. It is only the same rash and blind self-conceit 
 which scorns to be thus taught. 
 
 This defection from true religion began even while Solo- 
 mon reigned. The very power and eminence with other 
 nations which we shall see to be an occasion for God's Word 
 going out among the Pagans made a danger for the Israelites. 
 Their king himself, with all his intelligence and accomplish- 
 ments, though even a great Prophet of God, was a weak man 
 when his ambition made him marry a daughter of the King 
 of Egypt ; and still more so when he went on to gratify both
 
 440 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 ambition and lust in having a great harem besides — whether 
 of Pagan slaves or of free-born daughters of Israel. He 
 might despise all these women, as mere toys and slaves for 
 his selfishness, but they would coax and flatter him into the 
 follies of false religion, in which they had been brought up, 
 or fallen into it themselves in such society and real degra- 
 dation. And he himself, because he was growing selfish and 
 worldly, would seek this ' refuge of lies ' from the holy law 
 of spiritual and self-denying love. 
 
 According to the Will and Wisdom of God, which we often 
 cannot penetrate by any of our conjectures — and most surely 
 not according to our usual theories of such things — Solomon 
 was allowed to reign in unbroken power, and apparent glory 
 and prosperity, to the end of a long life. He seems never to 
 have been molested by foreign war, or to have had any dis- 
 position to undertake it against others. But he was not 
 without trouble at home. There were partisan chiefs among 
 his subject Edomites and Syrians, who maintained a sort of 
 independence in the mountain fastnesses of those countries, 
 to his great annoyance. But what was more serious, his 
 unfaithfulness to the true Religion, and his other sins and 
 selfishness, made him abuse his great power over his people. 
 Taxes grew heavier, and liberty was invaded. One bold and 
 able man, whom he had promoted from a low position, upon 
 observing his ability and diligence, seems to have headed a 
 revolt against him, which was at once suppressed ; and this 
 Jeroboam escaped into Egypt. The king's great ability was 
 feared by all, and probably an affectionate pride in this and 
 in the glory and power he had brought to his people, as well 
 as loyal devotion to the ' house of David,' may have made 
 most of them rather submit to his severe rule than make 
 resistance. But upon his son and successor at once fell great 
 trouble, in a revolt of the greater part of the nation, and the 
 setting up of a separate and hostile kingdom. Yet the chief 
 importance of this was as it affected the history of religion. 
 The new state of North Palestine, as being much the larger, 
 took the name of Israel ; while the part which still continued 
 under the house of David was called Judah, after his tribe, 
 which was the main part of it. 
 
 Of course religion was at once largely affected by this.
 
 ISRAEL— DAVID TO DANIEL. 441 
 
 The Israelites were no longer one nation, and the holy city of 
 Jerusalem and the Temple were in the smaller division. 
 Preparation for building the Temple had been made by 
 David with all his ardour and energy, though to Solomon 
 fell the glory of the acuual construction. But this was 
 not the former's greatest service to the stability of Re- 
 ligion. He had taken great pains to organise anew the 
 tribe of Levi, as the ministers of worship and teachers of the 
 Law of God, in their various orders. This re-establishment of 
 the Divine law and ritual as first given by Moses, and substi- 
 tuting the Temple for the great tent or ' tabernacle ' in which 
 until then the public worship had been kept up with various 
 vicissitudes — and in a city which God now declared should 
 be most dear and sacred to Him, — was a great event in that 
 History.^ Its usefulness in keeping the people from neglect- 
 ing true religion and the Word of God, was now to be most 
 severely tried. 
 
 God did not regard this political revolution as a defection 
 from His service. He, indeed, by Prophets had suggested it, 
 as a just punishment of the sins of Solomon, and a part of 
 His great Providence. It was also to be one of those trials of 
 the faithfulness of most of the Israelites which come in the 
 discipline of us all. He considered the men of North 
 Palestine no less Israelites on account of their separation 
 from the dynasty of David. The greatest of His Prophets 
 for hundreds of years after this appeared among them ; and 
 the mass of that people regarded themselves as His and as 
 amenable to His law. At the same time it was a very pecu- 
 liar trial of their fidelity, a peculiar history as an example 
 for us. 
 
 At once the political question arose whether they were 
 still to resort to the Temple at Jerusalem for the greatest acts 
 of their Religion. This would have been a great practical 
 question if their religion had had no more to do with their 
 politics than ours has now ; but far more so when with them 
 Religion and politics had never been separated. The sacred 
 tribe of Levi made their decision at once, now more than 
 
 ^ We should remember and consider well that in all this David and Solomon 
 were as much Prophets of God, inspired by Him to act and speak in His Name, 
 thus giving His Word, as Samuel before and Elijah afterward.
 
 442 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 ever gathering in and around Jerusalem ; abandoning for this 
 their houses and lands in the other country ; and thus the 
 Ten tribes were left in a still worse condition as to Religion. 
 But the new king of Israel, Jeroboam, had already, and pro- 
 bably without much objection by the people, very astutely 
 for his purpose, set himself to adjust religion to the new 
 politics. So, without at all admitting any defection from 
 ' Jehovah their God,' places were appointed within their own 
 boundaries for the chief worship ; and images set up for this, 
 which was indeed a gross departure from the law of God, but 
 quite useful for the king's purpose. And this in one shape 
 or another never ceased among them after. It seems to have 
 varied with various influences : at first rather like that of 
 Egypt, then more and more adopting that of their nearest 
 neighbours on the north-west, the Phoenicians. Some of 
 the people of Israel still resorted to Jerusalem to worship 
 (2 Chron. xi. 16), and perhaps most of them still continued 
 to hold a sort of allegiance to the true religion. The Prophets 
 who arose among them never spoke or acted otherwise, and 
 were held in general awe and reverence, even when they 
 spoke most severely of the prevailing idolatry and other sins 
 of their people. It was a very strange confusion and incon- 
 sistency ; but it endured for hundreds of years. 
 
 The like struggle was going on even in the more favoured 
 kingdom of Judah. In this too we have the same picture of 
 an incessant conflict between light and darkness — true religion 
 and false — among the ' peculiar people,' as, e.g. there is now. 
 The great difference between them and the rest of mankind 
 then, was that elsewhere there was no struggle — because the 
 false had pretty much all its own way. 
 
 The study of this in its details, from Solomon to Zede- 
 kiah, is worth all the pains and attention it would require. 
 But we can only for the present purpose, note its most im- 
 portant incident, — that from time to time God added to His 
 former Word by sending Prophets to warn wicked kings or a 
 worldly people of the dangers of the times. Some of these 
 He also caused to zvrite their prophecies and thus add to the 
 Holy Scriptures which were to be kept carefully, and to come 
 down as the charge and treasure of His Church, when they 
 would receive an even much greater value as appended to the
 
 ISRAEL— DA VID TO DANIEL. 443 
 
 New Testament. The history of all this, including the say- 
 ings and doings of some of the chief Prophets, was also 
 written by inspiration of God and added to the other Holy 
 Scriptures. 
 
 The most remarkable and heroic of the Prophets who left 
 no writings but whose acts and some brief sayings are con- 
 tained in this history, were Elijah and Elisha, who lived about 
 200 years after Solomon, and who, as remarked before, were 
 born, lived long lives, and died, not in Judah but in Israel. 
 All these men hesitated not to rebuke the most fierce and 
 wicked kings, and the whole people at their back, for leaving 
 the holy service of God to take up the false religion of other 
 nations. For this was still the perverse way of both these 
 nations, though Judah retained more of the truth, and God 
 had been pleased to make their capital especially ' the city of 
 God,' and thus ' loved the gates of Zion more than all the 
 dwellings of Jacob.' 
 
 Their chief passion of this kind was for the filthy Baal- 
 worship of the Syrians around them, or of the Arabian 
 pagans, Moabites, and others on the south-east, or of the 
 Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon on the north. 
 
 It was about this time that these sailors and merchants 
 of Tyre, with whom they had had many dealings ever since 
 David and Solomon's day, began to found colonies in the far 
 west, on the Mediterranean shores, in Spain and perhaps 
 Britain, certainly on the North-African coast, at what became 
 afterwards the famous city of Carthage.^ 
 
 It is not amiss, but will help us better to understand this 
 history of Israel, to anticipate Chap. XXI. a little more, and 
 notice that it was then too, that one of the tribes of Central 
 Italy was beginning to gather to it the great power which 
 afterwards became the famous City and Empire of Rome. 
 
 ^ All this history shows us in the most natural way how much the Hebrew 
 people were in advance of the Phoenicians as to history, the art of writing and 
 religious thonght, and thus how absurd it is to search, as some modern scholars 
 are doing (see supra, p. 399) in the few and imperfect Phoenician remains for the 
 beginnings of thought and writing among those who were so far in advance of 
 them. It would be much more reasonable to reverse the process. And this, as 
 we have seen already, is no less true if Selden, Bochart, Gale, and Casaubon 
 did make some little mistakes in their facts and inferences. See also Stillingfleet, 
 Origines Sacrce, iii. ch. 5, etc.
 
 444 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 In Greece, also, the quick intelligence and poetic genius 
 which had already begun with Homer was pushing out in 
 various ambitions of adventure, art, and thought. In India 
 still went on the same development together, of far-fetched 
 metaphysics and absurd superstition. In China, probably 
 something of the same ; though as yet that seemed absorbed 
 in physical contrivance and in the heaping up of worldly 
 wealth. But in none of these regions, or elsewhere on the 
 earth, was there anything like that light of true Religion 
 which God had given and still kept replenishing in 
 Palestine. 
 
 Nor was this Word of God to Israel kept entirely from 
 all other nations. Its kings and prophets were not com- 
 manded to teach the true religion to the rest of the world, 
 nor ever thought this their duty. But God Himself caused 
 some gleams of that light to shine into ' the dark places 
 of the earth.' One such incident was that of the visit of 
 the Queen of Sheba to Solomon (see also ijtfra, Chap. XXI. 
 p. 469). 
 
 This shows that the son of David was so widely famous 
 in all the East, especially for his wisdom, that a powerful 
 sovereign made a journey of probably 1500 miles across 
 Arabian deserts, to make personal acquaintance with him, 
 and to profit by his words. What interests us now most, is 
 that she could not but have thus learned something of the 
 pure and spiritual worship of Israel, and the belief in One 
 Creator and God. That wisdom of Solomon which she came 
 to learn was all interwoven with his religion, — that indeed 
 the main and dominant part of it. Such questions and be- 
 liefs carried home by her and her attendants, would be sure 
 to be thought of, and talked of, for long years after. In fact, 
 these agreeing with the most ancient traditions of Southern 
 Arabia, lingering, however vaguely and faintly in some 
 minds, would never quite perish. In some form or effect 
 they would survive always, as we have reason to believe 
 they were found there by the first Christian missionaries in 
 the second, if not even the first century. 
 
 Another such incident occurs about a hundred years later. 
 A famous Syrian soldier, whom a tradition, which is at least 
 1800 or 1900 years old, reports as the very man who killed
 
 ISRAEL— DA VID TO DANIEL. 445 
 
 the wicked Ahab in battle (see i Kings xxii.), became a 
 leper. In one of the forays of the almost continual war be- 
 tween his country and Israel, he had carried off a little maid 
 of that land who was now the favourite attendant of his wife. 
 The Syrian was plainly a good master, and the little Israelite 
 was grieved at his misfortune. So she told her mistress she 
 was sure that if he would go to the great prophet of her 
 country (Elisha, the successor of Elijah, and only second to 
 him in those annals for the miracles which God did by him), 
 he would cure him of his leprosy. 
 
 When this came to the ears of Benhadad, the king of Syria, 
 he, with what would be superstitious credulity as to his own 
 false gods and prophets, but wise faith as to the God of Israel, 
 resolved that his favourite Naaman should not miss any 
 such chance of a cure for lack of the attempt. So as there 
 was then peace between Israel and Syria (probably by the 
 acknowledgment of subjection and tribute to Syria by the 
 successor of Ahab after his defeat and death), he sent Naaman 
 to Samaria, with an embassage to this Jehoram, requiring 
 him to have Naaman cured of his leprosy. It was a haughty 
 and unreasonable message, perhaps intentionally careless as 
 to whether the tributary king could comply with it, or be only 
 frightened at such an exaction ; making no mention of the 
 prophet, yet certainly hoping that Naaman would be relieved 
 of his dreadful affliction — ^just this : ' Behold, I have sent my 
 servant Naaman unto thee that thou mayest cure him of his 
 leprosy.' 
 
 And so it fell out. For Ahab's son, who knew nothing 
 about Elisha in the affair, was only terrified at this require- 
 ment, and saw in it merely a freak of senseless tyranny or 
 the pretext for a quarrel. In the midst of his alarm and per- 
 plexity, came a message from Elisha, who had heard of this 
 by some means, and sends now to say, ' Let Naaman come 
 now to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.' 
 The Syrian general and his retinue go to the Prophet's house, 
 who does not come out to receive him, but only sends word 
 that he must go and plunge in the river Jordan seven times. 
 Naam.an was at first only disappointed, and very angry at 
 this want of ceremony and attention to him ; perhaps at the 
 disrespect to his sovereign and evasion of his wish, in sending
 
 446 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 him back to the little Israelitish river which he had but just 
 crossed on his way there. But he is afterwards persuaded by 
 his attendants to put that much faith in Elisha and his God, 
 to make a trial of this simple requirement. Doing so, he is 
 instantly and entirely cured of his dreadful disease. 
 
 Then, though well on his way home, he returns at once 
 ' with all his company ' to the Prophet and makes this 
 avowal : ' Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the 
 earth, but in Israel.' Then he offers him splendid gifts as a 
 well-earned fee for the cure, and as a part of his homage to 
 the One Only God. When these are positively declined, he 
 makes this remarkable request : that there ' be given to thy 
 servant two mules' burden of earth ; for thy servant will 
 henceforth offer neither burnt-offering nor sacrifice unto other 
 gods, but unto the Lord.' 
 
 And yet, having no thought that it was his duty to oppose 
 the religion of his own country or hope of changing it, he 
 asks this allowance : ' In this thing the Lord pardon thy 
 servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rim- 
 mon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I 
 bow myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy 
 servant in this thing.' Most remarkable of all, this request 
 is 7iot refused, but he is told to ' go in peace.' Evidently it 
 was not then the office of a Prophet in Israel to convert 
 other nations from false religion, or to require powerful men 
 in those nations who were converted to the true God, to make 
 that attempt. But it does show that the Great I AM of 
 Israel was the true God of those nations, and that any of 
 their people who came to know this, did wisely for themselves 
 to worship only Him. 
 
 It was probably in the last days of Elisha that God 
 caused the first of the later Prophets to write His message, 
 and had this preserved as a part of the Holy Bible for all 
 mankind. This was Jonah. And he is remarkable also 
 among these writers as having given us rather a history of 
 his mission than any predictions or precepts. More than all, 
 it is the most wonderful instance given in all the history of 
 Israel, of God's love and pity for the rest of mankind. This 
 Hebrew Prophet is the one who was not sent at all to his 
 own people, nor even to one of the neighbouring and more
 
 ISRAEL— DA VID TO DANIEL. 447 
 
 friendly nations, but to a great distant and wicked city, the 
 capital of a powerful people whom the Israelites knew of only 
 as sometimes fierce invaders and oppressors. 
 
 The mission of Jonah to Nineveh as related in his book is 
 therefore not only very interesting in itself, but is especially 
 noteworthy in a history of religious thought. It is a glimpse 
 of God's care for the souls of those who sat in religious dark- 
 ness for the fifteen centuries at least, in which it was the Will 
 of His wise love {0 altitudo !) to confine His Word to a 
 hundredth part (or less) of mankind. 
 
 Good reader, turn to this Book of Jonah, the tenth in 
 order of arrangement of the Prophets in our Bibles, and read 
 for yourself in a page or two a wonderful story, the like of 
 which is not in all other books in the world. This was about 
 850 years before Christ (a century before the founding of 
 Rome, and longer yet before Buddha appeared in India, or 
 Confucius in China). Yes, it is wonderful. Among that little, 
 hard, and narrow people, the Hebrews, in their wildest, hardest, 
 and narrowest period, was produced and handed down to us 
 a writing not the hundredth part of the amount of the 
 Brahmopadru, telling how the One God, Maker of Heaven 
 and Earth, pitied all the people of idolatrous and sensual 
 Nineveh, and sent an Israelite to preach to them repentance 
 for their sins and pardon from Him. 'Now the word of the 
 Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying : Arise, go 
 to Nineveh, that great city and cry against it ; for their 
 wickedness is come up before me. . . . And should not I spare 
 Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score 
 thousand persons that cannot discern between their right 
 hand and their left ; and also much cattle } ' Between these 
 sentences, in less than four such pages as this is comprised 
 all of that history. 
 
 Yet what we see in it ! The Great Father, before Whom 
 each soul of us (and even all of us together) is ' as nothing/ 
 and against Whom we are greater sinners than we can even 
 comprehend, — is preparing His Salvation for all men in His 
 own way, by giving a * Word of God,' for now some thousand 
 years of this history to only a very few of mankind. And 
 there is as great a mystery in His long-suffering with the 
 perversities of those few as in His special favour to them.
 
 448 BEG/XA'I.VGS OF RELIGIOX. 
 
 But in the midst of this, and longer before the great Gospel for 
 all was to begin in the world than it is now since the Norman 
 Conquest of England, He suddenly sends one of these 
 Hebrews to Nineveh as His messenger of mercy. Now 
 Nineveh represented the rich and prosperous false religion of 
 the world, to the East, as Eg>-pt did to the West All S}Tia 
 but most of all, the small Jewish kingdoms, was the prize of 
 conquest between these great and cruel rivals. Of the two 
 you might think that Eg}-pt, as not only the nearer, but once 
 the home of Joseph and shelter of his father and brothers, had 
 more claims to this. Neither had claims, as none of us have, 
 to God's mercy. Nor was His ' fulness of time ' come to 
 show that great mercy, and for His Son to die for all. He 
 chose to make this one marked demonstration of love and 
 pit)- for Pagan sinners. 
 
 Soon after this began the long line of other Prophets 
 whose writings are a large part of the Old Testament The 
 greatest of them, certainly of the earlier ones, Isaiah, 
 flourished within the centur>- after Jonah. He lived and 
 prophesied through several reigns of good and bad kings 
 of Judah, The last of these kings, and one of the best of 
 his line, was Hezekiah, who tried hard to restore the pure 
 law and ritual. He succeeded only in part The people 
 were so used now to deviations from God's Word, in things 
 great and small, public and private, that a vicious or irre- 
 ligious king more easily corrupted, than a good one reformed 
 them. 
 
 Long before this, however, the kingdom of Israel had 
 ceased to exist Its strange part in the histor)- of the 
 ' people of God ' had been finished. False religion and 
 public calamities, bad kings and a bad people, had ended in 
 Pagan conquest and captivity-. Such of the old stock of 
 Israel as were left in the land, not considered of consequence 
 enough to be removed to Assyria, resorted to Judah, or 
 were lost among the new heathen colonists. Out of this 
 last mixture came a sort of Jewish sect, which survives to 
 this day, called the Samaritans, and which has in a strange 
 way been of some ser\ice in preserving the ancient Word 
 of God and its proofs. 
 
 The writings of the Prophets contain many predictions
 
 ISRAEL— DAVID TO DAXIEL. 449 
 
 and precepts for their own times. But they also proclaim 
 with most eloquent power the spiritual meaning of that old 
 Word of God from the first, including the Law of Moses, 
 not only as the men of the Exodus best understood it, but 
 probably in an increasing degree, as God meant it yet for 
 ' a light to lighten the Gentiles ' (or other nations of the 
 earth), a preparation for the Great Gospel of salvation for 
 all men. And in this we should include such of the Psalms 
 as were doubtless added to that Book, after David, by the 
 same Inspiration and Divine authority. There is in the 
 Prophets no disparagement of that Law and opposition to 
 Moses, to the ritual and the Temple, and the whole body of 
 'statutes,' as Moses himself calls them. On the contrary, 
 they imply a spiritual and heavenly meaning in it all, and 
 a dawning vision of something future which is to perfect 
 and supersede it. [In fact there is nothing in the Prophets 
 more profound and spiritual than much of Moses, and of 
 those Psalms which are evidently David's.] They foretold 
 in a verj' beautiful and splendid way that there was yet to 
 be a still greater Word of God, and blessedness for all men. 
 Our Lord often refers to them for all this. 
 
 Yet it is to these Prophets and this time that some 
 ingenious men now resort for arguments to prove a theory 
 of theirs, that Moses did not write the five books (really one 
 book, see p. 408), received as his, and that no such writings 
 were known at all for eight hundred, if not for a thousand, 
 years after the Exodus. I have carefully examined the al- 
 leged proofs for this, and find that, so far as I am capable 
 of judging, they amount to nothing. They give a sort of 
 explanation of certain diflnculties of the history ; but they 
 raise a great many more. 
 
 To exalt the ' Prophets ' at the expense of ' the Law,' 
 they put forced constructions upon many passages in both 
 of them. And they assume that at least the four books 
 (Exodus — Deuteronomy), as we now have them, are a 
 bold and yet a most skilful forgery, which imposed upon 
 that whole nation for 2500 years, upon Our Lord and 
 His Apostles, and all Christendom since, until within a hun- 
 dred years past some European students have found out 
 and exposed it all ! Thus it requires more credulous trust in 
 
 2 F
 
 450 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 a few men's guesses in order to believe this new doctrine, 
 than it does of faith in God's Word to keep the old. 
 
 And as the Word of God enlarged by these Prophets 
 had more and more to say of the mercy of God to the 
 other nations, and of His greatest blessings, in which they 
 were to have as great a part as Israel, this is not by any 
 accommodation to false religion, such as modern ' Com- 
 parative Religion ' deals in. On the contrary, it is in Isaiah, 
 and the others of this ' goodly fellowship,' that we have the 
 most powerful exposure of the folly and wickedness of 
 idolatry, and all such superstitions — the most sublime setting 
 forth of the One Only True God. 
 
 But no sooner was the good king Hezekiah dead than 
 a wicked son takes his place, and a wicked people rush 
 with him into the imitation of the false religions of their 
 neighbours. It is only after three such reigns, and one of 
 them quite long, that another of the line of David, who 
 loved the true Religion, became king. Josiah was one of 
 those beautiful instances scattered sparingly through His- 
 tory, where a young boy inherits a throne, and instead of 
 mere self-indulgence, leaving it to agents to carry on the 
 government in some bad old way, sets out at once with a 
 virtuous and godly will of his own to be a good ruler. The 
 greatest reform then needed, that of religion, did not begin 
 at first, nor indeed until another though kindred question, 
 causing a search in the records of the Temple, brought out 
 a * roll of a book ' long left unnoticed, the reading of which 
 greatly stirred up its finder. When brought to the notice 
 of the king, then a young man growing up firm and vigorous, 
 he was very much moved. He gave an example to all the 
 rest by every outward demonstration of shame, and of 
 alarm at the dangers into which their departure from the 
 Law of God had brought all the nation. 
 
 But he did better yet in decreeing the immediate restora- 
 tion, as far as possible, of all the holy ritual in the * book of 
 the Law,' or ' book of the Covenant,' as well as the laws of 
 right between man and man. He attended in person to 
 this, and gave his presence and own speech to a resumption 
 of that Covenant in the purified Temple before a vast 
 assembly of all the priests and princes, and, as far as
 
 ISRAEL— DAVID TO DANIEL. 451 
 
 possible, all the people. He set himself to destroy, root 
 and branch, all the idolatries and superstitions,^ and their 
 institutions and places. 
 
 It was a vast undertaking for one young man, even a 
 king, and with some brave Prophets and Priests to help him. 
 This actual religion of a people, if it has been rooted for one 
 or two generations as the actual religion of their families 
 and their laws, though we can see that it was very unworthy 
 of them, and utterly out of place with those who had been 
 taken out from among men to represent the true God for a 
 thousand years, is very hard to deal with. And besides, 
 while God had given them the better religion ages before, 
 they had, for most of the time, been really fighting against 
 Him to follow any superstition of Canaanites or Syrians, 
 Egyptians or Assyrians, rather than this beautiful and holy 
 truth. 
 
 It is therefore very far from strange that even Josiah did 
 not succeed in a few days in banishing from his land every 
 irregularity out of the hundreds that had been lurking among 
 them ever since the days of Joshua, or in effecting such per- 
 fect observance of the Ritual as had likely never been seen 
 since Moses' time. Thus we are told of his first Passover, 
 that even this simplest and greatest of Hebrew feasts had not 
 been as carefully observed since the days of the Judges.^ 
 
 Much less then should we be puzzled at certain departures 
 as to sacrifices in * high places,' etc. These were allowed by 
 Samuel and other Prophets, and other changes of detail made 
 by David and Solomon, who also were Prophets of God. 
 None the less the ' Law,' as we have it in Moses, was the 
 
 ^ Note this well (2 Kings xxiii. 24). See also p. 347. 
 
 ^ This most important fact has been strangely neglected in its bearing 
 iipon all these questions, even by those who state it. It is a very bold and 
 rash assumption of some that ' the book ' found was only that part of Moses now 
 commonly called the ' Deuteronomy.' This is against the fact that the division 
 of Moses is a modern and artificial one. It is against the evident implication of 
 the history (2 Kings xxiii. 21, etc.), that it is the complete minutiae of ceremony 
 as found in ' Exodus,' which was followed by Josiah, rather than the brief notice 
 of the Passover in 'Deuteronomy.' What was found is first expressly called 
 ' the Book of the Law,' afterwards ' of the Covenant.' There is indeed no reason 
 why we should leave the natural sense that it was the entire ' Law ' as certainly 
 recognised from Ezra to Our Lord, except such reason as there may be in a desire 
 to propitiate the doubting ' criticism ' of modern times.
 
 452 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 perfect and acknowledged rule for Israel, and preserved as 
 such by its lawful guardians, as much as the Holy Bible was 
 kept by the Church through the Dark Ages. 
 
 This finding of the neglected book and restoration of its 
 authority in Josiah's time, has been twisted by some into 
 proof of the strange theory just noticed, as though it informed 
 us of the bringing out a most ingenious forgery of some 
 unknown priests, who, with a mixture of pious devotion 
 to the true God, and contempt for His wrath against 
 those who take His Name in vain or bear false witness, 
 invented new precepts of worship and obedience to Him, 
 and then prepared this book, in the name of a prophet who 
 lived a thousand years before— sowed it thickly with such 
 expressions as — * And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,' 
 etc. (in this not hoping or thinking to affect their own or even 
 the next succeeding generations), and then hid it where it 
 could be found eighty or a hundred years afterwards, and 
 be believed ! 
 
 A modified theory of this is sometimes suggested, viz., 
 that all the substance of what we call the * Books of Moses ' 
 had survived by oral tradition in different classes of people : 
 the Levitical law of sacrifices among that tribe whose interest 
 it was to make the most of that, but who had never suc- 
 ceeded in making anybody else believe in it, and so with 
 other parts of it. Somebody guesses now — thousands of years 
 after these events — that some cunning old zealots, getting 
 tired of a stern tradition which had for ages forbidden any 
 one to write down God's law (whatever else was written), it 
 being presei-ved by the mere oral tradition (though not 
 observed at all), for some mysterious purpose, these very 
 religious but very unscrupulous priests (and nobody knows 
 at all wJio they were) committed it to writing with perfect 
 accuracy, and then hid it in the Temple ! 
 
 Professor Robertson Smith thinks they did this in Heze- 
 kiah's reign. Is there any record or suggestion of this in the 
 history of that time .■' None whatever. Is there ayiy proof of 
 this story ? None. Why should we then believe it } Because 
 Professor Kuenen in Holland, and Professor Robertson Smith 
 in Scotland, and some others, have decided that Moses did not 
 write the Book of Moses ; and as King Josiah did find ' a
 
 ISRAEL— DAVID TO DANIEL. ' 453 
 
 book,' they must account for the existence of the book in 
 some way ! Is that ' science ' ? Then let us prefer to keep 
 to the common sense of truth without being scientific. The 
 real history shows that a book was found there because the 
 book had been written nearly a thousand years before : had 
 been kept by an unbroken line of men whose charge it was — 
 had been always recognised as the pure Law of Moses, but 
 often abandoned for a while, if ever fully observed. And 
 because this defection for some eighty years — that is, nearly as 
 long as this century has now lasted — had been more entire 
 than ever before, and the sacred memories and traditions had 
 almost perished, the bringing out of this neglected book, not 
 merely for priests to study, but for the whole people to learn 
 and repent by, was indeed a great event. 
 
 If this is not so we can have no sort of (I will not say 
 reverence, but even) respect for the ' Pentateuch.' What con- 
 fidence can we have in the History related by men, in a ficti- 
 tious narrative of how ' the Lord spake unto Moses,' and 
 Moses to Israel, when it was what they themselves had 
 made up eight or nine hundred years afterwards ? What 
 improbable accuracy of oral tradition of the most minute 
 directions of ritual and law of what had not been written down 
 before, and by very few, if any, observed for many ages .'' 
 
 The religion thus revived in Judeafell with Josiah, cut off 
 in battle in the flower of his age. The mighty Egyptian and 
 Assyrian nations were now under monarchs of great energy, 
 renewing their rivalry of ages. Josiah rashly meddled in 
 this by allying himself with the Assyrians, attacking Pharaoh 
 on his way east with a great army. Then the Egyptian 
 king not only levied a heavy contribution upon the little 
 kingdom, which pressed hard upon all the people, but he 
 showed his power also by displacing one son of Josiah, 
 Jehoahaz or Shallum, who had begun to reign, and putting 
 another, Jehoiakim, in his place. Both these were perverse 
 idolaters and evil rulers. Yet the second one reigned for 
 eleven years, and even died in his bed, and was succeeded 
 by his son Jehoiachin. 
 
 But before this the kings of Judah with all around them 
 had yielded to the conquering power of the East, and 
 been transferred as vassals from Pharaoh to the terrible
 
 454 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Judea was now harried by- 
 invasions of all its unfriendly neighbours, including the 
 Bedouins of Arabia. But just before his death, Jehoiakim 
 had ventured to renounce the authority of the king of Baby- 
 lon and defy him. It was not until his son's reign was 
 begun that the great army sent to repress this rebellion sur- 
 rounded Jerusalem. It fell. 
 
 Then began that period of this History called 'the Cap- 
 tivity of Babylon,' when the holy vessels of the Temple, as well 
 as all other spoil that could be found, were carried off, and 
 the chief of the people, to the number of 10,000, were marched 
 some 800 miles across a rough country to the low plains of the 
 Euphrates, where ' by the waters of Babylon they sat down 
 and wept' Nearly ten years after, this was repeated with 
 even more severity. For the prince whom Nebuchadnezzar 
 set up as a vassal king over the poor people whom he did not 
 care to take into captivity, this Zedekiah was foolish enough 
 to attempt rebellion. It ended in another capture and plunder 
 of the city, and the removal of all the able-bodied men, 
 making sure that they would never be mustered for another 
 rebellion. They and their king were swept along with the 
 great army on its return march to Babylon. 
 
 The sceptre seemed indeed to have departed from Judah; 
 and yet it was to be 500 years more before the great 
 Shiloh should come. It had departed, so far as any earthly 
 kingdom of Israel should ever really exist any more. But, 
 as we shall also see, the glory and the power of a greater 
 King than any other who ever then or since bore the name 
 were yet to be introduced by these and even more tragical 
 events.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS — B. C. IOOO-500. 
 
 In the central part of the inhabited world — say the southern 
 half of the north temperate belt of the Eastern Continent — 
 the human race prospered most in its tendencies to improve- 
 ment, and was most checked in some of its downward 
 impulses. Here, from the far Eastern or Pacific seas to 
 where the Atlantic seemed to end the world of mankind, 
 men by degrees gathered into nations instead of remaining 
 scattered in tribes. Here they tilled the ground like their 
 first ancestor, and built houses, instead of the more idle 
 wandering life of herdsmen and their shifting tents. Here 
 they began to reduce law and government to fixed and com- 
 plex forms, to state in terms the rights and duties of men to 
 one another, and to record the greater events, as they passed, 
 in writing. Thus arts were greatly improved and inventions 
 multiplied, not perhaps with the swiftness with which such 
 things seem to move in some countries now, but vastly 
 quicker than among the wandering tribes. Riches increased, 
 and with that the difference between the few more, and the 
 many less, fortunate. By this government tended to be more 
 a matter of selfishness and injustice of the one man or the 
 very few who had power. All had a traditionary belief, 
 responded to by our nature, that there must be law, and 
 rulers to enforce it ; and so that obedience and loyalty were 
 necessary. But as this was wounded by the sense of unjust 
 rule, rebellion, or the fear of it, made the ruler yet more cruel. 
 He was like to use fear as his chief or only motive to secure 
 obedience. Often the hated authority was right in what 
 was resisted. It was then the anger of a deserved humilia-
 
 456 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 tion, the defeat of some selfish wrong, which made the 
 offender a rebel and a conspirator. But, on the other hand, 
 this was often the insurrection of a wounded sense of justice. 
 It is a terrible, and yet has often been an actual thing, that 
 the very one who represented the justice of God to others 
 was himself the worst of evil-doers. Here was another 
 grievous perversion of that true Religion by which all 
 law arises from and depends upon the knowledge and love 
 of God. 
 
 There was yet another instance of this, in that the struggles 
 of selfish passion between individual men passed into deadly 
 contests between rival families, tribes, and at last great 
 nations. This indeed often (though not always) began with 
 the mere rapacity or revenge of a king, or of some one who 
 prompted him. But wars, however begun, usually became 
 in the end the ambition and the anger of thousands. They 
 increased the miseries of want, suffering, and death in all 
 the communities of men. Yet religion mingled with wars, 
 as it must with all great matters, and as it always will in 
 some way. This was another factor in the terrible perversion 
 and confusion of Religion and morals. 
 
 Early in this period appeared, in a lovely country on the 
 north of the Mediterranean Sea, certain poetical writings of 
 great beauty. Though these books are, after those of Moses, 
 among the very oldest human writings, they have never 
 since been surpassed in their kind of poetry. They are the 
 study and admiration of all the most refined nations of our 
 day. But what concerns us most now (and it is no small 
 part of their poetical value) is that they give us the most 
 artless and exact view of the religion of one of the ' Gentile ' 
 races. That the Iliad and Odyssey are not books of religious 
 rites and opinions, prepared in order to set down what the 
 sovereign or priestly order meant the religion of the people 
 to be, makes them all the more valuable for our purpose. 
 Such formal religious writings, unless they are the direct 
 Word of God to men, or follow that carefully, are sure to be 
 somewhat factitious and fictitious ; to omit much of fact 
 interesting to us, and spend most of their words upon the 
 artificial fancies and conceits of their writers, and their 
 ambitious but feeble speculations. They represent much
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1000-500. 457 
 
 more what these ' doctrinaires ' would Hke to make the 
 theory of their people's religion, than what that religion 
 really is. 
 
 The great poems of Homer tell us so naturally what the 
 old Greeks and Levantiiies did and thought about Divine 
 things, that we can take them in the main in this regard for 
 fact, and study what they furnish for a history of the religion 
 of mankind. They show certain very distinct remains of 
 the primitive Religion. First, that Religion lay at the root 
 of all authority, public order, and personal righteousness. 
 Second, that it was given to men by the power above men, 
 which was thus worshipped — was not discovered or invented 
 by mankind. Third, that language, and letters, and the chief 
 arts necessary to social man, were also such Divine gifts. 
 Fourth, that, as tradition went back furthest, it found man- 
 kind, not more and more brutish, but more beautiful, innocent, 
 and happy ; perfectly so at the very beginning. Fifth, that 
 this beginning was by the will and act of that Divine Power. 
 Sixth, that in the later ages of man's degeneracy and many 
 crimes, it was necessary for all to propitiate that Power by 
 various acts of worship, needing an Order of priesthood, but 
 especially by the killing of useful beasts in sacrifice. 
 
 No ingenuity can give a reasonable account of how these 
 things could appear in the writings of Homer, upon the theory 
 that religion is man's invention, by slow degrees of constant 
 advance, from the most crude and cruel ideas of the super- 
 human. How came such elevated thoughts of it to be 
 universal among Greeks and others while they were a bar- 
 barous people, and to fade away, and be almost unknown 
 among the elegant Athenians of 500 years later ? 
 
 On the other hand, the Religion of the Iliad and Odyssey 
 had already departed far from the true and old, in changing 
 the thought of God into a belief in many ' gods.' All idea 
 of personal love, as due on our part, to this great unseen 
 Power, or of a great, patient, and gracious love towards us on 
 its part, had also disappeared. The guilty fear of those who 
 owed ever so much to this mighty creditor, and had nothing 
 to pay, alone remained. The precious tradition of Divine 
 pity for sinners, and of a great mystery of future salva- 
 tion of them by the righteous God Himself, was, if not
 
 458 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 totally lost, only very faintly discoverable in their sacrifices 
 for sins. 
 
 The process of this change, and evidently a very natural 
 one, seems to have been, that those who had wandered so far 
 from the country of Adam and Noah, as to have got out of 
 the stronger currents of true tradition there, had already in 
 some twelve centuries — say at least thirty generations — gone 
 further than the Persians, or even the Egyptians, in some 
 directions of false religion. They did not lose all religion. 
 For when their love and hope ceased to rise that way, their 
 fears reminded them that there was somebody far above men, 
 and master of them. Following evil desire, and not restrained 
 in it by penitent love of God, nor hope in Him, they were 
 kept back from utter and shameless evil by the old tradition 
 of right- and wrong-doing, which human authority must en- 
 force to some extent, to maintain any order and peace among 
 men. But the very ' gods ' had ceased really to represent this 
 — or to differ from men except in being more powerful, and 
 usually unseen. And, as rulers and other admired men used 
 their power to gratify pride and every sensual passion, so the 
 * gods ' were represented by priests and poets, as doing the 
 like. Their authority and example were used to justify this 
 selfish passion and to gratify its imaginations. Thus Law 
 and Religion, while still leagued together, were widely sun- 
 dered in principle. So that what would make a man odious 
 to others, and the subject of just vengeance, was admired in 
 the higher persons, who were yet believed to be the authors 
 and maintainers of that law ! 
 
 Then guilty fear sometimes grew more and more san- 
 guinary and cruel in sacrifices. The thought that, as it was 
 men's sins that were to be atoned for, men should be the 
 victims, very naturally came forward. With these Greeks 
 this was checked and softened by other influences. In the 
 more barbarous races, further removed from the fountain of 
 Religion and from commerce with others, and where the 
 struggle for life itself against fierce beasts, and also the rigours 
 of winter, or poisonous torrid heats, tended to make men more 
 hard and cruel, this error in religion grew to a terrible ferocity, 
 which darkened the life of all the people, and seemed as if its 
 only limit would be reached when the priests had no other
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1000-500. 459 
 
 man or woman left to immolate. We see this somewhat in 
 the North-American and Siberian, but still more in those of 
 South and West Africa. 
 
 In all this the early Greeks, as described by Homer, re- 
 present in the main the process of deterioration and change 
 of religion going on everywhere, except among those to whom 
 God had now given His Word, both spoken and written, and 
 whom He had chosen to be His true worshippers for the 1000 
 years to follow. (Even among them these evil influences had a 
 certain play and power, which only shows the more the strength 
 of the tendency, and the Divine force which resisted it.) 
 
 But another element in this change now begins to come 
 more plainly into view. In the more civilised lands, beside 
 those who were busy with war, or the arts of peace, there were 
 some who turned rather to speculations upon things spiritual, 
 upon man's nature and destiny, and upon the unseen Divine. 
 Probably not distinguishing among their own thoughts be- 
 tween what they had learned and what they now reasoned 
 out, they often took for their own discovery what of the 
 primitive Religion (including God's commandments of duty) 
 had come down to them and all the rest of men. With this, 
 they also mingled more or less of the later and false tradi- 
 tion. But, besides this, some of these more powerful and 
 original minds proceeded to further * philosophy ' of their own. 
 Inasmuch as these things are above our invention — while 
 every man is beset by misleading tendencies of self-confidence, 
 ambition, and evil desire, — this ' philosophy ' was sure to be 
 erroneous in some, and perhaps in all points. At least, what 
 was best in it would only be the imperfect and deformed 
 traces of the original Word of God to man. 
 
 It is no doubt impossible to say when this began among 
 men. Its real beginnings were probably far back in the early 
 and patriarchal world. But the first distinct memorials of it 
 were, it seems, not in Greece nor even Egypt, but in India. 
 Here was also a very early and remarkable civilisation. 
 There seem to be quite plain footprints (in the language) of 
 this people, as having come direct from the Persian region, 
 the very countries where the first men lived, and the ancient 
 truth about God and man's soul lingered longest by mere 
 tradition.
 
 46o BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 So we find in the earliest Indian writings the thought of 
 Him as One, the Creator of all things, and having given 
 laws of righteous living to mankind, His noblest creatures. 
 But besides this, we have not only some of the false religion 
 of the later Persians, but men arose early among the Hindus 
 who had speculative and imaginative minds, and employed 
 them upon questions of religion. 
 
 The discovery of these writings (the Vedas, etc.), in 
 modern times, and especially a more correct knowledge of 
 them in our own generation, has attracted great attention 
 among European scholars. The best judgment fixes the 
 composition of the Vedas at about the time of King David 
 and the siege of Tro}'.^ Some maintain, but without any 
 good reason, that they are vastly older than I have stated, 
 even much older than the writings of Moses.^ Any such 
 claims by the Brahmins in behalf of the antiquity of the 
 Vedas prove nothing, unless they also turn all the absurd 
 fictions, in the midst of which the few finer passages are 
 scattered, into facts. There is no sort of resemblance between 
 this judgment and a rejection of our old Holy Scriptures. 
 For the Vedas have no mighty testimony of miracles and 
 sober tradition, of continuous yearly and even weekly cele- 
 brations from the very days of Moses, and of the verification 
 of them by the Divine Lord and Saviour of men when He 
 was in the world as our fellow-man. I name these reasons 
 for our obedient faith rather than that other great one, that 
 the Holy Bible is in itself and throughout so incomparably 
 great and true, because some may assume that this is mere 
 religious prejudice. And yet who of us can, upon any fair 
 comparison, think of the Vedas, or of the Buddhist or Con- 
 fucian writings, as having any such Divine genuineness as 
 the Christian Scriptures .'' 
 
 The chief interest of the Vedas to us is, that some modern 
 scholars think that in them they find proof that mankind 
 discovered the idea of religion in some very remote age by 
 
 ^ Professor Max Miiller assents to this, India, etc. 
 
 ^ Professor M. seems, in absurd contradiction of his own previous acknow- 
 ledgment of the fact, to say this in substance. It is probably an inadvertence 
 from his lack of acquaintance with the Hebrew history. But who in this day 
 can know everything ?
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1000-500. 461 
 
 the reasonings of these Hhidu philosophers, or others before 
 them. I am not able to find any proof or suggestion of that 
 notion in those writings. We have already seen that all facts 
 of History so far, and the Divine Word, inform us that God 
 gave man true Religion fiom the first. And with this all the 
 better parts of the Indian writings agree. The rest is just 
 such false invention as we find among Egyptians, Syrians, 
 and Greeks. The variations of these various peoples are evi- 
 dently due to their different circumstances and history, and 
 to the strong individual genius of certain poets, priests, and 
 kings, among each of them. 
 
 It was such a characteristic with the Hindus that their 
 religion should take (that is, in the opinions of a few specula- 
 tive persons and the priestly caste appropriating this) the 
 form of an abstract philosophy, ingenious, extremely so in 
 some things, but metaphysical, both in the popular and tech- 
 nical sense, fanciful and fruitless as regards men's real lives, 
 their goodness and happiness. This metaphysical religion 
 was utterly unmeaning to almost all the Hindu people. 
 They were, and ever have been, are now, as blind and silly 
 idolaters (with morals as bad as those of their many gods) as 
 the Egyptians were. Now Religion is for labourers as much 
 as for philosophers, for women and children as much as for 
 priests. But the very Brahmins themselves practised the 
 degrading, formal, and superstitious religion, as much as the 
 lowest of the people. At this day these guardians and 
 students of the Vedas are, as a class, beside being extremely 
 sensual and immoral, the most bigoted and active champions 
 of all those superstitions — in this way living upon the false 
 religion of the ignorant. That alone would suggest that we 
 are not to look in these Vedic writings for the beginnings or 
 progress of pure Religion. 
 
 Some one may reply that the same argument will dis- 
 prove the Christian Scriptures. If he, or those who follow 
 his opinions, really think that there is a resemblance in this 
 between the Church of Jesus Christ with its influence upon 
 Christendom, and the actual religion of India, I can only 
 then express my astonishment at such an opinion, and my 
 readiness to examine this elsewhere as a question of fact. I 
 suppose this now as unnecessary with most of my readers as
 
 462 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 for a writer upon government to prove that this country has 
 better law than the Bulgarians had under Turkish rule a few 
 years ago. Another proof is that among these Indian writ- 
 ings, by the distinct allowance, or rather the earnest conten- 
 tion, of their admirers, the more ancient are the truer and 
 better. As we come down from those, the Vedas and 
 Shastras, etc., become more trivial and superstitious. In the 
 Holy Bible there is a noble consistency and unity of original 
 truth. If we trace in it also a movement with History, that is 
 one of growing light and expanding love. At the last, after 
 1500 years, we have the Gospel, which is the * perfect day,' to 
 crown the early dawn of the older Scriptures. 
 
 Examined in detail, we find even the oldest and best of 
 the Sanscrit writings, say the Rig-Veda, of which we have a 
 translation by the greatest student and advocate of them 
 among English-speaking people, as a whole, exceedingly 
 unmeaning, dull, and repetitious. 
 
 It is indeed well for one like the present writer, who (and 
 almost all of us) cannot spend years in acquiring these strange 
 languages, and toiling through all their literature, to be care- 
 ful in forming such a judgment as this. But we must have 
 and express some judgments in these matters ; otherwise we 
 are the mere slaves, and perhaps dupes, of the few who have, or 
 claim to have, gone through all this investigation. So if, as 
 in the present instance, the judgment is given by one who has 
 employed such means for a fair judgment as anything short 
 of a lifetime given only to them (and then making a man 
 quite incapable of the comparison with other writings, and 
 likely to be biassed by his special ambition) will allow, and 
 who uses the very renderings and selections from these writ- 
 ings furnished by their admirers, such an opinion should have 
 its chance. Certainly it seems likely to be a fairer and more 
 intelligent one than that of those who call upon us to believe 
 every strange notion which they claim as new-discovered 
 truth, and in the same breath say that no one has a right to 
 an opinion about it but themselves ; because their studies have 
 been so narrow, and their pride is so engrossed with them. 
 
 With the admiration of the Vedas we have associated, by 
 its promoters, the theory of demonstrating the beginnings and 
 growth of religious thought, solely by investigating the mere
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1000-500. 463 
 
 words of the Sanscrit or ancient Indian language. I have 
 endeavoured to follow this process as they give it, with a 
 desire to find any truth that may be so discovered. And, as 
 the result, I do not hesitate to say that the method is 
 entirely fanciful, and, upon the whole, irrational. It is a 
 reversal of the natural method of an investigation {i.e. follow- 
 ing the footsteps) of facts. If anything can be (or at least 
 has been) thus traced in regard to the origin and progress 
 of men's thoughts about religion, it is only of the false and 
 morbid perversions of original truth, and tracing this does 
 not lead us in the direction of the original. 
 
 So this so-called scientific research has been really applied 
 to set aside real history. We have seen how the entire record 
 of what God has done with men from the beginning, and 
 which gathers into its majestic current all the rills of genuine 
 tradition and the streams of the actual experience of later 
 generations, tells us truly how men begun to be religious, and 
 how there came to be so many and various false religions. 
 But the class of Sanscrit scholars in question, starting from 
 the false theory (as if it were certain fact) that men have made 
 every thought for themselves, and then made words to suit 
 their thoughts, and leaping from one fanciful guess to another 
 about such words, have found an affinity between the Latin 
 Jupiter and the Sanscrit Dyaus-piter, and proposed the Greek 
 Zens-pater as a link and interpreter of the two. Well, allow- 
 ing all that, what then ? Fairly that, earlier than the idola- 
 tries and mythologies, either Latin, Greek, or Indian, there 
 was some juster idea of God as the One and Only, the 
 Maker and Lover of all mankind, ' the Father.' That we 
 have seen to be true enough. The wonder zvonld be (and is 
 in some few cases, no doubt) if all trace of this original truth 
 had faded out of the names which were worshipped. 
 
 But that is not what the ' Comparative Religion ' sees in 
 it. It is certain that these ' Aryan ' men were, for their 
 own race, if not for all mankind, the discoverers of all 
 Religion, as much as James Watt was of the steam-engine. 
 And so they assert that all the ancient Divine Names are 
 those of the air or sky ; and that this proves that the notion 
 of an Unseen Person (or persons), and so of all Religion, 
 began, by slow development, from fancies about the sky and
 
 464 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 air. They follow the same process in ' proving ' that many 
 other such names and personifications of worship are of 
 various powers or parts of ' Nature.' Therefore, all men's 
 religion began with their fears or admiration of the sky, 
 winds, waters, fire, sun, moon, stars, and other great objects. 
 More spiritual religion, and the idea of only One God, was 
 then but a slow refinement upon this, which employed a 
 thousand generations and as many philosophers and poets. 
 
 We know the truth about this, if we are real, modest 
 learners, and not merely would-be discoverers. But beside 
 the attenuated conjecture out of which all this theory is 
 built, which would make it of little value, even if we were 
 not already in possession of that truth, and were left to the 
 best guesses we could make, there are suggestions of error 
 in the theory itself That some names of worship, of the 
 chief object of it, should have a figurative reference to the 
 sky above, is natural enough. That great phrase * given to 
 us from above,' and that most sacred invocation, ' Our Father 
 Which art in Heavenl respond to the lifting of the eyes, 
 which is the first gesture of Religion. All our knowledge 
 of this earth, and of the stars as being rolling spheres in 
 vast space, makes no discord with the thought of God 
 being above us in space, though present everywhere. Why 
 this is, and how it accords with spiritual truth about Him, 
 is plainly not to be known in this life, but is among the 
 glorious wonders of our future. We suppose of course that 
 Adam looked up into the same vast sky, when he adored 
 God with innocent love. 
 
 With this accords our wonder at the vastness of space, ^ 
 and all our thought of what is 'above the world,' of a ' High 
 and Holy One Who inhabiteth eternity.' So that the first 
 and chief Divine Name did not come to man from a false 
 religion of worshipping the sky and air, but from true 
 Religion adoring ' God Which is above.' 
 
 And this theory seems conscious of weakness in avoiding 
 the very oldest word of worship, or afiecting to make light 
 of it. Everything in trustworthy history points to the holy 
 
 ^ If our great and much-misunderstood Berkeley were more read now-a-days, 
 we should have less of the false thought about * space ' and ' time ' which 
 Philosophy nourishes.
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1000-500. 465 
 
 name of ' El ' or Elohim, and its various forms (as also that 
 of Jah, Jehovah), as being so used before any others among 
 men. That baffles the most ingenious effort to fasten upon 
 it any derivation from creature-worship. Some fooHsh 
 attempts that way have oeen made, but none of our sharp- 
 witted students of words will espouse them. So far as we 
 can penetrate its thought in that direction, the word seems 
 to mean primarily 'the Mighty One.' It is a pure and true 
 word in that way. Is it not quite as likely that men got 
 the ordinary words for strength from this original (as we 
 sometimes call what is very great ' godlike '), as that they 
 named Him so because He is mighty ? (See p. 180, supra) 
 
 We may try this theory of the ' Aryan ' origin of all 
 religion by another comparison. Those whose religion was 
 of the ' Dyaus-pater,' have a ' philosophy ' with it much 
 quoted by their admirers as being about as wise and true 
 as the Gospel of Our Lord. Some of its phrases have a 
 resemblance to some of His teachings. Others are striking, 
 as the sayings of men whom in fact Christians have until 
 lately wrongly supposed to be mere barbarians. We might 
 as well think this of the Athenians in Pericles' days. But, 
 on the other hand, suppose we take the very best of their 
 writings, the Rig-Veda as a whole, and place it by the New 
 Testament. No such severe test, however, will we apply. 
 We will take a book which has not a trace even of the 
 Hebrew civilisation, or an illustration drawn from so culti- 
 vated a society as that, or from the arts of Egypt. It shall 
 be older, and simpler, and closer, by all the marks of thought 
 contained within it, to the ' infant world ' than any of the 
 others. There is not in the Book of Job any allusion to 
 towns or large states, to houses (all dwellings are tents, as 
 e.g. viii. 22, ' dwelling-place,' ochel), not even to Moses or 
 his laws, to the people of Israel, to Egypt or Babylon, to the 
 luxuries of those people, or the power of their monarchs. 
 
 This book, then, should be the nearest to this ' elementary 
 religion ' of sky, wind, sun, or star worship. Is it so ? The 
 exact reverse of this is true. The Book of Job has not a 
 trace of such a lower and grosser stage of Religion. It ex- 
 pressly rejects and reproves such things. It is vastly more 
 high, refined, and spiritual in its thoughts than the Rig- Veda. 
 
 2 G
 
 466 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Walking in the daylight of History, as we have so far, 
 we now meet a man blindfolded, who accosts us with the 
 assurance that it is pitch-dark everywhere but with him ; 
 but that if we will come into his gloomy alley he will be 
 able, by peering under his bandages, and following certain 
 clues which he has felt out, and allowing him some very 
 bold guesses and daring inferences, he will be able to con- 
 duct us to some inestimable ' science ' about the beginnings 
 of Religion. It would certainly not be the pursuit of truth 
 that would lead ' us, whose souls are lighted with wisdom 
 from on high,'^ to walk away from that wisdom under such 
 guidance. 
 
 As to the period now before us (say 1500 B.C., from 
 David to the Exile of Babylon ; from the Vedas, Zend, and 
 Iliad, to Confucius, Buddha, and Socrates), it is easy to have 
 either one of two opposite opinions, neither of which is 
 true. The one is, that God took no note of the religion of 
 the rest of mankind, and only concerned Himself with that 
 of Israel. The other is, that He inspired men among these 
 * Gentiles ' to be poets, philosophers, and teachers of religion, 
 as much as He did His holy Prophets in Israel, and that 
 their sayings and writings were His Word to those nations. 
 Much the same as this last is the theory that He speaks to 
 all men in ' Nature ' as much as by any words. 
 
 Either of these notions is contrary to express words of 
 Holy Scripture, and also to the very idea of any ' Word of 
 God.' There would be, then, no meaning in those sayings 
 about having chosen the descendants of Abraham and 
 Israel as His ' peculiar people,' if He talked to other nations 
 as much. There can be no occasion of talking to men in 
 word.s, if He speaks to them as much, and as plainly; in His 
 ' works.' 
 
 It is very rash and misleading for us to argue positively 
 as to what God must or must not do, from our nature or 
 notions. Yet some such thought, cautiously and reverently 
 followed, may help us to understand what He does say to us. 
 
 ^ It is very impressive to the present writer that he finds these words of 
 poetry, of an Oxford man of another generation who knew something of India, 
 and who gave' his whole bright soul and very life to it, the best expression of 
 what he would say here in most sober prose.
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1000-500. 467 
 
 One principle of such caution and reverence would be that 
 He made our nature, minds, and speech itself, and He ' to 
 Whom all things do bow and obey,' working His Will, must 
 speak to us with the greatest clearness and truth when He 
 chooses to use words. Another is that what we infer to be 
 His teaching of us in other ways is subject to much more 
 danger of mistake, as all our weakness of thought and bias 
 by selfishness and prejudice has more play in this. Much 
 more likely are we then to set up our own fancies, wishes, 
 and mistakes, as what God tells us. 
 
 It is also a part of this common sense to allow that, God 
 having- made such a numerous order of creatures with a 
 spiritual and moral nature — that very part of the living 
 tenants of this great world who can know and love Him, and 
 be in this and like ways exceedingly happy and good, pro- 
 ceeding through a few score of years of such life to a higher 
 everlasting life — that they being at any time, no matter how 
 this came about, all utterly out of the way of such a good life 
 here, — He would make use of messages and instructions in 
 words direct from Himself, as at least one means of replacing 
 them in the right way. Compared with the other idea, which 
 leaves us wholly to the discoveries of the few discovering 
 men there may be, and to immeasurable ages of wickedness, 
 which must thus endure among mankind before that slow 
 process could reach any considerable number of them, the 
 former supposition agrees far better with our best ideas of 
 God.i 
 
 It may be well for the few men who have the time and 
 the turn for it to use the same restless ingenuity which sets 
 others to adding to the common stock of knowledge in the 
 useful arts, sciences, and writings, — to employ this upon 
 thoughts of religion. In that case all useful truth brought 
 out is indeed from God as well as all that the others have 
 contrived, from the Chaldee astronomers to Newton and 
 Herschel ; or, with mechanical inventions, from the first plough 
 to the telephone. But what thoughtful Christian would set 
 any of these by the side of the giving of the Ten Command- 
 
 ^ Those who like such a ' development ' of religion, for which 40,000 years 
 would be a very small allowance, can find no objection to the old faith in the 
 Divine mystery by which the Gospel came only after 4000 years.
 
 468 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 merits, or the sending of the Twelve Apostles into all the 
 world ? 
 
 Just so, any man's religious reasonings or inventions are 
 the ' revelation ' of God to us, in a sense far inferior to that 
 of His actual Word. And they ought not only to be re- 
 garded as very humble aids in this association, but we might 
 in reason fear that they would often in fact mislead from 
 that truth. And so God's very Word warns us that they 
 probably will, unless they proceed from it, and seek only 
 to make it the better known. If it seems to any one an 
 objection to this that the Word of God came for fifteen 
 centuries to only one very small nation out of all mankind, 
 it is no less true that even this, with its expansion from 
 then on, for now near 2000 years, was vastly better than 
 no Word of God at all, which is the other alternative. 
 
 It may be too (though this is rather claimed and 
 allowed^ than proved), that during the long interval of 
 Pagan darkness, for almost all mankind, God sent some 
 rays of His truth to certain nations, especially through the 
 philosophers and religious reformers among the Hindus, 
 Chinese, and Greeks, of whom so much is claimed in this 
 way. Yet even this was only a small part of His actual 
 grace to all those people, in keeping something of the 
 primitive religion alive among them in their traditions, 
 laws, and very deformed worship and belief itself Even 
 the more acute and profound minds in question did not 
 invent the spiritual ideas in which they differed from most of 
 their countrymen, as Pythagoras proposed his beautiful geo- 
 metrical problems, or some Chinaman arranged a * mariner's 
 compass.' No ; they only recalled better than others, 
 and stated in words, some of that part of God's Word to 
 men which had been lost out of sight by their people. They 
 followed back some of the traces still lincrering; in the 
 thoughts of all, and, as St. Paul says, perpetually witnessed 
 to before all eyes in the things which God has made. They 
 were likely to suppose that these were only their own cog- 
 nitions. Sometimes they knew and acknowledged that they 
 received these suggestions from the thinking men of other 
 and distant nations. 
 
 There were no such means'of travel, and no such occasion
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1000-500. 469 
 
 for it, as exists in our age. Wars and national animosities, 
 suspicious and cruel governments, and the long time and 
 great expense of travel, caused this. Yet the love of gain, 
 and the curiosity of the more adventurous spirits, carried 
 a few men on long journeys. Sometimes these were also 
 men curious to know something of the religious thoughts of 
 other people, and to compare them with what they were 
 used to. It would have been rather strange if some of the 
 more remarkable beliefs of the Israelites had not thus come 
 to the knowledge of philosophic ' Gentiles,' and been studied 
 and more or less accepted by them. Perhaps what they 
 thus received they somewhat confounded with or mistook 
 for their own speculations. Probably in no such case were 
 the Hebrew beliefs quite understood, and were more or less 
 transformed by the learner, especially when at second or 
 third hand they reached some strong thinker, as, for instance 
 — to take an illustration from the events of five or six hun- 
 dred years later yet, — if Plato the Greek came upon such 
 strange doctrines among Persians or Indians, who had 
 first heard of them from travellers among the people of 
 Palestine, or reports of what Hebrew traders let fall of the 
 religion of their people. 
 
 Yet in this we do not entirely anticipate. Under David 
 and his son Solomon the Hebrew people sprang up into a 
 wide power and great influence among the nations of the 
 East. Instead of fighting for existence with the other 
 dwellers in Canaan, with the environing Arabians and Syrians, 
 they made vassals of all these, and treated as equals with the 
 great Egyptian and Assyrian monarchs whose neighbours 
 they had thus become. Much commerce both by sea and 
 land began with this, and without doubt the interchange of 
 thoughts and opinions as well as of wares. If such intellec- 
 tual barter would have been neglected otherwise, that was 
 quite impossible when those two great Hebrew kings were 
 themselves among the greatest writers who have ever set 
 others to thinking. Of the fact indeed we have a positive 
 record in the remarkable 'passage of the Book of Kings 
 (i Kings iv. 29-34) about the ' wisdom of Solomon,' and 
 the story of the visit of the Queen of Sheba (see i Kings x., 
 also 2 Chron. ix.), and all the traditions of the East, even to
 
 470 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 our day. Specially //^k/ those most great and. true thoughts 
 about the true God were noticed by the wise men of the 
 East, or of other regions, observed to accord with the traces 
 of wisest tradition among themselves, pondered and repre- 
 sented to their own people — all this we do not know — for one 
 reason, because we have as yet no trustworthy history except 
 these very sacred books of Israel. Did it at all check the 
 downward movement everywhere to multiply false gods and 
 to increase immoral superstitions ? God has not been 
 pleased to tell us, nor can any of our guesses at this, from 
 ' comparative language ' or abstract reasonings, even when 
 pursued with the wisest and most modest caution, give any 
 considerable light. We only know, and this we do know, 
 that the love of God was bringing to all the souls which 
 He had made a great redemption, and that one part of the 
 process was to keep the people of Israel from the false 
 and filthy religions that had come in like a flood over all 
 the rest of the world. 
 
 It was in this period that important movements took 
 place in some of the regions of false religion. None of our 
 chronologies of the event are very certain. Some men seem 
 very certain of them, but that does not help the matter. Yet 
 we may fairly judge that between 750 and 400 B.C. in the 
 great age of the Hebrew Prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi, 
 arose Buddha in India, Confucius in China, Zoroaster in 
 Persia, Numa at Rome, Lycurgus in Sparta, and the older 
 Greek philosophers. It is quite a fashion of some noted 
 writers of our day, perhaps I must confess quite t/ie fashion 
 of literary divines, to declare that these all were God's 
 Prophets, much as Isaiah or Daniel. Some in this com- 
 placency would like to let in to ' the goodly fellowship ' also 
 the famous Arabian of a much later time, whom Islam in 
 effect declares to be the only prophet. The step to this is 
 indeed short from declaring every man who ever did, said, or 
 wrote what we greatly admire, to have been ' inspired.' And 
 with this we usually find much contempt for ' mechanical 
 inspiration,' in which those who so think include, not only 
 the notion of men's merely writing at the dictation of God, 
 without its being at all their thoughts (which certainly this 
 book does not maintain), but any Divine influence which
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1000-500. 471 
 
 will keep the inspired writing free from errors of fact or 
 thought. 
 
 By this indeed the way is well cleared for allowing every 
 one of those remarkable men to have been ' inspired ' — in 
 fact, for every one whom we admire in History, — and why 
 not the pleasing hope to the modern writer who is so wise 
 and liberal, that he too is an instance of inspiration ? 
 
 But what is there left of the term then as a sacred dis- 
 tinction for some whom God chose through the ages to be 
 the authors of His incomparable Word, of Holy Scriptures, 
 which, so far from being instances of what excites the pride 
 of man, humble him in proclaiming always that ' there is 
 none good (and none great) but God.' Let men thus trifle, 
 if they will, with the word ' inspiration,' but leave untouched 
 in this what the Book itself describes as when ' holy men of 
 old spake (and wrote) as they were moved by the Holy 
 Ghost.' 
 
 We may well believe, we ought to, that whatever is true 
 or beautiful in a sentence of Confucius or of Plato is God's 
 gift to all who read it. So is speech itself, and writing, the 
 art of printing, and every saying or contrivance of a man that 
 does others good. He is the cause and the life of all ; and 
 all these His works are known unto Him from the begin- 
 ning. 
 
 But it is His own Will and way that there should be a 
 vast difference between all things working His Will, and thus 
 our duty of gratitude to Him for every good, no matter by 
 what means it reaches us, by our fellow-men's acts or other- 
 wise, and certain other acts and sayings which are directly 
 and specially His. This is essential to any thought of a 
 real ' Word of God ' to us. Only with this agrees the whole 
 history of the Patriarchs and of Israel, conducting in the 
 One, Only, and Divine Saviour of the world. If any one still 
 doubts this, let him notice how all that Holy Book, and God 
 the Word Himself in person on earth, recognises no 
 Prophets of His except these,^ allows to none but Israel any 
 
 * The only exception to this is Balaam, and that was at least 500 years before 
 any of the philosophers, among the lingerings of pure religion outside of Israel, 
 and before that people were yet settled in a land of their own to be exclusively 
 the ' Holy Nation.'
 
 472 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 ' oracles (that is, personal communications) of God,' and calls 
 all the rest of the world ' the people that sit in darkness.' 
 He does in glorious mercy allow that there may have been 
 among them some who ' feared God and worked righteous- 
 ness,' but these seemed rather the obscure who have no place 
 in History, they ' according to their deeds ^^ and not at all as 
 teachers of others. 
 
 In making the only true and sacred use of the power of 
 teaching other men, whether by books, journals, or speech of 
 any kind (and the present writer has endeavoured with care 
 and humility to keep this in mind), but especially in writing 
 History, we are in constant danger of a most misleading 
 illusion, of assuming that it is such as we who are alone of 
 any account among mankind. Thus, if men can show, or 
 fancy they do, that the intellectual people, say the writers 
 and readers of any age or country, had such or such 
 religious ideas, they suppose that they have described its 
 religion. Whereas, with all allowance for the greater per- 
 sonal influence of such men over a few others, this may not 
 touch the hundredth part of the facts. If a thousand such 
 more favoured people are rightly described, to a million the 
 description may have no just application. Then irut/iy 
 ' things as they are,' or, more correctly yet, as God sees them, 
 is utterly misrepresented as to the thoughts and the welfare 
 of a people, each soul of the larger number being of as much 
 importance to itself, and in the eyes of Him for Whom all 
 alike exist, as any one of the former. This the true Religion 
 has always distinctly recognised. 
 
 As all things are made by Him and do His Will, and 
 men among them, wc only follow the simplest and literal 
 truth in accounting whatever truth or truth-seeking things 
 any men have brought forth, as instances of God's deep ways 
 of grace to all mankind, while the main course of this mercy 
 is in the current of His direct Word. Indeed, such things are 
 and will be good only as they accord with that, and tend to 
 bring the whole world into the Kingdom of that Son of 
 David Who re-ascended to Heaven in the midst of human 
 History. 
 
 When in tracing such events we have to leave the plain 
 road of Divine truth, we need every precaution to separate
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1000-500. 473 
 
 facts from the mistakes, the vainglorious fictions and other 
 illusions, of mere human history. And we have also to 
 keep in mind that our purpose should be, not to find new 
 heroes in neglected regions of history, — to set them up as 
 rivals of the cherished idols of other men, — but to find the 
 simple truth as to what God may have caused them to say 
 and do among their fellow-men of false religion ; to check 
 its follies and impieties, or even to turn their countrymen 
 back, if for a little, toward the pure knowledge with which 
 all mankind began. 
 
 In all instances of what appear to be the institution, or 
 any great change, of the religion of a people, other than 
 the work of God for the true and Divine Religion, when in 
 times long after we try to estimate the work of any indi- 
 vidual, we must beware of ascribing to any one such man 
 what may be the result of thousands of influences drifting 
 slowly together toward a certain joint effect. It is as true 
 in these instances as any others, and perhaps they are the 
 strongest instances of this, that what we call the doings of 
 great men, proceed from forces far greater than they or any 
 of their conspicuous contemporaries. These all are rather 
 the instruments with which such a force, gathering the feel- 
 ings and wishes of the many, and even these executing 
 unconsciously the Will of Another, makes * great men ' of a 
 few of the stronger of its number, by their being the more 
 conspicuous agents of millions. The tendency of success of 
 this kind is to raise up eulogists and flatterers (even sincere 
 worshippers), of the powerful and famous, who make even 
 far more yet than is reasonable, of the importance to these 
 events of those they admire. 
 
 We have already seen that in the past history, the ' many 
 inventions ' with which all the tribes of men in various ways 
 deformed, mutilated, or disguised the original truth, seem to 
 have developed slowly, and by unnoticed degrees, instead of 
 being the contrivances of a few. So we may be sure it was 
 with every later * movement ' of the kind. Quite probably, 
 too, in the earlier instances, it was a man of more than 
 ordinary force here and there, though long since forgotten, 
 who gave the peculiar turn to the false religion of his own 
 people, so that we seem to have so many different false
 
 474 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 religions. There were also great differences as to what in 
 this way was added to the primitive truth, or what parts of 
 that truth were perverted, or neglected, or even entirely 
 excluded. 
 
 Thus among the primitive North Europeans (see Faber, 
 Origin of Pagan Idolatry) the idea of sin and sacrifice sur- 
 vived in a marked way in gloomy and bloody rites ; while 
 that God was One and a Spirit was much lost to them in 
 the religion of many and unworthy deities. On the other 
 hand, the most ancient Chinese religion still contained the 
 thought of One Spirit, the Absolute Creator of all else. 
 Yet it got rid of the painful thought of guilt, or even of any 
 duty, toward Him. It had no sacrifice of propitiation, and 
 no act of real worship (the high annual ceremonies are no 
 such worship) of Him. In place of that, there is a strange 
 adoration of parents and remoter ancestors. Allowing of 
 no ' duty ' except of men toward one another, they set that 
 of children in the highest place, and adjusted all morals, 
 and what they had of practical religion, to that. 
 
 The Hindu tendency, so far as the speculations of a few 
 men went (and what effect wc can reasonably allow to this 
 upon the religion of the other 999 thousands of their people), 
 was toward a dreamy metaphysics about space and time, 
 infinity and eternity, and the like. All this had a great 
 fascination for men of a certain turn of mind, and who had 
 leisure from actual work for it. It always has had, and has 
 now. But it does not lead to truth in matters of Religion, 
 with which always in fact it insists and persists in employing 
 itself. Thus, as we have seen in regard to the so-called holy 
 writings of India, the more intellectual wandered from the 
 obedient love of God, and belief of His Word (primitive), as 
 to the Creation, the Fall of Man, and his hope of salvation 
 and a better Eternal life, into fancies of an eternal and 
 incessant reproduction of worlds, in vast cycles of time, and 
 a ceaseless transmigration of the lives of men — of vague 
 confusion of God Himself with the * forces of Nature ' and 
 the like. With this there was an actual religion of temples, 
 ceremonies, offerings, and idols of the most absurd, disgust- 
 ing, and even indecent kind. This was probably all of the 
 religion of the ignorant, and a great part of that of the
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1000-500. 475 
 
 learned. Yet by the goodness of God were still left them 
 some true thoughts of worship, many wise laws of the past, 
 and true rules of good conduct among men. 
 
 But about this time appeared in India one of those 
 famous reformers of religion before alluded to. The attempts 
 of this man's followers afterwards to exalt him have pro- 
 duced such a mass of extravagant fictions that we are 
 scarcely able to determine even that there was one such 
 person as Buddha, of whom a fair and trustworthy account 
 can be given. If we are resolved that such a great and good 
 man, who Diay have lived, shall not suffer in that way from 
 the folly of his admirers, and so attempt to separate the 
 probable in these stories from the absurd, we have still 
 great difficulties before us. 
 
 Who is sure of his own sagacity and of his candour? 
 And shall we read everything of the sort, so as to make sure 
 that we overlook no fact ? A lifetime of such reading would 
 hardly suffice for an accomplished Indian scholar. And in 
 what a state of mind would such an exclusive reading leave 
 any man ? Or shall we choose daintily in advance what we 
 will credit enough for the purpose ? Then we almost decide 
 our question before we begin the inquiry. It is indeed a 
 method quite to the hand of the new sect of British Bud- 
 dhists, who with Mr. E. Arnold in his gorgeous poem, range 
 all History, sacred and profane, to extract the honey of praise 
 for their hero. And they confound the simple people who 
 do not pretend to have read these thousand Puranas, etc., 
 by asking them what right they have to an opinion, and 
 bidding them simply believe what these new pundits tell 
 them. 
 
 It seems rather that the first proper step of this inquiry 
 would be to observe what actual religion the followers of 
 Buddha have now. That is a fact within reasonable means 
 of knowledge. If, as some say, we ought to have great 
 respect for him because he was the author of the religion 
 observed by more people now than any other,^ let us look 
 at that religion as it actually is before the eyes of all the 
 world. As such, for almost all its devotees, it is one of the 
 most unspiritual, immoral, and absurd of all the false reli- 
 ^ Hindus, Ceylonese, Burmans, Siamese, Chinese, and Japanese.
 
 476 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 gions. And this is much more to the purpose than the fine 
 talk of the very small number who say that they are the only 
 real Buddhists. By this we must adjudge its founder in the 
 main an inventor of evil and not of good for his fellow-men. 
 
 This is a true test, as to the History of Religion, of what 
 any given man has done and deserves. Apply Our Lord's rule 
 as to ' false prophets, — ' By their fruits ye shall know them.' 
 Yet for all that he may have had a noble purpose, and been 
 much nearer the truth than most of his generation.^ He is 
 said by some to have been a great prince who gave up that 
 power in order to do men the greater service of teaching 
 religion. Others relate that he was a Brahmin of great note 
 and authority, that several different names, as Gautama, Sak- 
 yamuni, etc., besides Buddha, are ascribed to him. It throws 
 some doubt over the literal history. But we may fairly allow 
 that there was such a man, who attempted to rid his country- 
 men of much of the gross idolatry and other superstitions 
 taught and practised in what we may call the Sanscrit 
 religion. Inasmuch as this did not do much to make them 
 good and happy, which he claimed that religion should do, 
 he set himself to make great changes in it. Others may 
 have attempted this before, — succeeded in some measure, 
 perhaps, — or prepared for his success. He seems to have 
 lived a simple and self-denying life, and to have been very 
 earnest and persevering in showing the folly of many of 
 the superstitions of their ceremonial religion, and promoting 
 better thoughts of justice, truth, and kindness among them, 
 and was in all this strenuously opposed by the Brahmins as 
 a class. 
 
 Nevertheless he seems to have gained a large success 
 during his lifetime, and to have left behind him a great 
 number of admirers and zealous disciples. So in the course 
 of three centuries his doctrine triumphed in all India, even 
 invaded and conquered Ceylon, Burmah, Siam, Japan, and 
 
 ^ Whoever supposes that Christians are afraid of this test for their religion 
 may try it as rigorously as he will. There are a great many bad people, and a 
 very great many imperfect, and more or less unhappy, people in the Christian 
 lands. And the better Christian one is, the more ready will he be to allow this 
 imperfection as to himself. But by the same rule of fruits as to the general 
 effect upon the people, and especially upon the more religious of them, are we 
 ready for a comparison of the religions of Buddha and of Our Lord ?
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1000-500. 477 
 
 China. By this time * Buddhism ' itself was a great deal 
 changed. It had its many vast and splendid temples ; and 
 in them, as the chief object of worship, were huge idols, 
 images of Buddha himself He had become to his followers 
 the Supreme, if not the One Only God. And we have no 
 reason to doubt that Buddhists in the main were then what 
 they are now, — among the most superstitious and immoral 
 of Pagans. 
 
 There had also begun to be philosophers among the Greeks. 
 That people did not lack for very acute and original minds. 
 Yet it seems plain that some of their philosophical specula- 
 tions were at least suggested by those of the Hindus, coming 
 to them through travellers and traders, as we know they did 
 largely in the period next after. We have seen before 
 (p. 14) that the earlier traditional learning of the Egyptians 
 furnished them some such material, and that probably even 
 the Hebrew doctrines were not quite unknown in Greece. 
 But Egypt was now becoming the dead land (as destitute 
 of human energy as it was once teeming with it), which it 
 has been now for ages. The Greeks, on the contrary, were 
 the coming people. Everything they touched — war, com- 
 merce, the arts, and philosophy was stirred with new energy. 
 So the Greek philosophers had now begun a long line of 
 such speculators, who have never been surpassed in that 
 way. 
 
 Yet Philosophy may perhaps be best defined as the 
 struggle of human intelligence to comprehend what is above 
 its force. This might be altogether harmless, — in a sense 
 useful, — as the practice of an intellectual gymnasium, to 
 make the mental powers more firm and quick for real uses, 
 if it were always kept from attempts to discover or improve 
 such truth, as, in the nature of the case, we must always 
 simply learn from God by faith. But that it never yet has 
 consented to do ; and all experience seems to prove, never 
 will. Certainly common sense requires us, in the interest of 
 the highest truth, to refrain from, and to discourage in 
 others such a useless and, even more, most mischievous 
 employment of our minds. This, now, for Christians who 
 do receive the highest truth from God, — to consider. 
 
 The Philosophy of the Greeks was in a very different
 
 478 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION 
 
 position from this, for which we may well excuse (but not 
 by any means imitate) them. They were of ' the nations' 
 who were left merely, as St. Paul afterwards told them in 
 Athens, when he came to bring them the complete and 
 glorious ' Word of God,' to ' seek the Lord,' without even the 
 Law and the Prophets, 'if haply they might feel after Him and 
 find Him.' But, in accord with the wonderful History which 
 teaches us how men, even with that Word, kept losing their 
 way, all this History shows us how Philosophy utterly failed 
 to 'find Him.' (All is of that lesson of generations and of ages 
 which brings us up to the Advent, — the great lesson of human 
 weakness and perversity, and of Divine Power and Grace.) 
 
 Thus the Greek people, and especially the Athenians, 
 who are far too much taken by us to represent all Greeks in 
 this, were without doubt considerably affected in their reli- 
 gious thoughts by the speculations and discussions of the 
 philosophers, yet did not cease to be superstitious polytheists 
 and idolaters, and very coarse and loose in all ' morals.' If 
 anything, they grew worse in this last. The philosophers 
 were in general no better than the rest in either respect. In 
 fact the doubt and disparagement, the ridicule and contempt 
 of the actual religion, bad as it was, without substituting 
 anything better, tended rather to make all men more 
 boldly sensual and selfish. 
 
 As for the Persians and kindred people, the struggle 
 noted before between the purer Magian religion (so far as 
 we can so deem it) and the gross idolatries of Babylonia, — in 
 the North and West of Europe, and among the distant more 
 barbarous nations of Africa, North Asia, America, and the 
 Islands, so far as we know, the superstitious, false religions 
 passed down from generation to generation, or grew worse 
 with time. We have some remains of the Etruscans in Italy, 
 and allusions in later Roman writers to their religion, all 
 which only denote the same gloomy and superstitious 
 worship of many false ' gods ' and of images. Any fair 
 mind giving its attention to such details of this as we can 
 well make out, sees the same traces of primitive truth and 
 of the ' vain imaginations ' of the wandering away of lost 
 mankind, guilty and bewildered, as we have noted in all 
 other Pagans.
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1000-500. 479 
 
 The Roman people, as in this period they begin their 
 remarkable history, inherit this same Italian variety of false 
 religion, with a local variation. Numa appears among them 
 as a Priest-king, and seems (see Plutarch's Life of Numa) to 
 have had much more true thoughts of God and His worship, 
 and with all his authority and influence, to have excluded 
 idolatry. But this did not long outlive him, and by the close 
 of this period the Roman religion was as senseless and 
 superstitious as that of the Greeks. 
 
 Some suppose Numa's superior thoughts to have been 
 learned from Pythagoras, a famous Greek philosopher, who 
 had brought back such ideas from India or Persia, where he 
 travelled, and afterwards made his residence in Southern 
 Italy, and had many followers. Yet with some such spiritual 
 thoughts he mixed the absurd Hindu notion of the trans- 
 migration of human souls through the bodies of beasts and 
 the like. 
 
 In the end, the Romans, from much intercourse with the 
 Greeks, borrowed their mythology as well as arts, mingling 
 it with their own superstitions and adopting the Greek 
 * gods ' as theirs, confusing both names and characters of 
 these with their own older divinities. It may be observed 
 that in the Roman religion there was much more law and 
 less poetry than in that of the Greeks. Thus, according to 
 the different characteristics of the two races, the virtues of 
 civil order and of private purity and justice survived much 
 more with the Romans, while art, eloquence, and imagina- 
 tion were less fertile. 
 
 This also is probably the very period of the appearance 
 of Zoroaster (Zerdushta), and his writing the Zend-Avesta,^ 
 to which reference has been made before. It is very unlikely, 
 however, that this would have had much effect with that 
 people, but that some of the vigorous Persian kings espoused 
 that party earnestly, and used all their authority to repress 
 the opposing tendencies. Anyway the Zend is a most in- 
 teresting document as to the history of Religion, much more 
 so than the Indian Vedas, whether we notice its effect upon 
 the religion of the Persians then and afterwards, or a"s proof 
 
 1 This is by no means meant to contradict the suggestion of learned scholars 
 that parts of the Zend are of later composition, and by various hands.
 
 48o BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 of the survival of primitive truth from the Patriarchs. The 
 references in it to the Creation and Flood, to circumcision 
 and the distinction of clean and unclean beasts, are so 
 striking that some learned scholars of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury were sure that these were got by the writer from the 
 Book of Moses (much as Mohammed's Koran is an evident 
 patchwork from the Holy Scriptures with his own ' blas- 
 phemous fables and dangerous deceits '). This is a far less 
 probable conjecture than that these things are disfigured 
 remnants of true traditions from the days of Noah. 
 
 If there was also, as Professor Rawlinson thinks, among 
 these various false religions of that region, one of the worship 
 of ' the four elements,' especially of fire, beginning in Armenia 
 to the north-west, and led by priests called Magi, it must by 
 this time have combined with that of the Persians and Medes. 
 Thenceforth the Magi with their fire-altars and exercises 
 (from which we have the word magician), were the priest- 
 hood of all that powerful race (and this very religion survives 
 in our day among the Parsees of India). The struggle 
 between the purer Magian religion (as much as we can so 
 describe it) and the gross idolatries of Babylonia, continued 
 as before noted (see p. 478), with various vicissitudes, the 
 former being at times aided by the rise of conquering power 
 on the part of the Medes and Persians. Yet the partial 
 truth in it was continually obscured by a mixture of those 
 superstitions of the worship of many absurd ' gods,' and the 
 quite splendid but foolish and indecent ceremonies of the 
 Assyrian and Babylonish people. We shall see this as to 
 Cyrus and Darius in their dealings with the captive Jews at 
 Babylon, when those kings succeeded as masters of the Jews 
 by the conquest of Babylonia. 
 
 The Chinese Confucius {Kjing-fii-tse), who flourished 
 toward the end of this period, is generally allowed a like 
 conspicuous place in the history of Religion for his country- 
 men. Yet he was by no means an inventor of a new 
 Religion or reformer of the old. The authority of his 
 writings among the educated Chinese ever since, and in our 
 day, is not founded upon any such things. He seems to be 
 the one of all their ancient writers who best sat down, and 
 transmitted the traditions of the past as to industry, order.
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— B.C. 1000-500. 481 
 
 and family virtues. The slight tissue of religion with which 
 this is interwoven is scarcely anything more than each family's 
 worship of its ancestors, an exaggeration of the exaggerated 
 filial reverence which has taken the place of all thought of 
 the Spiritual Creator and Lord, and upon which all other 
 duty is supposed to be built. But most of the Chinese 
 people were then, and have been ever since, as superstitious 
 idolaters as any others on the earth. In fact Lao-tse, who 
 appeared in China a little before Confucius, and founded a 
 sect of superstitious rationalists which still survives, had 
 quite as much to do with the actual religion of his country. 
 
 Of the actual religion of the Phoenicians we have a 
 glimpse in the early part of this period — say about 900 B.C., 
 — in its being introduced into Israel by Jezebel, the wife of 
 King Ahab, and daughter of Eth-baal of Sidon. She was a 
 woman of great force of will and violent passions, and quite 
 the mistress of her wayward and wicked husband. So, 
 among other like compliances of his, against his own better 
 education and convictions, she induced him to allow, and 
 then to patronise, in Israel the worship of the chief Phoeni- 
 cian god, Baal; and at last to persecute, and all but exter- 
 minate, that of the Lord God. It is certain that in the 
 course of ten or twelve years there was not only a royal 
 temple of Baal at Samaria, with its cruel and immoral cere- 
 monies, but also more than a thousand of the priests (or 
 'prophets') of the false religion scattered through the 
 country. The bold and self-denying Elijah was alone left 
 to publicly maintain the true, and he usually hiding in 
 ravines or caves, or else a fugitive from his own country 
 among heathen nations around. In fact, we know that 
 there was hardly the hundredth part of the Israelites but 
 what had apostatised from the true God, and become Baalites. 
 Thus it was not merely king, court, army, and aristocracy, 
 who gave up their pure religion for that of Jezebel, while 
 the people as a whole were innocent and constant, — Elijah 
 again and again calls upon God to witness : ' the children of 
 Israel have forsaken Thy covenant,' etc. (i Kings xix. 10, 14). 
 
 Just then this Prophet appears suddenly before the king, 
 reproaches him with all this, and demands a public trial, before 
 all the nation, as to who is its true God. This is accorded. 
 
 2 H
 
 482 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 A vast assembly gathers upon the slope of Mount Carmel, 
 which looks westward over the Mediterranean, and far north 
 to the towns of Tyre and Sidon. Hundreds of Baal-priests 
 swarm on one side. Elijah stands alone on the other, 
 for this test before the silent and awestruck multitude. This 
 is to be by seeing upon which side the sacrifice offered will 
 be kindled by fire from Heaven. The splendid and costly 
 ceremonies of the idolaters come first, and two-thirds of the 
 day pass without the fire from Heaven. The cries of their 
 priests to Baal went forth incessantly from morning to noon 
 uninterrupted. After that there was another voice at 
 intervals, of scorn and reproach. It was Elijah upbraiding 
 them with the failure of their prayers, and this proof that 
 Baal was no real God. We have also a glimpse of the 
 foolish and cruel superstitions of the false religion of these 
 * civilised ' Phoenicians, in ' that the priests cried aloud and 
 cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets 
 till the blood gushed out upon them.' Then as the sun 
 descends toward the sea, Elijah gathers the scattered stones 
 of an ancient abandoned altar of the Lord (probably 'thrown 
 down ' by the recreant sons of Israel), of which modern 
 travellers not unreasonably think that they can now find 
 traces. On this he places his sacrifice, and drenches it with 
 water in such a way as to destroy any chance of its being 
 set on fire by accident or human contrivance. And so, 
 when in a hush of great awe over all, he lifts up his voice 
 and calls upon God for this proof, a flash of lightning does 
 dart out of that cloudless sky and a great flame consumes 
 the sacrifice. Israel repents, renounces Baal, and returns 
 for a little while to the true Religion.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE JEWS — FROM THE CAPTIVITY TO THE ADVENT. 
 
 In the next and last period — from the fall of Jerusalem to 
 the Advent — we must soon take leave of the Divine History, 
 even as to the Jews. Yet there is very much in all this 
 time, as to both them and the Pagan nations around them, 
 of profound interest for our purpose. It was like the hush 
 of all other voices just before the greatest utterance from 
 Heaven. Yet it was also crowded with vast events of war, 
 politics, art, poetry, philosophy, and eloquence — 'preparing 
 the way of the Lord.' All this however we must state in 
 the most brief and general way. 
 
 For the first seventy years of this period the Jewish 
 people were in two widely separated parts, each of these in 
 a very feeble and humiliating state. These were, first, the 
 poor people left in the villages around the ruins of Jerusalem, 
 living in a most frightened and needy way ; and, secondly, 
 their usual and natural leaders, both religious and secular, 
 with their families and many others — in fact, all the flower of 
 the sons of Israel — dwelling in and around Babylon among 
 unfriendly masters of another religion. 
 
 And now, strange to say, for the first time, the Jews did 
 not any of them fall to imitating the false religion of those 
 around them and leaving their own. For many reasons, 
 which any one can see, they were far more likely to do this 
 than ever before. On the contrary, from this time forth 
 they never, under the pressure of any force or allurement, 
 practised idolatry, but avoided and abhorred it. They never 
 again forgot the Book of the Law, so that its discovery after 
 eighty years of loss should be a wonder. They never 
 neglected the Priesthood or, when they had a Temple, the
 
 484 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 order of sacrifices, or even the more minute regulations. 
 Each word of ' the Law and the Prophets ' — each letter and 
 mark of punctuation — was carefully counted. This not only 
 for making exact copies of the Holy Writings, but afterward 
 more and more for the purpose of commenting upon them, 
 and affecting to find mysteries and lessons far more than the 
 plain sense declared. 
 
 Whether they were as much more religious in proportion 
 — whether the love of God and man was in a like way the 
 soul of their lives — is another question. But for this great 
 change in their outward treatment of the ancient Word of 
 God, how are we to account ? Some might say, perhaps, 
 that at last the Fall of Jerusalem and their miserable sub- 
 jection to the Babylonians, Persians, etc., had thoroughly 
 frightened them out of their old pei-verseness. 
 
 But things had happened to them before, as appalling, 
 without this result. And why were not the people of Israel 
 in like manner converted by their ruin and captivity ? 
 Others may say that it was the peculiar obstinacy of the 
 Jews, which was not called out for their religion when they 
 were prosperous, but now that it was insulted and persecuted 
 made them the most persevering of bigots. Yet neither will 
 this bear testing by facts. 
 
 It is a popular fallacy that the persecution of a religion 
 alzvays promotes it. More instances of the contrary fact 
 could be shown. And the Jews had 7iot been persecuted for 
 their religion. At Babylon they were not only tolerated, but 
 some of them became favourites of the Pagan monarchs 
 without compromising their religion, though they still did 
 this of their own will, as much as when they had acted 
 otherwise. 
 
 But here is the fact, one of the wonders and true miracles 
 of this History, that they never again fell away as a people 
 to the worship of many ' gods,' or of images. They became 
 even what (considering that with all this they were not pro- 
 portionally good and godly) can be rightly called morose 
 and fanatical about that, and have been so ever since. 
 Instead of being a humble and forbearing people with 
 others, in the recollection that they too had so much and 
 so perversely ' gone after other gods,' they make their differ-
 
 THE JEWS— THE CAPTIVITY TO THE ADVENT. 485 
 
 ence from ' the nations ' an occasion of pride, scorn, and 
 insult. 
 
 There is one way of understanding this which is reason- 
 able. That is, to see in it the Will of Him Who had kept 
 them as a 'peculiar people' to Him in the mystery by 
 which He was to bring in a great Redemption of all man- 
 kind in His own good time and pleasure. One part of the 
 complete Word of God for the instruction of all mankind 
 was to be the History of such a people in the past. This 
 period is a part of that lesson — that even their being at last 
 cured of their perverse defections to false religion by great 
 calamities, and their rigid care after this for outward cere- 
 mony and precepts, were not enough to make them really 
 good and devout, that they would pervert even this to selfish- 
 ness and pride. 
 
 Thus for some seventy years the Jews (for this now 
 becomes the designation of that people, and is accepted by 
 themselves), both in Judea and Babylon, were living in 
 poverty, shame, and sorrow, and some repentance for what 
 had brought on all this. When the victorious Medes and 
 Persians succeeded as their masters, there was little if any 
 change in their situation. Naturally Cyrus may have felt 
 some kindly pity for them, as far as he took any notice of 
 them at first, as having been victims of the hated Babylonian 
 power. But if so, it was a very slight and ineffective feeling. 
 Evidently he had no such sympathy for them, as being also 
 believers in One God, as some seem to fancy. The Jews 
 themselves did not so understand him. That indeed would 
 have been a great danger to their firm fidelity to ' the Law 
 and the Prophets.' But in other ways some of them grew 
 into high favour with the Persian monarchs. Yet so had 
 Daniel been with Nebuchadnezzar, and even with Belshazzar. 
 But thus it came about by the influence of Esther, and then 
 of Ezra and Nehemiah, that the Jews of Babylon were 
 granted their great desire of re-migrating in a body to 
 Palestine.^ 
 
 ^ We have indeed now a very striking proof of how the primitive truth of the 
 One Only God was surviving still amongst men of false religion in the language 
 used by Pagan monarchs in several of their edicts and proclamations as 
 recorded by Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. And we are expressly guarded 
 from the mistake of merely attributing this, on the part of Darius, etc., to their
 
 486 ■ BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 But the delight of this return was much impaired by some 
 things : — to see Jerusalem again, but to find it only a ruin ; 
 its environing walls hardly traceable ; its streets, that were 
 once ' full of boys and girls playing,' impassable from the 
 heaps of fallen walls of the burned houses ; that most sacred 
 Temple only the greatest of the ruins ; and their kinsmen 
 who welcomed them home, a flock of cowering half-starved 
 peasants ! 
 
 It was indeed a great undertaking to rebuild the holy 
 city ; enough to appal and unnerve the stoutest heart, if it 
 were only an affair of stout-heartedness. But it was God's 
 work. Some of the men were His Prophets, and quite a 
 number of others were their godly and faithful helpers. So 
 after years of toil and care, much increased by the selfish 
 perversity of many of the Jews themselves, it was done. It 
 was not the joyous and beautiful city of old, nor the great 
 Temple of the Kings. Yet it was a city and a Temple of 
 their own ; sufficient for what remained of His purpose in 
 the children of Israel. 
 
 There is no need of our mistaking that purpose. Was it 
 to give us this lesson of History of a people finally cured of 
 all false religion — holding up before other nations the entire 
 truth about God as the One Holy and Good ; and of a 
 spiritual Redemption of all mankind by His grace, joyfully 
 ' goiiig ii^to all the world to proclaim this good news to every 
 human creature ' ; thus keeping the Old Law in its spirit 
 of love to God and man, and so understanding the Prophets 
 as to rejoice in a hope of yet greater revelation to come, of 
 peace on earth and good-will to men, and of a better eternal 
 life in Heaven ? 
 
 Evidently, not at all. Some such elevated thoughts and 
 genuine piety, we may suppose, there always were among a 
 very few. But a great part (much the greater part) were 
 not penitent nor devout nor spiritual. We see this plainly 
 in the days of the last of the Prophets, from what he says 
 
 better religion as Persians, by the fact that Nebuchadnezzar's language is 
 as strong in the same way. Yet he (andj also Darius, Cyrus, and Ahasuerus) 
 really believed in the gross idolatry of his people, and practised it. Still, with 
 astonishing, unconscious inconsistency, they are wise enough at times to think 
 of One Who is Sole Ruler of Heaven and Earth, the ' Jehovah, God of Israel ' 
 (He is the God). (Ezra i. 3, also vi. 7-12, vii. 12-26 ; Daniel ii. 47, iii. 28, 29, 
 V. 2, 3, 32-37, vi. 25-28.)
 
 THE JEWS— THE CAPTIVITY TO THE ADVENT 487 
 
 (Malachi, passim). We find it at the end of the 400 years 
 that followed, in the most perfect of all histories. As noted 
 before, there was no longer any idolatry. But the people in 
 general, and those in one way the most religious, to whom 
 the rest looked for examples, while they adhered more care- 
 fully than ever before to the ceremonial rules, and took great 
 care of the Holy Writings, giving much reverence to the 
 copies they already had, and taking great pains to make 
 other exact copies, were as much without the spirit of that 
 Religion as the Pagans. (Some indeed were only kept from 
 joining in all the forbidden things of the idolaters around by 
 the national fashion, and by fear of the fanaticism of their 
 countrymen — as appeared plain when these restraints seemed 
 removed at some times in the period of the Maccabees, or of 
 the Roman conquest afterwards.) 
 
 This selfish pride and hollow worldliness worked its 
 natural result in making them ' omit the weightier matters of 
 the Law, — judgment, mercy, and faith.' It also set the priests 
 and other students of the Holy Writings upon a perversion 
 of them, in order to display their ingenuity, and for other 
 selfish purposes. This was the real beginning of the ' Rab- 
 binical ' writings, though there is good reason to think that 
 actual writing was at this time still confined, according to 
 primary custom, to the Word of God, and that these rules of 
 the ' scribes ' passed down to other generations by mere oral 
 tradition, yet with great care, and as of high authority. (Thus 
 Our Lord often appealed from what the scribes * say ' to 
 what ' is written.') They thus accumulated a great mass of 
 fabulous, absurd, and superstitious stories, and of arbitrary 
 rules, by which, they said, the letter of the Law must be un- 
 derstood, but most of which were utterly misleading, or even 
 contradictory, of the plain meaning of that Law. By the 
 time of the Advent these had become the chief authority in 
 the Jewish religion, as we must now distinguish that from 
 the true, as surviving in the world, whether from primitive 
 tradition or in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. 
 
 The writers of the Old Testament ceased about 400 B.C., 
 with Malachi, one of the most brief yet most powerful and 
 eloquent of the Prophets, though it has been a strange fashion 
 of late commentators, merely repeating a very careless saying 
 of Lowth, to disparage him as * prosaic,' and his style and
 
 488 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION 
 
 diction as ' showing the decline and corruption of the Hebrew 
 language.' It is a very solemn and wonderful fact of this 
 history, that there was now such a silence for 400 years until 
 the Lord came. And this, too, is utterly against the notion 
 of God's Word being a ' development.' Four hundred years 
 of such silence ! It is as long as from Solomon to Josiah ; 
 from the English Plantagenets to our day ! This, not merely 
 that there was no living Prophet, and no addition to the 
 Sacred Writing dicfing all that period, but that there is no 
 Divine History of 2\\ that period. This fact says, in effect, 
 that from the time Malachi wrote his last word, until the 
 Angel appeared to Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, 
 the doings of that people are no part of such a history of the 
 people of God as He means to teach all mankind by His 
 Word. 
 
 There are indeed certain writings of those times which 
 some would place in the Holy Book. But the Jews them- 
 selves have never so recognised them. And this, with the 
 fact that when this question of fact came before our fore- 
 fathers of the English race and Church for a careful and final 
 decision, they also so adjudged it. If we try these writings 
 (commonly called the Apocrypha) by the test of a comparison 
 with the undoubted Scriptures, they are of quite an inferior 
 strain of thought in general ; and, though some of them have 
 fine passages, are all in the manner of those Rabbinical 
 writings which no one thinks of calling Divine. They seem 
 of various dates and uncertain authorship ; perhaps composed 
 in Babylon by some of the Jewish residents there after the 
 Return from Captivity ; or at Alexandria in Egypt, where a 
 very large colony of Jews gathered by degrees. 
 
 The most noted Jewish book, however, which appeared at 
 Alexandria, was not an original composition, but a translation 
 of the Law and the Prophets into Greek, now known as the 
 Septiiagint or LXX. This was a great event in the history 
 of Religion. It made that of the Hebrews known to all 
 other peoples around the Mediterranean as nothing else 
 could. For some Greek scholars began at once to turn their 
 attention to this curious faith and ritual, and some philo- 
 sophers to compare it with the speculations of Plato as they 
 had never before been able to do.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS — 500 B.C. TO A.D. 
 
 This of itself should remind us that, even as to the Jews 
 alone, we could not understand the history of Religion at this 
 period without considering what had been going on of the 
 kind among the great nations around them for these four or 
 five hundred years. But even more, this now requires our 
 attention for its own sake. 
 
 The conquering nations, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, 
 who had now in turn held control of the most important 
 regions of the world, had been making no great change in 
 their religions, certainly not by way of returning to primitive 
 truth, or ascending to anything better than before as to either 
 worship or conduct. But the fact of these three nations in 
 succession becoming masters of all around them, would be 
 sure to have some effect upon the actual religion of both 
 subjects and masters. As we have seen, the Persian religion 
 never gained upon the vassal Jews, either at Babylon, or when 
 they were again in their remote and poor home of Judea, 
 where, however, they were also always in sight of the fact 
 that they were the absolute subjects of these * Gentiles.' The 
 Persian authority was entirely content to receive their tribute 
 and submission, without disturbing them in their religion. 
 Cyrus and Darius even helped them in a pitying way toward 
 the expenses of their return and the rebuilding of the Temple. 
 This indifference and indulgence may have been helped by 
 noticing that they, too, were not given to the idolatrous 
 worship of many gods ; but it went no further. There do 
 appear in their chronicles traces of a fierce struggle between 
 the Magian and the Babylonian priesthoods, for the control 
 of the religion of the Persian Empire, and of one or more of
 
 490 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 those monarchs taking the part of the former with all his 
 authority.^ Yet the tendency upon the whole was to the 
 prevalence of polytheism and idolatry, as was the result at 
 last. 
 
 There do appear in the Jewish writers of this period 
 traces of the Magian superstitions as to demons, magic, etc., 
 as well as of some notions of the Hindu philosophy. These 
 both may have been learned in Babylon. Nothing, however, 
 was added to their religion as they professed it. Yet some 
 writers would have us believe that all ideas of evil angels, or 
 of good ones, and of a future life and judgment, were first 
 learned by them from the Oriental pagans and during the 
 Captivity. From this source, forsooth, came to the Prophets 
 of God and to all His people, their most spiritual ideas, which 
 Our Lord, the Light of the world, approved and adopted as 
 His teaching too ! 
 
 When, 200 years later, the wonderful Alexander of 
 Macedon carried the Greek arms, laws, arts, and language 
 over the East, Judea, of course, fell under this new sovereignty. 
 The city which he founded in Egypt, and gave it his own 
 name, also became, under some of his successors, the home of 
 a multitude of Jews. And then, as we have just seen, ' the 
 Law and the Prophets ' became also a Greek book. 
 
 And so, too, for what may be called the literary people 
 on both sides, the Greek mind did largely affect the Jewish. 
 The philosophy of the Greeks had now attained its highest 
 development in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others, and 
 fascinated some of the Jews who lived abroad, as it always 
 has, minds of that turn in every people that have become 
 acquainted with it. Some of the Rabbis mixed this, as well 
 as the magical Persian, and the intensely metaphysical, yet 
 fanciful, Indian notions, with their own speculations and 
 doctrines. Philo of Alexandria is a notable instance of this. 
 He in substance makes a paraphrase of the Book of Moses 
 for the ' Gentile ' philosophers, to vindicate its truth as to the 
 beginning of the world and the history of his own people, yet 
 
 ^ See Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, iii., chap, vii., etc. I venture to 
 think that this learned historian has not quite understood the obscure question 
 as to the various religions of the Persian Empire, from not sufficiently consider- 
 ing the survival of primitive tradition. I can only state this result of my own 
 study of all the facts, and remit, to another occasion, the argument.
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS— soo B.C. TO A.D. 491 
 
 often twisting its plain sense, in an allegorical way, to agree 
 with the Greek notions. How all this reappeared and de- 
 veloped further in a later age, either in philosophical rivalry 
 of the Gospel, or in the attempt of some Christian writers to 
 state its truth in that way, it does not belong to our present 
 purpose to relate ; yet it would be very valuable as a sug- 
 gestion of the process going on before and at the Advent. 
 
 One plain effect of Philosophy among the Jews was the 
 arising among them of the sect of the Saddiicees, who, in fact, 
 gained over the richest of the people and the very High- 
 priesthood. Their principle in matters of religion was to 
 question and argue, rather than to believe. This, while very 
 rightly applied in opposition to those human precepts and 
 traditions with which the Pharisees on the other hand were 
 overlaying the truth of God's Word, was utterly wrong in its 
 application to that Word, or to so constniing it as to deny 
 the spiritual and supernatural meaning, and put other con- 
 structions upon its plain words. This the Sadducees did 
 afterwards in opposition to Our Lord, by denying that there 
 is either angel or spirit, or any resurrection from the dead, 
 and judgment, and life to come. So also among all the 
 nations to whom now the Greek was the intellectual language, 
 among the reading and thinking people, as well of Syria, 
 Egypt, and Italy, as of Greece proper. While disputing with 
 one another in schools and sects — or as partisans of this or 
 that great man of the past — about the beginnings of all 
 things, including law, morals, and human beliefs, as well as 
 about the 'gods ' (or in a vague way 'God,' as the real supreme, 
 if not only, Deity and power), they all agreed in regarding 
 the actual religion of their own people in ceremonies and 
 beliefs as to the Divine, with doubt, and with something 
 of scorn ; yet practising it, not altogether in pretence, nor 
 merely from fear of the fanatical hatred of the religious multi- 
 tude. And that multitude, the poor and ignorant, the un- 
 thinking believers of whatever their forefathers had believed, 
 and all the women and children : these were as inconsistent 
 in their way, in being affected somewhat by the scornful 
 doubts of the philosophers as to the Divine persons and 
 justice. 
 
 Some modern writers assume the sayings in the later
 
 492 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Greek poets about Zens ox Jupiter as the one all-powerful to 
 be a purely intellectual growth in this period toward the idea 
 of the One God. Yet, to say nothing of the arguments and 
 quotations of some of the early Christians from Orpheus and 
 ' the Sibyl/ Homer and Hesiod have the same expressions. 
 It is but reasonable to think that all this is compounded of 
 two elements : first, a faint survival of the primitive religion 
 of this Unity ; and secondly, in the later writers, the penetra- 
 tion among them obscurely of the wonderful Hebrew doctrine, 
 and the need of something in their own religion to apply it 
 to. But this so-called ' father of gods and men,' in that re- 
 ligion for ages, in all that was taught and thought of him, had 
 been known as the child of yet earlier gods, as the most 
 parricidal of sons, — often very weak as against either force or 
 undue influence, — a most flagrant and frequent instance of 
 what is filthy and mean in a man, and, so far, less worthy of 
 respect than many of his human worshippers. So that to 
 identify him with the Holy One Who inhabits eternity is 
 itself a shocking absurdity. The early Christian writers never 
 excepted this one from the crowd of false gods, as being 
 really the One True ; but are perhaps more severe in holding 
 up his exploits to abhorrence and derision, than as to any of 
 the others. 
 
 When the Romans in turn dispossessed the Greeks of their 
 supremacy,^ after it had endured some 200 years, and 
 founded an even larger and stronger empire of all the Mediter- 
 ranean countries : north and south, from the North Sea to 
 the Desert of Sahara : and east and west, from the Euphrates 
 to the Atlantic coasts, — they carried with them their own law 
 and direct administration over the subject countries, much 
 more thoroughly than any other like conquerors had done 
 before them. And thus this vast machine did not fall to 
 pieces in one, two, or three centuries by its own weight and 
 want of cohesion of so many diverse parts, as all the others 
 had, but lasted, in the main, at least twice as long as anyone 
 of the others. 
 
 ^ Which of course includes the Syrian and Egyptian monarchies as parts of 
 the great Greek Empire which Alexander alone held under one sovereignty, and 
 whose rivalries and contentions caused the first interference with the Temple 
 worship at Jerusalem, and gave the Jews their opportunity of tern orary inde- 
 pendence.
 
 OTHER RELIGJONS—Soo B.C. TO A.D. 493 
 
 But on the other hand, as to Philosophy and Art, the 
 Romans became really subject to the Greeks about in degree 
 as they had prevailed over them in arms and government. 
 This changed their language a great deal, and even their 
 religion. For while they had for ages worshipped much the 
 same ' gods ' as the Greeks, and with resembling ceremonies, 
 still there were very considerable differences even of the 
 names of the supposed divinities. These differences now 
 disappeared, in a great degree, by the general adoption 
 throughout the cities of the Roman Empire, of many of the 
 Greek names and rites. 
 
 And with this also came the influence of Greek Philo- 
 sophy in causing just such a spirit of scornful doubt as to the 
 truth of their traditions of religion, in various degrees through 
 all ranks of men. There were even some ' theoretic Atheists' 
 (that is, who came to the conclusion by argument that in 
 fact there was no such thing as a Divine person) among the 
 most eminent Romans, as well as Greeks, the great Julius 
 Caesar being one, as well as the elegant poet Lucretius. Yet 
 with all this, so deep-seated was the sense of truth and reality 
 in the belief of a Person above mankind, who ought to be 
 worshipped and obeyed by them, that it was always unsafe to 
 assail this belief directly ; and storms of murderous rage would 
 sometimes break out in large communities or whole nations 
 against those who were accused of being enemies of Religion. 
 The elegantly fashionable unbelief of that time is commonly 
 supposed to have found utterance in the famous saying of 
 Pontius Pilate, Governor of Judea, ' What is truth ? ' and, as 
 some think, in the satirical exclamation of Agrippa, ' Almost 
 thou persuadest me to be a Christian.' On the other 
 hand, we have in Cicero, the greatest of Roman orators 
 and philosophical writers, the struggle of one deep-thinking 
 mind to hold fast the great truth of the Divine, though the 
 actual religion revolted him by its absurdities. 
 
 These Romans were absolute lords in Palestine at the 
 time of the Advent. The Greek language and literature 
 were also there, with considerable influence upon thought 
 The Jews indeed were not Pagans, either sceptical or sincere. 
 They abhorred idolatry and idolaters more than ever, and 
 were, among themselves, exceedingly proud of their sole
 
 494 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 exemption from that monstrous folly and sin. They even 
 applied to their long-cherished hope of before long turning 
 the tables upon their all-powerful masters who served these 
 false gods, — the very mighty and splendid promises of future 
 great glory to Zion and Israel, which they read in the 
 Prophets. They understood these to foretell that very soon 
 they, under a wonderful hero and prince of the old line of 
 David, would set their feet with him upon the necks of all 
 the heathen, and that his dominion would have no end. 
 But they were so far from really being the true repre- 
 sentatives of true Religion, that the Lord described them as 
 a whole, by thus quoting of them this fearful sentence of one 
 of the Prophets : * Well hath Isaiah prophesied of you hypo- 
 crites, as it is written. This people honoureth Me with their 
 lips, but their heart is far from Me. Howbeit in vain {i.e. 
 unreally) do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the 
 commandments of men ' (St. Matt. xv. 8, 9). That it is 
 the natural sense of this passage to apply it to the general 
 state of Religion among the Jews then is plain, not only 
 from the invariable force in Holy Scripture of the phrase 
 ' this people ' (not ' these men '), but also from the fact, that 
 as a people they did in that generation reject, blaspheme, and 
 even put to death, the glorious and blessed Messiah ; not 
 only denying the Prophecies in their real and spiritual 
 fulfilment, but also when they had been attested before their 
 eyes by His great miracles and greater life of holiness and 
 love. ^ 
 
 For all the vast world of mankind that lay outside of 
 this oiKovyukvr] (or inJiabited world of the New Testament — 
 virtually the Roman Empire), we have no reason to think 
 that any real change of religion had occurred within these 
 last five centuries, unless it was the introduction of Buddhism 
 into China, as also into Japan, in the following age. But 
 that was only a new shape of vicious superstition — so all 
 fair observers now testify — as, for instance, from thorough 
 
 ^ Even when a new generation had grown up after that Rejection, St. Paul, 
 who, with all the ardour of a countryman and kinsman, had persisted in the 
 hope that, as a people, they would yet believe in their Lord, and felt as if he 
 would be willing to lose that hope of salvation if he could thus bring them to it, 
 at the close of his life takes up those words again as God's Prophet, and repeats 
 them to the Jews of his day (Acts xxviii. 25-28).
 
 OTHER RELIGIONS—soo B.C. TO A.D. 495 
 
 acquaintance with the facts, Bishop Schereschewsky and 
 Professor Monier WiHiams. Everywhere, spread over all the 
 Continents from Atlantic to Pacific Seas, and the islands of 
 those Oceans, lay one darkness of miserable false religion. 
 
 It was now ' the fulness of time ' for the Word of God 
 in Person giving to mankind more and even much greater 
 Holy Scripture, and setting up a more holy people, gathered 
 out of all nations alike, to bring in the true Religion and 
 Salvation for all men in all perfection. Amen !
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 REVIEW OF THIS INQUIRY, AND ITS RESULTS. 
 
 We have now arrived again at that great fixed point in 
 History with which we both began and ended this inquiry. 
 It has been a long and complicated research, ranging over 
 vast tracts of time and of territory, and with some large and 
 yet necessary digressions from the history, strictly considered. 
 It is well then to make a rapid re-survey of all this, and a 
 summary of its just results. First, we chose the Advent of 
 Jesus Christ the Lord as that certain epoch with which we 
 were in unbroken historical connection. Beginning thus 
 safely this side of the region of fiction and myth, in which 
 certainly lie the beginnings of much of the actual religion of 
 mankind, we undertook to trace all these backward, to see if 
 any of them gave a possible clue to the origin of all religious 
 thought. Only one such bore the test, all the others disap- 
 pearing in a mist of fable and disconnected fancies. All the 
 historical clues, however, the further they could be traced 
 back, agreed that Religion was not any men's discovery or 
 invention, but was revealed to them by the Divine they 
 worshipped. 
 
 The Hebrew tradition, as contained in much the most 
 ancient of writings, did profess to guide us far back of all 
 other history in a clear, interesting, and dignified account of 
 the Religion of one people, until this brought us to their 
 origin as descendants of one man. Even there it claimed to 
 conduct us, by a revelation of God, back to the very first of 
 our race, and the creation of all things, visible and invisible. 
 This, as fact, has indeed, by some men of note, been rejected 
 with scorn. But, on the other hand, it has in all ages since, 
 and does now, command the respect and the reverent faith 
 of a vast number of the most intelligent and candid.
 
 REVIEW OF THIS INQUIRY, AND ITS RESULTS. 497 
 
 Altogether, it was quite worth our while to make the 
 experiment of trying it as a hypothesis, to see, as is done in 
 other investigation, how, supposing it to be true, it will, accord 
 with, or fail to account for, other facts of the history of man. 
 Thus, reversing the first process, we began to descend the 
 stream we had so rapidly explored in ascent. But now the 
 exploration must be made more carefully, and in detail. 
 Every other current which joins our little rill must then be 
 ascended as far as possible, to see what claims it may have 
 to be the main stream. 
 
 As a part of this process there needed some scrutiny of 
 the theory of ' Natural Religion.' This was done, with the 
 clear result of showing that this theory is contrary to the 
 substance of Christian faith, and against the facts of History. 
 It is therefore set aside as a cumbersome fiction, only 
 obstructing the work before us. 
 
 But we cannot well yet enter upon that, without first 
 settling distinctly the authority of the Holy Scriptures, as to 
 both facts and principles, and the true method of their use 
 by Christians, in such an investigation as we were about to 
 begin. This was done with care, and its results, to which I 
 again invite special attention, as briefly summed up on p. 99, 
 were of the greatest importance to our present inquiry. For 
 it will be seen that, by neglect, or mistaking of these principles, 
 many false notions have been carelessly allowed, as to the 
 history of Religion, by those who wish to be among the more 
 enlightened Christians of the age. 
 
 With this preparation we then began to trace the history 
 of mankind from the Genesis, By this we learned that they 
 began with one man and woman as the pattern of all subse- 
 quent marriage, innocent, and made according to the very 
 Divine words, ' in the image and likeness of God.' To 
 understand these wonderful words, we go at once to Our 
 Lord in the Gospel, Himself the only pattern since of such 
 complete human nature, and the restorer of it — as well as 
 the complete Word of God, — to us all. From Him we learn 
 that the purpose of man's existence, and his nature, in the 
 highest sense, is TO LOVE ; first, above and including all 
 else, to love God, with all his heart, his mind, his strength ; 
 and secondly, to love his fellow-men as himself This, then, 
 
 2 I
 
 498 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 by the purpose and nature of mankind, is the highest con- 
 ceivable, the only true Religion, for them. They are by this 
 nature and purpose first, and above all, religious. If that had 
 been omitted from the life of Adam and Eve they would not 
 have been human. If it had been delayed for a while, — only 
 the human body, mind, and such life as there may be with 
 these, — this would not have been man as God did make him, 
 in His Own image, for ' GOD IS LOVE.' 
 
 This Religion involved an instant personal knowledge of 
 God, and immediate great love of Him, including reverence 
 of One so great and glorious, adoration, joyful obedience to 
 all His commands, faith and hope in all He revealed as to 
 their safety and happiness now, and eternal life afterwards. 
 But for all this, information from Him about Himself and 
 them, as to their nature and destiny, was indispensable. So 
 also was the power of spiritual thought and speech (in them- 
 selves inseparable), that they might use words of worship to 
 Him, and of love to one another. 
 
 This we found expressly made known to us in the 
 Genesis as a fact. It was well, however, to turn aside from 
 pursuing that narrative further, until we might meet the 
 question which has been raised by some against this being 
 fact, and not rather ' allegory,' according to certain theories 
 of the origin of human speech, particularly as maintained by 
 Professors Max Miiller and Whitney. And this also naturally 
 involved the question of the survival of the primitive 
 language, or of any fragments of it, especially those greatest 
 of its words which denoted God and man, and the chief 
 relations and duties of the latter. In the same way, some 
 inquiry into the peculiarities of the Hebrew language, as 
 giving us the only history of the first ages, and its study 
 that we might best understand that history, was necessary 
 to our purpose. 
 
 Then, for man to be thus freely and responsibly religious, 
 implied that he might choose to be otherwise. The test of 
 this was the simplest act of obedience, only requiring the 
 self-denial of a momentary bodily pleasure, and the subjec- 
 tion of curiosity — that is, the desire of knowing more about 
 this — to the loving will of God. 
 
 Before this test they fell. The primitive Religion of a
 
 REVIEW OF THIS INQUIRY, AND ITS RESULTS. 499 
 
 perfect love and innocence was gone. But the pitying- 
 mercy of God had provided a great Redemption from this, 
 through the Son and Word of God taking the nature of 
 mankind upon Him, and among them, after some hundred 
 increasing generations of such souls ; and, in the meantime, 
 conducting these generations through a mystery of prepara- 
 tion for this, which we have in the Old Testament. 
 
 Beginning then with true Religion after the loss of inno- 
 cence, we trace it down through the swiftly multiplying 
 generations for 1600 years to the Flood, It is a religion of 
 penitence for sins, and faith in God's mystery of mercy to 
 sinners — with sacrifices celebrating that, and offering adora- 
 tion to Him — with a constant struggle of the self-denial of 
 all evil passions and worldly selfishness, in order to keep 
 God's two great laws of love. This on the part of a decreas- 
 ing few, though some of these (notably Enoch) rose to a 
 height of such love, unsurpassed, if equalled, among men 
 afterwards, until ' the last Adam ' appeared. 
 
 On the other hand, with the fall from perfect love began, 
 with the greater number of men, not so much false religions 
 as utter irreligion. (It was more like what is so threatening 
 now in some so-called Christian nations, than among barbar- 
 ous idolaters.) It was the fierce struggle with one another 
 of ungodly, unloving, selfish, passionate men — armed still 
 with all the fresh physical powers and sharp intelligence of 
 their first Creation, and not self- restrained by any thought 
 of God — endeavouring to forget Him as any restraint, 
 either by love or fear, upon their ambitions. 
 
 This began with the first-born of men murdering his 
 innocent brother. And this period of the mystery of 
 Redemption ended with God proclaiming, at the end of ten 
 such very long generations, that since, of the now great 
 multitude of mankind, there was only one religious family 
 left — only one of which it must not be said that * the wicked- 
 ness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagina- 
 tion of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,' — 
 therefore by the miracle of a vast flood. He would destroy 
 from the earth all but that religious family of Noah. 
 
 With this began a new epoch in the ages before Redemp- 
 tion, in which we can only discover the true Religion con-
 
 500 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 tinuing in very few of the many families into which Noah's 
 household rapidly multiplied. The other branches, migrating 
 over the vacant world, and growing into nations, set up 
 various false religions. This dispersion begins most energeti- 
 cally at Babel in Mesopotamia, after a demonstration of 
 worldly self-conceit by many families among the adherents 
 of false religion assembled there, which is thwarted by the 
 sudden development among them of different languages. 
 And this is the only clue we really have to the present 
 varieties of human speech. 
 
 Some centuries later, we find the true Religion scarcely 
 surviving in a few scattered households of the East. Then 
 to one of those masters of families, Abraham, a man of very 
 unusual faith in the Unseen God, it was committed by Him, 
 to preserve this from utter extinction. To him, as a Prophet, 
 now comes the Word of God to mankind ; and the ceremony 
 of circumcision is appointed as the sacrament of admission 
 into this first calling out {ecclesid) of believers in God from 
 the rest of mankind. 
 
 Then we also collected all extant proofs of what were at 
 that time the various false religions, and the causes and pro- 
 cess of this great defection from the True ; observing, how- 
 ever, that always were left in these some traces of that 
 primitive truth, and that even a few scattered families and 
 small tribes of Syria and Arabia may still have adhered to 
 it in the main. Yet probably all these were in the way of 
 disappearing in a few generations in the general apostasy. 
 
 For this inquiry, and from this time on, we found great 
 beacon-lights of the New Testament illuminating all our 
 way, — as to the true Religion, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 chapter xi., and as to the many false, in the Epistle to the 
 Romans, chapter i. 18-22. 
 
 Then, returning to the only real history we have yet, we 
 followed the Patriarchs, from Abraham to Joseph, in their 
 simple and spiritual religion, in contrast with that of the 
 idolatrous and vicious tribes of Canaan, and the rich and 
 magnificent, yet equally silly and immoral, false religion of 
 Egypt. In like manner we learned of how the descendants 
 of Jacob, increasing to a great multitude in Egypt, after the 
 death of Joseph, still maintained, though imperfectly, the
 
 REVIEW OF THIS INQUIRY, AND ITS RESULTS. 501 
 
 worship and faith of the Only and True God, and kept the 
 sacred traditions of that history from Abraham, Noah, Enoch, 
 and Adam. 
 
 There comes a great epoch in this history, in the Word 
 of God coming to them by Moses, their Exodus from Egypt , 
 and across Arabia to Canaan under his leading, and the 
 giving of the Law to them at Sinai. This required also a 
 careful inquiry into the origin of zvritten language, and the 
 character and substance of the Book of Moses, especially of 
 the Ten Commandments. From this also it was made plain 
 that the Word of God has no such method of ' Development' 
 or ' Evolution ' as modern theories have assumed and de- 
 scribed — that there was even rather a contraction of the 
 primitive truth of Religion in the history from Adam, 
 Abraham, and Moses. 
 
 Going back then (Chapter XVI.) to the scrutiny of all 
 proofs as to other religions at this time (say 1800 to 1500 
 B.C.), we find the same want of real history everywhere, 
 except with the Hebrews, but evidently the same process of 
 variation and deterioration from the primitive truth. 
 
 So, returning to the Divine story of Israel, we followed 
 the history of true Religion as now in sole charge of that 
 ' people of God ' through some 500 years of * theocracy ' from 
 Moses to Samuel, and the beginning of the Hebrew mon- 
 archy. This included the conquest of Canaan from its 
 superstitious and immoral native tribes, and the establish- 
 ment there of the nation Israel, the semi-patriarchal state of 
 twelve distinct tribes, yet one commonwealth, bound together 
 above all by a spiritual and majestic religion, and occasion- 
 ally rescued from great disasters and defections from that 
 truth by Prophets of God, ' Judges,' and heroes whom He 
 caused to appear for them. All this was an example of 
 what men can do at the best, even with considerable super- 
 natural help, in the way of maintaining real piety and good- 
 ness against the downward tendency in general, perversity 
 in themselves, and the bad example of all other peoples 
 around them. 
 
 Turning from them to learn how those Pagan nations 
 fared in their ways, we see for this period, all over the world, 
 the same gloomy waste of false gods, superstitions, incon-
 
 502 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 sistencies, absurdities, and bad morals, through which still 
 faintly gleams some of the ancient truth about Divine power, 
 God's commands of duty, man's sins, and a future judgment 
 and life. The first traces of real History outside of the 
 Hebrew Scriptures also now begin to appear ; but all it can 
 tell us is to the same effect. The monuments and hiero- 
 glyphics of Egypt have already been allowed their use in the 
 research, as well as what could be fairly allowed to like 
 remains in Assyria, Persia, India, and China, and the legends 
 of more barbarous nations. 
 
 Proceeding to the next age of Israel, say from David to 
 Daniel, from the building of the first Temple to its destruc- 
 tion, we see ' the people of God ' under the more firm and 
 strong government of monarchs ; at first powerful and 
 prosperous among their neighbour nations far and near. 
 The Temple at Jerusalem is famous upon the banks of 
 Nile and Euphrates ; and the thought of only One, True, 
 Unseen God, to be worshipped only in spirit and in truth, 
 not by any image or visible object of reverence, and Who 
 requires goodness and purity in all this worship and in 
 private life, this doubtless penetrated in some measure to all 
 those lands, as we know it did to Sheba (in South Arabia). 
 When, on the other hand, the false religion began to creep 
 into the Holy Land, Israel was divided into two jealous and 
 quarrelling nations, and even in Judah with the Holy City 
 and Temple, there were oftener bad kings and a like people 
 than otherwise. 
 
 Then we have new Prophets appearing with more of the 
 Word of God, and adding to its Scriptures these later 
 writings called by their names. Yet, as in these was no 
 contradiction of 'the Law,' but ratlier its fulfilment and 
 enforcement, so also, as we have seen in the previous history, 
 was there no advancing development in Religion. That 
 began with the greatest light and truth by the Word of God, 
 which, being much obscured by the Fall of man, was hardly 
 kept from utter extinction on the earth by the prophets of 
 God, even then at times suff'ering rather diminution than 
 increase. 
 
 The same age among the Pagan nations saw the same 
 darkness of perversion of that truth as before. Yet now we
 
 REVIEW OF THIS INQUIRY, AND ITS RESULTS. 503 
 
 begin to find materials for history among them. And espe- 
 cially we note the appearance of certain men as philo- 
 sophers, reformers, or, as some of them claimed, prophets 
 of religion by Divine inspiration ; as Zoroaster and other 
 writers of the Zend among the Persians, and the authors of 
 the Vedas in India. Excepting with the Persians, among 
 whom the primitive truth survived more evidently, the actual 
 religion of only a very few was at all affected by such in- 
 fluences. Superstitious and vicious idolatry occupied the 
 religious thought of almost all the men, women, and children 
 of those lands, and was generally practised by the philo- 
 sophers themselves. Whence then these men got the more 
 true and spiritual things they said (with a great deal else 
 which was inconsistent with that, and misleading) can only 
 be conjectured. But we have had occasion to see that far 
 the most reasonable conjecture is, that it was not from 
 original thought of their own, but the survival of primitive 
 truth, and, in some cases at least, from the religion of Israel 
 coming to their knowledge, either in its Holy Writings or 
 by personal intercourse of traders and travellers, and re- 
 calling that truth to their attention. A great illustration of 
 this, and of the mercy and pity of God for all these 'Gentiles,' 
 we saw in the mission of Jonah to Nineveh, and also in the 
 episodes of the Queen of Sheba and of Naaman the Syrian. 
 For the last period — from the Captivity of Babylon to 
 the Advent, — the Jews, though even fanatically monothe- 
 istic, so far from advancing in spiritual piety, and devoting 
 themselves to spread the truth of Religion among all other 
 men, grew more formal, hypocritical, and bitter as a people. 
 Instead of falling away to Syrian, Greek, or Roman idolatry, 
 they fought furiously, and against any odds — often victori- 
 ously, — to expel their Pagan masters, and to prevent sacri- 
 legious interference with the Temple at Jerusalem and its 
 rites. Early in this period the last of the Prophets brought 
 the Word of God to them, with warnings against their hypo- 
 crisies. Then for the 400 years until the Advent no Prophet 
 appeared. The ancient Scriptures were carefully presented, 
 and treated in profession and form with an almost super- 
 stitious reverence. But their real meaning for spiritual 
 good was obscured by the pretended discovery of other
 
 504 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 meanings than that in the plain words, and by false tradi- 
 tions to the same effect. Much of this may have been 
 derived from, doubtless was suggested by, the fictions of the 
 Persian Magi and the Hindu poetry and philosophy with 
 which some of their ' scribes ' became acquainted in Babylon 
 during the Captivity, and where one of their chief ' schools ' 
 was afterwards. 
 
 Thus at the Christian Era we find the Jews still in the 
 Holy Land as a people, yet many of them scattered as 
 trading adventurers in all the large towns from Persia to 
 Spain : a large colony of them at Alexandria, and even a 
 considerable one at Rome. Everywhere they are exclusive 
 in their religion, rigid in the ceremonies of the Law of Moses 
 and many other observances which have no authority from 
 it, — often at the services of the Temple, if near enough to 
 Jerusalem for that, or in attendance every Sabbath at places 
 of worship called synagogues, when the Holy Scriptures 
 were read aloud, — yet having almost as little of the true 
 meaning of this Religion as the Pagans. Scattered among 
 them were a very few devout penitents before God, looking 
 and longing for the great Messiah whom God had promised 
 ' by the mouth of His holy Prophets, which had been since 
 the world began.' These promises were indeed much talked 
 of by their worldly and selfish countrymen, but only for 
 their glory as Jews and the subjugation of all other nations 
 to them. One great fact of this period especially connected 
 their religious history with that of the other nations — the 
 translation of their Scriptures into Greek, made about 200 
 years before the Advent of Our Lord. 
 
 Finally, reviewing this period as to Religion in the rest 
 of the world, we found the same general condition as before. 
 No growing civilisation nor genius of a few extraordinary 
 men had lifted the black cloud of false religion which hung 
 over almost all mankind. Rather this was settling down 
 from bad to worse. Any such necessary ' development ' and 
 improvement of this as some now imagine was really greater 
 degeneracy. Buddha in India, estimated at the most favour- 
 able we reasonably can, leaves his countrymen, and his con- 
 verts elsewhere, at least as superstitious and immoral as he 
 found them. The Persian religion is now only another sort
 
 REVIEW OF THIS INQUIRY, AND ITS RESULTS. 505 
 
 of these religious follies, — of sun- and fire-worship and cruel 
 sorceries, — while its purer traditions have lost all meaning. 
 The Greek philosophers and their Roman successors have 
 written elegantly, and giv^en out some fine sentences, without 
 even making themselves spiritually religious ; while their 
 countrymen are only more superstitious than ever, though 
 mocking doubts as to there being anything Divine weaken 
 all restraints upon vice in high and low alike. 
 
 Is not this a fair account of the state of Religion in the 
 world when Jesus Christ was born at Bethlehem in Judea? 
 How this came about we have now carefully investigated by 
 the only possible historical clue from the first down, if any 
 is possible, — that is, by the Hebrew Scriptures, according to 
 the Christian view of them as a part of the Word of God 
 to us in Jesus Christ Our Lord. No other history pretends 
 to begin so early or to maintain this sequence, or to be the 
 truth without any possible mixture of error. Scientific 
 theories have to plunge into the regions of absurd myth 
 and of contradictory fictions, and by some guesses at 
 thought and language make it as plausible as possible that 
 thus or thus it might have been. Yet not even in that very 
 imperfect way can any of them adjust themselves to many 
 of the facts. 
 
 But here is history that traverses the whole range of fact 
 with a clear eye and firm step, and shows how the most 
 reasonable solution of all the questions of other traditions, 
 records, and religions is in accordance with it. 
 
 This for all the candid who were willing in this way with 
 me to try ' the Christian hypothesis.' It is unanswerable. 
 It is irresistible. But it is far below the Christian's ambition 
 to have set up an unanswerable argument. This truth is 
 not his. It is from God. It is His gift of grace and love to 
 all mankind. My hope is that we may all accept it by that 
 faith in Him which is the highest exercise of our intelligence 
 and love of truth.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Aaron, 381. 
 
 Abel, 45, 223, 226. 
 
 Aberglaube, 238. 
 
 Abraham, 28, 262, 265, 281, 295, 
 
 297, 299. 
 all we know of, is from the Book 
 
 of Genesis, 277. 
 religion of, when he arrives in 
 
 Canaan, 268, 274-278. 
 had no new knowledge of God 
 
 first revealed to him, 276. 
 does not worship any stars or 
 
 idols, 341. 
 
 did not change his language, 298. 
 
 a slaveholder and a polygamist, 
 
 353- 
 
 faith of, 349, 351. 
 
 his sacrifice of Isaac, 350. 
 
 covenant with, 349. 
 
 an Arab ? 299. 
 
 Absurdities of false religions, 292, 323, 
 
 336. 
 Adam, 33, 44, 100, 103. 
 
 ' As in Adam all die,' 103. 
 
 the name, 161, 171, 177, 302. 
 
 greatness of, 103, 204-206. 
 
 compared with C. Darwin, 
 
 an infant? 51, 133, 150. 
 
 ' a federal head ? ' 103. 
 
 what revelation made to 
 
 190. 
 
 him, 
 
 204. 
 
 sons and daughters of, 231. 
 
 ' the Last,' 103, 207, 220, 360. 
 
 Africa, languages of Central, 254. 
 
 'After-gods,' 298, 304, 321, 325. 
 
 ' h.ya.-K'f], 115. 
 
 "Kyvoia, 329. 
 
 Agnostics, 329. 
 
 Ahriman, 305. 
 
 Ahuri-masda, 306. 
 
 Air and sky as the first suggestions of 
 
 religion, 179, 463. 
 'AW-qyopovneva, 62. 
 Allegorical — sense of Gen. ii. and iii. , 
 
 51-54, 102, 137, 177, 209. 
 
 Allegorical, indecent religions ex- 
 plained as, 219, 293, 294, 336. 
 
 Allusions to the false religions in Holy 
 Scripture, 284. 
 
 Alphabet, 390-398, 403-405-. 
 
 invented by the Egyptians ? 393- 
 
 397- 
 
 Phoenicians ? 398. 
 
 Alphabet (The), etc., by Rev. J. 
 
 Taylor, 392, 398, 404. 
 Encyc. Brit., 9th edition, 
 
 393- 
 Alphabet (Z') Phenicien, Lenormant, 
 
 395- 
 ' Altruism,' 239. 
 
 America, European conquest of, 262, 
 284. 
 
 peopling of, 263. 
 
 American (aborigines) religions and 
 
 traditions, 255, 319, 437. 
 Amor, A mare, 1 3 1. 
 Ancestor- worship, 305, 313, 338. 
 ^Kvrip and "Ac^/OWToy, 173. 
 Angels, 490. 
 Anthropoids, lOO. 
 Anthropomorphism, 213, 234, 248, 
 
 403- 
 
 Aphobis, Proverbs of, 288. 
 
 Apocrypha, The, 4S8. 
 
 Apostles, their method with Holy 
 Scripture, 76, 77. 
 
 Aquinas, 55- 
 
 Arabians, 270, 304, 354, 3S2, 444. 
 
 Arabic, as used in construing Hebrew, 
 168, 189. 
 
 Aramaic, 299. 
 
 Arbitrary, as applied to command- 
 ments of God, 209. 
 
 Argyll, Duke of. Primeval Man, 252. 
 
 Arnold, Edwin, Light of Asia, 475. 
 
 Matthew, 216, 221, 238, 287, 
 
 349, 352, 361, 383- 
 Art, as to decency, 217, 218. 
 Articulation, the peculiar, of different 
 
 languages, 151.
 
 5o8 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Arts and inventions before the Flood, 
 
 232. 
 
 no test of religion, 232. 
 
 Aryan, 150, 159, 311, 312, 322, 323, 
 
 332, 463, 465- 
 ' As a little child,' 89. 
 'As gods,' 127. 
 'As thyself,' 112, 1 17. 
 Assyrian religion, 304, 435, 480. 
 
 remains, 160, 170, 246, 304. 
 
 Astronomy, false religion from? 305, 
 
 343- 
 Astruc, 182. 
 Atheism, theoretical or practical? 113, 
 
 135- 
 
 Atheists, the Roman, 493. 
 
 Athenians, their idea of Our God, 286. 
 Augustine, Civ. Dei, on Adam in 
 Paradise, 204. 
 
 Baal, 181, 297, 303, 304, 481, 482. 
 
 Babel, 250, 258. 
 
 Babylon, religion of, 304, 478. 
 
 captivity of, 454. 
 
 antiquities of, 246, 304. 
 
 Bad morals from false religion, 324. 
 
 Balaam, 175. 
 
 K"I3> primary meaning of, 185-187. 
 
 T T 
 
 Barbarous races, 319. 
 
 Baring-Gould, x, 261. 
 
 Bedouins, 354. 
 
 'Beginning, in the,' as to marriage, 
 
 353-. 
 Beginnings of false religion, 320, 348. 
 Bel, 109, 297. 
 Ben- and Bni-Adam, 172. 
 'Beyonds,' the three, 313, 314. 
 Bible, the, one book of God, 43, 60, 
 
 69, 71. 
 
 the English, 169. 
 
 the Word of God, 69. 
 
 Biology — as to the seventh Com., 216. 
 Blunt's Theolog. Diet., 33. 
 Bochart, 140, 159, 300, 443. 
 Bolingbroke, 133. 
 Book, a, of more authority for history 
 
 than inscriptions, 394. 
 Book of the Dead, The, 2S8, 289. 
 Book of the Law, The, 450. 
 of Moses, 60, 63, 321, 406-410, 
 
 424, 425, 432, 450. 
 contains a local and tem- 
 
 porary religion for Israel, and an 
 enduring preparation for the Gospel, 
 
 425. 
 
 date of, 407. 
 
 one writing, 99, 449. 
 
 the earliest of histories, 308. 
 
 finding of, in Josiah's time, 
 
 450- 
 
 Bow in the cloud, 244. 
 
 Brahmins, 334, 460. 
 
 Brahmo-Somaj, 334. 
 
 Bryant, Jacob, 338. 
 
 Buddha, 21, 470, 475, 
 
 Buddhism as an actual religion, 475, 
 
 477- 
 Bunsen, EgypCs Place in History, 
 
 257, 288. 
 
 Burnt-oftering, 243. 
 
 Butler, Bishop, xi. 
 
 Cadmus, 389, 398. 
 Cain, 226, 234, 355. 
 Cainites, 228, 246. 
 Canaan, son of Ham, 245. 
 Canaanites, 267, 269, 270, 294, 299, 
 
 361, 432. 
 Captivity of Babylon, 454, 483, 
 
 485. 
 
 Chabas' Voyage cTun Egyptien, 288. 
 
 Chaldee language, 299, 301. 
 
 religion, 305, 330. 
 
 remains, 170, 219, 246, 255, 256, 
 
 272, 304. 
 
 Chambers's Encyclopedia : ' Philo- 
 logy,' 153; 'Devil,' 347. 
 
 Charily, 115, 131. 
 
 Chastity, as commanded by religion, 
 9, II, 218, 219, 293. 
 
 according to poets, physiologists, 
 
 and philosophers, 216, 219, 294, 
 
 357, 361. 
 
 as a jest, 318, 357, 361, 363. 
 
 Chateaubriand, account of Adam in 
 
 the Genie du Christianismc, 203. 
 Chiefs, their influence upon the re- 
 ligion of families and tribes, 291. 
 Child, its first acquirement of speech, 
 
 156. 
 
 'as a little,' 89. 
 
 China, religion of, 218, 308, 316, 436, 
 
 468, 480. 
 
 history of, 246, 278, 308, 316. 
 
 Chinese writing, 396. 
 
 traditions of the Flood, 255. 
 
 Christian hypotheses upon which this 
 
 inquiry is pursued, 99, 144. 
 Chronologies of the ' Hyksos,' 377. 
 Chronology, uncertain, 246, 420, etc. 
 Church, the Old Testament belongs to 
 
 the, 66, 169, 170. 
 ' the witness and keeper of Holy 
 
 Writ,' 66. 
 
 its belief as to Holy Writ, 77. 
 
 Cicero, 18, 493. 
 
 Circumcision, tradition of, in the Zend, 
 
 307- 
 Cities of the Plain, 282, 294, 357. 
 ' City,' in Genesis, 231.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 509 
 
 Civil society, 258. 
 
 Civilisation, distinct from religion, 
 
 232, 296. 
 Clement of Rome, 78. 
 
 of Alexandria, 54. 
 
 ' Cogitations,' 322, 332. 
 Commandment, a, of God, 350. 
 
 a new, 123. 
 
 Commandments, the two Great, as 
 
 primitive, loi, 128, 177, 326. 
 after the Fall, 214, 258, 
 
 268, 275. 
 
 the Ten, written by God, 196. 
 
 the same in substance from 
 
 the Fall, 221, 25S, 413. 
 Comparative grammar, 250. 
 
 language, 250. 
 
 religion, 218, 294, 340, 463. 
 
 Condillac, 147, 151. 
 
 Conduct, 287, 352. 
 
 Confucius, 21, 316-318. 
 
 Confusion of Pagan traditions, 250, 
 
 257, 286. 
 
 of tongues, 250, 300. 
 
 Conjugal love, 202. 
 
 Conscience, 326, 347, 353. 
 
 Consciousness, 347, 353. 
 
 'dawn of religious, in Paradise,' 
 
 204. 
 Contraction instead of ' development ' 
 
 of the Will of God, 410, 412, 413- 
 
 417, 419, 426, 430. 
 Copts, 284. 
 ' Corroborating ' the Word of God, 
 
 366. 
 Cosmogony, 183. 
 Covenant with Noah, 244. 
 
 Abraham, 349. 
 
 Book of the, 450. 
 
 Covenants, the old and new, 80. 
 Create, the primary meaning of, 185. 
 
 See also t<")3. 
 
 T T 
 
 Creation, revealed to man from the 
 
 first, 183, 224. 
 
 purpose of, 102. 
 
 traces of this tradition in Chaldee 
 
 and other histories, 183, 187, 307. 
 Creator not known to Plato, 58. 
 Criticism, modern, 452. 
 Cushites, 261. 
 Cyrus, 480, 485, 486. 
 
 Dagon, 109, 303. 
 
 Danger, the chief, for us as to know- 
 ledge of God, 83-85, 90, 95- 
 Daniel, 367, 485. 
 Daniel Deronda, 165. 
 Darius, 480, 486. 
 Darwin, C, 38, 185, 190, 219. 
 Darwin compared with Adam, 190. 
 
 Dates, uncertainty of the Egyptian, 
 
 288. 
 David, 325, 433, 438. 
 a great Prophet of God, 438, 
 
 441. 
 Death by sin, 208, 211. 
 a reminder of religion, 337. 
 
 Dnan, 196. 
 
 Degeneration of mankind, 48, 149, 
 220, 222, 235, 238, 252, 261, 348. 
 
 Deists, 55, 306. 
 
 Deity of Our Lord, 52, 163. 
 
 Demosthenes, 18. 
 
 Demotic, 394, 396. 
 
 Dens, 312, 315. 
 
 Deuteronomy, 451. 
 
 Devas, 312, 315. 
 
 Development of Holy Scripture, as 
 read into it by ' Modern Thought,' 
 70, 71, 203, 274, 353, 3S8, 429. 
 
 Devil, the, as well as the world and 
 the flesh, promotes false religion, 
 346. 
 
 and his angels, 337, 346. 
 
 Devil-worship, 294, 304, 306, 323, 
 
 .337- 
 Diagram, showing the comparative 
 
 certainty of truth by this method, or 
 
 that of 'Comparative Language,' 
 
 316. 
 Aia\o7t(rMOt, 322, 325, 332, 340. 
 Dictates of conscience, 326, 347, 350, 
 
 352, 353- 
 Differences of the false religions, 331, 
 
 337> 474- 
 
 E)ignity of man under the law of love, 
 121, 127. 
 
 Dilemma for doubters, 95. 
 
 Diligere, 131. 
 
 Disagreement of the ' scientific ' 
 theories, 331. 
 
 Dispersion, the, 247, 249, 262. 
 
 Divination, 370. 
 
 Divine, — application of term, 315. 
 
 Divorce, 273. 
 
 Documents, from which Moses cum- 
 piled, 182, 402. 
 
 Doubting, special treatment of mor- 
 bid, 404. 
 
 never rational, 94, 95. 
 
 Doubts of the popular religion, 493. 
 
 Dreams, as the first suggestion of 
 religion, 335. 
 
 of Joseph's fellow-prisoners, 364. 
 
 of Pharaoh, 365. 
 
 superstition as to, 364. 
 
 the Word of God in, 351, 
 
 364- 
 Drunkenness of Noah, 245. 
 Dualism of the Persians, 15, 306.
 
 5IO 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 'Duty, stem daughter,' etc., 128. 
 Dyaus-pitej-, 463. 
 
 Earliest history in the Book of 
 
 Moses, 246, 262, 400. 
 Eber, 256. 
 Ebrard, 274. 
 Ecdesia, 263, 264. 
 Ecclesiasticus, 143. 
 Eddas, 255, 319. 
 Eden, 219, 275. 
 Edomites, 167, 354, 358, 435. 
 Effigies of heroes, etc., 346. 
 Egypt, religion of, 14, 220, 232, 256, 
 
 282, 285, 294, 323, 344, 362, 422, 
 
 434- 
 common people, 290. 
 
 Egyptian remains, 283, 246, 272, 
 282, 338, 343, 377, 379, 434. 
 
 morals of the women, 362. 
 
 tradition of the Flood, 256, 292. 
 
 style, 368. 
 
 Egj'ptians, Hamites, 256. 
 
 energy and talents of the early, 
 
 258, 283. 
 
 El (^s), Elohim, 136, 180, 297, 302, 
 
 304, 365, 373- 
 Elijah, 443, 445. 
 Elisha, 443, 445. 
 Elohistic, 182. 
 Emerson, R. W., 333. 
 'Ec dpx'y, lOl- 
 
 Encyclopadia Britannica, 393, 397. 
 English Bible, 169. 
 
 language, 301. 
 
 nations, 232. 
 
 Enoch, 44, 230, 234-237, 276, 354. 
 
 Book of, 236. 
 
 Esau, modern Jews in part descended 
 
 from, 167. 
 Esquimaux, 251, 255- 
 Eternal life and heavenly joy for those 
 
 who love God, 230, 375, 498. 
 
 principles, 350. 
 
 rEter7iel, 384. 
 Eternity of matter, 185. 
 Ethics, lOi, 221, 260. 
 "Y.evt], 164, 295, 321, 327, 387. 
 European explorations in one century, 
 
 262, 284. 
 Evdl angels or spirits, worship of, 337, 
 
 346. 
 Evolution, 56, 185, 223, 354, 426, 501. 
 
 by the Fall, 203. 
 
 of man, 157, 
 
 of language, 152. 
 
 Ewald, 390-392. 
 Exodus, the, 27, 379, 388. 
 Ezra, 485. 
 
 Faber, G. S., Origin of Pagan Idols, 
 
 187, 278, 338, 339. 
 Faith in God a great part of true 
 
 religion, 224, 246, 380, 383. 
 the great distinction of 
 
 Abraham, 266. 
 
 and reverence indispensable con- 
 
 ditions of the use of the ^Yord of 
 God, 82, 91, 198, 324, 340, 400. 
 
 Fall of man, 84, 206, 211, 212, 258, 
 276, 306, 342. 
 
 swift results of, 211, 229. 
 
 False religion, the beginning and his- 
 tory of, a great mysteiy, 247,321,326. 
 
 causes and process of this, 
 
 221, 247, 248, 321, 327. 
 
 religions, perversions of primi- 
 
 tive truth, 59, 335. 
 Falsehood forbidden by all religions, 
 
 418. 
 yet allowed and taught by 
 
 some, 418. 
 Families of languages, 250. 
 Family, the human race one, 249. 
 the germ of the tribe and the 
 
 nation, 249, 259. 
 true religion intrusted to one, 265, 
 
 349- 
 
 Fanaticism, 352. 
 
 Fate, 14. 
 
 Father in heaven, 464. 
 
 Fathers, the, 329. 
 
 Faust, 127. 
 
 Fear, slavish and guilty, 338. 
 
 Fecundity, as worshipped and glorified, 
 
 216, 220, 293. 
 Fifth Commandment has a local and 
 
 temporary' reference, 417. 
 Fire-worship, 307. 
 First Commandment, 413, 417. 
 and Great Commandment, lOi, 
 
 112, 115, 117, 126, 130, 131, 322, 
 
 412. 
 
 as it came to Adam, 102. 
 
 as the Jews understood it, 
 
 109. 
 proclaimed anew by Our 
 
 Lord, no, 118, 123, 131, 419. 
 First of the human race, the, most in- 
 telligent and vigorous, 225, 247, 
 
 262, 283. 
 Flood, the, 234, 240, 242, 250. 
 memory of, 242, 244, 255, 
 
 307- 
 
 why probably no traditions 
 
 of it in Eg)pt, 256, 292. 
 
 Foh-hi, 278. 
 
 ' For this is the Law and the Prophets,' 
 119. 
 
 Forces, general, in religious move- 
 ments, 473.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 511 
 
 Fourth Commandment the eailiest of 
 
 the Ten, 194, 197, 416. See also 
 
 Sabbath. 
 Freedom, 128. 
 ' Free handling,' 74. 
 Free-will of man a mystery, 362. 
 Future life, belief in, 14, 230, 268, 
 
 273, 289, 317, 375. 
 
 of the Egyptians, 289. 
 
 left somewhat aside, 
 
 yet continued in the religion of 
 
 Israel, 375, 411. 
 one of the traditions 
 
 of primitive religion, 289, 375. 
 
 Gale, Coui-tofthe Gentiles, 140, 159, 
 
 300, 338. 
 Geikie, Hours with the Bible, 59, 256, 
 
 261, 299. 
 General laws, 369. 
 Generative and receptive, 293. 
 Genesis the only real history of the 
 
 first ages, 12, 44, 60, 99, J02, 198, 
 
 201. 
 only to be fully understood from 
 
 the Gospel, 43, 224. 
 
 ii., as to the first language, 144. 
 
 i.-iii., an allegoryl 51-53, 137. 
 
 Gentiles, 295, 321, 327, 434, 469, 490, 
 
 SOS- 
 German race, 232, 319. 
 — — research, 338, 392. 
 Giving of the law, 407. 
 Gladstone, J. H., 185. 
 
 W. iL. , Juvenilis Mzmdi, 319. 
 
 ' Glorify,' 322. 
 
 God, the thought of, never entirely 
 
 lost, 32. 
 
 as an object of love, 106-112. 
 
 asks and yet commands men to 
 
 love Him, 127. 
 more to man than he himself, 
 
 177. 
 His pity for men of false religion, 
 
 243, 263, 468. 
 
 ' of the Jews only,' 1 10. 
 
 of Israel, none the less the 
 
 One Only, 109, 413. 
 of the world, 337. 
 
 Gods, 6, 15, 312, 321, 368, 373, 
 420, 436, 445, 457, 458, 478, 492. 
 
 strange, 321. See also 'After- 
 gods.' 
 
 Goethe, 127, 216, 232. 
 
 D"'ijj 321. See Gentiles. 
 
 Good Samaritan, 115. 
 Goodness, the highest in man, 352. 
 Goodwin, Bp. H., 38, 71, 203, 274. 
 Gospel, the first promise of the, 214, 
 276. 
 
 Gothic traditions, 255, 319. 
 Gould, S. Baring-, Origin, etc., 261. 
 Government, all, from God, 259. 
 'Gradual Development,' etc., 203. 
 
 See Bp. Goodwin. 
 Vpa<pr] and Tpa<pal, 69. 
 Graven images, 414. 
 Gueat Name, 341. 
 
 Spirit, 319. 
 
 Greece, 426, 477. 
 
 Greek, art and beauty of images, 344. 
 
 adventure, art, and thought, 459. 
 
 history and traditions, 3, 17, 
 
 255, 457- 
 
 (Pagan) religion, 12, 457. 
 
 a language of Palestine at the 
 
 Advent, 593. 
 
 reading people of the 
 
 Roman Empire, 491. 
 • philosophers as to natural religion. 
 
 46, 491. 
 
 study the LXX., 488. 
 
 Gregory the Great, 78. 
 
 Gross darkness of Pagan Egypt, 291. 
 
 Guilt of false religion, 324, etc. 
 
 Hallowed, 416. 
 Ham, 245, 257. 
 Hamilton, Sir W., 42. 
 Hamites, 258, 265, 291, 354. 
 
 the Egyptians were, 256, 261. 
 
 Hebrew, the original language ? 1 58, 
 
 160, 300. 
 alone preserves some of the 
 
 original words, 160, 177, 297, 301. 
 the language of Abraham, 298, 
 
 300. 
 mytholog}', 293. 
 
 — now a 'dead' language, 170. 
 
 — history. See Jews. 
 
 — religion of Our God, 3. 
 
 — Scriptures, age of, 98, 158, 159. 
 — as material for this inquirj', 
 
 3, 5- 
 
 sensus receptus and self- 
 interpretation of, 170. 
 
 Hebrews, Epistle to the, 164, 321. 
 
 Heredity, 36, 47, 326, 359. 
 
 Herodotus, 71, 284, 286. 
 
 Hero-worship, 305, 331, 346. 
 
 Hesiod, 20, 294, 334. 
 
 Hieratic writing, 390, 394, 396. 
 
 Hieroglyphics, 390, 393, 394, 398, 
 403, 404. 
 
 High places, 451. 
 
 Hindu writings, 3. See Sanscrit, 
 Vedas, etc. 
 
 religion, 459, 465. See Sanscrit, 
 
 Vedas, etc. 
 
 History, the oldest and most trusty, 
 134, 160, 198, 246, 251, 255, 259.
 
 512 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 History and conjecture (diagram), 316, 
 
 466. 
 none Divine, of the 400 years 
 
 before the Advent, 488. 
 
 ' what I call,' 253 (see India). 
 
 Historical Analysis, Prof. Whitney's, 
 
 147. 
 Hobbes, 148. 
 
 Holy Ghost, guide to all truth, 73, 77. 
 Holy Scriptures, oldest of all writings, 
 
 26, 393- 
 whence Christians receive 
 
 them, 65-69, 166. 
 Christian view of, xiv, 91- 
 
 99, 3", 449- 
 method of use and value in 
 
 this inquiry, 23, 25, 60-79. 
 
 wonderful preservation of. 
 
 68. 
 
 Did Our Lord teach us that 
 they were in part erroneous? 85. 
 See Bible. 
 
 Homer, 20, 456. 
 
 Homo, vir, 172, 174- 
 
 Host of heaven, 323. 
 
 Human sacrifices, 286, 296. 
 
 thought as ' inspiration ' or ' reve- 
 lation,' 468. 
 
 'Humble, to,' 219. 
 
 Humboldt, A., 256. 
 
 W., 253. 
 
 Humility and love, essential to the 
 Christian method, 64. 
 
 reverence, and faith, conditions 
 
 of our knowing God, 90, 95, 137, 
 240. 
 
 only for the ignorant 
 
 and unthinking, 84. 
 Huxley, Prof., 38. 
 Hyde, Dr. Thomas, 307. 
 Hyksos, 377, 397. 
 
 'I AM,' 181, 383,384. 
 
 ' I fear God,' 372. 
 
 Ideographic, 395, 397. 
 
 Idolatry, 268, 270, 282, 295, 307, 323, 
 
 339, 341, 344, 414, 461, 483, 484, 
 
 493- 
 Idols, human fignres as, 345. 
 
 ugliness of Egyptian and Hindu, 
 
 344- 
 ' If thou turn away thy foot from the 
 
 Sabbath,' etc., 417. 
 Image of God, in the, 49, 103, 105, 
 
 138. 
 
 Image-worship, none among Chris- 
 tians for 400 years, 345. See also 
 Idolatry. 
 
 Imaginations, 243, 245, 248, 2S0, 322, 
 325, 332, 344. See also AiaXoyiff/j-oi, 
 Inventions, etc. 
 
 Imperfection of the religion of Israel, 
 
 411,419. 
 ' In the beginning,' loi. 
 Incarnation of Our Lord no suggestion 
 
 of image-worship, 345. 
 Incongruities and inconsistencies of 
 
 false worship, 338. 
 Increase of mankind after the Flood, 
 
 247, 262. 
 Indecencies of all the false religions, 
 
 10, 292. 
 India, religion of, 21 8, 246, 277, 308- 
 
 315, 330, 332-334, 422, 436, 459, 
 
 465, 474-477- 
 
 has no early history,' 246, 308. 
 
 India : What ive can Learn from it, 
 
 253, 308, 309, 310, 312, 313, 314, 
 
 325, 330, 332, 436, 460. 
 Indian metaphysics, 461, 474. 
 
 ■ traditions, 255. 
 
 Individual men, exaggeration of their 
 
 work, 465-475- 
 Infant, its etymology, 150. 
 
 Adam a huge? 275. 
 
 Inheritance of sin, 325, 326. 
 Inscriptions, Phoenician and Syrian, 
 
 399- 
 Inspiration, 76, 90, 95, 364, 449, 466, 
 
 470, 471. 
 Invention, human, 260. 
 Inventions, 50, 2S7, 290, 292. 
 Irenreus, 187. 
 Isaac, his birth, 349 ; sacrifice of, 350, 
 
 353- 
 Ish and Ish-ah, 140, 171-177. 
 
 Ishmael and Ishmaelites, 354, 358. 
 
 Israel, the God of, 413. 
 
 (Jacob), 24, 358. 
 
 as a people, in Egypt, 376, 379, 
 
 384- 
 
 its religion, 376, 384. 
 
 as separated from Judah, 440, 
 
 448. 
 — its religion, 483, 487. 
 
 Jacob, 358, 374, 375- 
 
 Jacobi, 42. 
 
 Jah, 465. 
 
 Jehovah, 28, 109, 180, 297, 303, 323, 
 
 384, 442. 
 Jerusalem, 441, 442, 483. 
 Jews, proper use of the word, 164, 
 
 167, 485. 
 at Babylon and under the Persian 
 
 power, 483, 485, 486, 503. 
 never tried to convert the world 
 
 to the One True God, 4, 167. 
 — of Our Lord's time, 4-6, 23-25, 
 162-165, 167, 266, 486-488, 503. 
 
 of our day, 161, 162, 165, 
 
 167, 257, 266, 381.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 513 
 
 Jews, we do not receive the Old Testa- 
 ment from the, 166. 
 
 their authority in the study of the 
 
 Hebrew Scriptures, 161-168. 
 
 modern sentimentalism about, 
 
 162-165. 
 
 Job, Book of, 270, 271, 293, 342, 
 402, 403, 465. 
 
 Jonah, 446-44S. 
 
 Joseph, 302, 359, 362, 37S. 
 
 a propliet, 365, 367, 375. 
 
 Joseph's cup, 370. 
 
 Josephus, 19. 
 
 Joshua, 266, 270, 304, 451. 
 
 Josiah, 450-453- 
 
 Jubal, 232, 233. 
 
 Judah, 359, 360, 370. 
 
 kingdom of, 440, 442, 443, 448, 
 
 4S3> 454- 
 Jude, Epistle of, 236. 
 Judgment, Day of, 235-237, 258, 268, 
 
 273, 290, 338, 382, 430, 491. 
 Jupiter, 10, 328, 463. 
 Justin Martyr, 54. 
 
 Kedem, 398. 
 King's law, the, 
 
 the Great, 454. 
 
 Know, senses of the word, 134. 
 
 the desire to, a temptation, 210. 
 
 Knowledge, possessed in Paradise, 
 
 204, 274. 
 more faith in men the ground of 
 
 most of our, 93. 
 
 of God, primitive, 133, 135, 225, 
 
 276. 
 
 of good and evil, 200, 211. 
 
 would never be entirely 
 
 lost, 225. 
 Koran, 306, 307. 
 Kosmos, 263. 
 Kuenen, 274, 325. 
 
 Lange, 243, 301. 
 
 Language, origin of, 51, 132, 158. 
 
 necessary to religion, 50, 53, 
 
 138, 180, 389-400. 
 cannot God use human language 
 
 with exactness ? 82. 
 
 the original surviving, 158,300. 
 
 coloured by the manners and re- 
 
 ligion of a people, 290. 
 
 Languages, how many at the disper- 
 sion, 250. 
 
 Aa6s, 164, 295. 
 
 Laotze, 317. 
 
 Lasciviousness, its effect upon a people, 
 361. 
 
 Law belongs with religion, 9, 260, 
 
 28s, 347> 430- 
 beginning of human, 244, 259. 
 
 Law of Moses, 160, 407-412, 425, 428, 
 431, 432, 441, 449, 453, 483, 487, 
 502. 
 
 of love, primitive, lOi, etc. See 
 
 Love. 
 
 Book of the, finding in Josiah's 
 
 tnne, 450-453. 
 
 and the Prophets, 43, 65, 69, 
 
 118, 449, 484, 488, 490. 
 Laws of Nature, 349, 350, 380. 
 Lenormant, Ot-ig. de l'histoi>-e, 187, 
 
 197, 256. 
 
 L' Alphabet Phemcien, 395, 397. 
 
 Lessing, Nathan der ]Veise, 165. 
 Levitical law of sacrifices, 452. 
 Lewis, Professor Tayler, 243, 301. 
 Life, shortening of, etc., 244. 
 
 future. See Future Life. 
 
 Light of Asia, by M. Arnold, 475. 
 
 Like unto it, 113, 117. 
 
 Likeness of God, 135. See Image of 
 
 God. 
 Literary admiration of the Bible, 52- 
 Literature, 238. 
 ' Little child, as a, ' 89, 93-98. 
 khyo%, lOI, 196. 
 
 Lord, the, 234. See Jehovah. 
 Lord's Prayer, 227. 
 Lot and his daughters, 357, 358. 
 Love, an elementary word, 105, 130, 
 
 131- 
 
 ' and with all thy soul, etc. , 1 1 1. 
 
 ' and thy neighbour as thyself,' 
 
 112-118. 
 
 cannot be commanded, 120- 1 28. 
 
 conjugal and filial, 114, 130. 
 
 false notions of, from the devil, 
 
 124. 
 
 — ' God is love,' the greatest of all 
 facts, 105, 327, 360, 363. 
 
 — increasing degeneration from, 
 
 321, 337. 457- 
 
 in paradise, 114, 130, 
 
 in the second of the Ten Com- 
 mandments, 415. 
 
 — - the fulfilling of the law, 109. 
 
 the two Great Commandments 
 
 of, 101-131. 
 
 with all thy heart,' 106-109, 
 
 239, 438- 
 Lucretius, 147. 
 
 LXX., 67, loi. See Septuagint. 
 Lycurgus, 21, 470. 
 Lyell, Antiquity of Man, 253. 
 
 Magee on Atonement and Sacrifice, 
 
 30, 57, 140, 145. 
 Magic, 347. See also Superstition. 
 Main, Sir H., Ancient Lazv, etc., 
 
 261. 
 Malachi, 487, 488. 
 
 2 K
 
 514 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Man, purpose of his existence, 102, 
 
 I03) 152- 
 
 actual present condition, 239. _ 
 
 begins with great vigour and in- 
 telligence, 225, 226. 
 
 early degradation, 149; 237- ^^^ 
 
 Degeneration. 
 
 his liberty, 120, 128, 369. 
 
 made in the image of God, 49, 
 
 etc. See also Image, etc. 
 
 the first, 100, 188, 190, 192. 
 
 Manetho, 19, 71. 377- 
 Marriage belongs to rehgion, 123, 
 215, 268, 288, 353- 
 
 after the Fall, 231, 273. 
 
 among the Egyptians, 288. 
 
 modern notions of, 123, 124, 
 
 130. 
 Max Muller, x, xiii, 140, 141, 142, 
 146, 159, i8i, 246, 253, 277, 308, 
 309, 310, 312, 313, 314, 325. 329> 
 
 335- 
 Medes, 480. 
 
 Mediterranean nations, 296. 
 Melchizedek, 270, 297. 
 Mercy to fallen man, 272. 
 Messiah, promise of, 263, 486, 499» 
 
 504. 
 Metaphysics, mischievous meddhng 
 with religion, 178. 
 
 of Hindu religion, 461. 
 
 Meteoric stones, 345. 
 
 Mexican traditions, 255. 
 
 Migrations and hardships, their effect 
 
 upon religion, 421. 
 Milton, ' The Great Taskmaster,' etc., 
 
 128. 
 Minos, 21. 
 Miracles, 399. 
 
 Missionaries, 254, 334, 336. 
 Mizraim, 257. 
 Moabite stone, 399, 405- 
 Moabites, 295, 354, 443- 
 Modern scepticism, 203, 274. 
 Mohammed, 27, 297, 306. 
 Monotheism not of itself true religion, 
 
 306. 
 INIorals a part of religion, 9, 115, 221, 
 260, 287, 289, 318, 41 8. 
 
 scientific basis of, 260. 
 
 Moses, 21, 26, 61, 63, 65, 69, 166, 
 266, 379, 384. 
 
 and the prophets, 72, 76. 
 
 as a lawgiver, 387. 
 
 did not imitate the Egyptian 
 
 religion, 
 
 no writing before, 390, 394. 
 
 Book of, a history, 26-29, 160, 
 
 Faith and Free 
 
 Mozley, Dr., in 
 
 Thought, 178. 
 Murder, before the Flood, 244. 
 Music, 233. 
 ' Must,' 96. 
 ' My God,' 414. 
 Mysteries, 104, 326. 
 Mythologies, 336. 
 
 {j>n3 [nachash), 370. 
 
 Name of God, 160, 177, I79- . 
 
 and preserved in our 
 
 language, 302. 
 ■ of man, 160, 177. 
 
 310, 421 
 
 the earliest, 26, 498. 
 
 Law of. See Law 
 
 Nameless thought, the, 334. 
 Names given to animals, 139. 
 Narrator, Third, Fourth, etc., 403. 
 Nation, a holy, 385, 407. 439- 
 National deities, 109. 
 Nations, the, 387, 466. 
 Natural religion, 30-59. 
 Naturalists, 42. 
 
 Nature, an artificial word, 40, iss. 
 false religions as a philosophy of, 
 
 293. 
 
 laws of, 188, 379. 
 
 love of, 41. 
 
 of man, 121, 132, 235. 
 
 primitive man's thought of, 1 00. 
 
 worship, 40, 49, 59, 188, 331, 
 
 335, 337- 
 NaviUe, E., 292. 
 Nebuchadnezzar, 454, 485, 486. 
 Necromancy, 347- 
 Nehemiah, 266, 485. 
 Neighbour, thy, 1 14-1 16. 6"^^ Love. 
 New Testament, 80. 
 'Newer Criticism,' its easy method 
 
 with difficulties, 402. 
 Nicene Creed, 187. 
 Nile, 256, 284, 291, 292, 305. 
 Nimrod, 258, 283, 295, 305. 
 
 Nineveh, 447, 448- , , . , „ 
 
 Ninth Commandment, forbids all 
 
 falsehood, 418. 
 Noah, 222-224, 225, 234-238, 242- 
 
 246. 
 North American tribes, 318, 437. 
 
 Asia, 478. 
 
 Europe, 319, 478- 
 
 Mediterranean nations, 319. 
 
 Nous, 340. 
 Numa, 21, 470, 479. 
 Numbering of the Israelites (in Kings 
 and Chronicles), 92. 
 
 Oak and acorn, 189. 
 Obscenities of false religions, 293, 
 294, 296.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 515 
 
 Odyssey, 456. 
 
 Offerings in religion, 8, 226. 
 
 Ohio, remains in, 252. 
 
 OIkov/j.&7], 240. 
 
 Old Testament belongs exclusively to 
 
 the Church, 162, 166, 425. 
 traces of primitive truth in 
 
 other religions, not from the, 300. 
 to be understood from the 
 
 New, 43, 61-64, 411- 
 Oldest Mss. of Holy Scripture, 309. 
 Olshausen on St. Matthew xxii. , etc., 
 
 37, 130. 
 
 — Rom. vii. 9, 276. 
 
 ' On these two commandments,' etc., 
 118. 
 
 ' One blood,' 231, 249. 
 
 Oppression before the Flood, 355. 
 
 by lawand authority. .J^i? Slavery. 
 
 Oracles of God, yy, 471, 472. 
 
 Oral traditions, 310, 311, 312. 
 
 Order of nature, 237, 242. 
 
 Origin of good, 239, 
 
 evil, 206, 212, 238, 306. 
 
 language. See Languages. 
 
 writing. See Writing. 
 
 Original language, 300. 
 
 Other gods, 193, 194, 298, 304, 312, 
 328. 
 
 Our Lord not a Jew, 167. 
 
 declares that the Old Testa- 
 ment is to be understood through 
 Him, 65. 
 
 receives it from the scribes. 
 
 65- 
 
 appeals from what ' the 
 
 scribes say' to 'what is written,' 
 487. 
 
 gives His authority for it 
 
 as Divine, 65, 67, 69, 74, 75, 86, 
 
 471. 
 as an example to us in 
 
 treatment of Holy Scripture, 75, 76. 
 affirms the Fourth Com- 
 
 mandment, 200. 
 Ovid, 255. 
 
 Pagan religions, 320, 348. 
 Paradise, man's goodness in, 100, 102. 
 Parents can command love, 126. 
 Passover, 407, 451. 
 Patriarchal government in the East, 
 
 259- 
 Patriarchs, no mention of the Sabbath 
 
 in their time, 198. 
 why their religion defective, 272, 
 
 406. 
 Penitence, the first, 211. 
 Pentateuch, 394, 408. See Book of 
 
 Moses. 
 
 People of God, 385-387, 413, 424- 
 
 433> 485, 494- 
 
 the. See Aa6s. 
 
 Persecution does not always promote 
 
 a religion, 484. 
 Persians, 15, 21, 255, 306-308, 323, 
 
 423, 435> 460, 469, 479> 489- 
 Person, questionings whether God is a, 
 
 103, 177-179- 
 Peruvian traditions, 255. 
 Pharaoh, 285, 263-268, 384-386. 
 
 worship, 285, 305, 338, 367. 
 
 Pharisees, 167, 491. 
 
 Philo of Alexandria, 19, 490. 
 
 Philosophy, 4, 289, 307, 322, 328, 
 
 33 1> 340, 35 1 > 36o> 459- 
 
 as applied to religion, 4, 54, 137, 
 
 208, 307, 328, 340, 351, 360, 477. 
 as to the seventh commandment. 
 
 216, 293. 
 
 definition of, 477. 
 
 Phcenician alphabet, 391, 395, 398- 
 
 399- 
 
 people, 29s, 303, 304, 422, 434. 
 
 religion, 295, 296, 434, 481, 
 
 482. 
 
 remains, 170, 389, 391. 
 
 Plato, 18, 48, 58, 138, 143, 212, 286, 
 
 326, 331, 427, 469, 490. 
 UXijcriov Xproximus—prochain), 1 16. 
 IIX7?p6w, 119. 
 Poets and romancers, what they say 
 
 of love, 124, 220. 
 and priests as influencing false 
 
 religions, 436, 458, 461. 
 Polygamy, 229, 245, 273, 288, 353, 
 
 358. 
 
 Polytheism, 490. See Gods. 
 
 Pompeii, 219. 
 
 Popular religion, 493. 
 
 Poptdar Science Monthly, 38. 
 
 Positive philosophy, 317. 
 
 and natural laws, 193-195. 
 
 Prideaux, 307. 
 
 Priestcraft, 292. 
 
 Priests, primitive, 270. 
 
 Primary words, 139, 149, 405, 498. 
 
 Primitive truth survives in false re- 
 ligions, 335, 420, 421, 434, 500. 
 
 language, 158. 
 
 religion, 100, 131, 138, 464. 
 
 Prophet, meaning of the word, 62. 
 
 test of a false, 476. 
 
 Prophets, none from Joseph to Moses, 
 386. 
 
 after Moses, 424, 432, 439, 441, 
 
 452. 
 
 the, do not contradict or change 
 
 ' the Law,' 425, 449, 451-453- 
 Proto- Aryans, 141, 159, 181. 
 Psalms of Da\ad, 431, 449.
 
 5i6 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Psalms, Book of, 449. 
 
 Puerilities of false religion, 335. 
 
 Purana, 333. 
 
 Purity taught by religion, 219, 268, 
 
 293- 
 Purpose of mans existence, 102, 135, 
 
 152, 160, 263. 
 
 Pyramids and temples in Egypt before 
 
 Abraham, 282. 
 
 Ra, 409. 
 
 Rabbinical writings, l6l, 165, 172, 
 
 488. 
 Ramayana, 333. 
 Ram-Mohun-Roy, 334. 
 Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, 
 
 etc., 423, 490. 
 Records and traditions, the earliest, 
 
 201, 257. 
 Red Sea, passage of, 3S5, 387. 
 Redemption, 128, 207, 258, 411, 
 
 486. 
 to be gradual, 214, 226, 264, 
 
 265, 276, 411, 486. 
 Reformation of religion by Josiah, 
 
 450-453- 
 Reformers of false religion, 466, 468, 
 
 470, 473, 475, 479, 480, 503. 
 
 Religion defined, i, 58, 138. 
 
 given first by God to man, 290, 
 
 315- 
 
 begins with knowledge of God, 
 225, 235, 258, 321. 
 — the true before the false, 290, 
 ^00. 
 
 — language necessary to it, 136- 
 
 140, 144-149. 152, 157- 
 
 — morals and law never separated 
 from the true, 9, 113, 221. 
 
 — the primitive, 29, 100-131, 258. 
 a human invention ? 
 
 33-39. 133. 290, 300. 
 changed by the Fall, 
 
 213-215, 222. 
 
 241, 258. 
 
 after the Fall, 211- 
 
 after the Flood, 242- 
 247, 257, 258, 263, 330. 
 
 the false, its beginning, 224, 247- 
 
 256, 258, 263, 264, 280-348. 
 — all, kept among all men only by 
 the goodness of God, 264, 272, 318, 
 348, 468. 
 
 the true, maintained by other 
 
 than Abraham in his day, 268, 269, 
 
 359. 382. 
 
 — of the Patriarchs defective, 273, 
 
 353. 359- 
 
 — causes of all defections from the 
 
 Religion of the many, not of the more 
 refined few, more important, 291, 
 317,461,472. 
 
 only one requires purity, 215, 
 
 221, 293, 336, 461, 480, 481. 
 
 scarcely any men have discarded 
 
 all, 421. 
 — of the Israelites in Egj'pt that of 
 
 the Patriarchs, 376, 380. 
 but injured by resi- 
 
 dence in Egypt, 376. 
 
 true, restricted to one family. 
 
 263, 385. 
 
 true, 280-282, 321, 348. 
 
 to a nation, 385. 
 
 — not an invention nor a develop- 
 ment, 290, 300, 315, 457. 
 
 injured by the bondage in Egypt, 
 
 386. 
 the true and false, in collision in 
 
 Egypt, 385- 
 'Religious stage,' the, 188. 
 Remember, 19S, 200. 
 Renan, E., 9, 358, 361. 
 Repentance, the first, 214, 228, 258. 
 Representative worship, 342 - 346, 
 
 414. 
 Reptiles, etc., worshipped by the 
 
 Egyptians, 286. 
 Rest of God after the creation, 199, 
 
 201. 
 Resurrection and judgment, 430. 
 Reuel, 382. 
 
 ' Reveal,' in Holy Scripture, 47. 
 Revelation, Book of, 78. 
 Reverence and humility, conditions of 
 
 knowing God, 67, 198, 240. 
 Revision, the, 224, 246, 295, 321. 
 Right and wrong, origin of the ideas 
 
 of, 260, 287, 314. 
 Rights of man, 120, 121, 128. 
 Rig- Veda, 462. 
 Romans, religion of, 7, 2l8, 323, 479, 
 
 493, 505- 
 
 lords of Palestine, 493. 
 
 Epistle to, 45, 223, 321-327. 
 
 Rome, city and empire, 443, 492. 
 Rubbish, the history of our religion in 
 
 Holy Scripture so described, 315. 
 Rulers, their part in shaping false 
 
 religions, 231, 337, 420. 
 y-|, 116. 
 
 Sabbath, as observed before the Ten 
 Commandments, 198, 221, 225. 
 
 made for man, 197, 201, 202, 
 
 225, 226, 415. 
 
 why required by one of the Com- 
 mandments, 268, 273, 377, 416. 
 
 of the Jews in later times, II, 
 
 417.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 517 
 
 Sabbath changed to the Lord's Day, 
 
 201. 
 Sacred penmen, 72. 
 Sacrifice, 226, 243, 268, 270, 285, 
 
 294, 407, 430, 434, 4S2. 
 Sadducces, 491. 
 St. Jude, 236. 
 St. Paul, 44, 76, 265, 287, 321, 328, 
 
 336. 
 St. Peter, 73, 77. 
 St. Stephen, 265. 
 Samaritans, 448. 
 Samuel, 79, 428, 433. 
 Sanscrit, language and religion, 141, 
 
 142, 160, 181, 253, 254, 301, 308- 
 
 316, 332, 334, 460-465, 474, 476. 
 Satan, 306, 337, 346. 
 Saul, 433. 
 Science, impossible always to separate 
 
 the questions of, from religion, 145. 
 its relation to this inquiry, 143- 
 
 146, 154-156, 240, 250. 
 'Scientific basis of morals,' 260, 418. 
 Scottish Sermons, 217. 
 Scribes, the, 65, 487. 
 Scripture and Scriptures, 69. 
 Scriptures of false religions, 407. 
 Second Commandment, 326, 340, 345, 
 
 414. 
 Selden, 296, 297, 300, 338, 422, 443. 
 Self-conceit, intellectual, 85, 323, 327. 
 Self-interpretation of Holy Scripture, 
 
 170. 
 Self-love, 106. 
 
 Sensus receptus of Holy Scripture, 170. 
 Septuagint, 67, loi, 169, 488. 
 Sermon on the Mount, 118. 
 Sethites, 228. 
 
 Seventh Commandment, 215-221. 
 Shallow pretenders to science, 37. 
 Shame, 217, 219. 
 Sheba, Queen of, 444, 469. 
 Shemitic languages and races, 250, 
 
 299-302, 333, 378. 
 Shepherd kings. See Hyksos. 
 Shiloh, 454. 
 Sidon, 434, 443, 481. 
 Silence of the Word of God for 400 
 
 years before the Advent, 488. 
 Simeon and Levi, 361. 
 Sin, the doctrine of, 432. 
 Sinai, 382, 391, 411. 
 Sincerity in false religion, 347. 
 Slavery, ancient; origin, etc., 355- 
 
 357. 
 
 African, 357. 
 
 Small part of mankind to whom the 
 
 later Word of God came, 327. 
 Smith, Professor Robertson, 274, 452. 
 Social conditions now as to wealth 
 
 and labour, 356. 
 
 Socrates, 18, 143, 286. 
 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, 283, 294, 296, 
 
 357, 434- 
 Solomon as a writer and prophet of 
 
 God, 179,. 271, 325, 439, 444- 
 
 his follies, 439-441. 
 
 ' Some theologians,' 153. 
 
 ' Son of Man,' 172. 
 
 Sons of God, 229. 
 
 l^ocpoi Kal ffwerol, 89. 
 
 Sorcery, 347. See also Superstition. 
 
 ' Soul, and with all thy,' in. 
 
 South, Dr., on Adam in Paradise, 
 
 204. 
 Southall, Recent Origin of Man, 252. 
 vSpecialists, ix, 462. 
 Speech, origin of, 51. See also 'L2iXi- 
 
 guage. 
 Spirit, primary words for, 180. 
 
 and letter, 78, 81. 
 
 God a, 180, 423, 430. 
 
 man a, 103. 
 
 Spiritual freedom, 82. 
 Star-worship, 305, 324, 343, 406. 
 Stillingfleet, Origines Sacrac, 398, 
 
 436, 443- 
 
 Strange gods, 321. See also Other 
 Gods. 
 
 Sunday, 344, 
 
 Swet'Sryerty, 326, 353. See also Con- 
 science. 
 
 Sun-worship, 15, 292, 305, 340, 342, 
 344, 406, 435. 
 
 Supernatural, the, rational and cre- 
 dible in its place, 364, 401. 
 
 Superstitions, beginning and growth 
 of, 320, 323, 343, 364, 367, 368, 
 420, 423, 458, 461, 470, 478, 490. 
 
 ' Sweetness and light ' of the Greek 
 religion, 12. 
 
 Syrians, 218, 293, 362, 367, 370, 435, 
 461, 491. 
 
 Tables of Stone, 391. 
 
 Talmudists, 161, 165, 171, 172, 342, 
 
 487. 
 ' Taskmaster,' 128. 
 Taylor, Rev. J., The Alphabet, etc., 
 
 392, 395, 397, 398, 399, 404, 405- 
 Temple of Jerusalem, 441, 449, 450, 
 
 454, 483, 486, 489. 
 Temples, 285, 420. 
 Temptation, the first, 192, 208. 
 Ten Commandments, 112, 193, 196, 
 
 200, 215, 221, 258, 406-419. 
 ' Ten great religions,' 280. 
 ' Ten words,' 196. 
 Tenth Commandment the most 
 
 spiritual of all, 419. 
 Terence, 219. 
 Tertullian, 187.
 
 5i8 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ' That thy days may be long,' 417. 
 
 Theism, 40. 
 
 Theogony of Hesiod, 20, 293, 334. 
 
 Third Commandment, 202, 323. 
 
 ee6s, 313, 315. 
 
 'Thy God,' no. 
 
 Time necessary for peopling Eg}'pt, 
 the world, etc., 247, 283-285. 
 
 for inventing speech, 156. 
 
 Tithes, 270. 
 
 Tongues, confusion of, 247-250, 300. 
 
 Traces of Primitive Religion in all 
 other religions, 254-257, 296, 305, 
 307. See also Tradition. 
 
 Tradition, the first, 201, 286, 287, 
 289, 290, 296, 297, 300, 305, 307, 
 310, 320, 336-338, 340, 402, 434> 
 43S> 457, 45S, 480, 500. 
 
 of the Flood, 254-256, 307. 
 
 of the origin of speech and writ- 
 ing, 143, 389. 
 
 of the origin of religion, 17, 18, 
 
 332, 457, 479- 
 
 of the Jews, 417, 487. 
 
 Traffic, war, and philosophy, as 
 
 changing religions, 17. 
 Transmigration of souls, 474. 
 'Tree of the Knowledge,' etc., 192, 
 
 203, 208, 209, 275, 276. 
 Trial of an Egyptian after his death, 
 
 290. 
 Trinity, original tradition of, 136, 
 
 339- 
 
 Truthfulness required by the true re- 
 ligion alone, 418. 
 
 Tyndall, Prof., 183. 
 
 Tyre, 296, 434, 442, 482. 
 
 Uniformity of Nature, 238, 243, 
 
 400. 
 Unity of God, 6, 268, 269, 271, 277, 
 
 286, 298, 302-304, 306, 328, 300, 
 
 430,431, 460. 
 of language, the original, 133, 
 
 250, 299, 300. 
 ' Unknown God,' 46, 328. 
 ' Unscientific,' 146. 
 ' Usual order of Nature,' 237, 242, 
 
 243- 
 
 'Vain imaginations,' 280, 2S2, 303, 
 
 322, 344- 
 
 Vanity, intellectual, misleading ten- 
 dency of, 340. See Self-conceit. 
 
 variation of copies of Holy Scrip- 
 ture, 68. 
 
 Vedas, 212, 278, 308, 315, 333, 379, 
 403, 422, 436, 460. 
 
 compared with the Old Testa- 
 ment, 333, 460. 
 
 date of, 308, 309, 460, 462. 
 
 Vedas not history or historical, 310. 
 
 and Shastras : the later more 
 
 trivial and absurd than the older, 
 
 ^ 333, 462. 
 
 Verbal inspiration, 76. 
 Versions of Holy Scripture, 169. 
 Voice of God, as heard by men, 
 407. 
 
 Wall, Dr. C. T. , Exam. Ancient 
 OrtJiography of the Jews, 392, 393, 
 397, 399, 402, 403. 
 
 his conclusions not im- 
 paired by later Egyptian research, 
 
 392. 
 War: its effect upon religion, 17, 
 
 423- 
 Week, origin of, II, 194, 197, 343. 
 What can India teach us ? 159. 
 
 See also India. 
 Whitney, Prof., 141-142, 146, 148- 
 
 ^152, 335- 
 Wife, one, 229. See also Polygamy. 
 Will of God, 129, 192, 306. 
 Wisdom, Book of, 346. 
 of the Egyptians, 183, 289, 366, 
 
 382, 394- 
 ' Wise and prudent,' 98. 
 Witchcraft, 346. 
 'With all thy heart,' 106. 
 Women of Egypt, 362. 
 Word of God, 31, 65. 
 not merely Holy Scripture, 
 
 160. 
 to mankind from the first, 
 
 102, 326, 382. 
 
 evolution or development 
 
 of, 354, 388. 
 
 in ' Nature '? 467. 
 
 to Moses, 381, 407. 
 
 after Moses, 424, 425, 446, 
 
 448, 449. 
 
 447. 
 
 also to Pagan nations, 444, 
 
 'written only to one small 
 
 people, 447. 
 
 as to false religions, 321. 
 
 ' Words, the ten,' 196. 
 
 Words, no thoughts without, 138, 254. 
 
 great matters in religion, 139, 
 
 415- 
 
 the most direct and plain com- 
 munications from God to man must 
 be by them, 97, 467, 471. 
 
 the primary, 139. 
 
 Wordsworth, W., 128, 129. 
 
 Worlds, succession of, in the Hindu 
 
 religions, 339, 474. 
 Worship, ' representative,' 336. 
 of devils, 337.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 519 
 
 'Writing of God,' 196, 391, 405, 412. 
 
 -origin of, 98, 99, 272, 389-405. 
 
 Writing, a direct gift of God, 99, 389, 
 
 391, 393. 395> 398,399- 
 
 derived from the Israelites by 
 
 other peoples, 399. 
 
 Writings, none earlier than the 
 Hebrew, 182, 308, 390. 
 
 Written law, or ' personal govern- 
 ment,' 97. 
 
 Xenophon, 18. 
 
 Zedekiah, 454. 
 
 Zeit-geist, 238. 
 
 Zend, 22, 26, 212, 306, 307, 423, 435, 
 
 479- 
 Zeus, 8, 10, 463. 
 Zeus-pater, 463. 
 Zoroaster (Zerdusht), 21, 306, 379, 
 
 479- 
 
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 MESSRS. RIVINGTON'S NEW LIST. 13 
 
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 MESSRS. RIVINGTON'S NEW LIST. 15 
 
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