' 
 
 A?* /4x 
 
 9
 
 THE DIVINE ASPECT OF HISTORY 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOLUME I
 
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 C. F. CLAY, MANAGER 
 ILon&on: FETTER LANE, E.C. 
 
 100 PRINCES STREET 
 
 efo Scrfe: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 ISomfaaji, Calcutta anto ffiafcras: MACMILLAN AND CO.. LTD. 
 
 (Toronto: J. M. DENT AND SONS, LTD. 
 Cobp.o: THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
 
 THE DIVINE ASPECT OF HISTORY 
 
 by 
 JOHN RICKARDS MOZLEY 
 
 Take better part, with manlier heart, 
 
 Thine adult spirit can ; 
 No God, no Truth, receive it ne'er 
 
 Believe it ne'er O Man ! 
 But turn not then to seek again 
 
 What first the ill began ; 
 No God, it saith ; ah, wait in faith 
 
 God's selfcompleting plan ; 
 Receive it not, but leave it not, 
 
 And wait it out, O Man ! 
 
 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 Cambridge : 
 
 at the University Press 
 
 1916
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFOJ 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 TO THE DISCOVERER OF THE LAW OF UNIVERSAL GRAVITATION 
 ILLUSTRIOUS AMONG THE IMMORTALS 
 
 ISAAC NEWTON 
 
 THIS TREATISE 
 
 WHICH GIVES REASONS FOR THE BELIEF 
 
 THAT A SPIRITUAL FORCE ISSUES FROM GOD 
 
 WHEREBY LIFE IS MADE DOMINANT OVER MATERIAL FORCES 
 
 AND SOULS IN THE FLESH ARE LINKED WITH SOULS DEPARTED 
 
 IS DEDICATED
 
 PREFACE 
 
 r 1 1HE purpose of this book includes a certain amount of 
 JL negation, but is nevertheless essentially positive and 
 affirmative. The negation will be found in arguments directed 
 to show the unhistorical character of the Biblical miracles; the 
 miracles of healing, in the New Testament, being admitted to be 
 exceptions in some degree, and to contain some truth. Certain 
 parts of the doctrinal system of the New Testament are too 
 dependent on the miracles to stand when the miracles are dis- 
 carded; but there are other parts of New Testament doctrine 
 which remain uninjured, even though we disbelieve most of the 
 miracles. 
 
 The positive affirmation of this book lies in its vindication of 
 the main current of Biblical teaching as unique in its spiritual 
 truth, especially the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth; whom 
 Christians are right in regarding as the revealer of the way into 
 eternal life, and as the reconciler of God and man, and who 
 was also (though this is not the way in which Christians commonly 
 put it) the first of the sons of men to feel intimately his true 
 filial relation to God, which relation he also taught us to believe 
 as belonging to ourselves, and as capable of being realised by us 
 if we trust God and pray to him with all our hearts. That 
 Jesus is rightly called the Christ, or in other words the ruler of 
 all mankind (which is what the title Christ implies) is also 
 affirmed in this book ; though it must be understood that the rule 
 attributed to him lies in his attractive power, not in any external 
 compulsion exercised or authorised by him. External com- 
 pulsion, though not always avoidable among men, is quite 
 different from the government and the organisation which spring 
 from true religion. 
 
 The Christian society which has sprung from the teaching of 
 Jesus Christ is regarded in this book as a society which has been 
 in many ways truly faithful to its Master, and truly like him, but 
 which yet has been liable, as all men are liable, to error ; and the 
 error has sometimes been great and complex ; but in the Christian
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 society the possibility of reform and renovation has always 
 existed. At the present day the greatest difficulty of the Christian 
 society lies in the doubt whether the critical intellect of man has 
 any right at all to judge of those religious emotions which have 
 been handed down as sacred among Christians from generation 
 to generation. It is maintained in this book that, though the 
 critical intellect may doubtless go wrong, yet it cannot be 
 altogether debarred from that province. 
 
 It is a question which cannot be quite disregarded, in view of 
 the present divisions in the Christian society, which part of that 
 society has preserved the original type, instituted by Jesus himself, 
 most truly, and with most profit to the world at large. But I 
 have thought that the unity, rather than the differences, of the 
 Christian society ought to be accentuated at the present day, 
 and I have given no distinct answer to the above question; 
 though some account of the separation between the eastern and 
 western churches, and of that between the Roman church and 
 the Reformed churches, had of course to be given, and has been 
 given. 
 
 The great religions of the world outside Christianity, Brah- 
 minism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, the worship of ancestors as 
 practised in China and Japan (not quite without recognition of 
 a Divine Being), the ancient religions of Greece and Rome (which 
 have now perished, but still affect us by the extraordinary merit, 
 and even the spiritual insight, of Greek and Roman writers), and 
 finally the religion of Islam, are regarded as possessing true merit, 
 and as capable of affording instruction to ourselves; though 
 they have not penetrated into the centre of religious truth in at 
 all the degree in which Christianity has done so. Judaism is 
 regarded in this book as so near to Christianity, as hardly to be 
 outside it at any rate it ought to be so regarded in the estimation 
 of Christians. 
 
 I trust I have never forgotten that historical conclusions 
 cannot have mathematical certainty. The attempt to assimilate 
 history to science, by treating the history of our contemporaries 
 as that which it is most important for us to learn, after which 
 (it is suggested) we may mount up to the more recondite regions 
 of medisevalism and antiquity, appears to me an impossible 
 attempt. Contemporary history cannot be understood without 
 reference to the past ; hence, in spite of all difficulties, we have 
 to begin with the past, and then we can give a consecutive story, 
 in the proper lines of evolution.
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 But it is not of course to be disguised that the history of the 
 remote past does present us with many difficulties. I do not think 
 I have generally been paradoxical ; but it may be proper to men- 
 tion where I have most diverged from the conclusions arrived at 
 by previous writers. I have ventured to put the date of Zoroaster 
 in the first half of the sixth century before Christ, believing that 
 the Magi had had a creditable career of considerable length 
 before he appeared among them, and that their less worthy 
 characteristics in after times were in no wise chargeable to 
 Zoroaster, but were the result of their unsuccessful revolt against 
 the Persians in the time of Darius a calamity which they had 
 not the strength to endure without loss of rectitude. 
 
 Another point in which I do not stand alone, but in which 
 still the common opinion is against me, is my belief that Zerub- 
 babel lived, not under Cyrus and Darius Hystaspes, but under 
 Darius Nothus, a century later than is usually supposed. The 
 effect of this alteration of historical view is very much to raise 
 the character of the Jews of the fifth century before Christ, who 
 on this showing had to surmount difficulties far more serious than 
 is usually conceived in obtaining their restoration to their own 
 country, and who did surmount those difficulties with extra- 
 ordinary patience, fidelity, and resolution. But I must refer to 
 my fourteenth chapter, and to the first appendix to that chapter, 
 for the reasons for this opinion. 
 
 It is not quite the same sort of difference from ordinary 
 opinion, but I may note it here, that I hold the Christian Church 
 of the fourth century after Christ to have had a greater share of 
 responsibility for the fall of the western empire than is generally 
 believed; at the same time I think it was want of experience 
 more than moral error which misled the Church authorities of 
 that time; so that it does not tell vitally against them. 
 
 In my first chapter I have expressed the opinion that organi- 
 sation, which so powerfully assists human action, has also had 
 a share in the evolution of sun and stars. This is an opinion 
 which does not admit of speedy verification ; but if organisation 
 were found, not merely to increase human power on the earth, 
 but also to increase the natural powers of the earth itself, to make 
 it permanently more fruitful, more filled with living agencies 
 (and living agencies that work harmoniously together), we should 
 have ground for expecting a still greater development of terres- 
 trial energy as time goes on ; and it is impossible to set limits 
 to such an advance. If mankind could peacefully unite for a- 
 
 a5
 
 x PREFACE 
 
 few centuries, we should know better than we do now what is 
 the power of organisation in raising the whole condition of our 
 earthly habitation; and it is fervently to be hoped that this 
 experience may be won by mankind. The present treatise en- 
 deavours to show that such a hope is justified by our knowledge 
 of the power which resides in religion. 
 
 This is, I think, all that I need say in regard to special points 
 mentioned in the present work ; but there are some more observa- 
 tions that I must make. 
 
 The anthropologists, I know, have added much to our know- 
 ledge of the curious habits and superstitious fears which have 
 accompanied the evolution of religion; but the true evolution 
 of religion is that which takes place by the divine enlargement 
 of the spirit of man; and my present belief is that the anthro- 
 pologists have not added much to our knowledge of this. If I 
 am shown to be wrong, I will gladly confess my error. 
 
 Metaphysical philosophy is capable of being a great support 
 to religion, and I can by no means think of it as an unfruitful 
 subject, though a very difficult one it certainly is. The philosophy 
 which Socrates began, and Plato continued, was the first attempt 
 to show the importance of the mental element in experience ; 
 and they were right in connecting it with religion ; but detailed 
 clearness of view was not to be expected at that stage of the world's 
 history. Indeed for long afterwards, though ethics advanced, 
 metaphysical philosophy remained as a kind of vision, in which 
 the divine nature was the culminating point, and man was 
 somehow transcendentally connected with this divinity. Kant 
 was the first to show that these beliefs as to God and man are not 
 proved by such arguments as had been offered on their behalf 
 from various quarters ; at the same time he did not deny the 
 value of the beliefs ; and in practice he held that God, human 
 freedom, and immortal life were guiding conceptions for mankind. 
 To practical life then, the proof of these doctrines was committed ; 
 and if the view of history given in the present treatise be correct, 
 practical life confirms them. The embracing of great concep- 
 tions because they are necessary, and proved to be necessary, 
 for our practical guidance that is, I think, the central character 
 of true philosophy ; and Kant was the person who first distinctly 
 led men to this kind of view. However, philosophy radiates 
 from this centre into all manner of inquiries and subjects of 
 thought ; and there is just a little more that I should like to say 
 of it in this place.
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 First, those philosophers who are called idealists, who have 
 insisted that matter is an unmeaning word unless mind is 
 assumed as well that matter acquires its definite character 
 through the percipient mind, and would be vague unless it were 
 regarded as somehow perceived these philosophers are not easily 
 refuted ; though in our ordinary life we seem to disregard them, 
 and to treat matter and mind as separate things. Berkeley in 
 England, perhaps Malebranche in France, and Fichte, Schelling, 
 and Hegel in Germany, are the most famous of these philosophers ; 
 but the most cardinal proposition of all idealism appears to me 
 best expressed by a Scotch philosopher of the middle of the 
 nineteenth century, James Frederick Ferrier. He said that our 
 personal self is known to us as the universal element in all our 
 knowledge; that it cannot be thought of as a particular thing 
 among other things. It is true that in the spiritual world our 
 self is regarded as a self among other selves; but in the world 
 of our sensuous perception this is not so ; in that external world 
 our self is a universal element, present in every perception of 
 ours. I am not quoting Ferrier's words, but I am sure I am 
 giving his meaning rightly, as expressed in his Institutes of Meta- 
 physic ; and it appears to me that he expresses both a true plain 
 fact, and also a true mystery in which that plain fact is involved. 
 We cannot escape the region of mystery even in our most common- 
 place thoughts, nor can we desire to escape it, for in mystery 
 lies the seed of progress. It is evident how entirely this kind of 
 view fits in with the religious temperament, and sanctions it on 
 the intellectual side. 
 
 The same result is enforced on us by another consideration, 
 which biological science makes absolutely clear. Our senses, or 
 in other words the faculties by which we apprehend the external 
 world, are growths, just as much as a tree is a growth; they 
 began, ages ago, with a very small power of discernment ; they 
 have increased in power until sight and hearing have become 
 able to discriminate in a truly marvellous degree. But is it 
 reasonable to suppose that we have come to an end of this growing 
 process? Will not new methods of perception rise up in the 
 generations to come? May we not hope, and even expect, that 
 the souls of the departed, who are still joined to us by love, will 
 be known by us in due time with a knowledge that we shall 
 recognise as genuine and unquestionable? I think we may 
 expect this. 
 
 Of the authorities referred to in this book, there are three.,
 
 xii PREFACE 
 
 not mentioned as often as might be expected by English or Scottish 
 theologians, but looked upon by myself with much admiration, 
 and therefore proper to be mentioned here. One is the Acta 
 Conciliorum, published in Paris early in the eighteenth century 
 by Harduin and his fellow Jesuits. This work is invaluable for 
 anyone who wishes to understand the mediaeval Church. Another 
 is the Church History of Neander ; a work clumsy, it is true, in its 
 structure, but so serene, impartial, and large in its knowledge, 
 that every thoughtful religious inquirer must be the better for 
 reading it, especially the later volumes of it. The third authority, 
 or perhaps I should rather say set of authorities, is that great 
 series Sacred Books of the East, edited by the late Professor Max 
 Miiller, and written by learned and able men of many nations; 
 the most enlightening set of works on the Asiatic religions which 
 has ever been published in England. 
 
 A few more books, for different reasons, I must mention here. 
 Our greatest English historian, Gibbon, is so necessary to every 
 one who undertakes to say or write anything about the latter days 
 of imperial Rome, that to name him is sufficient. At the time 
 when I wrote the twenty-third chapter of the present work, I had 
 not read Mr F. Warre-Cornish's book on Chivalry ; else I should 
 have borrowed some of the descriptive touches given in that 
 interesting account of the most picturesque side of mediaeval 
 life. Lastly, I must not leave unrecognised, in relation to the 
 question of miracles, what is I suppose the best defence of the 
 New Testament miracles written in England in the nineteenth 
 century, the Bampton Lectures for 1865, by my uncle, Dr James 
 Bowling Mozley, who shortly afterwards became Regius Professor 
 of Divinity at Oxford. It is a work full of acute and valuable 
 remarks, but it does not include any critical examination of the 
 gospel evidence, which is not, I think, at all as strong, when 
 properly weighed, as it is assumed to be in those Lectures; also 
 the characteristic results of Christian doctrine are assumed to bo 
 altogether good, whereas the action of the Christian Church in 
 the middle ages was often of a very questionable kind indeed, 
 and the prima facie (and I think the correct) view is that this was 
 not unconnected with Christian doctrine. If the greater power 
 wielded by the human race, from its European centre, in modern 
 times as compared with antiquity, be drawn from the strength 
 of the Christian religion, as I think is the case (and I have argued 
 in this sense in the present work) if the greater respect paid to 
 women, and greater mildness in general behaviour, be due to the
 
 PREFACE xiii 
 
 same cause must not the fantastic asceticism, the repression of 
 the intellect, the persecution of Jews and heretics, which for so 
 many centuries were ordinary forms of Christian action, be 
 reckoned as indicating some fault in Christian doctrine? To 
 recover from errors, is a power inherent in the Christian Church ; 
 V but to deny the errors of the past, is impossible; and the 
 natural inferences to be drawn from those errors must not be 
 shirked. 
 
 One more literary production, and a very recent one, I must 
 now mention. In the Observer newspaper for January 30, Feb- 
 ruary 6, and February 13 of the present year are three articles 
 by that eminent physicist, Sir Oliver Lodge, so similar in their 
 purport to the view advanced in the first chapter of this treatise 
 (and expanded at the close of the twenty-seventh chapter) that 
 I cannot avoid speaking of them here. The gist of them is that 
 life is the restorative element in the universe. Here is the para- 
 graph in which this thesis is summarised (a paragraph prefixed 
 to each of the three articles mentioned above) : 
 
 "It has been assumed from a physical point of view that the 
 universe must come to an end, unless it receives a new impulse 
 of creation, such as it must have had at its beginning. Every 
 mathematical thinker during the last century has held that 
 cosmic energy must decay by dissipation of heat that the 
 whole clock of things, as it were, must come to the stillness of 
 an everlasting death. This is the greatest and most mysterious 
 of all the themes of pessimism. Sir Oliver Lodge seeks escape 
 from the physical aspect of the problem, and suggests that it 
 may be found in the nature of life." 
 
 In the articles themselves, the following is the central pro- 
 position which elucidates the whole: after saying that "Life is 
 definitely not a form of energy," Sir Oliver Lodge adds, "Life 
 certainly guides or directs energy ; that is its physical function ; 
 and I see no reason against some form of life being able to direct 
 energy uphill, so to speak, instead of being only able to utilise 
 energy while in process of falling down." A luminous sentence ; 
 but I venture to add that this guiding function of life is im- 
 possible, unless we take into account Herbert Spencer's theory 
 of an Infinite and Eternal Energy beyond our senses, which 
 streams into the world surveyed by our senses. For the actual 
 point of the guidance of material energy by the living agency lies 
 in a region unknown to us. Hence I have placed this theory of 
 Herbert Spencer at the foundation of the whole view, and without
 
 xiv PREFACE 
 
 it I do not believe that the view can stand. Further, considering 
 the mysterious nature of life, the possibility follows that life of 
 a very exalted kind exists in the sun and stars now. This addition 
 to the theory Sir Oliver Lodge does not (I think) hold; but it 
 explains a very great deal, if it be true. 
 
 But now I must refer to another point a small one. I trust 
 that the reader will not think the absence of capital letters, in 
 pronouns indicating God or Jesus Christ, a sign of want of 
 reverence; which reverence I truly feel. But I think that in 
 naming the most exalted beings, it is a wrong habit of mind to 
 feel oneself obliged to express that exaltation by a particular 
 sign ; and it has a tendency to lead other people into hypocrisy ; 
 for there are sceptics in the world who do not want to flaunt their 
 scepticism, and yet are harmfully affected if through custom they 
 express themselves so as to imply belief. The practice of using 
 capital letters, in these cases, is a modern one. 
 
 I must not forget to express my thanks to those private 
 friends, who during a long course of years have helped me, in one 
 way or another, in the work which is now completed. There are 
 too many of these for me to mention them all by name. But 
 I cannot leave unnamed Henry Sidgwick, now departed, who 
 represented to me the duty, for candour's sake, of giving a careful 
 account of my opinions, for the benefit of persons interested in 
 religion; or Henry Graham Dakyns, also departed, whose con- 
 tinual sympathy and encouragement were of the greatest value 
 to me ; or Warren Maude Moorsom, whose interest in the book 
 has been unfailing, and who told me when it ceased to be amor- 
 phous and became an organism. To my three surviving children 
 I am also greatly indebted; to my elder son, Edward, for a 
 great deal of excellent criticism ; to my younger son, Kenneth, 
 for information concerning the early Christian writers and also 
 concerning modern continental opinion; and to my daughter, 
 Eleanor, for some valuable suggestions. I trust my readers 
 clearly understand that the kind help thus acknowledged is no 
 indication that the helpers are in agreement with the views 
 expressed in these volumes. In these difficult and delicate subjects 
 a helping hand is often given where agreement cannot be reached ; 
 and it would be a great pity if the acknowledgment of such help 
 were debarred by reason of intellectual differences. 
 
 This also is the best place for me to say that I am sorry if 
 I give pain to any by disturbing ancient landmarks ; but, conversely, 
 I may ask my readers not to judge of my book by reading a few
 
 PREFACE xv 
 
 casual pages, without giving the trouble necessary to grasp the 
 purport of the whole. 
 
 Finally, let me not omit to mention the many benefits for 
 which I am indebted to the University of Cambridge, from the 
 time when I first entered her walls as an undergraduate in the 
 year 1858, down to the present day, when she has done me the 
 honour of publishing my book. 
 
 J. R. M. 
 May, 1916,
 
 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I 
 PREFACE pages vii-xv 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN 
 
 The contrast between history and physical science; the lesser range 
 of history more than compensated for by its emotional interest. The 
 importance of organisation as a method of progress wielded by man ; 
 the question raised, whether this progress will always find support in new 
 energy continually evolved. The view of Herbert Spencer as to this; 
 the alliance, though not identity, of Herbert Spencer's view with the 
 religious view. Organisation declared to be probably the secret of the 
 evolution of the stellar universe, and Divine Power the secret of eternal 
 organisation. The relation of this theory to the theories of Helmholtz 
 and of Darwin drawn out at length .... pages 1-27 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ANCIENT RELIGION: BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 
 
 As speech is the characteristic faculty which most distinguishes man 
 from the lower animals, so writing is the characteristic art which most 
 distinguishes civilised from uncivilised man. Writing probably invented 
 either in Babylonia or in Egypt, two countries in which religion had a 
 strong development; a brief statement as to their religious character. 
 A more detailed account of the Brahminical religion of India, especially 
 as known to us in the Rig- Veda, the Upanishads, and the Laws of 
 Manu 28-56 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 INDIA CONTINUED: SIDDARTHA THE BUDDHA 
 
 Buddhism a purification of Brahminism : an account of the founder of 
 Buddhism, known as Siddartha personally, Gautama by his family name, 
 and finally as "the Buddha." The great value of his teaching lies in the 
 love for mankind which he felt and inculcated : he was however defective 
 in the hope of happiness, and in trust towards God. His death very 
 touching in the peace and harmony which breathed through it ; an 
 account of it given ......... 57-77 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 
 
 Extraordinary difficulty attends the inquiry into the religion of ancient 
 Persia, whether it be thought of as the religion of Zoroaster (Zarathustra) 
 or as the religion of the Magi. Zoroaster is here first described ; the
 
 CONTENTS xvii 
 
 Gathas, the most ancient part of the sacred books known collectively as 
 the Avesta, are the authority concerning him, and were no doubt partly 
 written by him. He was one of the Magi; but the Magi had existed 
 long before him, and had had some religious insight, though he had a 
 religious insight much surpassing theirs. He is here treated as having 
 lived in the first half of the sixth century before Christ (reasons are given 
 for this opinion, which in modern times is novel) ; the Magi inherited that 
 increased authority which he had won for them, but unluckily (soon after 
 his death) deteriorated greatly ; this was the result of their blamable revolt 
 against the Persians, which was put down by Darius, son of Hystaspes. 
 They never quite recovered their integrity, and the Vendidad, the part of 
 the Avesta which is most characteristically theirs, was no doubt written 
 after the revolt just named, and exhibits their later and very strange 
 doctrines. Yet the Parsis, the modern descendants of the ancient 
 Persians, have liberated themselves from most of these errors. Mithraism 
 is here regarded (following Cumont) as the outcome, not of the original 
 Magianism of Media, but of the side current, the Magianism of Babylon 
 
 78-109 
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IV 
 
 On the identification of Vistaspa, the Royal Convert of Zoroaster, 
 with Vistaspa the father of Darius 109-110 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 ANCIENT RELIGION: CHINA AND JAPAN 
 
 The primitive history of China known to us more or less from the 
 third millennium before Christ; the character of the Chinese, prone to 
 reverence, imbued with civilising instincts, simple and quaint in their 
 religion (which includes ancestor worship), superstitious in a mild way. 
 Some account of the two great philosophers, Lao-tsze and Confucius. 
 The progress of Japan referred to ..... 111-135 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE 
 
 The illuminating clearness of the Greek spirit; the precision of Greek 
 history when compared with other ancient histories; yet the want of 
 depth in the Greek character, which led to a fantastic mythology in their 
 religion. The common feeling of Hellenism among the Greeks (that is, 
 the feeling that they were all of one race) traced to three causes ; the great 
 effort of the Trojan war ; the splendid poems, popular in every part of 
 Greece, by which that war was celebrated ; and lastly, the strength of the 
 Dorian character the Dorians being also mainly responsible for the con- 
 secration of the worship of Apollo in the oracular shrine of Delphi, whence 
 came a certain unity in the religion of the whole race. The Orphic religious 
 societies brought in a certain solemnity of feeling. Athens, in the end, 
 became the real centre of Greece, both in her strength and in her weakness ; 
 a brief sketch of the history, showing this . . . 136-159
 
 xviii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 ANCIENT RELIGION: THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 
 
 An account of the way in which the higher spirits among the Greeks 
 effected a purification of religion ; Socrates standing at the centre of this 
 movement ; a vindication of his pre-eminence in this respect, as shown by 
 a comparison of our two principal witnesses, Plato and Xenophon. Some 
 account of religion as understood by Plato, and a briefer reference to 
 Aristotle and to the great thinkers of Greece in after times 160-190 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME 
 
 The primitive religion of Rome marked by many superstitions, but 
 assuming a nobler character through the worship of "Jupiter Best and 
 Greatest." The Romans for a long time singularly faithful in their 
 religious worship; and this may justly be held a cause of the moderation 
 and sanity which they showed in the internal affairs of their city, so that 
 they became continually more powerful against external enemies. But 
 as Rome grew in power, Roman religion decayed, and the Roman character 
 deteriorated; a regeneration of the nobler Romans (or Italians), such as 
 Virgil and Cicero, took place through Greek philosophy, but did not reach 
 to the lower strata of society ...... 191-215 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH: 
 ABRAHAM AND MOSES 
 
 The question treated, whether the Old Testament is subject to error 
 in its ethics and in its miraculous history. In both respects error is 
 affirmed to exist in it; the crucial point as regards the miracles lies in 
 the book of Deuteronomy, which professes to give the personal evidence 
 of Moses, but which on examination is shown to have had its origin in the 
 reign of Josiah. Yet the Old Testament history has much and deep 
 truth; and the great originality and value of the religion of Abraham 
 is pointed out, as also the extraordinary courage by which Moses carried 
 that religion to victory; pressing the material side of Abraham's ideal, 
 in the conquest of the Canaanitic races, too far indeed, but also giving sound 
 moral precepts to the race of Israel 216-244 
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Name "Jehovah" . . 245
 
 CONTENTS xix 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 ISRAEL'S EARTHLY IDEAL ATTAINED: DAVID 
 
 The gradual process of conquest by the race of Israel within the bounds 
 of Canaan, and the carrying of that conquest by David far beyond the 
 bounds of Canaan. The less worthy side of the ideal which Abraham had 
 conceived is thus carried to its greatest height; the unity of God, under 
 the name of Jehovah, a cardinal principle with Samuel and David, but 
 the character of God in many ways misconceived by them. The relation 
 of David to the Psalms is also touched upon . . . 246-264 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE FALL OF THE EARTHLY IDEAL: THE RISE 
 OF PROPHECY: ISAIAH 
 
 The reign of Solomon, who was a shrewd and powerful, but not a wise, 
 king ; his despotism the real cause of the breaking up, after his death, of 
 the unity of Israel. The ten tribes (after the breach) retained external 
 power, but were slowly weakened from within, and their great prophets, 
 Elijah and Elisha, had no successors. But in the small kingdom of Judah, 
 under the descendants of David, Isaiah gave expression to a new hope, a 
 heavenly ideal, for Israel and for mankind. An explanation of his genuine 
 prophecies .......... 265-291 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL IN CONFLICT: JEREMIAH 
 AND EZEKIEL 
 
 The sudden retrogression of the tribe of Judah into idolatry in the reign 
 of Manasseh; their rescue from it, by means not altogether legitimate, 
 in the reign of Josiah; the relapse into idolatry afterwards. The fall of 
 Nineveh; the exultation of the Jews at this event speedily shown to be 
 premature, when Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came and besieged 
 Jerusalem; the fall and ruin of that city. The great prophets of this 
 epoch, Jeremiah in Jerusalem, Ezekiel in Babylonia, strong in their re- 
 proofs of their nation, but never ceasing to hold out a divine hope of 
 restoration in the future ....... 292-315 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE CULMINATION OF PROPHECY: THE PROPHET 
 OF THE EXILE 
 
 An account of the first return of the Jews from the Babylonian Cap- 
 tivity, taken from the last twenty-seven chapters of the book which is 
 known as the book of Isaiah (but these twenty-seven chapters were 
 written long after the time of Isaiah, and their author is unknown to 
 us) 316-334
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: THE PSALMS: 
 ZECHARIAH 
 
 In this chapter a chronology different from that generally accepted is 
 given: at the beginning of the chapter both the ordinary chronology, 
 and that which is here followed, are stated in a brief compendium. The 
 story here followed runs thus : the first chapter of Ezra tells of the return 
 under Cyrus (spoken of in chapter xm. of this work): the history after 
 this for 50 or 60 years is a blank (the second and third chapters of Ezra 
 being erroneous history) : but the Psalms will in great measure fill up this 
 blank space. The book of Ezra, from chapter iv. 6 onwards, is genuine 
 history, and relates to the reigns of Xerxes (Ahasuerus), Artaxerxes 
 Longimanus, Darius Nothus, and Artaxerxes Mnemon. The return of 
 Zerubbabel was in the reign of Darius Nothus, and the prophets Haggai 
 and Zechariah prophesied at that time : many of the Psalms, notably the 
 107th and 118th, are probably of the time of Zerubbabel. The book of 
 Nehemiah is also genuine history ; and the Antiquities of Josephus and the 
 papyri of Elephantind supply interesting elements to fill up the narrative. 
 This reading of history is supported by argument. At the close of the 
 chapter the books of Job, Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, etc., are mentioned 
 
 335-367 
 
 APPENDIX I TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The true character of the chapters Ezra ii. and iii. together with some 
 other remarks bearing on the date of Zerubbabel . . 367-385 
 
 The more difficult arguments which support the view taken in chapter 
 xiv. are inserted in this Appendix. 
 
 APPENDIX II TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Concerning the Titles to the Psalms. 
 
 The titles are not to be regarded as historically trustworthy; argu- 
 ments in support of this view ...... 385-386 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL TAKES TO ITSELF 
 EARTHLY ARMOUR 
 
 An account of the Maccabean wars : also of the book of Daniel (dated 
 as contemporary with Antiochus Epiphanes). The history is briefly 
 sketched up to the Christian era, and some other literary works are 
 mentioned 387-407
 
 THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN 
 
 HUMAN history is a brief fragment. Time eternal, as it must 
 succeed the present day, so must have preceded it ; space in- 
 finite lies around us. Can space and time ever be without material 
 contents ? However this may be, it is hundreds of millions of 
 years, if we may trust the astronomers and physicists, that the 
 stars of heaven have been gathering splendour and pouring out 
 their light into the regions of space ; and even if we take the 
 history of our earth alone, geologists will certainly not be content 
 with a million years to account for the strata which must have 
 been deposited in the waters of the ocean, and which are now 
 raised up into mountain ranges. What, compared to these vast 
 realities, is human history ? It is but six or eight thousand years 
 of the past that are illuminated for us by written records, for the 
 most part very imperfectly ; and it is one of the smallest and 
 most insignificant of the orbs of space that has been the scene 
 of all human action, from first to last. 
 
 It is true that there is, even on the first showing of the matter, 
 something to be said in honour of historical study, when compared 
 with the science of the external universe. In human history we 
 find beings whom we may love ; even in the sorrows and trage- 
 dies of human life a deep interest is often involved ; hope is caught 
 and cherished in our hearts from the hopes of the human beings 
 who have preceded us ; reverence is felt for brave souls, who have 
 acted and suffered heroically. These are sentiments which the 
 astronomer, the physicist, or the geologist may feel as a man ; 
 but they are not written for him, according to his present know- 
 ledge at all events, in the science which he studies ; if he wishes 
 to feel his heart warmed, his sympathies strengthened, he will 
 find the fuel of such fire in the pages of history, but scarcely will 
 he find it in the sciences of external observation or in the calcu- 
 lations of the intellect. 
 
 Yet, when we have said all that we can in favour of historical 
 study, a question remains behind, which may damp our ardour 
 
 M. D. A.
 
 2 THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN [CH. 
 
 again. Is not the race of man, no less than the individual man, 
 transitory ? Is there not this permanent cloud hanging over us, 
 that we must all disappear into nothingness, first each one of us 
 individually, and then after many ages the entire race of men ? 
 How many races of living beings, strong in their own day and 
 generation, have disappeared from the surface of the earth 
 the ichthyosaurus, the mammoth, the moa of New Zealand 
 which last, even two centuries ago, is said to have been a still 
 living creature ! Many, many other less notable species of animals 
 have flourished on this earth for ages, but have now departed, 
 and can never be revived again. May not mankind vanish, even 
 as the others have vanished ? and we may remember that the 
 eminent physicist Helmholtz predicted the extinction of the solar 
 light and heat, without which earthly life can hardly exist. Can 
 mankind exist for ever ? 
 
 A certain answer to such a question as this might be supplied 
 from the Christian religion, with its promise of a new heaven and 
 new earth, were we to take that promise literally ; but in any 
 such literal acceptance we should be deserting wholly that natural 
 human understanding on which we rely for all our ordinary 
 actions ; and it will not be history in that case which will be our 
 guide, but a scheme of things independent of history. It will 
 be the task of the present work, in subsequent chapters, to show 
 that the Christian religion is really the solvent of the historical 
 problem, elevating history so as to make it the more inspired 
 companion of physical science ; but not the Christian religion in 
 its literal acceptation ; the Christian religion interpreted by the 
 light of the experience we have gathered since the time when 
 that religion first began, nearly nineteen centuries ago. 
 
 Our present problem is to find a scheme of thought which 
 shall give an explanation, not quite inadequate, of the state of 
 things in which we live ; so far, at least, as to satisfy our con- 
 science, and not to clash violently with our understandings. 
 The physical universe, whatever else it may be, is a cradle in 
 which human history lies ; and it is possible that, as physical 
 science influences and colours human history, so likewise the 
 elements of human history may be able to impart a colour and 
 a warmth, a sympathetic emotion, to parts of the physical uni- 
 verse where at present we do not suspect the presence of life at 
 all. If this be so, human history will indeed be a talisman of 
 power. Let us consider the nature of it more closely. 
 
 That which first strikes the inquirer, when he pays regard
 
 i] THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN 3 
 
 to those purposes, struggles and thoughts, which fill the history 
 of man, is the exceeding subtlety of the field, when compared with 
 that which physical science tries to compass. Physical science, 
 it is true, has its subtle methods, among which the theorems of 
 mathematics are preeminent; but no mathematical theorem 
 presents that mixture of plain direct reasoning with elusive 
 side-currents, dimly conjectured and uncertain, which is the 
 ordinary staple of history. Among the greatest themes of his- 
 tory are the characters of men ; and if the characters of men 
 are often a puzzle to us in the intercourse of common everyday 
 life, how much more must they be so when our whole knowledge 
 of them is derived from the writings of falh'ble, often prejudiced 
 and ignorant, witnesses ! Therefore, in spite of the vastly greater 
 compass of physical science both in time and space, history pre- 
 sents for our decision more doubtful, more difficult problems, 
 than any part of physical science does. 
 
 But the next thing we observe, when we study the history 
 of man (and more notably at the present day than ever before) 
 is that the history of man introduces to our notice a principle 
 of government, in a sense in which physical science does not. 
 In physical science we have intermingling causes, forces which 
 combine in different proportions and produce diversified results ; 
 but physical science, in the strict sense of the word, excludes the 
 consideration of purposes, aims and ends ; whereas government 
 is essentially concerned with purposes, aims and ends. 
 
 Looking however into the matter more closely, we observe 
 that no sharp severance can be made between the topics of phy- 
 sical science on the one side, and the topics into which government 
 enters as a necessary constituent on the other side. The physical 
 side of life can never be ignored ; and hence living things cannot 
 be excluded from physical science ; yet all living things are 
 organised ; and organisation implies government. The appor- 
 tioning of forces towards an end is government, and the appor- 
 tioning of forces towards an end is seen in the lily and the oak-tree, 
 in a way in which it is not seen in the mountain torrent or in the 
 movements of the clouds or in the revolution of the planets 
 round the sun. The lily and the oak-tree draw nutriment out of 
 the air, the water, and the earth in such quantities and propor- 
 tions as will best nourish the lily or the oak-tree to its perfection ; 
 we know by what channels this is done, but we cannot measure 
 the forces employed in the operation, or say why the plant 
 chooses certain elements for its nurture and rejects others. We 
 
 12
 
 4 THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN [CH. 
 
 are in presence of something of the same mystery which we find 
 in human history ; life, wherever it be found, has something in 
 it which we cannot reason about with certainty. 
 
 Life is mysterious, because of the incalculable nature of that 
 organised energy which it sets into action. The peculiarity of 
 organisation is this, that while we do not appear to create force 
 by it, we do multiply very greatly the effectiveness of force ; 
 we increase our own effective power ; and we bring to light forces 
 of which otherwise we should have been ignorant. Looking back 
 through the records of history, we see that human power has 
 increased wonderfully as the ages have gone by, and that the 
 increase has taken place through larger and more thorough 
 organisation. It was a wonderful thing for the Pharaohs of Egypt 
 to build the pyramids ; but how much more wonderful are the 
 feats of modern engineers ! The piercing of mountains by tunnels, 
 the construction of railways and railway engines, steamships and 
 harbours, are deeds which far surpass anything which was done 
 four, five, or six thousand years ago. The Pharaohs did not 
 more surpass the builders of the lake dwellings of the primitive 
 ages, than they have been surpassed by the material constructors 
 of the present day ; and all because our means of organisation are 
 greater and more flexible. Take another example. In no period 
 of ancient times was government as effective as in the period of 
 the early Roman emperors, down to Marcus Aurelius inclusive. 
 Could those emperors have established a post office in each city 
 of their dominions, to convey letters with the accuracy with which 
 they are now conveyed in Italy and France and Spain ? They 
 certainly could not, nor did any one in those days dream of doing 
 such a thing ; letters were sent by special messengers, known to 
 the sender, and as these were necessarily few, letterwriting could 
 not be a general practice. Men were neither so peaceable, nor so 
 enterprising, nor so faithful, seventeen hundred years ago as they 
 are now ; and therefore organisation is far more powerful at the 
 present day than it was in ancient times ; and the result is, that 
 the race of man has increased in power incalculably. 
 
 It will be seen then that human history, inferior as it is to 
 physical science both in range and in accuracy, does introduce 
 to our notice a form of power which physical science hardly 
 notices at all. It is true that physical science cannot help men- 
 tioning living organisms ; but writers on physical science never, 
 as far as I know, take note of the great power which the principle 
 of organisation supplies.
 
 i] THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN 5 
 
 But having said this, I must mention an objection which may 
 not improbably be made to this exaltation of organising power. 
 It may be said, that as organisation does not create force, but 
 only uses force more effectively than the crude natural man can 
 use it, the effectiveness of organisation is necessarily limited by 
 the amount of force, or energy, which is supplied to it. More- 
 over, it will be added, since the earth and the whole solar system 
 are continually losing energy by the dissipation of heat and other 
 forms of energy into the surrounding space, there will come a time 
 when organisation in this part of the universe will cease, because 
 there is no more force or energy for it to work up into new forms 
 of effectiveness. This is an argument which, not precisely in 
 these words, but in this sense, is actuaUy used at the present day. 
 
 It is an argument which, for its validity, depends entirely on 
 the assumption that the amount of force, or energy, which awaits 
 our care, our intelligence, and our industry, in the years which 
 are to come, is finite and not infinite. If an infinite store of 
 energy is laid up in the unknown storehouses of the universe ; 
 if access to those storehouses is obtainable by us ; then the living 
 inhabitants of the earth, of whom man is the head, will never 
 want material on which to operate, will never want the means 
 of operating ; the bankruptcy with which we are threatened will 
 not take place. If, however, proof be required that that infinite 
 store exists, such proof from the nature of the case cannot be 
 had ; a store whose existence can be proved would by that very 
 fact be finite and not.infinite. Proof, then, must not be demanded ; 
 but a belief may be felt to be reasonable, and rightly accepted, 
 in spite of the absence of strict proof ; and the question is, whether 
 the belief that man has an infinite support behind him to carry 
 his action on through all future ages, is reasonable or not. 
 
 It will not be out of place to refer here to the opinion of a 
 famous philosopher, who will not be accused of prejudice. Her- 
 bert Spencer, is not, I believe, an authority on the details of 
 science ; and he is certainly not an authority on history. But 
 no man has ever looked more steadily and impartially than he 
 on the whole scope of science, so as to discern the philosophical 
 elements inherent in it. He was the first of all men to discern 
 the immense range of the principle of evolution ; and as the 
 counterpart of that immense range in the results, he saw that 
 the source of evolution must be one. Let me quote the remark- 
 able words in which he enunciated this last truth ; it is the 
 closing sentence of the sixth part of his Principles of Sociology ;
 
 6 THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN [CH. 
 
 Amid the mysteries which become the more mysterious the more they 
 are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty, that he 
 [i.e. the man capable of discernment] is ever in presence of an Infinite 
 and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed. 
 
 The form of the concluding phrase must be noted ; Spencer 
 does not say, " from which all things have proceeded " ; it is the 
 present and ever continuing effluence of the visible from the in- 
 visible of which he speaks. The utterance is not properly a 
 religious one ; but it marks with precision the limit at which 
 science passes over into religion ; and religious considerations are, 
 I believe, needed for its full acceptance. But even without 
 bringing religious considerations to bear, so important is the 
 principle of the unity of origin of all existent things, that the 
 sentence I have just quoted deserves great respect on scientific 
 grounds alone ; and it will be well to consider in the first place 
 how far it is supported by the obvious primary aspect of things, 
 before adding those elements of thought and feeling through 
 which Spencer's principle becomes truly religious. 
 
 We notice, that at the birth of every human infant something 
 new enters the world of our knowledge, which had not been there 
 before ; and it is difficult not to extend this assertion to other 
 new born things which are not human. There is a new centre of 
 , energy ; the baby derives large portions of its being from its 
 father and mother, but its individuality it does not derive 
 from its father or its mother. It is a new person in the world ; 
 and so mysterious is the source of personality, that we cannot 
 refuse to contemplate the possibility that new energy may enter 
 the world through this avenue. If this be so, the invisible rein- 
 forces the visible. 
 
 There is a further series of facts, which in some degree can 
 hardly be denied to be true, but which for their full verification 
 must probably await further experience ; these, if finally veri- 
 fied, would greatly support the view that new energy enters the 
 world along with new life. It can hardly be denied that the 
 fertility of the earth depends in no inconsiderable degree on the 
 energy and skill of man. Recent discoveries have made known 
 the fact, that large portions of central Asia, which are now barren 
 and waterless, were formerly well watered and populous. Did 
 the desolation which has overtaken these tracts come from natural 
 causes alone, and was it incapable of being averted by human 
 effort ? is it now incapable of being remedied ? I believe that 
 the most probable answer to these questions, judging both by
 
 I] THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN 7 
 
 what we know of the wild savagery that prevailed in central 
 Asia in bygone days (of which Jingis Khan is the most famous 
 but far from the only example), and also by what has been done 
 by civilised men during recent years to reclaim deserts in various 
 parts of the world, is that prudent human action is capable 
 of increasing the sum of life on the earth, as certainly perverse 
 human action is capable of diminishing it. If further experience 
 shows that this is true on a large scale, the contention that there 
 is an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all the energy of 
 this visible world has proceeded and does proceed, will be felt 
 at any rate to be quite consistent with our natural knowledge ; 
 and life will be seen to be the avenue through which it enters 
 the world. 
 
 But now it must be considered in what way religion, as we 
 know it in our experience, affects the question. Herbert Spencer 
 spoke of the Infinite and Eternal Energy as essentially the Un- 
 known ; and unknown it is through any of our sensuous faculties. 
 But the emotional part of man is not sensuous ; the sympathy 
 which binds human beings together is not sensuous. Will these 
 parts of our nature tell us anything about the Infinite and Eternal 
 Energy ? Let us bear in mind how closely the sympathetic parts 
 of human nature are allied to that power of organisation, which 
 as a power is not reckoned very highly by physical science, but 
 which history reveals to us as truly important in relation to man, 
 and which gives us a prospect of attainments in the future far 
 beyond any which have been reached at the present day. If 
 men sympathise with each other, they can work together, and 
 organisation can proceed safely. Sympathy then is closely re- 
 lated to the most characteristic power which man possesses, to 
 the highest ideal at which he can aim. 
 
 It is no superficial or transient need of human nature which 
 bids us desire an orderly life, a life in which our duties are com- 
 mensurate with our faculties, in which affection is predominant, 
 in which our present labours are lightened by future hopes. 
 These are the elements, spiritual and not material, in which 
 human power centres. But in order to show how these may be 
 fostered, how sympathy may be fostered and organisation ex- 
 tended, I must make that transit into true religion which Herbert 
 Spencer stood on the brink of but did not actually make. 
 
 If the Infinite and Eternal Energy be a Spirit, full of all that 
 sympathetic emotion which is exhibited by the best persons in 
 their highest moments (though that Spirit is too mysterious to
 
 8 THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN [CH. 
 
 be called definitely a person), then the universe is worthily ani- 
 mated by its central Power. No one who believes this will think 
 prayer unnatural ; for every one must feel that his own character 
 is made up of various habits of action and strains of feeling, of 
 which some are less worthy than others, and some need repression, 
 others need to be strengthened. That Infinite Spirit of whom 
 I have spoken is in religion named God ; and it will be the object 
 of the present treatise, while not denying some intrinsic merit 
 to human nature, to show that the animating and controlling 
 power of God is a necessity for mankind, and that prayer is the 
 natural intercourse between man and God. I do not speak from 
 mere theory ; had I not been saved by it myself, I would not have 
 recommended it to others. 
 
 We are saved by prayer to God ; but yet the relation in which 
 we stand to man, as well as the relation in which we stand to God, 
 must be a part of salvation in its full sense. To be saved in the 
 full sense, must mean that we are capable of surviving that 
 seeming collapse, which we all of us suffer in death ; and if we 
 are capable of surviving it, then the organisation which begins 
 in this life must be continued into a future life, and for all eternity ; 
 and this means that we have eternal relations with our fellow men. 
 
 Government of the spirit of man, and therewith government 
 of this earth, which is the abode of man ; government by divine 
 inspiration and help, leading to a salutary organisation, and 
 thereby to increased life and happiness ; such is the solution 
 which I offer for the problem which life presents to us. But I 
 add this, that it is a solution which will be found unavailable 
 unless we extend our views towards a life which shall belong to 
 us after this life in the flesh has passed away ; for that alone 
 will give us a perfect organisation, and perfect relations with our 
 fellow men. And I may be permitted to add, though it is a thesis 
 the proof of which is beyond the present chapter, that in Christ- 
 ianity, when the right distinctions are made, when we see rightly 
 what elements are temporary and what permanent in that entire 
 system which we name Christianity, lies the power to create 
 those eternal relations of men with the Divine Being and with 
 each other which will constitute a full solution of the problem 
 of life. Not, however, until I come to deal with the life and death 
 of Jesus Christ, can I clothe this whole subject with those sacred 
 and inviolable emotions which are to us the witness of there 
 being, in our own persons, an eternal element. 
 
 At present I must recede from the topics to which I have
 
 i] THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN 9 
 
 just been referring. It is not the permanence of the individual, but 
 the permanence of terrestrial life and specially of humanity, with 
 which the present chapter is concerned ; and there is a difficulty 
 in the way of our believing the permanence of terrestrial life, 
 which may seem formidable. Against ordinary dangers it is not 
 hard to conceive that we may protect ourselves by a right use of 
 the resources that we possess ; but there is one danger against 
 which it may seem that we are quite powerless. The future 
 extinction of the sun's light and heat was predicted by Helmholtz, 
 on grounds accepted by the leading physicists and astronomers of 
 the world, as an event likely to take place not indeed very soon, 
 but still within twenty million years from the present time ; and 
 though twenty million years is long as compared with the indi- 
 vidual life of any of us, it is nothing compared with eternity. 
 Twenty million years will come to an end as surely as fifty years 
 will come to an end ; if, after twenty million years, all life on the 
 earth is destroyed, our view of the universe is not essentially 
 altered from what it would be, if we supposed the destruction 
 about to take place within fifty years from to-day. It is true 
 that we may fall back on the view of literal minded Christians, 
 and suppose that a new heaven and new earth will be provided 
 for us twenty million years from to-day ; but such an interpre- 
 tation of the well-known passages in the Old and New Testaments 
 is not a very satisfactory one ; and the want of reasonableness 
 about any such view cannot but be felt as very damaging to it. 
 
 It is, however, well known that the recent discovery of radium 
 has tended very considerably to modify the theory of Helmholtz 
 in the eyes of all scientific thinkers. But before saying how 
 and to what extent the theory of Helmholtz has been modified 
 of late, it will be well for me to give some brief account of what 
 the theory is in itself. 
 
 The theory of Helmholtz is an expansion of that earlier theory, 
 the nebular hypothesis ; which, first conceived by Kant, and 
 strengthened by Herschel and Laplace, was always received with 
 considerable favour, though perhaps not with absolute acceptance, 
 by scientific men. Here is the tale of it, as far as concerns the 
 solar system. 
 
 In the beginning there was a vast nebula. How this nebula 
 came, we are not at present to inquire ; but however it came, 
 it gathered towards its centre and began to revolve, by virtue of 
 the Newtonian law of attraction. More and more, as the ages 
 rolled on, it grew in coherence ; yet certain films, at successive
 
 10 THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN [CH. 
 
 intervals, detached themselves from the main body of the 
 nebula ; and these films probably surrounded the main nebula 
 like rings, and revolved about it, as the rings of Saturn do about 
 that planet now. In any case, whatever the exact shape of these 
 films, they gradually grew together severally into their densest 
 portions, until each film became a globe of hot, gaseous or molten, 
 matter, the primitive form of a planet. Of these planets one, 
 as we know, has in its cooling down become the abode of living 
 beings ; the other planets have also cooled down, but whether 
 they are the abodes of living beings is not certainly known. It 
 is a natural, but not absolutely necessary, part of the theory, 
 to suppose that the satellites of the planets were formed by a 
 similar process to that by which the planets themselves were 
 formed. 
 
 All these planets however in their entirety were but a very 
 small fraction indeed of the nebula ; and after the planetary 
 films had been detached, the mass of the nebula still kept retreat- 
 ing inwards, in globular form, revolving continually about a cen- 
 tral axis, until at last it assumed that size under which we know 
 it, being no other than our brilliant luminary, the Sun. 
 
 So far, so good ; but in the above description it has not been 
 explained how the sun has come to be so brilliant or so hot as it 
 is ; or why the planets (seemingly) were once brilliant and hot. 
 Laplace has assumed that the whole nebula was from the first 
 of fiery substance ; but about the middle of the nineteenth 
 century Helmholtz showed, by a very notable train of reasoning, 
 that this assumption was not necessary. It was the compression, 
 Helmholtz said, involved in the contraction of so vast a mass, 
 which had engendered the solar heat and light ; for it must be 
 remembered that the nebula is held to have been at first im- 
 measurably larger than it is now. The sun, Helmholtz added, is 
 still contracting ; the contraction produces continually a vibra- 
 tory movement in all the particles of the sun throughout his 
 whole mass ; in this vibratory movement heat and light consist ; 
 and the vibration is communicated to the ether which surrounds 
 the sun, and is conveyed through the ether to distant parts of the 
 universe. Nor is it only heat and light that are thus conveyed ; 
 electricity, magnetism, and even chemical forces are wafted on 
 the waves of the ether, ready to do any work that may come in 
 their way ; and thus for instance a magnetic storm in the sun 
 may create an aurora in the earth, the chemical rays from the 
 sun affect beneficially the foliage of plants, and the light waves
 
 i] THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN 11 
 
 from the sun touch our eyes, and are the source to us of all that 
 knowledge and all that delight which comes to us from our faculty 
 of seeing. 
 
 There is much in the process thus indicated which goes beyond 
 our present powers of reasoning ; but as a broad conception it 
 is intelligible ; and it is not difficult to explain even to an unlearned 
 reader the most salient points of the causative process suggested. 
 The most natural question for any reader to ask, on first con- 
 sidering the theory, is whether mere compression of the matter 
 which constitutes the sun could possibly produce all that amazing 
 amount of heat and light which the sun pours forth. It is not 
 easy to give among familiar terrestrial phenomena an instance of 
 gradual compression producing heat ; but of sudden compression 
 producing heat and light there is a familiar instance, when a 
 horse's iron shoe strikes a stone pavement and elicits a spark. 
 What really happens in this case is that the rapid motion of the 
 horse's iron shoe is stopped by the stone pavement ; it is probably 
 not stopped entirely at once, for a dint in the pavement will 
 testify that there has been some motion of matter as the result 
 of the stroke of the horse's foot ; but stopped it is in the end. 
 Then, by that subtle interchange of power which goes on through 
 the particles of all existent things, the plain direct motion is trans- 
 muted into that other kind of motion, which we call heat and 
 light ; and the evidence of this lies in the spark which is elicited 
 by the collision of the iron shoe with the pavement. 
 
 Now very much in the same manner, according to Helmholtz 
 (allowing for the difference between a sudden stroke and a con- 
 stant pressure), the force of gravitation acts between the particles 
 of the sun, contracting these particles into a narrower compass : 
 so it does now, and so it has done from the first beginning of the 
 solar nebula. The internal parts of the sun resist and hinder 
 this contraction, and thus heat is evolved ; the amount of heat 
 being measured by the amount of motion that is stopped by the 
 resistance. Roughly speaking, if the sun contracts a mile in its 
 diameter every eleven years, it will give us all the heat that we 
 now receive from it 1 . How imperceptible such a contraction 
 must be, will be appreciated if we remember that a mile is not 
 much more than a millionth part of the sun's diameter. 
 
 We see then, that mathematical calculation does not forbid 
 our regarding the theory of Helmholtz as the real solution of the 
 
 1 See, for the exact reckoning, Sir Robert Ball's book, The. Earth's Beginning, 
 pp. 370-374.
 
 12 THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN [CH. 
 
 problem of the origin of the sun and stars. But the theory, in 
 its full compass, is as yet unverified. It may be asked, what 
 would be full verification of it ? If half a dozen stars went out 
 suddenly, that would be a considerable verification ; not absolute 
 even then ; but such an event would prove that it was quite 
 possible for a star to get to the end of its illuminating power ; 
 and the explanation, that the substance of the star had been so 
 compressed as to have become solid and to have lost all capability 
 of further compression, would have very seriously to be enter- 
 tained ; and we might consequently fear the same fate for our 
 sun also. But this very formidable piece of verification has not 
 taken place so far ; and we may without over-presumption 
 consider what objections may lie in the way of the theory, 
 considered as the sole and exclusive account of the matter. 
 
 First, then, it is to be observed that the theory of Helmholtz 
 makes the law of gravitation the primary cause, out of which all 
 other known physical forces proceed ; gravitation causes pressure, 
 and from pressure proceed heat, light, electricity, magnetism, elas- 
 ticity and chemical forces. But is gravitation entitled to this 
 primary position among physical forces ? This is not at all the 
 conclusion to which the most recent science pointed, even before 
 the discovery of radium. Among the molecules of matter, at 
 those infinitesimal distances where electricity and radio-activity 
 have their play, gravitation does not appear to work at all. These 
 considerations are not unimportant ; it might however be said 
 against them that no method of building up the sun and stars by 
 means of electricity or by the other forces named had ever been sug- 
 gested, whereas by gravitation such a method had been suggested. 
 
 After the discovery of radium, however, this answer could not 
 be so confidently made. Not only does radium preserve its 
 effluent energy for a wonderfully long time, which in itself would 
 tend to prolong the term of the sun's luminous power, if sufficient 
 amount of radium and kindred substances exist in the sun ; but 
 also it was discovered that one cause of this prolongation of the 
 active energy of radium lay in the fact that the atoms of it were 
 being decomposed. The possibility of the decomposition of an 
 atom had before been denied ; but if it be possible, must we not 
 revise our opinion as to the amount of latent energy in every one 
 of the orbs of heaven ? This consideration has really influenced 
 physicists in their views as to the durability of the sun's light 
 and heat ; and it certainly has some force ; how much, is not 
 quite easy for us to say at the present time.
 
 I] THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN 13 
 
 I confess, that it is in another direction that I look for the 
 full truth as to the origin of the self -glowing luminaries of heaven. 
 What is there to prevent our thinking that the sun and the stars 
 are the results of organising power, of the power of life, in some 
 respects even of the power of mind ? What do we know of life ? 
 We know it as it exists on the earth. Even on the earth the 
 forms of life are very diverse and susceptible of change ; and 
 even on the earth the spiritual element in life is singularly subtle, 
 and quite beyond sensuous perception. By what reasoning is it 
 possible to justify the assumption that life must always present 
 itself in that obvious tangible form under which we know it on 
 earth ; or rather, under which we know some of its constituent 
 parts ; for even on the earth there are some elements of life which 
 are neither visible nor tangible ? If there be any truth at all in 
 human immortality, it would certainly not appear that our im- 
 mortal part is visible or tangible in the ordinary sense. Is no 
 allowance to be made for possible faculties not yet attained by 
 man? 
 
 It was from a sense of the diversity of living forms that the 
 great astronomer Laplace, writing more than a century ago 1 , 
 urged the probability that living beings exist on the other planets 
 of the solar system, suited in each case to the temperature of 
 their respective abodes. It is not an unreasonable argument ; 
 but when the nature and power of organisation are considered, 
 has not such an argument enhanced force as applied to the sun ? 
 To organise, is to arrange the powers which lie at our disposal 
 in such a way that they shall not be impeded by each other's 
 action, but have their full effect. Is not the sun's energy, whether 
 spiritual or non-spiritual in its origin, exceedingly effective ? is 
 it not much more effective than the solid matter which forms the 
 mass of the earth ? If we admit the thought that it is organised 
 at all, is it not much better organised than the earth is ? 
 
 The solution here suggested of the origin of the solar and 
 stellar fires has the distinctive feature that it rests on mystery. 
 It answers the challenge of the physicists, " From whence will 
 you get the new energy which is to replace that which is dissi- 
 pated into the regions of space ? " not by bringing forward any new 
 tangible store of energy, but by saying that wherever life exists, 
 the process of organisation which is inherent in life draws energy 
 out of an unknown and mysterious source ; and that the higher 
 
 1 Laplace, Exposition du Systeme du Monde, Liv. 5 me , c. vi. See the translation 
 of the passage in Sir David Brewster's More Worlds than One, chapter xvi.
 
 14 THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN [CH. 
 
 the organisation is, the more is it in contact with this mysterious 
 source. It is not seen how the new energy comes ; it unites 
 itself with the known forms of visible energy, but adds something 
 to them. Let any one who denies the truth of this explain, if 
 he can, so simple an act as the picking up of a pin from the ground. 
 There are plenty of known forces, physical and chemical, concerned 
 in that act ; but if a full explanation of the act is to be given, 
 it has to be added, over and above all the affirmation of physical 
 and chemical forces, that somebody wanted to pick up the pin. 
 
 The region of mystery is not to be denied ; are we to suppose 
 that mystery attaches to the destinies of man, but is banished 
 from the starry heavens ? do plain mathematical and physical 
 laws explain every part of this infinite universe, except only the 
 little corner where man exists ? If this is a preposterous supposi- 
 tion, then let it be remembered how much more mysterious life 
 is than anything else known on earth. Recognising this, we shall 
 feel that the mystery of the heavens is probably also connected 
 with life, in a manner beyond our present comprehension. 
 
 It is then the conclusion of this whole argument, that the 
 sun is not, as far as we know at present, in danger of dying out ; 
 the earth is not in danger of losing the heat and light which we 
 enjoy to-day. The development of man, then, in the future 
 ages is not necessarily for a finite number of years only, after 
 which it must cease ; and the history of the past is not subject 
 to this great disparagement, which would result if the race of 
 men were liable to be cut short by inexorable physical laws, and 
 thenceforth be no more remembered for ever. 
 
 It is the supreme interest of history that I have been vindi- 
 cating, and on this ground, that all the history of the past is the 
 seed of an infinite development in the future. The value of this 
 will be felt ; though attempts to foresee the future, either of the 
 race or of the individual, with precision, are not likely to be very 
 successful. 
 
 One thing more I must say with respect to the distinguished 
 man of science on whom in the main I have been commenting. 
 Lamentably poor and barren as we must think the starry universe, 
 if the theory of Helmholtz is the full truth respecting its nature 
 and genesis ; little though we can esteem the amendment, if the 
 only relief comes through the decomposition of atoms ; this is 
 not the same as saying that the theory can be wholly disregarded. 
 Helmholtz deals with real forces, and traces their effect on the 
 supposition that these forces act singly ; and there may be cases
 
 i] THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN 15 
 
 in which these forces do act singly, or at any rate in which the 
 force of gravitation is so predominant, that other forces may be 
 neglected. We have to bear this in mind, though we must cer- 
 tainly hope, and may I think believe, that the full explanation 
 of the starry universe is much more mysterious, and much more 
 connected with the things which we most love, honour, and revere, 
 than it would be if the theory of Helmholtz were the full truth. 
 
 I have been vindicating the honour of history, but I have 
 not thus far been narrating history. To narrate history is 
 however the purpose of my book ; and with what epoch of time 
 shall I begin the narration ? The proper answer, it would seem, 
 must be : With the first appearance of man upon the surface 
 of the earth. That, at all events, is the beginning of human 
 history ; but there are considerations which will lead us to think 
 that the time before the beginning of human history ought not 
 to be quite left out of our survey. Biologists tell us, and I quite 
 agree with them, that the human race is the offspring of an 
 antecedent race, which was infra-human. Biologists do not 
 identify that antecedent race with any existing species of ape ; 
 though they do say that that antecedent race was the common 
 progenitor both of mankind, and of apes. Taking this general 
 view, what was the sign of the first arrival of mankind on this 
 earthly scene ? 
 
 I cannot myself doubt, that the acquisition of the faculty of 
 speech was the fact which distinguished for the first time the race 
 of man from the lower animals. "Articulate-speaking men"; 
 such is the epithet which Homer attaches to men, to signify their 
 distinctive characteristic ; and there is none other of equal 
 significance. Speech it was that united the race of men with 
 a power to which no other species has approached ; speech 
 enabled cooperation to begin in those works by which life is 
 defended and strengthened ; in the making of tools, in the building 
 of huts, in the kindling of fires. Speech found a natural aid in 
 the increased flexibility of the human hand ; and the upright 
 posture which man assumed in walking on the ground gave him 
 a larger survey of the things around him ; but neither of these 
 developments of the human body had effects so powerful and so 
 penetrating as that whereby mental communication was pro- 
 moted, and the purposes of mankind were made more effective 
 through union. Of all his physical powers, speech is the one 
 which man could least afford to do without ; and of all his phy- 
 sical powers, speech is the one most akin to the mind.
 
 16 THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN [CH. 
 
 It cannot be denied that a complete history of mankind ought 
 to take some notice of that momentous series of events, whereby 
 the nascent upward striving creature, that had the germ of man 
 in him, became truly and fully man. We have indeed no written 
 records of that time, and it is impossible that we should have had 
 such ; the conditions forbid it. Nor is it easy to see how any 
 material signs could have reached us, showing the steps by which 
 so great an advance was made ; at all events we have no such 
 material signs. 
 
 But is analogy of no value as a guide ? Speech is a faculty, 
 but we must also assume it to be an art, won by trial, by effort, 
 by experiment, in slow gradations and with much patience. 
 Along with the growth of this art many other things must have 
 grown ; the brain of man must have gathered complexity, his 
 tongue and lips a finer tissue of nerve fibre, besides the alteration 
 in stature and hand-structure, already spoken of. Is there any- 
 thing else we can discern as practically necessary, if such a period 
 of change was to result in practical success ? Friendly feelings 
 must have prevailed more extensively than in previous ages ; 
 for the practice of speech must for a long time have implied 
 friendly relations between those who thus sought to communicate 
 ideas with each other ; the suspicion which enemies entertain 
 of each other would in early days debar all attempt at trying to 
 speak to an enemy. Thus a more stable social system would 
 rise along with speech. At the same time that famous principle, 
 " natural selection " or the " survival of the fittest " would show 
 itself ; for on the whole and in the long run those who had made 
 any advance towards speech would have the superiority over 
 those who had not ; those incapable of speech would be driven 
 into remoter and wilder places, and would remain in the animal 
 state. 
 
 A point to be carefully remembered is, that the art of speech 
 could not have arisen through any deliberate attempt to learn 
 it ; the value of articulation would for a long time be experienced 
 in single instances, and would slowly fit itself on to that vocalisation 
 which had been long known ; for animals can express by cries 
 their feelings, and to some slight extent ideas also. In the first 
 learning of the art of speech by the human race there would be 
 no such stimulus as the young child is conscious of at the present 
 day, when it hears its elders all around it uttering sounds which 
 it tries to imitate ; the stimulus in that primaeval age would come 
 from the direct sense that it was to the interest of the man
 
 I] THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN 17 
 
 himself to frame the sound which had some material signification, 
 because if he did frame it, some other man would catch his 
 meaning and be able to help him. Thus it would be the most 
 vigorous who would learn the art of speech, as distinguished 
 from their less enterprising fellows ; and the learning, as I have 
 said, would be instinctive and answering to the immediate oc- 
 casion, not resulting from the conscious knowledge that there was 
 an art to be learned. 
 
 I have been giving an account which rests entirely on ana- 
 logy, and on what must be presumed from the nature of the case, 
 not in any degree on specific evidence ; this is what we are 
 obliged to do in respect of all terrestrial events which took place 
 before that comparatively recent period when the art of writing 
 was invented. Geology, for example, could not stir a single 
 step without the assumption that the strata exposed on mountain 
 sides and in railway cuttings were deposited according to the 
 analogy of the earthy particles which are deposited at the present 
 day in the seas that wash the coasts of continents and islands. 
 
 If then analogy and the intrinsic nature of the case are our 
 only guides in regard to the primaeval period with which I am 
 now dealing ; if, up to a certain point and with proper limita- 
 tions, they are fairly dependable guides ; is there anything that 
 we can infer from them as to the religious, the divine aspect of 
 human evolution at this its incipient stage ? I spoke, some 
 pages back, of the strength which comes to men through prayer ; 
 is there any reason why these incipient men, these men still in 
 the stage of being formed into men, should not have prayed to 
 an unknown Power? Possibly they may have prayed super- 
 stitiously, as many men since have done, without absolutely 
 frustrating the intrinsic value of the act ; they may have held 
 that an unknown power resided in trees, in stones, in the sun or 
 in the starry heavens. Prayer mingled with errors may still be 
 a source of strength, although not of unmingled strength ; and 
 prayer without words is not necessarily injured by the absence of 
 words, if the need of aid and the desire for aid be felt in the 
 spirit ; it is no unnatural belief that the human race arose out 
 of its animal surroundings by divine help. The divine help 
 would promote especially those sentiments of peaceful friendship 
 and alliance which were so important in the first beginning of 
 articulate communication of ideas ; a stability would be felt in 
 the status of man, greater than that which had belonged to the 
 animals ; even if quarrels between men occurred afterwards, 
 
 M. D.A. 2
 
 18 THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN [CH. 
 
 this stability, though in some degree imperilled, would not be 
 lost. It is not easy, judging from what we know of religion in 
 human history, to think that it was altogether absent as a cause 
 in the first beginnings of man ; and the nature of its causative 
 action would be the strengthening of the human heart in that 
 most critical epoch, when the new tie constituted by language 
 was being formed between man and man. 
 
 If the above remarks are justly reasoned out, the very begin- 
 ning of human history was founded on a manifestation of the 
 divine power, spiritual in its essential nature, but extending in 
 its effects into the material sphere. Let me assume this to be 
 true ; is it possible to refrain from casting a glance on that 
 immensely long series of ages, during which living organisms 
 existed on the earth's surface or in the ocean depths, but man 
 had not yet appeared ? Can we think of the animal life which 
 existed before man as altogether without kinship to man ? We 
 cannot, if there be any truth in the evolutionary view as applied 
 to the human species. If the animal life existent before human 
 life appeared had a certain kinship with human life, and was 
 itself struggling upwards, and was on the way to a higher de- 
 velopment ; can we deny that the word " history " has a real 
 meaning in reference to this life, which was not yet endowed 
 with the full human dignity ? It appears to be a just inference 
 that we are here still partly in the province of history, and not 
 of mere physical science. 
 
 But in dealing with the life which existed on the earth before 
 man appeared, we find ourselves at once in the middle of all 
 those theories which have sprung from the famous work of 
 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, first published shortly 
 after the middle of the nineteenth century. If in some respects 
 the biological theories to which I refer appear to me defective, 
 their extraordinary compass, and the illuminating power which 
 they have had on all human thought since that date, must still 
 be acknowledged ; and it will be best briefly to describe these 
 theories as they have generally been held, before endeavouring 
 to indicate where the insertion of spiritual causes appears neces- 
 sary for their full and reasonable validity. 
 
 It is a familiar fact that children have a general resemblance 
 to their parents, while yet no child was ever in all points abso- 
 lutely like father or mother. There is variation ; and if we 
 suppose variations to accumulate through a long series of genera- 
 tions, the child may in the end become very unlike its remote
 
 I] THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN 19 
 
 ancestor. So it is with all creatures ; the progeny is similar to, 
 and yet differs from, both its parents. Even when we come to 
 those creatures which do not enjoy the blessing of two parents, 
 which propagate by one part simply separating off from another 
 part, it is certain that a general similarity still holds between 
 parent and offspring ; and that there is difference between parent 
 and offspring is also not doubtful, though it would be too much 
 to say that it is always obvious at a glance, especially when we 
 come to such tiny creatures as the amoeba ; but then an ordinary 
 person may think two sheep precisely similar, which to the 
 shepherd are distinguished by a hundred different traits. So it 
 is with plants ; every plant, whether it propagates by seed or 
 by suckers or in any other way, produces a plant like itself, and 
 yet not entirely like. Variation, in the midst of a general like- 
 ness, is always taking place in the realm of life. 
 
 Can we put any limits on the degree of such variation ? 
 No doubt, in finite time, the variation must have some limits. 
 But the earth, to judge by the deposits of geological strata, has 
 lasted an exceedingly long time ; our limits may be wide ; the 
 variations of living organisms may have been, are almost certain 
 to have been, far greater than that which has been known in 
 recorded experience. Is it possible that variation can have 
 acted, during hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years, 
 so effectively, that out of one original stock, diverging in many 
 directions, all the animals of feline kind may have sprung ; 
 animals so diverse as the lion, tiger, leopard, and the common 
 cat ? Is it possible that all dogs and foxes and wolves may have 
 sprung from a single stock of wild wolves ? To take a wider 
 range, is it possible that all birds may have sprung from a wingless 
 set of creatures, possibly from the same wingless set of creatures ; 
 that all animals which suckle their young have sprung from a 
 more primitive set of animals which did not suckle their young ? 
 Or to take wider range still that all vertebrate creatures have 
 had an ancestry that was invertebrate ? If this should have 
 happened, then variation has been indeed an important factor 
 in the history of terrestrial life. 
 
 Various thinkers in the earlier half of the nineteenth century 
 approached or even reached the opinion that living organisms 
 had arrived at their present forms by a slow process of develop- 
 ment, after the manner just indicated. Lamarck is the most 
 famous of these ; and the philosophical force of his view must 
 not be underrated. I will quote the brief description of it from 
 
 22
 
 20 THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN [CH. 
 
 Merz's History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 
 vol. n. p. 314 : 
 
 The idea is worked out in the Philosophic Zoologique, that if we com- 
 mence the study of living creatures from below, and from the side of 
 vegetable life, we are inevitably led to the conviction that the surrounding 
 conditions and influences, the environment, are gradually and slowly 
 modifying the elementary organisms, and through habit and inheritance 
 developing the higher ones, endowing them with more specialised organs 
 and more complex powers and activities. 
 
 Still, the view thus enunciated failed to obtain general accept- 
 ance, mainly from the want of any observed instance of varia- 
 tion actually taking place under our eyes. But shortly after 
 the middle of the nineteenth century Charles Darwin brought 
 before the notice of naturalists a variation frequently occurring, 
 not of the largest kind, but considerable and permanent enough 
 to deserve being taken as evidence of what might possibly happen 
 on a much larger scale. This was the variation of animals and 
 plants under human control. Horses, cows, sheep, pigeons in 
 the animal world, numerous flowers and fruits in the world of 
 plants, have actually been changed in size and in the character 
 of their respective parts through a process governed by the human 
 will. It would seem at first sight that this must imply a know- 
 ledge on our part of the causes of such variation, and a capability 
 of wielding such causes. This however is not exactly the case ; 
 the actual causes which begin to change an organism in any 
 direction are exceedingly subtle, and can hardly be said to be 
 known at all ; the human will effects change in the character 
 of the animals and plants subject to it, not by originating varia- 
 tions, but by choosing, when variations have somehow come 
 into being, which shall survive and which shall not survive. 
 One variation may be an improvement (from the human point 
 of view), another a deterioration ; man allows the improved 
 animal or plant to produce progeny, and forbids this to those 
 which have deteriorated. The progeny resembles the parent ; 
 and thus mankind, without actually dominating, guides nature. 
 The improved progeny alone survives. To the process thus 
 described Darwin gave the title of Artificial Selection. 
 
 Now it struck Darwin that all through the world of living 
 things there is going on a process which resembles this artificial 
 selection, and which, if variations are once supposed to be going 
 on, would settle which variation was to survive and which was 
 to perish. One very well known instance of this process is the
 
 i] THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN 21 
 
 disappearance of the North American Indians before the white 
 races ; a disappearance not absolutely complete at the present 
 day, but complete over the main part of the area over which 
 the wild copper-coloured tribes once roamed. The stronger race 
 has prevailed over the weaker race ; and there is everywhere 
 this tendency, not only among men but among all animals, and 
 also among plants. Quite apart from any deliberate direction or 
 purpose known to us, the stronger organisms (or at least the 
 organisms which are best adapted to their surroundings) tend to 
 survive, and the weaker dwindle and decrease in numbers. If 
 then there is continual variation going on in the forms and the 
 structure of all living creatures inhabiting the earth, the prin- 
 ciple just described, which Darwin called Natural Selection, will 
 determine which creatures shall survive and which shall perish. 
 
 If artificial selection, acting on those continual variations 
 which arise in the form and structure of living creatures, is able 
 to perpetuate these spontaneously arising differences, so that 
 after a long course of human supervision and management such 
 different forms as the drayhorse and the racehorse, the small 
 wiry shaggy Highland cattle and the ponderous shorthorn, the 
 slim greyhound and the sturdy mastiff, will come into existence, 
 the differing pairs having in each case come from a common 
 stock, may not the same sort of differentiation be produced 
 by natural selection ; and as natural selection has had more 
 than a thousand times the length of time to operate in, as com- 
 pared with artificial selection, may not the results have been 
 more than a thousand times as great ? 
 
 Such was the question which Darwin asked, and answered 
 in the affirmative ; and naturalists at once felt that a new cause 
 had been discovered, which might perhaps explain the reason 
 why living creatures all over the earth's surface have arrived 
 at the characteristics which they respectively present. Moreover, 
 when once it was felt that a solid ground had been reached, on 
 which the theory of a development of differing types growing 
 out of the same stock could rest, it was also felt by naturalists 
 that the aspect of living organisms, with then- large similarities 
 and differentiations within differentiations, exactly corresponded 
 to what we should have, if the theory of development be true ; 
 and a final confirmation of the theory lay in the observed fact, 
 that creatures so different as a man and a rabbit, in the course 
 of their formation before birth, are for a certain period indistin- 
 guishable from one another ; the differences originate as the
 
 22 THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN [CH. 
 
 growth proceeds. It is natural to think that each individual 
 does to a certain extent recapitulate the history of his race ; 
 and if so, human beings and rabbits, notwithstanding the immense 
 difference that lies between them now, have sprung from stocks 
 which, long ages ago, were identical. 
 
 One difficulty, indeed, lay in the way of the Darwinian theory. 
 Though, when a particular species begins to separate into stronger 
 and weaker forms, there will always be a tendency towards the 
 disappearance of the weaker forms, while the stronger survive ; 
 yet if the weaker specimens vanish entirely, and the stronger 
 alone remain, there will be no separation of one species into 
 two ; all that will have happened will be that the species has 
 grown stronger. It is only if some of the weaker forms of the 
 species remain, as well as the stronger, that any explanation of 
 the division of one species into two is possible by means of the 
 Darwinian theory ; and this accordingly is what we must sup- 
 pose to have happened in a countless number of cases. It is 
 quite conceivable that this was so ; but then the question arises, 
 how can it have come to pass that the difference between the 
 stronger and weaker forms was not swamped by interbreeding, 
 which would have made them all one species again ? 
 
 The difficulty just noticed admits of a variety of solutions, 
 which are by no means inconsistent with one another, and have 
 no doubt acted concurrently ; it is not possible in the present 
 state of knowledge to determine the relative value of solutions, 
 or in other words the extent to which each cause has operated. 
 Darwin laid the greatest stress on the separation in space as the 
 principal cause which would prevent the intercrossing of the 
 stronger and weaker branches of a divided species ; and he 
 justly remarked on the great influence which geological changes 
 would have in promoting this separation. But he instanced also 
 other possible causes ; "I can bring a considerable catalogue of 
 facts," he wrote, "showing that within the same area, varieties 
 of the same animal can long remain distinct, from haunting 
 different stations, from breeding at slightly different seasons, or 
 from varieties of the same kind preferring to pair together 1 ." 
 Of these causes, the last is specially noticeable, as bringing 
 mental disposition and will into the matter ; and those who ob- 
 serve how powerful a very slight difference in external form may 
 be in creating dislike between two races (as for instance between 
 
 1 Origin of Species, p. 103 of 1st edition ; p. 126 of edition of 1900 (with very 
 slight variation).
 
 I] THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN 23 
 
 the white man and the negro at the present day) will be of opinion 
 that this has been one of the strongest causes in confirming a 
 separation that has once begun between the stronger and weaker 
 branches in any species. It is a cause that will be equally effective 
 in the ocean and on land ; whereas the mere physical separation 
 cannot be as effective in the ocean as on the land. For the land 
 has been perpetually broken up in a way to make intercommuni- 
 cation difficult ; the ocean is in the main continuous (for inland 
 seas, even the Caspian, are but insignificant exceptions) ; and we 
 have no reason to think that the case was ever otherwise. I believe 
 however that great ocean depths do act as causes of severance. 
 An additional possible cause of permanent differences of structure 
 was suggested by Romanes, namely a tendency to barrenness in 
 the intercourse between the two separating branches of a species. 
 
 In whatever proportion the above causes may have acted, 
 they do collectively constitute a full answer to the difficulty 
 just noticed in the Darwinian theory ; and in confirmation of 
 the belief that such causes do act, it may be added that the 
 existing varieties of the dog can hardly have always owed their 
 diversity to a deliberate intention of men that they should be kept 
 separate (though this cause has in some degree operated). Hence 
 the theory of Darwin (suggested simultaneously and independ- 
 ently by Wallace, though not with so much fullness of illustration 
 as Darwin brought forward) takes rank now as an established 
 scientific truth ; although important instances of structural 
 changes in any species have never been observed in the actual 
 course of their making. 
 
 Yet, accepting the general hypothesis of evolution, as applied 
 to the origin of living organisms ; accepting too the importance 
 of the principle of natural selection, which in certain of its aspects 
 is a matter of ordinary experience ; are we entitled to say that 
 the whole theory of the origin of terrestrial life has been made 
 plain to us thereby ? So much as this Darwin himself did not 
 affirm ; on the contrary, he recognised in explicit terms the in- 
 adequacy of natural selection to explain every part of the process 
 of evolution. 
 
 " Natural Selection," he wrote, " depends on the survival under various 
 complex circumstances of the best-fitted individuals, but has no rela- 
 tion whatever to the primary cause of any modification of structure." 
 Animals and Plants under Domestication, eh. xxm. (vol. n. p. 272 of 1st 
 edition). 
 
 It is obvious, of course, that natural selection cannot begin
 
 24 THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN [CH. 
 
 to operate until the modification of structure which is to be 
 selected as dominant in the future has already come into exist- 
 ence. How, then, are we to arrive at a knowledge of the primary 
 causes of modification ? To this difficult question biologists 
 have naturally been slow to give an answer. No one can find 
 fault with their caution ; but unfortunately they have too often 
 treated the question as a negligible one, which is quite a different 
 matter. An especial importance belongs to the question of 
 " the primary cause of any modification of structure " (I quote 
 Darwin's phrase) ; and for this reason, that it is a question which 
 brings before us the whole being of any living creature, not 
 merely the visible organism, but that which underlies the visible 
 organism, the motives and needs of the creature. It will scarcely 
 be denied that the most primitive creatures have needs, and 
 have motives. Mr Headley, in his interesting work Life and 
 Evolution (p. 175), tells us how an amoeba (an animalcule con- 
 sisting of only a single cell) rejected a morsel of flint and 
 ate a diatom (a very small single-cell plant), thereby showing 
 clearly a perceptive preference. The amoeba had a need, and 
 had a motive ; and if we go higher in the scale of creatures we 
 shall find more complex needs, and higher motives. If we are 
 to inquire into the primary causes of modification of structure, 
 we can hardly make a greater mistake than by neglecting the 
 finest and subtlest elements of that being which is so intimately 
 connected with the structure, which expresses itself through the 
 structure. It may be difficult to apprehend motives, still more 
 to apprehend the workings of the animal mind through a long 
 continuance of time ; but just as we should make a great mistake, 
 in contemplating the works of man, if we ignored the labour and 
 the pain, the thoughts and the hopes, by means of which these 
 works came into existence, so we shall make a great mistake, in 
 contemplating the visible structures in which life has enshrined 
 itself, if we try to solve the question of the original formation of 
 those structures without paying regard to the deepest character- 
 istic of life, those feelings and purposes which collectively we 
 name the soul. 
 
 It will not be expected that, in the few pages which are at 
 my command, I shall do more than touch on the way in which 
 the mind and purpose of any creature may be conceived to 
 have operated towards a change of its external structure ; but 
 a few instances may be given. The first shall be from a quarter 
 where perhaps it would not be expected that any instance would
 
 i] THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN 25 
 
 be found from the history of plants. It will of course be under- 
 stood that, in using the word history, I have no thought of direct 
 evidence in my mind ; we have to be guided by inferences ; and 
 it may be useful to remark how often, in everyday experience, 
 we are accustomed to say that we see something when we are 
 really inferring something. For instance, in reading a friend's 
 hastily written letter, we shall often be compelled to infer that a 
 certain set of strokes means a word to which it has no natural 
 resemblance. * 
 
 To come to my instance in plant-history ; it is generally con- 
 ceded that in order of time, water-plants preceded land-plants ; 
 this is probable both from the shape of the earth, which must have 
 been an originally liquid mass before it was solidified, and also 
 the structural signs point to this order of development. It was 
 when land first emerged from the waters of the primaeval ocean 
 that land-plants began to be ; and how ? By the invention (if 
 I may so call it) of a root. That plant was indeed a great inventor 
 which first struck a root into the ground ! In the remote ages 
 of which I am speaking, some sea-plant (which had previously 
 derived its nurture only from waves and air and sunlight) was left 
 by the tide just below the highest high-water mark ; the water it 
 received in this way was not adequate to its needs ; it thrust 
 out a fine filament into the ground, just as heretofore it had 
 thrust out filaments into the sea ; and behold, there was water 
 underneath ! That fine filament was the first root ; it was 
 evoked by the need of the sea-plant ; the sea-plant had a motive 
 in sending it out. The habit of root-making spread among plants ; 
 the moist ground near the estuaries was soon covered with vegeta- 
 tion, and presently the drier land remote from the ocean was 
 also covered, as plants learned to thrust in their roots deeper 
 and deeper. What an accession of strength came therefrom ! 
 The solid earth in its depths proved to have treasures of nourish- 
 ment far beyond what the waves could bring ; for though the 
 first land-plants, mosses and ferns, were not greatly superior to 
 the seaweed, yet presently the great forest trees began to grow, 
 sending their tons of timber high up into the air (hundreds of 
 feet in the case of the American sequoia) ; and what comparison 
 can the limp seaweed hold with such a display of strength as 
 this ? 
 
 Land-animals were in the end fully as much superior to the 
 denizens of the sea as land-plants are to water-plants ; but it is not 
 so easy to trace their development. The first land-animals,
 
 26 THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN [CH. 
 
 the reptiles, do not appear to be greatly superior to the fishes. 
 But when warm-blooded creatures came to the front in their 
 two main divisions, birds with their power of flight, and mammalia 
 bringing forth their young alive and fostering them with a new 
 affection, then the power and range of animal life rose very 
 greatly ; but by what steps the reptile won development into 
 these two higher forms it is not easy for us to imagine. More 
 simple were two great advances made by animal life while yet 
 under the waters of the, ocean ; the winning of special senses, of 
 which sight was the most remarkable ; and the sheltering of the 
 most delicate part of the nervous system by the formation of a 
 spine. These were not aggressive advances ; they injured none ; 
 and they are of a kind peculiarly marked by receptivity. Not 
 action, but patience, must have been the most prominent neces- 
 sity while the changes were being matured ; and the patience 
 must have been deliberate. The first beginnings of sight lay in 
 the greater sensitiveness of a certain portion of the skin to the 
 waves of the heavenly ether ; this feeling must have been pleasur- 
 able in itself, before it was known to be the method by which 
 a world can be revealed to us. Receptivity is the quality indi- 
 cated by the sense of sight, as by the other senses ; and though 
 it would be an error to suppose that this receptivity was not 
 mingled with action, there must have been occasions when 
 receptivity alone was in play, while the creature was winning 
 the faculty of sight. We call sight a faculty ; but evidently 
 seeing was at first (like speech) an art, won with labour, inspired 
 by hope. Purpose there must have been in it, though purpose of 
 a much more gentle and limited character than what we generally 
 call by that name ; no creature ever thought, " I will learn to 
 see," any more than any man ever said to himself, " I will 
 learn to speak." These primitive powers are learned, but not 
 consciously learned ; the purpose of the learner is confined to 
 very small elements indeed, which only become great by accumu- 
 lation, and only after a lapse of time far exceeding the life of a 
 single individual. 
 
 So, likewise, the processes by which vertebrate creatures arose 
 out of the invertebrate must have been very gentle and slow ; 
 very small, scarcely perceptible, purposes must have been the 
 animating cause of the change. 
 
 Of developments in structure of more doubtful value, such 
 as the retractile claw of the feline genus, I need not perhaps 
 speak here.
 
 i] THE UNIVERSE IN RELATION TO MAN 27 
 
 Purpose we must conclude there is in development, in the 
 sense explained above ; but are we to acknowledge a divine 
 purpose in the whole series of growing life ? It will be pertinent, 
 in relation to this question, to quote some expressions of Charles 
 Darwin himself, who, though not feeling himself able to acknow- 
 ledge distinctly the being of God, yet was incapable of refusing 
 to express what he felt to be a genuine instinct. He wrote to 
 . Professor W. Graham : 
 
 You have expressed my inward conviction . . . that the universe is not 
 the result of chance. Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. I. p. 316. 
 
 Again, he wrote to Lord Farrer : 
 
 If we consider the whole universe, the mind refuses to look at it as the 
 outcome of chance, that is, without design and purpose. The whole 
 question seems to me insoluble, for I cannot put much or any faith in the 
 so-called intuitions of the human mind. More Letters, vol. i. p. 395. 
 
 No one ought to call that question easy, which Darwin called 
 insoluble. Nor have intuitions, unconfirmed by experience, 
 any value. Still, there are two purposes which we may fairly 
 attribute to the Divine Will, and which will indicate in some 
 measure how the Divine Will may have operated in bringing life 
 on the earth to its present state of growth ; first, the purpose 
 of strengthening all faculties which may promote living energy 
 in the whole of creation ; secondly, the purpose of uniting the 
 children of life, so that they may mutually help one another, and 
 if possible have conscious affection for one another. Religious 
 experience does, I think, confirm the reality of these divine 
 purposes.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ANCIENT RELIGION : BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 
 
 IN the foregoing chapter, I spoke of the relation of man to 
 the universe, and of the belief, which we are at liberty to enter- 
 tain, that divine and spiritual action have place in other parts 
 of the universe, besides the earth on which we live ; and of the 
 reasons why we are at liberty to entertain this belief. Moreover 
 I said that the same philosophy, which teaches us that man has 
 kinship with all other terrestrial life, leads us to believe that 
 the divine action has place in terrestrial life other than human 
 life ; and I endeavoured faintly to indicate of what nature this 
 divine action must be, in beings outside man. But it is of course 
 man in whom our religious inquiries centre ; and the beginning 
 of man dates from the time when articulate speech was first 
 fashioned into a real art, a successful faculty. Along with 
 speech, the flexible human hand and the upright human posture 
 came into being, and were causes of advance. We know that 
 during all these early periods, advance was being made, but how 
 it was made we do not know. The particulars of the advance 
 we do however to some extent know. Man discovered how to 
 kindle fire ; he learnt to make flint hatchets ; he built houses 
 and villages ; he tamed horses, and subjugated other animals, 
 partly to help him in his labours, partly to be used for food. 
 Metals were discovered and wrought into tools and weapons. 
 He snared and hunted animals, and used their skins as clothes. 
 The art of agriculture slowly began. Men formed communities ; 
 and ranks, offices, and specific duties were assigned to different 
 individuals. How greatly did man soar above the animals now ! 
 
 But of these ancient days we have no record. We may 
 conjecture the historical causes through which progress was 
 made ; but conjecture it is, not evidence. Doubtless there were 
 heroes then, wise thinkers, keen observers, tender self-sacrificing 
 women, as millennium after millennium passed by, and human
 
 CH.H] ANCIENT RELIGION: BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 29 
 
 worth increased. But neither heroes nor sages, nor women 
 worthiest of love, could in those days hand down any memorial 
 of themselves to posterity ; for even if there were poets among 
 them, as doubtless there came to be in the processes of time, 
 these poets were ever liable to be thrust out of memory by the 
 inflowing and accumulating interests of the age that succeeded 
 them, before which the remoter events of the past became pale 
 and dim. A blurred memory was preserved for a time, but 
 inevitably vanished at last. 
 
 But the time came when this defect was, in great measure 
 at any rate, to be remedied. 
 
 On a piece of mammoth tusk, preserved from a period long 
 antecedent to all written or remembered history, there still exists 
 the earliest known work of artistic representation. There, 
 rudely engraved on the tusk, is the picture of the mammoth 
 himself. Doubtless the work was done with some metallic 
 instrument ; and doubtless the carver worked it, not only for 
 the delectation of himself, but for his fellows ; and the design 
 of it was to preserve, clear and distinct, the impression which 
 the mighty beast had made on those who had seen him in the 
 flesh. In that design lay more than the beginning of the arts 
 of sculpture and painting ; there lay in it the beginning of the 
 art of writing. 
 
 As it is intelligent speech which distinguishes man from the 
 lower animals, so it is the art of writing which decisively dis- 
 tinguishes civilised man from his predecessors, even though many 
 of those predecessors were above the mere savage. After speech, 
 w r riting is the greatest invention in human history, the invention 
 which has raised man most. It would be grossly to underrate 
 its value were we to say that it has multiplied the powers of 
 man a thousandfold. Not only has the art of writing increased 
 the efficiency of human action by making it possible to communi- 
 cate thought from' a distance, but also (and this was a still greater 
 benefit) it for the first time shed illumination on the ages of the 
 past ; experience was thus handed down from age to age. No 
 more need valiant deeds and wise thoughts be forgotten ; some 
 portion of them, and a continually increasing portion, was per- 
 petuated in durable records. So, it is to be hoped, will it be for 
 ever ; though we know not how far the art of writing may be 
 transcendentalised as time goes on, or how far memory may be 
 enlarged and strengthened as we obtain fuller access to the heart 
 of all reality.
 
 30 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 We know something of the art of writing in its earlier stages. 
 It is not like the art of speech, the beginnings of which we may im- 
 perfectly imagine, but cannot know. Here we have some actual 
 evidence ; not enough for a full explanation of the details of the 
 manner in which it arose ; but enough to give us a fair notion. 
 The earliest known types of writing, the hieroglyphs of Egypt, are 
 sculptures, just like the carving on the mammoth tusk ; but with 
 a difference. The graven picture of the mammoth stood for 
 nothing but a mammoth ; but the hieroglyphic sculpture stood 
 for something beyond that which is immediately represented. 
 The sculptured figure is no longer valued for its accuracy as a 
 representation ; it is valued because, in connexion with other 
 figures, it represents a complex train of ideas, of which the greater 
 part were not actually represented, but were conveyed by natural 
 association to the mind of the beholder. This, in fact, was 
 exactly what speech had done in its appeal to the sense of hearing ; 
 the articulated sounds called up trains of ideas ; and long custom 
 made the association easy and effortless. The art of writing is 
 simply the transference of a symbol which appeals to the eye to 
 a symbol which appeals to the ear. Starting as a branch of 
 pictorial art, it became swayed and bent by a purpose remote 
 from the pictorial art, the purpose of making speech visible ; 
 and the reason why it was desired to make speech visible was 
 because impressions made on the sense of hearing could not be 
 preserved, whereas impressions made on the sense of sight could 
 be preserved. Thus, while writing began with being a set of 
 pictures, those pictures were for human convenience so trans- 
 muted, that at last they became simply representative of certain 
 sounds, the sounds used in human speech. This, though a develop- 
 ment, was not an ordinary development ; for under it, the pic- 
 torial art does not simply expand, but it is made subservient to 
 a new office altogether. Beginning with a simple appeal to the 
 sense of sight, it ends with being an appeal, through association, 
 to the sense of hearing. The mammoth carved on the tusk 
 brought the actual mammoth into the memory or imagination of 
 the beholder : the word " mammoth " as written- has no force 
 to do this ; but the written word " mammoth " brings the sound 
 of the spoken word " mammoth " before the mind of the reader, 
 and the spoken word brings the idea of the mammoth with it. 
 Even now, I believe that no person, however apt a reader, ever 
 passes at once from the sight of the written word to the thought 
 of the thing signified by it, without the intervening memory of
 
 ii] BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 31 
 
 the sound of the spoken word. That intervening memory may 
 be very slight, but I believe that it is always a part of the mental 
 process when there is real understanding of what is written. 
 
 How this most curious transmutation took place, a trans- 
 mutation not at all primarily designed, exceedingly difficult, and 
 only accomplished at last because the need of it was so great, 
 cannot be investigated here. But it is of interest to have before 
 our minds the countries in which the earliest specimens of writing 
 are found ; and these are Egypt and Babylonia. In both of these 
 countries the earliest writing has still the pictorial character 
 which reminds us of its origin, being what is called hieroglyphic ; 
 Egypt has hieroglyphs more abundantly than Babylonia, but this 
 is merely because the dry air of Egypt has preserved them better. 
 We cannot trace the art further back than the hieroglyphs of 
 Egypt and Babylonia ; but if we were asked to conjecture the 
 place of its absolute origin, the choice must lie between these 
 two countries. If the thought came before us that possibly 
 it originated in China, we should have to reflect that there are 
 no such signs of a primitive hieroglyphic origin in China as there 
 are in Egypt and Babylonia ; and moreover there is reason to 
 believe that the Chinese in their first beginnings came from 
 Central Asia, which was then very much more fertile than it is 
 now. The Chinese would then learn the art in the west, and 
 would carry it with them to the east. Then, as communication 
 between east and west became more difficult, the Chinese re- 
 mained stationary in the art as they had learned it ; they had 
 not quite the fiery progressive genius of the western nations. 
 
 The progress of writing lay through a stage in which a separate 
 sign was given to every word. That stage we still find in China 
 and Japan, but nowhere in the west ; though in the west we find 
 this approximation to it that, in some of the ancient Sumerian 
 languages which exist in cuneiform script in Babylonia and else- 
 where, we find more than six hundred separate signs, some of 
 them plainly pictorial. But the number of these signs was con- 
 tinually being reduced in the west, the pictorial element slowly 
 vanishing, and comparatively few signs being found sufficient to 
 represent all the necessary sounds of a language ; until (probably 
 through the enterprising Phoenicians) an alphabet of between 
 twenty and thirty letters was found sufficient to express to the 
 eye any spoken word. But China had stopped short long before 
 this stage was reached, the Chinese written language still requiring 
 thirty thousand signs to express all its words ; a result which is
 
 32 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 hardly conceivable, if full and free communication had existed 
 continuously between China and Western Asia. Hence it is 
 probable, as I said just now, that in primaeval days a degree of 
 communication existed between the extreme east and the extreme 
 west of Asia, which at a later time was broken off ; whether 
 through any physical change or through racial hostility, is un- 
 known to us. 
 
 Egypt and Babylonia are the countries in which the early 
 development of writing is most distinctly visible to us ; and 
 from their records we know that they were great and important 
 countries from every point of view. More than that, they were 
 distinctly religious countries. For more than four millenniums 
 before the Christian era have we some knowledge of their history ; 
 and from the earliest times religion is inwrought into its texture 
 with an assurance and a constancy which we should look for in 
 vain in the histories of to-day. It is true that their religion 
 has frequently been called " false " ; polytheistic and idolatrous 
 it certainly was, with few and doubtful exceptions. But the 
 presence of error, in these large and mysterious subjects, must 
 not be taken as proving that the whole is valueless. Who is 
 there that will refuse to acknowledge the sublimity of the feeling 
 shown in that sentence which was inscribed (as Plutarch tells 
 us) on the temple of the veiled Isis, at Sais in Egypt : 
 
 I am all that was, and that is, and that shall be ; and no mortal has 
 yet lifted up my veil. 
 
 Iii what century of Egyptian history these words were com- 
 posed is not known to us ; but the sentiment which they breathe 
 is more like the earlier than the later records ; they tell of the 
 uplifted heart, though not of the heart which prays ; yet that 
 these ancient people did pray, we know, and as much in the 
 early as in the late times. Though we have not the evidence 
 before us which alone could enable us to trace causes accu- 
 rately, we shall be disposed to believe that the Babylonians and 
 Egyptians of very ancient times derived strength from their 
 religion, with whatever errors it may have been associated ; and 
 that strength would aid in the discovery of methods by which 
 thought could be made visible to the sight and perpetuated, or 
 in other words the invention of writing. 
 
 Having said this, it is necessary to add some remarks as to 
 the conditions which must have prevailed while the invention 
 was in the process of making. It is involved in the nature of 
 the case, that during both these processes, the learning to speak
 
 n] BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 33 
 
 and the learning to write, a spirit of mutual friendliness must 
 have prevailed among those who were elaborating the art. 
 Mutual hostility would have destroyed the desire of intercommu- 
 nication, and would have greatly impeded the attention which 
 was necessary for bringing the art to perfection. Yet it is also 
 true that the earliest instances of the art of writing are generally 
 the celebration of some victory in war. But we must distinguish 
 between the invention of the art, and the use which was made 
 of it after it was invented. When it was once invented, the 
 most powerful persons would be those who would use it most ; and 
 the most powerful persons in those days would be the greatest 
 warriors. This is why the art of writing does not appear to us 
 an instance of the value of a peaceful temper, while yet in reality 
 it is so ; and for the same reason it is not to us an instance of the 
 value of religion, while yet we cannot but believe that it is so. 
 The great kings who perpetuated the memory of their victories in 
 sculptures or in hieroglyphics, and who celebrated at the same time 
 the deity by whom they believed themselves to have been favoured, 
 were not hypocrites ; and there was even something of humility 
 in their acknowledging a greater power than their own, to whom 
 they owed allegiance. But such humility is quite compatible 
 with a great deal of pride ; and as time went on, the fixity of 
 religious ceremonial became a corrupting force, which took away 
 the vitality of the true spirit. This was what wrought the down- 
 fall of both the Babylonian and the Egyptian states (and of the 
 Assyrian too, though that was less early in the field, and had 
 , less seminative power) ; their external splendour proved to the 
 detriment of their internal life. Polytheism, though an error, 
 was an error that might in itself have been overcome ; but when 
 polytheism was enshrined in massive temples, made vivid to the 
 imaginations of men by sculptured images, confirmed by powerful 
 priesthoods and a stately ritual, and finally taken by despotic 
 monarchs as one of the great supports of their monarchy, it became 
 impossible for pure religion to vivify these immense bulwarks of 
 established error. Decadence was inevitable for them ; and by 
 the year 500 before Christ both Babylon and Egypt had lost the 
 living energy which had once been so strong in them ; they 
 were as salt that had lost its savour ; they were trodden underfoot 
 of men. Assyria had perished more utterly even than they, 
 and a century earlier. 
 
 Yet for the sake of their ancient history, Babylonia and 
 Egypt deserve to be remembered. The most ancient of all 
 
 M. D. A.
 
 34 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 countries that have any history whatever, we can hardly doubt 
 that to them the art of writing was mainly due, though it may 
 have been perfected by the Phoenicians ; and the invention of it 
 is a title to honour which can never be effaced. They were 
 consumed by the fierceness of their own energy ; whereas the 
 milder flame of Chinese civilisation has subsisted up to the 
 present day. 
 
 After all, Babylonia did not entirely succumb ; for from 
 
 Babylonia came Abraham, the author of true monotheism in 
 
 ^the world, as I shall endeavour to show when I come to the 
 
 narrative of the real centre of the religious forces of the world. 
 
 < And though Moses, the great successor of Abraham, was not a 
 
 product of Egypt, he was greatly helped by Egypt. 
 
 But before coming to this central religious history, it is desir- 
 able that a glance should be cast on those great countries which 
 we call heathen, but which have been true lights to the world 
 in their several capacities, and which have not lost their worth 
 even at the present day. Of Babylonia and Egypt, interesting 
 though they are, I need say no more ; but ancient India, ancient 
 Persia, ancient China, ancient Greece and Rome, are still powers 
 in the world ; the writings of their ancient representatives are 
 of singular force and beauty ; their religious temper, though 
 imperfect in various ways, is still capable of giving us instruction ; 
 we must certainly not neglect them, though it was not by them 
 that real penetration into the invisible sphere was accomplished. 
 
 Of the five countries just named, it will be best to begin with 
 India ; tor though Chinese history reaches farther back than 
 Indian history (and probably too Chinese literature farther back 
 than Indian literature), yet India and Persia can hardly be 
 dissevered, and India and Persia together have connexions 
 with Babylonia which it will be well not to ignore ; although 
 India by itself might be considered as purely separate. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact, that our knowledge of the earliest 
 history of India is obtained simply and solely by inference from 
 the language in which the sacred books of the Hindus are written. 
 That language is Sanskrit ; and Sanskrit is so nearly related, 
 / both to the language in which the sacred books of Persia are 
 written, and also to Greek and Latin, as almost to compel us to 
 assume a common ancestry for the nations who spoke those 
 languages. We cannot indeed absolutely infer identity of race 
 from similarity of language ; but the inference, where nothing 
 exists to make it improbable, cannot be deprived of force. It
 
 n] BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 35 
 
 is probable, at all events, that some of the ancestors of the ancient 
 Hindus lived side by side with some of the ancestors of the 
 ancient Persians, Greeks, and Romans, in a common country ; 
 and the tendency of recent inquiry has been (on what are called 
 archaeological grounds, that is, the actual remains of men and 
 men's work found in the soil) to locate this country somewhere 
 towards the north-west of Europe. Of the migrations which 
 ensued from this beginning we know nothing whatever from any 
 relic of ancient writing, hieroglyph, or sculpture ; that there 
 were such migrations is the sum of our knowledge ; and this, 
 on the whole, is due to philological science, and is its greatest 
 triumph. Other languages, which it is not necessary here to 
 name, belong to the same group as those just mentioned ; and 
 the common race marked out by these kindred languages is 
 called the Aryan race, or " the race of nobles," as they proudly 
 termed themselves. The countries along which the current of 
 the Aryan peoples swept were thus on the whole to the north 
 of those in which the more stationary Semitic races (Babylonian 1 , 
 Palestinian, Arabic) lived ; it was only in Persia and India that 
 the Aryan races approached the tropical regions of the earth. 
 
 Not only is historical evidence (in the proper sense of that 
 word) absent as regards the first beginnings of the Aryan Hindus ; 
 it is also absent in a most singular degree from the entire litera- 
 ture of India for more than a thousand years after its first begin- 
 ning. In ancient India we have the remarkable phenomenon 
 of a race full of thought, feeling, and religious aspiration, a race, 
 too, capable of framing a complex legal system, in which never- 
 theless the very conception of a historical narrative had not 
 arisen. The Rig-Veda, the earliest of all Hindu compositions, 
 is a collection of religious hymns ; the Atharva-Veda adds 
 religious incantations and charms to the hymnology ; the Brah- 
 manas are a collection of ritualistic rules, interspersed with 
 legends ; the Upanishads are an elaborate, though infor- 
 mal, philosophical scheme ; the Code of Manu is a legislative, 
 but also a semi-religious work ; the Ramayana and Maha- 
 bharata are epic poems, out of which grains of history may be 
 gathered. But not one scrap of genuine historical writing is 
 to be found in all that immense literature ; save in so far as 
 oral traditions of the Buddhists, which no doubt have a historical 
 
 1 The Babylonians were at first of the Surnerian race ; the Semitic race invaded 
 the country afterwards ; and whatever the admixture of races, the Semitic language 
 became dominant. 
 
 3 2
 
 36 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 character, and which were first set down in writing in the second 
 century before the Christian era, constitute an exception. But 
 the Brahmanic or main current of Hindu literature is (up to 
 the Christian era at all events) totally devoid of historical works ; 
 and this resulted from various causes. In the first place, the 
 art of writing was late in its introduction into India. " Before 
 the first spreading of Buddhism in India," says Max Miiller 
 (History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 507), " writing for 
 literary purposes was absolutely unknown " ; that is, it was abso- 
 lutely unknown till the fifth century before Christ. The absolute 
 first introduction of writing into India is however now put in the 
 eighth century B.C. ; but even after the art of writing was known, 
 the use of it was looked upon with the greatest suspicion by the 
 Brahmins ; thus we read in the Maha-bharata, " Those who sell 
 the Vedas, and even those who write them, those also who defile 
 them, they shall go to hell." (Max Miiller, op. cit. p. 502). 
 
 Without the art of writing, history must always be of an im- 
 perfect character ; for the comparison of authorities is generally 
 impossible unless those authorities have given their testimony 
 in writing. But if we look further into the matter, we shall 
 see that there was a yet deeper reason why the Hindu mind 
 did not produce histories ; and this was because the Hindu 
 mind acquired from a very early period an introspective bent, 
 and while cultivating extraordinary subtlety in abstract spiritual 
 inquiries, disregarded external research almost entirely. Thus 
 it will be seen that the very absence of historical works in Hindu 
 literature is eloquent as to the character of the people ; they 
 were spiritually active and originative, outwardly passive and 
 uninventive. It is indeed probable that the Hindu mind made 
 one invention of real importance for the well-being of mankind, 
 the invention of those figures which we call Arabic, which have 
 been of such power in facilitating numerical calculations (taken 
 in connexion with the place-value of figures in the decimal nota- 
 tion) ; but the invention is one which belongs to the least material 
 and most abstract side of knowledge, and it does not belong to 
 the period before the Christian era. 
 
 When then we try to discover what happened in the successive 
 epochs of Indian history before the Christian era, our conclusions 
 have in the main to be drawn from indirect sources. Philology 
 is our first informant, geography our second ; for from the 
 mention of rivers in the successive treatises above mentioned, 
 we may trace the gradual progress of the Aryan race after it
 
 ii] BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 37 
 
 crossed the northern mountain-barrier. First came the move- 
 ment into the valleys of the Indus and its tributaries ; onwards 
 then into the plains of the Ganges and the Jumna ; onwards 
 again into yet further regions of the east and the south. Other 
 inferences are to be drawn from the character and the subject 
 matter of the treatises ; from the whole a brief but significant 
 story may be evolved. The Aryans with whom the story is con- 
 cerned were moulded by the conditions in which they found 
 themselves into so different a likeness from the ancient Greeks 
 and Romans, that we could hardly conceive the stock to be the 
 same, had we not the languages to give evidence to it, and did 
 we not know the gradual transformation of character which took 
 place in those who migrated into the great southern peninsula. 
 
 The Aryan Hindus (and the word " Hindus " implies a home 
 near the river Indus) must have been a nation of warriors in 
 their first beginnings. This lay in the nature of the case ; for 
 they were winning land for themselves ; not indeed in the tornado 
 fashion of the Mongols in after ages, but slowly and surely, like 
 the Saxons in our own country, when they beat back the Britons. 
 The hymns of the Rig-Veda supply references to these wars of 
 the Aryans with the ruder tribes whom they were supplanting ; 
 but it must be noted that war, even at this early period, was 
 not the topic which most animated the spirits of this conquering 
 race. Religion was the theme of the earliest Hindu song ; \ 
 religion, in one of its most natural forms, though not the deepest 
 or truest ; the awe which man feels before the great powers of 
 nature, the belief that behind each manifestation of these powers ; 
 a personal spirit lies hidden, and the worship of these personal 
 spirits. That is the main, though not the only, theme of the ' 
 Rig-Veda ; and it is treated with a primitive simplicity unri- 
 valled in any other literature 1 . Ancestor worship, so powerful 
 in China, is here subordinate. It is the great dome of the 
 sky ; the mighty sun, and all the power inherent in fire ; the 
 storm-winds, and the beneficent rains ; the intoxicating Soma- 
 plant ; these are the chief deities of the Aryan Hindus in their 
 earliest known phase. But the stars are not greatly honoured ; 
 
 1 " Vedic mythology," says Professor Macdonell, " occupies a very important 
 position in the study of the history of religions. Its oldest source presents to us an 
 earlier stage in the evolution of beliefs based on the personification and worship of 
 natural phenomena, than any other literary monument of the world. To this oldest 
 phase can be traced by uninterrupted development the germs of the religious beliefs 
 of the great majority of the modern Indians, the only branch of the Indo-European 
 race in which its original nature worship has not been entirely supplanted many 
 centuries ago by a foreign monotheistic faith." Vedic Mythology, by A. A. Macdonell, 
 p. 2.
 
 38 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 they 1 " slink off like thieves " before the sun-god. They are 
 not worshipped in their own nature at all, nor are they felt to 
 have power over men ; imagination had not yet invested them 
 with artificial authority. Neither is the moon, or even the earth, 
 greatly worshipped at present ; yet the earth in some degree 
 perhaps 2 ; but nowise comparably to the sun, the storm-winds, 
 or the rain. The most powerful natural forces were the chief 
 objects of worship to the primitive Aryan Hindus ; and for such 
 a worship no very complex imagination was needed, in which 
 respect this early religion differed very remarkably from the 
 Hindu religion of later days. These natural forces were of 
 course personified ; the sun under the greatest variety of names, 
 Savitri, Surya, Pushan, Vishnu, &c. ; the heaven in all its com- 
 plex character is Varuna, to whom also moral attributes belong 
 more fully and specifically than to any other deity 3 ; with Varuna 
 is associated Mitra, the deity of the solar light ; Agni is the god 
 of fire ; Indra governs the lower sky, with its clouds and fostering 
 rains ; the Maruts are the storm- winds. 
 
 A simple-minded race were they to whom the religion just 
 described was acceptable. It might seem that they hardly needed 
 a formal priestly class ; yet a formal priestly class did arise 
 among them ; and then by slow degrees a formal partition of 
 society into ranks, whereby the whole mind and character of 
 this part of the Aryan race underwent a complete metamorphosis. 
 They who had been mere warriors became at length a nation in 
 which thought, not action, was predominant, and thought the 
 most subtle, mingled with imaginations the most fantastic, to 
 be found in any community under the sun. 
 
 It happened somewhat in this way. The further the Aryan 
 race penetrated into India, the less able were they entirely to 
 drive out or abolish the dark-skinned races which had occupied 
 the land before them. (Some of these races, especially the 
 Dravidian, were of a high type and far from wanting in intellec- 
 tual power.) Thus then the fair-skinned Aryans were compelled 
 to settle down side by side with the dark races ; it is true, those 
 dark-skinned races were their inferiors, and were generally 
 enslaved by them, but hardly ever exterminated. In the desire 
 of the Aryans to keep their own higher type uncontaminated 
 the institution of caste began. (Significant of this origin is the 
 
 1 See the passage quoted by Monier Williams on the 19th page of his Indian 
 Wisdom. 
 
 * See Indian Wisdom, p. 14. 
 
 * See Macdonell's Vedic Mythology, p. 26.
 
 n] BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 39 
 
 fact that the word for caste in the Laws of Maim is varna, colour.) 
 But meanwhile other causes had tended to deepen the distinction 
 between the different classes of the Aryans themselves. In their 
 original habitation we may infer that priest and warrior and 
 husbandman had grown to be more or less distinct, since we 
 find such a distinction prevailing among their kindred the Per- 
 sians (including in the term " Persians " all the inhabitants of 
 the country between the borders of India and the rivers Tigris 
 and Euphrates). But in India the distinction had been deepened. 
 How this happened, is matter of conjecture ; but we may well 
 conceive that the hot climate of India slackened the energy of 
 the fighting class, and gave an introspective bias to the medita- 
 tions of the ministers of religion ; so that the dignity of the priests 
 was raised and their peculiar character was emphasised ; while 
 at the same time the warriors, though less warlike, would not 
 be less typically warriors than they had been before. At all 
 events at the close of the Rig- Veda period (possibly 800 B.C., 
 but dates are most uncertain elements in Indian history) we find 
 the four castes clearly named, and the Brahmin or priestly caste 
 at the head of them ; though how strict the separation was in 
 those days between priest, warrior, and husbandman, it is im- 
 possible for us to say. The passage in the Big-Veda here referred 
 to is in the 90th hymn of the tenth Mandala ; in which, after 
 describing mythically how the first man was divided by the 
 Gods into four parts, the poet says : 
 
 The Brahmin was his mouth, the kingly soldier was made his arms, 
 the husbandman his thighs, the servile Sudra issued from his feet. Indian 
 Wisdom, p. 25. 
 
 It is clear that the fourth caste, the " Servile Sudra," is 
 greatly inferior to the other three ; and we must conclude (as 
 was said above) that this was a result of the Sudras being a 
 conquered race. 
 
 But what were the means by which the Brahmins attained 
 their superiority over the warrior caste, the Kshatriyas (to use 
 the Hindu term) ? Partly no doubt it was from the cause 
 already indicated, the greater tendency towards internal medita- 
 tion and the corresponding diminution of external action ; but 
 another cause, and one unfortunately detrimental to the well- 
 being of the entire people, lay in the excessive multiplication of 
 religious performances, charms, rites, and ceremonies, in the 
 interest of the Brahmin or priestly class. Good and evil were 
 commingled in the Hindu religion, as in all other religions,
 
 40 ANCIENT RELIGION: [OH. 
 
 and in all the affairs of men ; and in the present instance both 
 the good and the evil tended to the exaltation of the priestly 
 class. On the side of good must be mentioned the spiritual 
 fervour of the Brahmins ; their gradual approximation to the 
 doctrine of a single divine power immanent in the universe ; 
 their ethical doctrine that self-denial was the right way of life. 
 They erred however in that they did not think of divine love as 
 the power capable of saving men ; and prayer and self-denial 
 were more and more conceived as agencies producing their 
 result by a sort of mechanical compulsion. The gods themselves 
 were believed to pray, and to win power by praying, as by a 
 sort of compulsory charm ; and since the original meaning of 
 " brahma " is " prayer," the highest god (named in early days 
 Prajapati) was in the end named Brahma, or in other words 
 prayer itself was sublimated into a deity. To this mixture of 
 good and evil on the side of doctrine corresponded a good and an 
 evil on the side of practice. Refinement increased, and tempers 
 grew milder ; but the Brahmin also grew more greedy of the gain 
 which the sacrifices brought him, and the Kshatriya dared not 
 lessen his sacrificial duties by one jot or one tittle. From the 
 Rig-Veda indeed one could not have inferred this ; but the 
 Atharva-Veda with its abundance of magical rites is clearly in- 
 dicative of it, and in the Brahmanas it stares one in the face. 
 " Like sacrifice to the gods are the fees paid to the human gods 
 the priests " so says the Satapatha Brahmana 1 ; and the 
 complexity of gods and of sacrifices grew continually greater. 
 Strange it is to reflect that while the subtle reasoning of Hindu 
 theologians was continually drawing them nearer to the truth of 
 the essential unity of the Deity (a doctrine embraced by them 
 first as theism, afterwards as pantheism), the practice of the 
 priests continually drew them more and more in the direction 
 of a fantastic polytheism ; but the causes of both tendencies 
 are sufficiently apparent, and subtle intellects rarely find it 
 difficult to reconcile the irreconcilable. Thus it was that the 
 Brahmins in the end overmastered the warrior caste, and made 
 themselves the real rulers of Aryan India. We need not suppose, 
 nor is it at all probable, that they won their predominance by 
 material fighting ; though statements implying this appear in 
 the great epics, which are comparatively late. 
 
 Meanwhile the Aryan conquerors had been spreading from 
 west to east, till they were in touch with the Bay of Bengal ; but 
 
 1 Quoted by Dr Hopkins in The Religions of India, p. 17!).
 
 ii] BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 41 
 
 it would hardly seem that they had penetrated south of the 
 Vindhya hills, or in other words into the true peninsular 
 part of India, when the real philosophy of the Hindu religion 
 received clear form in the Upanishads. As the Rig- Veda 
 represents the primary natural religion of the Aryan Hindus ; 
 as the Atharva-Veda represents this religion obscured by their 
 first natural superstition ; as the Brahmanas represent their 
 complex ceremonial organisation ; so the Upanishads represent 
 the culmination of their philosophy. It would appear at first 
 sight as if these four branches of thought and practice might 
 have arisen at the same time, for the parts of human nature 
 to which they appeal are different and are all real ; but as a 
 matter of fact their contents show that they arose on the whole 
 in the order just named ; though there was a good deal of over- 
 lapping, and no actual date must be pressed. Speaking loosely, 
 we may say that this whole range of literature occupied the best 
 part of a thousand years in its production, from 1500 B.C. to 
 500 B.C., and that the close of the Upanishads coincides very 
 nearly with the rise of Buddhism. And as the literature here 
 mentioned (together with the Laws of Manu) constitutes the most 
 important part of the pre-Christian Hindu literature (not including 
 the writings of the Buddhists under that appellation), it will be 
 well if I illustrate by a few quotations the progress of the highest 
 thought and feeling as shown in these works. Pure Theism is 
 expressed in one of the hymns of the Rig-Veda ; a late hymn, 
 possibly, as compared with the rest of that collection ; but still 
 very early. I quote the translation of part of it given in Max 
 Miiller's Ancient Sanskrit Literature (p. 569) : 
 
 In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light He was the 
 only born Lord of all that is. He stablished the earth, and this sky ; 
 Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 
 
 He who gives life, He who gives strength ; whose blessing all the 
 bright Gods desire ; whose shadow is immortality ; whose shadow is 
 death ; Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 
 
 He who through his power is the only King of the breathing and 
 awakening world ; He who governs all, man and beast ; Who is the 
 God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 
 
 He whose power these snowy mountains, whose power the sea pro- 
 claims, with the distant river ; He whose these regions are, as it were his 
 two arms ; Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 
 
 Five stanzas more are in the same vein ; and then comes 
 a tenth stanza, in which it is affirmed that Prajapati (i.e. the 
 Lord of all creatures) is the God to whom sacrifices must be
 
 42 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 offered, and from whom we ask wealth. This last stanza is 
 often thought to be a later addition. It is a question of feeling 
 more than of evidence ; something might perhaps be said for its 
 genuineness 1 . Prajapati, though the oldest name for the Supreme 
 Being, is probably not so old as some names of the more special 
 deities. In this poem Hindu Theism reaches its high-water 
 mark ; pantheism is not hinted at in it, and polytheism is quite 
 in the background ; the one Creator occupies the whole soul of 
 the poet. 
 
 For a moment then, the religious consciousness of India rested 
 in that belief which is the foundation of all true religion, the belief 
 in a Creative Spirit from whom all that exists has received its life 
 and being, by whom all that exists is guided and governed. Such 
 a belief naturally leads to action, and receives its interpretation 
 through action ; but if action be relaxed, the belief in God sinks 
 into that passive contemplation of divine motions pervading the 
 universe which is known as the belief in pantheism. Action 
 did become relaxed among the Hindus, as in the intense heat 
 of that climate was not unnatural ; pantheistic belief followed, 
 and appeared the highest attainment of human reason ; and while 
 among the multitude this lofty contemplation was impossible, 
 the multitude were incapable of rising to true belief in God, and 
 sank again into that polytheism which imaginative but un- 
 reasoning minds so naturally embrace. It was not quite the 
 same as the primitive nature worship ; but it was no advance on 
 that ancient view. 
 
 At the very end of the Rig -Veda pantheism appears. Perhaps 
 most distinctly in the hymn which is numbered as Mandala, x. 90, 
 and which is called the Purusha-sukta ; but the remarkable 
 hymn in which the creation of the world is described (Mandala, x. 
 129) gives more idea of that speculative process which has so much 
 natural affinity with pantheistic belief, and which stands so very 
 far apart from the practical conduct of life. Let the reader bear 
 in mind the first chapter of Genesis, and mark the contrast with 
 the hymn now to be quoted, which deals with precisely the same 
 subject 2 : 
 
 In the beginning there was neither nought nor aught, 
 Then there was neither sky nor atmosphere above. 
 What then enshrouded all this teeming universe ? 
 In the receptacle of what was it contained ? 
 
 1 Professor Mardonell assumes it to be genuine (Vedic Mythology, p. 119). 
 1 I quote it from the Indian Wisdom of Monier Williams, p. 22.
 
 H] BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 43 
 
 Was it enveloped in the gulf profound of water ? 
 
 Then there was neither death nor immortality, 
 
 Then there was neither day, nor night, nor light, nor darkness, 
 
 Only the Existent One breathed calmly, self-contained. 
 
 Nought else than him there was ; nought else above, beyond. 
 
 Then first came darkness hid in darkness, gloom in gloom. 
 
 Next all was water, all a chaos indiscreet, 
 
 In which the One lay void, shrouded in nothingness. 
 
 Then turning inwards he by self-developed force 
 
 Of inner fervour and intense abstraction, grew. 
 
 And now in him Desire, the primal germ of mind, 
 
 Arose, which learned men, profoundly searching, say 
 
 Is the first subtle bond, connecting Entity 
 
 With nullity. This ray that kindled dormant life, 
 
 Where was it then ? before ? or was it found above ? 
 
 Were there parturient powers and latent qualities, 
 
 And fecund principles beneath, and active forces 
 
 That energized aloft ? Who knows ? Who can declare ? 
 
 How and from what has sprung this Universe ? the gods 
 
 Themselves are subsequent to its development. 
 
 Who, then, can penetrate the secret of its rise ? 
 
 Whether 'twas framed or not, made or not made ; he only 
 
 Who in the highest heaven sits, the omniscient lord 
 
 Assuredly knows all, or haply knows he not. 
 
 Profound meditation there is in that passage, a profound 
 sense of mystery ; but there is not the feeling of awe before 
 a Creative Power greater than oneself. In the book of Genesis 
 the reverse is the case ; the writer of Genesis is full of awe before 
 God ; but the mystery of Creation is not dwelt upon ; his mood 
 is affirmative, not meditative. With all the inaccuracies in detail 
 of the first chapter of Genesis (inaccuracies hardly to be avoided 
 when that book was written) the writer has firm hold in his feelings 
 of where the creative power lies ; it lies in God ; after that has 
 been acknowledged, all other feeling is swallowed up in trust and 
 awe. But the Hindu philosopher has no sense of the value of 
 trust ; he does not know how intimately trust is connected with 
 all fruitful action ; and the chief reason of his ignorance is because 
 he has come to undervalue action ; for it is in action that trust 
 becomes necessary. The Hindu philosopher throws all his force 
 into meditation : yet he is in presence of a problem not to be 
 solved by meditation. All he can do is to make us feel that 
 we are looking into a profound depth, in which there is but a 
 spark or two on which our vision can rest determinately. The 
 feeling produced is impressive, but there is little fruitfumess in 
 the method ; it has but superficial effect in framing society. 
 
 Thus, then, at the time when the first period of Hindu thought
 
 44 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 and action was closing, the period signalised by those lyrical 
 hymns called the Rig- Veda, a habit of life had been entered upon, 
 in which action was too little prominent, thought too much. 
 Yet in some form or other action must take place ; and this was 
 exactly the opportunity for priests to enter in with ritual and 
 services, sacrifices and forms of expiation. This ceremonial 
 religion is the main theme of the collection called the Brahmanas ; 
 but earlier than the Brahmanas is the collection called the Atharva- 
 Veda, in which charms and incantations are predominant, a 
 practice of the least commendable kind. In short, the warrior 
 race which had entered India from the north-west centuries before, 
 and was then full of forward-pushing energy, had now lost its 
 old temper, and had taken instead a mood of mystical acquies- 
 cence, and of subservience to occult powers. It is significant that 
 at the same time idols begin to appear in religious worship. 
 Possibly even the Rig- Veda, in one passage, mentions an idol ; 
 at least this is the natural interpretation of the following words : 
 
 Who will buy this my Indra for ten cows ? When he has slain his foes 
 he may give him back to me 1 . 
 
 The Brahmanas again, in their later parts, recognise idols. 
 Thus the polytheism of the lower classes among the Hindus was 
 not tending to better things ; it was on that downward course, 
 which ultimately produced the worship of Siva or Seeva (whom 
 English readers of Southey's Kehama will well remember) ; from 
 which source fear was engendered, affecting all the thoughts of 
 men respecting supernatural things. 
 
 But the higher members of the race were not decadent. The 
 worship of Siva does not enter into the Upanishads. That great 
 treatise, or series of treatises, exhibits the highest effort of the 
 Hindu mind to define the relation between man and the Infinite 
 Creative Power from whom man has derived his being, and under 
 whose superintendence the universe lies. The Upanishads take 
 up the question which the Rig-Veda in its closing hymns had 
 propounded, and endeavour to give this question a full answer. 
 The answer thus given is the product of deep meditation and 
 labour ; it merits the attention of philosophers ; but it is involved 
 in this radical weakness, that it assumes intellectual thought, 
 and not love and trust, to be the final revealer of the spiritual 
 unity of all things. The result of this was that conduct, or the 
 ordinary action of men in the world, was undervalued ; it would 
 
 1 Rig-Veda, iv. 24. 10. I take the quotation from Macdonell's Vedic Mythology, 
 p. 155, as also the statement about the Brahmanas.
 
 n] BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 45 
 
 not be correct to say that conduct is ignored by Hindu thinkers, 
 but the place which it holds is subordinate. In all this the con- 
 trast between the Hindu mind and the Israelite mind (which was 
 engaged about the same time in the attempt to solve the same 
 question) is most striking. 
 
 A few passages from the Upanishads will illustrate in a more 
 precise manner the teaching briefly characterised in the above 
 sentences. The first passage that I will quote is a command to 
 believe, and a command what to believe. 
 
 Man is a creature of will. According to what his will is in this world, 
 so will he be when he has departed this life. Let him therefore have this 
 will and belief : The intelligent, whose body is spirit, whose form is light, 
 whose thoughts are true, whose nature is like ether (omnipresent and 
 invisible), from whom all works, all desires, all sweet odours and tastes 
 proceed ; he who embraces all this, who never speaks, and is never sur- 
 prised, he is myself within the heart, smaller than a corn of rice, smaller 
 than a corn of barley, smaller than a mustard seed, smaller than a canary 
 seed or the kernel of a canary seed. He also is myself within the heart, 
 greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greater than heaven, greater 
 than all these worlds. He from whom all works, all desires, all sweet 
 odours and tastes proceed, who embraces all this, who never speaks and 
 who is never surprised, he, my self within the heart, is that Brahman. 
 When I shall have departed from hence, I shall obtain him (that Self). 
 He who has this faith has no doubt ; thus said Sandilya, yea, thus he said. 
 Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. p. 48. 
 
 " Brahman " and " Self " have the same meaning in the above 
 passage, and both are identified with Absolute Being ; we might 
 almost sum up the meaning of the passage thus : " The Absolute 
 exists in man." But the Hindu philosopher is aware that man 
 in his present state does not realise the existence in himself, 
 in his own sensuous nature, of the Absolute ; man has to be taught 
 to realise it ; and the following passage gives some idea of the 
 manner in which the instruction is to be conveyed ; it is a dialogue 
 between an instructor and his pupil : 
 
 " When one attends on a tutor (spiritual guide), then one believes. 
 One who does not attend on a tutor, does not believe. Only he who 
 attends, believes. This attention on a tutor, however, we must desire 
 to understand." 
 
 " Sir, I desire to understand it." 
 
 " When one performs all sacred duties " [the duties of a student, such 
 as restraint of the senses, concentration of the mind, &c. so Max Miiller 
 explains the words of the original] " then one attends really on a tutor. 
 One who does not perform his duties, does not really attend on a tutor. 
 Only he who performs his duties, attends on his tutor. This performance 
 of duties, however, we must desire to understand." 
 
 " Sir, I desire to understand it."
 
 46 ANCIENT RELIGION: [OH. 
 
 " When one obtains bliss (in oneself) then one performs duties. One 
 who does not obtain bliss, does not perform duties. Only he who obtains 
 bliss, performs duties. This bliss, however, we must desire to understand." 
 
 " Sir, I desire to understand it." 
 
 " The Infinite is bliss. There is no bliss in anything finite. Infinity 
 only is bliss. This Infinity, however, we must desire to understand." 
 
 " Sir, I desire to understand it." 
 
 " When one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, understands nothing 
 else, that is the Infinite. When one sees something else, hears something 
 else, understands something else, that is the finite. Tho Infinite is im- 
 mortal, the finite is mortal." 
 
 " Sir, in what does the Infinite rest ? " 
 
 " In its own greatness, or not even in greatness. In the world they 
 call cows and horses, elephants and gold, slaves, wives, fields and houses, 
 greatness. I do not mean this. . . .The Infinite indeed is below, above, 
 behind, before, right and left it is indeed all this. Now follows the 
 explanation of the Infinite as the I : I am below, I am above, I am behind, 
 before, right and left I am all this. Next follows the explanation of 
 the Infinite as the Self : Self is below above, behind, before, right and 
 left Self is all this. He who sees, perceives, and understands this, loves 
 the Self, delights in the Self, revels in the Self, rejoices in the Self he 
 becomes a Svaraj (an autocrat or selfruler) ; he is lord and master in all 
 the worlds. But those who think differently from this, live in perishable 
 worlds, and have other beings for their rulers." Sacred Books of the East, 
 vol. I. pp. 122-124. 
 
 An intelligent reader of the above passage must be divided 
 between admiration of the wonderful subtlety of it, and a sense 
 that the subtlety is wrongly directed. It will be observed that 
 in the whole passage not only is no harmony obtained between 
 man in his moods of desire and labour, patience and courage, 
 as shown in ordinary life, and the thinker who transcends ordinary 
 life for the sake of divine hopes and divine experiences ; but such 
 harmony is from the outset regarded as impossible. The thinker 
 is represented as deserting the finite in order to obtain the infinite. 
 Cows and horses belong to the finite, my true self belongs to the 
 infinite ; the absolutely right course is for me to desert my cows 
 and horses and attend solely to my true self. Yes, and the 
 absolutely right course will be for me to desert my wife too ; 
 so did the great Hindu sage Yajnavalkya, whose affection for his 
 wife Maitreyi could not for a moment be doubted. He told her, 
 before he left her for ever, that the cause of his love for her lay 
 in his love for the greater or Absolute Self ; therefore he must 
 follow that love which was causative of all other love. 
 
 Now it is true that some Christian mystics have said words 
 and done deeds not quite dissimilar to those of Yajnavalkya, 
 and that even some words of Jesus Christ himself might appear
 
 n] BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 47 
 
 to set the finite and the infinite at variance with one another 
 and to recommend the desertion of all things belonging to this 
 world for the sake of a mystical union with the Divine Being. 
 But this is not the real teaching of Jesus Christ, when all his 
 sayings are considered. The main current of Biblical teaching, 
 most undoubted in the Old Testament, and really adhered to 
 in the New, in spite of some difficulties occasioned by the con- 
 templation of eternal life, is to represent the finite as sustained 
 by the Infinite, fed from the Infinite, tending towards the Infinite ; 
 not as being in opposition to the Infinite. In that petition of 
 the Lord's prayer, " Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven," 
 it is assumed that our ordinary earthly life may present the pattern 
 of the divine life ; there is no abandonment of our ordinary life 
 assumed or recommended. One must not deny that there has 
 been an element in the Christian belief and practice of the past 
 which may fairly be put as parallel with the doctrine of the 
 Upanishads, and with the practice which resulted from that 
 doctrine among the Hindus ; but it has not been the leading, 
 central, and finally dominant doctrine and practice of Christians 1 . 
 Nor, it is fair to say, are the Upanishads on their side devoid 
 of passages which mitigate the extreme doctrine of deserting the 
 finite in order to be absorbed into the infinite. But their extreme 
 doctrine has been followed among Hindus for a length of time 
 and with a severity of practice beyond any parallel that could 
 be adduced from the history of Christianity. With what severity 
 it has been followed will be seen by the extracts that I will now 
 quote from Monier Williams : 
 
 The aim of the Yoga is to teach the means by which the human soul 
 may attain complete union with the supreme Soul. This fusion or union 
 of individual with universal spirit may be effected even in the body. . . . 
 
 In the Sakuntald (act vii. verse 175) there is a description of an 
 ascetic engaged in Yoga, whose condition of fixed trance and immovable 
 impassiveness has lasted so long that ants had thrown up a mound as high 
 as his waist without being disturbed, and birds had built their nests in 
 the long clotted tresses of his tangled hair. This may be thought a mere 
 flight of poetical fancy, but a Mohammedan traveller, whose narrative 
 is quoted by Mr Mill (British India, I. 355) once actually saw a man in 
 India standing motionless with his face turned towards the sun. The 
 same traveller, having occasion to revisit the same spot sixteen years 
 afterwards, found the very same man in the very same attitude. Such 
 men have been known to fix their gaze on the sun's disk till sight has 
 
 1 The question whether the New Testament commands or favours asceticism is 
 of course different from the question whether Christians in any age have actually 
 been ascetics. The former is the more important question ; but I must not say more 
 on the point here.
 
 48 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 been extinguished. This is paralleled by a particular form of austerity 
 described in Manu, vi. 23, where mention is made of the Pahda-tapas, a 
 Yogi who during the three hottest months (April, May and June), sits 
 between four blazing fires placed towards the four quarters, with the 
 burning sun above his head to form a fifth. In fact, a Yogi was actually 
 seen not long ago (Mill's India, i. 353) seated between four such fires on 
 a quadrangular stage. He stood on one leg gazing at the sun while these 
 fires were lighted at the four corners. Then placing himself upright on 
 his head, with his feet elevated in the air, he remained for three hours in 
 that position. He then seated himself cross-legged and continued bearing 
 the raging heat of the sun above his head and the fires which surrounded 
 him till the end of the day, occasionally adding combustibles with his 
 own hands to increase the flames. Indian Wisdom, pp. 102, 104-5. 
 
 I do not think that any one, who compares the actual practice 
 of the Yogis as here described with the precepts laid down in the 
 dialogue quoted from the Upanishads, will doubt that there is 
 some real causative connexion between the precepts and the 
 practice. It is true that the Yogis, over and above thSir desire 
 of being united with the Divine Being, had also a belief that the 
 pain of their asceticism deserved and would receive a reward 
 hereafter ; but the Upanishads teach the value of penance 
 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xv. pp. 64-66) and the reward of 
 good works, so that on this side also precept and practice are 
 connected. Yet we cannot but ask the question : Would the 
 authors of the Upanishads have approved of the practice of the 
 Yogis ? We can hardly think so. Though their teaching led 
 in that direction, yet all teaching ought to be received with 
 intelligence (cum grano salis) sufficiently to prevent the accept- 
 ance of preposterous conclusions which appear to be logical. 
 There is in the Upanishads human feeling, much recognition of the 
 value of affection, even some recognition of the love of God as 
 a motive. When, in the Katha-Upanishad, Nakiketas has been 
 devoted to death by his angry father, he goes to the house of 
 Yama or Death, and never thinks of asking for his own life, 
 but the first gift he asks for is that his father may be free from 
 anger towards him. Again, for a milder exposition of philo- 
 sophical doctrine than that contained in the dialogue between 
 teacher and pupil above quoted, take the following : 
 
 That (the Brahman) is the true Brahma-city, (not the body). In it 
 all desires are contained. It is the Self, free from sin, free from old age, 
 from death and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing 
 but what it ought to desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to 
 imagine. . . .Those who depart from hence, after having discovered the 
 Self and those true desires, for them there is freedom in all the worlds. 
 Sacred Books of the East, vol. I. pp. 120-7.
 
 n] BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 49 
 
 Here, it will be seen, honourable desires are recognised ; and 
 there is a domestic touch in the following passage, descriptive of 
 a good man, from the close of the Khandogya Upanishad : 
 
 He who has learned the Veda from a family of teachers, according to 
 the sacred rule, in the leisure times left from the duties to be performed 
 for the Guru (the preceptor), who, after receiving his discharge, has settled 
 in his own house, keeping up the memory of what he has learned by repeat- 
 ing it regularly in some sacred spot, who has begotten virtuous sons, 
 and concentrated all his senses on the Self, never giving pain to any crea- 
 ture except at the tirthas (sacrifices, &c.)> he who behaves thus all his 
 life, reaches the world of Brahman, and does not return, yea, he does not 
 return. Sacred Books of the East, vol. I. p. 144. 
 
 It must be observed, in reference to this last phrase, " he does 
 not return," that the Upanishads clearly recognise the trans- 
 migration of souls ; and they are the first of the great Hindu 
 treatises which do recognise this doctrine. The transmigration 
 of souls fits very well into a system which makes absorption 
 into the Infinite the final crown of man's being ; for many men 
 are obviously not fitted to obtain the final reward of virtue, 
 and for them a fresh period of probation is readily conceivable. 
 At the same time the Hindu imagination provided very serious 
 hells (or possibly they should be called purgatories) between 
 the successive lives of transmigrating souls, where distinct punish- 
 ment has been deserved. 
 
 With all the defects of the Hindu religion, a conscientious 
 struggle was involved in it. Were I to proceed further on the 
 religious line, Buddhism would be the next topic ; but that great 
 religion must be left for another chapter. Meanwhile, religion 
 is not the whole of life, however closely it may be intertwined 
 with life ; what progress then were the Hindus making in secular 
 matters ? Life goes on, whether men be religious or irreligious ; 
 whether their religion be sound and true, or a superstition. The 
 religion of the Hindus having been such as is here described, 
 what was the ordinary life of the Hindus like ? They had begun 
 as a clan of invading warriors ; one may conceive what their 
 life was like in those aggressive days ; but when they had settled 
 down, and were lords of the aboriginal tribes, what was life like 
 in this new state, among the lords themselves, their vassals, and 
 their slaves ? Not a very happy life, it is certain. The hot sun 
 had sucked out their energy ; nature was large and abundant 
 around them, it is true, but nature teemed with hostilities ; and 
 worse than wild beasts or serpents was the danger of disease 
 and famine. Men may contend against, may conquer, physical 
 
 M. D.A. 4
 
 50 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 difficulties ; but for this a store of native strength is needed, 
 and a strength that shows itself in organisation ; whereas the 
 crude simplicity of the organisation which prevailed among the 
 Hindus is in itself a token of their inability to become the masters 
 of nature. That organisation was the caste system ; of which, 
 indeed, I have already spoken ; but it has been too important, 
 too long enduring an institution not to demand some account, 
 not only how it came to be what it is, but also how it acted, 
 for good or for harm. 
 
 We must not think it altogether, and in every respect, an evil. 
 The caste system sprang from natural causes, from motives 
 which were sincerely felt ; the distinctions of value on which 
 it was based were to a certain extent true ; and though it stood 
 greatly in the way of advance in good, it had a certain preservative 
 power against the forces of disorder which are latent in all human 
 society. If under it the people of India could not rise, it helped 
 them at any rate not to sink utterly. The instinct of self-preser- 
 vation a too timid but not quite contemptible instinct created 
 the castes ; the opening words of the following extract from that 
 ancient work, the Laws of Manu (i. 87-91) are the practical 
 acknowledgement of this : 
 
 In order to protect this universe He, the most resplendent one (i.e. the 
 Creator) assigned separate duties and occupations to those who sprang 
 from his mouth, arms, thighs, and feet. To Brahmanas he assigned 
 teaching and studying the Veda, sacrificing for their own benefit and for 
 others, giving and accepting of alms. The Kshatriya he commanded to 
 protect the people, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study the Veda, 
 and to abstain from attaching himself to sensual pleasures ; the Vaisya 
 to tend cattle, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study the Veda, to 
 trade, to lend money, and to cultivate land. One occupation only the 
 lord prescribed to the Sudra, to serve meekly even these other three castes. 
 Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv. p. 24. 
 
 Such is the authoritative description of the most durable and 
 rigid division that ever existed between the classes of a single 
 people ; for the division, while inexorably perpetuating itself, 
 did nevertheless assume, at all events when the Laws of Manu 
 were written, that the people was one. Beginning, it would 
 seem, while some difference of hue still existed between rulers 
 and ruled, it lasted after this had died away. 
 
 On this foundation of caste Hindu legislation is built up. 
 The Laws of Manu do not absolutely forbid intermarriage between 
 different castes ; and it might be thought that, intermarriage
 
 n] BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 51 
 
 once being allowed, the whole system would break down ; but 
 great care is taken that this shall not happen. The rules are 
 given in the Laws of Manu (in. 4. 12-15) : 
 
 Having bathed, with the permission of his teacher, and performed 
 according to the rule the Samavartana (the rite on returning home) a 
 twice -born man shall marry a wife of equal caste who is endowed with 
 auspicious bodily marks. . . . For the first marriage of twice-born men 
 wives of equal caste are recommended ; but for those who through desire 
 proceed to marry again, the following females, chosen according to the 
 direct order of the castes, are most approved. It is declared that a Sudra 
 woman alone can be the wife of a Sudra, she and one of his own caste 
 the wives of a Vaisya, those two and one of his own caste the wives of a 
 Kshatriya, those three and one of his own caste the wives of a Brahmana. 
 A Sudra- woman is not mentioned even in any ancient story as the first 
 wife of a Brahmana or of a Kshatriya, though they lived in the greatest 
 distress. Twice-born men who, in their folly, wed wives of the low Sudra 
 caste, soon degrade their families and their children to the state of Sudras. 
 Ibid. vol. xxv. pp. 75, 77, 78. 
 
 The expression " twice-born men " in the above passage needs 
 explanation ; it means all belonging to the three upper castes. To 
 use another phrase, these are the " initiated " ones ; the initiation 
 being the second birth, outwardly manifested by the tying of 
 the sacred girdle about the loins, after instruction in the Vedas v 
 It will be seen that intermixture of castes through marriage is not 
 an impossibility ; and in the tenth book of the Laws of Manu 
 names are given to the progeny of male and female differing in 
 caste ; but it is not necessary to enter upon these details here. 
 
 On the whole, the permanence of the caste system was in- 
 sured ; the guarantee of it lay partly in the conservative disposi- 
 tion of the Hindus, partly in the natural power of an aristocratic 
 government the most stable, where it has really entered into 
 possession, of all governments. 
 
 Beyond all the other aristocratic tendencies of the caste 
 system was its exaltation of the highest caste, the Brahmins (or 
 Brahmanas). Kings were by virtue of their office of the second 
 caste, the Kshatriyas 1 ; and how greatly a Brahmin surpassed 
 a king in dignity will be seen by the following extract from the 
 Laws (vm. 37, 38) : 
 
 When a learned Brahmana has found treasure, deposited in former 
 times, he may take even the whole of it ; for he is master of everything. 
 When the king finds treasure of old concealed in the ground, let him give 
 one half to Brahmanas and place the other half in his treasury. Ibid. 
 vol. xxv. p. 259. 
 
 1 This is declared at the beginning of the seventh book of the Laws of Manu. 
 
 42
 
 52 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 Again, while corporal punishment may be inflicted on the 
 other three castes, a Brahmin is never oh any account whatever 
 to be subjected to it (Laws, vm. 124, 125). Nor may a Brahmin 
 be put to death ; for we read (Laws, vm. 380, 381) : 
 
 Let him (the king) never slay a Brahmana, though he have committed 
 all possible crimes ; let him banish such an offender, leaving all his 
 property to him and his body unhurt. No greater crime is known 
 on earth than slaying a Brahmana ; a king, therefore, must not even 
 conceive in his mind the thought of killing a Brahmana. 
 
 The Laws of Manu, it will be seen, are very decidedly respecters 
 of persons, and are quite without shame in being so. Very 
 rarely, and under special circumstances, the caste distinction may 
 be mitigated, as in the following passage : 
 
 He who possesses faith may receive pure learning even from a man 
 of lower caste, the highest law even from the lowest.. . .It is prescribed 
 that in times of distress a student may learn the Veda from one who is 
 not a Brahmana ; and that he shall walk behind and serve such a teacher, 
 as long as the instruction lasts. Laws, n. 238-241. 
 
 The king (in spite of his being only of the second caste, a 
 Kshatriya) is declared in the Laws (vn. 8) to be "a great deity 
 in "human form," and the rightful inflicter of punishment ; only 
 he must " daily worship aged Brahmanas who know the Veda 
 and are pure," and also, " though he may already be modest, 
 constantly learn modesty from them " (vn. 38, 39). 
 
 The unequal measure of justice meted out to the respective 
 castes is undoubtedly the most radical fault in Indian law and 
 Indian feeling, but it is not the only fault. What, for instance, 
 is to be said of the following injunctions ? 
 
 Whenever the death of a Sudra, of a Vaisya, of a Kshatriya, or of 
 a Brahmana would be caused by a declaration of the truth, a falsehood 
 may be spoken ; for such falsehood is preferable to the truth. Such wit- 
 nesses must offer to Sarasvati oblations of boiled rice which are sacred 
 to the goddess of speech, thus performing the best penance in order to 
 expiate the guilt of their falsehood. Ibid. vm. 104, 105. 
 
 One cannot but ask, whether such a permission, or rather 
 command, to give utterance to a falsehood confessedly of a guilty 
 character, and to atone for it by a sacrificial offering, must not 
 have acted injuriously on the moral rectitude of those who have 
 accepted the Laws of Manu as a divine code ; though, no doubt, 
 the general teaching of those laws is strong in the inculcation of 
 truthfulness. 
 
 As regards cruelty, we must not expect the legislator to have
 
 n] BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 53 
 
 been beyond his age ; and cruelty was hardly reckoned as in- 
 trinsically a sin in those times. Enactments prescribing mutila- 
 tion of limbs or tongue, or cruel burnings, cannot but offend us, 
 but too great censure ought not to be bestowed on those who 
 ordained such punishments. More directly responsible was the 
 Hindu legislator for his law of penances ; of these it will be enough 
 to say that some are childish and some disgusting ; and though 
 " to take pleasure in doing good to cows and Brahmanas " (Laws, 
 xi. 79) is a form of penance not exactly to be called either childish 
 or disgusting, one could have wished that some recognition had 
 been given to the value of doing good, when the objects of it 
 were fellow men less exalted than Brahmanas ; must one add, than 
 cows ? 
 
 It is but moderate merit that can be allowed to the Laws of 
 Manu, regarded as legislation ; but when regarded as counselling 
 rather than commanding, as persuading to sentiment rather than 
 enforcing action, we may have some esteem for them, in spite 
 of their defects. Before however coming to this side of Hindu 
 law, it may be well to give an example of real legislation in them, 
 in a matter in which caste feeling has no place. Here is the rule 
 for the determination of a disputed boundary (vm. 245-254) : 
 
 If a dispute has arisen between two villages concerning a boundary, 
 the king shall settle the limits in the month of Gyaistha (late May and 
 early June), when the landmarks are most distinctly visible. Let him 
 mark the boundaries by trees, (e.g.) Nyagrodhas, Asvatthas, Kimsukas, 
 Cotton-trees, Salas, Palmyra palms, and trees with milky juice, by clus- 
 tering shrubs, bamboos of different kinds, Samis, creepers, and raised 
 mounds, reeds, thickets of Kubgaka ; thus the boundary will not be 
 forgotten. Tanks, wells, cisterns, and fountains should be built where 
 boundaries meet, as well as temples ; and as he will see that through men's 
 ignorance of the boundaries trespasses constantly occur in the world, 
 let him cause to be made other hidden marks for boundaries, stones, 
 bones, cow's hair, chaff, ashes, potsherds, dry cowdung, bricks, cinders, 
 pebbles, and sand, and whatsoever other similar things the earth does 
 not corrode even after a long time, those he should cause to be buried 
 where one boundary joins the other. By these signs, by long continued 
 possession, and by constantly flowing streams of water, the king shall 
 ascertain the boundary of the land of two disputing parties. If there 
 be a doubt even on inspection of the marks, the settlement of a dispute 
 regarding boundaries shall depend on witnesses. The witnesses, giving 
 evidence regarding a boundary, shall be examined concerning the land- 
 marks in the presence of the crowd of the villagers, and also of the two 
 litigants. Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv. pp. 298, 299. 
 
 That is real legislation, and on a point of some importance. 
 It will be seen that the land is communal, each village having
 
 54 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 its own portion : the " litigants " mentioned at the end are merely 
 the champions of the two villages between which the dispute 
 lies. By the " king " is meant, no doubt, the great noble, or 
 lord of the manor, who is supreme in that part of the country. 
 
 The following passage on the duties of a Vaisya or husband- 
 man (the third caste, reckoned as " twice-born" along with the 
 two upper castes) is partly legislation, partly advice and counsel : 
 
 After a Vaisya has received the sacraments and has taken a wife, he 
 shall be always attentive to the business whereby he may subsist and to 
 that of trading cattle.... A Vaisya must never conceive this wish, "I 
 will not keep cattle" ; and if a Vaisya is willing to keep them, they must 
 never be kept by men of other castes. A Vaisya must know the respective 
 value of gems, of pearls, of coral, of metals, of cloth made of thread, of 
 perfumes, of condiments. He must be acquainted with the manner of 
 sowing of seeds, and with the good and bad qualities of fields, and he must 
 perfectly know all measures and weights. Moreover, the excellence and 
 defects of commodities, the advantages and disadvantages of different 
 countries, the probable profit and loss on merchandise, and the means 
 of properly rearing cattle. He must be acquainted with the proper wages 
 of servants, with the various languages of men, with the manner of keeping 
 goods, and the rules of purchase and sale. Let him exert himself to 
 the utmost to increase his property in a righteous manner, and let him 
 zealously give food to all created beings. Laws, rx. 326, 327-333. 
 
 The practical instinct in the above passage will be felt. A few 
 more distinctly ethical passages may be quoted. On the duty of 
 forgiveness : 
 
 A king who desires his own welfare, must always forgive litigants, 
 infants, aged and sick men, who inveigh against him. Ibid. vui. 312. 
 
 Women receive just appreciation in the following maxim : 
 
 Where women are honoured, there the gods are pleased ; but where 
 they are not honoured, no sacred rite yields rewards. Ibid. in. 56. 
 
 Nor less in the following : 
 
 He only is a perfect man who consists of three persons united, his 
 wife, himself, and his offspring ; thus says the Veda, and learned Brah- 
 manas propound this maxim likewise. " The husband is declared to 
 be one with the wife." Ibid. ix. 45. 
 
 One cannot deny that polygamy must have stood consider- 
 ably in the way of this last maxim ; but the intention, amid all 
 practical defects, must be honoured. 
 
 Whatever we may think of asceticism, the following instruc- 
 tions to an ascetic may meet our approval : 
 
 Let him patiently bear hard words, let him not insult anybody, and 
 let him not become anybody's enemy for the sake of this perishable body.
 
 n] BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA 55 
 
 Against an angry man let him not in return show anger, let him bless 
 when he is cursed, and let him not utter speech devoid of truth. Ibid. 
 vi. 47, 48. 
 
 The following maxim declares the supremacy and importance 
 of conscience : 
 
 The Soul itself is the witness of the Soul, and the Soul is the refuge 
 of the Soul ; despise not thy own soul, the supreme witness of men. Ibid. 
 vm. 84. 
 
 Such maxims, though embedded in the midst of much inferior 
 matter, do in themselves reach a singular height of excellence. 
 From Indian history it is not possible to illustrate them, for 
 Indian history was not only unwritten, but even the conception 
 of a historical record had not been reached in India in the times 
 of which I have been speaking ; and even if we had historical 
 records, the real morality of a people is one of the last things 
 that is illustrated in formal histories. It is one of the virtues 
 of poetry that it brings out the sentiments and character of a 
 nation in a degree which historians find it difficult to rival ; and 
 the two vast epics of ancient India, the Maha-bharata and the 
 Ramayana, while of hardly any value as narratives of material 
 fact, have, amid the wildness of their contents, something of the 
 human touch. Those who wish to see this exemplified in brief 
 space, may look to the Indian Wisdom of Monier Williams, 
 and read, from the Ramayana, the affecting story of the accidental 
 death of the hermit's son through the arrow of king Dasaratha ; 
 and from the Maha-bharata, the tale of Satyavan and his wife 
 Savitri. The Maha-bharata contains that wonderful song, the 
 Bhagavad-gita, which will be found translated in the eighth 
 volume of the Sacred Books of the East ; a song in which 
 pantheistic theory is mingled with ardent devotion to the Deity, 
 even to the incarnate Deity (for as such Krishna, who speaks the 
 divine word, is brought before us) ; a song in which all passion 
 and all desire are represented as shrivelling up before the imperious 
 claim of duty ; and this claim has its example in the great warrior 
 Arjuna, who trembles and shrinks, not with cowardly reluctance, 
 before the thought of killing his own kinsmen ranged against 
 him in the field of battle, and is told that such reluctance is a 
 sin. The Bhagavad-gita is probably the work in which the 
 original Hindu religion reaches the highest point ; concerning 
 the date of it very various opinions have been held. On this 
 point I have no claim to an opinion ; but Mr Telang (the trans- 
 lator of the Bhagavad-gita in the Sacred Books of the East,
 
 56 ANCIENT RELIGION [CH. n 
 
 and himself a Hindu) pleads impressively on behalf of an early 
 date ; that is, a date earlier, and probably a good deal earlier, 
 than 300 B.C. 
 
 Let me close this portion of my subject by quoting from the 
 Upanishads the ideal description of the feelings of a righteous 
 soul, just before it passes through the veil of death : 
 
 The door of the True is covered with a golden disk. Open that, O 
 Pushan, that we may see the nature of the True. O Pushan, only seer, 
 Yama (judge), Surya (sun), son of Prajapati, spread thy rays and gather 
 them ! The light which is thy fairest form, I see it. I am what he is 
 (viz. the person in the sun). Breath to air, and to the immortal! Then 
 this my body ends in ashes. Om ! Mind, remember ! Remember thy 
 deeds ! Mind, remember ! Remember thy deeds ! Again, lead us on 
 to wealth (beatitude) by a good path, thou, O God, who knowest all 
 things ! Keep far from us crooked evil, and we shall offer thee the 
 fullest praise ! Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. pp. 313, 314. 
 
 The famous word " Om " in the above passage is best rendered 
 by " Yea." It may remind us of " the Everlasting Yea " in the 
 sense in which that phrase has been used by Carlyle ; a phrase 
 indicating the highest law, the highest blessedness ; a supreme 
 state, higher than which is nothing conceivable.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 INDIA CONTINUED : SIDDARTHA THE BUDDHA 
 
 ^XVHEN a form of religion has lasted for many ages, and has 
 been developed in many various ways, rising sometimes to great 
 heights of self-denying virtue, but stained at other times by the 
 sins and infirmities which belong to human nature, it is then to 
 . be expected that attempts should, in one quarter or another, 
 be made to reform it, to amend its faults, and to gather all the 
 good that is in it into a new combination, and very likely with 
 a new centre. 
 
 The religion of ancient India, which I described in the fore- 
 going chapter, was one that peculiarly called for reform. It 
 was a valiant effort to attain the true touch, whereby an invisible 
 world might be revealed to us ; but experience did not bear any 
 clear witness that it had succeeded. A strenuous asceticism had 
 been the instrument on which it chiefly relied ; but also, a con- 
 formity to ancient rule, an adherence to an established order 
 of society, in which the ranks were rigidly divided and kept 
 apart ; these were the characteristics of personal and social life 
 that had resulted from the simple habits and natural religion of 
 the early Aryans, when they quitted the high tablelands of Iran 
 and descended into the burning plains to the south of the Hima- 
 layan range. We must not too much find fault with their failure, 
 which had, it will have been seen, its redeeming points ; but the 
 great and famous attempt to reform it which was made either 
 in the sixth or fifth century before Christ (the date is uncertain, 
 as generally in Indian history) deserves even more of our attention 
 than the original Hindu religion. At the period just mentioned 
 a spirit of reform was in the air ; and though obscure compared 
 with Buddhism, the system of Jainism arose about the same time, 
 and endeavoured to make benevolence, conscientiousness, and 
 human reason supreme in the ordering of men's lives, as against 
 the authority of the Vedas and the time-honoured institution .of
 
 58 INDIA CONTINUED : [CH. 
 
 caste. Jainism still exists ; but this brief mention of it must 
 here be sufficient ; and to the great reformer, Siddartha the 
 Buddha, I now come. 
 
 Siddartha ; that was his name as an individual person ; but 
 he is also called by his family name of Gautama or Gotama ; 
 and again he is called Sakyamuni, the saint of the Sakya race ; 
 and lastly, Buddha, the Enlightened One. Let me be permitted 
 to call him Buddha ; for that is the name by which, even if not 
 so intrinsically correct, he will best be recognised by the world 
 of to-day. 
 
 If we desire to understand Buddhism, we must remember 
 (as has been already said) that it was a purification of the religion 
 of the ancient^Hiiidiis^rJBrahminism as it maylairly~be~called ; 
 a ^mlftcTttio^'mjje^by^aL.jp^on of extraordinary goodness and 
 rgTlneah intellectual power^ T T Ke~"TJganishads , which are ^he 
 intellectual core of Brahminism, are also^the Immediate ante- 
 cedent of BuddHsnTTnEthd IHe~kinship is manifested alike in the 
 gentleness of temperament which pervades both, and in the sort 
 of ideal aim which they prescribe for mankind at large ; although 
 in respect of this ideal aim, Buddhism is not clearer but more 
 obscure than the Upanishads. The idea of absorption into the 
 Absolute Infinite Being has more apparent intelligibility than 
 the Buddhist Nirvana ; I am not saying that it is nearer the 
 truth. 
 
 While we bear in mind theJiisjtoricjiLdescent of Buddhism 
 from the Brahmin religion, we must also note the important fact 
 that Siddartha the TSuddHa sprang from the warrior caste of the 
 
 i -i- m cj 
 
 ndus,~ffiie~Ksha4riyas,jmor that Tftis warrior caste had 
 in ancient days lost their natural supremacy through the influence 
 (partly deserved, but partly factitious and false) of the Brahmin 
 priesthood. Hence, notwithstanding the gentleness and humility 
 of Buddha himself, he was likely for personal as well as for general 
 reasons to be opposed to the caste system ; and similarly the 
 great system of sacrificial observances, which the Brahmins had 
 elaborated in no slight degree for their own exaltation, would 
 i have no attraction for him. He did, as a matter of fact, oppose 
 both the caste system and all sacrifices which implied the ex- 
 tinction of life, even of vegetable life. Yet we should be wrong 
 if we supposed that he made open war against either of these 
 points of practice, or against any part of the Brahmin religion. 
 He stood, in the quietest manner, as one independent of all that 
 he saw around him ; for though he was in a true sense formed by
 
 m] SIDDARTHA THE BUDDHA 59 
 
 the world in which he lived (as we all must be), and therefore 
 formed by the Brahmin religion, he chose for himself what out 
 
 V IF^V - "" '"" " ' "' "" """"" 
 
 of that reUgiojEh&JVEQuld acceplcAn^_whajb_hejEQj.ild not accept 4 
 and to others he allowed the samejjiberty of .chojge. So tolerant 
 a religion as the Buddhist religion has never appeared among 
 men. But this did not mean that Buddha was indifferent in 
 regard to belief . He was truly anxious to convert the world ; 
 moreover, he was a singularly precise thinker, where precision 
 was possible. He ventured on some points on which precision 
 was not possible ; nor are we always certain of his exact relation 
 to the elder doctrines. 
 
 While the debt of Buddha to Brahminism must be acknow- 
 ledged, his personal character was yet the prime force which 
 moulded the religion of which he was the first propagator. The 
 accounts of hTsTIfe that have reached us are mingled wifli fable, 
 a^^ra-s"Ce"ftaiii To be the case in arTage and country in whicKTihe 
 art of writing was of recent introduction, and in which the exer- 
 cise of imagination was one of the highest pleasures ; but in all 
 essential respects the account of him which we have received is 
 quite natural and probable. Born as the son of a warlike chief, 
 in the town of Kapilavatthu, in the north of India, almost within 
 sight of the Himalayas, and (as seems the best opinion) shortly 
 after the year 500 B.C., he lived as other men do till after attaining 
 manhood ; he married a wife, and an infant son was born to him. 
 Then, from causes which are but imperfectly sketched in the tra- 
 ditions, a sense of the world's misery fell upon him. It is said 
 that specific instances of misery and death were the moving 
 cause of his altered temper ; but the manner in which this is told 
 is legendary, and the history of his early mental development is 
 really unknown to us. ~~ But when this crisis came, he fled from 
 his home, resolved upon intense meditation, in order if possible 
 to discover a remedy for the sorrow of which the world is full, 
 the cause of which seemed to him to lie in the disposition of the 
 hearts of men. In such a conviction we cannot but see an effect 
 of that introspective philosophy which had been the fruit of the 
 thought of the Aryan race in India ; outward remedies were 
 to Buddha of quite inferior value, just as they were to Yajfia- 
 valkya. 
 
 The best account of the thoughts of Buddha at this crisis is 
 to be found in the book called the " Buddha-Karita," by Asva- 
 ghosha ; a work centuries later than Buddha and full of imagina- 
 tive exaggerations, but one which may well have preserved true
 
 60 INDIA CONTINUED: [OH. 
 
 traditions of his growth in feeling and thought. Here is what 
 Buddha is reported to have said to the monarch of the Magadhas, 
 who had remonstrated with him on his abandonment of his home 
 (I quote from the translation by Cowell, Sacred Books of ttie 
 East, vol. XLIX. pp. Ill sqq.) : 
 
 This is not to be called a strange thing, . . . that by thee of pure con- 
 duct, O lover of thy friends, this line of conduct should be adopted towards 
 him who stands as one of thy friends. ... I will meet thee courteously 
 with simple friendship ; I would not utter aught else in my reply. I, 
 having experienced the fear of old age and death, fly to this path of religion 
 in my desire for liberation ; leaving behind my dear kindred with tears 
 in their faces, still more then those pleasures which are the causes of evil. 
 I am not so afraid even of serpents nor of thunderbolts falling from heaven, 
 nor of flames blown together by the wind, as I am afraid of these worldly 
 objects. These transient pleasures, the robbers of our happiness and our 
 wealth, and which float empty and like illusions through the world, in- 
 fatuate men's minds even when they are only hoped for, still more when 
 they take up their abode in the soul.. . .Deer are lured to their destruc- 
 tion by songs, insects for the sake of the brightness fly into the fire, the 
 fish greedy for the flesh swallows the iron hook, therefore worldly objects 
 produce misery as their end. As for the common opinion, " pleasures 
 are enjoyments," none of them when examined are worthy of being enjoyed; 
 fine garments and the rest are only the accessories of things, they are to 
 be regarded as merely the remedies for pain. Water is desired for allaying 
 thirst ; food in the same way for removing hunger ; a house for keeping 
 off the wind, the heat of the sun, and the rain ; and dress for keeping off 
 the cold and to cover one's nakedness. So too a bed is for removing 
 drowsiness ; a carriage for remedying the fatigue of a journey ; a seat 
 for alleviating the pain of standing : so bathing as a means for washing, 
 health, and strength. External objects therefore are to human beings 
 means for remedying pain, not in themselves sources of enjoyment ; what 
 wise man would allow that he enjoys those delights which are only used 
 as remedial ? . . . I have come here with a wish to see next the seer Arada 
 who proclaims liberation ; I start this very day happiness be to thee, 
 O king ; forgive my words which may seem harsh, through their absolute 
 freedom from passion. Buddha -Karita, book xi. 
 
 The important point will be observed in the above extract 
 that while Buddha did not regard it as legitimate to pursue 
 pleasure, he did regard it as legitimate to assuage pain. 
 
 It is true that it may be held that the above passage is no 
 proper evidence as to what the great teacher's final view was, 
 since Asvaghosha attributes to him these sentiments at a period 
 when he had not received that enlightenment which caused him 
 to take to himself the title of Buddha. But there is no reason 
 to think that he ever changed the sentiments expressed above. 
 " Right conduct " was in his completed system of ethics one 
 branch of the " noble eightfold path " for men ; and there is
 
 in] SIDDARTHA THE BUDDHA 61 
 
 absolutely nothing recorded of him which should lead us to doubt 
 that the alleviation of suffering by any innocent means was 
 included by him in his conception of " right conduct," or " right 
 action," during the whole period of his preaching. In fact, the 
 time of his conversation with the king of the Magadhas, from which 
 I have just been quoting, was the time in all his life when he was 
 most likely to have disparaged the alleviation of suffering as a 
 motive ; for the Brahmin religion, to which he was then attached, 
 regarded voluntary suffering as of great value. If then Buddha 
 would at this period have had men devote themselves to the 
 alleviation of suffering, much more would he have given this 
 counsel afterwards, when he had received enlightenment. (On 
 the other hand, it cannot be denied that the authenticity of the 
 speech just recorded is made somewhat less probable by the very 
 fact that it so much coincides with what we know to have been 
 the later, as distinguished from the earlier, conviction of Buddha.) 
 But Siddartha (let me recur once more here to his personal 
 name) had not yet received enlightenment, had not yet become 
 " Buddha," at the time of his conversation with the king of the 
 Magadhas. He was obedient to the highest religion which he 
 fenew, the religion of the Brahmins ; for though he was not of 
 the Brahmin caste, he was permitted to practise that asceticism 
 which the Brahmins regarded as the highest religion, and by so 
 doing rendered himself the equal of the Brahmins in their own 
 estimation. 
 
 For a period of six years after leaving the king of the Maga- 
 dhas, Siddartha practised pure asceticism after the manner of the 
 Yogis, abstaining from all outward action, and joining himself 
 to five other devotees who were animated by the same purpose 
 as himself ; the purpose, namely, of finding the remedy for the 
 
 = world's huge burden of sorrow. It must be remembered that 
 the universal belief in India then was (as in the main it is still) 
 that the burden of man's sorrows had to be borne during many 
 successive lives, until that crowning moment was reached, when 
 each individual life should become identified with the Absolute 
 
 ; Existence, with the divine Brahma. Thus Siddartha and his 
 companions were endeavouring to escape not only from sorrow 
 in the present life, but from the burden inherent in all future 
 lives ; and the means prescribed for them by the Brahmin religion 
 were concentration of mind and voluntary self-inflicted pain, 
 chiefly it would seem in the form of semi-starvation. But at 
 last, after six years, Siddartha gave up the effort which he felt
 
 62 INDIA CONTINUED: [CH. 
 
 to be useless. He was in no way bettered by his self-inflicted 
 sufferings ; nor was the burden of the world's sorrow made 
 lighter by them. He wandered away from his five companions, 
 and at last, in a place called Bodhi-Gaya, he came to a great 
 fig-tree and sat under it. Sitting there, he became enlightened ; he 
 saw in a moment what he deemed to be supreme truth, namely, 
 that the way of escaping sorrow was not to subject oneself 
 to voluntary sorrow, but to restrain the instincts of pleasure- 
 seeking desire. This was the great moment of the liberation 
 of Siddartha's innermost being ; now he was truly Buddha ; 
 now he was awakened to the reality ; and the liberation was 
 not merely of himself, but from himself. With instantaneous 
 prophetic glance he looked forward to that time when he should 
 enter into a state in which his own self should no longer exist ; 
 the state called by him Nirvana. That is the mystical consum- 
 mation of Buddhism ; a consummation which, when we look 
 upon it with the eye of the ordinary understanding, appears 
 cold, barren, meagre, the commonplace conviction of men who 
 are wholly devoid of religious faith ; but which to Buddha him- 
 self was a great mysterious conception, deliverance and salvation. 
 Let me leave the conception of Nirvana in its mysteriousness, 
 not seeking at present to determine what measure of truth it 
 may contain (for indeed the absolute truth is beyond all power 
 of man to conceive), but acknowledging, as I think we must 
 acknowledge, that Buddha himself fell short on one side of 
 truth, fell short of the recognition of creative power as 
 not only the prime source of this phenomenal world, but also 
 a power whose alliance we ourselves must seek, and to partake 
 in which is our highest happiness. " To be blown out," as a 
 candle, is, it appears, the meaning of Nirvana ; and to accept 
 this as our ideal is not in the long run salutary for us. But the 
 full mind of Buddha is not easily apprehensible ; it will be best 
 to begin by noting the positive side of his teaching as to this life. 
 Here, in the treatise called the " Tevigga Sutta," is a declaration, 
 truly magnificent, of what every sincere Buddhist ought to feel ; 
 and it is what we must conclude that Buddha himself actually 
 did feel, for it is a declaration that lies in the heart and essence 
 of Buddha's creed : 
 
 He lets his mind pervade one quarter of the world with thoughts of 
 love, and so the second, and so the third, and HO the fourth. And thus 
 the whole wide world, above, below, around, and everywhere, does he 
 continue to pervade with heart of Love, far-reaching, grown great, and
 
 in] SIDDARTHA THE BUDDHA 63 
 
 beyond measure. Just, Vasettha, as a mighty trumpeter makes himself 
 heard and that without difficulty in all the four directions ; even so 
 of all things that have shape or life, there is not one that he passes by or 
 leaves aside, but regards them all with mind set free, and deep-felt love. 
 Verily this, Vasettha, is the way to a state of union with Brahma. And 
 he lets his mind pervade one quarter of the world with thoughts of pity, 
 sympathy, and equanimity, and so the second, and so the third, and so 
 the fourth. And thus the whole wide world, above, below, around, and 
 everywhere, does he continue to pervade with heart of pity, sympathy, 
 and equanimity, far-reaching, grown great, and beyond measure. Sacred 
 Books of the East, vol. xi. p. 201. 
 
 That is a passage which brings into clear light the advance 
 which Buddha made on the Brahmin religion that had preceded 
 him. It cannot be said that either the Upanishads, or the Laws 
 of Manu. or the Bhagavad-gita, place love in its true, high, and 
 important position as regulative of the acts of man ; they treat 
 of the duties involved in the particular relations of life, and the 
 general sense of duty and self-denial is expressed in them very 
 strongly ; but love, which alone gives full meaning both to duty 
 and to self-denial, is not in them fully and adequately appre- 
 hended. By Buddha, and by him first, it was fully and ade- 
 quately apprehended. No one will dispute this who considers 
 the full sum of the teaching which has descended from him ; at 
 the same time it is impossible to keep the touch of self-regarding 
 feeling out of the efforts of any great soul. We find it in such 
 an expression as this, attributed to Buddha in the Sutta-Nipata 
 (m. 2, 16) : 
 
 Woe upon life in this world ; death in battle is better for me than 
 that I should live defeated. Ibid. vol. x. part n. p. 71. 
 
 Nor is it to be denied that the " liberation " which Buddha 
 sought was in a certain degree a personal deliverance ; but it 
 must not be thought of as narrowly personal. The tradition is 
 (and it may be a true tradition), that after he had received that 
 enlightenment which I have just been describing, the temptation 
 came upon him to accept deliverance as a mere personal gain 
 for himself alone, and to seek death at once, as securing him an 
 immediate entrance into the final blessed state. This would 
 indeed have been a narrowly personal interpretation of the 
 deliverance which he sought ; but the temptation was rejected 
 by him. Buddha is said himself to have given the account of 
 this temptation, shortly before his death, to his disciple Ananda 
 (see The Book of the Great Decease, in. 43, 44, in the eleventh 
 volume of the Sacred Books of the East). We may well believe
 
 64 INDIA CONTINUED: [OH. 
 
 that temptations came upon him shortly after the great crisis 
 in his life ; a new position must always be open to new dangers. 
 Temptations to follow after power and pleasures are also said 
 to have assailed him 1 ; and it must be understood that in all 
 cases a personal tempter, Mara, is introduced as pressing the 
 temptation. It is impossible to think of the works from which 
 I am quoting as historical in all their details ; but the general 
 current of the narrative (especially in the Book of the Great 
 Decease) is not improbable ; and that some trustworthy par- 
 ticulars of the life of Buddha would be preserved by tradition 
 we may naturally believe. The tree under which he was sitting 
 when he received his enlightenment became famous in after 
 time ; and though it is impossible to think that it still exists, 
 an ancient tree is to be seen in the traditional locality 2 . 
 
 We must of course distinguish between Buddha's personal 
 acceptance of his doctrine and his resolve to preach it to others ; 
 the resolve marked a far more decisive severance from his previous 
 life as an ascetic than the mere acceptance of the new doctrine 
 had done. As an ascetic on the lines of the Brahmin religion, 
 he did not preach at all ; his aim was by solitary exercises to 
 attain absorption into the Deity. His new doctrine, taking love 
 as its animating principle in a degree far exceeding what had ap- 
 peared in his previous efforts, was naturally accompanied by the 
 resolution to make others participant in his own enlightenment. 
 
 The first converts of Buddha were the five ascetics whose 
 company he had left when he had become dissatisfied with the 
 doctrine and practice of Brahminism. It is related (Mahdvagga, 
 I. 67 ) 3 that when he approached them in the lofty ardour of a 
 newly inspired seer, they determined to treat him with silent 
 contempt as a recreant ; but overcome by his personal dignity, 
 were unable to maintain their determination, and inquired what 
 his new design might be. Let me quote part of his answer to 
 them ; and it will perhaps be most intelligible if I quote it in 
 Oldenberg's translation, given in the valuable and learned work 
 mentioned : 
 
 Then the Exalted One spake to the five ascetics, saying "There are 
 two extremes, O monks, from which he who leads a religious life must 
 abstain. What are those two extremes ? One is a life of pleasure, 
 devoted to desire and enjoyment : that is base, ignoble, unspiritual, 
 
 1 See the Buddha- Karita of Asvaghosha, hook xin, in the 49th volume of Sacred 
 Books of the East. 
 
 1 Sec Cunningham, Archaeological Reports, vol. i. p. 5, quoted by Oldenberg on 
 p. 108 of his Buddha. 
 
 * See Sacred Books of the East, vol. xm. p. 02.
 
 : 
 
 m] SIDDARTHA THE BUDDHA 65 
 
 a unworthy, unreal. The other is a life of mortification ; it is gloomy, 
 unworthy, unreal. The Perfect One, O monks, is removed from both 
 these extremes and has discovered the way which lies between them, 
 the middle way which enlightens the eyes, enlightens the mind, which 
 leads to rest, to knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nirvana. And what, 
 O monks, is the middle way, which the Perfect One has discovered, which 
 enlightens the eye and enlightens the spirit, which leads to rest, to know- 
 ledge, to enlightenment, to Nirvana ? It is this sacred, eightfold path, 
 as it is called ; Right Faith, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Action, 
 Right Living, Right Effort, Right Thought, Right Selfconcentration. 
 This, O monks, is the middle way, which the Perfect One has discovered, 
 which enlightens the eye and enlightens the spirit, which leads to rest, 
 to knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nirvana. 
 
 " This, O monks, is the sacred truth of suffering ; Birth is suffering, 
 
 old age is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, to be united 
 
 , with the unloved is suffering, to be separated from the loved is suffering, 
 
 not to obtain what one desires is suffering, in short the fivefold clinging 
 
 (to the earthly) is suffering. 
 
 " This, O monks, is the sacred truth of the origin of suffering ; it is 
 the thirst (for being), which leads from birth to birth, together with lust 
 and desire, which finds gratification here and there : the thirst for plea- 
 > sures, the thirst for being, the thirst for power. 
 
 " This, O monks, is the sacred truth of the extinction of suffering ; 
 the extinction of this thirst by the complete annihilation of desire, letting 
 it go, expelling it, separating oneself from it, giving it no room. 
 
 " This, O monks, is the sacred truth of the path which leads to the 
 extinction of suffering ; it is this sacred, eightfold path, to wit ; Right 
 Faith, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Living, Right 
 Effort, Right Thought, Right Selfconcentration." Oldenberg's Buddha 
 (translated by William Hoey, M.A., pp. 127-8). 
 
 In the above passage the Buddhist conceptions of life and 
 duty are brought before us in a manner peculiarly clear and 
 suited to critical examination. Nirvana is mentioned, but we 
 are not tied down to the mere question whether Nirvana is or 
 is not a worthy end of human endeavour ; we are presented 
 with a problem of everyday life, whether we ought to follow 
 our desires or to reject them. The contention of Buddha, 
 broadly speaking, is that we ought to reject them and not to 
 follow them. We must not interpret this saying so rigidly as 
 to think that Buddha would have dissuaded from the use 
 of active means to relieve pain ; but clearly he discouraged 
 the positive search after things pleasurable. Was he right 
 or not ? 
 
 Let us consider how far we ourselves should go in affirming 
 the pursuit of pleasure, or the following of strong desire, to be 
 wrong. We should affirm it to be wrong 
 
 (1) If the pursuit was injurious to vital energy. 
 
 M.D.A. 5
 
 66 INDIA CONTINUED: [CH. 
 
 (2) If it tended to the injury of affectionate intercourse with 
 others. 
 
 (3) If it occupied time which ought to be occupied with the 
 discharge of plain duties. 
 
 In all these cases we should agree with Buddha that the 
 search after things pleasurable is wrong. But it need scarcely be 
 said that admissions of so limited a character would have been 
 very far from satisfying the great Indian thinker ; and indeed 
 the point of view which he initially took was one from which 
 desire and pleasure appeared things much more radically harm- 
 ful than we in our ordinary thinkings are accustomed to esteem 
 them. Let us try and approximate, as far as we can, to his 
 initial starting point. Perhaps the following stanza, attributed 
 to him in the Mahd-Sudassana Sutta (vol. xi. p. 289 of the Sacred 
 Books of the East) will give an idea of his primary feeling : 
 
 How transient are all component things ! 
 Growth is their nature and decay ; 
 They are produced, they are dissolved again ; 
 And then is best, when they have sunk to rest ! 
 
 " Component things," in this stanza, mean especially and 
 primarily living organisms ; and it is an obvious fact that all 
 living organisms on earth, as they originate in birth, so after a 
 time decay in death. To Buddha, the fact that they decayed 
 appeared a token and evidence of error in their origination. 
 Moreover, as Buddha fully accepted the doctrine of transmigra- 
 tion of souls, previously taught in the Brahmin religion, the 
 error which led to the birth of any creature was regarded by him 
 as an error inherited from some previous existence. A human 
 being who led a perfect life would never be born again into 
 terrestrial life ; a human being who led a sinful life would by the 
 fact of his wrong propensities be led into renewed life of an 
 earthly kind ; he would be born again. All terrestrial life was 
 looked upon by Buddha as a failure ; that seemed to him quite 
 obvious ; the fleeting pleasures which men valued were of no 
 account ; the final outcome of it was always decay, decay, decay, 
 over and over and over again. That we should get out of it, 
 be delivered from it, finally and absolutely, was in his view the 
 right aim of man. The " error " in which it originated he called 
 simply " ignorance " ; the man who had died implicated in 
 passions knew not what he did and pressed forward towards a 
 renewed birth, a renewed life with all its pains and its ultimate 
 ending in decay and death. The grievous unsightliness of the
 
 m] SIDDARTHA THE BUDDHA 67 
 
 whole sequence, the perpetual trial and perpetual failure, ap- 
 peared to Buddha to demand from all wise men the single-minded 
 resolve to escape from it. But into what sphere should man 
 escape ? What was the good that he should seek ? 
 
 The answer to this question, in Buddha's mind, lay in the 
 word Nirvana. Without trying to elucidate the entire meaning 
 of that word, it will make Buddha's course of thought more 
 intelligible if I quote here a chapter (the 15th) from the Dhamma- 
 pada ; not that it is necessarily Buddha's own composition, but 
 it expresses his sentiment : 
 
 Let us live happily then, not hating those who hate us ! among 
 men who hate us let us dwell free from hatred ! 
 
 Let us live happily then, free from ailments among the ailing ! 
 among men who are ailing let us dwell free from ailments ! 
 
 Let us live happily then, free from greed among the greedy ! among 
 men who are greedy let us dwell free from greed ! 
 
 Let us dwell happily then, though we call nothing our own ! We 
 shall be like the bright gods, feeding on happiness ! 
 
 Victory breeds hatred, for the conquered is unhappy. He who has 
 given up both victory and defeat, he, the contented, is happy. 
 
 There is no fire like passion ; there is no losing throw like hatred ; 
 there is no pain like this body ; there is no happiness higher than rest. 
 
 Hunger is the worst of diseases, the body the greatest of pains ; if 
 one know this truly, that is Nirvana, the highest happiness. 
 
 Health is the greatest of gifts, contentedness the best riches ; trust 
 is the best of relationships, Nirvana the highest happiness. 
 
 He who has tasted the sweetness of solitude and tranquillity is 
 free from fear and free from sin, while he tastes the sweetness of drinking 
 in the law. 
 
 The sight of the elect is good, to live with them is always happiness ; 
 if a man does not see fools, he will be truly happy. 
 
 He who walks in the company of fools suffers a long way ; company 
 with fools, as with an enemy, is always painful ; company with the wise 
 is pleasure, like meeting with kinsfolk. 
 
 Therefore one ought to follow the wise, the intelligent, the learned, 
 the much enduring, the dutiful, the elect ; one ought to follow a good and 
 wise man as the moon follows the path of the stars. Sacred Books of the 
 East, vol. x. 
 
 No one can deny that the above verses contain deep truth. 
 The evils of conflict and hatred, the happiness of wise converse, 
 of a tranquil mind, and of adherence to law, are set forth with 
 a conviction that we ourselves may share. Moreover, in such 
 an expression as " The sight of the elect is good, to live with 
 them is always happiness," a positive element of rightful happi- 
 ness is affirmed, from which we may fairly infer that something of 
 the same kind is supposed present in Nirvana itself. 
 
 52
 
 68 INDIA CONTINUED: [CH. 
 
 I am oot indeed saying that every expression in the above 
 extract is perfect. We may demur to the phrase, " the body is 
 the greatest of pains," not on the ground of the transient plea- 
 sures which our body is capable of experiencing, but because 
 both the pleasures and pains of the body are to a noble spirit 
 capable of suggesting noble spiritual thoughts, not indiscrimin- 
 ately or as a matter of course, but when accepted with due 
 regard to all the consequences of action. 
 
 One cannot help, in considering such passages as those which 
 
 I have just quoted, being divided between admiration of the 
 
 self-denial and deep affection which they inculcate, and regret 
 
 that an undervaluing of outward action is implied in them ; 
 
 that the positive moulding of the world into new external forms 
 
 is discouraged rather than encouraged. The Buddhist is taught 
 
 to exert himself in his inward thoughts and feelings, but he is 
 
 led to refrain from adventurous action in the external world ; 
 
 . his task is rather to withdraw himself from, than to govern, 
 
 < material things. A teaching which on one side reaches a rare 
 
 perfection is on another side cramped and repressed ; this is, 
 
 I think, a fair judgment of the doctrine of Buddha. In saying 
 
 I so, I am practically denying his right to be considered the supreme 
 
 I teacher of mankind ; but one of the highest teachers he must 
 
 always be considered. Many of his maxims have an eternal 
 
 freshness and profundity, and can never be forgotten. Let me 
 
 quote again from the Dhammapada, the treatise which perhaps 
 
 of all others most represents his deepest mind : 
 
 All that we are is the result of what we have thought ; it is founded 
 on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts 
 with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of 
 the ox that draws the carriage. 
 
 All that we are is the result of what we have thought ; it is founded 
 on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts 
 with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never 
 leaves him. 
 
 " He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me " in those 
 who harbour such thoughts hatred will never cease. 
 
 " He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me " in 
 those who do not harbour such thoughts hatred will cease. 
 
 For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time ; hatred ceases by 
 the absence 1 of hatred, this is an old rule. 
 
 Ho who lives looking for pleasures only, his senses uncontrolled, 
 immoderate in his food, idle, and weak, Mara (the tempter) will certainly 
 overthrow him, as the wind throws down a weak tree. 
 
 1 I rely upon Oldenberg (Buddha, p. 21>3). " Love " is perhaps too ardent a word; 
 '' absence of hatred " is intended.
 
 m] SIDDARTHA THE BUDDHA 69 
 
 He who lives without looking for pleasures, his senses well controlled, 
 moderate in his food, faithful and strong, him Mara will certainly not 
 overthrow, any more than the wind throws down a rocky mountain. 
 
 The evildoer mourns in this world, and he mourns in the next ; he 
 mourns in both. He mourns and suffers when he sees the evil of his own 
 work. 
 
 The virtuous man delights in this world, and he delights in the 
 next ; he delights in both. He delights and rejoices, when he sees the 
 purity of his own work. 
 
 The thoughtless man, even if he can recite a large portion (of the 
 law), but is not a doer of it, has no share in the priesthood, but is like a 
 cowherd counting the cows of others. 
 
 Whatever a hater may do to a hater, or an enemy to an enemy, a 
 wrongly directed mind will do us greater mischief. 
 
 Death subdues a man who is gathering flowers, and whose mind is 
 distracted, before he is satiated in his pleasures. 
 
 As the bee collects nectar and departs without injuring the flower, 
 or its colour or scent, so let a sage dwell in his village. 
 
 Not the perversities of others, not their sins of commission or omis- 
 sion, but his own misdeeds and negligences should a sage take notice of. 
 
 If a fool be associated with a wise man even all his life, he will 
 perceive the truth as little as a spoon perceives the taste of soup. 
 
 If an intelligent man be associated for one minute only with a wise 
 man, he will soon perceive the truth, as the tongue perceives the taste of 
 soup. 
 
 Well-makers lead the water (wherever they like) ; fletchers bend the 
 arrow ; carpenters bend a log of wood ; wise people fashion themselves. 
 
 If a man for a hundred years worship Agni (fire) in the forest, and if 
 he but for one moment pay homage to a man whose soul is grounded (in 
 true knowledge), better is that homage than sacrifice for a hundred years. 
 
 Let no one think lightly of evil, saying in his heart, It will not come 
 nigh unto me. Even by the falling of waterdrops a waterpot is filled ; 
 the fool becomes full of evil, even if he gather it little by little. 
 
 Let no one think lightly of good, saying in his heart, It will not come 
 nigh unto me. Even by the falling of waterdrops a waterpot is filled ; 
 the wise man becomes full of good, even if he gather it little by little. 
 
 Is there in this world any man so restrained by humility that he 
 does not mind reproof, as a welltrained horse the whip ? Like a well- 
 trained horse when touched by the whip, be ye active and lively. 
 
 Let no man forget his own duty for the sake of another's, however 
 great ; let a man, after he has discerned his own duty, be always attentive 
 to his duty. Sacred Books of the East, vol. x. 
 
 For ever will mankind be the better for reading such maxims 
 as these. I have quoted them from various parts of the Dham- 
 mapada ; and I can hardly conceive that they did not come 
 from Siddartha the Buddha himself ; but external evidence is 
 wanting, and we do not exactly know. At all events, he was 
 the first author of the spirit which breathes in them. Had he 
 lived in an age of more active progress, it is possible that he.
 
 70 INDIA CONTINUED: [CH. 
 
 would not have reached so deeply into the things of the spirit. 
 Yet it is impossible not to regret that he had not that experience 
 of the power of God which so much abounds in the writings of 
 the Hebrew prophets ; it would have made him feel that that 
 tangle of human desire and passion in which we live was capable 
 of being disentangled and made straight, capable of being pre- 
 sented as in itself worthy of honour, and worthier as time goes 
 on ; and hence it would have made his energies more active in 
 external things. He was not, as he has sometimes been called, 
 an atheist ; but the Gods were not to him, any more than they 
 had been to the Brahmin sages, a source of strength and authors 
 of help ; their highest office was to be patterns of purity. 
 
 Let me resume the account of his life, which I have inter- 
 rupted in order to give some account of his teachings. There 
 was in it much activity, but few salient circumstances. He 
 made disciples abundantly ; among them his own son Rahula, 
 who had been an infant when he left his home. He instituted 
 an Order of monks ; the declaration of every convert was, " I 
 take refuge in the Buddha, in the doctrine, in the Brotherhood " ; 
 and Buddha himself is said to have accepted all believers with 
 the words 1 , " Come hither, monk ; well preached is the doc- 
 trine, walk in purity, to make an end of all suffering." He 
 instituted, at the request of his foster-mother, an Order of nuns ; 
 though it is said that this was half unwillingly ; and his sense 
 of the dangerous influence of women upon men contended 
 strongly with his universal philanthropy. It was involved in 
 his whole train of thought that he should regard celibacy as a 
 higher state than marriage ; yet marriage was not wholly un- 
 recognised by him. In the Sutta-Nipata, among a number of 
 states which are severally described as " the highest blessing/' 
 we read the following : 
 
 Waiting on mother and father, protecting child and wife, and a 
 quiet calling, this is the highest blessing. Sacred Books of the East, vol. x. 
 part ii. p. 44. 
 
 Besides the monks and nuns, there were lay adherents of 
 Buddha and his doctrine, among whom were counted kings 
 and nobles ; and it was a matter of course that adherents of this 
 sort were of great importance in sustaining the whole organi- 
 sation of the Buddhist community. 
 
 Though self-denial is the keynote of Buddhist doctrine, and 
 self-denial is compulsory with the poor, it would hardly be true 
 
 1 Oldenbcrg's Buddha, p. 151.
 
 in] SIDDARTHA THE BUDDHA 71 
 
 to say that the Buddhist doctrine was in the first instance 
 addressed to the poor ; the converts mentioned to us are mainly 
 of the Brahmin and warrior castes.] There is, it would appear, 
 aiTexception in the person of Sumta, who is said to have been 
 " despised of men," a mere day-labourer, but who desired to 
 be a monk, and was accepted by Buddha. Oldenberg, who quotes 
 this story (Buddha, p. 157), will not allow any other nameable 
 exception to the rule of high caste among the converts ; and he 
 remarks that the intellectual difficulty of the Buddhist formula 
 would render it more acceptable to the rich and cultured than 
 to the poor. This we might naturally suppose ; yet I see in the 
 recent work entitled Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot (p. 8) a quotation 
 from the Sutra of Forty- two chapters, in which Buddha himself 
 is reported to have said, " If you endeavour to embrace the Way 
 through much learning, the Way will not be understood. If 
 you observe the Way with simplicity of heart, great indeed is 
 this Way." 
 
 In truth, the mere difficulty of the Buddhist formula would 
 not be a hindrance to the poor joining the Buddhist community, 
 if the teaching on the whole were felt to be intelligible and com- 
 forting i /-The probability is that the caste system was during 
 the days of Buddhist predominance more or less undermined in 
 India ; not through any formal intention (for Buddha never 
 opposed the Brahmins) but by the operation of those principles 
 of self-denial and poverty to which all Buddhists were subject. 
 Between monk and monk, it is clear, no difference of caste could 
 ever be allowed to operate ; and the principles of universal love 
 so nobly propagated by Buddha would tend to produce the same 
 equality between laymen who adhered to the religion. All this, 
 however, would not prevent the sequence of Buddhist conversion 
 being from the upper classes to the lower, and not from the lower 
 to the upper, as was the case in the development of Christianity. 
 
 We picture to ourselves Buddha as mainly moving among 
 the higher ranks of society, though not rejecting the poor, and 
 himself to all outward appearance poor ; devoid of all tokens 
 that might indicate a prince or a chieftain, clad in a simple 
 yellow robe, and bearing a bowl into which might be poured 
 the donations of rice which others would give him for his sub- 
 sistence. We picture him as wandering from place to place, 
 sometimes with hundreds of followers, inculcating everywhere 
 the restraint of desire, teaching love and kindness as due to men 
 and animals, teaching finally the preeminence of that state,
 
 72 INDIA CONTINUED: [CH. 
 
 Nirvana, in which our personal being shall be extinguished. 
 We picture him as sometimes, though not at first, accompanied 
 by women as well as by men ; as receiving gifts from women 
 as well as from men. A great person he was felt to be all through, 
 great and peaceful in soul ; kings treated him as one to whom 
 they must look up ; Bimbisara, the ruler of Magadha, and 
 Pasenadi, the ruler of Kosala, are mentioned especially as minis- 
 tering to the wants of the Buddhist community. The Brahmins 
 can hardly have approved of his teaching ; yet he never quarrelled 
 with them. Only once do we hear of an enemy of his, his cousin 
 Devadatta, who tried to supplant him, and who is said to have 
 come to an evil end ; in whatever degree this may be true, the 
 attempt of course failed. In all the written accounts of Buddha 
 that have been handed down to posterity, we have to remember 
 that oral tradition lies at the base of them ; that oral tradition 
 was for several centuries the sole means by which any knowledge 
 of Buddha was preserved ; and hence a poetic colouring surrounds 
 all that we read of him, and the substratum of truth has received 
 many imaginative additions. Moreover the reverential phraseo- 
 logy which always (as was to be anticipated) surrounded any 
 mention of his name was a hindrance to the full acknowledg- 
 ment of those roughnesses in his ordinary career from which he 
 could not have been entirely free. That he had to exercise 
 discipline, directly or mediately, in the many monastic estab- 
 lishments which had been founded through his influence, we know; 
 and it is clear that nuns as well as monks came under his super- 
 intendence in this respect, though of course with nothing like 
 the same frequency. The discipline was mild ; the severest 
 ordinary penalty was the refusal to speak to an erring brother 
 or sister ; (and this penalty, we read, Buddha even on his death- 
 bed imposed on the monk Khama) ; in the last resort, the 
 offender was expelled from the Order. 
 
 In all that he did, the personal charm of Buddha was clearly 
 great, and was one chief cause of his success ; and as illustrative 
 of the gentle nature of his reproofs the following anecdote may 
 be given here 1 : 
 
 Thus is related to us the conversation of Buddha with Sona, a young 
 man who had imposed on himself an excess of ascetic observances, and 
 now, when he becomes aware of the fruitlessness of his practice, is on the 
 point of turning to the opposite extreme, and reverting to a life of enjoy- 
 ment. Buddha says to this disciple: "How is it, Sona, were you able 
 
 1 I quote it from Oldenberg's Budtlha, p. 189 ; the source is Mahavagga, v. 1-15.
 
 in] SIDDARTHA THE BUDDHA 73 
 
 to play the lute before you left home?" "Yes, sire." "What do you 
 think then, Sona, if the strings of your lute are too tightly strung, will 
 the lute give out the proper tone and be fit to play ? " "It will not, sire." 
 " And what do you think, Sona, if the strings of your lute be strung too 
 slack, will the lute then give out the proper tone and be fit to play ? " 
 " It will not, sire." " But how, Sona, if the strings of your lute be not strung 
 too tight or too slack, if they have the proper degree of tension, will the 
 lute then give out the proper sound and be fit to play?" "Yes, sire." 
 "In the same way, Sona, energy too much strained tends to excessive zeal, 
 and energy too much relaxed tends to apathy. Therefore, Sona, cultivate 
 in yourself the mean of energy, and press on to the mean in your mental 
 powers, and place this before you as your aim." 
 
 I come to the last scene of his life. We perceive, amid all 
 the curious formality of the narrative (which may be read in the 
 eleventh volume of the Sacred Books of the East], that he was 
 greatly beloved by those among whom he had moved and 
 preached. Shortly before this, he had accepted the invitation 
 of a courtesan, Ambapali by name, who had asked him to stay 
 at her mango grove, preferring her invitation to that of the 
 Likkhavis of Vesali, men young and noble. The Likkhavis 
 offered Ambapali large sums if she would give up her guest 
 to them, but she answered, " My Lords, were you to offer all 
 Vesali with its subject territory, I would not give up so honour- 
 able a feast ! " Then, we read, the Likkhavis cast up their 
 hands, exclaiming, " We are outdone by this mango girl ! we 
 are outdone by this mango girl ! " but they came to Ambapali's 
 grove none the less, and Buddha discoursed to them there, and 
 they departed. The feast was the next morning, Buddha and 
 his brother monks having (it would appear) slept in the open 
 air, in the mango grove ; but the feast was in Ambapali's dwell- 
 ing house, and consisted of sweet rice and cakes. 
 
 ''And when the Blessed One," we read, " had quite finished his meal, 
 the courtesan had a low stool brought, and sat down at his side, and 
 addressed the Blessed One, and said : 'Lord, I present this mansion to 
 the order of mendicants, of which the Buddha is the chief.' And the 
 Blessed One accepted the gift ; and after instructing, and rousing, and 
 gladdening her with religious discourse, he rose from his seat and departed 
 thence." 
 
 Such a narrative gives a milder idea of Buddha's behaviour 
 towards women than some of the sayings which are elsewhere 
 attributed to him ; but a rigid severity was not according to 
 his character. In the same way, we perceive that his general 
 maxims of abstaining from animal food were not intended to 
 be of absolute stringency ; for the immediate cause of his 
 death (though his health previously had not been strong) was
 
 74 INDIA CONTINUED: [CH. 
 
 partaking of a meal of dried pork which Kunda, a worker in metal, 
 had prepared for him. It is interesting to note that he was 
 particularly anxious that Kunda should not feel any remorse 
 for the accidental result ; and he begged his best-loved disciple, 
 Ananda, to assure Kunda that the result was not for harm but 
 for good ; and that the result to Kunda himself would be not 
 harm, but blessing. Buddha took more than one journey after 
 the meal which caused his death, and the vehement pain which 
 he suffered at first passed away ; and then the end came tran- 
 quilly. He had been conducted to a place where two Sala trees 
 were blooming, though it was not the season for such flowers ; 
 " I am weary, Ananda, and would lie down," he said. Presently, 
 after much conversation, Ananda went away, and we read this : 
 
 Now the venerable Ananda went into the Vlhara, and stood leaning 
 against the lintel of the door, and weeping at the thought : "Alas ! I 
 remain still but a learner, one who has yet but to work out his own per- 
 fection. And the Master is about to pass away from me he who is so 
 kind!" 
 
 Now the Blessed One called the brethren, and said, "Where then, 
 brethren, is Ananda?". . .And the Blessed One called a certain brother, 
 and said, "Go now, brother, and call Ananda in my name, and say, Brother 
 Ananda, the Master calls for thee." 
 
 "Very well, brother," said the venerable Ananda, in assent, to that 
 brother. And he went up to the place where the Blessed One was, and 
 when he had come there, he bowed down before the Blessed One, and took 
 his seat respectfully on one side. 
 
 Then the Blessed One said to the venerable Ananda, as he sat there 
 by his side : ' ' Enough, Ananda ! Do not let yourself be troubled ; do 
 not weep ! Have I not already, on former occasions, told you that it is 
 in the very nature of all things most near and dear unto us that we must 
 divide ourselves from them, leave them, sever ourselves from them ? . . . 
 For a long time, Ananda, you have been very dear to me by thoughts 
 of love, kind and good, that never varies, and is beyond all measure. You 
 have done well, Ananda ! Be earnest in effort, and you too shall soon be 
 free from the great evils from sensuality, from individuality, from delu- 
 sion, and from ignorance ! " 
 
 So did Buddha, in the hour of his approaching dissolution, 
 counsel his best-loved disciple ; and not him only ; for presently 
 the other brethren came too, and to them also he addressed 
 words of counsel. Ananda lamented that the great Master 
 should die in so poor and mean a place, and even proposed that 
 he should be moved to Benares or some other great city near 
 at hand ; but Buddha rejected the idea, and indeed the time 
 was past for such transference. It so happened, however, that 
 the Mallas of Kusinara (a neighbouring town) were holding a
 
 in] SIDDARTHA THE BUDDHA 75 
 
 meeting in their council chamber ; these were summoned, 
 and they came with their wives and families, and to each family 
 in succession Buddha addressed a few words, and they departed 
 with tears. Then lastly he asked all the brethren, whether 
 they had any doubt of the truth of his message, and whether 
 they had anything to ask him. But they had no doubt, nor 
 anything to ask. Just before this, the last convert made by 
 Buddha during his lifetime, Subhadda, had professed his accept- 
 ance of Buddha's message, and had entered the Order. And 
 then Buddha uttered his last words, " Hearken, O disciples, 
 I charge you ; everything that cometh into being passeth away ; 
 strive without ceasing." And then, as we should say, he died ; 
 or, as his disciples said, he entered by successive stages into 
 Nirvana, the final blessedness. 
 
 Such was the death, some twenty-three or twenty-four cen- 
 turies ago, of one of the most loving spirits that ever lived on 
 earth. I have of necessity greatly abridged the narrative ; and 
 since I think it may be in the main accepted as true, I have 
 not added to it the few wonders which were introduced into 
 it by his followers in after ages. It was natural for them to 
 think that at such a moment the earth should quake and the 
 heavens thunder, and that Brahma Sahampati, the creative 
 Deity, should utter a declaration as to the importance of that 
 moment, when the victorious Buddha was finally perfected. 
 
 I have implied that there were qualities in which Buddha 
 fell short. The desires and passions of ordinary men have a 
 certain measure of goodness which he seldom recognised and 
 perhaps in terms denied ; and though it would not be right 
 to interpret such a denial too rigidly, it cannot be said that 
 material happiness was any part of the aim which he set before 
 men. Buddha hardly felt the full compass of his assertion, 
 when he said that material happiness is transitory. It is transi- 
 x tory in a certain obvious sense ; but it leaves its mark on the 
 soul ; and honourable happiness leaves a mark which we should 
 be sorry to dispense with. Yet when we reflect how much 
 dishonourable happiness there is in the world, the happiness 
 of one implying the unhappiness of many, our surprise may be 
 lessened that Buddha condemned the pursuit after material 
 happiness without making any exception to such condemnation. 
 
 Even at the present day, how often does the happiness of 
 the rich involve the unhappiness of the poor ; and if in the 
 present day, how much more in the age of Buddha, an age in
 
 76 INDIA CONTINUED: [OH. 
 
 which the world was full of cruelties, often deliberately perpe- 
 trated under the name of justice, to which there is no parallel 
 in the world of to-day ; an age in which indifference to the 
 welfare of the stranger and the alien was almost universal ! 
 We must not be greatly surprised if Buddha thought that desire 
 and passion, whose fruits in so many instances he saw to be bad, 
 were things intrinsically and always to be avoided. It is per- 
 mitted to ourselves to hope that we may purify desire and passion 
 without abolishing them ; and the experience of the world has 
 advanced so far that we may say that, for their perfect puri- 
 fication, God's help is needed. But the experience of the world 
 had not advanced so far in Buddha's age. 
 
 Only it would not be right, because he was deficient on the 
 side of trust in God, to put out of sight all that he did on the 
 human side for the advancement of mankind. Can it be said 
 that we of the twentieth century after Christ are beyond the 
 need of such instruction as that which I have quoted from the 
 Dhammapada ? Few of us, I think, are beyond being benefited 
 by Buddha's axioms of morality. 
 
 After the death of Buddha, his doctrine spread with vigour 
 in the north-east of India, and councils were held for the deter- 
 mination of points of greater or less importance in connexion 
 with the religion. But the adoption of the Buddhist creed by 
 the great king Asoka in the third century before Christ was 
 perhaps the most important of all the events in the early history 
 of Buddhism, that is to say between the death of Buddha and 
 the Christian era. Asoka was the grandson of Chandragupta, 
 to whom ambassadors had come from the Greek king Seleucus 
 Nicator, one of the successors of Alexander. With all his great- 
 ness, Asoka's family had originally sprung from the lowest caste, 
 the Sudras, and thus he had a certain interest in the overthrow 
 of Brahminism. He reigned over all India north of the Vindhya 
 hills, and numerous inscriptions, put up by his command, still 
 remain, and commend to us the precepts of Buddha. 
 
 Another powerful king, who in Buddhist writings is known 
 as Milinda, but who was of Greek origin and in his native tongue 
 is known as Menander or Menandros, attached himself to the 
 doctrine at the end of the third century before Christ. The 
 Questions of King Milinda is a famous Buddhist work, translated 
 in the 35th and 36th volumes of Sacred Books of the East. He 
 reigned in the north-west of India, and is said to have made 
 considerable conquests.
 
 HI] SIDDARTHA THE BUDDHA 77 
 
 Thus, whether by the power of monarchs, or by its own 
 dignity and charm, the Buddhist doctrine and discipline, the 
 Buddhist monasteries and lay communities, made great progress 
 in the world for many centuries after the death of Buddha him- 
 self. In the first century of our era Buddhism was carried into 
 China, and had great influence in that country. In the sixth 
 century of our era it was carried into Japan, and from the ninth 
 century onward spread there rapidly. (Lafcadio Hearn's Japan, 
 an Interpretation, pp. 204-5.) Undoubtedly the Buddhist doc- 
 trine had power as a missionary creed. 
 
 Yet, when we look into it, this power would seem to need 
 something to supplement it. In India (except so far as Burmah 
 and Ceylon are concerned) Buddhism proved after all to be but 
 a transitory phase of belief. For five hundred years it grew ; 
 then slowly it began to yield before the ancient Brahmin religion, 
 which had never really vanished from the hearts of the Hindus. 
 As it was not by the help of persecution that Buddhism arose 
 in India, so neither was it through persecution by its enemies 
 that it fell. It fell, we cannot doubt, because it could not unite 
 itself with Brahminism, and Brahminism, with all its faults, 
 was more tangible, more imaginable, than Buddhism. Some- 
 thing there was which needed to be added to Buddhism, before 
 it could deeply affect the popular mind. In China and Japan 
 Buddhism did survive, because it was capable of uniting itself 
 with that ancestor worship which is the heart of the religion 
 of those two great countries. But with China and Japan a 
 future chapter must deal more fully.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ANCIENT RELIGION I PERSIA 
 
 TRULY does Darmesteter say of the religion of ancient Persia, 
 " There has been no other great belief in the world that ever 
 left such poor and meagre monuments of its past splendour." 
 Yet the religion of ancient Persia has one claim on our regard 
 which the more famous religions of ancient Greece and Rome 
 have not ; it has survived, whereas they have perished. The 
 name of Zeus or Jupiter is no longer honoured by any man as 
 a worthy name of the Supreme Being ; but Auramazda, to whom 
 the Persian king Darius, five hundred years before Christ, re- 
 corded his devotion on the rocks of Behistun, in cuneiform letters 
 legible to-day and interpreted by scholars, is worshipped at this 
 hour by the community of the Parsis, who mostly have found a 
 refuge in India. Ahura Mazda Auramazda Ormuzd ; whether 
 it is in one or another of these three forms that the Supreme Being 
 is named and worshipped, the worshipper belongs to the same 
 line of tradition ; and that tradition has never quite died out 
 as a living word among men. 
 
 But when we ask what is the history of this tradition ; when 
 we ask how and at what date it originated, and what we are to 
 think of the famous prophet Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, whose 
 name is so intimately associated with it ; when we ask what 
 we are to think of the scarcely less celebrated Magi, who were 
 its priests ; when we seek to judge of the real worth of the religion 
 indicated by these names, its power to strengthen the human 
 heart and to direct men's conduct fruitfully and honourably ; 
 we find ourselves in a maze of doubt ; and the most learned 
 persons, who have solved the enigmas of the language, who have 
 made plain the Avesta and the Pahlavi texts, who have wrested 
 from the cuneiform inscriptions their long-hidden secret these 
 men, so eminent and so courageous in their researches, have 
 wide differences among themselves as to the century in which
 
 CH. iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 79 
 
 Zoroaster lived, as to his relation to the Magi, and are not even 
 all of them sure that there ever was such a person at all. 
 
 Let me try to unravel the tangled skein of the history which 
 gives occasion for differences so serious ; remembering always 
 my dependence on the learned men who are the first authorities 
 on the subject. 
 
 The sacred book of the Persian religion is called the Avesta ; 
 it resembles the Bible rather than the Koran in this, that it 
 was written by many persons, not by one person, and at different 
 epochs of time. If we knew precisely the date at which the 
 several parts of it were respectively written, we should have an 
 invaluable key to the history ; but this knowledge does not lie 
 on the surface, at any rate. 
 
 The different parts of the Avesta are these : First, the Gathas ; 
 the oldest part of the collection and written in a dialect different, 
 generally speaking, from what we find elsewhere ; though there 
 are some other examples of it. The Gathas are poetry, and are 
 recited as hymns in the religious services of the Parsis even at 
 the present day. They are therefore not history ; yet there 
 is no part of the whole Avesta in which there is so near an 
 approximation to history as in the Gathas. The name of 
 Zarathustra occurs frequently in them, and also the name of 
 Vistaspa, the royal patron of Zarathustra, and the names of 
 others ; and the mention of these persons is the mention of real 
 contemporaries of the writer, whoever he may be ; and the 
 writer and his friends are engaged in serious conflicts with ene- 
 mies, preaching and praying, fighting and making converts, 
 nurturing their cattle, and lastly marrying ; for the final hymn 
 of the Gathas relates the marriage of Zarathustra's daughter 
 to one of his attached followers. Well does Professor Mills 
 contrast the Gathas with the later parts of the Avesta in the 
 following passage : 
 
 In the Gathas all is sober and real. The Kine's soul is indeed poeti- 
 cally described as wailing aloud, and the Deity with His Immortals is 
 reported as speaking, hearing, and seeing ; but with these rhetorical 
 exceptions, everything which occupies the attention is practical in the 
 extreme. Grehma and Bendva, the Karpans, the Kavis, and the Usigs, 
 are no mythical monsters. No dragon threatens the settlements, and no 
 fabulous beings defend them. Zarathustra, Gamaspa, Frashaostra, and 
 Maidyomah ; the Spitamas, Hvogvas, the Haekataspas, are as real, and 
 are alluded to with a simplicity as unconscious, as any characters in his- 
 tory. Except inspiration, there are also no miracles. All the action is 
 made up of the exertions and passions of living and suffering men. Let
 
 80 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [CH. 
 
 the Zendist 1 study the Gathas well, and then let him turn to the Yasts 
 or the Vendidad ; he will go from the land of reality to the land of fable. 
 He leaves in the one a toiling prophet, to meet in the other a phantastic 
 demigod. Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxxi. p. xxvi. 
 
 The passage here quoted may stand as a prelude to all study 
 of the Avesta ; it strikes the note of a contrast which is never to 
 be forgotten ; it brings clear before us the fact that in whatever 
 degree imagination or superstition may enter into the Zoroastrian 
 sacred writings, there is solid rock at the bottom of them ; and, 
 it may be added, true conscientiousness, real heartfelt faith. 
 These are the qualities inherent in the Gathas, rugged though 
 they be. Outside the Gathas, the Avesta consists of the Vendidad, 
 the Yasts, the later Yasnas (or hymns), and some other shorter 
 treatises which have considerable likeness to the Yasnas. 
 But for the present let us dismiss these later treatises, and fix 
 our attention on the Gathas alone. In. the Gathas Zoroaster 
 comes before us as a man ; it would seem that the greater part 
 of them was written by him ; perhaps even the whole. And 
 what about the Magi ? I believe, myself, that the Magi do to a 
 certain extent lie behind the Gathas, in a manner whicli must 
 be explained later. But this is not universally admitted, and it 
 is certain that the Magi are never mentioned in the Gathas. 
 Zoroaster then for the present comes before us alone. Our dates 
 are undetermined ; but whether we are reading about events 
 which were taking place in the fourteenth century before Christ, 
 or whether we are reading about events which were taking place 
 in the sixth century before Christ, or whether some intermediate 
 era between these two extremes is before us, we are reading in 
 the Gathas about real persons, real things. Let us examine 
 their nature. 
 
 I have said that the Gathas are poetry, and that they are 
 recited as hymns in the religious services of the modern Parsis. 
 But it would be incorrect to suppose that they were originally 
 written as hymns, or with any view to religious services. Of the 
 later Yasnas it would be correct to say this : the later Yasnas 
 were written for a religion that had become dominant ; and 
 adornment and splendour, not contention, is their aim. But 
 contention is written on every line of the Gathas. They are 
 songs, but songs of battle ; the enemy is present, and the writer 
 is praying and fighting against him. Who is the enemy ? The 
 
 1 By the Zendist is meant properly " the student of the language of the Avesta "; 
 but Professor Mills doubtless intends by it " the student of the Avesta " simply.
 
 iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 81 
 
 enemy comes before us first in material fashion, as a nomad 
 horde ravaging the peaceful works of agriculture and pasture. 
 Take, as an instance of the feeling of the prophet (for a prophet 
 the writer of the Gathas is all through), the following words from 
 that early hymn (or Yasna) which is numbered as the 29th. It 
 is a prayer raised by the suffering peasantry (symbolised as the 
 soul of the Kine, or as others translate it, the Ox-soul) to God 
 and his Righteousness for protection against the marauders : 
 
 Unto you the Soul of the Kine cried aloud . For whom did ye create 
 me, and by whom did ye fashion me ? On me comes the assault of wrath, 
 and of violent power, the blow of desolation, audacious insolence, and 
 thievish might. None other pasturegiver have I than you, therefore do 
 ye teach me good tillage for the fields. Sacred Books of the East, vol. 
 xxxi. p. 6 (translation by Professor Mills). 
 
 Thus does Zarathustra (let me be allowed the form of his 
 name used in the Avesta) plunge into the heart of practical 
 religion. Through him the "Kine" (or the "settlements" as he 
 calls them elsewhere) plead with Ahura Mazda and Asha with 
 God and his Righteousness. We must not suppose that Ahura 
 Mazda and Asha are thought of as two different beings, though 
 they proceed to converse together ; but the representation is 
 poetical. The question is : Who shall be appointed leader of 
 the herds in their distress ? The difficulty of such an appoint- 
 ment, men being the imperfect beings that they are, is urged. 
 Upon this Zarathustra intervenes : 
 
 The Great Creator is himself most mindful of the uttered indications 
 which have been fulfilled beforehand hitherto in the deeds of demon gods 
 and men, and of those which shall be fulfilled by them hereafter. He 
 Ahura is the discerning arbiter ; so shall it be to us as he shall will ! 
 Therefore it is that we both, my soul and the soul of the mother Kine, 
 are making our supplications for the two worlds to Ahura, and with hands 
 stretched out in entreaty, when we pray to the Great Creator with ques- 
 tions in our doubt. Not for the righteous liver, not for the thrifty, shall 
 there be destruction together with the wicked. Ibid. vol. xxxi. pp. 8, 9. 
 
 The two worlds here mentioned are the material world and the 
 spiritual world. Immediately upon this Zarathustra himself is 
 appointed the people's guide ; it is Ahura Mazda who speaks : 
 
 This man is found for me here who alone has hearkened to our indi- 
 cations, Zarathustra Spitama ! Our mighty and completed acts of grace 
 he desires to enounce for us, for Me, the Great Creator, and for Right- 
 eousness ; wherefore I will give him the good abode and authoritative 
 place of such an one as speaks ! 
 
 M.D.A. 6
 
 J 
 
 82 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [CH. 
 
 The Kine weep, regarding Zarathustra as too feeble for so 
 great a purpose ; but the hymn ends by Zarathustra praying for 
 aid in his great cause, so that "the peaceful amenities of home 
 and quiet happiness" may be restored to the sufferers. 
 
 It is in the hymn (or Yasna) numbered as immediately pre- 
 ceding the one just quoted (but the arrangement cannot be held 
 certain) that Vistaspa, the royal patron of Zoroaster, is first 
 named, and also Frashaostra, one of the most intimate friends 
 and allies of the prophet. These names, along with other names 
 of friends and foes, occur frequently in the Gathas. 
 
 Zoroaster, it will be seen, founds himself on this material world 
 in which we live, but reaches out of it, in his thoughts and in his 
 prayers, to the heavenly invisible world. He desires, for himself 
 and for those with whom he is allied, the happiness of peaceful 
 homes and prosperous communities prosperous according to 
 the ideas of that primitive time, the prosperity of pasture and 
 agriculture; and he prays to Ahura Mazda (the "Wise Lord") 
 that this may be accomplished. But his religion is not confined 
 to these simple elements. Before him stand the enemy, the 
 despoilers of that peasantry whose protector and advocate he is ; 
 and it is not enough for him to fight against them with material 
 weapons, he must also find out how these foes are regarded in 
 the divine counsels Does Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, approve 
 of them ? Surely not ; it is by another spirit that they are 
 inspired ; and it is not only in their predatory practices, it is in 
 the thoughts of their heart, in that which they call their religion, 
 in the deities whom they worship, that Zoroaster feels them to 
 be hostile. There is then, besides the Spirit which is akin 
 to Ahura Mazda, a false spirit also in the world, deceiving and 
 leading astray ; and as Zoroaster preaches adherence to the Wise 
 Spirit, so is he constrained to preach avoidance of the false spirit. 
 How naturally then did there arise in him that view of the double 
 character of the world, of two principles, one good and the other 
 evil, contending together in all things for the mastery, by which 
 the doctrine which he preached became afterwards best known to 
 posterity ! It is called a dualism ; but we must not do Zoroaster 
 the injustice of supposing that he preached it with a technical 
 rigidity, or that he thought of his evil spirit as the equal adversary 
 of the Wise Spirit. His feeling is truly monotheistic ; and it is 
 the Good that will conquer ; that is his unmistakable prophecy, 
 though we may have some doubt as to the precise ond which 
 he assigned to the evil. But it is time now to quote his own
 
 iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 83 
 
 description of the doctrine to which I have been referring ; it is 
 from the 30th Yasna, immediately succeeding to that from which 
 I have already quoted : 
 
 And now I will proclaim, O ye who are drawing near and seeking 
 to be taught ! those animadversions which appertain to Him who knows 
 all things whatsoever ; the praises which are for Ahura, and the sacrifices 
 which spring from the Good Mind, and likewise the benignant meditations 
 inspired by Righteousness. And I pray that propitious results may be 
 seen in the lights. 
 
 Hear ye then with your ears ; see ye the bright flames with the 
 Better Mind. It is for a decision as to religions, man and man, each 
 individually for himself. Before the great effort of the cause, awake ye 
 to our teaching ! 
 
 Thus are the primeval spirits who as a pair combining their opposite 
 strivings, and yet each independent in his action, have been famed of 
 old. A better thing, they two, and a worse, as to thought, as to word, 
 and as to deed. And between these two let the wisely acting choose 
 aright. Choose ye not as the evildoers ! 
 
 When the two spirits came together at the first to make life, and 
 life's absence, and to determine how the world at last shall be ordered, 
 for the wicked the worst life, for the holy the Best Mental State : he 
 who was the evil of them both chose the evil, thereby working the worst 
 of possible results, but the more bounteous spirit chose the Divine 
 Righteousness, he who clothes upon himself the firm stones of heaven 
 as his robe. And he chose likewise them who content Ahura with actions, 
 which are performed really in accordance with the faith. 
 
 And between these two spirits the Demon-gods can make no right- 
 eous choice, since we have beguiled them 1 . As they were questioning and 
 debating in their council, the Worst Mind approached them that he might 
 be chosen. And thereupon they rushed together unto the Demon of 
 Fury, that they might pollute the minds of mortals. Sacred Books of 
 the East, vol. xxxi. pp. 28 sqq. 
 
 There is a dualism, doubtless, in the above passage ; but it is 
 the dualism of experience, not the dualism of faith. In faith, 
 Ahura Mazda stands supreme ; but as a matter of fact, the world 
 contains both the good and the bad, and these, to Zoroaster's 
 eye, proceed each from the spirit which is the primary principle, 
 respectively, of the good and of the bad. Without saying that 
 this is a perfect philosophy, it is yet a very natural philosophy, 
 
 1 One would be glad to escape this predestinarian sentiment. I have no claim to 
 judge whether the translation is or is not correct ; but I observe that this clause is 
 absent from Professor Moulton's translation in Early Zoroastrianism, p. 350 : " Between 
 these twain the demons also chose not aright, for infatuation came upon them as 
 they took counsel together, so that they chose the Worse Thought. Then they 
 rushed together to Violence, that they might enfeeble the world of man." 
 
 I should add that in transcribing the translation given by Professor Mills, I have 
 felt myself at liberty to omit words which he has put into parentheses, and which 
 I understand are not in the original, in cases where the insertion was not necessary 
 for the understanding of the passage. 
 
 62
 
 84 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [CH. 
 
 and does not hinder the unity of that monotheism which is the 
 true dominating belief expressed in the Gathas. In the sequel 
 of the passage the aspiration is uttered that the prophet and 
 those whom he addresses may be among those who renovate the 
 world ; and the Yasna concludes as follows (I will quote this time 
 from Professor Moulton's translation in Early Zoroastrianism, 
 p. 351) : 
 
 Then truly on the Lie shall come the destruction of delight ; but 
 they that get them good name shall be partakers in the promised reward 
 in the fair abode of Good Thought, of Mazdah, and of Right. 
 
 If, O ye mortals, ye mark those commandments that Mazdah hath 
 ordained of happiness and pain, the long punishment for the liars, and 
 blessings for the righteous then hereafter ye shall have bliss. 
 
 Most strongly before Zoroaster's mind are the two conceptions 
 of Good and Evil ; most strongly does he urge men to follow Good, 
 and to forsake Evil. And when we ask what he means by Good 
 and Evil, we see that by Good he means peaceful industry, and by 
 Evil he means that which disturbs, frustrates, and ruins peaceful 
 industry ; and he is convinced that as there is a good God who helps 
 the peacefully industrious, so there are false deities to whom the 
 authors of ruin and destruction apply for aid. But he is convinced 
 also that the conflict between Good and Evil will come to an end, 
 and that they who have followed good shall be rewarded ; and 
 from other expressions which he uses we see that he holds this 
 i reward to be eternal ; he believes in immortality. Thus in 
 Yasna xxxi. 6 we read (the translation is by Professor Mills) : 
 
 That verily shall be the best of all words to him which the Allwise 
 one will declare to me in very deed, that word which is the Mathra 
 (or counsel) of Welfare and of Immortality; 
 
 and again in 21 of the same Yasna : 
 
 But Ahura Mazda will give both Universal Weal and Immortality 
 in the fulness of his Righteous Order, and from himself as the head of 
 Dominion. And ho will likewise give the Good Mind's vigorous might to 
 him who in spirit and deeds is his friend. 
 
 How Zoroaster arrived at the conception of personal immor- 
 tality we do not know ; but it is not an unnatural belief for men, 
 and the quaint conception of the Bridge of the Separator (the 
 bridge over which, after death, the righteous pass safely, but from 
 which the wicked fall into hell) is likely to have been taken by 
 him from his predecessors. The conceptions however of a reno- 
 vation of the world, and of an era when the world shall be reno- 
 vated, are different from the conception of personal immortality ;
 
 iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 85 
 
 and these other conceptions are much more likely to have been 
 original with him than the conception of personal immortality. 
 The conception of an era when the world shall be renovated, 
 and when goodness shall be universal, is plain in the Gathas ; the 
 translation of Professor Moult-on brings it out rather more dis- 
 tinctly than the translation of Professor Mills, but there is no 
 essential difference between them, as will be seen from the 
 following clause ( Yasna xxx. 8) which I will quote in both versions ; 
 Professor Mills writes : 
 
 Then, O Mazda ! the Kingdom shall have been gained for thee by 
 thy Good Mind within thy folk. 
 
 Professor Moulton translates the same passage thus : 
 
 Then, O Mazdah ! at thy command shall Good Thought establish the 
 Dominion in the Consummation. 
 
 The word "consummation" adds a point to the thought, but 
 there is no real difference between the two translators here. 
 Again, both translations mark how the happy state at which 
 Zoroaster aims has its essence in "Good Thought," in Tightness 
 of the mind ; material happiness, though a real thing, comes 
 afterwards. This sequence, by which mind and soul, not place 
 or power, are the first constituents of the heavenly life, is clear 
 all through the Gathas ; and yet mind and soul act naturally ; 
 happiness is the natural, not the artificial, result of them. Take, as 
 illustrative of this, Yasna xxxrv. 12, 13, 14: 
 
 Teach us by Right the paths of Good Thought that are blessed to 
 go in even that way of Good Thought, O Ahura, of which thou didst 
 speak to me, whereon, a way well made by Right, the Selves of the future 
 benefactors shall pass to the reward that was prepared for the wise, of 
 which thou art determinant, O Mazdah. That precious reward, O Mazdah, 
 ye will give by the action of Good Thought to the bodily life of those who 
 are in the community that tends the pregnant cow. Moulton's Early 
 Zoroastrianism, p. 363. 
 
 It will be seen, moreover, from this passage, that the "reno- 
 vation" or "consummation" of which Zoroaster speaks is not 
 conceived as a catastrophe disturbing the existing order, but as 
 a true sequence of the existing order rightly directed. How the 
 spirits of the holy departed are related to this material order in 
 its renovation and fresh excellence, is not altogether clear ; but 
 we must not expect clearness on every point ; and to ourselves 
 the same question may occasion a difficulty. 
 
 No one, I am sure, can study the passages which I have here 
 quoted, or the Gathas as a whole, without admiration for the
 
 86 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [OH. 
 
 mind which had so sane an apprehension of religion and morality, 
 or without recognition of the reality of Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, 
 as a man. This conclusion stands, whatever we may think of the 
 questions which surround this name. The question, in what cen- 
 tury Zoroaster lived ; the question, in what relation he stood to 
 the Magi ; the question, who the Magi were, and what we ought 
 to think of them ; the question, who those opponents were, 
 against whom Zoroaster in the Gathas inveighs so fiercely ; the 
 question, in what relation he stood towards those kings of Persia, 
 who are famous in history, Cyrus and Cambyses, Darius and 
 Xerxes and their successors ; these questions have hardly been 
 touched by me as yet, and very important questions they are. 
 But those who differ most largely on these points may yet agree 
 that, somewhere in the early centuries, long before the Christian 
 era, there lived a man endowed with singular clearness of spiritual 
 vision, and rectitude of principle ; that he lived somewhere in 
 the great country called Iran, the country which stretches from 
 the river Tigris in the west to the frontiers of India in the east, 
 and from the Caspian and Aral seas in the north to the Arabian 
 sea in the south. This man, whom we must call Zoroaster or 
 Zarathustra, left the memory and the influence of his spirit to a 
 long line of posterity, through that literary work with which the 
 present chapter has so far been concerned, the Gathas ; and 
 though his spiritual posterity often misinterpreted him, and used 
 his authority to support practices and beliefs which would have 
 been abhorrent to him, the truth which he proclaimed survived, 
 and is at this day not unworthily embraced by the few who accept 
 him as their master in religion. 
 
 It is interesting to compare and contrast him with the great 
 teacher with whom my last chapter was concerned, Siddartha 
 the Buddha ; both of them ardent and unselfish ; but Buddha 
 preaching love and self-denial rather than practical work, and 
 indeed laying little stress on the work of the hands ; Zoroaster 
 on the contrary laying the greatest stress on peaceable work, and 
 though valuing love, not laying the stress on love which Buddha 
 did ; Buddha thinking of Divine beings as examples rather than 
 as helpers, Zoroaster appealing with all the fervour of his soul to 
 the Supreme Deity for help. It will be seen that they were in 
 some degree the complements of each other ; and as I have 
 spoken of the defect of Buddha as being the undervaluing of 
 personal desire, so I may speak of the defect of Zoroaster as being 
 a want of tenderness towards enemies : his danger was, in thinking
 
 iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 87 
 
 of the enemy, to forget the man ; and though he is not chargeable 
 himself with cruelty (as far as we know), his followers afterwards 
 were not so blameless. Both Buddha and Zoroaster strove to 
 make their teaching universal, a teaching for all men ; and it is 
 especially worthy of notice that, while Iran was the great tract 
 over which the influence of Zoroaster peculiarly extended, and to 
 which he brought his first message, he welcomed those who were 
 traditionally the foes of the natives of Iran, and who afterwards 
 were his own chief foes, the Turanians of the north. Let me 
 give the passage in the Gathas (Yasna XLVI. 12) as translated by 
 Professor Williams Jackson : 
 
 When Asha (Righteousness) came unto those that are to be named 
 as the children, and children's children, of Fryana, the Turanian who 
 zealously doth further the possessions of Armaiti [increasing Earth by 
 agricultural activity] and when Vohu Manah (Good Thought) took up 
 his abode with them, (then) the Lord Mazda is announced to them to 
 their comfort. Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient Iran, pp. 83, 84. 
 
 In that passage national narrowness is repudiated. It is 
 not to be denied that the story which we gather from the prophetic 
 deliverances of the Gathas is obscure and fragmentary ; the 
 detailed personal references, such as that which speaks of the 
 marriage of Zoroaster's daughter, or the quaint mention of the 
 " ten mares with a stallion and a camel" which Zoroaster hopes 
 to have ( Yasna XLIV. 18), do not throw much light on the history ; 
 and there is a singular absence of mention of places. But the 
 main purport of the preaching indicated by the Gathas must be 
 accepted as real ; and now, to make it a little more determinate, 
 let us ask who were the enemies against whom Zoroaster had to 
 contend. 
 
 The enemies, as has already been said, were not merely 
 hostile through their habits of despoiling and ravaging the 
 peaceful settlements, but also in their religious beliefs and senti- 
 ments. Their deities are called the Daevas ; when the "demon- 
 gods" were spoken of in the extract from the 30th Yasjia 
 given above, the original gives "Daevas" ; and all through the 
 Gathas the Daevas are the base deities who work ill. Here is 
 the description of them, together with a description of one of 
 their worshippers and adorers, from one of the earliest Gathas 
 (Yasna xxxn. 3, 4, 5, 9, 10) : 
 
 But ye, ye Daevas all, and he that highly honours you, are seed of 
 the Bad Thought yea, and of the Lie and of Arrogance ; likewise your
 
 88 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [CH. 
 
 deeds, whereby ye have long been known in the seventh region of the 
 earth 1 . 
 
 For ye have brought it to pass that men who do the worst things 
 shall be called beloved of the Daevas, separating themselves from Good 
 Thought, departing from the will of Mazdah Ahura and from Right. 
 
 Thereby ye defrauded mankind of happy life and of immortality, by 
 the deed which he and the Bad Spirit together with Bad Thought and 
 Bad Word taught you, ye Daevas, and the Liars, so as to ruin mankind. 
 *********** 
 
 The teacher of evil destroys the lore, he by his teachings destroys 
 the design of life, he prevents the possession of Good Thought from being 
 prized. These words of my spirit T wail unto you, O Mazdah, and to 
 the Right. 
 
 He it is that destroys the lore, who declares that the Ox and the Sun 
 are the worst thing to behold with the eyes, and hath made the pious 
 into liars, and desolates the pastures and lifts his weapon against the 
 righteous man. Moulton's Early Zoroastrianism, pp. 355-357. 
 
 It will be evident from this passage that the Daevas are not 
 the product of any chance superstition ; they are deities with an 
 accredited worship. But the whole district of Iran, in some 
 part of which Zoroaster was preaching, was a district in which 
 the old Aryan religion, of which we have the leading example in 
 the Hindu sacred writings, was dominant in the earliest times 
 known to us ; and in the Hindu sacred writings the Gods are called 
 "Devas." Is it not plain, then, that the Daevas and the Devas 
 are the same ? And it follows from this that Zoroaster in the 
 Gathas was attacking the deities of the old Aryan religion, which, 
 probably in a corrupted form, was strong in Iran. If any doubt 
 could remain on the subject, it would be dispelled by the fact 
 that Zoroaster attacks that famous divinity of the Aryans, 
 Haoma (called Soma by the Hindus) 2 and that famous Aryan 
 hero, Yima son of Vivahvant (called by the Hindus Yama son 
 of Vivasvat). The old Aryan religion had its drunken orgies, 
 its slaughter of cattle (nominally for sacrifices, practically for 
 feasting and rioting) ; to all of which Zoroaster, with his plain 
 natural piety, was steadfastly opposed. 
 
 These followers of the Aryan religion were also, in no slight 
 degree, nomads, and turbulent and aggressive nomads ; and it was 
 both in their capacity of turbulent nomads, and of superstitious 
 worshippers, that Zoroaster attacked them. He himself had been 
 born in Media, the native country of the Magi ; but the traditions 
 say, and the best opinion holds, that the main part of his preaching 
 
 1 (leldncr interprets this phrase as moaning " the central part of the earth, on which 
 men live." 
 
 2 See Moulton's Karl;/ Zoroastrianiam, p. 357, and the remark there quoted from 
 the German critic Bartholomac : and various phrases from the 32nd and 4hth Yosnos.
 
 iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 89 
 
 was in the east of Iran 1 , in such countries as Bactria and Seistan, 
 verging on the borders of India ; perhaps also in Parthia, and in 
 Persis (the small country which gave its name to the Persians) 
 to the south. Somewhere in this region he had found and had 
 converted king Vistaspa, a king who cannot have been supreme 
 in Iran, but who still evidently had much power ; and with the 
 help of some faithful companions of his own, and through the 
 political power exercised by king Vistaspa, Zoroaster was en- 
 deavouring to found a stable and peaceable community, pastoral 
 and agricultural, and a religion which trusted in the Most High, 
 and which looked forward to better things in the future. Such 
 was his work in life. If, in the end, he was not altogether suc- 
 cessful in so mighty a task, can we be very much surprised ? 
 Yet, as I began this chapter by saying, his teaching lives to the 
 present day, and lives honourably. Not only by his professed 
 followers, the Parsis, but from ourselves also, who have known 
 other teachers, he deserves acknowledgment. 
 
 It remains to be added, what I have already half implied, 
 that he was one of the Magi. This, which all the old traditions 
 say, has only recently been doubted. But it is only the extreme 
 difficulty of the subject, and the necessity of finding some exit 
 out of a thorny labyrinth, which has caused it to be doubted ; 
 and, indeed, it should not be doubted. For who has preserved 
 the writings, the sayings, the doings of Zoroaster for us, but the 
 Magi alone ? Who had the smallest interest in preserving for 
 us the writings, the sayings, and the doings of Zoroaster, but the 
 Magi ? Who has honoured Zoroaster with supreme honour, but 
 the Magi ; and if sometimes the honour which they paid to him 
 was technical and formal, is not that a misfortune to which all 
 religions are liable ? Nor was the honour which the Magi paid 
 to Zoroaster always technical and formal. It is so in the Vendidad, 
 that unlucky work written when the Magi were in their decay ; 
 but in the later Yasnas he is referred to simply as the author of 
 the teaching which is to be honoured and followed ; and in the 
 Yasts, in spite of the imaginative nature of those compositions, 
 which does appear in the following passage, I do not think it 
 a passage breathing a wholly unreal sentiment : 
 
 We worship the piety and the Fravashi (i.e. the underlying eternal 
 spiritual being) of the holy Zarathustra ; who first thought what is 
 good, who first spoke what is good, who first did what is good ; who was 
 
 1 See Professor Williams Jackson in his Zoroaster, the Prophet of Ancient Iran, 
 pp. 182-225, and Professor Moulton in Early Zoroastrianism, p. 84, and note the quo- 
 tation from Bartholomae given by Moulton.
 
 90 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [CH. 
 
 the first Priest, the first Warrior, the first Plougher of the ground ; who 
 first knew and first taught.... In whose birth and growth the waters 
 and the plants rejoiced ; in whose birth and growth the waters and the 
 plants grew ; in whose birth and growth all the creatures of the good 
 creation cried out, Hail ! Hail to us ! for he is born, the Athravan, Spitama 
 Zarathustra. Sacred Books of the East, vol. \\iii. pp. 200, 201 (trans- 
 lation by Darmesteter). 
 
 The Farvardin Yast, from which the above passage is taken, 
 is the Yast which takes as its theme that peculiarly Magian 
 conception, the Fravashi, the underlying spiritual existence of 
 every living being, which is the eternal element in every living 
 being ; therefore this Yast must be a Magian composition ; and 
 besides the word "Athravan," the word for "priest" which the 
 Magians peculiarly used, ratifies it as Magian. Not wholly 
 insincere do I think it ; and as far as this passage goes, one 
 might more reasonably hold Zoroaster to have been the founder 
 of the Magian body, than not to have belonged to them at all. 
 Some indeed have taken him to have been the founder of the 
 Magi, regarding the Magi as a sect. But this cannot reasonably 
 be held ; the teaching of the Magi cannot be derived from the 
 teaching of the Gathas ; on the other hand, the Gathas are the 
 highest point of that religious sentiment, to which the Magi 
 could not reach, but towards which they had been tending. 
 We must then hold with the tradition, that Zoroaster was not 
 the founder of the Magi, but that he was one of the Magi. 
 
 And now, who were the Magi ? Herodotus tells us that they 
 were a tribe of the Medes ; and we have no reason to doubt iiis 
 statement. Whether they were a tribe (as we may rather believe) 
 or a sect, they had great religious influence, and not only in Media ; 
 not only, even, in Iran ; for we find them in Babylon, and beyond 
 Babylon. They preceded Zoroaster in time, as a consideration of 
 their tenets will show ; it is a confirmation of this when we find 
 that not all of them followed Zoroaster, or honoured him with 
 special reverence. The Magi of Media did so honour him ; the 
 Magi of Babylon treated him more remotely. It is beyond doubt 
 that the Magi of Babylon came originally from Media ; but there 
 is a strong distinction between them and the Magi of Media. The 
 Magi of Media worshipped supremely Ahura Mazda, to whom 
 Zoroaster himself (as will have been seen from the Gathas) gave 
 his devotion and addressed his prayers ; the Magi of Babylon 
 worshipped supremely Mithra, the God who originally represented 
 the heavenly light, but who came to be identified with the iSun. 
 Now it is true that the Magi of Media did recognise and worship
 
 iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 91 
 
 Mithra, and sometimes appear to put him even as equal to Ahura 
 Mazda ; but their true sentiment is, that Ahura Mazda is the 
 sole highest. On the other hand, the worship of Ahura Mazda 
 does sometimes filter through to the religion of the Babylonian 
 Magi ; but not very much ; it is Mithra to whom they address 
 their chief devotion. It was from the Magi of Babylon and not 
 from the Magi of Media, that that Mithraism was descended 
 which, passing through Asia Minor, became in the second and 
 third centuries of our era the chief rival of Christianitj^ in the 
 Roman empire. To confirm this important point let me quote 
 two paragraphs from the splendid and comprehensive work of 
 M. Cumont (Textes et Monuments Figures relatifs aux Mysteres 
 de Mithra), published at Brussels in 1899. 
 
 De tout qui precede, se degage done un resultat tres net. Soit qu'on 
 examine les caracteres du mithriacisme, soit qu'on suive le cours de son 
 histoire, on aboutit a la meme conclusion : les mysteres qui se sont repan- 
 dus dans 1' empire romain sont les heritiers directs du mazdeisme, tel qu'il 
 etait pratique a Babylone sous les derniers rois Achemenides. 
 
 Le mithriacisme n'est done pas, comme on 1'a cru a tort, une altera- 
 tion du Zoroastrisme avestique. II s'est developpe a cot6 de lui et inde- 
 pendamment de lui, ils sont 1'un et 1'autre une transformation de 1'antique 
 religion des tribus iraniennes. Cumont, vol. i. p. 11. 
 
 The distinction drawn by M. Cumont in the last paragraph 
 is fundamental ; but in the first paragraph one word should, I 
 think, be altered ; instead of "mazdeism," it would be more 
 exact to speak of "primitive magianism" as the source of 
 Mithraism. If mazdeism, or in other words the worship of Ahura 
 Mazda, had been the source of Mithraism, we could not but have 
 found Ahura Mazda (or Auramazda) recorded on the Mithraic 
 monuments as at least the equal of Mithra ; whereas in reality 
 the Mithraic monuments hardly recognise Ahura Mazda at all. 
 But it is evident that M. Cumont uses the term "mazdeism" 
 technically to express the Persian religion in the form which it 
 took when it had separated itself from the original Aryan worship. 
 
 I must not linger much longer over the Magi of Babylon, for 
 they were after all a subordinate branch of Magianism, and were 
 not Zoroastrian at all ; but a few things more must be said 
 about them. How far back can we trace them ? 
 
 Professor Moulton has acutely pointed out that they are 
 found, in the year 591 B.C., as far west as Jerusalem. Here 
 is the passage in which the prophet Ezekiel indicates them ; 
 not indeed naming them, but unmistakably referring to their 
 ceremonial. The passage professes to be a vision, but the facts
 
 92 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [CH. 
 
 mentioned were evidently known to the prophet through actual 
 witnesses : 
 
 And he brought me into the inner court of Jehovah's house, and 
 behold, at the door of the temple of Jehovah, between the porch and the 
 altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple 
 of Jehovah, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the 
 sun toward the east. Then he said unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son 
 of man ? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the 
 abominations which they commit here ? for they have filled the land with 
 violence, and have turned again to provoke me to anger ; and lo, they 
 put the branch to their nose. Ezekiel viii. 16, 17. 
 
 The five and twenty men were Jews, as is implied in the 
 prophet's reproof ; but their ritual is marked as Magian by their 
 worshipping the sun, and "putting the branch to their nose." 
 The branch is the barsom or baresman, a bundle of thin tamarisk 
 rods, which the Magian worshipper held in his hand when sacri- 
 ficing. Another Biblical passage quoted by Professor Moulton 
 in this connexion is Jeremiah xxxix. 3 and 13, where a Babylonian 
 public officer, called the "Rab-Mag," is mentioned among the 
 princes who entered Jerusalem after its capture by Nebuchad- 
 nezzar ; the title "Rab-Mag" being most naturally interpreted 
 as "Chief of the Magi." The date indicated in Jeremiah is 
 five years later than the date of the passage in Ezekiel ; the 
 two passages support one another, and the extract given from 
 M. Cumont supports both ; and as the Medians and Babylonians 
 were friendly to each other (both having been enemies to Nineveh) 
 the whole is exceedingly natural. The Sun, it will be seen, was 
 the object of worship to the Magi of Babylon ; and Mithra, 
 interpreted as the Sun, was the object of worship to the Mithraists 
 afterwards. It only remains to add that the Mithraists of the 
 Roman empire were, not indeed the followers of a true religion, 
 but still the most estimable, except the philosophic schools, of all 
 the heathen rivals and opponents of early Christianity ; so that 
 we have some reason, on their account, to think well of Magianism 
 in its original form. That Mithraism fell before Christianity, is 
 of course a matter neither of surprise nor of regret ; and saying 
 this, I now leave the Magi of Babylon. 
 
 Of the Magi as they originally came into prominence in Media, 
 a good opinion may reasonably be held, as I have just intimated. 
 In their chequered career afterwards, they committed serious 
 sins, and ran into great follies ; they never reached to anything 
 like the height of Zoroaster, their greatest example ; but in 
 their first origin they merit some approval, and in the after
 
 iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 93 
 
 history they did carry down for the recognition of posterity, 
 though very imperfectly represented in their own persons, the 
 teaching of Zoroaster. That teaching, in its true essence, lay 
 for centuries in a kind of trance ; the Magi were the guardians of 
 the sleeping form of it ; the real awakening has taken place in 
 times comparatively modern. 
 
 Without seeking exactly to determine the date at which the 
 Magi of Media began to be religious teachers, the time of their 
 largest influence and purest teaching must have been coincident 
 with the time of the greatest sway of the Median empire, that is 
 during the seventh century and the early part of the sixth century 
 before the Christian era. During some part of that time their 
 missionaries went to Babylon ; and during some part of that time 
 the greatest of their missionaries, Zoroaster, went from Media to 
 the east. What then, irrespectively of Zoroaster, was the Magian 
 teaching ? 
 
 In the after ages, when they had declined from their first 
 virtue, it appears as a kind of worship of the elements, mingled 
 with certain fragments of polytheism, derived from the old Aryan 
 religion. But we should judge them unjustly if we held that this 
 was the character of the primary Magian teaching. The Magi 
 of Babylon had never any of those unworthy eccentricities into 
 which the Magi of Media fell in the time of their decay, and of 
 which the best known (and most enduring) has been their habit 
 of exposing their dead to be devoured by birds ; and therefore 
 we must infer that the original Magi of Media had not these eccen- 
 tricities either. 
 
 The primary doctrine of the Magi of Media was evidently a 
 kind of pantheism, exemplified to us in many of the later Yasnas, 
 from which I will quote one passage : 
 
 Yea, we worship the Creator Ahura Mazda and the Fire, Ahura 
 Mazda's son, and the good waters which are Mazda-made and holy, and 
 the resplendent sun of the swift horses, and the moon with the seed of 
 cattle in his beams ; and we worship the star Tistrya 1 , the lustrous and 
 glorious ; and we worship the soul of the Kine of blessed endowment, 
 and its Creator Ahura Mazda ; and we worship Mithra 2 of the wide pas- 
 tures and Sraosha (Obedience) the blessed, and Rashnu 2 the most just, 
 and the good, heroic, beautiful Fravashis of the saints, and the Blow-of- 
 Victory Ahura-given. And we worship Raman-Hvastra 2 , and the boun- 
 teous Wind of blessed gift, and its Creator Ahura Mazda, and the good 
 Mazdayasnian Religion, and the good Blessedness and Arstat 2 . Sacred 
 Books of the East, vol. xxxi. p. 256. 
 
 1 Generally held to be Sirius. 
 
 2 Mithra is the heavenly light; Rashnu is the Genius of Truthf ulness ; Raman- 
 Hvastra is the Genius that gives good abodes and good pastures ; Arstat is Truthfulness.
 
 94 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [CH. 
 
 Now, I am not saying that that passage entirely coincides 
 with the original doctrine of the Magi ; for the mention of Ahura 
 Mazda shows in it the influence of Zoroaster. But it is charac- 
 teristic, in that it assembles together all the things of noble 
 and worthy repute, whatever the world contains, and presents 
 them together, not separately, to be worshipped by men. In 
 another of these Yasnas it is said, "we worship all good men and 
 good women" ; and it is sometimes added, all good men and 
 good women who have suffered and struggled for the faith. It 
 is a matter of course, that when men were bidden to worship 
 such an assemblage of noble and excellent, but diverse, beings, 
 they should end by isolating one or more of those beings as most 
 excellent, and worship these in a special manner ; and thus 
 pantheism would slide into polytheism. Hence we find the Magi 
 of Babylon worshipping the Sun ; and from the Yasts, which 
 are the latest part of the Avesta (though probably embodying 
 passages from old Aryan hymns, which would be quite early) 
 we see that the Magi of Media, in the fourth century before Christ, 
 had succumbed to a distinct polytheism. But the earliest Magian 
 teaching was clearly a revolt against the old Aryan polytheism, 
 and especially against idolatry. We learn from Herodotus 
 (i. 131-132) that the Persians (and with the Persians he must 
 include the Medes) had neither temples nor altars nor images ; 
 but that they went to the highest peaks of the mountains, and 
 there offered their sacrifices. Herodotus wrote in the latter 
 part of the fifth century before Christ, when the Magian teaching 
 had been long in existence ; and he tells us that the Persians 
 accounted it unlawful to offer a sacrifice unless one of the Magi 
 was present and chanted a hymn concerning the gods. Evidently 
 then the Persian worship of which Herodotus speaks was a worship 
 according to the Magian religion. Must we not infer that it 
 was from the Magi that the Persians learnt to abstain from using 
 temples, altars and images ? From whom else could the Persians 
 have learned this ? The nations all round Iran, with no exception 
 that we know, used temples, altars and images : thus did the 
 Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians and (when 
 they had once settled down) the Hindus 1 . Is it not plain that it 
 was the influence of the Magi which led the Persians not to use 
 these common adjuncts of religious worship ? Moreover, it is 
 
 1 See, in the second chapter of the present work (p. 44) the passage quoted by 
 Professor Macdoneli from the Rig-Veda, mentioning an idol ; and the reference to the 
 Brahmanaa.
 
 iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 95 
 
 plain why the influence of the Magi should tend this way. They 
 were directing the thoughts of worshippers, not to deities imagina- 
 tively described, but to realities, behind which a divine spirit 
 was conceived to lie. Just as all good men and good women 
 had their Fravashis, or eternal spiritual representatives, so all the 
 great and wonderful things of the visible universe had the divinity 
 behind them, and that divinity was to be worshipped. This 
 was a true advance on the Aryan polytheism ; and besides its 
 more intrinsic rationality, we may well believe that the religious 
 rites, elaborate and turbulent, which the Aryan priesthood en- 
 couraged, offended the Magi, who were more spiritually minded ; 
 so that on all grounds it was natural for the Magi to urge the 
 abandonment of temples and altars and images, and we must 
 believe that it was they who produced this amendment in the 
 religion of the Aryan Medes and Persians. 
 
 But yet, as the Magi held that the path to knowledge of the 
 divinity lay through the visible universe, in which there were 
 many objects, some more and some less splendid and wonderful, 
 there would be a tendency to select some of these objects as 
 more worthy of worship than others, and thus the way back again 
 to polytheism was not shut out by the Magian system. It was 
 shut out by Zoroaster ; but Zoroaster was too high even for the 
 Magi properly to comprehend him. Hence we find the Magi of 
 Babylon worshipping the Sun ; and the Magi of Media paid 
 special regard to the element of Fire, and in a sort of way they 
 made an idol of Fire ; and their whole attitude towards Fire, 
 Earth, Water, was in the end not rational. But they began ration- 
 ally and devoutly ; and though we must not say that Zoroaster's 
 teaching was exactly the development of the teaching of the 
 Magi, for it sprang from a purer and more native source than 
 that from which the teaching of the Magi sprang, still it lay 
 much nearer to the teaching of the Magi than it did to the teaching 
 of the old Aryan religion. The Magian religion was intermediate 
 between the Aryan religion and Zoroaster ; in recognising this, 
 we have the surest key to the whole subject which is at present 
 obtainable. 
 
 Let me say, at this point, that I agree with Professor Moulton 
 in holding that the Magi were not Aryans, not of the ruling race 
 in Media ; this is what is implied by Darius, when in his Behistun 
 inscription he calls Auramazda 1 "the god of the Aryans"; he 
 means to say that he had more right to worship Auramazda than 
 
 1 Auramazda is the Persian, Ahura Mazda the Median form of the name.
 
 96 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [CH. 
 
 his enemies, the Magi, had. (Yet surely Zoroaster, even if he 
 borrowed the name from the Aryans, had made the right to use it 
 his own.) The Magi, though not of the ruling race, were evidently 
 of great consequence and repute ; nor have we any reason to say 
 that hatred was felt towards them as long as the Median empire 
 lasted ; it was afterwards that that hatred came. Of course, 
 they would not be popular with the Aryan priesthood. 
 
 Such then were the Magi ; but before I pursue their career 
 onwards it will be well to show how Zoroaster, coming from the 
 Magi, treated that critical point, the worship of Fire and of the 
 luminaries of heaven. He could not leave the teaching of his 
 youth, in which Fire had been held to be divine, quite without 
 recognition ; and all through the Gathas Fire is spoken of as a 
 kind of sacramental sign of deity ; as for instance in such phrases 
 as these : "the f eh' city that is with the heavenly lights" (Yasna 
 xxx. 1); "the award thou givest by thy Spirit and thy Fire" 
 Yasna xxxi. 3); "thy Fire, O Ahura, that is mighty through 
 Right" (Yasna xxxiv. 4). But he never approaches in the 
 least degree to the worship of Fire in itself, and his attitude 
 towards all created things is well shown in the following verses 
 ( Yasna XLIV. 3, 4) : 
 
 This T ask thee, tell me truly, Ahura, Who is by generation the 
 Father of Right, at the first ? Who determined the path of sun and stars ? 
 Who is it by whom the moon waxes and wanes again ? This, O Mazdah, 
 and yet more, I am fain to know. 
 
 This I ask thee, tell me truly, Ahura, Who upheld the earth beneath 
 and the firmament from falling? Who the waters and the plants ? Who 
 yoked swiftness to winds and clouds? Who is, O Mazdah, creator of 
 Good Thought? 
 
 And presently he answers : "I strive to recognise by these 
 things thee, O Mazdah, creator of all things through the holy spirit." 
 
 Zoroaster, then, surpassed his own tribe, the Magi ; and the 
 Magi, when their hour of need came, fully knew and acknowledged 
 this. What they thought of him in his lifetime, there is no record 
 to say ; but we have no reason to think that they were ever 
 adverse to him. They were never pure monotheists, as he was ; 
 but there was nothing in the way of honouring him, which they 
 could do, which they left undone. There is an interesting point 
 in their history to which I may here refer ; an old king Husravah, 
 a very warlike king, who must be a Median king (for it is said of him 
 very frequently 1 that he was the first who united the Aryan nations 
 
 1 In the Vasts. Our information about this king comes from combining what we 
 read of him in the Yasts with what we read in the Pahlavi writings.
 
 iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 97 
 
 together, which did not happen before the Median empire began, 
 and did happen under that empire), is also said to have destroyed 
 the idol temples near lake Kaekasta, which is what is now called 
 lake Urumiah in Armenia. (This last fact is stated in the Pahlavi 
 writings, where his name appears as Khusrob.) Now that destruc- 
 tion must have been effected by the counsel of the Magi ; but it 
 is plain from the Behistun inscription that the Aryan temples 
 in Media were not destroyed in the reign of king Husravah ; 
 and we can well understand that the Aryan priests would have 
 an influence in the centre of the Median empire which they 
 would not have in the outskirts of that empire. I may add 
 that the account in Herodotus, I. 102, does perhaps justify us in 
 identifying king Husravah with the second king of the Median 
 empire, Phraortes. 
 
 It is time now to ask : What are we to hold, as near as we can 
 tell, to have been the date of Zoroaster ? or, to put a kindred 
 question, what was the date of Vistaspa, the king to whose 
 help Zoroaster, and the teaching of Zoroaster, owed so much ? 
 The traditional account, which we find in the Pahlavi texts, 
 gives the date of "the coming of the religion" (or in other words 
 the conversion of king Vistaspa by Zoroaster) either as 300 
 years before the conquest of the Persian empire by Alexander 
 of Macedon, or (in Bundahis, xxxrv.), with a slight difference 
 from the former account, 272 years before the death of Alexander. 
 As Alexander's victory at Arbela was in 331 B.C., and Alexander's 
 death in 323 B.C., these statements imply that the conversion of 
 Vistaspa took place either in 631 B.C. or in 595 B.C. But the 
 Pahlavi texts are very uncertain authorities in the matter of 
 dates ; and though we cannot ignore them, we must not reckon 
 them to be our most important guides. What, then, is our most 
 important guide ? To myself, the tone of the Behistun inscription 
 appears to be that piece of evidence which is hardest to overthrow, 
 and which as a matter of fact has not been overthrown by any 
 other piece of evidence now in the field. As to the Behistun 
 inscription in all its bearings, I must give an account of that 
 later on ; I am now treating it simply as a piece of composition 
 of the famous king Darius, and as showing the mind of Darius. 
 For the present it is enough to say that it is the commemoration, 
 written by Darius himself, of that great series of victories by which 
 he, in the year 521 B.C. or shortly afterwards, won for himself 
 the royal authority over the whole extent of the Persian empire, 
 which had been thrown into disorder, first by the misrule of 
 M. D. A. 7
 
 98 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [CH. 
 
 Cambyses, and next by the treacherous rebellion of the Magi 
 that first sin of the Magi, the seed of many calamities in the after 
 time. 
 
 Most cordially do I agree with Meyer and Geldner and Moulton, 
 that the Behistun inscription shows Darius to have been an 
 ardent follower of Zoroastrianism ; and with the explanation 1 , 
 by Professor Moulton, of the difficulties which have been thought 
 to lie against the belief that this was the case. When I say, however, 
 that Darius was an ardent follower of Zoroastrianism, I do not 
 exactly mean that he was an ardent follower of Zoroaster. There 
 is a difference between the two propositions which I am putting 
 side by side. In all the long Behistun inscription, Darius never 
 mentions Zoroaster ; what a contrast to the profuse mention of 
 Zoroaster's name in the Later Avesta, written by the Magi ! 
 Ought not Darius to have at least shown that he knew the name 
 of that teacher to whom he was so much indebted ? if not in the 
 Behistun inscription, at any rate in the inscription on his own 
 tomb, which still exists ? But he never does. What is the 
 explanation ? 
 
 The explanation, and the sufficient explanation, of the silence 
 of Darius, is that Zoroaster had been one of the Magi, the enemies 
 whom Darius had just subdued. It is the counterpart of that 
 silence which the Avesta, and the Pahlavi texts too, preserve 
 towards Darius himself ; they ignore him utterly. I need add 
 no more to this most natural reason for a silence which in itself 
 might puzzle us ; and I must now call attention to the phrases 
 by which the Zoroastrianism of Darius is shown to us. 
 
 In all heathen literature, I feel sure that there is no parallel 
 to the extraordinary insistence of Darius, from beginning to end 
 of the Behistun inscription, on his indebtedness to Auramazda, 
 his devotion to Auramazda. Take one example : 
 
 Thus saith Darius, the king : Auramazda hath granted unto me 
 this empire. Auramazda brought me help, until I gained this empire ; 
 by the grace of Auramazda do 1 hold this empire. 
 
 Elsewhere he says, in relation to one of the arduous conflicts 
 in which he was engaged : "I prayed to Auramazda ; Auramazda 
 brought me help." The recurrence of these phrases is incessant. 
 He does indeed barely recognise other deities ; this much he does 
 allow to the feeling of his own race, the Aryans ; but Auramazda 
 alone has his heart. Can we imagine a characteristic that more 
 recalls the Gathas ? Scarcely less does his scorn of lying recall 
 
 1 See Moulton'a Early Zoroastrianism, pp. 48-50, 131, 136, 431-433.
 
 iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 99 
 
 the Gathas. In the Gathas, "the Lie" is the brief symbol 
 whereby the enemy is denoted. Now hear Darius : 
 
 Thus saith Darius, the king : Thou who mayest be king hereafter, 
 beware of lies : the man who is a liar, destroy him utterly, if thou think- 
 est, "thereby shall my land remain whole.". . . 
 
 Whosoever shall read this inscription hereafter, let that which I 
 have done be believed ; thou shalt not hold it to be lies. Thus saith 
 Darius, the king : I call Auramazda to witness that it is true and not 
 lies ; all of it have I done. 
 
 Moreover, whenever he speaks of one of the false pretenders 
 to royalty, he says of him briefly, "he lied." 
 
 Whence comes this very clear and remarkable resemblance 
 of the utterance of Darius to the utterances of Zoroaster in the 
 Gathas ? There may, possibly, have been a copy of the Gathas 
 in the palace of Darius ; but if there was, we should have to ask 
 how it came there. In any case a natural explanation is given 
 us, if the Vistaspa, whom from the Gathas we know to have been 
 the protector of Zoroaster, and the promoter of Zoroaster's cause, 
 was the same as that other Vistaspa, whom Darius mentions 
 in the Behistun inscription as his own father 1 . If this was the 
 case, then we perceive that, with very slight knowledge of Zoroaster 
 personally, and probably with very little sense of the need of 
 gratitude to him, Darius would have drunk in from his childhood 
 the maxims of Zoroaster ; his own father would have been the 
 intermediary. That is a satisfactory account of the resemblance 
 which I am bringing forward ; and if we remember how very 
 soon the sincerest religious feeling changes its aspect, as it is 
 handed down from generation to generation, I do not think 
 we shall find any other account that satisfies the conditions. 
 I think too that this account, though not absolutely in accord 
 with the date implied by the Pahlavi texts to which I referred 
 above, is not so far different from that testimony as to occasion 
 any objection on that ground. I am supposing that what the 
 Pahlavi texts call "the coming of the religion," that is the con- 
 version of king Vistaspa by Zoroaster, took place about 570 B.C. 
 And now let me go back to the history of the Magi. 
 
 All Media, and the Magi no doubt among other Medes, had' 
 been thrown into great disorder by an invasion of the wild 
 northern tribes (called in the inscriptions the Ummum-Manda) 
 which took place in the last quarter of the seventh century before 
 
 1 This identification is much questioned. It was made by Ammianus Marcellinus, 
 the eminent historian of the fourth century A.D. ; who, from his birth at Antioch and 
 his military journeys in the east, was likely to have real knowledge of Zoroastrian 
 tradition. I will say more about it in an Appendix to this chapter. 
 
 72
 
 100 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [CH. 
 
 Christ ; and as we now know from the inscriptions that Astyages, 
 who used to be called the last Median king, and who became king 
 in 594 B.C. was really one of these Ummum-Manda, it is possible 
 that the disorder still in some degree continued all through the 
 first forty years of the sixth century. Zoroaster, in the east of 
 Iran, would for the present be out of the field of this disorder ; 
 and his success in his own field was evidently great. That 
 Vistaspa was a young man at the time of his conversion is 
 probable from the Vistasp Yast (which not only speaks of him 
 as young, but implies that he had at that time no children) ; 
 some loose expressions in the Pahlavi texts, which imply that he 
 was then middle-aged, need not be regarded. Briefly let me 
 mention the end of Zoroaster, as it is handed down to us. The 
 Iranian tradition is fairly unanimous that he was slain, when over 
 ''> seventy- seven years old, by a Turanian ; and there is also evidence, 
 ] which though late is not to be despised, that he was slain in a 
 / war caused by an invasion of the northern (or Turanian) tribes, 
 after they had taken the city of Balkh, the capital of Bactria, 
 where Zoroaster then was. The date of this event would seem 
 to have been after, rather than before, 540 B.C. 
 
 But after the death of Zoroaster, I have to narrate the fall of 
 the Magi ; their fall in spiritual worth, as well as in outward fortune. 
 Outward misfortune came upon them first, and they shrank under 
 it. What happened was this. Media, as I have said, was 
 probably weakened by the northern invasion ; but the conquest of 
 Media by Cyrus, king of Elam, which took place in 559 B.C., pro- 
 duced a direr humiliation. That Cyrus was a Zoroastrian in any 
 exclusive sense, it is no longer possible to believe, since the 
 discovery of his Cylinder Inscription, in which, after conquering 
 Babylon, he records his devotion to Marduk, the Babylonian 
 deity, without any mention of Ahura Mazda, or Auramazda, at 
 all. We must not however argue that because Cyrus, a politic 
 ruler, worshipped Marduk at Babylon, he would therefore not 
 worship Ahura Mazda in Iran, with which he was so much more 
 intimately connected by birth and natural associations ; in all 
 probability he did so, though we cannot regard him as devoted 
 in heart and soul to Ahura Mazda. Neither, of course, can we 
 account Cambyses, the madly despotic son of Cyrus, as in any 
 true sense the worshipper of that God to whom Zoroaster ad- 
 dressed his fervent prayers. Yet we have evidence, which it is 
 impossible to resist, that Cambyses was in a certain sense a 
 fanatic follower, probably of Zoroaster, certainly of the Magi.
 
 iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 101 
 
 We must infer this from the fact of which we are informed in 
 the Aramaic papyri recently discovered near Assuan in Egypt, 
 that Cambyses, when he destroyed the other temples round that 
 place, left the Jewish temple unharmed. Why should Cambyses 
 have drawn this distinction, except because the Jewish temple 
 had no idol in it ? That would be in accordance with the prin- 
 ciples of Magianism ; and certainly we must suppose that in 
 530 B.C. Magi were abundant in Iran, and that they had on the 
 whole the predominance over the ancient Aryan religion. Cam- 
 byses then would have every opportunity of falling under their 
 influence, and there can be little doubt that he did so. This did 
 not imply that they could influence him for good ; his whole 
 life showed a recklessness of conduct which has seldom been 
 surpassed. But in a certain sense Cambyses followed the Magi, 
 in the superficialities of religion ; and the moment was one when 
 the Magi of Media were singularly liable to temptation. They 
 ) had lost the power which they possessed under the Median kings 
 of the seventh century, for those Median kings no longer existed ; 
 and they looked for power wherever they could find it. This 
 it was which made them now seize the great name of Zarathus- 
 tra, who had acquired such authority far outside the bounds of 
 Media; henceforth, without the least conscious insincerity, they 
 professed a profound allegiance to him, in their prayers, in their 
 legends, in their legislation. But henceforth, also, they attached 
 themselves to the Persian kings, unless (as the event showed) 
 there was a chance of rebelling against those kings successfully ; 
 and then they rebelled. This dangerous strain of temperament 
 soon worked evil. It is probable that we must attribute to the 
 Magi that sinister counsel which Herodotus attributes to the 
 royal judges of Persia, when Cambyses asked whether he might 
 lawfully marry his sister ; the answer was, that they (the judges 
 or more probably the Magi) found no law authorising marriage 
 with a sister, but that they did find a law authorising the king 
 of Persia to do whatever he pleased ! From this origin, it would 
 seem, came that Magian custom of regarding marriage with 
 sisters (nay even with mothers and daughters) a virtuous act. 
 There is some doubt how far the prevalence of this custom 
 reached ; but as to its existence among the followers of the Magi 
 in ancient times there seems no doubt. 1 If I have done injustice 
 to the Magi in supposing that their complaisance to Cambyses 
 
 1 The learned essay of E. W. West (Appendix m. in volume xvm. of Sacred Books 
 of the East) is the most complete and impartial investigation existing on this subject.
 
 102 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [CH. 
 
 first originated this custom (and one must not press too strongly 
 an uncertain charge), at all events the act of Cambyses, for 
 some reason taken up by the Magi, appears the most likely origin 
 of it. 
 
 The Magi, it is probable, flattered Cambyses ; it is certain 
 that they rebelled against him. His unpopularity gave them the 
 opportunity ; and their minds were seething with discontent and 
 ambition ; and lastly, his secret murder of his brother Smerdis 
 enabled them to induce one of their own number to personate 
 Smerdis, so that they could rebel professedly in his cause. The 
 false Smerdis soon acquired a great following ; the Medes, mind- 
 ful of their lost sovereignty, backed him up ; and the Magi 
 showed their religious animus by destroying many temples in 
 Media, no doubt those of the old Aryan religion. Cambyses, 
 who was in Egypt, set out to return to put down the rebellion ; 
 but that return was never accomplished. The Behistun inscrip- 
 tion tells us that he slew himself ; Herodotus says that his death 
 was the result of an accident, the point of his sword piercing 
 his thigh as he mounted his horse ; in any case he died. 
 
 It would seem that at first the bold acts of the Magi stunned 
 the Persian nobility, for we read in Herodotus (in. 67) that the 
 false Smerdis ventured to promise his subjects, freedom from 
 liability to military service, and from taxation, for the space of 
 three years : on the other hand, he slew those who had known 
 the true Smerdis, in order that the truth might not be discovered. 
 
 But that so treacherous an act in the end failed, can occasion 
 us neither surprise nor regret. After eight months Darius, who 
 appears to have been recognised as the representative of the 
 Achaemenian family, with the help of his friends slew the false 
 Magian and those who were supporting him ; and the Persians, 
 taking heart from the death of their chief foe, gathered in numbers 
 and slew all the Magi on whom they could lay their hands, an 
 event afterwards commemorated by the Persians in the annual 
 festival of the Magophonia, or slaughter of the Magi. 
 
 But the result of this victory was, at first, far from being 
 the attainment of peace. All over the Persian empire men had 
 hoped, it would seem, that the reign of the Great King was over, 
 and that every nation was free again ; and all over the Persian 
 empire pretenders sprang up, declaring that they were legitimate 
 sovereigns. Then did the genius of Darius assert itself. What- 
 ever the force of the subject nations, the superior discipline 
 belonged to the Persians ; and Darius appealed not in vain to
 
 iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 103 
 
 his ministers, his generals, in every quarter. Among those 
 generals, we are interested to hear, was his father Vistaspa, who 
 was governing in Parthia 1 . It is clear that naturally Vistaspa 
 rather than his son Darius would have been the monarch of the 
 Persian empire, the king of kings ; but Vistaspa, on the reckon- 
 ing which I have followed, would be nearly seventy years of 
 age ; and no doubt he was quite willing to leave this most strenu- 
 ous warfare to his vigorous son. Father and son worked loyally 
 together, and I cannot but think that this is some evidence that 
 there was a religious tie, as well as a natural tie, between them. 
 Not only in Parthia, but everywhere, were the rebels subdued, 
 and speedily. It cannot be said that Darius was merciful, in his 
 victory, to the leaders of the rebels ; but cruelty was in those 
 days hardly reckoned as a vice, and even in the Gathas it is 
 impossible to say that mercy to enemies is inculcated as a virtue, 
 much less as a duty. 
 
 A great man we must acknowledge Darius to have been, and 
 it was not an unworthy thing of him to commemorate his victory 
 in the way in wlu'ch he did commemorate it. On the face of a 
 precipice, inaccessible to the ordinary wayfarer, high up on the 
 road between Babylonia and the cities of Media, he caused to 
 be carved in three languages that inscription which, from the 
 name of the place, is called the Behistun inscription ; to which 
 I have so often referred in the present chapter. There may still 
 be seen the arrow-like letters which to the skilled student reveal 
 the names of Darius himself, his ancestors and his family, his 
 enemies in all the provinces where he had enemies, his friends 
 and his servants, the punishments of his chief enemies, and many 
 moral reflections, some of which I have quoted above, and reiter- 
 ated expressions of religious trust ; and also his restoration of the 
 shrines which the Magi had destroyed, and which Darius now 
 restored, as we must suppose, because they belonged to the Aryan 
 race, the race of nobles ; not because Darius agreed with the 
 worship which they represented. The whole inscription, in spite 
 of its repetitions, has a nervous conciseness, indicating a strong 
 will and a commanding character. 
 
 This great inscription was first copied in the year 1835 by a 
 young English officer, afterwards known as Sir Henry Rawlinson; 
 who was let down by a basket from the top of the rock, and, not 
 without risk of life, took squeezes of the inscriptions ; and who 
 afterwards had the principal share in interpreting them. Other 
 
 1 We know this on the indisputable authority of the Behistun inscription.
 
 104 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [CH. 
 
 scholars have surveyed the rock from below ; but the American 
 professor Williams Jackson is the only one who has imitated 
 Rawlinson's feat, and seen the inscription at close quarters, and 
 taken squeezes from it. 
 
 The general history of Darius as a king does not concern the 
 present chapter ; but one more point must be mentioned relating 
 to him ; namely, that he was the institutor of the Calendar 
 which, handed down from age to age, is at this day used by the 
 Persian Parsis. The evidence for this fact is too complex to be 
 given in the present chapter ; it was first perceived, with great 
 acuteness, by E. W. West, whose disquisition on the subject will 
 be found on pages xlii-xlvii of his Introduction, in vol. XLVII. 
 of the Sacred Books of the East, and the proof has been further 
 elaborated by Professor Moulton, on pages 431-434 of Early 
 Zoroastrianism, who also remarks how entirely the names of the 
 months in the Calendar suit the character of Darius as "a 
 genuine and earnest follower of Zarathushtra." 
 
 But I must leave Darius ; it is with the Magi, the continua- 
 tors of the religion of Zoroaster, that I am now concerned. They 
 had failed, and failed deservedly, in their attempt to win political 
 supremacy in Iran ; they were reduced to the exercise of religious 
 authority, if they could maintain even that ; and with the hatred 
 of the Persians and the memory of their own recent failure 
 against them, it was difficult to maintain religious authority. 
 The name of Zarathustra doubtless helped them greatly. 
 Zoroaster had won the deep respect of Aryan kings ; he had not 
 been implicated in any failure, in any dishonour ; the Magi 
 could take his name as their title to honour, and they did so, 
 in almost every production of their pen. Of their own name 
 they were, alas, not undeservedly ashamed; their own name 
 occurs oniy once in the whole Avesta, and there, characteristically 
 enough, it occurs in the phrase, " one who hates the Magi." We 
 must not blame the Magi if something artificial, something not 
 quite disinterested, mingled with their reverence for Zoroaster. 
 They had some true reverence for him, as I showed in the quota- 
 tion which I made from the Farvardin Yast. 
 
 More to be blamed were the Magi for the superstitions by 
 which they tried to increase their religious authority. They 
 knew the curious principle that religious authority acquires 
 weight with the generality of men, not so much by the good 
 which it can be shown to have effected (for to determine this 
 is a delicate and difficult matter), but by the demands which
 
 iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 105 
 
 it makes, concerning which there need be no doubt at all. From 
 this time forth therefore the Magi insisted, and insisted more 
 and more as time went on, on those prohibitions as to burying 
 or burning dead bodies, which are perhaps the best known thing 
 connected with the Parsi religion at the present day ; so much 
 more easy is it to remember a quaint superstition than a noble 
 religious example ! In the time of Herodotus, the Magi had not 
 succeeded in inducing the Persians to refrain from burying the 
 dead. They themselves, and doubtless their ardent adherents, 
 exposed their dead to be eaten by birds. 
 
 Then too, the principle that, in the things which we see and 
 know, a good spirit and a bad spirit are at war together, and 
 produce good and bad fruits respectively, this, which Zoroaster 
 had seen in experience, the Magi took as an abstract principle, 
 and marvellous indeed were the results which they deduced from 
 it ! All living creatures were divided into the creatures of Ahura 
 Mazda, and the creatures of Angra Mainyu or Ahriman. The 
 reason of the selection, in either case, was obscure ; the result 
 was clear in the extreme. The hedgehog was one of the creatures 
 of Ahura Mazda ; if you killed a hedgehog, purification from such 
 a sin was not to be had by a punishment less than a thousand 
 stripes. (Darmesteter has suggested, probably with truth, that 
 a way was eventually found to commute the stripes for a money 
 payment.) The tortoise was a creature of Angra Mainyu ; if 
 you killed a tortoise, all your sins of thought, word, and deed 
 were instantaneously forgiven. With follies like this is the 
 greater part of the Vendidad filled. Could a great religion sink 
 lower ? Yet even the Vendidad has redeeming parts ; if the 
 first four Fargards and the last four Fargards alone had been 
 preserved, we should not have thought so badly of it. The 
 intermediate Fargards are those which sink it into the depths. 
 But let me by preference quote one of the redeeming passages : 
 here is one from the third Fargard (23-29) : 
 
 O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One ! Who is the fourth 
 who rejoices the earth with greatest joy ? 
 
 Ahura Mazda answered : It is he who cultivates most corn, grass, 
 and fruit. O Spitama Zarathustra ! who waters ground that is dry, or 
 dries ground that is too wet. Unhappy is the land that has long lain 
 unsown with the seed of the sower and wants a good husbandman, like 
 a well-shapen maiden who has long gone childless and wants a good hus- 
 band. He who would till the earth, O Spitama Zarathustra ! with the 
 left arm and the right, with the right arm and the left, unto him will she 
 bring forth plenty, like a loving bride on her bed unto her beloved : the 
 bride will bring forth children, the earth will bring forth plenty of fruit.
 
 106 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [CH. 
 
 He who would till the earth, O Spitama Zarathustra ! with the left arm 
 and the right, with the right arm and the left, unto him thus says the 
 Earth : O thou man ! who dost till me with the left arm and the right, 
 with the right arm and the left, hither shall people ever come and beg 
 for bread, here shall I ever go on bearing, bringing forth all manner of 
 food, bringing forth profusion of corn. He who does not till the earth, 
 O Spitama Zarathustra ! with the left arm and the right, with the right 
 arm and the left, unto him thus says the Earth : O thou man ! who dost 
 not till me with the left arm and the right, with the right arm and the 
 left, ever shalt thou stand at the door of the stranger, among those who 
 beg for bread ; ever shalt thou wait there for the refuse that is brought 
 unto thee, brought by those that have profusion of wealth. Sacred 
 Books of the East, vol. iv. pp. 28, 29. 
 
 The nobler spirit both of the Magi, and of Zoroaster, is well 
 exemplified in that passage ; nor is it the only instance of that 
 spirit in the Vendidad ; but when the whole book is considered, 
 such a passage is the exception, and not the rule. 
 
 The Vendidad was one of twenty-one books (or Nasks, as 
 they were called) in which the laws and maxims of the Zoroas- 
 trian religion were contained in the fourth century before Christ 
 (as well as we can tell) ; most of them have perished, but the 
 topics dealt with in them are more or less preserved to us in the 
 Dinkard, one of the principal Pahlavi writings (translated by 
 E. W. West : this part of the Dinkard will be found in vol. xxxvu. 
 of Sacred Books of the East). 
 
 I have written in this chapter of the Gathas, of the later 
 Yasnas (which have something of the features of a liturgy), and 
 of the Vendidad : the Yasts are the chief remaining part of 
 the Avesta, and I must say something more about them. That 
 the Yasts, in their present form, were the composition of the 
 Magi (like all the later Avesta) is probable ; but they bear strong 
 traces of the old Aryan religion ; they evince to us, what other- 
 wise we should not have known, the incessant struggle of that 
 religion to enter within the borders of Magianism, to dis- 
 possess Magianism and claim the ground for itself. The Yasts 
 are most graceful, picturesque productions ; in some ways 
 they remind one of the Homeric hymns ; but they have less 
 narrative, more fervour ; something of the ethical glow of the 
 original Magianism accepts into its embraces the story-telling dis- 
 position of the Aryan bard. It can hardly be doubted that the 
 Yasts show us the Magian priesthood yielding before the allurements 
 of the great men of Persia, and especially of the kings of Persia, 
 and preferring the ornaments of cultivated life to those senti- 
 ments of religion with which even the Magi, much more Zoroaster,
 
 iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 107 
 
 had begun. Let me quote, as perhaps the most extreme instance 
 of a polytheism which would gladly keep itself under a veil, but 
 cannot, part of the description of the famous goddess Ardvi Sura 
 Anahita from the fifth Yast : 
 
 Ardvi Sura Anahita, who stands carried forth in the shape of a maid, 
 fair of body, most strong, tall-formed, high-girded, pure, nobly born of a 
 glorious race. . . .Upon her head Ardvi Sura Anahita bound a golden 
 crown, with a hundred stars, with eight rays .... She is clothed with gar- 
 ments of beaver, Ardvi Sura Anahita ; with the skin of thirty beavers of 
 those that bear four young ones, that are the finest kind of beavers. . . . 
 Here, O good most beneficent Ardvi Sura Anahita ! I beg of thee this 
 favour, that I, fully blessed, may conquer large kingdoms, rich in horses, 
 with high tributes, with snorting horses, sounding chariots, flashing swords, 
 rich in raiments, etc. Ibid. vol. xxin. pp. 82, 83. 
 
 Do we not read in the last sentence the very inmost senti- 
 ment of a Persian despot perhaps of Artaxerxes Mnemon him- 
 self l ? But there is rather an unusual absence of the moral 
 element in the Yast from which the above extract is made ; 
 much more of it would be found in the Mihir Yast or the Far- 
 vardin Yast, or some others. Yet on the whole, the morality 
 of the Yasts is below their poetry. 
 
 I do not doubt that nearly the whole of the Vendidad and the 
 Yasts were written under the Achsemenian dynasty, and in the 
 fifth and fourth centuries before Christ ; something of the Yasts 
 may be drawn from ancient Aryan poetry, and something of the 
 Vendidad may have been added in Sassanian times, with a view 
 to special heresies then prevalent ; but on the whole these two 
 books show the decadence of Persia after the time of the great 
 Darius ; they show the absence of any guiding influence over 
 the inmost being of men. The elements of good that were in 
 them had little influence, and Persia hastened to ruin. 
 
 The crash came when Alexander mounted the throne of 
 Macedon. There was no strength in the Persian empire to resist 
 that great warrior, when he overran, and took possession of, that 
 empire ; Greeks began to occupy large Persian provinces ; the 
 Zoroastrian religion and the Magi sank into obscurity. From the 
 year 331 B.C., when the victory of Arbela gave the whole of the 
 Persian empire into the hands of Alexander, the Zoroastrian 
 religion lay buried, seemingly dead, for the best part of four 
 centuries. Then, when the phalanx of Macedon and the legion 
 
 1 We know from Berosus that Artaxerxes Mnemon was the first who caused 
 an image of Anahita to be made ; and Professor Moulton justly argues that the 
 description in this Yast was taken from the image ; from whence the date of the 
 composition of the Yast may be inferred.
 
 108 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [OH. 
 
 of Rome had alike receded from those eastern territories, the 
 Zoroastrian religion began to revive again ; slowly under the 
 Parthians at first ; but from 226 B.C. onwards, for four centuries, 
 under the native Persian rule of the Sassanians. In this revived 
 state it was probably purer and better than it had been under 
 the Persian kings of the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ ; 
 yet still with too many superstitious and feeble elements clinging 
 to it for it to be able to renovate mankind. 
 
 Lastly, in the seventh century of our era, there fell upon 
 Persia the hurricane of Mohammedan conquest, and the adher- 
 ents of Zoroastrianism generally succumbed to the storm. The 
 small community of scholars and merchants who have retained 
 their ancient faith, and in a purified form, those named the 
 Parsis, deserve our respect ; some great elements of an ancient 
 history, and of pure feeling, survive in them ; and these are 
 valuable, though they have not been able to accomplish that 
 great work, the conversion of the world, which is the crown of 
 all religion. 
 
 Let me in conclusion quote from one of the Pahlavi writings 
 a strain of feeling which is found in briefer form in the Avesta, 
 both in the Vendidad and in the Yasts a recurrent strain which 
 exhibits the Zoroastrian religion at its best : 
 
 When a soul of the righteous passes upon that bridge [the super- 
 natural bridge to heaven, which the wicked cannot cross] the width 
 of the bridge becomes as it were a furlong, and the righteous soul passes 
 over with the cooperation of Srosh the righteous. And his own deeds 
 of a virtuous kind come to meet him in the form of a maiden, who is 
 handsomer and better than every maiden in the world. 
 
 And the righteous soul speaks thus : " Who mayest thou be, that 
 a maiden who is handsomer and better than thee was never seen by me 
 in the worldly existence ?" 
 
 In reply that maiden form responds thus : "I am no maiden, but I 
 am thy virtuous deeds, thou youth who art well thinking, well speaking, 
 well doing, and of good religion ! For when thou sawest in the world 
 him who performed demon-worship, then thou hast sat down, and thy 
 performance was the worship of the sacred beings. And when it was seen 
 by thee that there was any one who caused oppression and plunder, and 
 distressed or scorned a good person, and acquired wealth by crime, then 
 thou keptest back from the creatures their own risk of oppression and 
 plunder ; the good person was also thought of by thee, and lodging and 
 entertainment provided ; and alms were given by thee to him who came 
 forth from near and him, too, who was from afar ; and wealth which was 
 due to honesty was acquired by thee. And when thou sawest him who 
 practised false justice and taking of bribes, and false evidence was given 
 by him, then thou hast sat down, and the recitation of truth and virtue 
 was uttered by thee. I am this of thine, the good thoughts, the good
 
 iv] ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA 109 
 
 words, and the good deeds which were thought and spoken and done by 
 thee. For when I have become commendable, I am then made altogether 
 more commendable by thee ; when I have become precious I am then 
 made altogether still more precious by thee ; and when I have become 
 glorious, I am then made altogether still more glorious by thee." 
 
 And when he walks onwards from there, a sweet-scented breeze comes 
 then to meet him, which is more fragrant than all perfume. The soul of 
 the righteous inquires of Srosh thus : " What breeze is this, that never in 
 the world so fragrant a breeze came into contact with me ? " 
 
 Then Srosh, the righteous, replies to that righteous soul thus: "This 
 breeze is from heaven, which is so fragrant." 
 
 Afterwards, on his march, the first step is set on the place of good 
 thoughts, the second on that of good words, the third on that of good 
 deeds, and the fourth step reaches up into the endless light which is all- 
 radiant. And angels and archangels of every description come to meet 
 him, and ask tidings from him thus : "How hast thou come, from that 
 which is a perishable, fearful, and very miserable existence, to this which 
 is an imperishable existence, that is undisturbed, thou youth who art 
 well thinking, well speaking, well doing, and of good religion ? " 
 
 Then Auharmazd, the Lord, speaks thus : " Ask ye from him no 
 tidings ; for he has parted from that which was a precious body, and has 
 come by that which is a fearful road. And bring ye unto him the most 
 agreeable of eatables, that which is the midspring butter, so that he may 
 rest his soul from that bridge of the three nights, unto which he came 
 from Astovidad and the remaining demons ; and seat him upon an all- 
 embellished throne." 
 
 As it is declared that " Unto the righteous man and woman, after 
 passing away, they bring food of the most agreeable of eatables the food 
 of the angels of the spiritual existences that which is the midspring butter; 
 and they seat him down upon an all-embellished throne. For ever and 
 everlasting they remain in all glory with the angels of the spiritual exist- 
 ences everlastingly." Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxrv. pp. 18-22. 
 (The meaning of the name of the work from which this extract is taken 
 is Opinions of the Spirit of Wisdom.) 
 
 Let us smile, if we will, at the " midspring butter " ; but 
 has a religion, however imperfect, existed in vain, which has 
 been able to hand down to all posterity such a picture of the 
 reward of a virtuous soul ? 
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IV 
 
 ON THE IDENTIFICATION OF VISTASPA, THE ROYAL CONVERT OF 
 ZOROASTER, WITH VISTASPA THE FATHER OF DARIUS 
 
 THIS identification would be impossible if Zoroaster lived, 
 as some of the Greeks thought, 5000 years before the Trojan 
 war. But this curious Greek error has been well explained by 
 Professor Williams Jackson (Zoroaster., p. 152) ; the Greeks mistook 
 what the Persians told them of the fravashi, or spiritual essence,
 
 110 ANCIENT RELIGION: PERSIA [CH. iv 
 
 of Zoroaster, for a statement regarding his bodily existence. 
 But it is argued, that if Zoroaster had lived in the sixth century 
 B.C., the Greeks must have known his period. This argument 
 would be sound, had Zoroaster been a Persian ; but the Persians, 
 though accepting the Magi as their priests, cared little for any 
 individual Magian; hence it was that they did not mention 
 Zoroaster's name to Herodotus. 
 
 Modern critics do not realise what a blank void was caused 
 in the historical consciousness of the Magi, by reason of their 
 rebellion against the Persians, and their defeat by Darius. This 
 is why the A vesta never mentions Darius or his successors on 
 the Persian throne. A silence caused by shame has been mis- 
 interpreted as if all that preceded this silence were ancient 
 and legendary. 
 
 Again, the language of the Gathas has certain special resem- 
 blances to the language of the Rig-Veda, a book probably of 
 the second millennium B.C. ; whence it is argued that the Gathas 
 date not very far from the second millennium B.C. But Professor 
 Moulton tells us (Early Religious Poetry of Persia, p. 4) that 
 these two languages differ in their general character as much 
 as Dutch and English ; a difference which must have taken 
 many centuries to accomplish. The special resemblances may 
 be accounted for by the Gathas having been written in eastern 
 Iran, comparatively near India. I may remark that when so 
 excellent a scholar as E. W. West places the conversion of Vis- 
 taspa at the date 618 B.C. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. XLVII. 
 p. xxx), it can hardly, on linguistic grounds, be thought impossible 
 for it to have taken place in 570 B.C. 
 
 Lastly, the father of the Zoroastrian Vistaspa is called in 
 the Avesta Aurvat-aspa (Aban Yost, 105) ; in the Pahlavi writings 
 by the equivalent name Lohrasp or Loharasp. Now Darius, 
 in the Behistun inscription, after mentioning his own father 
 Vistaspa, says that the father of Vistaspa was Arshama. 
 Hence it is argued, that the two Vistaspas, having different 
 fathers, must be different men. But (not to speak of other 
 explanations) this argument overlooks the fact that Darius, in 
 tracing his own descent from Achaemenid kings, would almost 
 certainly have omitted females who were in the direct line ; see 
 a later instance of this given by West (Sacred Books of the East, 
 vol. v. p. xix). Thus Arshama, if ho were the maternal grand- 
 father of Vishtaspa, would be called his father; and this would 
 take away the difficulty. 
 
 The identification of the two Vistaspas receives some support 
 from Pliny; .still more from the sober narrative in Dinkard v. i. 
 2-0; iv. 8, 9, according to which Loharasp, the father of the 
 Zoroastrian Vistaspa, went as a subordinate of Nebuchadnezzar 
 to the siege of Jerusalem (the siege in 598 B.C. must bo the one 
 intonded). 
 
 I think, therefore, that the identification stands.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 ANCIENT RELIGION : CHINA AND JAPAN 
 
 So remote, until the latter half of the nineteenth century, 
 were China and Japan from the spiritual movements of Europe 
 and western Asia, that it may seem to some people that this part 
 of the earth ought to be regarded as a separate province, and 
 not to form part of the subject of a work which necessarily 
 centres in the western nations. But the importance of China 
 and Japan, from the moral and religious no less than from the 
 material point of view, is undeniable ; and to omit them from 
 the present work would leave a sad lacuna. I must needs take 
 them in ; and China, the more ancient, comes first. 
 
 The history of China is eloquent to us on the merits, and 
 eloquent on the defects, of reverence when taken as the single 
 supreme motive of man. It is impossible to think of the four 
 thousand and more years during which the Chinese have been 
 a growing and expanding nation, always industrious, always 
 subduing the earth to human needs, never dispirited by calami- 
 ties whether inflicted by man or by nature, and not to feel that 
 a true power lies in them, of which it will be profitable to 
 investigate the source. But we cannot help also noticing how 
 prone the Chinese have been to cling to ancient evils ; how 
 strong the yoke of custom (until quite recent years) has been 
 upon them ; and this defect came from a wrongly directed 
 reverence. For good chiefly but not solely, the Chinese type of 
 character has been remarkable ; and we cannot but inquire how 
 this is reflected in their religion. 
 
 The Chinese character appears to have received its final 
 stamp in the sixth century before Christ, through the great and 
 famous philosopher Confucius ; but it cannot be doubted that 
 its main characteristics had appeared long before this. If we go 
 back to the first origin of the race, we have to look to the region 
 south of the Caspian sea. So says Terrien de Lacouperie (as 
 quoted in The Story of the Nations China, page 2), and doubtless
 
 112 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 he is right. Of this conclusion the character of the Chinese 
 writing is evidence. Chinese writing is at this day in that stage 
 which belonged to all writing before an alphabet was invented ; 
 a stage when something of the hieroglyphical character still 
 remains ; when every sign stands separate from every other 
 sign, and each sign suggests its own meaning, not indeed at a 
 glance, but by a nearer similarity than is possible under alpha- 
 betical systems, where the sound of each letter, and not the 
 meaning of each sign, is the guide to the word intended. More 
 than 30,000 signs are employed in Chinese writing ; and how 
 remote this system must be from our own western methods of 
 writing will be seen at once. But when we find that one of the 
 languages of the Nineveh inscriptions has no fewer than 642 
 characters 1 , we perceive that in that language also what we call 
 an alphabet has hardly been attained ; though an alphabet 
 must have been on its way. In Chinese writing an alphabet is 
 not even on its way ; yet Terrien de Lacouperie was able to 
 show " a marked connexion between many of the primitive 
 written characters of the languages of Akkadia and China " 
 Akkadia meaning the great Mesopotamian valley. We infer, 
 then, that in times antecedent to the earliest of the Akkadian 
 or Sumerian languages as found in the Nineveh inscriptions, the 
 Chinese must have been one of the races inhabiting the country 
 between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, including in this 
 the valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris. 
 
 Eastwards, then, from this origin, went the Chinese ; but 
 it would be vain to ask in what millennium before Christ this 
 great migration took place. If I understand rightly what others 
 have written on the subject, it is not merely the Chinese writing, 
 but the Chinese spoken language, which has marks of being 
 extremely primitive ; and this would imply a very early migra- 
 tion from the haunts of their first habitation, where they were 
 associated with races more given to change than they themselves 
 were. As farther linking the Chinese with the Sumerian races, 
 the oblique eyes of some of the latter may be mentioned 2 . 
 
 When the Chinese people are first mentioned in their own 
 historical documents, we find them in the province of Shensi, 
 along the western bank of the great river Hwang-ho, in its upper 
 course. An ancient monarch, named Fu-hsi, is said to have 
 governed them in those early days; but he is too shadowy a 
 
 1 Sayee's Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, p. 18. 
 
 2 Noted by Sayce, Archeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, p. 72.
 
 v] CHINA AND JAPAN 113 
 
 figure for serious history to dwell long upon him. The most 
 ancient of Chinese books, the $M King, begins with a brief 
 account of a ruler of the name of Yao, in whose time a flood 
 took place, which may probably have resulted from an inundation 
 of the Hwang-ho river, such as has repeatedly happened in more 
 recent times. But the " Canon of Yao " (by which title this part 
 of the Shu King is known) contains the still more curious informa- 
 tion that this ruler appointed astronomers by whom the four 
 quarter-days of the year, the solstices and the equinoxes, were 
 to be exactly determined ; the days being fixed by the particular 
 star which then culminated in the south while the sun was setting 
 in the west. As these stars are named in the Shu King, modern 
 astronomers have been able to calculate from them the date at 
 which Yao must have reigned, and they determine it to have been 
 approximately in the twenty-fourth century before the Christian 
 era. This is fairly in accordance with the traditional reckoning of 
 Chinese philosophers and historians (as will be seen by referring 
 to the third chapter of Dr Legge's Introduction to the Shu King, 
 in the third volume of Sacred Books of the East) ; and hence we 
 may regard Yao as a real historical personage, living at about 
 the date thus assigned to him. 
 
 If Yao was a real historical personage, the inference seems 
 to hold that the monarchs subsequent to him who are mentioned 
 in the Shu King were real historical personages also ; and as the 
 art of writing is distinctly mentioned as in use at a date not far 
 from 1700 B.C., and is probably implied in regard to a consider- 
 ably earlier epoch, there is no reason for doubting that the names 
 of the monarchs and some of the principal events of their reigns 
 were actually recorded. In later times we have mention of court 
 annalists or recorders 1 ; but we have no certain knowledge when 
 these officials began to exist ; it was at any rate long before the 
 time of Confucius (in the sixth century B.C.). But in reference 
 to the trustworthiness of the Shu King, the opinion of the Chinese 
 philosopher Mencius is important (he lived in the fourth century 
 B.C.) ; here is what Dr Legge says about this 2 : 
 
 One passage in Mencius seems to put it beyond a doubt that the Shu 
 existed as such a collection in his time. Having said that " it would be 
 better to be without the Shu than to give entire credit to it," he makes 
 immediate reference to one of the books of our classic by name, and adds, 
 " In the Completion of the War I select two or three passages only, and 
 believe them." 
 
 1 See pages 4 and 5 of Dr Legge's Introduction to the Shu King just mentioned . 
 
 2 In the same Introduction, page 2. 
 
 M. D. A. 8
 
 114 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 It will be seen that Mencius was a discriminating critic ; at 
 the same time his criticism is directed towards the question of 
 the credibility of the narrative, not to the question of the date 
 of its composition. It is not difficult to believe that the main 
 facts over a great part of the Shu King were noted down at the 
 time that they happened, especially as the existence of court 
 annalists in early times is probable ; but what is difficult to 
 believe is that the Shu King was written down at first in the 
 form in which we read it now. It is indeed quite surprisingly 
 free from strange and improbable occurrences ; but that in a 
 society emerging out of barbarism into civilisation, with so much 
 of wildness and disorder remaining to the last, there should have 
 been for many centuries such perfect uniformity of moral 
 tone as that which we find in the Shu King seems impossible. 
 The moralising is incessant ; it is never sharpened into 
 indignation, and never remitted for the sake of picturesque 
 narrative or any idiosyncratic tendency of the historian ; nor is 
 it ever interrupted by lively discussion. It is an even monotonous 
 flow ; and for a sample, take the following passage. Here is 
 part of the speech of Thang to his nobles, when he assumed rule 
 after defeating and destroying the dynasty of Hsia (about 1766 B.C. 
 is the assigned date) : 
 
 It is given to me, the One man, to secure the harmony and tran- 
 quillity of your states and clans ; and now I know not whether I may not 
 offend against the Powers above and below. I am fearful and trembling, 
 as if I were in danger of falling into a deep abyss. Throughout all the 
 regions that enter on a new life under me, do not, ye princes, follow law- 
 loss ways ; make no approach to insolence and dissoluteness ; let every 
 one be careful to keep his statutes ; that so we may receive the favour 
 of Heaven. The good in you I will not dare to keep concealed ; and 
 for the evil in me I will not dare to forgive myself. I will examine these 
 things in harmony with the mind of God. When guilt is found anywhere 
 in you who occupy the myriad regions, let it rest on me, the One man. 
 When guilt is found in me, the One man, it shall not attach to you who 
 occupy the myriad regions. Oh ! let us attain to be sincere in these 
 things, and so we shall likewise have a happy consummation. Sacred 
 Books of the East, vol. HI. pp. 90-1. 
 
 We run little risk in saying that the victorious soldier Thang 
 was not himself the author of that edifying harangue. But when 
 we find the same sort of moral reflectiveness overspreading the 
 whole of the Shu King, it is plain that the speeches in it can lay 
 claim to no sort of genuineness ; though they may give us an 
 idea of what Confucius and his disciples thought. The speeches
 
 v] CHINA AND JAPAN 115 
 
 in the Shu King are hardly likely to be older than the era of 
 Confucius ; but the kind of religion which the above passage 
 implies is likely to be older than Confucius, and it will be well 
 to say something about it. 
 
 " Heaven " and " God " ; or to use the Chinese words, 
 " Tien " and " Shang Ti " ; these are the two words in which 
 the Chinese express the ultimate ruling divinity of the universe. 
 In " Tien" the personal element is sunk; in "Shang Ti " it is 
 prominent ; Shang Ti is the Creator, the Sovereign of all. But 
 Shang Ti is not thought of as ruling singly or without ministers 
 of the divine purposes ; these ministers exist all around us ; 
 among them are reckoned the spirits of sun, moon, and stars, 
 the spirits of mountains and hills, the spirits of seas and rivers ; 
 and nearer still to human affections, the spirits of departed 
 ancestors. A belief of this kind, though it may be called poly- 
 theistic, still assigns a unity to the Supreme Being ; it has a 
 certain dignity, and even a certain imaginative truth, although 
 truth hard for us to define and realise. But the weakness of 
 the belief, as the Chinese held it, was that they introduced into 
 it the principle of gradation of ranks, making the heavenly order 
 of things appear to be fashioned on the model of a highly arti- 
 ficial human society. It was thought a lack of decent humility 
 if an ordinary human being approached the Most High in sacrifice 
 or prayer. The monarch might do so ; and in doing so, the 
 monarch would sacrifice and pray not only on his own behalf 
 but on behalf of his people, on solemn stated occasions ; but an 
 ordinary man would pray to his departed ancestors. There is a 
 certain connexion between the want, hi the Chinese, of that 
 supreme daring which alone can break through ingrained errors 
 of the past, and this formalism brought into the midst of their 
 highest spiritual theories. The message of the Hebrew prophet, 
 into whose ears the Almighty has spoken " I dwell in the high 
 and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble 
 spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart 
 of the contrite ones," was debarred to the Chinese ; and how 
 much exaltation and comfort of heart did they not lose in this 
 way ! 
 
 But to return to the Shu King. Stripping off its moralising 
 mantle, what do we find beneath ? We find in it the history 
 of a race more than commonly intelligent, more than commonly 
 persevering ; not one of the most warlike races, though not 
 incapable of fighting ; not free from cruelty, especially in the 
 
 89 
 - _
 
 116 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 way of legal punishments, but desirous that that cruelty should 
 not be made worse by injustice ; a race that continually pushed 
 back, in cases where it could not civilise, the barbarous races 
 which surrounded it. Beginning as an inland race, it reached 
 the seacoast at last. In three ways did the Chinese race employ 
 its strength ; first, in observation and material construction ; 
 secondly, in the determination of ethics and religion ; thirdly, 
 not in so laudable a manner, in the arts of divination. Super- 
 stitious we must account these ; and yet these superstitious 
 practices did not in the early times greatly corrupt the Chinese 
 religion ; they stood separate from it. And so it is, I believe, 
 even at the present day, in China, in so far as Confucianism has 
 sway ; the other two recognised religions of the country, Taoism 
 and Buddhism, have adhered less to their primary motive, and 
 have been more seriously corrupted. 
 
 What are we to think about the details of the history in the 
 Shu King ? It is a fragmentary history ; considerable portions 
 have been lost. Even in what has reached us there is often a 
 certain meagreness. But there are interesting passages. Take, 
 for instance, what we are told about that very early hero, Yu, 
 whose date is placed at 2205 B.C. His first service was to repair 
 the damages of a great flood, afterwards he became a monarch ; 
 and the first of the Hsia line of kings. (I regard the rise and fall 
 of the several dynasties of Hsia, Shang, and Chau as historical, 
 but their details are hardly pertinent to my present purpose.) 
 What I am here concerned to recount is the gradual formation 
 of the Chinese civilising energy in all its parts ; and the amount 
 and character of the tribute paid to Yii, the monarch whom I 
 have already named, will give us some idea of the progress of 
 the Chinese in very early times. Here is the list of what was 
 sent him from the province of Ching Chau. 
 
 Feathers, hair, elephants' teeth, and hides ; gold, silver, and cop- 
 per ; K him trees, wood for bows, cedars, and cypresses ; grindstones, 
 whetstones, flint stones to make arrowheads, and cinnabar ; and the 
 Khun and lu bamboos, with the hi tree (all good for making arrows). . . . 
 The three-ribbed rush was sent in bundles, put into cases. The baskets 
 were filled with silken fabrics, azure and deep purple, and with strings 
 of pearls that were not quite round. From the country of the nine 
 Kiang the great tortoise was presented when specially required. Sacred 
 Books of the East, vol. in. p. 69. 
 
 The use of flintstones for arrowheads is an evidence of real 
 antiquity ; it would seem that iron was rare, though the wild 
 province of Liang Chau did supply it, as we learn in another part
 
 v] CHINA AND JAPAN 117 
 
 of this document. Agriculture was not neglected, and the 
 different kinds of soils were known and classified ; " woven 
 ornamental fabrics " and " fine cloth " were part of the tribute 
 from some of the other provinces, and the art of producing silk 
 was already known. The following sentence, from the account 
 of the tribute paid to Yii, is interesting for several reasons : 
 
 The wild people of Lai were taught tillage and pasturage, and brought 
 in their baskets the silk from the mountain mulberry tree. Ibid. vol. in. 
 p. 66. 
 
 We see from this that the primitive Chinese instructed their 
 less civilised neighbours in peaceful arts ; a more excellent plan 
 than making war upon them and rooting them out. Also the 
 expression " they brought in their baskets the silk from the 
 mountain mulberry tree " appears to show that the wild silk- 
 worms (as I believe is known or conjectured from other sources) 
 left their cocoons, and probably long trails of the silken thread, 
 on the mulberry trees whose leaves had served them for food ; 
 so that Virgil's expression, 
 
 Velleraque ut foliis depectant tenuia Seres, 
 
 is not so incorrect as it has sometimes been thought to be. It 
 does not appear from the document here quoted whether the 
 Chinese at the date of king Yii cultivated the silkworm or not, but 
 from the amount of silk evidently used it is probable that they 
 had begun to do so, and were not entirely dependent on what 
 could be procured by more natural and inartificial means. This 
 same chapter on the tribute paid to Yii also gives evidence of the 
 care taken in keeping rivers within their proper channels, and 
 in draining marshes ; also in obtaining the produce of the sea, 
 and in other details which it is not necessary to enumerate fully. 
 
 We see then that the Chinese, in the most primitive times 
 known to us, were in the right way towards civilisation ; in the 
 right way as regards enterprise, in the right way also as regards 
 an orderly and friendly disposition. Doubts which may be felt 
 as to the date of Yii, or even as to his real existence, cannot 
 greatly alter the evidence on these points ; and the care bestowed 
 on geography, the care also to hand down these facts to posterity, 
 show that the nation at large had a right-minded and progressive 
 temperament. A perusal of the collection of lyrics called the 
 Shih King will strengthen this impression. The oldest of these 
 lyrics would appear to have been written some time before 
 1721 B.C., in honour of some of the ancestors of the dynasty 
 of Shang. But very few of the other poems in the collection- at
 
 118 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 all approximate to this date ; most were evidently written under 
 the Chau dynasty, which reigned from 1122 B.C. to 256 B.C. 
 All of these pieces are pure and right-minded ; many are poetical 
 and pleasing. Let me quote a few brief extracts. Here is an 
 ode written in time of prosperity : 
 
 There is peace throughout our myriad regions. There has been 
 a succession of plentiful years ; Heaven does not weary in its favour. 
 The martial king WO maintained the confidence of his officers, and em- 
 ployed them all over the kingdom, so securing the establishment of his 
 family. Oh ! glorious was he in the sight of Heaven, which kinged him 
 in the room of Shang. Sacred Books of the East, vol. in. p. 335. 
 
 Here again is a brief festal ode ; and the picturesque element 
 in it enhances the feeling : 
 
 On the trees go the blows kang-kang ; and the birds cry out ying- 
 ying. One issues from the dark valley, and removes to the lofty tree. 
 Ying goes its cry, seeking with its voice its companion. Look at the 
 bird, bird as it is, seeking with its voice its companion ; and shall a man 
 not seek to have his friends ? Spiritual beings will then hearken to him ; 
 he shall have harmony and peace. Ibid. vol. m. p. 347. 
 
 Here is an ode written in a time of disorder and general afflic- 
 tion ; the poet thinks of the times that are past : 
 
 Small is the cooing dove, but it flies aloft to heaven. My heart is 
 wounded with sorrow, and I think of our forefathers. When the dawn 
 is breaking, and I cannot sleep, the thoughts in my breast are of our 
 parents. 
 
 Men who are grave and wise, though they drink, are mild and masters 
 of themselves ; but those who are benighted and ignorant become de- 
 voted to drink, and more so daily. Be careful, each of you, of your de- 
 portment ; what Heaven confers, when once lost, is not regained. 
 
 The greenbeaks come and go, picking up grain about the stackyard. 
 Alas for the distressed and solitary, deemed fit inmates for the prisons ! 
 With a handful of grain I go out and divine, how I may be able to become 
 good. Ibid. vol. in. p. 359. 
 
 Proverbs may amuse, without being convincing. Here are two : 
 
 A flaw in a mace of white jade may be ground away ; but for a flaw 
 in speech nothing can be done. 
 
 To look for horns on a young ram will only weary you, my son. 
 Ibid. vol. in. pp. 415, 416. 
 
 Here is another lament on the sorrowful state of the people : 
 
 Luxuriant is that young mulberry tree, and beneath it wide is the 
 shade ; but they will pluck its leaves till it is quite destroyed. The 
 distress inflicted on these multitudes of the people is an unceasing sorrow 
 to my heart ; my commiseration fills my breast. O thou bright and 
 great Heaven, shouldest thou not have compassion on us ? Ibid. vol. ill. 
 p. 417.
 
 v] CHINA AND JAPAN 119 
 
 Here, finally, is a part of a love-story : the maiden is the 
 narrator : 
 
 A simple -looking lad you were, carrying cloth to exchange it for 
 silk. But you came not so to purchase silk ; you came to make proposals 
 to me. I convoyed you through the river Khi, as far as the height of 
 Tun. "It is not I," I said, " who would protract the time ; but you have 
 had no good go-between. I pray you be not angry, and let autumn be 
 the time." 
 
 I ascended that ruinous wall, to look towards Fu-kwan ; and when 
 I saw you not coming from it, my tears flowed in streams. When I did 
 see you coming from Fu-kwan, I laughed and I spoke. You had consulted 
 (you said) the tortoise-shell and the divining stalks, and there was nothing 
 unfavourable in their response. "Then come," I said, "with your carriage 
 and I will remove with my goods ; " Ibid. vol. m. p. 437-8. 
 
 The maiden, we must regret to learn, was cast oft in the end. 
 But the reader will observe mention in this passage of two of 
 the main processes of divination, used for both public and private 
 purposes ; the marks on the shell of the tortoise, and the arrange- 
 ment of the stalks of the Khi plant (" probably the Achillea 
 millefolium," says Dr Legge). Superstition there certainly is in 
 such practices, but not a dark or very blamable superstition. 
 
 The reader will, I think, allow that there was a tender and 
 natural flow of feeling in the people who could do and write the 
 things which I have transcribed from the ancient books of China ; 
 that there was energy in them moreover, and a feeling of duty ; 
 and if he thinks that their imagination went beyond the mark 
 in assigning to every mountain and river its individual spirit, and 
 also in the worship of their departed ancestors, we cannot afford 
 wholly to despise such imaginations ; where they felt sacredness, 
 there was some sacredness, though not the precise foundation of 
 worship which they imagined to be there. Who can but be moved, 
 even if he must a little smile, when the duke of Chau prays for 
 the life of his sick brother the king, asking his ancestors to take 
 himself away from this world in place of his brother, on the 
 ground that he had spiritual abilities which his brother lacked, 
 and was better fitted to serve his ancestors in the world of spirits? 
 Nor must we forget that over the world of unseen spirits these 
 ancient Chinese held that a Supreme Spirit rules ; there was a 
 largeness in their conceptions, even when their actual practice 
 went wrong. 
 
 Other points in these primitive ages (and I speak of times 
 earlier than the sixth century before Christ) are worthy of notice, 
 though I must mention them but briefly. We read of standard
 
 120 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 measures of length, capacity, and (probably) of weight ; of 
 astronomical observations, which had no doubt some relation to 
 astrology, though not without other applications, as for instance 
 indicating the seasons of the year ; of musical instruments, 
 especially the " sounding-stone " ; of the building of temples 
 and altars, and of sacrifices, including sacrifices of animals. We 
 read prohibitions of drunkenness ; and we read, finally, of a 
 third system of divination (besides the divination from the tor- 
 toise shell and that from the Khi plant) which has curious mathe- 
 matical affinities ; a system expounded in a treatise, highly 
 esteemed by Confucius, called the Yi King. We ourselves may 
 glance at its pages with amusement, and from its Appendices 
 we may even draw instruction ; moreover the way in which the 
 Yi King makes linear measurements emblematic of morality 
 and prudence will remind us of the way in which the Greek 
 philosopher Pythagoras regarded number as the primary essence 
 of all things, moral as well as material. The hexagrams of the 
 Yi King were, it is said, elaborated by one of the heroes 
 of old time (who afterwards, under the name and title of king 
 Wan became the founder of a dynasty), when imprisoned by the 
 tyrannical monarch whom he afterwards dethroned ; but the first 
 suggestion of the hexagrams appears to have been still more 
 ancient. 
 
 And now I come to the era of the great philosophers ; of 
 Lao-tsze, born 604 B.C. ; and of Confucius, born 551 B.C. The 
 third greatest name in Chinese literature is that of Mencius, who 
 lived in the fourth century before Christ, and was a follower of 
 Confucius. It will of course be understood that Confucius and 
 Mencius are Latinised names, of which the Chinese equivalents 
 are Kung-foo-tsze and Mang respectively. 
 
 The name of Lao-tsze was never Latinised ; from which it 
 is clear that Lao-tsze was a philosopher of less wide fame than 
 the other two. Yet as a philosopher, Lao-tsze is certainly the 
 greatest whom China has produced. Had he possessed mission- 
 ary energy equal to his intellectual perspicacity, his would have 
 been far the greatest of Chinese names ; but from his writings 
 we should gather that he disapproved of missionary energy ; he 
 thought it too turbulent. Such entire disapproval was a mistake, 
 and this really was his own mistake ; but for the superstitions 
 which became attached afterwards to the name of Taoism he is 
 no more responsible than he is for the invention of Grimm's 
 Fairy Tales. Often as the thoughts of great souls have been
 
 v] CHINA AND JAPAN 121 
 
 distorted by unworthy followers, it is seldom that the depravation 
 has been carried so far as in this case. It is of the system of the 
 Tao, as taught genuinely by himself, that I must now speak ; or 
 in other words I must give some account of Lao-tsze's sole sur- 
 viving work, the Tdo Teh King, as that is exhibited in the lucid 
 translation of Dr Legge, in the 39th volume of the Sacred Books 
 of the East. 
 
 That Lao-tsze was not a faultless philosopher, it is perhaps 
 hardly necessary to say ; but his strength is that which we have 
 to understand first. 
 
 The greatest theme which he propounds is the value of spon- 
 taneity, of that origination which flows silently from the heart of 
 a man. Heaven and earth, he says, came into existence by a 
 method which was impalpable, indiscernible. You would say, 
 " There is nothing at work " ; yet out of this non- working, 
 everything that we see is produced. This secret, silent method 
 he calls the Tao. " The Tao does nothing, and therefore there 
 is nothing which it does not do " ; such is the brief paradox in 
 which he sums up the whole of his system. Or, to quote a verse 
 in which this idea is rather expanded, he says : 
 
 The movement of the Tao 
 
 By contraries proceeds ; 
 And weakness marks the course 
 
 Of Tao's mighty deeds. 
 
 Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxxix. p. 83. 
 
 It will be seen that, according to this verse, although the 
 working of the Tao is in a true sense weak, yet strength is brought 
 out of it ; and it may be asked whether Lao-tsze assigns any 
 function to strength, as well as to weakness, in the work of crea- 
 tion. Yes, he does ; it is not weakness alone, but weakness 
 inseparably combined with strength, to which he attributes 
 practical efficiency ; and the whole, strength and weakness, 
 must be hidden from the eyes of men, to accomplish the greatest 
 works. In the physical universe, water, with its readiness to 
 yield at a touch, and yet its intense penetrative power, is his 
 type of the Tao, of the creative method; of the divine method, 
 we may truly say ; but Lao-tsze says, " It might appear to have 
 been before God." That is a sentiment with which we shall not 
 agree, though we must not call it atheistic. We should rather 
 say, " It is eternally inherent in God." 
 
 It is not, however, the physical universe which has the 
 primary attraction for Lao-tsze, though he assumes indeed that the
 
 122 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 physical universe has the Tao for its root ; but it is in our own 
 selves that he first marks the Tao's existence. Take for instance 
 the following lines : 
 
 Who knows his manhood's strength, 
 Yet still his female feebleness maintains ; 
 As to one channel flow the many drains, 
 All come to him, yea, all beneath the sky. 
 Thus he the constant excellence retains ; 
 The simple cliild again, free from all stains. 
 
 Who knows how white attracts, 
 Yet always keeps himself within black's shade, 
 The pattern of humility displayed, 
 Displayed in view of all beneath the sky ; 
 He in the unchanging excellence arrayed, 
 Endless return to man's first state has made. 
 
 Who knows how glory shines, 
 
 Yet loves disgrace, nor e'er for it grows pale ; 
 
 Behold his presence in a spacious vale, 
 
 To which men come from all beneath the sky. 
 
 The unchanging excellence completes its tale ; 
 
 The simple infant man in him we hail. 
 
 Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxxix. p. 71. 
 
 K Lao-tsze lays great stress on the virtue of timeliness, as being 
 that which renders the employment of violence unnecessary. 
 " Action," he writes, " should be taken before a thing has made 
 its appearance ; order should be secured before disorder has 
 begun." Ibid. vol. xxxix. p. 107. 
 
 He deprecates violent warlike action without saying that it is 
 always avoidable ; " He who has killed multitudes of men," he 
 writes, " should weep for them with the bitterest grief." Ibid. 
 vol. xxxix, p. 74. 
 
 Here are passages in which the ultimate divine agency is 
 referred to : 
 
 It is the way of Heaven not to strive, and yet it skilfully overcomes ; 
 ' not to speak, and yet it is skilful in (obtaining) a reply ; does not call, 
 ' and yet men come to it of themselves. Its demonstrations are quiet, 
 '. and yet its plans are skilful and elective. The meshes of the net of 
 ) Heaven are large ; far apart, but letting nothing escape. Ibid. vol. xxxix. 
 ( p. 116. 
 
 There is always One who presides over the infliction of death. He 
 who would inflict death in the room of him who so presides over it may 
 be described as hewing wood instead of a great carpenter. Seldom is it 
 that he who undertakes the hewing, instead of the great carpenter, does 
 not cut his own hands ! Ibid. vol. xxxix. p. 117. 
 
 Here is a passage in which he describes, more clearly perhaps
 
 v] CHINA AND JAPAN 123 
 
 than in any other, the type of moral excellence which he is 
 inculcating : 
 
 I have three precious things which I prize and hold fast. The first 
 is gentleness ; the second is economy ; and the third is shrinking from 
 taking precedence of others. With that gentleness I can be bold ; with 
 that economy I can be liberal ; shrinking from taking precedence of others 
 I can become a vessel of the highest honour. Nowadays they give up 
 gentleness and are for being bold ; economy, and are all for being liberal ; 
 the hindmost place, and seek only to be foremost ; of all which the end 
 is death. Ibid. vol. xxxix. p. 110. 
 
 Lastly, let me quote the following passage, which in the light 
 of Christian history we may call truly prophetic : 
 
 Every one in the world knows that the soft overcomes the hard, 
 and the weak the strong, but no one is able to carry it out in practice. 
 Therefore a sage has said, 
 
 He who accepts his state's reproach, 
 Is hailed therefore its altars' lord ; 
 To him who bears men's direful woes 
 
 They all the name of king accord. 
 Words that are strictly true seem to be paradoxical. Ibid. vol. xxxix. 
 p. 120. 
 
 Is not this on the very highest pinnacle of morality ? I can- 
 not but think that my reader will be surprised to see such 
 direct inculcation of the doctrines of humility and self-denying 
 acceptance of pain, with the full knowledge that this is the true 
 creative principle, put forward in China in the sixth century 
 before Christ. " To recompense injury with kindness " is also 
 a maxim which we find in the Tao Teh King (in the 39th volume 
 of Sacred Books of the East, p. 106) ; and this was a maxim to 
 which Confucius himself was unable to attain ; he somewhat de- 
 murred to it, though by no means as encouraging vindictiveness. 
 
 It will be right to counterbalance the sayings which I have 
 quoted above by one that will show the weaker side of Lao-tsze. 
 In the following passage, the second sentence is not wrong ; but 
 the first and third sentences cannot be defended. It is, as will 
 be seen, a passage in praise of a simple life : 
 
 I would make the people (in a little state) return to the use of 
 knotted cords (instead of the written characters). They should think 
 their (coarse) food sweet, their (plain) clothes beautiful ; their (poor) 
 dwellings places of rest ; and their common (simple) ways sources of 
 enjoyment. There should be a neighbouring state within sight, and the 
 voices of the fowls and dogs should be heard all the way from it to us ; 
 but I would make the people to old age, even to death, not have any 
 intercourse with it. Ibid. vol. xxxix. p. 122. 
 
 This is making of no account the natural human feeling of
 
 124 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 curiosity, the joy in the acquisition of something new ; it is 
 making simplicity a bar to progress, which certainly it ought 
 not to be. But we must not be surprised that Lao-tsze in a few 
 passages drew incorrect inferences from a correct principle. His 
 primary conception has been thought obscure ; but when once it 
 is understood that by the Tao a Method is intended, a Method 
 penetrative, universal, reaching into every avenue of reality and 
 influencing all things, I do not think that any great difficulty 
 lies in his expressions. 
 
 The treatise from which I have been quoting is the only one 
 of his which has survived ; and the narrative which tells us in 
 what manner the Tao Teh King was produced is curious and 
 interesting. Here it is, as related by the Chinese historian, Sze- 
 ma Khien (who lived in the first century before the Christian 
 era), and translated by Dr Legge (The. Religions of China, p. 206): 
 
 Lao-tsze cultivated the tao and virtue, the chief aim of his studies 
 
 ,' being how to keep himself concealed and remain unknown. He continued 
 
 \ to reside at (the capital of) Chau, but, after a long time, seeing the decay 
 
 of the dynasty, he left it, and went away to the gate leading out of the 
 
 state to the northwest. Yin Hsi, keeper of the gate, said to him, "You 
 
 are about to withdraw yourself out of sight ; I pray you to compose for 
 
 me first a book." On this Lao-tsze wrote a book in two parts, setting 
 
 forth his views on Tao and virtue, in more than five thousand characters. 
 
 He then went away, and it is not known where he died. He was a superior 
 
 man who liked to keep himself unknown. 
 
 Though Sze-ma Khien in the above passage says that it was 
 not known where Lao-tsze died, Kwang-Tze, the most famous 
 follower of Lao-tsze, but living two hundred years after him, gives 
 us this interesting particular about his death, that his loss was 
 deeply lamented by old and young. We at the present day should 
 certainly consider this as evidence of the attractiveness of his 
 personality ; but in his own day another inference was sometimes 
 drawn. His friend Khin Shih, offended by the sight of what he 
 regarded as unmanly grief, "the old men wailing as if they had 
 lost a son, the young men wailing as if they had lost their mother," 
 declared that Lao-tsze himself must have failed in the training 
 of his disciples, for it to have been possible that they should so 
 abandon the serenity which philosophy prescribes. Yet Buddha 
 and Socrates were bewailed by their followers in a similar manner; 
 and of Confucius too we read that his disciples mourned at his 
 grave for three years 1 . 
 
 If we are to find fault with Lao-tsze, it must be on far other 
 
 1 See Confucianism, &c., by Professor Douglas, p. 63.
 
 v] CHINA AND JAPAN 125 
 
 ground than this. We shall have to admit that the reproach 
 ? which is sometimes cast on Christianity, but which is not I think 
 true of genuine Christianity, is true of him ; he assigned less 
 i than their proper value to those positive and arduous efforts, and 
 c to those passionate hopes, out of which the world's progress 
 ' comes. Passivity is too much honoured by him. Yet I do not 
 like to call him a dreamer, as Dr Legge does ; there is too much 
 truth in his views for this to be permissible. Only his disregard 
 of the enforcement of practical energy had an unfavourable 
 effect on the development of his disciples after him ; and, though 
 far from being an atheist, he resembled Buddha and the great 
 Brahmin philosophers in not having an adequate feeling of the 
 manner in which the Divine power strengthens men from within. 
 In one anecdote related of him, Lao-tsze is made to appear 
 rude. It is possible that he was so, though his tone and manner, 
 if these had been fully conveyed to us, might modify the impression 
 of his reported words ; but in any case it will be proper to quote 
 the anecdote as it has come down to us. It relates to the single 
 occasion on which Lao-tsze and Confucius are recorded to have 
 met. Confucius must be supposed to have been expounding his 
 own views with some animation ; the reply of the elder philo- 
 sopher is caustic, though not malevolent : 
 
 " I have heard," Lao-tsze is represented as saying, " that a good 
 merchant, though he have rich treasures safely stored, appears as if he 
 were poor ; and that the superior man, though his virtue be complete, 
 is yet to outward seeming stupid. Put away your proud air and many 
 desires, your insinuating habit and wild will. They are of no advantage 
 to you : this is all I have to tell you." Religions of China, p. 205. 
 
 It must be remembered that Lao-tsze was eighty-seven years 
 old when he is reported as speaking thus, and Confucius thirty- 
 four. It does not appear that Confucius took offence ; but his 
 comment afterwards was rather humorous : 
 
 I know that birds can fly, fishes swim, and animals run. But the 
 runner may be snared, the swimmer hooked, and the flyer shot by the 
 arrow. But there is the dragon ; I cannot tell how he mounts on the 
 wind through the clouds, and rises to heaven. Today I have seen Lao- 
 tsze, and can only compare him to the dragon. 
 
 That is to say, Lao-tsze's philosophy was in the eyes of 
 Confucius lofty, but unrealisable. It is not exactly the comment 
 which I have made myself, but it is a not unnatural comment, 
 nor quite without reason. 
 
 A more celebrated name is Confucius than Lao-tsze ; yet as 
 far as originality is concerned, and native apprehension of the
 
 126 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 profoundest principles of morality, Lao-tsze is unquestionably 
 the superior. When, however, we compare the two men, not as 
 thinkers, but as actors, the superiority is on the other side. It is 
 in no wise necessary to set in opposition to each other two men 
 whose qualifications were so wholly different. Confucius was 
 essentially, as Professor Douglas calls him, a statesman ; for 
 though he had no immediate direction of state affairs, his effort 
 was always directed towards practical good, not theoretical 
 insight. As he said of himself, he was a lover of the ancients, a 
 transmitter of the wisdom of elder generations ; he took the moral 
 principles that were traditional in his country, principles by no 
 means wanting in enlightenment, and devoted all his labour to 
 enforcing them both on the young who were starting in life, and 
 on rulers who needed guidance in governing. It must be admitted 
 that he attributed too much value to the outward form of cere- 
 monies, as compared with their inner meaning ; yet the outward 
 form is not valueless ; there is a function performed by it, in 
 bringing before the minds of men thoughts which in the hurry 
 of life they might otherwise forget. 
 
 Both Lao-tsze and Confucius lived in disturbed times, and 
 the remedy which they respectively sought was different; Lao- 
 tsze endeavoured to penetrate into the roots of the moral tempera- 
 ment, Confucius endeavoured to set men actually to work with 
 those moral qualities which they possessed. All the precepts of 
 Confucius that have come down to us have a direct practical 
 bearing. Thus at the beginning of the Hsido King he writes : 
 
 Filial piety is the root of all virtue, and the stern out of which grows 
 all moral teaching. . . . When we have established our characters by the 
 practice of the filial course, so as to make our name famous in future 
 ages, and thereby glorify our parents this is the end of filial piety. It 
 commences with the service of parents ; it proceeds to the service of 
 the ruler ; it is completed by the establishment of the character. Sacred 
 Books of the East, vol. in. p. 466. 
 
 In the above words we have an expansion of the sentence 
 with which Li Ki begins : "Always and in everything let there 
 be reverence " ; an admonition older no doubt than the era of 
 Confucius, but which certainly was very dear to his heart. Yet 
 Confucius knew that filial piety must not be slavish. When one 
 of his followers asked him whether filial piety was to be inter- 
 preted as meaning simple obedience, he answered : 
 
 What words are these !. . .When a case of unrighteous conduct is con- 
 cerned, a son must by no means keep from remonstrating with his father, 
 nor a minister from remonstrating with his ruler. Ibid. vol. nr. pp. 483-4.
 
 v] CHINA AND JAPAN 127 
 
 For a minister to remonstrate with his ruler was in those 
 times not free from danger ; as was proved by the followers of 
 Confucius on a critical occasion some three centuries after his 
 time. Here again is a maxim of somewhat similar effect from 
 the Appendices to the Yi King : 
 
 The superior man, in his intercourse with the high, uses no flattery, 
 and in his intercourse with the low, no coarse freedom : does not this 
 show that he knows the springs of things ? Those springs are the slight 
 beginnings of movement. Ibid. vol. xvi. p. 392. 
 
 The Appendices to the Yi King are not in their entirety the 
 work of Confucius, though doubtless the work of his followers ; 
 but when the " Master " is expressly quoted, as we find to be 
 the case in regard to the above passage, we may then conclude 
 that we have the words of Confucius himself. So it is in the 
 following instructive passages : 
 
 He who keeps danger in mind is he who will rest safe in his seat : 
 he who keeps ruin in mind is he who will preserve his interests secure ; 
 he who sets the danger of disorder before him is he who will maintain 
 the state of order. Therefore, the superior man, when resting in safety, 
 does not forget that danger may come ; when in a state of security, he 
 does not forget the possibility of ruin ; and when all is in a state of order, 
 he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is kept safe, 
 and his states and all their clans can be preserved. Ibid. vol. xvi. pp. 391-2. 
 
 The following, in verse, is in a tenderer strain : 
 
 One man his lips with silence seals ; 
 Another all his mind reveals. 
 But when two men are one in heart, 
 Not iron bolts keep them apart ; 
 The words they in their union use, 
 Fragrance like orchid plants diffuse. 
 
 Ibid. vol. xvi. p. 362. 
 Again : 
 
 He toils with success, but does not boast of it ; he achieves merit, 
 but takes no virtue to himself from it : -this is the height of generous 
 goodness, and speaks of the man who with great merit yet p aces himself 
 below others. Ibid. vol. xvi. p. 362. 
 
 Again, on the necessity of reticence : 
 
 If important matters in the germ be not kept secret, that will be 
 injurious to their accomplishment. Ibid. vol. xvi. p. 363. 
 
 Again, on the quietude of natural processes : 
 
 In all the processes taking place under heaven, what is there of 
 thinking ? what is there of anxious scheming ? They all come to the 
 same successful issue, though by different paths ; there is one result, 
 though there might be a hundred anxious schemes. What is there of 
 thinking ? what is there of anxious scheming ? Ibid. vol. xvi. p. 389.
 
 128 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 Interesting, again, is the following testimony to his favourite 
 disciple Yen Hui : 
 
 I may venture to say that the son of the Yen family had nearly 
 attained the standard of perfection. If anything he did was not good, 
 he was sure to become conscious of that ; and when he knew it, he did 
 not do the thing again. Sacred Books of the East, vol. xvi. p. 392. 
 
 I quote the following from Dr Legge's work, The Religions 
 of China, p. 137 : 
 
 Tsze-kung once asked him [Confucius] if there were one word which 
 
 f . would serve as a rule of conduct for all the life ; and he replied, " Is 
 
 \ not reciprocity such a word ? What you do not want done to yourself, 
 
 ' do not do to others." Subsequently, when the disciple told him that he 
 
 was carrying this rule into practice, he replied, "Tsze, you have not attained 
 
 to that." He was thus aware of the difficulty of obeying the precept, and 
 
 he confessed on one occasion that he himself failed to do so. His words 
 
 then also showed that the rule had for him not only a negative form, but 
 
 also a positive form. He was unable, he said, to take the initiative in 
 
 serving his father as he would require his son to serve him. 
 
 I must not forget to quote from the same work (p. 140) yet 
 another utterance : 
 
 He who offends against Heaven has none to whom he can pray; 
 
 from which it will be seen that Confucius was truly religious ; as 
 certainly he was, though he was well aware that the religious 
 instincts take us into a sphere that lies beyond our absolute 
 knowledge. 
 
 It is impossible not to feel admiration for a man who laboured 
 so persistently as Confucius did through a long life to introduce 
 order, reverence, and kindness into the actions of his fellow- 
 countrymen, at a time of no common disorder, and amid many 
 rebuffs. Whether as an official or in private life, he appears to 
 have been singularly faithful ; it would be too much to say that 
 he was wholly without fault, but few men have been less charge- 
 able with distinct acts of wrong-doing. As regards his family 
 relations, he wept bitterly over the death of his mother ; but it is 
 possible, though the evidence is very slight, that he was wanting 
 in affection for his wife. 
 
 His own death was not wanting in pathos. He had lost his 
 two best-loved disciples ; and in the spring of 478 B.C. he felt 
 his end was near. Let me quote Dr Legge (Religions of China, 
 p. 133) : 
 
 Early one morning, we are told, he got up ; and, with his hands 
 behind his back, dragging his staff, he moved about by the door, crooning 
 over,
 
 v] CHINA AND JAPAN 129 
 
 The great mountain must crumble ; 
 
 The strong beam must break ; 
 
 And the wise man wither away like a plant. 
 
 After a little he entered the house, and sat down opposite the door. 
 Tsze-kung had heard his word?, and said to himself, "If the great moun- 
 tain crumble, to what shall I look up ? If the strong beam break, and the 
 wise man wither away, on whom shall I lean ? I fear the master is going 
 to be ill." With this he hastened into the house, when Confucius told 
 him a dream which he had had in the night, and which he thought presaged 
 his death, adding, "No intelligent monarch arises; there is no prince in 
 the kingdom who will make me his master My time has come to die." 
 So it was. He took to his couch, and after seven days expired. 
 
 He was mourned with great sincerity of grief by his disciples ; 
 but the period of his extraordinary influence did not come at 
 once. China was distracted with internal commotions, and if the 
 cultured and learned were more and more disposed to regard 
 Confucius as the model of excellence (for his influence even then 
 was beginning to transcend that of Lao-tsze), this was not equally 
 the case with kings and princes. At last, in the latter part of the 
 third century B.C., the dynasty of Chau having wholly disappeared, 
 the great, powerful, terrible emperor Shih Hwang Ti came to the 
 throne. He by his warlike abilities overcame all his rivals, and 
 for the first time reduced the empire to an absolute unity of rule ; 
 he built the famous Great Wall to be a protection against the 
 outer barbarians ; he made roads through the whole country (it 
 is said) ; he centralised the military administration, and disarmed 
 the provincial centres which had been for centuries the origin of 
 civil wars ; and under his strong hand China was at peace. But 
 in the course of his unification of China he came into collision 
 with many points of ancient ceremonial, valued in themselves, 
 and ratified by the great authority of Confucius. With the 
 directness of a practical man, impatient of the past when it 
 would interfere with the present, he desired to abrogate or curtail 
 much that had been customary in religious usage. It is not easy 
 for us to say how far such a design was in itself a good one ; for 
 ceremonial ministers sometimes to genuine feeling and sometimes 
 to the decayed semblance of genuine feeling, and in the one case 
 it is good, in the other case bad. But the separation of vital 
 feeling from its dead imitation is always a difficult task ; and 
 Shih Hwang Ti, who was wont to sit on his throne with a naked 
 sword in his hand, was not prone to delicacy of procedure. The 
 literary classes were, above all men in China, conservators of 
 ceremonial, and a deep animosity soon arose between them
 
 130 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 and Shih Hwang Tt. Probably there would have been a way 
 to reconciliation, if the reverence paid to Lao-tsze had been 
 as great among the people generally as the reverence paid to 
 Confucius, for in that case the literary classes would have been 
 divided, and would not in their entirety have faced the monarchy 
 as a hostile power. But Confucius had become then, as he is now, 
 the recognised Master of thought in China. Accordingly, in a 
 great meeting held at the imperial capital, Hienyang, in the year 
 213 B.C., the smouldering fire broke out. The emperor was pre- 
 siding ; his prime minister, Lisseh, was by his side ; governors 
 of provinces, officials, and the representatives of literature and 
 of ceremonial were gathered for consultation. (I take the main 
 points of the scene from D. C. Boulger's History of China, vol. I. 
 pp. 72 sqq.) The emperor (sword in hand, we must suppose) called 
 upon those present to give their candid opinion of his government 
 and his legislation. Candour has not always been manifested by 
 an audience under such circumstances ; but the followers of 
 Confucius had been trained on principles that implanted courage 
 in their hearts, and Shih Hwang Ti was destined to hear words 
 of candour on this occasion. At first, indeed, a courtier arose, 
 and delivered a panegyric wholly agreeable to his exalted hearer, 
 whom he described as having surpassed the very greatest of his 
 imperial predecessors. But the learned part of the assembly were 
 stung by words which seemed a dishonour to the ancient mon- 
 archs ; one of them rose, and stigmatising the speech which he 
 had just heard as " vile flattery," advocated the restoration of 
 those separate principalities throughout China which it had been 
 the great work of Shih Hwang Ti to abolish. This was certainly 
 an extreme proposition, and when the emperor refused to listen 
 to it, and called upon his prime minister, Lisseh, to justify that 
 remodelling of the empire which had been carried out, he was 
 well within his rights. But Lisseh was not content with vindi- 
 cating what had been done ; he perceived that the occasion was 
 a critical one, and he determined within himself that now was the 
 time for delivering his imperial master from his last and most 
 irreconcilable enemy, the formidable literary classes. He demanded 
 that all books throughout the empire should be burnt, except 
 such as treated of medicine, agriculture, and divination. These 
 three subjects appeared to him to be of practical utility ; but 
 history, in his opinion, only fed men's minds with phantom-like 
 memories, and rendered them incapable of appreciating the true 
 needs of mankind. The emperor accepted the suggestion of his
 
 v] CHINA AND JAPAN 131 
 
 minister, and directed him to lose no time in carrying out the 
 burning of the books. 
 
 Thus the forces of authority, all over China, were set to work 
 to destroy every scrap of history and of literature (in the proper 
 sense of that word) which could be found. The literary men 
 had been foolishly conservative ; but they had not deserved such a 
 sentence as this, and the emperor's decree meant the bringing back 
 of China to barbarism. When, then, we read that four hundred 
 and sixty literary men were buried alive on the charge of impeding 
 the execution of the decree, we can only esteem them as martyrs 
 in a just cause ; and despite the real services which Shih Hwang 
 Ti had rendered in other ways to the well-being of China, we can 
 only regard his death, which took place three years after the 
 promulgation of the decree, as a happy event and a deliverance 
 for the best interests of China. He died, and the Ch'in dynasty 
 (of which he was the most remarkable member) survived him 
 only some four years ; and the Han dynasty, which next came 
 into power, was anxious in every way to repair the destruction 
 which had been committed. Every corner of the empire was 
 ransacked for manuscripts which had been hidden away from the 
 fury of the destroyer ; what could not be recovered from actual 
 written documents was often supplied by the incomparable 
 memory of Chinese students ; and in the end, though some 
 things had been irrecoverably lost, quite enough remained to 
 enable the Confucian teaching again to take its place, which 
 it retains to the present hour, as the most cherished possession 
 of the whole Chinese people. 
 
 The reader will not think me unregardful of the great merit 
 of Confucius ; but no doubt his fame is partly due to the fact 
 that he fell in with the general current of feeling and thought in 
 his own people. Lao-tsze, who discerned the power which lies 
 in the quiet unforced motions of the spirit, deserves at least as 
 much attention from us now ; and the similarity between his 
 ethics and Christian ethics will strike every one, though there are 
 also obvious differences. 
 
 An anecdote in Book xxxi. of the writings of Kwang-tsze is 
 interesting as showing the difference between Lao-tsze and Con- 
 fucius in a manner to bring out the strength of Lao-tsze and the 
 weak side of Confucius ; and though Kwang-tsze (the most dis- 
 tinguished of the school of Lao-tsze) would naturally lay stress 
 on the points in which his own master had the superiority, there 
 is no dishonour to Confucius implied in it. The narrative tells 
 
 92
 
 132 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 how Confucius, wandering in a forest with his disciples, at last 
 left them and met an old fisherman, with whom he conversed. 
 The old fisherman was a follower of the doctrine of the Tao ; and 
 after pointing out to Confucius the troubles and frequent faults 
 of personal conduct which are unavoidable in an active career of 
 political or philosophical teaching (such a career as that to which 
 Confucius had devoted himself) at last plainly tells the great 
 philosopher that he had not "guarded his proper Truth." 
 
 Confucius with an air of sadness said, "Allow me to ask what it is 
 
 that you call my proper Truth." The stranger replied, "A man's proper 
 
 Truth is pure sincerity in its highest degree without this pure sincerity 
 
 one cannot move others. Hence if one only forces himself to wail, however 
 
 sadly he may do so, it is not real sorrow ; if he forces himself to be angry, 
 
 , however he may seem to he severe, he excites no awe ; if he forces himself 
 
 to show affection, however he may smile, he awakens no harmonious 
 
 / reciprocation. True grief, without a sound, is yet sorrowful ; true anger, 
 
 '( without any demonstration, yet awakens awe ; true affection, without a 
 
 smile, yet produces a harmonious reciprocation. Given this truth within, 
 
 it exercises a spiritual efficacy without, and this is why we count it so 
 
 valuable. . . . Rites are prescribed for the practice of the common people ; 
 
 man's proper Truth is what he has received from Heaven, operating 
 
 spontaneously, and unchangeable." Sacred Books of the East, vol. XL. 
 
 pp. 198-9. 
 
 An admirable passage ; and we are not surprised to learn that 
 Confucius, with that humility which was his most charming 
 characteristic, bowed twice to the fisherman, and begged, with 
 extraordinary thanks, to have the honour of coming to hear him 
 again. But this the fisherman declined, and no doubt rightly ; 
 he had said his say, more words would but have spoiled it. Now 
 the followers of Confucius had witnessed this scene from a distance, 
 and felt unbounded amazement when they saw their master, 
 whom they had been accustomed to see standing erect and proud 
 before princes and rulers, bowing low before an old fisherman ; 
 and one of them remonstrated with him for so doing. But Con- 
 > fucius replied, " If you see a man of superior wisdom and good- 
 ness, and do not honour him, you want the great characteristic of 
 humanity." These are words to be remembered ; and yet perhaps 
 Confucius did not mean to give up his own case so entirely as 
 would at first sight appear from this narrative. The old fisher- 
 man, and Lao-tsze himself, hardly sufficiently felt the danger 
 which lies in a man becoming a hermit, and this danger at any 
 rate Confucius escaped entirely. 
 
 It has been the object of this chapter, in the main, to describe 
 the seminal elements of Chinese belief and practice ; but it is
 
 v] CHINA AND JAPAN 133 
 
 impossible altogether to abstain from noticing the historical re- 
 sults of that belief and practice in subsequent ages. For China 
 has never fallen into the confusion into which India has fallen. 
 China, like Japan, stands independent before the world, anxious 
 to learn, and capable of learning ; but not weakened by indolence 
 or by deep-seated internal conflicts. 
 
 The two most distinguished followers of Lao-tsze and Con- 
 fucius respectively, Kwang-tsze and Mang (or Mencius) both lived 
 in the fourth century before Christ ; and they are interesting 
 persons, but I must not say more about them here. 
 
 The cataclysm which had threatened to overwhelm Chinese 
 literature and thought when the powerful emperor Shih Hwang 
 Ti endeavoured to destroy nearly all the existent literature of the 
 country, was not only stayed by the accession of Kaoti, the 
 founder of the Han dynasty, to the throne in 206 B.C. ; a great out- 
 burst of literary activity took place in China immediately after 
 that date. Moreover, from the first century of the Christian era 
 onwards, Buddhism gained a footing in China, and grew with no 
 slight success. Incorrect as it is to think of Buddhism as the 
 religion of China (an error not infrequently committed by writers 
 of the western world), it is yet one of the religions there recog- 
 nised, and has no small number of adherents ; and it has pro- 
 duced a considerable (and I believe beneficial) effect on the whole 
 tone of Chinese feeling. Only one effect which we must regard 
 as unfortunate has been produced by it. The weakness of 
 Buddhism lies in its want of a rational theology, and its followers 
 have too often supplied this want by superstitious imaginations. 
 This has happened in the case of Chinese Buddhism, and Taoism 
 has caught the infection, and is immersed in superstitions. 
 Though indeed Taoism had been by no means free from super- 
 stitious beliefs and practices before the advent of Buddhism into 
 China, yet the advent of Buddhism greatly increased the evil. 
 Those who desire to know more on this subject may consult 
 Dr James Legge's work on The Religions of China ; and I cannot 
 close this part of my inquiry without expressing my sense of the 
 debt due to Dr Legge in regard to this whole subject. He is (as 
 far as an unlearned person may judge) impartial, and yet he is 
 in love with his subject. 
 
 There has been no radical change in the Chinese character 
 since the first century of our era. Let me quote, as exemplifying 
 this, the evidence respecting the Chinese people of the missionaries 
 Carpini and Rubruquis in the middle of the thirteenth century.
 
 134 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 The following translations are from the work on China by R. K. 
 Douglas, in the series entitled, Story of the Nations. Here, first, 
 is what Carpini says of the Chinese (p. 27) : 
 
 They seem indeed to be kindly and polished folks enough. They 
 have no beard, and in character of countenance have a considerable 
 resemblance to the Mongols, but are not so broad in the face. They have 
 a peculiar language. Their betters as craftsmen in every art practised by 
 man are not to be found in the whole world. Their country is very rich 
 in corn, in wine, in gold and silver, in silk, and in every kind of produce 
 tending to the support of mankind. 
 
 And here is Rubruquis (p. 28) : 
 
 Those Cathayans are little fellows, speaking much through the nose, 
 and, as is general with all those Eastern people, their eyes are very narrow. 
 They are first-rate artists of every kind, and their physicians have a thorough 
 knowledge of the virtues of herbs, and an admirable skill in diagnosis by 
 the pulse. The common money of Cathay consists of pieces of cotton 
 paper about a palm in length and breadth, upon which lines are printed 
 resembling the seals of Mangu Khan (the third in succession from Jenghiz 
 Khan) ; they do their writing with a pencil such as painters paint with, 
 and a single character of theirs comprehends several letters so as to form 
 a whole word. 
 
 Again in these passages, as in all those quoted before in this 
 chapter, a people is described endowed with many excellent 
 qualities ; a people industrious, intelligent, friendly. On the 
 other hand, the Chinese character has not been well adapted to 
 impose restraint on the vices of rulers, or to shake off customs of 
 long standing when these are shown to be injurious. These 
 defects are capable of being amended by intercourse with other 
 nations ; and the positive proficiency of the Chinese in stability 
 and force is an element that must never be forgotten, when the 
 general progress of mankind is being recounted. Perhaps their 
 greatest want has been in the region of idealism, of ardent love, 
 of high enthusiastic hope reaching out into the far future. To 
 send fire into the earth has not been their province. 
 
 If in this chapter I have said more about the Chinese character 
 and philosophy than about the Chinese religion, this is because 
 religious problems have been less to the forefront in China than 
 problems of morality and of character. It is not that the Chinese 
 have been, or are, irreligious. Certainly they are not atheistic, 
 and the worship of parents and ancestors, which forms the greater 
 part of their practical religion, is not devoid of true feeling, and 
 even of some true instinct. But though there may be true in- 
 stinct in it, the instinct is an imperfect one, and does not reach 
 to the root of human nature. A real share in the development
 
 v] CHINA AND JAPAN 135 
 
 of mankind has belonged to China ; but the most profound causes 
 of development have lain elsewhere. 
 
 I must not close this chapter without some remarks on that 
 other race of the far east, akin to the Chinese and yet different 
 from them the Japanese. Japan arrived at civilisation, and at 
 conscious religion, much later than China. Tradition in Japan 
 goes no further back than about 600 B.C., and though religion 
 under the form of ancestor-worship existed from time immemorial, 
 the softening of religion by morality, and the consequent removal 
 of barbarous rites does not appear to have begun earlier than the 
 Christian era 1 . The great refining influence of Buddhism was 
 introduced into Japan about the sixth century of our era ; it 
 existed for centuries side by side with the primitive religion of 
 Japan, called Shinto-ism ; to-day it is declining as a creed, though 
 the moral work that it has done is not small. As well as I can 
 gather from what I have read on the subject, religion 2 and morality 
 have not been marked by that strong originality in Japan which 
 we find in China ; and yet it is difficult to say that the Japanese 
 are inferior to the Chinese. The balance on the Japanese side is 
 restored by the extraordinary power of initiative which the Japan- 
 ese have always possessed, and in which the Chinese have been 
 somewhat lacking. I cannot in the present work recount, even 
 cursorily, the history of Japan ; but every reader of that history 
 must be struck with the swiftness and energy of purpose which 
 has always marked the Japanese conduct of affairs, in contrast 
 with the comparatively slow and acquiescent type of the Chinese 
 practical conduct. The Japanese repelled the great Mongol 
 sovereign, Kubla Khan, who had conquered China ; they have 
 always held their own as against foreign nations with singular 
 independence, and I need not say what remarkable evidence 
 their recent history has given, both of the power of internal 
 change and of self-sacrifice and vigour in war. Yet it would be 
 incorrect to think that these qualities, admirable though they are, 
 reach to the profoundest depths of the human heart, or supply a 
 foundation on which to build for eternity. To show how such a 
 foundation can be attained, belongs to a future part of this work. 
 
 Meanwhile, in my next chapter I shall return from the far east 
 to the west, and begin the account of religion as it existed in those 
 nations which we call classical the nations of Greece and Rome. 
 
 1 See Lafcadio Hearn's Japan : an Interpretation, p. 46. 
 
 2 This is the impression that I have derived from Lafcadio Hearn's works ; and 
 he was, I suppose, more intimately acquainted with Japan than any other European 
 writer.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ANCIENT RELIGION : GREECE 
 
 IN the foregoing chapters I have dealt with the religion of 
 nations who were in their different ways famous before the 
 Christian era, but whose fame to us of the twentieth century 
 of the Christian era is much dimmed by the obscurities which 
 time has thrown in our way, and by the scantiness of extant 
 historical records. It is true that the history of China shines to 
 us with a clearer light than the histories of India and Persia; 
 and possibly if Chinese literature were better known to us, this 
 superiority of China might be yet further accentuated, but I 
 speak of history as it appears to us Europeans now, with our 
 present means of knowledge. These three vast countries, when 
 studied in their remote epochs, have a real store of spiritual light 
 for us at the present day ; but the details of their history are for 
 the most part shrouded in darkness. Coming from the histories 
 of ancient China, India or Persia, to the histories of Greece and 
 Rome, is like leaving a scene of dim twilight for the full blaze of 
 day. The history of Israel, to which I must presently come, may 
 be placed, for clearness of illumination, intermediate between the 
 history of China and the history of Greece. We know nearly as 
 much about king David as we know about Socrates, or about 
 Caesar. But there is no other hero or prophet of Israel of whom 
 this can be said ; about Isaiah, for instance, we hardly know as 
 much as we do about Confucius. 
 
 It is Greece, not Rome, to which the credit of this illuminating 
 power chiefly belongs ; for Greece initiated what Rome inherited. 
 The early days of Roman history, from the times of the later 
 kings onwards, seem to have been recorded more or less by con- 
 temporary annalists ; but the vast range which belongs to the 
 human intellect, and the infinite charm of literature and art, were 
 wholly unsuspected by the Romans until, in the third century 
 before Christ, they began by slow steps to derive instruction from 
 the Greeks. Greece is as wonderful on the human side as Israel
 
 CH. vi] ANCIENT RELIGION : GREECE 137 
 
 is on the religious side, but the humanity of the Greek genius is 
 very different from the solemn law-abiding tenderness which 
 characterises the teaching of Buddha and Lao-tsze and Confucius; 
 it is full of vivid emotions which seek for a law but do not find 
 a law. The Greek spirit vivified those who came under its influ- 
 ence abundantly, but it was imperfect on the side of ruling and 
 guiding power ; and yet the noblest Greek minds were ardently 
 in search after that ruling and guiding power, the want of which 
 was so manifest in the Greek race of their own day. The variety 
 of the Greek impulses was in truth not favourable to the attain- 
 ment by the entire race of dominating power in any single defi- 
 nite line, but the capacities of mankind, if not organised or made 
 permanent by the Greek spirit, were most notably enlarged by it, 
 more than by any other race in ancient times and may we not 
 also add, more than by any single nation in modern times ? 
 
 Moreover, there was one particular kind of virtue, not in 
 itself of a ruling character, but still indispensable to rulers, the 
 virtue of a just scepticism, which owes its origin to the Greeks. 
 Not to be too ready to say " I know " ; to hold back from abso- 
 lute assertions, where probability only is attainable ; this is a 
 very general characteristic of the Greek mind, and a salutary one. 
 Hence it was that accurate science and accurate history took 
 their rise in Greece, and the courage of Socrates brought this 
 scepticism to bear on the highest subjects of human thought, 
 religion and ethics. Had Socrates been an irreligious man, this 
 scepticism would have been a destructive force in his hands ; 
 but religious feeling, and an obedient orderly spirit, were strong 
 in him. All things considered, the influence of Socrates, though 
 never recognised in such formal ways as the influence of Buddha 
 and Confucius and Zoroaster, has been fully as great as that of 
 any of those famous teachers. In Socrates, quite as much as in 
 Buddha, we feel that we are approaching, though not attaining, 
 the ultimate goal of a spiritual command which should gather all 
 the emotions of men under its fostering charge. 
 
 With this explanatory preface, let me begin my sketch of the 
 development of the spiritual elements in ancient Greece. 
 
 The primitive religion of the races inhabiting Greece, like the 
 primitive religion of all Aryan races, was the worship of personi- 
 fied natural forces. Zeus was the god of the heaven ; Poseidon, 
 of the sea ; Demeter, the goddess of the earth regarded as nourish- 
 ing men ; Gaia, the earth in a more general sense ; Hades, the 
 god of the regions below the earth, whither the shades of men-
 
 138 ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE [CH. 
 
 went after death ; Hephaestus, the god of fire, especially of vol- 
 canic fires ; Dionysus (who later was called Bacchus) the god of 
 the vine, with its wonderful intoxicating force ; Apollo, probably 
 the god of the sun at all times, certainly from the time of ^Eschylus 
 onwards ; though this his central signification was sometimes for- 
 gotten (as for instance in Homer and Hesiod) amid the abundance 
 of functions attributed to him. But the Greek mind, with its 
 extraordinary rapidity of imagination, could not rest, as the poets 
 of the Rig-Veda rested, in simple personification ; the Greek gods 
 became a picturesque assemblage of beings in no way differing from 
 men, except in their greater power; beings who quarrelled and 
 fought, who ate and drank, who married and begat children, who 
 debated in political fashion, and formed political parties. This is 
 the aspect of religion which we find in Homer ; a most singular and 
 unparalleled stripping away of mystery from the most mysterious 
 of all subjects ! Yet, with all the sensuous descriptions of divine 
 things in Homer, it is plain that there was a certain subtlety in 
 the Greek mind even at that date; or how else should we find 
 Athena, the goddess of wisdom, in the list of Greek divinities ? 
 That is not quite an obvious conception to a rude race ; nor 
 perhaps is even Aphrodite, the goddess of love, an obvious con- 
 ception to a mind from which an intellectual interest in the world 
 is wholly absent. It was not for nothing that the Greeks sprang 
 from the Aryan race, the race of nobles ; an intrinsic breadth of 
 conception belonged to them ; but must we not add, with some 
 rare exceptions, an intrinsic want of depth also ? 
 
 When we seek to penetrate into the first formation of that 
 people whom in their later development we call Hellenes or 
 Greeks, and whom under either name we know so well, we are 
 baffled by cross lights coming from many quarters with uncertain 
 meanings. Hellas is recognised by Homer as but a small tract 
 of country ; the Hellenes as apparently but a small tribe ; at 
 least the only line of Homer in which they are mentioned with a 
 more extensive signification was rejected in ancient times as 
 spurious. Are we to suppose that this small tribe expanded 
 until it filled the whole peninsula, casting out all its rivals ? 
 There is not the smallest scrap of legend or myth, much less of 
 trustworthy history, testifying to such an expansion. How came 
 it then that the whole race acquired the name of Hellenes ? 
 What was that other race whom we read of in very ancient 
 times as overspreading not only Greece proper, but the islands 
 and part of Asia Minor, the Pelasgians ? What are we to think
 
 vi] ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE 139 
 
 of the Cretans in prehistoric times, and their recently discovered 
 inscriptions, still undecipherable ? We wander in mists when 
 such questions as these are brought forward ; but when we come 
 to the Trojan war and to the chief poet of that time, Homer, a 
 certain light does seem to dawn upon us. It is not easy to resist 
 the impression that the Trojan war was an important reality, and 
 that it had an immense unifying effect on all the inhabitants of 
 the country which we now call Greece ; though this unity must 
 not be understood to be a unity of government, but of sentiment 
 and finally of language. That the Trojan war had this great 
 result, appears to have been the opinion of Thucydides, and it 
 is not easy to think of any fact which could better give a start 
 to that vital unity which (amid all varieties of government) held 
 together Spartans and Athenians and Bosotians and Thessalians 
 and many other tribes, as being essentially a single people. 
 But the military unity achieved by the Trojan war would have 
 been fleeting and transient, if the record of it had not been 
 enshrined in noble works of literature ; and out of a mass of lost 
 literature these two great poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, sur- 
 vive as examples of that spiritual movement which first gave to 
 Greece its worth and dignity. Epic poetry, sung by a thousand 
 bards and culminating in two poems distinguished by no slight 
 moral force, was a primary source and cause of the Greece which 
 we know. Not, of course, that mere poetry could have had this 
 effect ; but poetry enshrining the memory of great and worthy 
 actions had this effect. 
 
 We must then accept Homer and his compeers (and it matters 
 little whether the transcendent poet who produced the Iliad was 
 the same as the transcendent poet who produced the Odyssey, 
 or whether certain books in either poem were added at a later 
 date) as a chief origin of the spirit which made Greece one land 
 and not many petty districts, each single and isolated ; and this 
 great service could not have been performed without the aid of 
 religion. Crude as is the religion of the Iliad and the Odyssey, 
 the crudeness of it would hardly strike men in an age so vigorous 
 and so daring ; and it elevated men above the narrow sphere of 
 daily life. The morality, again, of the Iliad and Odyssey is im- 
 perfect, whether as relating to men or to gods, but inequalities 
 in moral treatment can never surprise us ; and the great interest 
 of the two poems lies in the amount of genuine love, affection, 
 faithfulness, and comradeship in service, which the poet elicits 
 out of a groundwork of war and violent personal antagonisms.
 
 140 ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE [CH. 
 
 The religion and morality taught by Homer do not lack power, 
 but they do lack depth, and especially does the religion lack 
 depth. This is not merely because it was polytheistic, though 
 the polytheism was a hindrance ; but it is plain that Homer 
 shrank from definitely ascribing righteousness or goodness to the 
 gods. The gods in Homer do on the whole favour the right 
 side, and are evidently intended to do so, but the reasons which 
 are represented as influencing the divine action are always of an 
 adventitious, casual sort; the gods will favour a hero because 
 he has offered to them in sacrifice thighs of oxen and goats ; or 
 they will disfavour him for adherence to the party whom they 
 dislike ; or Zeus weighs his fortune in the balances, and Fate 
 assigns to him life or death. One would say that among the 
 gods, as among the men, there is a preponderance of right feeling ; 
 but no saving power is attributed to righteousness ; all men in 
 the end succumb to Fate, and the shadowy existence of the dead 
 is not apportioned according to any distinction drawn from their 
 conduct in this life. No principle is ever affirmed in the Iliad 
 or the Odyssey, according to which the gods, either in this life 
 or in a future life, recompense the good as good, and the bad as 
 bad. Right feeling is abundant, but it never frames itself into 
 moral principle of any kind. 
 
 From this kind of spiritual atmosphere diffused over the 
 Greek race, it followed that the Greeks had abundance of sym- 
 pathetic instincts, fitfully and often violently manifested, abun- 
 dance of imaginative religion, but little consistency or government 
 in spiritual matters. Nevertheless, the Greek race were always 
 feeling after spiritual government, and even before the time of 
 the composition of the Homeric poems, the great oracle of Delphi 
 had begun to establish itself as a common centre for the whole 
 race. We find Pytho (which is the same as Delphi) mentioned 
 in the Iliad (ix. 405) as a rich temple of Apollo, but with no 
 mention of its oracle ; in the Odyssey it is mentioned as an 
 oracle. Delphi did in fact displace Dodona, the most ancient 
 and venerable of oracles, as the point of chief approach to the 
 Deity for all the races inhabiting the land which we now name 
 Greece ; but Dodona never had the great authority of Delphi. 
 The rise of Delphi is a proof that Greece was feeling after unity 
 in spiritual matters; an effective centre was needed; and the 
 neighbourhood of Delphi to the Peloponnesus (then and for long 
 afterwards the most powerful part of the country in civil govern- 
 ment) made its position advantageous. Dodona had been too
 
 vi] ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE 141 
 
 far off for general consultation, but Delphi was easily accessible, 
 and the more so, because the rugged nature of the surrounding 
 country made it unavailable for the abode of any people who 
 should be politically strong. Moreover, one point which might 
 have been regarded as advantageous to Dodona, the fact that its 
 oracle was dedicated to the supreme God, Zeus, was in the general 
 Greek feeling no advantage against Delphi, which was dedicated 
 to Apollo. For Apollo was regarded as the interpreter of Zeus to 
 men, and the imaginative Greek mind held it to be more suitable 
 for the supreme Deity to issue his injunctions to men through 
 an interpreter, than in his own proper person. The solemn, awe- 
 striking look of Delphi, with its precipices and its chasm under 
 the lofty summit of Parnassus, aided in enhancing its religious 
 significance ; and before long every great enterprise among the 
 Greeks was held to require the sanction of the Delphic oracle 
 before it could be launched into practical working. 
 
 But at this point I must go back and pick up another strand 
 of primaeval Greek history, which so far I have not mentioned. 
 I may best do this by asking, as a preliminary, two questions : 
 
 Was the beginning of unity of feeling among the Greeks solely 
 due to the valiant exploits of the Trojan war, and the brilliant 
 poems which narrated that great event ? 
 
 Was the supremacy of the Delphic oracle solely due to its 
 central position and to the natural desire of all Greeks to have 
 one ultimate religious guide ? 
 
 No, these were not the sole causes ; another cause joined in 
 producing these results, and that was the Dorian strength. With- 
 out the Dorians, the feeling of unity among all those who waged 
 the Trojan war would never have expressed itself in those famous 
 names of the country, Hellas ; and of the people, Hellenes. 
 Without the Dorians the Hellenic tongue would never have pre- 
 vailed over the more ancient tongues, its rivals. Without the 
 Dorians, the feeling of all Greeks for religious unity would never 
 have concentrated itself in acknowledgment of the Delphic 
 oracle. Lastly, without the Dorians the Greek race would never 
 have had that desire for unity of government which, though 
 they never really attained such unity, was so valuable to the 
 whole race as an inspiration. It was the strength of the Dorians 
 which gave to the entire Greek race the hard kernel of persistency ; 
 and though the most remarkable Greek qualities lay in the direc- 
 tion of sympathetic expansion and not of persistent strength, 
 still for the accomplishment of what they did some persistent
 
 142 ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE [CH. 
 
 strength was necessary ; and this was contributed by the 
 Dorians. 
 
 I must recount the history, in so far as the mists of antiquity 
 permit us to discern it ; and the best way of approaching it will 
 perhaps be by quoting that single passage from Homer in which 
 the Dorians are mentioned. The passage is in the Odyssey 
 (xix. 175-179) ; it occurs in the description of the population of 
 the island of Crete given by Ulysses (then in disguise) to his wife 
 Penelope : 
 
 " Their tongue," he says, " is diverse, of diverse races ; among them 
 are Achseans, among them are indigenous Cretans high-souled, and Cydones, 
 and Dorians in their threefold division, and Felasgians of divine origin. 
 Among their cities is the great city of Cnosus, and there Minos reigned 
 for nine years, he who conversed familiarly with great Zeus." 
 
 The natural inference from this passage is, what we otherwise 
 know to be a fact, that the Dorians were colonists in Crete and 
 not indigenous ; but as colonists they must have been powerful, 
 or they would never have preserved their name and characteristics 
 with such precision in foreign territory. " Indigenous Cretans " 
 and " Cydones " need not occupy much of our attention here ; 
 but Achseans and Pelasgians lived side by side with Dorians in 
 the mainland of Greece as well as in Crete, and formed parts of 
 that community, diverse in origin, which was slowly being moulded 
 into the Hellas of later times. Achseans and Dorians were nearly 
 related, and both came from the north and pressed southwards ; 
 we read of them both in very early times in the region of 
 Phthiotis, south of Thessaly, the very same region which was the 
 home of the great warrior Achilles; it is Homer who tells us 
 that Achaeans occupied this tract, it is Herodotus who places the 
 primitive Dorians there. But it was just in this little tract that 
 the primitive Hellenes lived ; and Homer uses language which 
 implies so near a relationship between Achaeans and Hellenes 
 (Iliad, n. 684) as to suggest that the Acheeans called themselves 
 Hellenes. From Herodotus (i. 56) we may infer that the Dorians 
 did the same. It would seem that the Achaeans had pressed down 
 into the Peloponnesus before the Trojan war, and the great host 
 under the command of Agamemnon held large numbers of them ; 
 but the Dorians still remained in northern Greece, though it is 
 likely that, even before the Trojan war, they had penetrated into 
 the region round Mount Parnassus, and had sent colonies to 
 Crete, and to other islands that studded the sea on the way to 
 Crete. They held their strength in reserve, but the first great
 
 vi] ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE 143 
 
 evidence of it lay in their appropriation of the oracle of Delphi 
 for their patron-god, Apollo. Delphi had long been an oracular 
 shrine, but it had been tossed about, so to speak, between various 
 deities, and as long as this was the case, the ancient Pelasgian 
 shrine of Dodona preserved its supremacy. But the Dorians en- 
 throned Apollo at Delphi ; Dodona sank to the second place ; 
 and a new and powerful authority, of a religious kind, began to 
 rule over Greece. Dorians from Crete, it would seem, united 
 with Dorians on the mainland of Greece in effecting this change 1 . 
 
 Behold then the Dorians established in power, though hardly 
 a recognised power; but one immediate result, even before the 
 Trojan war, may be discerned in their effect on Athens and 
 Attica. Herodotus tells us that the Athenians were originally 
 Pelasgians, that is, that they belonged to the aboriginal inhabi- 
 tants of Greece, who had never migrated (and all the evidence 
 is to this effect) ; but that the natural superiority of the Hellenic 
 language caused them to change their language from Pelasgic to 
 Hellenic. We cannot but recognise some probability in this 
 account ; and when should the change take place but when the 
 Dorians had established the worship of Apollo at Delphi, and 
 thereby made the Hellenic tongue prevalent wherever Delphi 
 was honoured ? What now took place in Attica, took place 
 presently over the whole Ionian race, to which the Athenians 
 belonged ; for the Athenians were bound by intimate ties with the 
 lonians of Asia Minor, and though the exact origin and meaning 
 of the " Ionian race " is doubtful, the existence of the Ionian race 
 is of course not to be questioned. The lonians, though Pelasgic 
 in origin, ceased to be Pelasgic in language, and became Hellenic. 
 (Herodotus represents the Hellenic race as a branch of the Pelasgic 
 race ; if so, the languages would be akin ; this, however, cannot 
 be held certain.) 
 
 The Hellenic tongue and the Doric character were then 
 beginning to win prominence in Greece, even before the Trojan 
 war. But after the fall of Troy, the dynasties of the great chief- 
 tains who had carried on that war evinced the strain to which 
 they had been subjected ; they fell into comparative weakness, 
 
 1 For the evidence that the Dorian race was the active power which established 
 Apollo at Delphi, I may refer to the well-known and learned work of K. 0. Miiller 
 on The History of the Dorian Race ; the considerations adduced are too numerous 
 and too subtle to be transferred to the present work. For the evidence as to the 
 influence of the Achseans in bringing the Hellenic name into the Peloponnesus, I must 
 refer to an article by J. B. Bury in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xv. part II. : 
 being the volume for the year 1895. The special reason suggested by Professor Bury 
 for the predominance of the name "Hellenes" has not been adopted here, but is not 
 impossible.
 
 144 ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE [CH. 
 
 especially did the dynasty of the great king Agamemnon slowly 
 succumb and disappear. The Dorian race, who had long waited 
 at the doorstep of the Peloponnesus, seized the opportunity. 
 Aided, it is said, by the survivors of an ancient Peloponnesian 
 dynasty, the Herakleids, they entered the southern peninsula, 
 and established themselves at Sparta, Messene, and Argos. With 
 that successful blow the Dorian influence became supreme all 
 over Greece and its colonies ; and Sparta, the chief Dorian city, 
 was looked up to as unquestionably the chief of Greek cities. 
 Moreover monarchy, in its old form, now passed away from 
 Greece, for the Dorians, without entertaining any formal objec- 
 tion to monarchy, were too much filled with the pride of collective 
 superiority to endure a despotism, and henceforth there was no 
 legitimate monarchy in Greece. Despots, under the name of 
 tyrants, were not indeed uncommon at any period, but the uni- 
 versal feeling was against them, and no despot in the days when 
 Greece was vigorous ever succeeded in establishing a dynasty. 
 
 The abolition of monarchy throughout Greece was then one 
 consequence of the Dorian supremacy, and it may be observed 
 that monarchy passed away from Ionian and -^Eolian cities quite 
 as much as from Dorian cities. The JEoli&n race was indeed 
 kindred with the Dorians, so that the same impulse might natur- 
 ally affect both races ; and as to the lonians, their subtle, 
 flexible, feminine temperament (Homer calls them eX/ce^tTty^a?, 
 " trailing their tunics ") would easily receive impressions from 
 the stronger Dorian mood, which more and more ruled Greece 
 as time went on. The strength of Athens had not yet been born. 
 With all this it is to be observed that the Dorians had no pro- 
 fessed antipathy to kings ; Sparta, the chief Dorian city, had 
 two kings to the very end of its famous history, but they were 
 kings with but little power ; the Ephors were the true rulers of 
 Sparta. Neither were the Dorians adverse to the indigenous 
 deities worshipped in any Greek state ; but they insisted that 
 Apollo should be worshipped as well as the indigenous deities, 
 and hence we have at Athens temples of the Pythian Apollo and 
 of the Delphian Apollo, both manifestly set up under Delphian 
 influence ; and the same is doubtless true of the temple of the 
 " Paternal " Apollo. The Dorian deity became the Ionian 
 deity, whether in the mainland of Greece, or in the islands of 
 the yEgean, or on the coast of Asia Minor ; though Apollo never 
 displaced the goddess Athena (or Athene) from the first place in 
 the minds of the faithful Athenians.
 
 vi] ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE 145 
 
 Let me now recapitulate, in chronological order, the three 
 causes which made of Greece one nation ; first, the great effort 
 of the Trojan war, under Agamemnon and the ancient royal 
 dynasties in feudal 1 subjection to Agamemnon ; next, the Dorian 
 advance into southern Greece, and attainment of supremacy over 
 the other Greeks ; and thirdly, the great power and brilliancy of 
 the poetry, especially the epic poetry, which, two or three cen- 
 turies after Troy had fallen, was everywhere sung in celebration 
 of the heroes of that heroic age. It was the Ionian race which 
 produced the epic poetry ; and it is evident that the Ionian race 
 had an intrinsic literary and artistic power, which has done 
 more for the permanent fame of Greece than all the military 
 skill of the Dorians. The ^Eolian race had likewise its famous 
 poets, of whom Sappho and Alcaeus are the best known ; but the 
 Dorian race had little preeminence in this way. A certain nar- 
 rowness characterises the Dorian temperament, and the Lycur- 
 gean legislation at Sparta drew some of its strength from this 
 narrowness, but it proved fatal in the end to the permanent 
 supremacy of Spartans over Greece ; they never renovated their 
 race by taking new blood into it. Yet when this narrowness is 
 allowed for, the Spartans had great qualities of faithfulness and 
 moderation, at any rate in dealing with their equals. 
 
 Dorian, ^Eolian, Ionian ; under these names we recognise the 
 three chief motive powers of rising Greece, during the seventh 
 and sixth centuries before Christ. All around the ^Egean sea, 
 at Gyrene on the north coast of Africa, all over the south of Italy, 
 even as far as Marseilles in France, the Greek colonies grew, and 
 ever attained greater splendour. At what precise period the 
 people first recognised their unity, and called themselves Hellenes, 
 in contradistinction to the foreigner of strange speech outside 
 them, we cannot certainly affirm. But we can see and wonder 
 at the living force that was among them all. At so ancient an 
 era as the ninth century before Christ, it would appear that 
 there were games held at Olympia in the north of the Peloponne- 
 sus, under religious sanction ; and though it is not likely that 
 the competitors were drawn from so extensive an area as was 
 afterwards the case, the very idea of such a festival bears wit- 
 ness to a certain peaceful and amicable energy than which nothing 
 can be more valuable. We have, of course, to remember all the 
 drawbacks of that state of society ; the frequent violences, the 
 sensualities, the tendency more and more to thrust women into 
 
 1 The word " feudal " is not quite exact here, but is not far from the truth. - 
 M. D. A. 10
 
 146 ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE [CH. 
 
 a low position, the existence of slaves who were not thought to 
 have any rights of their own ; in spite of all this, we may justly 
 admire the growing sense of a common Hellenic feeling, evinced 
 in a common religious worship, common festivals, common 
 games and peaceful contests, a common delight in poetry, sculp- 
 ture, architecture, and presently in dramatic spectacles, and in 
 the art of painting ; also in exercises of the intellect, in attempts 
 to understand this mysterious world in which we live, the causes 
 of physical changes upon earth, the true nature of the sun and 
 moon and stars. No nation ever rushed so speedily into such a 
 field of varied and genuinely delightful exercises, bodily and 
 mental, as the Greek nation between the years 700 and 500 B.C.; 
 and every part of this varied exercise was placed under religious 
 sanction, and it was believed that the Gods approved of it and 
 took delight in it. How can we ourselves fail to applaud such a 
 conviction, even while we know that there was much in Greek 
 society which was alien to divine love and mercy, and acknow- 
 ledge that the Hebrew prophet who sighed and wept over the 
 misdoings of his fellow-countrymen came nearer to the centre of 
 moral truth than the Greek poet or sculptor or athlete who re- 
 joiced in the Hellenic world as the very abode of light ? After 
 all, there were some grave and serious spirits among the Greeks, 
 who did not ignore the lessons of sorrow, and who preferred the 
 power of ruling one's own soul to the acquisition of any amount 
 of external happiness. 
 
 That the Greeks of the sixth century before Christ were bound 
 to experience sorrow, and were almost certain to experience 
 defeat in one quarter or another, we may easily see. They had 
 fringed the greater part of the shores of the eastern Mediterranean 
 with their cities ; here and there (though not frequently) pene- 
 trating into the inland countries. Wherever they went, other 
 races of foreign speech (called by the Greeks " barbarians ") had 
 been before them, and war was the natural condition between 
 the invading Greeks and the original inhabitants of these coun- 
 tries. In such a war, the Greeks would have some superiority 
 as long as they were within easy reach of the coast-line, but not 
 in the inland parts, where they would be comparatively out of 
 reach of their own countrymen, and where supplies, in case of 
 need, would not easily reach them. The necessity of restricting 
 their colonies to the near neighbourhood of the coast was then 
 one circumstance which hindered the expansion of the Hellenic 
 race ; and another circumstance which hindered their expansion
 
 vi] ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE 147 
 
 was the difficulty of making very long voyages, in consequence 
 of the fear which men without maps or compasses felt of aban- 
 doning the coast-line and committing themselves to the open sea. 
 It followed, that when the Greeks could no longer expand out- 
 wards, they were driven by that struggle for existence, which so 
 often tragically hinders human progress, to contend with each 
 other for ground which was no longer adequate to an expanding 
 population. This dire necessity of mutual contention was held 
 off (as far as our information permits us to judge) in the seventh 
 century before Christ ; even in the sixth century it was not very 
 urgent ; but in the fifth century, after the Persian wars, it became 
 urgent, and it was sharpened by the fact that whereas in the 
 previous centuries there had been only one leading state, Sparta, 
 there were now two leading states, Sparta and Athens, and the 
 vigorous Athenian character was not disposed to exercise that 
 consideration towards subjects or towards rivals which so 
 delicate a situation demanded. All this was natural enough ; 
 it was no special fault of the Greeks that they were brought face 
 to face with difficulties which are deeply implicated in the whole 
 nature of man, and in his position as a living creature upon the 
 earth's surface. But the worth of a race, as of an individual 
 man, is tested by the way in which difficulties are met. What 
 are we to say of the way in which the Greeks met this very serious 
 difficulty, the limitation of their area of settlement and expansion ? 
 
 I think we may fairly say that in most respects the Greeks 
 were better fitted to meet the outside world, better able to grapple 
 with those difficulties which are inherent in the condition of man, 
 at the beginning of the fifth century before Christ, than they 
 had been in the Homeric age, or at any period since that era. 
 But there were two circumstances of their condition in which 
 there had been no advance, but retrogression or rigid stationari- 
 ness ; the first being the sexual relations prevalent among them ; 
 the second, the political type of the then leading state, Sparta. 
 It will be well to show more exactly how the case stood, both as 
 regards advance and as regards retrogression. 
 
 The advance consisted in the extraordinary development of 
 sympathy and of power in so many fields of which I have already 
 spoken ; in the intercourse which made every part of the Hellenic 
 world responsive to every other part ; in the penetrating intellect 
 which so many philosophers, Thales, Pythagoras, Anaximander, 
 Anaximenes, Heraclitus, had brought to bear on the whole 
 sphere of reality ; in the growing conviction that the world was- 
 
 102
 
 148 ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE [CH. 
 
 governed by the Gods under moral laws. By the time of Pindar, 
 at the very close of the period of which I speak, the superstitious 
 and extravagant parts of the Greek mythology were beginning 
 to give way, as we may see from the first Olympian ode of that 
 great poet ; and yet no universal destructive scepticism had be- 
 gun to mingle with the salutary sense that the Gods must not 
 be accredited with evil passions. The way of truth was in many 
 respects beginning to open before the Greeks ; but the profound 
 difficulty which lay at the very entrance of that way was as yet 
 unsuspected by them. Of the philosophers of this era, Pytha- 
 goras and Heraclitus would seem to have been the nearest to 
 the apprehension of that true solvent of all human problems, 
 love acting through self-denial ; but the approach even of 
 Pythagoras and Heraclitus to this great truth was very im- 
 perfect, although it is of course right to add that we know 
 little of the actual lives of those two philosophers. On the 
 whole, the Greeks of this early period are memorable for true 
 instincts in a stage of immature development. 
 
 After saying this, however, it is necessary to notice those parts 
 of the Greek character which were retrograde or stationary. Their 
 retrogression lay chiefly in the relation between the sexes. Of 
 all human relations, the sexual relations are the most subtle. It 
 appears to be true, that not only men, but some animals and a 
 large number of birds, have the feeling of a permanent emotional 
 relation (which we may rightly call spiritual) as the counterpart 
 of that physical connexion which is natural between the sexes. 
 It is unfortunate that the animals patronised by man, whom we 
 regard as tame, appear to lose the sense of this spiritual counter- 
 part. I speak under much ignorance, but I never heard of a dog 
 having a bitch for its permanent mate. But I believe that the 
 lion has special affection for its mate, the lioness 1 ; the male for 
 the female swallow. The development of this spiritual relation 
 is one of the most important things in the whole world. That 
 there are many obstacles to its development, every one is aware ; 
 and the Greeks, whose delicacy of perception might have enabled 
 them to foster spiritual attachment between man and woman, 
 had fallen, at some period after the Trojan war, into serious 
 error in respect of this whole subject. We do not know the 
 history of the matter ; but whereas in the times which Homer 
 
 1 Wo must distinguish between this special affection, and the general tenderness 
 which the males of any species may have for the females. In an interesting imagina- 
 tive work, White Fang, this is brought out strongly as a characteristic of wolves ; 
 and I suppose that the author has knowledge.
 
 vi] ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE 149 
 
 describes, and probably more or less in the times when Homer 
 sang, women appear to have possessed a certain freedom, though 
 subjected to the violences of a rude age, this freedom had not 
 remained unimpaired during the centuries which followed. The 
 woman, indeed, who was content to lead a licentious life, had 
 still great chances of freedom, for no man had a peculiar and special 
 interest in her ; but the married woman was placed under more 
 rigid control than had formerly been customary. The married 
 woman was looked upon more and more as the possession, less 
 and less as the companion, of her husband. It is true that this 
 change did not take place in Sparta as much as in other Greek 
 cities ; and it is true also that, in every Greek city, personal 
 character must have operated more or less in modification of 
 the general rule. The noble heroines in some of the Greek 
 tragedies, such as Antigone and Alcestis, could hardly have been 
 depicted by poets who had not known brave and worthy women 
 in actual existence ; the wife of Ischomachus, of whom Xenophon 
 tells us, was treated with courtesy and respect by her husband ; 
 and Xanthippe, whatever her faults, was not servile. Still, on 
 the whole, during the time of which I am speaking, women had 
 become subject to injurious restriction, and this had actually 
 come through the advance of civilisation ; for the same causes 
 which enabled a man to keep his property more securely, enabled 
 him also to keep his wife more securely, and therefore under 
 greater restraint. The liberty of men did not imply the liberty 
 of women. 
 
 A condition in itself unfortunate was made worse by the 
 practice which the Greeks adopted as a remedy. Spiritual 
 union between husband and wife had been lowered in its char- 
 acter ; irregular unions between man and woman were essentially 
 unsatisfactory. But spiritual union between man and man was 
 capable of great intensity ; and it appeared the finest flower of 
 happiness to combine spiritual affection between man and man 
 with something like that physical union which a man may have 
 with a woman. The practice prevailed not among the Greeks 
 alone ; but we must more regret it among the Greeks than in 
 any other nation, because of their distinguished qualities. (The 
 Spartans, Xenophon tells us, were pure in this respect.) It may 
 seem strange, but it is true, that a practice which is justly con- 
 demned as weakening to body and soul, and which is regarded 
 as abominable in modern times, was among the Greeks not in- 
 capable of being combined with genuinely lofty feelings. The
 
 160 ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE [CH. 
 
 evidence does, I think, warrant us in saying this; but it was 
 impossible that this should be a general result of the practice; 
 and it did, on the whole, contribute most materially to the down- 
 fall of the Greek race. Of all its results, the degradation of 
 family life which resulted from it was probably the worst. 
 Though it is true that the relations involved in family life are 
 not absolutely the deepest which the human mind can conceive, 
 yet there is no external relation so capable of administering to the 
 deepest and most enduring phases of sentiment as family life ; to 
 corrupt the family tie means the endangering of the welfare of 
 the entire community. Even the greatest Greek philosophers, 
 though they did condemn that harmful practice of which I have 
 spoken, hardly perceived how great a reform was needed in this 
 part of the Greek mind. Did we desire to see how far wrong a 
 very great philosopher is capable of going, when he treats of the 
 relations between the sexes, the fifth book of Plato's Republic 
 would give us ample evidence. Yet, it should be added, that 
 Plato spoke much more soundly on the subject of marriage in 
 his last treatise, the Laws, than in the Republic ; and everywhere 
 the duty of restraining intemperate desires is very seriously felt 
 by him (as by his master, Socrates, and by his pupil, Aristotle). 
 But a more vivid energy in dealing with the faults of the Greeks 
 was needed than any philosopher among them put into play. 
 
 To return to the sixth century before Christ. The Greek 
 character of that time, though in some ways noble and pro- 
 gressive, was retrograde in the way just mentioned. To this 
 most serious disadvantage another disadvantage must be added ; 
 namely that Sparta, the unquestioned chief at that time of 
 Hellenic peoples, was so rigidly conservative as to debar all 
 political progress in that quarter. Whence it followed that the 
 remaining Hellenic states were greatly hampered in their political 
 progress also ; for the example of Sparta, and the prejudices of 
 Sparta, were exceedingly powerful. There was much that was 
 truly worthy of admiration in Sparta throughout her whole 
 history, but the world has hardly ever seen such an example of 
 the evil wrought by mere conservatism ; for if the ruling tribe 
 of Spartans had once consented to share their power with the 
 countryfolk of Laconia, as the Roman patricians consented to 
 share theirs with the Roman plebeians, the whole course of Greek 
 history would have been altered, and the internal quarrels of 
 other Greek states would have been greatly mitigated. It is 
 impossible not to add that the Spartan authorities are accused
 
 vi] ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE 151 
 
 of fortifying their own oligarchic rule by acts of secret treachery 
 and murder ; we must in part credit this (see an instance recorded 
 in the 80th chapter of the fourth book of Thucydides); and con- 
 sidering the eminence of Sparta, few things can have contributed 
 more to the downfall of Greek virtue and of Greek power. 
 
 There is nothing which so forcibly brings before the mind the 
 fact that man has a sinful nature, resulting in actual sins and 
 actual degeneration (if it be not checked), as such examples as 
 those which I have just given of ill-doing on the part of men 
 who really desired to progress in excellence and virtue, who in 
 many respects deserve our admiration, and who yet in their 
 ignorant cupidity clutched at methods and practices which could 
 only bring destruction with them. It is among such difficulties 
 as these that mankind are placed ; we cannot altogether refuse 
 to follow our natural impulses, and yet danger is intricately in- 
 woven in them. Of all parts of human history, Greek history 
 is that which is most filled with examples of the frailty which 
 accompanies human activity. 
 
 The religious minds among the Greeks were not unaware of 
 this danger to their race, and they strove to introduce correctives 
 of it. The Greek conscience was not so sensitive of sin as the 
 Hebrew conscience, but it was not insensitive. In Homer, we 
 find the singular combination of a sensitiveness to sin with an 
 assumption that the sinful impulse cannot be resisted ; this 
 double feeling is called Ate (infatuation) ; thus Helen admits 
 without a blush her own wrong-doing in eloping with Paris, but 
 evidently thinks that she could not have helped committing the 
 sin, and Menelaus her husband, having recovered her, seems to 
 acquiesce in this view. But by the sixth century before Christ 
 a desire for purity had entered the Greek mind, a sense that " we 
 must strive even now to realise our affinity with God 1 ," which 
 must be accounted a real advance on the lines of duty. It was in 
 the Orphic religious societies, with their mystical ceremonies and 
 their teaching as to the destiny of the soul, that this movement 
 began ; a movement which ran into many extravagances and 
 was liable to be darkened by imposture, but which had true 
 value at the core. That the great poet Pindar belonged to one 
 of the Orphic communities, we have no reason to say ; but in 
 the second of his Olympian odes, he declares the happiness of 
 the virtuous after death in famous and beautiful lines ; and 
 
 1 I quote this expression from the work on The Religious Teachers of Greece, by 
 James Adam.
 
 152 ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE [OH. 
 
 after death, also, shall evil-doers (he says) receive punishment for 
 their misdeeds ; and such teaching as this was no doubt a part 
 of that instruction which was given by the Orphic communities, 
 as well as in the Eleusinian mysteries. Even as expressed by 
 Pindar, we have to recognise something of the superfluities of 
 fancy in his description ; but his seriousness, and his individual 
 conviction of the essential truth of what he says, are not to be 
 doubted. We must not disparage such teaching, imperfect 
 though it necessarily was ; and the Pythagorean brotherhoods, 
 which had their start in the sixth century, were another evidence 
 of something that was felt to be needed on the lines of religious 
 duty. 
 
 Whatever her drawbacks, Greece in the sixth century before 
 Christ was teeming with ardour ; and I need not tell my reader 
 that that ardour did not come to an end with the sixth century. 
 When we think of Greece, it is of Greece in the fifth and fourth 
 centuries before Christ that we chiefly think ; and when we think 
 of the leading state of Greece, it is not of Sparta that we think, 
 but of another state. The career of Athens and of the Athenian 
 people was a mighty explosion of human genius ; too violent to 
 last, and mingled with so many crimes and follies as greatly to 
 dim and chequer the liking and affection which the name of 
 Athens at first arouses in us ; but in the end we must confess 
 that hardly any part of the world's history is so interesting and so 
 pathetic as the two centuries of which I have spoken, and the 
 little country of Attica as the central point of their interest and 
 pathos. In ancient times, only the narrow thread of living gold, 
 which runs through the history of Israel, surpasses Attica in the 
 ways I have named. 
 
 It cannot be doubted that the bold political reform of Solon 
 was the beginning of the power of Athens. It was really Solon, 
 at the beginning of the sixth century before Christ, who made 
 Athens a democracy ; not so much by his political constitution, 
 as by his law which at one stroke abolished all debts. So won- 
 derful a law was perhaps never conceived by the human brain, 
 or carried out by the human will. But it was done ; and wonder- 
 ful to relate, it succeeded. It was conceivable that it might have 
 multiplied the quarrels, the intestine wars, of the Athenian people 
 tenfold ; only happily it did not do so. It would be too much, 
 indeed, to say that it gave peace to Athens ; but it gave life 
 and spirit to the poorest citizen, and it was accepted with ac- 
 quiescence. We can only conclude that Solon, with the eye of
 
 vi] ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE 153 
 
 genius, saw what his city needed. As to the constitution which 
 Solon gave the Athenians, it was good as a type, as a promise, 
 as an ideal for the future ; but the Athenians were not as yet 
 strong enough to work it. It was not long afterwards (before 
 Solon's death, it would appear) that they fell under the power of 
 one of those plausible despots, who often acquired the govern- 
 ment over Greek cities, and who often deserved some respect. 
 Peisistratus was the despot in this case, and his sons, Hippias 
 and Hipparchus, succeeded him peaceably in the government ; 
 nor does it appear that they were bad rulers, at least naturally. 
 But circumstance, as well as natural disposition, has a power in 
 the way of influencing rulers, so as to make them good or bad in 
 their rule ; and so it proved in this case. Hipparchus was slain 
 in a private quarrel, and from that moment Hippias became 
 severe and suspicious. The Athenians, remembering the promise 
 of freedom which had come to them from Solon's legislation, 
 chafed under the yoke, and at last the way to deliverance was 
 found. 
 
 It so happened that the temple of Apollo at Delphi had been 
 burnt down this had happened before the death of Hipparchus ; 
 and now one of the wealthy Athenian families, the Alcmseonids, who 
 being opponents of Peisistratus and his sons had been banished 
 from Athens, offered their services in rebuilding the temple. The 
 contract was at first one simply of a business nature ; but the 
 Alcmseonids performed their part with such splendour as to 
 merit real gratitude from the people of Delphi and from the 
 Amphictyons (the board of governors, as in modern phrase we 
 should style them, in charge of the temple). Cleisthenes, the 
 head of the Alcmaeonid family, acquired in this manner great 
 influence at Delphi ; and that influence was presently exercised 
 in a way which was, at any rate, natural. Athens, and the 
 oppressed inhabitants of Athens, became suddenly dear to 
 Delphi ; and the Spartans, who were not only the most powerful 
 people in Greece, but also the most conspicuous in their obedience 
 to the Delphic oracle, presently found that on all occasions when 
 they consulted the oracle, they received but one answer : " they 
 must set Athens free." It was an injunction by no means agree- 
 able to Sparta, for the Spartans had been on friendly terms with 
 Peisistratus, and had continued their friendship with his sons, 
 and they ignored the bidding of Apollo as long as they dared do 
 so. But after a time they found they had to face the situation, 
 and they obeyed the oracle. Their first expedition for the
 
 154 ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE [CH. 
 
 deliverance of the Athenians was not successful ; for Hippias had 
 managed to secure the assistance of a body of Thessalian cavalry, 
 who repelled the Spartans. But a second and more powerful 
 expedition proved effective. Hippias had to retire from Athens 
 to Asia Minor ; he was strong enough to be able to secure a 
 peaceable departure for himself, though some of his adherents 
 afterwards felt the vengeance of the Athenians ; and Athens was 
 free. This great crisis of Athenian history was reached in the 
 year 510 B.C., the same year (if we may trust the ordinary 
 reckoning) in which the Romans cast off their kings and became 
 a republic. 
 
 " Then," says Herodotus, " it was seen that liberty is an 
 excellent thing for a nation." Herodotus was right as regards 
 those cases in which the nation has real force ; and Athens had 
 real force, and was resolved to use it. Cleisthenes, who until 
 then had been an aristocrat, joined the rising tide of democracy, 
 and framed for the Athenians a truly democratic constitution ; 
 and this time the Athenians were resolved that their constitution 
 should not be filched away from them, as the Solonian consti- 
 tution had been. They stretched out arms of strength, and made 
 themselves felt, outside the boundaries of Attica, by Boeotians 
 and other surrounding peoples ; and made even the Spartans, 
 hah* repentant of their aid already given to Athens, hold them 
 in respect. But it was not in such petty conflicts as these that 
 Athens was to win a world-wide fame. The conflict with Persia 
 was looming ahead. 
 
 Yet it was very far from being a premeditated design of the 
 Athenian people, or even of their most clear-sighted statesmen, 
 to challenge the mighty empire of Persia to a duel. It is true 
 that the Athenians probably underrated the power of Persia ; 
 their immediate feeling, when Sparta began to threaten them, 
 was that Persia might perhaps be a useful ally against Sparta, 
 and they actually made proposals to the Persians to this effect. 
 The Persian satrap, who received these overtures with profound 
 astonishment, expressed his contempt in an appropriate manner, 
 and the first flame of indignation against the Persians was kind- 
 led in the Athenian breast. It so happened that the lonians, 
 kindred to the Athenians, who were living in their flourishing 
 cities on the coast of Asia Minor, were subject to the Persians ; 
 it was the only part of the world where Greek communities 
 obeyed a non-Hellenic master, and they obeyed very reluctantly, 
 remembering an independence which had been torn from them
 
 vi] ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE 155 
 
 in days well within the memory of their old men. About ten 
 years after the expulsion of Hippias from Athens, these lonians 
 rebelled ; and they asked help first from the Spartans, who 
 refused it, and next from the Athenians, who granted it. A 
 force of lonians and Athenians united in a march up to the great 
 city of Sardis, in the centre of Asia Minor, and as the houses of 
 the city were generally either built of wickerwork or thatched 
 with reed, it was easy to apply fire to them, and the city was set 
 on fire and almost destroyed. But Persian armies were near at 
 hand, and lonians and Athenians, having done this feat, fled 
 back precipitately. Probably the Athenians could give no solid 
 help against so powerful a foe, who had a natural command of 
 the country ; at any rate they made no further attempt in this 
 direction. The poor luckless lonians were overwhelmed and 
 severely punished ; and then Darius, the great and famous 
 Persian king, of whose character and exploits I spoke in a 
 previous chapter, ruler of all the lands between India and the 
 Mediterranean sea, asked the question : " But who are the 
 Athenians?" It was explained to him who they were; and 
 then he gave directions that the Athenians should be subjugated 
 and punished, even as had been done to the lonians. 
 
 It must be a matter of wonder to us, even at the present 
 day, why the Persians could not accomplish that conquest which 
 Darius so lightly commanded, and which, after his failure, was 
 essayed by his son Xerxes with such extraordinary accumulation 
 of efforts. The battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and 
 Platsea, stand on the pages of history as the evidences of the 
 Persian failure ; and the valour of the Greeks in those battles is 
 not for a moment to be denied ; but we have no reason at all to 
 say that the Persians were cowards. Nevertheless, when the 
 slow but exceedingly valiant Spartans united in one cause with 
 the swift, ardent and dexterous Athenians, and when both were 
 supported by a fair number of the other Greek states, and when 
 every state that joined the cause sent out all its forces, the com- 
 bination was a strong one. Yet it is not always appreciated by 
 the reader of history how very nearly the Greeks came to being 
 defeated ; how unstable was their equilibrium ; how narrow was 
 the verge within which it was possible for them to act in effective 
 union. Salamis was the critical battle ; and it is very likely 
 true that, if the battle of Salamis had been put off for a week, 
 the Greek fleet would have dissolved of itself, and all Greece 
 would have fallen a prey to Persia. It was under not very
 
 156 ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE [CH. 
 
 dissimilar circumstances that the Ionian fleet had been defeated ; 
 for the lonians also had been subject to internal dissensions, and 
 the ruin of their cause had been brought about by looseness of 
 fibre from within quite as much as by the hosts of the Persians 
 from without. Happily, when the Greek fleets were assembled 
 at Salamis, their coherence, though imperilled, remained unbroken; 
 the battle in fact was forced by the Persian attack, and when 
 that had once begun there was no thought of disunion among the 
 Greeks. We are told by Herodotus that the Persian attack was 
 hastened by the subtlety of Themistocles, the Athenian com- 
 mander, who, having the evidence before his eyes of the immin- 
 1 ence of the Greek danger through the mutual disunion of the 
 different states, conveyed a secret message to Xerxes, represent- 
 ing himself as a well-wisher to the Persians, and informing him 
 that now was the time to crush the whole Greek force at once. 
 Xerxes fell into the trap, and made the attack which proved the 
 ruin of the Persians. Themistocles has had rather an ^ambiguous 
 reputation in after ages, owing to the suspicion of double-dealing 
 and selfishness which has attached to him ; but it is undeniable 
 that his counsels saved Athens, and that in saving Athens he 
 saved Greece. The singular wisdom and boldness of the course 
 of which he was the true author, and to which he persuaded the 
 Athenians, namely, to disregard the safety of their material city 
 and take refuge in their ships, transporting their wives and 
 families to the island of ^Egina, has not always been appreciated 
 as it deserves. This advice came nominally from the Delphic 
 oracle, and those who look at the account in Herodotus (vn. 
 140-144) will see that the oracle was not without some credit in 
 the matter ; the terms in which the oracle conveyed its advice, 
 that the Athenians were to trust to their " wooden walls," are 
 famous. It is permissible to believe that Themistocles, as he 
 certainly interpreted this oracle in the sense which proved salu- 
 tary, so also suggested in some manner the purport of it ; though 
 no doubt the prophetic (and ambiguous) form came from Delphi. 
 Herodotus also tells us that it was Themistocles who persuaded the 
 Athenians to build their fleet in the first instance (this was anterior 
 to the Persian wars); a memorable counsel, as if the fleet had 
 not been built, Athens, and Greece too, would assuredly have 
 gone under in the critical hour ! Of all Greek statesmen of any 
 age, with the single exception of Solon, Themistocles appears to 
 me the greatest ; though his rival and comrade, Aristides, may 
 have been more blameless, and Pericles was certainly more
 
 vi] ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE 157 
 
 magnificent. Miltiades, the Athenian commander at Marathon, 
 was another to whom an incalculable debt was owing. Leonidas, 
 the Spartan king, who fell at Thermopylae, ought not to be un- 
 named in any mention of these events ; but he was scarcely the 
 equal of the great Athenians. 
 
 The Persian war was over ; Greece was saved ; but Greece 
 was now essentially a duality, not a unity. The energy of 
 Athens had been so conspicuous during the war, the wisdom 
 and moderation of her statesmen had been so great, that her 
 leadership was felt all over Greece to be a rival to the leader- 
 ship of Sparta ; and if Sparta was still held to be superior in land 
 warfare, Athens plainly took the lead at sea. Hence almost 
 immediately the islands of the ^Egean, with insignificant excep- 
 tions, became nominally the allies, really the subjects, of Athens. 
 The splendid age of Pericles ensued ; an age of oratory and poetry, 
 of architecture and sculpture, of citizen life and philosophic thought, 
 such as the world had never seen before. Athens and not only 
 
 ' Athens, but Greece was at its acme of power and splendour. 
 
 Alas ! such splendour is but a flower ; and it became very 
 soon manifest that no genuine root of permanent progressive 
 life, operative in politics and society generally, existed either in 
 Athens or in Sparta, or anywhere in Greece. Athens and Sparta, 
 under the pressure of that inevitable question, " Which is the 
 greater ? " glided slowly into war. I need not recapitulate here 
 that tragic history ; but let me record the single gleam of light 
 at its close, which saved mankind from the occurrence of a still 
 greater and irremediable tragedy. Athens, after incredible exer- 
 tions, and, it must be admitted, also after incredible acts of folly, 
 had fallen ; the subtle Spartan general, Lysander, had caught 
 her in his net ; the beautiful city, that had almost attained 
 imperial rule, surrendered perforce to her enemies. What would 
 those enemies do with her ? Often and often, in the previous 
 history of mankind, and in the subsequent history too, did such 
 
 / enemies destroy the object of their hate utterly. Thus had 
 Nineveh been destroyed, and thus had Sybaris been destroyed, 
 and thus had Jerusalem been destroyed (for the renascence of 
 
 . Jerusalem after its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar was wholly 
 unforeseen and wholly unlikely by any ordinary standard of 
 probability). Would not Athens be destroyed in accordance 
 with those lamentable precedents ? So the Thebans desired, and 
 the Corinthians ; but Sparta had the supreme voice in the matter, 
 / and the Spartans nobly replied that they would never consent to
 
 158 ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE [OH. 
 
 the destruction of a city which had done such services to Greece 
 as Athens had done in the Persian war. 
 
 By this reply of the Spartans, the mind of Greece, the genius 
 of Greece, the noble works of Greece in literature and art, were 
 saved for all future generations of mankind. For would any- 
 thing of them have been saved, if Athens had then been de- 
 stroyed ? It is not likely. 
 
 Greece, in its true spiritual element, survived and survives 
 still ; but the material power of Greece was even then on the 
 way to extinction. Sparta was suffering (as Aristotle tells us) 
 from " fewness of men " ; the ruling Spartan race had not been 
 replenished from outside, and the " polyandry " (the converse 
 of polygamy) which was unfortunately prevalent there, also 
 tended to lessen the number of the population. Hence the 
 unquestioned Spartan supremacy over Greece, after Lysander's 
 victory, was shortlived ; thirty-three years, or a single genera- 
 tion, was the measure of it. Then Thebes, under the heroic 
 Epaminondas, became for nine years the leading Greek state ; but 
 when Epaminondas was slain in the battle of Mantinea, in the 
 year 362 B.C., Greece had no longer within its bounds any state 
 or city of which it could be said, " Herein lies guidance." Xeno- 
 phon, in the impressive close of his history, the Hellenica, notes 
 and laments the fact that, after such arduous struggles, there 
 was not anywhere any true chieftainship over the Hellenic race, 
 which had been so long expecting a chief. 
 
 The issue came in a manner that neither Xenophon nor any 
 of his contemporaries had expected. Philip of Macedon, the 
 strong, subtle despot, ruling over a people only half Hellenic, 
 hung over Greece from the north ; and he employed his intellec- 
 tual power in gathering together and drilling an army such as 
 no mere citizen army could withstand ; and as he was bent on 
 conquest alone, and the Greeks (and above all the Athenians) 
 were interested in many things, it was not wonderful that Philip, 
 when at last he swooped down, conquered the Greeks. The 
 great orator Demosthenes in vain tried to animate his country- 
 men with force to contend against their mighty antagonist. 
 Philip was assassinated shortly after he had won his great victory 
 that dishonest victory at Chaeronea, fatal to liberty, as Milton 
 calls it ; but a mightier than Philip succeeded to the throne. 
 Alexander had had the instruction of Aristotle ; he accounted 
 himself not merely a Greek, but as the typical Greek, destined 
 to avenge the ancient wrongs of Greece upon the old enemy
 
 vi] ANCIENT RELIGION: GREECE 159 
 
 of Greece, Persia. I need but remind the reader of the well- 
 known story ; how Alexander, after annihilating Thebes (the 
 only Greek city which had ventured to rebel against the Mace- 
 donians) led his army (moderate in size but perfectly disciplined) 
 into the heart of Asia ; how he overthrew the Persian army and 
 everywhere replaced Persian rule by Greek rule ; how under his 
 overwhelming onset the famous religion which called itself by 
 ' the name of Zoroaster vanished into corners and was lost for a 
 time to the sight of men ; how he implanted Greek settlers all 
 over western Asia and Egypt, and made Greek language and 
 learning dominant over those vast tracts ; how, having effected 
 a work which in its external aspect was one of the greatest that 
 any man ever did, he died at the early age of thirty-two, of a 
 fever, at Babylon. The one Greek achievement which Alexander 
 was unable to renew, create, or transplant into any single spot of 
 his vast empire, was the Greek political liberty. This the Greeks 
 had lost ; deservedly we must own ; and few of the warlike 
 despots who followed Alexander as his successors have any 
 claim to our attention as part of the divine legacy of Greece to 
 mankind. 
 
 But the spiritual force which mankind owe to Greece was 
 openly active among mankind for many centuries after Alexan- 
 der ; and though lost to view in that strange twilight of thought 
 which we call the mediaeval period, has been revived in modern 
 times, and influences us still. To this then I must now recur. 
 But the theme is so great as to deserve a chapter to itself, and the 
 present chapter, which has given as it were the framework of 
 the subject, may well terminate here.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 ANCIENT RELIGION : THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 
 
 IT is of the religion of Greece, as it emerged out of mere 
 naive mythology into its final development, that this chapter 
 must treat ; and I will begin by speaking of the Delphic oracle. 
 How far that oracle, the most marked centre of Greek religion, 
 was animated by true sentiment and real uplifting of the heart 
 from man to God, is hardly possible for us now to tell. That 
 it had its delusive side, in which it made use of verbal quibbles, 
 we know ; that it had its worldly-wise side, and its secret sources 
 of information, is probable ; and when Greece was invaded by 
 sceptical philosophy, about the middle of the fifth century before 
 Christ, the oracle began slowly to lose its commanding reputation. 
 Yet out of the midst of that very scepticism a hand was reached 
 out, which did to a certain extent preserve the honour of the 
 oracle. 
 
 The event of which I am about to speak happened, as we 
 cannot doubt, before the Peloponnesian war began ; and it may 
 justly be said that the Delphic oracle, before it fell, bequeathed 
 its authority to a new order of things, and pointed the way to 
 a type of character, and to a method of religious inquiry, which 
 could not possibly have belonged to any formal priesthood. 
 The way in which this came about was through its utterance 
 as regards Socrates. Of that utterance there are two versions, 
 slightly differing ; let me quote both. First let me give the 
 version as Plato reports it, in the account which he gives of 
 the apology or public defence of Socrates, when tried before 
 the Athenian people; it runs thus: 
 
 You must have known Chaerephon ; he was early a friend of mine, 
 and also a friend of yours, for he shared in the exile of the people, and 
 returned with you. Well, Chaerephon, as you know, was very impetuous 
 in all his doings; and he went to Delphi and boldly asked the oracle to tell 
 him whether (as I was saying, I must beg you not to interrupt) he 
 asked the oracle to tell him whether there was any one wiser than I was,
 
 CH. vn] THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 161 
 
 and the Pythian prophetess answered, that there was no man wiser. 
 Chaerephon is dead himself ; but his brother, who is in court, will confirm 
 the truth of this story. Jowett's Dialogues of Plato, vol. i. p. 335. 
 
 The other version occurs in the apology of Socrates as reported 
 by Xenophon: 
 
 Chserephon once, in the presence of many witnesses, put a question 
 at Delphi concerning me, and Apollo answered that there was no human 
 being more liberal, or more upright, or more temperate than myself. 
 The Works of Xenophon, by H. G. Dakyns, vol. HI. part I. p. 189. 
 
 The Platonic version is no doubt the correct one here ; but 
 the question arises, how came the Delphic oracle to know anything 
 at all about Socrates? The answer is, that the age was one in 
 which sceptical opinions were growing ; and sceptical though 
 Socrates himself was, he yet welcomed and did not abandon 
 religion, as it was practically held in his own country, including 
 the reverence for Delphi. In a self-confident age a wise man 
 had been found who was not self-confident, but who trusted in 
 the Gods; and the fact was sufficiently remarkable to have 
 attracted attention, even at Delphi. If this account of the matter 
 be true, it must raise our opinion of the Delphic oracle ; we shall 
 perceive in it a seriousness of intention ; but after all it is Socrates 
 who must attract our highest interest, and it is his position as 
 a man and as a teacher that I must now proceed to examine. 
 But, first, to speak of his predecessors. 
 
 Except the dimly seen figure of Pythagoras, there is not among 
 the Greeks before Socrates any nameable person, whose influence 
 can possibly be held to have had its strong animating centre in 
 religion ; and even of Pythagoras little can be said in this con- 
 nexion. The Greeks were religious, but religion entered into 
 their lives as one of many various and complex influences ; and 
 hence we must not be surprised if, in the days before rationalism 
 began to affect the Greek mind, the poets are they who give us 
 the most striking examples of religious seriousness. By ^Eschylus 
 and Sophocles the heathen mythology is used in such a way 
 that pure religion shines through it; the mythology is assumed 
 without questioning, but the morality of those two poets, which 
 is in many respects very profound, is not dependent on the mytho- 
 logy; a mysterious goodness is ascribed to the supreme Powers 
 which rule all things. Thus the Chorus in the Agamemnon of 
 ^Eschylus, after briefly referring to Uranus and Cronus, who were 
 said to have preceded Zeus as rulers of the immortals, proceed 
 M. D. A. 11
 
 162 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 to speak of Zeus in terms which seem to imply that he is the true 
 and only author of divine judgments : 
 
 " He who in triumphal tones calls on Zeus" thus their song runs 
 "shall obtain perfect wisdom; Zeus, who guides men in the way of know- 
 ledge, who has laid down the inviolable law that through suffering comes 
 experience." 
 
 That is a monotheistic passage written by a poet who was 
 apparently a polytheist ; and the numerous passages in ^Eschylus 
 which speak of the just retribution of woe to the sinner, are all 
 based on a belief in mysterious divine powers which either are 
 unnamed or which centre in Zeus. It is true that in the Prome- 
 theus Bound, and in the three plays which collectively are called 
 the Oresteia, ^Eschylus does set great store by the mythology ; 
 but in each case it is with the intention of showing that peace 
 and harmony are the ultimate purpose of the divine will, and that 
 Zeus is conducting all things to this end. We see that this is 
 the case in the Oresteia, and though the play is lost which would 
 have brought the Prometheus Bound to its full end, we know that 
 in that case also a harmonious result was attained under the will 
 of Zeus. 
 
 The mythology is as much accepted by Sophocles as by 
 ^Cschylus, though not as much dwelt upon ; but even more than 
 ^Eschylus does Sophocles use phrases which in their simple religious 
 trust recall the Bible. "Take courage, my child, take courage," 
 say the Chorus to the despairing Electra; "Zeus is still mighty 
 in heaven, he who beholds and governs all things ; to whom submit 
 the anger that torments thee ; be not overmuch afflicted by thy 
 foes, and yet forget them not." In a similar tone Antigone, 
 after burying her brother contrary to the prohibition of Creon, 
 speaks to the tyrant : 
 
 It entered not my mind that thy proclamations were of such power, 
 that thou a mortal shouldest override the unwritten and unshakable laws 
 of the Gods ; those laws are not of to-day or yesterday, but are eternal, 
 and no man knows whence they came into being. 
 
 So too the Chorus in the (Edipus Tyrannus pray for " a pious 
 purity of word and deed, according to the lofty laws of which 
 heaven is the sole father: great is God in these and groweth not 
 old." Great too was the indignation of Sophocles against 
 blasphemers of the Gods ; as appears in the sequel of the chorus 
 just quoted, and also in the Ajax. A gentle yet strong spirit 
 was he ; the Athenians once made him, in reward for his poetry, 
 an admiral ; but they had the good sense to give him Pericles as
 
 VH] THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 163 
 
 a colleague in actual service. However, he would no doubt 
 have fought bravely, as ^Eschylus did at Marathon. 
 
 Those who, after reading the tragedies of ^schylus and 
 
 Sophocles, proceed to read those three solemn and affecting 
 
 Platonic works, which narrate the trial, imprisonment, and death 
 
 : of Socrates, namely the Apology, Crito, and Phcedo, will not feel 
 
 that they have changed their atmosphere at all, as far as religious 
 
 belief and hope goes ; they are indeed beholding religious belief 
 
 exemplified in a real man, and not in the shadowy personages 
 
 ( of ancient legend ; but the kind of belief is the same. The religion 
 
 < in its details is mistaken, and Socrates at any rate knew that it 
 
 ; was mistaken ; but the spirit of the belief is one of trust in the 
 
 / Gods, and trust that the Gods are ruling human affairs in such 
 
 * wise that a happy and harmonious end will be realised. 
 
 Now the philosophers of Greece who precede Socrates are by 
 no means centred in this sort of attitude. Heraclitus indeed 
 is imbued with the conviction that the Divine nature is intrinsi- 
 cally rational; and Xenophanes protests against the anthropo- 
 morphic conceptions of the Deity prevalent among his contem- 
 poraries. In the refined abstractions of Parmenides we discern 
 a conviction of the unity of the world, and that in this unity 
 goodness consists. But all these modes of thinking, though 
 connected with religion, are not the heart of religion ; the feeling 
 of trust is not dominant. Still less is it dominant in Thales, 
 Anaximander, Anaximenes, Empedocles, Democritus, or Anaxa- 
 goras. On the whole, these writers are physicists; though in 
 their physical speculations the proportion of observation to theory 
 is much smaller than in the physicists of the present day. They 
 have a regard for religion, and for religion in a sense different 
 from the popular mythology, but religion is not their central 
 thought. Of Pythagoras I spoke above ; a great genius he seems 
 to have been; but his exact attitude towards religion has not 
 been clearly told us. 
 
 Every reader of ^schylus and Sophocles, and it may be added 
 of Pindar also, will be sensible that religion stood for a much 
 greater force, a much more overpowering topic of thought, to 
 those poets than it did to the philosophers of the sixth century 
 or the early fifth century before Christ. But with the splendour 
 of Athens under Pericles there arose a light and sceptical vein 
 of thought, pervading the Athenian mind (not without examples 
 in other parts of Greece also). Euripides, the third great drama- 
 tist of Athens, has drawn in the breath of scepticism ; he has the 
 
 112
 
 164 ANCIENT RELIGION: [OH. 
 
 air of one who would be religious if he could ; but he sees with too 
 perspicacious an eye the moral faults of the mythology, and he 
 knows not how to transcend this impediment. Nor is the great 
 comic poet Aristophanes, with all his love for ancient manners, 
 really a religious mind; his greatest quality, apart from his 
 brilliant imagination, is his love of peace, and of Hellas as Hellas. 
 Among the succeeding poets of Greece there is only one who is 
 markedly religious, and that is Cleanthes, who was primarily 
 a philosopher; his noble hymn to Zeus exhibits the basis of 
 religious feeling in a very pure and simple form. 
 
 But I return to Socrates. That he was firm as a rock, tender 
 as a child, is admitted by all ; the question is, whether he was also 
 profound in intellect. No one probably would have denied that 
 he was so, if his faithful and attached follower Xenophon had not 
 written about him. As it is, we have two witnesses respecting 
 Socrates, Xenophon and Plato. If Plato alone had written 
 about him, there would certainly have been a doubt as to how far 
 Plato had mingled his own opinions with the opinions of Socrates ; 
 but it would have been impossible to deny that Socrates was 
 a subtle and deep inquirer ; so intense is the search for truth 
 which Plato everywhere attributes to him. But Xenophon 
 represents Socrates not so much as in search of truth, as 
 having found truth ; and the substitution, though it does not 
 injure Socrates as a man, does injure him as a thinker ; for the 
 kind of truth which Xenophon loves to attribute to Socrates 
 is truth of a practical sort, roughly but not clearly held ; whereas 
 Plato in his delineation of Socrates attributes to him also the 
 desire (and a very intense desire) to see truth clearly. Now the 
 tendency among modern writers has been either to reject or to 
 mistake this testimony of Plato about Socrates. Those persons 
 have rejected it who regard Socrates simply as a plain honest 
 man and nothing more ; and who think that all the discourses 
 which Plato attributes to him are simply instances of Plato's 
 wonderful power of imagination. Those persons mistake Plato's 
 testimony who think that Socrates was simply a reasoner for 
 reasoning's sake, and that that exalted region of positive concep- 
 tions in which Plato takes delight did not belong to Socrates at all. 
 
 Let me try to show the real state of the case. I am not 
 ignoring the value of Xcnophon's account of Socrates ; he gives 
 us the practical side of Socrates much more than Plato does. 
 It is he who tells us how Socrates remonstrated with his son 
 Lamproclcs for bitterly resenting the harsh words of his mother
 
 vii] THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 165 
 
 Xanthippe; and we gather from Xenophon that Xanthippe's 
 bark was worse than her bite, and that she was really an affection- 
 ate and careful mother ; of which fact Socrates duly reminds his 
 son. It is Xenophon who tells us how Socrates tried to reconcile, 
 and it would seem did reconcile, the two brothers Chserephon 
 and Chaerecrates ; how he led Aristarchus to supply with useful 
 work the female relatives who had rather forced themselves on 
 his hospitality and protection; how he dissuaded Glaucon from 
 attempting a political career until he had provided himself with 
 the necessary knowledge as to the revenues and forces of Athens. 
 It is Xenophon who tells us that the cause of the change of Critias 
 from friendship to enmity towards Socrates was that Socrates 
 had found fault with him as showing signs of an impure passion ; 
 and how Socrates more gently remonstrated with Critobulus 
 when in some danger of a similar kind. It is Xenophon who 
 describes to us the interest which Socrates took in the household 
 of Ischomachus, and how the wife of Ischomachus was tenderly 
 trained by her husband in household duties ; a graceful picture, 
 probably amplified by Xenophon's imagination, but still having 
 a basis of truth. The conduct of Socrates as regards the duties 
 of ordinary life is much more to the front in Xenophon than it 
 is in Plato, and a very important part of the life of Socrates it 
 is which Xenophon thus gives us. 
 
 But Xenophon was very far from being a speculative philo- 
 sopher himself, and though a man of very varied ability, subtlety 
 of argument was foreign to him ; it is not that he is unintellectual, 
 but the feeling of intense intellectual search could hardly exist 
 in a man who was also a skilful military leader, and a historian 
 and popular writer of no slight merit. Moreover, besides being 
 unable, Xenophon was doubtless also unwilling to exhibit Socrates 
 as a very subtle arguer ; it is the evident object of the Memorabilia 
 to convince ordinary men, and in particular ordinary Athenians, 
 that Socrates was a man of the highest moral excellence, and that 
 to condemn him to death had been a piece of great wrong-doing 
 on the part of the Athenians ; plain and not abstruse arguments 
 were needed in maintaining such a thesis. But when Xenophon 
 gives a description of the general conversation of Socrates, there 
 is great room in it for deep and subtle thought. Here is his list 
 of the Socratic topics. 
 
 What is piety ? what is impiety ? what is the beautiful ? what the 
 ugly ? what the noble ? what the base ? what are meant by just and 
 unjust ? what by sobriety and madness ? what by courage and cowardice"?
 
 166 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 what is a state T what is a statesman ? what is a ruler over men T what 
 is a ruling character 1 T 
 
 It is remarkable that this list of Socratic subjects accords better 
 with the conversations of Socrates as recorded by Plato, than with 
 the conversations of Socrates as recorded by Xenophon himself. 
 Not that I am disputing Xenophon's testimony ; but it is no doubt 
 most exact where he keeps himself most remote from subtleties 
 of argument. It is precisely here that Plato is strongest, but at 
 the same time most disposed to amplify the argument on his 
 own account ; yet I think I can show that even here he is trust- 
 worthy in a fair degree. 
 
 It will tend to set the mutual relations of Xenophon and Plato, 
 as biographers of Socrates, in a clear light, and will besides be 
 highly pertinent to the subject of the present treatise, if I quote 
 from Xenophon and Plato the passages in which they respectively 
 report the sayings of Socrates on the reason we have for believing 
 in a Divine Power, and some of the bearings of such belief. To 
 take Xenophon first ; here is part of the dialogue between Socrates 
 and Aristodemus from the Memorabilia 2 : 
 
 I will first state [says Xenophon] what I once heard fall from his lips 
 in a discussion with Aristodemus " the little," as he was called, on the topic 
 of divinity. Socrates had observed that Aristodemus neither sacrificed 
 nor gave heed to divination, but on the contrary was disposed to ridicule 
 those who did. 
 
 Tell me, Aristodemus (he began), are there any human beings who 
 have won your admiration for their wisdom ? 
 
 Ar. There are. 
 
 Soc. Would you mention to us their names ? 
 
 Ar. In the writing of epic poetry I have the greatest admiration for 
 Homer, and as a dithvrambic poet for Melanippus. I admire also Sophocles 
 as a tragedian, Polycleitus as a sculptor, and Zeuxis as a painter. 
 
 Soc. Which should you consider the more worthy of admiration, 
 a fashioner of senseless images devoid of motion or one who could fashion 
 living creatures endowed with understanding and activity ? 
 
 Ar. Decidedly the latter, provided his living creatures owed their 
 birth to design and were not the offspring of some chance. 
 
 Soc. But now if you had two sorts of things, the one of which presents 
 no clue as to what it is for, and the other is obviously for some useful 
 purpose which should you judge to be the result of chance, which of 
 design ? 
 
 Ar. Clearly that which is produced for some useful end is the work 
 of design. 
 
 Soc. Does it not strike you then that he who made man from the 
 beginning did for some useful end furnish him with his several senses 
 
 1 Dakyns' Xenophon, vol. in. part I. p. 5. 
 
 2 Ibid. pp. 25 sqq.
 
 vii] THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 167 
 
 giving him eyes to behold the visible world, and ears to catch the intonations 
 of sound ? Or again, what good would there be in odours if nostrils had 
 not been bestowed upon us ? what perception of sweet things and pungent, 
 and of all the pleasures of the palate, had not a tongue been fashioned in 
 us as an interpreter of the same ? And besides all this, do you not think 
 this looks like a matter of foresight, this closing of the delicate orbs of sight 
 with eyelids as with folding doors, which, when there is need to use them 
 for any purpose, can be thrown wide open and firmly closed again in sleep ? 
 and, that even the winds of heaven may not visit them too roughly, this 
 planting of the eyelashes like a protecting screen ? this coping of the region 
 above the eyes with cornice-work of eyebrow so that no drop of sweat fall 
 from the head and injure them ? again this readiness of the ear to catch all 
 sounds and yet not be surcharged ? . . . I ask you, when you see all these 
 things constructed with such show of foresight, can you doubt whether 
 they are products of chance or intelligence ? 
 
 Ar. No doubt these do look like the contrivances of some one de- 
 liberately planning the existence of living creatures. 
 
 Soc. Well, and doubtless you feel to have a spark of wisdom yourself ? 
 Ar. Put your questions, and I will answer. 
 
 Soc. And yet you imagine that elsewhere no spark of wisdom is to be 
 found ? And that, too, when you know that you have in your body a tiny 
 fragment only of the mighty earth, a little drop of the great waters, and 
 of the other elements, vast in their extent, you got, I presume, a particle 
 of each towards the compacting of your bodily frame ? Mind alone, it 
 would seem, which is nowhere to be found, you had the lucky chance to 
 snap up and make off with, you cannot tell how. And these things around 
 and about us, enormous in size, infinite in number, owe their orderly 
 arrangement, I suppose, to some vacuity of wit ? 
 
 Ar. It may be, for my eyes fail to see the master agents of these, as 
 one sees the fabricators of things produced on earth. 
 
 Soc. No more do you see your own soul, which is the master agent 
 of your body ; so that, as far as that goes, you may maintain, if you like, 
 that you do nothing with intelligence, but everything by chance. 
 
 At this point Aristodemus : I assure you, Socrates, that I do not disdain 
 the Divine power. On the contrary, my belief is that the Divinity is too 
 grand to need any service which I could render. 
 
 Soc. But the grander that power is, which deigns to tend and wait 
 upon you, the more you are called upon to honour it. ... Ah, my good sir, 
 lay to heart and understand that even as your own mind within you can 
 turn and dispose of your body as it lists, so ought we to think that the 
 wisdom which abides within the universal frame does so dispose of all 
 things as it finds agreeable to itself: for hardly may it be that your eye 
 is able to range over many a league, but that the eye of God is powerless 
 to embrace all things at a glance ; or that to your soul it is given to dwell 
 in thought on matters here or far away in Egypt or in Sicily, but that the 
 wisdom or thought of God is not sufficient to include all things at one 
 instant under His care. If only you would copy your own behaviour 
 where human beings are concerned. It is by acts of service and of kindness 
 that you discover which of your fellows are willing to requite you in kind. 
 It is by taking another into your counsel that you arrive at the secret of 
 his wisdom. If, on like principle, you will but make trial of the Gods by 
 acts of service, whether they will choose to give you counsel in matters
 
 168 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 obscure to mortal vision, you shall discover the nature and the greatness 
 of Godhead to be such that they are able at once to see all things and to 
 hear all things and to be present everywhere, nor does the least thing 
 escape their watchful care. 
 
 I trust the reader does not think my quotation too long 
 (I have been obliged to curtail the passage). For its mixture of 
 theory and practical advice, it seems to me one of the most remark- 
 able passages in all ancient literature ; and the comment which 
 Xenophon appends to the dialogue which he has recorded is one 
 which may well be echoed by his readers now and always : 
 
 To my mind the effect of words like these was to cause those about 
 him to hold aloof from unholiness, baseness, and injustice, not only whilst 
 they were seen of men, but even in the solitary place, since they must 
 believe that no part of their conduct could escape the eye of Heaven. 
 
 Nevertheless it is obvious that such a mixture of argument 
 and exhortation leaves many questions unanswered both on the 
 theoretical and on the practical side. The position taken up is 
 just and right as a beginning; the Greek mythology is entirely 
 absent from it; and as regards one detail, namely that Socrates 
 speaks of "the Gods" in the plural number, it may be observed 
 that the same plural form occurs in the first verse of the Hebrew 
 Bible, and in neither case is it in the least intended to impair the 
 unity of the divine purpose. But it is one thing to say that a 
 position is a right one to start from, and another thing that we 
 ought to be satisfied with it. If the meaning of Socrates, in his 
 argument with Aristodemus, was that the position laid down by 
 him was one that we might acquiesce in without further inquiry 
 if he was oblivious or imperceptive of the fact that it does need 
 support in the details of scientific experience and of practical 
 life then we should certainly be obliged to say that his range 
 of thought was a limited one. Are we obliged to say this? 
 
 We must not expect that Xenophon, admirable though he 
 is in his own line, will supply us with sayings of Socrates that go 
 beyond the intellectual scope of the passage I have just quoted. 
 But let us see what Plato tells us. In the Phsedo, Socrates is 
 represented as giving an account of his early thoughts on philo- 
 sophy ; of his attraction to the philosophy of Anaxagoras from 
 what he heard of it in general, his disappointment with that 
 philosophy when he examined it in detail. Here is the passage 
 (Jowett's Plato, vol. r. pp. 446 sqq) : 
 
 Then I heard some ono who had a book of Anaxagoras, as he said, 
 out of which he read that mind was the disposer and cause of all, and I was 
 quite delighted at the notion of this, which appeared admirable, and I said
 
 vn] THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 169 
 
 to myself, If mind is the disposer, mind will dispose all for the best, and 
 put each particular in the best place ; and I argued that if any one desired 
 to find out the cause of the generation or destruction or existence of any- 
 thing, he must find out what state of being or suffering or doing was best 
 for that thing, and therefore a man had only to consider the best for himself 
 and others, and then he would also know the worse, for that the same 
 science comprised both. And I rejoiced to think that I had found in 
 Anaxagoras a teacher of the causes of existence such as I desired, and 
 I imagined that he would tell me first whether the earth is flat or round ; 
 and then he would further explain the cause and the necessity of this, 
 and would teach me the nature of the best and show that this was best ; 
 and if he said that the earth was in the centre, he would explain that this 
 position was the best, and I should be satisfied if this were shown to me, 
 and not want any other sort of cause. And I thought that I would then 
 go on and ask him about the sun and moon and stars, and that he would 
 explain to me their comparative swiftness, and their returnings and various 
 states, and how their several affections, active and passive, were all for 
 the best. For I could not imagine that when he spoke of mind as the 
 disposer of them, he would give any other account of their being as they 
 are, except that this was the best ; and I thought that when he had explained 
 to me in detail the cause of each and the cause of all, he would go on to 
 explain to me what was best for each and what was best for all. I had 
 hopes which I would not have sold for much, and I seized the books and 
 read them as fast as I could in my eagerness to know the better and the 
 worse. 
 
 What hopes I had formed, and how grievously was I disappointed ! 
 As I proceeded, I found my philosopher altogether forsaking mind or any 
 other principle of order, but having recourse to air, and ether, and water, 
 and other eccentricities. I might compare him to a person who began by 
 maintaining generally that mind is the cause of the actions of Socrates, 
 but who, when he endeavoured to explain the causes of my several actions 
 in detail, went on to show that I sit here because my body is made up of 
 bones and muscles ; and the bones, as he would say, are hard and have 
 ligaments which divide them, and the muscles are elastic, and they cover 
 the bones, which have also a covering or environment of flesh and skin which 
 contains them ; and as the bones are lifted at their joints by the contraction 
 or relaxation of the muscles, I am able to bend my limbs, and this is why 
 I am sitting here in a curved posture ; that is what he would say, and he 
 would have a similar explanation of my talking to you, which he would 
 attribute to sound, and air, and hearing, and he would assign ten thousand 
 other causes of the same sort, forgetting to mention the true cause, which 
 is, that the Athenians have thought fit to condemn me, and accordingly 
 I have thought it better and more right to remain here and undergo my 
 sentence ; for I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine 
 would have gone off to Megara or Boeotia by the dog of Egypt they would, 
 if they had been guided only by their own idea of what was best, and if 
 I had not chosen as the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant 
 and running away, to undergo any punishment which the state inflicts. 
 There is surely a strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. 
 It may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts 
 of my body, I cannot execute my purposes. But to say that I do as I do 
 because of them, and that this is the way in which mind acts, and not
 
 170 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 from the choice of the best, is a very careless and idle mode of speaking. 
 I wonder that they cannot distinguish the cause from the condition, which 
 the many, feeling about in the dark, are always mistaking and misnaming. 
 And thus one man makes a vortex all round and steadies the earth by the 
 heaven ; another gives the air as a support to the earth, which is a sort of 
 broad trough. Any power which in disposing them as they are disposes 
 them for the best never enters into their minds, nor do they imagine that 
 there is any superhuman strength in that; they rather expect to find 
 another Atlas of the world who is stronger and more everlasting and more 
 containing than the good is, and are clearly of opinion that the obligatory 
 and containing power of the good is as nothing; and yet this is the 
 principle which I would fain learn if any one would teach me. 
 
 There is no direct mention of the Divine Power in this passage ; 
 but it is quite evident that it is the Divine Power of which Socrates 
 is speaking, and that the "mind" of which he is in search is the 
 Supreme Mind. What, however, I am most concerned here to 
 remark is this : the passage from Plato is on the same lines as 
 the passage from Xenophon, but is an extension of it into a region 
 where the phenomena do not so clearly indicate the conclusion 
 which Socrates has at heart, namely the goodness of the Divine 
 Mind. In Xenophon, Socrates tells Aristodemus that the Divine 
 Power has been his benefactor by giving him those senses which 
 are percipient of the external world ; in Plato, Socrates tells 
 his hearers how keen his desire had always been to discern that 
 goodness was inherent in the structure of the universe at large, 
 where there are many phenomena discernible as facts, but not 
 readily seen to be examples of beneficence. The moral character 
 of the passage from Xenophon, and of the passage from Plato, 
 is the same ; only in Xenophon, Socrates speaks as one declaring 
 certainties, in Plato he speaks as one in search ; the difference 
 being produced by the difference in the phenomena which are 
 the subject of the inquiry. When we consider that according 
 to the testimony of both Xenophon and Plato, Socrates was 
 a person preeminently searching after true moral principles, the 
 probability that the passage in Plato is an authentic account of 
 what Socrates really said must be admitted to be great ; nor are 
 there wanting other reasons to confirm this inference. Though 
 Xenophon does not record the disappointment which Socrates 
 felt on reading Anaxagoras, in the way in which it is recorded in 
 the Phaedo, lie does record the disapproval of Anaxagoras felt 
 by Socrates, especially in regard to the view of Anaxagoras that 
 the sun was no more than a "fiery stone 1 " ; and the disapproval 
 on this ground is repeated also in the Apology of Socrates as given 
 
 1 Memorabilia, IV. 7.
 
 vii] THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 171 
 
 by Plato. The three passages are confirmatory of one another. 
 Xenophon adds, that Socrates remarked on the vivifying effect 
 of the sun's rays on plants as distinguishing it from ordinary fire ; 
 an observation which in its main purport is also attributed to 
 Socrates in Plato's Republic 1 . An additional reason for holding 
 the passage in the Phsedo to be an authentic utterance of Socrates 
 lies in the expression of doubt which the passage contains as to 
 whether the earth is flat or round. When Socrates was a young 
 man, let us say between the years 450 and 440 B.C., the rotundity 
 of the earth, though growing continually more probable, was not 
 an absolutely established doctrine; there was a possibility of 
 doubt being expressed on the matter. But it is very unlikely 
 that Plato in his mature years ever had a doubt on the point ; in 
 the fanciful description of the earth towards the end of the Phsedo, 
 for instance (which I agree with ordinary critics in assigning to 
 Plato as distinguished from Socrates), it is assumed that the earth 
 is spherical. Where then a doubt is expressed on the point, we 
 have reason to say that the doubt was one entertained by Socrates 
 in his youth, rather than by Plato in his manhood; and this 
 circumstance tells in favour of the authenticity of the whole 
 account. 
 
 But over and above these special reasons, let the reader of 
 the passage just quoted from the Phsedo say whether it does 
 not sound like a genuine piece of autobiography? Plato had 
 a sufficient personal intimacy with Socrates to be in a position to 
 know something of the early history of his great teacher; and 
 though Plato was prevented by illness from being a witness of 
 the last scene of the life of Socrates, yet if Socrates did on that 
 occasion relate this old experience of his, as the Pheedo tells us 
 that he did, no one would be better able than Plato to appreciate 
 it and reproduce it from the evidence of another (though it is also 
 likely that Plato had himself heard Socrates on some other occasion 
 tell this experience). Without in the least denying that Plato 
 did put into the mouth of Socrates opinions and poetic descriptions 
 which did not belong to the true Socrates, I cannot think that 
 so specific a piece of autobiography as that which describes the 
 relations of Socrates to Anaxagoras is one which Plato would 
 have invented; even if there had not been so many incidental 
 reasons, which I have given above, for thinking the passage 
 authentic. 
 
 But if the passage is an authentic account of himself given 
 
 1 vi. 509 BO
 
 172 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 by the true Socrates, observe what follows. All that kind of 
 representation of Socrates, which makes him out to be a mere 
 pious, good man with an extraordinary delight in convicting other 
 people of ignorance, falls to the ground. The question which 
 Socrates brings forward in the passage from the Phsedo is the 
 profoundest of all questions which to this day have ever come 
 before the mind of man. It is the question, whether the world 
 has been created and organised for good ends. That question is, 
 it is true, not a question which has been at all the most prominent 
 in modern physical science, which rests on external observation. 
 Nor is it a question formally propounded in the Bible ; though the 
 temper inculcated in the Bible is a temper which looks upon all 
 things as created for good ends. This also was the temper of 
 Socrates ; but the faith in a supreme goodness ruling the universe 
 is not one that can relieve us from the desire of seeing in actual 
 experience that all things are working towards good issues, and 
 towards an increasing happiness and well being of all living things. 
 The inquiry suggested is infinite in its extent, and yet perfectly 
 clear in its character; and the person who first propounded it 
 deserves our reverence in no ordinary degree. That person, if the 
 reasonings given above are valid, was Socrates. He first set 
 before men the endeavour, expressed long afterwards in famous 
 words by Milton, 
 
 To justify the ways of God to man. 
 
 It is desirable that I should follow up this assertion with some 
 further arguments directed to show that Plato, with all his imagina- 
 tive and dramatic power, was yet in many respects a trustworthy 
 witness respecting the sayings and doings of Socrates ; though 
 I admit that he is not so in every respect, and in regard to the 
 most elaborate of all the dialogues into which Socrates enters, 
 the Republic, it is particularly hard to draw the line between real 
 memory and imaginative expansion. But of that I must speak 
 later; on the more general question I argue as follows. 
 
 In the first place Plato gives, what Xenophon nowhere gives, 
 an intelligible account of the causes which made Socrates un- 
 popular at Athens, and which, when circumstances at last brought 
 them to a head, led the Athenians to condemn him to death. 
 That long and energetic practice of his, the subjecting his fellow- 
 citizens to a kind of continuous catechising, whereby all their 
 ignorances were brought to light and their self-esteem hurt, could 
 not but produce a sentiment against him. The picturesque
 
 VH] THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 173 
 
 description of his conduct in this respect, given in his apology 
 as recorded by Plato, has no parallel in any other account given 
 of him ; the simile, which he there applies to himself, as a "gadfly " 
 sent by divine command to stir up the Athenian people (whom 
 he compares to a large and noble but somewhat sluggish horse) 
 to greater energy, is transparently authentic. The gadfly, we 
 may be sure, would not be liked by the horse ; and so mean 
 a comparison, while it would never have been applied to Socrates 
 by an ardently devoted follower, is just what Socrates, with his 
 keen sense of humour, would have applied to himself. Nor can 
 we fail to recognise in that ironical courtesy towards opponents, 
 of which Plato gives so many examples in Socrates, a weapon 
 that would not always be felt to be conciliatory. The descriptive 
 pen of Xenophon is not equal to representing this irony effectively ; 
 but he recognises the fact of it in the words which he represents 
 Hippias as saying to Socrates : 
 
 We have had enough of your ridiculing all the rest of the world, 
 questioning and cross-examining first one and then the other, but never 
 a bit will you render an account to any one yourself or state a plain opinion 
 upon a single topic. Memorabilia, iv. chapter 4, Dakyns' Xenophon, 
 vol. in. part I. p. 155. 
 
 Aristotle also was aware of the irony of Socrates (Ethics, iv. 13), 
 though it is needless to say that Aristotle does not, any more 
 than Xenophon, give examples of this irony. It is Plato who 
 lets us see it in action. Further, Plato gives us a very important 
 indication of the way in which Socrates had offended the religious 
 susceptibilities of the Athenians, by his censure of large parts 
 of the mythology (as is recorded in the second and third books of 
 the Republic) ; particularly when we add to this his affirmation of 
 his own inspiration by a Divine Power. Putting these two things 
 together, we see exactly why Meletus accused Socrates of "refusing 
 to recognise the gods acknowledged by the State, and importing 
 strange divinities of his own " ; though both Xenophon and Plato 
 tell us that Socrates sacrificed, as ordinary Athenians did, to 
 recognised deities ; it was only the unseemly stories respecting 
 the Gods which he refused to accept. 
 
 If then Plato far more than any other writer makes us under- 
 stand why the Athenians put Socrates to death, is not this a 
 ground for giving some credit to his testimony as to the sayings 
 and doings of Socrates ? Plato may have been partly a poet, 
 but he was also partly a true historian. Let me add another 
 indication to the same effect.
 
 174 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 Of all philosophers, Plato is the most brilliant ; not merely is he 
 eloquent, but there is a sparkle in his dialogue with which mere 
 eloquence is not usually combined. Yet, if any one looks carefully 
 into the occasions when this brilliance, this sparkle, is manifested, 
 he will find it to be dependent on the presence of Socrates among 
 the company. Let Socrates depart, and the sparkle goes too ; 
 and though the converse statement, "Let Socrates arrive, and 
 the sparkle appears," is not universally true, it is true in the most 
 famous and important dialogues. When he is present, we have 
 philosophy plus that living thrill which is the charm of human 
 society ; when he is absent, we have philosophy alone. Now 
 would this difference appear, if Plato were simply a poet and 
 Socrates one of his characters ? I think not ; we should then have 
 the sparkle diffused over all Plato's works. But if Plato be truly 
 the biographer, the phenomenon is explained ; the sparkle means 
 that he has genuine delight in a past reminiscence ; the thought 
 of Socrates kindles him, because he really remembers what Socrates 
 was. Can we, recognising this, refuse to admit a genuine basis 
 of truth in what Plato tells us about the opinions of Socrates ? 
 
 But further; as I have quoted and compared together two 
 passages, from Xenophon and Plato respectively, in which the 
 opinions of Socrates on the Divine Providence are set forth, so 
 let me quote and compare two passages from these respective 
 authorities in which the theme of love is treated of in relation 
 to Socrates ; Xenophon giving the practice, Plato the theory, of 
 Socrates. Here first is Xenophon, from the beginning of the 
 fourth book of the Memorabilia: 
 
 Nor was he less helpful to his acquaintance in his lighter than in his 
 graver moods. Let us take as an example that saying of his, so often on 
 his lips, " I am in love with so-and-so " ; and all the while it was obvious 
 the going forth of his soul was not towards excellence of body in the bloom 
 of beauty, but rather towards faculties of the soul unfolding in virtue. 
 And these "good natures" he detected by certain tokens ; a readiness to 
 learn that to which the attention was directed : a power of retaining in 
 the memory the lessons learnt ; and a passionate predilection for those 
 studies in particular which serve to good administration of a house or of 
 a state, and in general to the proper handling of man and human affairs. 
 Such beings, he maintained, needed only to be educated to become not only 
 happy themselves and happy administrators of their private households, 
 but to be capable of rendering other human beings as states or individuals 
 happy also 1 . 
 
 And here is the passage from Plato ; it is from the Symposium, 
 and is from the discourse of Socrates, who professes to have heard 
 
 1 Dakyna' Xenophon, vol. in. part I. p. 130.
 
 vn] THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 175 
 
 the teaching from Diotima, a wise woman of Mantineia; but 
 whether this be so or not the main gist of it, which is the com- 
 mendation of the love of beautiful souls, has been justly made his 
 own by Socrates. 
 
 He who would proceed rightly in this matter (he says) should begin 
 in youth to turn to beautiful forms ; and first, if his instructor guide him 
 rightly, he should learn to love one such form only out of that he should 
 create fair thoughts ; and soon he will himself perceive that the beauty 
 of one form is truly related to the beauty of another ; and then, if beauty 
 in general is his pursuit, how foolish he would be not to recognise that the 
 beauty in every form is one and the same ! And when he perceives this 
 he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem 
 a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms ; this will lead 
 him on to consider that the beauty of the mind is more honourable than 
 the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little 
 comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him, and will search out 
 and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young, until his 
 beloved is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions 
 and laws, and understand that all is of one kindred, and that personal 
 beauty is only a trifle ; and after laws and institutions he will lead him on 
 to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like a servant in 
 love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself a slave 
 mean and calculating, but looking at the abundance of beauty and drawing 
 towards the sea of beauty, and creating and beholding many fair and noble 
 thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom ; until at length he grows 
 and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, 
 which is the science of beauty everywhere. . . . Do you not see that in that 
 communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be 
 able to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities ; for he has hold not 
 of an image but of a reality ; and bringing forth and educating true virtue 
 to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may? Would 
 that be an ignoble life 1 ? 
 
 In that passage of Plato, the primary thought is the same as 
 in the passage of Xenophon ; and in both passages, it is the mind 
 and practice of Socrates which is being set before us ; in Plato, 
 more especially the mind ; in Xenophon, more especially the 
 practice. It is true that Plato infuses into the subject a poetic 
 imagery which is foreign to Xenophon ; and also he brings into 
 clear view the divine immortal part of man's nature, which 
 Xenophon is here content to leave in the background. But from 
 both we perceive that deep in the nature of Socrates a power of 
 love was seated, which was, as it could not help being, most 
 attractive to ardent ingenuous souls, especially those of the young ; 
 a power of love which was closely united with the desire for clear 
 intellectual insight. If we ask how this power of love as shown 
 
 1 Jowett's Plato, vol. I. pp. 526-7.
 
 176 ANCIENT RELIGION: [OH. 
 
 in Socrates differs from that which we find commended and exem- 
 plified in the pages of the New Testament, I think we must say 
 that love as exhibited by Jesus Christ and his chief apostles 
 receives wings from the profound pity which commingles with 
 it ; there is a sense of the urgent need of it, without which it could 
 not have been effective for redeeming the whole human race. To 
 this Socrates does not reach ; but we must not undervalue his 
 commingling of love with the intellectual element, with his sense 
 of the good of true understanding: Christianity in all its early 
 history was so much an appeal to the poor and unlearned, that the 
 intellectual element is* subordinate in it. 
 
 It will not be out of place, in regard to the part of the character of 
 Socrates with which I am now dealing, to refer to a dialogue found 
 among those of Plato, but by modern critics not generally held 
 genuine, the Theages ; genuine or not, it has a sentence which is 
 worth our remembering. I mean that in which Socrates tells 
 Theages that he resigns "blessed and honourable sciences" to men 
 likeProdicus and Gorgias, and only claims for himself one small piece 
 of knowledge, the Art of Love. No one who studies either Plato 
 or Xenophonwill doubt that Socrates was justified in this claim. 
 
 Speaking generally, one would say that Xenophon gives us 
 a greater proportion of historic accuracy as regards Socrates than 
 Plato does. But the difference is not so great as is generally 
 supposed ; and in one important work, the Apology, Plato is more 
 exact than Xenophon. It is not wonderful that it should be so, 
 for Plato was present at the trial of Socrates 1 , whereas Xenophon 
 at the time was in Asia, having just returned from the Cyreian 
 expedition; his knowledge on this point was second hand. In 
 most matters respecting the trial, however, our two authorities 
 are remarkably coincident. In both, a considerable space is 
 taken up with a personal colloquy between Socrates and his accuser 
 Meletus (the other two accusers, Anytus and Lycon, do not enter 
 in); in both, Socrates relates the question which Chaerephon put 
 to the Delphic oracle, and the answer given by the oracle ; in 
 both, Socrates refers to the "divine sign" which was wont to 
 restrain him from wrong courses ; in both, he is careless about 
 conciliating his judges, and addresses to them home truths, to 
 which his hearers do not always listen with placidity; in both, 
 he declares that death to him is not a calamity. In both, when 
 he has been declared guilty, and is asked to name a penalty as 
 an alternative to that penalty of death which Meletus proposed, 
 
 1 See Plato's Apoloyy of Socrates, pp. 34 A, 38 B.
 
 vii] THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 177 
 
 he refuses to name any penalty ; though it is true that in Plato's 
 account he relaxes in the end owing to the entreaties of his friends, 
 and proposes for himself a fine of thirty minse, his friends having 
 offered to pay this for him. In both accounts, he addresses the 
 audience after he has been condemned to death, and says he has 
 been unjustly condemned, and refers to the case of the hero 
 Palamedes as in like manner unjustly condemned in the olden 
 time. 
 
 Nor is there less correspondence between Plato and Xenophon 
 as respects the surroundings of the trial, than in the trial itself. 
 In both, the fact is mentioned that the death was delayed for 
 many days (a month, in fact) in consequence of the annual embassy 
 to Delos coinciding with his condemnation ; for until the embassy 
 returned from its voyage, it was the custom of the Athenians to 
 refrain from putting any one to death. In both, the wish of the 
 friends of Socrates that he should escape out of prison, and his 
 refusal to do so, are mentioned. It is worth notice again, that 
 of seven persons whom Xenophon specially names as true and 
 honourable friends of Socrates, five (namely Crito, Hermogenes, 
 Simmias, Cebes, Phaedondes) are mentioned by Plato as present 
 at the death of Socrates ; the sixth, Chserecrates, is mentioned by 
 Plato (under the title of the brother of Chserephon) as present at 
 the trial ; while the seventh, Chaerephon himself, had died shortly 
 before the trial. With respect to another follower of Socrates, 
 Apollodorus, it is remarkable how similar his character is as 
 described by Plato and by Xenophon. According to Plato, 
 Apollodorus was the first and most vehement of the friends of 
 Socrates in lamentation, when Socrates had drunk the poison 
 handed him by the gaoler ; while Xenophon records this anecdote 
 about him : 
 
 Now there was present a certain Apollodorus, who was an enthusiastic 
 lover of the master, but for the rest a simple-minded man. He exclaimed 
 very innocently, "But the hardest thing of all to bear, Socrates, is to see 
 you put to death unjustly." Whereupon Socrates, it is said, gently stroked 
 the young man's head; "Would you have been better pleased, my dear 
 one, to see me put to death for some just reason rather than unjustly ? " 
 and as he spoke he smiled tenderly 1 . 
 
 The action of Socrates in stroking the head of Apollodorus 
 is paralleled by a similar action of his towards Phsedo, recorded by 
 Plato (Phcedo, p. 89 B). 
 
 In the midst of this great and various agreement between 
 
 1 Dakyn's Xenophon, vol. m. part i. pp. 193-4. 
 M. D. A. 12
 
 178 ANCIENT RELIGION: [OH. 
 
 Xenophon and Plato as respects the trial and death of Socrates, 
 there are two points in which our authorities differ ; and in both, 
 as I have said, the preference must be given to Plato. Xenophon 
 makes Socrates in his defence appeal directly to his practice of 
 sacrificing on the public altars. We have reason to say that 
 Socrates did this as a fact, but Plato does not make him defend 
 himself by mentioning it, and the tone of his defence in Plato is 
 not altogether consistent with his having mentioned it. It is 
 evident, I think, that Socrates felt instinctively a certain difference 
 between the temper of his own religious worship and that of 
 ordinary Athenians ; which difference Xenophon hardly appreci- 
 ated, and still less would have wished to mention. The other 
 point in which Plato and Xenophon are inconsistent with each 
 other is one of greater importance. The reader will remember 
 that I quoted the two forms in which the saying of the Delphic 
 oracle respecting Socrates is given; Plato putting it thus, that 
 "no one was wiser than Socrates" ; Xenophon more expansively 
 thus, " that there was no human being more liberal, or more 
 upright, or more temperate than Socrates." Now even as a 
 matter of mere form, the brevity of Plato is more akin to the 
 character of the oracle than the effusiveness of Xenophon ; but 
 the difference reaches much beyond mere form. According to 
 Xenophon, the oracle is simply accepted by Socrates, and there 
 is an end of it ; but according to Plato, the oracular response is 
 interpretative of the whole public career of Socrates, and for this 
 very reason, that Socrates did not lightly or easily accept it. 
 He wondered at the oracle having said that no man was wiser 
 than he ; till at last he hit upon the explanation, that all men 
 were ignorant of the things which most concerned them, and he 
 no less than others ; but that he had just this little advantage 
 over others, that he knew himself to be ignorant, whereas others 
 thought themselves wise. I know not whether the exquisite 
 grace with which Socrates expounds this thesis, and relates how 
 he made himself unpopular by vindicating the correctness of 
 the oracle as to the ignorance under which all men were labouring, 
 be a true fact ; Plato was an exquisite artist, and something may 
 have been added by him to Socrates as regards beauty of style ; 
 but surely is it in substance the true Socrates we are hearing, 
 when we read this explanation of his remarkable career. It does 
 explain Socrates to us ; and nothing else does adequately explain 
 him. Surely this tells in favour of Plato as a truthful biographer. 
 I venture to .say, moreover, that the single really untenable
 
 vn] THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 179 
 
 argument which Socrates (according to Plato) advanced in his 
 own defence the argument that he could not wilfully have 
 taught men to do injury to others, because then he would be teach- 
 ing them to do injury to himself has a real Socratic ring about 
 it: Socrates did not strengthen his case by using it, but it fell 
 in with the customary tenor of his thoughts, and we must believe 
 that he did say this. 
 
 If then the Apology of Socrates as given by Plato is substantially 
 a true and adequate account of what Socrates said in his own 
 defence at his trial, must we not hold that the dialogue which 
 immediately follows the Apology, the Crito, is authentic also ; 
 hi which the noble argument is given, by virtue of which Socrates 
 rejected the suggestion made to him, that he should escape from 
 prison, and so save his life? (We must remember that it is not 
 only Plato, but Xenophon, who tells us that he rejected this 
 suggestion.) The argument is essentially this, that a man should 
 in all lawful things obey cheerfully the commands of his country, 
 even though those commands lead him to his death. 
 
 And now I come to that Platonic dialogue which follows hi 
 due sequence after the Apology and the Crito namely, the 
 Phaedo in which the account of the death of Socrates is given. 
 Of that scene Plato was not himself a witness ; his own illness 
 was the cause which kept him away ; but it is plain that he had the 
 greatest possible interest in knowing what happened, and there 
 were many who were able to inform him. Are we to disbelieve 
 him when he says that Socrates spent the last day of his life in 
 discussing with his friends the question of the soul's immortality ? 
 I know not on what ground we should disbelieve it. The occasion 
 was so solemn as to constitute a demand on Plato that he should 
 say nothing but what was effectively true ; he might and would 
 put the truth in his own language, no doubt, but truth ought to 
 be there, and I do not doubt that there is truth in what Plato 
 records in the Phsedo. Moreover, I have already spent much 
 pains in vindicating the truth of a particular part of the Phsedo, 
 that namely in which Socrates is represented as expressing his keen 
 desire to perceive the divine goodness in the facts of the phenomenal 
 universe as known to us. If in this part of the dialogue Plato is 
 narrating true facts, it lends probability to the truthfulness of 
 the rest. Let me then give as briefly as possible the arguments for 
 the immortality of the soul as stated in the Phsedo ; they are in 
 the main three ; and the first of the three is one eminently natural 
 for Socrates, in the position in which he then was, to have put 
 
 122
 
 180 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 forward. It is an argument resting on the feeling that the life 
 of a true philosopher must always be a preparation for death, 
 or in other words a preparation for the time when the soul shall 
 be separated from the body. The soul is regarded as superior to 
 the body, and as having in this life the duty of governing the body ; 
 and the thought is, that if the soul discharges its duty of governing 
 the body well, it becomes fitted for higher station afterwards. 
 This argument is begun in the ninth chapter of the dialogue, and 
 then, without being continuously dwelt upon, it is evidently in 
 the thoughts of the speaker, and finds its natural termination in 
 the 32nd, 33rd, and 34th chapters. The feeling that bodily 
 pleasures are unworthy is in some parts of the argument too pre- 
 ponderant ; but was that an unnatural feeling in Socrates immedi- 
 ately before his death? But meanwhile, in the middle of this 
 argument, the second of the three arguments of which I spoke is 
 interjected ; it is in fact suggested by one of the friends of Socrates 
 who is present, Cebes ; but he prefaces it by saying that Socrates 
 is often accustomed to speak of the thesis on which the argument 
 rests. That thesis is, that our knowledge, in its leading principles, 
 is essentially remembrance ; that we had it before we were born 
 into this present life. This implies that we lived in an antecedent 
 life ; and if we lived in an antecedent life, is that not an argument 
 that we shall also li ve in a future life ? 
 
 Now in modern times this argument will not, I think, be 
 received with as much respect as the first argument ; for the duty 
 of educating the soul in virtue cannot be ignored, and the thought 
 that it is being educated for responsibilities that will be realised 
 after death will not be derided, at any rate ; whereas the thought 
 of the soul's preexistence is hardly seriously entertained in modern 
 European thought. Moreover, this second argument is generally 
 thought of as distinctly Platonic, not Socratic. Nevertheless 
 (to take the last point first) I do not believe that Plato would 
 have put into the mouth of Cebes the statement that Socrates 
 "often" referred to the doctrine that the soul remembered prin- 
 ciples learnt in a state of previous existence if that doctrine had 
 never been propounded by Socrates. As to the doctrine itself, 
 it is in a very mysterious region, and what I have to say about 
 it had better be postponed until I have stated the third argument 
 for immortality given in the Phacdo. 
 
 That third argument is elaborated at length in the dialogue, 
 but the upshot of it. which is reached at the close of the 54th 
 chapter, may be put into very brief compass, and it is this. The
 
 vii] THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 181 
 
 question is asked : "What is that, the presence of which implies 
 that the body is alive? " and the answer given is, "It is the soul." 
 "Therefore," the inference is drawn, "the soul is essentially life; 
 death is its opposite; therefore the soul is immortal." 
 
 Of all three arguments it may be said (and especially it may 
 be said of the first of the three) that though they do not produce 
 conviction, neither are they to be despised. They remain in our 
 thoughts, though not as proofs of what is, yet as indications of 
 what may be. It is an "honourable risk" to think in this way; 
 this is the phrase by which Socrates (in the 63rd chapter of the 
 Phaedo) certainly characterises a part of the argument, and I think 
 he means to characterise the whole of it thus. The proof must 
 come later, if at all; but meanwhile, indications of truth are 
 welcome. This is the true Socratic position; it is foreshadowed 
 in the Apology ; and though in the Apology the side of doubt 
 is more distinctly represented than in the Phsedo, it is only natural 
 that a courageous spirit should devote his last words to the infusion 
 of hope into those who hear him. 
 
 Thus, while the form of the arguments for immortality given 
 in the Phsedo is due to Plato, the underlying thought certainly 
 belongs to Socrates ; and the objections (not by any means idle 
 or unreasonable) which Simmias and Cebes raise to the arguments 
 of Socrates may be accepted as historical facts, as well as (sub- 
 stantially) the replies which Socrates makes to them. There is 
 no reason why the Socratic authorship should not be accepted 
 in the case of the argument for preexistence, out of which im- 
 mortality follows as a sequel, as much as in respect of the other 
 arguments. So mysterious a theme cannot be pursued into 
 details ; but in itself the argument is neither unreasonable, nor 
 is the premiss on which it rests the congenital possession by 
 human beings of faculties in the germ at all disputable; it is 
 an argument well within the range of Socrates, and should be 
 accepted as his. Socrates may easily have believed, and we may 
 believe too, that our real existence did not begin with our physical 
 conception and birth. But on such a subject we ought not to be 
 too free with our imaginations. 
 
 Does Xenophon support Plato in his account of the views 
 of Socrates respecting immortality ? Not by his direct evidence ; 
 and it is quite possible that he was less acquainted with this side 
 of the mind of Socrates than Plato was. But yet, when we consider 
 the narrative of the death of Cyrus the elder, as given by Xenophon 
 in his Cyropcedia, we perceive that Cyrus is represented as holding
 
 182 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 just that mixture of belief with a shade of doubt respecting a 
 future life which is avowed by Socrates in his Apology (as given 
 by Plato) ; and we do probably see in this the Socratic influence 
 on Xenophon 1 . 
 
 I must not dwell on the other Platonic dialogues with anything 
 like that fullness with which I have treated of the Phaedo ; but it 
 will be proper to mention some notable instances in which the 
 true Socrates is discernible in Plato. We may see him in the moral 
 maxims, which are sometimes very profound. Take, for instance, 
 those which we find in the Gorgias ; that " he who injures another, 
 injures himself more" ; that " to suffer wrong is better than to do 
 wrong " ; that he who has done wrong ought to seek, and not to 
 avoid, the just punishment, for his own good. Take, again, the 
 fine definition of courage in the Republic, as the just sentiment 
 respecting things which ought to be feared and things which ought 
 not to be feared. Most of all, take the saying in the Crito, that it 
 is wrong to revenge ourselves upon those who have injured us. It 
 has sometimes been thought that this saying is not authentic, owing 
 to its contrast with the words which Xenophon reports Socrates 
 to have used in his conversation with Critobulus (Memorabilia, 
 book ii.), that "a man's virtue is to excel his friends in kindness 
 and his foes in hostility " ; but it must be remembered that 
 Socrates was more likely to express his truest and deepest feelings 
 during the last days of his life (to which period the Crito belongs) 
 than in an accidental expression uttered years before, when he 
 might not unnaturally have spoken in the manner of ordinary 
 Greek feeling. Nor can we say that it was impossible for Xenophon 
 to put an ordinary Greek sentiment into the mouth of Socrates 
 carelessly and by mere accident ; whereas the saying in the Crito 
 could not possibly have slipped in by accident. 
 
 I attribute the above maxims, recorded by Plato as spoken 
 by Socrates, truly to Socrates; and for this reason, that Socrates 
 was before everything a moralist, and original in his moral teaching. 
 Testimony and probability favour an identical conclusion here. 
 It will be of interest to compare his morality, in the most formal 
 statement of it, with an analogous statement in the New Testa- 
 ment. The Socratic division of virtue (to judge by Plato and in 
 the main also by Xenophon) was fourfold : courage, temperance, 
 justice, and wisdom, are the four sustaining pillars of righteous 
 
 1 Jowctt is, though ratlu-r doubtfully, of this opinion (see the close of his introduc- 
 tion to the Pluedo); and H. <J. Dakyns has noticed the probability that Xenophon had 
 Socrates in his thoughts when writing the story which appears in book in. chap. 1, 
 38-^0, of the Cyropaedia.
 
 vn] THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 183 
 
 conduct. But the New Testament division of virtue, as set forth 
 by the apostle Paul, is threefold; faith, hope, and love are its 
 constituents. Now the first three of the Socratic virtues, though 
 not the same as the three Pauline virtues, have yet an analogy 
 to them; and in this comparison the Pauline virtues have the 
 superiority. He who has faith, has something which lies at the 
 root of courage, and administers to courage. Temperance and 
 hope are not indeed the same ; but what Paul meant by hope, 
 the steady anticipation of future good as ordained for men by 
 God, is the greatest cause of temperance in present enjoyments. 
 Finally, love is the soil on which a just treatment of our fellow-men 
 naturally grows. In these important points, Christian virtue 
 has a depth to which the Socratic philosophy does not attain. 
 But what is to be said of the fourth Socratic virtue, "wisdom" 
 or "insight" (aofyLa, Qpovrjo-is) 1 * It cannot be identified with 
 any of the other virtues, either in the Socratic or in the 
 Pauline scale ; it expresses purposive action in a way in which 
 the other virtues do not express it. Purpose is one of the 
 cardinal qualities of man ; and I cannot but think that "wisdom," 
 in the Socratic sense, has a scope to which early Christian sentiment 
 hardly did justice ; it means the slow building up of a happy 
 human society ; and the problem, how to effect this, received but 
 imperfect attention in early Christian times. On the other hand, - 
 Socrates did no doubt fall into the error of making the study of 
 virtue too much an affair of reasoning (which is the opposite error 
 from that of the early Christians). In his personal conduct, 
 a divine instinct, warning him when he was about to do wrong, 
 continually attended upon him, as he tells us ; but he ought to 
 have felt that for others also the way of virtue lay in trusting 
 such an instinct ; whereas in his instructions to others, he com- 
 mended rather the intellectual search after virtue, which by itself 
 is a comparatively crude method, although of course one that has 
 its value, as I have just been saying. But the over-valuation of 
 knowledge was (if I may use an old metaphor) the heel of Achilles - 
 in his spiritual framework. 
 
 Neither my subject, nor the limits of this work, permit me 
 to enter in detail upon the interesting question how far the real 
 Socratic element exists in those other Platonic dialogues in which 
 Socrates is the chief speaker ; but I may say briefly that I believe 
 the first four books of the Republic to contain a great deal of the 
 real thought of Socrates ; and I incline to think that the early 
 chapters of the Parmenides, in which Socrates as a youthful
 
 184 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 arguer is represented as yielding to the veteran philosopher 
 (needlessly in my opinion), contain a reminiscence of a true 
 historic fact. 
 
 No account of Socrates, however brief, ought to omit to mention 
 the consistent courage which he displayed as a man (apart from 
 his energy as a thinker), both when employed in military service, 
 and still more when resisting unjust commands of oligarchs and 
 outcries of the Athenian populace ; and whether we regard him 
 as a philosopher or as a man, we may read sympathetically these 
 words, with which Plato, after narrating his death, characterises 
 him : 
 
 Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, whom I may truly call 
 the wisest, and justest, and best, of all the men whom I have ever known. 
 
 These, the concluding words of the Phaedo, might be fully 
 paralleled from Xenophon also. 
 
 I have dwelt at length on the teaching of Socrates, because 
 though in a certain way he is always recognised as the central 
 point of the Greek spiritual development, it has been too common 
 with critics to regard him as a mere questioner and arguer, a 
 sharpener of the intellect rather than an implanter of moral truth 
 in the minds of men. But his real influence lay in the moral 
 feeling which he inspired, and in the unerring instinct by which 
 he brought moral feeling into alliance with religious devotion ; 
 these are qualities which transcend the imaginative brilliancy of 
 Plato, and the large knowledge of Aristotle. 
 
 As to the physical philosophers who came before Socrates, 
 they, though not equal to him, must be commended for the interest 
 which they showed in the visible universe ; arid while men like 
 Thales and Leucippus have come down to us rather as speculative 
 theorists than as scientific observers, it must be remembered that 
 a great deal of exact observation was being carried on in Greece 
 during the fifth century before Christ, which bore fruit in after 
 time. The names of the observers have for the most part been 
 forgotten ; but the name of Meton survives. He was the reformer 
 of the calendar at Athens; and the golden number 19, which 
 coordinates the revolutions of the sun and moon, and which has 
 served ecclesiastical purposes in Christian times, was by him 
 discovered. The search after intellectual truth was at all times 
 characteristic of the Hellenic mind ; the distinction of Socrates 
 was that, inheriting this characteristic, he applied it to the most 
 important of all subjects, the determination of the conduct of 
 men with a view to the increase of life and happiness.
 
 vn] THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 185 
 
 This most important quest was taken up, after the death of 
 Socrates, by his pupil, Plato, and by the pupil of Plato, Aristotle. 
 To these great names I must do no dishonour, and yet I cannot 
 adequately treat of them here ; for Plato to some extent, and 
 Aristotle much more, entered upon themes of general interest, 
 which have only an indirect connexion with the vital springs of 
 human nature, and by consequence with history. 
 
 In ethics and religion, Plato took up the Socratic position, 
 systematised it, illustrated it, expanded it. He was a literary 
 artist, which Socrates was not; he was a systematiser, which 
 Socrates was not; he had poetic imaginations which we can 
 hardly attribute to Socrates. Yet the essential character of 
 Plato's philosophy was due to Socrates; the feeling that our 
 deepest interest is due to mankind, that the human soul and 
 character deserve our careful study beyond anything else in 
 the world, and that man has received his faculties and bodily 
 frame from a divine source and is dependent on the divine help 
 for his well-being ; all this is the root of the philosophy of Plato, 
 because it had been the root of the philosophy of Socrates. Even 
 the idealism of Plato sprung out of the germ which Socrates had 
 sown ; though the creative use which Plato makes of the cardinal 
 spiritual ideas, their function in the mind of God to create this 
 world which we see and feel, goes beyond anything which Socrates 
 conceived in this line, and belongs to Plato alone. 
 
 If Plato is sometimes rather tiresome in the minuteness and 
 length of his argumentation, he makes up for this by the splendour 
 of his delineation in the final result. How, for instance, is the 
 reader amazed and electrified by the parable with which the 
 seventh book of the Republic commences ; that parable, according 
 to which we of human kind are here on earth as in a dark cavernous 
 prison, seeing only shadows of truths and not the realities them- 
 selves, our true life being in the presence of the eternal Good, 
 from which we have been banished, but to which we may hope to 
 reascend! When we look into the meaning of this parable, we 
 perceive that it is just what Socrates in his Apology says in plain 
 prose, that all men (and he includes himself in the saying) were 
 ignorant of the things which most concerned them. But Plato 
 has given a new vividness to that saying ; he makes us feel the 
 tragic significance of the position of man upon the earth ; we 
 tremble as we realise it, and yet are partly relieved by seeing in 
 the distance those divine lights, which are our native possession, 
 if we can only attain to them.
 
 186 ANCIENT RELIGION: [CH. 
 
 All through the Republic Plato is on the strain to express the 
 whole of life, individual and social ; to express it as it should be, 
 if men had attained perfection ; to express it as divine, law-abiding 
 and happy. Unlike Socrates, he delights in pressing theories to 
 their conclusions. In so great an effort, carried out with such 
 precision of detail, and with an unequalled audacity of reasoning, 
 there were sure to be errors in the execution ; and errors there 
 are, and one of them is a very great error. Three I reckon in 
 all, in this masterpiece ; three errors that are more than incidental, 
 and seriously affect our estimate of the whole. The first error 
 is the absolute condemnation of poetry ; and we see in the Apology 
 that Socrates was not very favourable to poetry ; one must surely 
 see the Socratic influence here. But there is great tenderness 
 mixed with the condemnation ; and the error (whether of Plato 
 or of Socrates) was not likely to produce any diminution of the 
 poetic vein in the actual world. Outside the Apology and the 
 Republic, the brief but very charming dialogue of the Ion is well 
 worth reading on this question; the rhapsodist (or reciter of 
 poetry) is treated there with gentle satire, but with much respect. 
 The great amount of genuine human experience and human feeling 
 enshrined in poetry is of course its true and legitimate defence. 
 
 The second error in the Republic is evidently due to those 
 Pythagorean philosophers by whom Plato was in some respects 
 so much influenced. It is this. After the splendid passage at 
 the beginning of the seventh book, to which I have just been 
 referring, in which the need of mankind to ascend out of their 
 present darkness into the divine light is set forth, the question 
 is asked, What form of knowledge constitutes the first step in 
 our progress towards the heavenly light? and the answer is, 
 Arithmetic. That is surely a fantastic answer; but we have to 
 remember the transcendental aspect in which Pythagoras surveyed 
 the whole subject of number. 
 
 But the most extraordinary of all the errors in the Republic 
 is that in the fifth book, intermediate between the two already 
 mentioned. I need hardly say that I am referring to the scheme 
 by which the leading class in the State, the "Guardians," are to 
 have their wives in common, and their children in consequence 
 common also ; precaution being taken that no parent, either father 
 or mother, shall know which are his or her individual children ; it 
 being added that the inferior or unhealthy children are not to be 
 allowed to live. The whole socialistic scheme, of which the above 
 provision is a part, is beyond the scope of my present argument ;
 
 vn] THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 187 
 
 perhaps it may be said briefly that the spirit of it is superior to 
 the form of it. But with respect to the project of a community 
 of wives and children, so entirely does it trample on natural feeling, 
 that we can but echo the condemnation which has been expressed 
 by every writer who has had occasion to mention it, from Aristotle 1 
 downwards. How shall we pardon Plato for such a travesty of 
 morality? Let us pardon him by remembering first that, if he 
 had never been so audaciously wrong, it is not likely that he would 
 ever have been so brilliantly right as he was sometimes. But 
 still more may we pardon him if we remember that in his last and 
 most elaborate treatise, the Laws, his view of marriage differs 
 but little from the Christian view; in its main compass I mean, 
 apart from details; though even in the Laws the spiritual side 
 of wedded love is not valued highly enough. But the intrinsic 
 equality of the sexes is maintained by Plato in a manner rare 
 among ancient writers. In connexion with this whole subject 
 of sexual relations it should be said that both Socrates and Plato 
 reprobate the sexual connexion of men with men, not indeed 
 with the severity with which the Bible treats it, but distinctly. 
 (See Plato's Republic, in. p. 403 and Laws, vin. p. 841 ; and compare 
 various passages in the Memorabilia of Xenophon.) 
 
 The defects of Plato's two most elaborate treatises, the Republic 
 and the Laws (in which latter treatise Socrates does not appear) 
 are eminently the defects of a theorist. He was a theorist in quite 
 a different sense from that in which either Socrates or Aristotle 
 was so ; that is to say, he delighted in filling in his theories, and 
 rounding them off, so that they might appear complete and be 
 felt to be attractive by the reader. This procedure was highly 
 artistic but not scientific. It may at first sight appear as if Plato 
 were more of a physicist than Socrates, for the Timceus (in which 
 Socrates though present is not the chief speaker) is an attempt to 
 explain the origin of the physical universe. But the attempt, 
 whatever its value, is so distinctly not on the lines of observation 
 and experience through the senses, that we cannot recognise Plato 
 as in the very least a forerunner of the physical science of modern 
 times. 
 
 Whatever the faults of those two dialogues, the Republic and 
 the Laws, no reader of them can fail to be struck by the moral 
 
 1 Aristotle in the second book of the Politics speaks as if the whole scheme 
 of a community of wives and children had emanated from Socrates. This is 
 not at all likely, in the detail which the scheme reaches ; though we are not entitled 
 to say that Socrates may not have given a hint which was elaborated by Plato. But 
 Aristotle would seem to have avoided attacking his own master, Plato, with an energy 
 which he did not mind using towards Socrates.
 
 188 ANCIENT RELIGION: [OH. 
 
 and religious feeling, and by the deep interest in the welfare of 
 society, which those works display. Plato remains to us one of 
 the most ardent, independent, and benevolent of minds; and if 
 I may seem to have taken away somewhat from his absolute 
 originality, I have credited him in compensation with the virtue 
 of loyalty. He was truly loyal to Socrates ; he desired to make 
 the world know and honour Socrates ; though after the manner 
 of those times, he thought it permissible to give picturesque form 
 to his exposition, to expand hints into theories, and even at times 
 to attribute to Socrates theories which really belonged to the 
 Pythagorean school. 
 
 Of the personal career of Plato I have so far said nothing ; 
 and in truth we know but little of it. That after the death of 
 Socrates he at first avoided Athens ; that he travelled ; that 
 possibly (though this is uncertain) he had the misfortune to be 
 sold into slavery, but was redeemed from it by one who admired 
 and esteemed him ; these things are recorded, and may be true. 
 Certainly he afterwards lectured at Athens, in the groves of the 
 Academy, and in his old age was esteemed and honoured there. 
 He was, at any rate, not poor ; and in relation to this a repartee 
 of his to the cynic Diogenes may commend itself to us. Diogenes 
 with dirty sandals had entered the house of Plato and trod on 
 a new carpet there : "Thus," he said, "I trample on the pride of 
 Plato." "With greater pride, Diogenes," was Plato's answer. 
 One more important thing respecting Plato remains to be added ; 
 in the groves of the Academy he had Aristotle for his pupil. 
 
 With Aristotle we enter on a new era ; and as far as religion 
 is concerned, we are in a certain sense standing at a scene of death. 
 Not that the spirit of religion is dead; but the form of it, as 
 hitherto held among the Greeks, is held to be outside the range 
 of real belief. Though the author of the Magna Moralia (printed 
 among Aristotle's works) was very likely not Aristotle himself, 
 he knew the mind of Aristotle, and in his second book he utters this 
 remarkable sentiment; "It would be a strange thing if any one 
 said that he loved Zeus." Certainly we have got very far from 
 jEschylus and Sophocles in that sentiment ; from /Eschylus, who 
 speaks of Zeus as guiding mortals in the way of wisdom ; from 
 Sophocles, in whose play the dispirited Electra is bidden to commit 
 the pain of her anger to the superintending providence of Zeus! 
 But the mythology was in Aristotle's time quite rejected by the 
 philosophers ; and Zeus fell with it. Yet to Aristotle, God remains ; 
 "a living being, eternal and most excellent"; he tells us in the
 
 vn] THE HELLENIC QUEST AFTER TRUTH 189 
 
 Metaphysics (xi. 7) ; and he appears to say that the motions of 
 the universe take place through the passionate desire of all things 
 for this divine being. That is an exalted conception ; and exalted 
 too is Aristotle's description of happiness : "an energy of the soul 
 on the lines of perfect virtue, and in a perfect life." Scarcely 
 could these thoughts be excelled ; but Aristotle has not the warmth 
 of Socrates or of Plato, and in the region of religion he has not 
 their stimulating power. 
 
 What Aristotle is most remarkable for is his extraordinary 
 comprehensiveness, his resolution not to let any side of reality 
 pass by him unnoticed. It could not be expected that, when he 
 came to recording facts, he should not set down much on hearsay ; 
 nor could his analyses of thought always be perfect ; but he sweeps 
 from end to end of reality with a quiet determination in which no 
 man has ever equalled him. 
 
 After Aristotle, the thoughts of the learned in the Greek world 
 became specialised into different branches; but their range on 
 the whole did not diminish, and their value in many ways was 
 great. In the field of science there are illustrious examples; 
 Euclid and Archimedes in mathematics are household words; 
 in astronomy, Aristarchus of Samos anticipated by conjecture, 
 though he could not prove, the theory which Copernicus introduced 
 to the modern world, and which to-day is a commonplace truth ; 
 Hipparchus was the greatest, Ptolemy the most famous, astrono- 
 mical observer of ancient time. Rather later than the latest 
 of these, Galen was eminent in medicine. 
 
 Ethical philosophy is nearer to religion than science is ; and 
 more than Academics and Peripatetics (as is probable), more 
 than Epicureans (as is certain), the Stoics kept up a noble atmo- 
 sphere of resolution and of allegiance to duty in the world. But 
 our means of estimating Stoicism would be scanty if Greek 
 philosophers of this school had been the only teachers of it ; we 
 know it much more intimately through Roman writers ; and 
 Epictetus, though a Greek and writing in Greek, lived under the 
 Roman empire. It will be better therefore to reserve what 
 I have to say about Stoicism till the next chapter, of which Rome, 
 and the religion of Rome, will be the theme. 
 
 Let me finish this chapter by endeavouring to indicate briefly 
 what we owe to ancient Hellas. The extraordinary variety of 
 Greek achievements, both by external actions recorded in history, 
 and by works of literature and art, is the characteristic which 
 first strikes us ; but the real goodness of some eminent Greeks,
 
 190 ANCIENT RELIGION [CH. vn 
 
 and the intensity of moral and religious feeling in these select 
 persons, is a nobler possession still. Yet the noblest of the Greeks 
 did not establish such a foundation of divine goodness that all man- 
 kind might rest in this afterwards, as securely leading us into that 
 infinite unknown, which lies beyond the present life. The greatest 
 absolute achievement of the Hellenic race was the steadying and 
 clarifying of the intellect ; to appreciate how much they did for 
 1 mankind in this way, let any one compare the lucid narrative of 
 Thucydides with any Oriental writing whatever. It is true 
 that their greatest men, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, fell,through 
 lack of knowledge, into some intellectual errors ; but the more 
 than two thousand years experience which mankind have had 
 since their time gives us an unfair advantage over them, if the 
 rivalry be regarded as personal. 
 
 In conclusion, I hope that the pains which I have taken in 
 this chapter to vindicate for Socrates his true preeminence 
 among the Greeks, will not be regarded as pressed unduly ; it 
 is of no slight importance that the master should be recognised 
 as the master.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ANCIENT RELIGION : ROME 
 
 IN imperial Rome the ancient times had their end and limit, 
 their euthanasia, their passage through the abysses of death, out 
 of which the heavenly earth was to be born. Not that that new 
 birth lay in ancient Rome, or could have come about there : not 
 to Rome did the seed of eternity belong ; but to Rome belonged 
 the office of protecting that seed in its tender infancy. We are 
 accustomed to think of ancient Rome as an aggressive military , 
 power, conquering and subduing ; and that indeed she was ; but ) 
 that was not her most noble characteristic. Rome did also 
 stretch a canopy and a shelter over the nations ; and under that 
 shelter grew whatever of spiritual life our western world possessed ; j 
 and though when the religion of Christ was born, in which the 
 capacity of eternity lay, Rome would not endure the seeming 
 rivalry of that spiritual government, and made fitful and sometimes 
 severe war upon it, yet the general protection had in it more 
 service than the occasional hostility had danger. 
 
 How did this power of ancient Rome come about? in what 
 qualities was its protective influence born ? what were its demerits, 
 its corruptions? for its great merits had certainly their counter- 
 balance in the way of evil done. Let me, before beginning to 
 answer these questions, acknowledge the debt I owe to a recent 
 work, Mr Warde Fowler's Religious Experience of the Roman 
 People. It is a work in which the foundations of a great subject 
 are largely and accurately laid; nor could I have written the 
 present chapter without its help. 
 
 When Livy tells us that it is "sufficiently certain" (satis 
 constat) that JSneas with his Trojans came to Italy, and that 
 ^Eneas became the ancestor of a dynasty from which Romulus, 
 the famous founder of Rome, was descended ; are we to attribute 
 any value at all to so confident an assertion? To debate such 
 a question is like trying to read a book when the twilight of dawn
 
 192 ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME [CH. 
 
 has only just begun ; so let us leave it undebated, and pass on. 
 In any case, the founders of Rome came of a stock which was 
 predominantly Latin ; it may be added, predominantly agricultural 
 in their type of life and character : yet a warlike prescience must 
 also have been in these founders when they seized on this situation 
 by the side of the principal river of middle Italy for their settled 
 abode. It is probable that they had an eye to defence rather 
 than to commerce ; but the river was a means of commerce also, 
 and Rome began early to have wider intercourse with the outer 
 world than Alba Longa, out of which Romulus is said to have 
 come, could possibly have enjoyed. 
 
 Whatever be true, whatever untrue, of those picturesque 
 stories which tell us of the early kings of ancient Rome, the 
 important points to remember about the Romans of that period 
 are, first, that they had a character full of warlike grit; next, 
 that they were religious. Whence came their religion ? Obviously 
 there are analogies in it to the Greek religion (as there are in the 
 Latin language to the Greek language) ; but we have reason to 
 say also that much in it was derived from the Etruscans (who 
 themselves were indebted to the Greeks) ; and finally there were 
 original elements, some valuable and some merely superstitious. 
 The admixture of superstition in primitive religions is a matter 
 of course; "the effective desire to be in right relation with the 
 Power manifesting itself in the universe" (so runs the definition 
 of religion quoted by Mr Warde Fowler from an American author) 
 cannot be pure as long as the conception of that Power is imperfect. 
 These ancient Romans trembled at the unknown forest and 
 mountain for reasons which excite our smile to-day : they devised 
 ceremonies and sacrifices that had no rational ground ; they 
 imposed disabilities adverse to personal liberty. But a more 
 sane and worthy view was not wanting to them also. Thus they 
 valued the family, and all pertaining to the family the household, 
 the glowing hearth, the store of necessary provisions, the land out 
 of whose bosom the sustenance of life came. Not untruly were 
 Divine Powers held to be interested in these primary needs of 
 men : and if the Romans held the Penates, and the Lares, and 
 Vesta, to be deities independent and separate, this was not, as 
 a first sketch of immature religion, a very harmful error. Not 
 untruly also was the discipline of the family regarded as under the 
 sanction of Divine Powers: and if the rule of the paterfamilias 
 sometimes degenerated into tyranny, yet in the more normal 
 affairs of daily life there was strength in his authority. When the
 
 vm] ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME 193 
 
 Romans called their great council of state not merely the council of 
 old men (senatus), but also the Fathers (patres), this was a tribute 
 to the family bond the significance of which we cannot mistake. 
 
 Polytheists the Romans were, and this was not unnatural: 
 nor can we dignify their worship of Janus, of Diana, of Minerva, 
 with any profound moral meaning; nor even their worship of 
 Mars, though he may seem a deity specially Roman, and though 
 the worship of this wild superhuman being may really have 
 administered to the warlike courage of the people who conceived 
 themselves akin to him. But a nobler worship, and one which 
 cannot be left unnoticed, was that of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. 
 Jupiter, like the Greek Zeus (the names are really identical) is the 
 God of heaven ; and something of monotheism, something of infinite 
 power, is implied in such a name. We have reason to say that 
 the worship of Jupiter was widely spread in Italy ; but when those 
 other exalted titles, Optimus Maximus ("Best and Greatest"), 
 were added to the name, a more universal moral government of 
 the world was implied in the Deity so conceived than is commonly 
 recognised among primitive peoples. It is true that in the temple 
 of Jupiter Capitolinus (where Jupiter was honoured as " Best and 
 Greatest") Juno also and Minerva were worshipped; but the 
 unquestioned precedence belonged to Jupiter. Now this great 
 temple was begun by the first of those kings of Rome whose 
 lineage was confessedly from Etruria, Tarquinius Priscus ; it 
 was continued by his successors; and it was finally dedicated, 
 after the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus and the establishment 
 of the republic, by the consul Horatius, in the year 509 B.C. But 
 was the title "Best and Greatest" as applied to Jupiter due to 
 the original thought of the Etruscan kings of Rome, or was it the 
 expression of the fervid gratitude of the Roman people after they 
 had expelled their tyrants? We cannot tell; but to the kings 
 of Etruscan origin some of the merit of building it was certainly 
 due ; and if any one doubted the real existence of those kings, 
 it ought to go some way towards removing these doubts when we 
 learn that the temple "was built in the Etruscan style, that its 
 foundations were of Etruscan masonry 1 ." 
 
 Where an alleged historical fact serves to explain the lines of 
 historical development, this is considerable reason for holding 
 that historical fact to be true : and we have this special reason 
 for believing the historical reality of that king of Rome who came 
 after Tarquinius Priscus (and who himself also seems to have been 
 
 1 Warde Fowler, Roman Religious Experience, p. 237. 
 M. D. A. 13
 
 194 ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME [CH. 
 
 an Etruscan 1 ) namely Servius Tullius, that to him is attributed 
 the authorship of that assembly of citizens, which must have had 
 some individual author, which was called the comitia centuriata. 
 It would not be correct to call the comitia centuriata a parliament, 
 for the purpose of it was not to speak, but to vote, though informal 
 public speaking was natural, and could not be prevented, in 
 connexion with such voting ; but even though not a parliament, 
 the appointment of this assembly was one of the most important 
 facts in all Roman history', and Servius Tullius was one of the 
 truest benefactors of his country that ever lived. The comitia 
 centuriata must not indeed be thought of as a democratic assembly. 
 It was military in the way in which the voters were drawn up 
 and the votes counted (the "century" being a well-known military 
 division) ; and not only so, but the classes of centuries were so 
 distributed, and the centuries were so constituted, that if the 
 wealthier citizens were agreed upon any measure (or against any 
 measure), they carried the day against any combination of the 
 poorer citizens ; and as the wealthier citizens voted first, it 
 generally happened that the poorer citizens were not called upon 
 to vote at all. Popular rights, as far as this assembly was con- 
 cerned, were thus merely in their beginnings ; but yet they were 
 in their beginnings and were not an absolute nullity; that the 
 whole people should ever be called upon to vote at all was in 
 the nature of a concession by the rich to the poor. Moreover, 
 though the comitia centuriata had no impress of democracy about 
 it, there was in it a reminder of the possibility of an assembly 
 that should have such an impress. Nor ought the advantage 
 to be overlooked that a slow development of liberty is likely to 
 be more permanent (as arousing fewer antagonisms) than a quick 
 development. 
 
 Servius Tullius was good and wise ; his successor, if we 
 believe the traditional narrative (and I think we may believe 
 the main features of it) was wicked and, though not a fool, was 
 far from being wise. Tarquinius Superbus (or the "Proud") 
 is said to have been the murderer of Servius Tullius ; and he 
 established a cruel despotism at Rome. Then for his misdeeds 
 he was driven out (for the Romans were not powerless) and the 
 republic was established ; two consuls, elected annually, took the 
 place of the king, and during their year of office wielded the same 
 power which the king had wielded. 
 
 But king Tarquin sought the help of king Porsena, an Etruscan 
 
 1 Warcle Fowler, pp. 237, 245.
 
 vm] ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME 195 
 
 king whose capital was Clusium in Etruria; and king Porsena 
 came to his help with a great army, and Rome was obliged to 
 surrender. Tarquin might thus have been restored, had not 
 Porsena, elated with his victory, pressed on to the conquest of 
 all the Latin cities. The Greeks from Cumae came to the aid of 
 the Latins, and Porsena was badly defeated by them, and was 
 henceforth compelled to confine his dominion to the Etruscan 
 side of the river Tiber. Thus, though the Romans lost the territory 
 which they had previously possessed on the Etruscan side of the 
 Tiber, they saved that much more valuable possession their 
 freedom. Moreover, though the Romans, in their hour of defeat, 
 had bound 1 themselves to Porsena not to use iron for any except 
 agricultural purposes, it is not to be supposed that they regarded 
 this engagement as binding on them, when Porsena was no longer 
 able to enforce it. 
 
 With this epoch the real heart of Roman history begins. 
 Free the Romans were after the retreat of Porsena, but feeble ; 
 in 220 years, after the termination of the third Samnite war, 
 they had become the strongest power in Italy; and it needed 
 but another century to prove their superiority in arms over every 
 country that bordered on the Mediterranean Sea. By virtue of 
 what qualities, and through what actions, did they achieve so 
 wonderful an advance? 
 
 There was a disposition among the Romans themselves to 
 attribute their victorious progress to the religious disposition of 
 their race in the earlier stages of their history. Thus Cicero told 
 the senate 2 : 
 
 Let us cherish what self-love we like, Conscript Fathers, yet we are 
 not more numerous than the Spaniards, nor more muscular than the Gauls, 
 nor more clever than the Carthaginians, nor more artistic than the Greeks, 
 nor better endowed with homely natural feeling than the Italians themselves 
 and specially the Latins ; but it is in piety and religious duty and in this 
 single piece of wisdom, that we have understood all things to be ruled and 
 governed by the will of the immortal gods, this it is in which we have 
 surpassed all races and all nations. 
 
 Such a boast, though not without some portion of truth, cannot 
 
 be accepted by us in its entirety. Never, not even in the years 
 
 of the growing epublic, had the citizens of Rome so deep a sense 
 
 K of the connexion of religion with the moral duties of men as had 
 
 1 Pliny xxxiv. 14. This passage, together with Tacitus, Hist. m. 72, disproves 
 Livy's romantic story of the defence of the bridge by Horatius Codes. For the defeat 
 of Porsena by the Latins and Greeks, see Dionysius of Halicarnassus v. 36 and vn. 21 1 . 
 I take these references from Arnold's History of Rome, vol. I. pp. 127-8. 
 
 2 De Harusp. resp. 19. 
 
 132
 
 196 ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME [CH. 
 
 the Hebrew prophets or even some of the Greek philosophers and 
 poets. The effective cause of the Roman conquest of the western 
 world was more complex, and not so pure, as Cicero represents it 
 in the remarkable passage which I have just quoted from him. 
 
 It will be the best preliminary to showing what the actual 
 state of the case was, if I quote from Cicero another passage, which 
 apparently says the same thing as the passage already quoted, 
 but says it with a difference. 
 
 "If we wish to compare ourselves with foreign nations," he says, "in 
 other matters we shall be found not more than equal to them, or perhaps 
 even inferior ; but in religion, that is, in worship of the gods, we are much 
 superior to them." Cicero, De Naturd Deorum, II. 8. 
 
 "In worship of the gods," Cicero says, the Romans surpassed 
 other nations ; but this is not the same as surpassing other nations 
 in the religious spirit, which is what he had said in the previous 
 passage. It is not the same, because worship may be external 
 
 . only ; and as a matter of fact this was the sad and serious defect 
 of the religion of ancient Rome, that as time went on it became 
 more and more external, more and more a collection of forms and 
 ceremonies, less and less an inspiring motive towards noble and 
 philanthropic acts. This decay was taking place during the whole 
 
 1 period of three centuries which separated the beginning of the 
 republic from the times of Hannibal, or from the year 510 B.C. 
 to the year 202 B.C., when Hannibal was overthrown. A certain 
 recovery took place later on through that portion of the religious 
 spirit which had been rescued by Greek philosophy, and which 
 was absorbed eagerly by the highest Roman minds of the second 
 and first centuries before Christ, and for long afterwards. But 
 the religious spirit inherent in Greek philosophy never penetrated 
 into the great mass of men ; and I need not say that the Roman 
 dominance over the world had not its origin in any inspiration 
 drawn from that source. 
 
 Let me return to primitive Rome, to the times of the early 
 republic, and endeavour to show in the broad sequence of the 
 ensuing centuries what was the cause of the victorious career 
 of Rome. Religion was partly the cause, it is true; for religion 
 kept the Romans from irredeemable follies, and curbed the arro- 
 gance of individual men. But religion in them became associated 
 with another feeling, became almost absorbed into another feeling, 
 which though honourable in itself was not religious, and was 
 capable of working injury to other nations ; the love of Rome 
 as Rome. Of such a patriotic feeling the Romans were no unique
 
 vm] ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME 197 
 
 example in antiquity; but they were unique in the degree in 
 which they avoided its dangers; they did not avoid all its 
 dangers, but they avoided those which might have wrecked them 
 palpably and utterly. We shall see this, if we compare the history 
 of Rome with the history of two other famous cities, Jerusalem and 
 Athens. All three cities, Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem, entered 
 upon the most important phase of their respective histories at 
 approximately the same time, that is towards the close of the 
 sixth century before Christ; and perhaps the most burning and 
 enthusiastic love was that which the Jews felt for Jerusalem. 
 But the legislation of Ezra, when Jerusalem had been finally 
 reestablished, narrowed the Jewish mind under the pretext that 
 this narrowness was a religious duty; and the noble qualities 
 of the Jews could not in the end preserve the city of their love 
 from conquest, or themselves from dispersion into the distant 
 corners of the earth. The Athenians were strangely unbalanced, 
 and attended far too little to the internal organisation of their 
 city and of themselves as its citizens ; nor had they any flexibility 
 as far as their citizenship was concerned ; they drew in no fresh 
 blood from outside. Hence they were incapable of infusing 
 vigour into the Greek race as a whole ; they themselves fell into 
 inanition, though their achievements are in many respects a posses- 
 sion to the world for ever. But the Romans, with all their love 
 for Rome, had the good sense to make their citizenship an expand- 
 ing citizenship ; and it was the combination of these two qualities, 
 their devotion to their own city, and yet their willingness to expand 
 their citizenship, which was the chief cause of their conquering 
 career. It may be asked, whether the motive which I ascribe 
 to them is a religious motive? It was not a simply religious 
 motive, and it had many defects from the point of view of true 
 religion ; but there was much faithfulness in it and much generosity, 
 and these are qualities which are fostered even by an imperfect 
 religion, provided it be sincere ; and the native Roman religion 
 had for a long time great sincerity. 
 
 Let me illustrate the guiding principle which I have just 
 mentioned by going through some of the details of Roman history. 
 Even under the early kings, if tradition in any degree speaks 
 truth, Sabines and Latins and Etruscans were received as citizens 
 into the Roman city on equal terms with the original inhabitants ; 
 courage and capacity gave a certain claim to equal rights, though 
 consanguinity were absent. But the strain and struggle which 
 had to be undergone before it could be determined that this
 
 198 ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME [CH. 
 
 expanding citizenship should be a principle of Roman development, 
 took place after the kings had been driven out. The Romans 
 after that crisis had retained their liberty, but poverty had come 
 along with it ; they had suffered a reduction in power, in wealth ; 
 and the poorest of them were overburdened with debts. Now 
 these poorest of the Romans, though not absolutely and under 
 all circumstances deprived of a vote in the comitia centuriata, 
 were not reckoned as part of the "populus," the Roman people; 
 they were "plebs," plebeians; and the Roman aristocracy did 
 not consider themselves bound to the plebeians by those considera- 
 tions of humanity which they would have recognised as due to 
 their equals. Hence a plebeian who could not pay his debts 
 might be sold for a slave or might be forced to undergo any, even 
 the extremest, cruelty. Fifteen years after the kings had been 
 driven out, the misery of the plebeians reached a point which, 
 to brave men, became unendurable. Their numbers were probably 
 not inferior to the numbers of their oppressors, the patricians ; 
 but in military force they must have been greatly inferior; and 
 of armed resistance they never thought. Then there flashed 
 upon them a thought, a resolution, which had no doubt some 
 first begetter, but which was so congenial to them all, that no 
 definite leadership was needed in the execution of it ; to abandon 
 that city which had not acknowledged them as her true children, 
 and to build a new city for themselves where they might live 
 securely. So they left Rome and marched to the river Anio, 
 which flows into the Tiber a few miles above Rome ; they crossed 
 the Anio, and established themselves on a hill which thenceforward 
 was called the "Mons Sacer," or Sacred Mount, from a remem- 
 brance of the great compact that was made there. 
 
 Next, we read (and what we read certainly contains some 
 portion of truth) that the patricians, dismayed at this weakening 
 of their city by the secession of so large a portion of its population, 
 determined among themselves that the case was not one for 
 compelling, but rather for persuading (if possible) the plebeians 
 to return ; and they sent an embassy to the plebeians. The 
 spokesman of this embassy, Menenius Agrippa, was a man favour- 
 ably regarded by the plebeians, and an orator of some power. He, 
 it is said, addressed the plebeians with the following fable which, 
 well known though it is, it may be permissible to quote here : 
 
 Once upon a time the members of the body were not, as now, har- 
 monious, but each severally had his own thought and his own way of 
 expressing it; then were the remaining parts of the body indignant with
 
 vm] ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME 199 
 
 the belly, which, they said, was nourished by their care, labour, and service ; 
 the belly, at rest in the middle place, had nothing to do but to enjoy the 
 pleasures accorded to it. Therefore they entered into an agreement, 
 that the hand should not bring food to the mouth, neither should the 
 mouth accept the food when given, neither should the teeth crush it. 
 Desiring, in this angry temper, to subdue the belly by hunger, the members 
 themselves and the whole body came to the verge of dissolution. Thus 
 was it made plain, that the belly had no indolent office ; that it contributed 
 to nourishment as much as it received nourishment ; seeing that it dispersed 
 into all the limbs of the body that by which we live and grow, namely the 
 blood, apportioned equally into all the veins with ripened energy after we 
 have eaten food. Livy n. 32. 
 
 The plebeians, we read, were persuaded, and returned to Rome ; 
 but not without having secured from the patricians a concession 
 of the highest importance ; namely, that two tribunes should be 
 appointed, themselves plebeians, to whose charge the security of 
 the plebeians should be entrusted. The persons of the tribunes 
 were declared to be sacred and inviolable ; and should they have 
 cognisance of wrong done to any plebeian, either in respect of 
 undue pressure for the payment of his debts or in respect of the 
 exactment of military service from him, very large powers were 
 given them for remedying the wrong. Indeed these plebeian 
 tribunes had the power also of protecting patricians, and sometimes 
 used that power. I need not set forth in detail all the means 
 assigned to the tribunes for vindicating their authority; nor 
 need I enter into the questions concerning the manner of their 
 election, or the number of them in the early years after their 
 first appointment. In less than fifty years after the secession of 
 the plebeians to the Sacred Mount we find that the number of the 
 tribunes of the plebs was ten, and this number was never departed 
 from in the later history. 
 
 But what cannot be left untold (however familiar it be to the 
 reader of Roman history) is that right which became finally (even 
 if not from the first) the distinctive power of the tribunes of the 
 plebs, the right possessed by each one of them individually 
 of stopping any piece of the State machinery (or the whole, it 
 would seem) by his single prohibitory voice. A conspicuous 
 instance of the exercise of this power is recorded in the 35th chapter 
 of the sixth book of Livy. Two of the tribunes of the plebs had 
 brought forward bills of a kind greatly adverse to the peculiar 
 prerogatives of the patricians, and these bills, in the natural 
 course of things, would have been brought before the comitia 
 for decision. But the patricians tried to bar these bills from the 
 outset, so that they should not even be brought before the comitia.
 
 200 ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME [CH. 
 
 Accordingly they induced some of the tribunes of the plebs, who 
 happened to be favourable to the patricians, to interpose their 
 "veto" (possibly these tribunes were clients of some of the patri- 
 cians) ; the effect they desired was produced ; the bills were barred. 
 But Sextius, one of the two tribunes who were promoting the 
 bills, turned round upon the patricians and said: "Very well, 
 Fathers of the State ; you are greatly pleased with our colleagues' 
 veto ; see how you will like ours." And he prohibited all comitia 
 from being held, in which patrician magistrates could be elected. 
 And Livy tells us (what is rather hard to believe) that for five 
 years there was an entire absence of the higher magistrates in 
 Rome. 
 
 Whether the above narrative be exactly true or not, there is 
 no doubt that things like it took place : and well may Mommsen 1 
 say: 
 
 We have an evidence of the strong civic spirit of the people in the 
 fact, not that it embraced such a constitution, but that it endured it, and 
 that the community, notwithstanding the most vehement convulsions, 
 held together. 
 
 Strange indeed it is that any people should have enacted 
 that the whole action of the State was to be frozen into inertness, 
 if some lowborn official by his mere single word resolved that so 
 it should be ! But it is a signal proof of the superiority of the 
 moral temper to intellectual perspicacity in the affairs of men 
 that the citizens of Rome did, for nearly three centuries after the 
 establishment of the tribunes of the plebs, actually grow in mutual 
 harmony and in effective force. The most unlikely measures 
 may prove salutary, if a salutary will is behind them. 
 
 Is it not plain whatever be the uncertainty as to the details 
 of these ancient records, and whatever may have been the barbarity 
 and cruelty of individual Romans that the Roman people were 
 flexible and not rigid in their conception of the meaning of a State, 
 flexible and not rigid in their actual practice of determining 
 who were their fellow-citizens? The famous fable of Mencnius 
 Agrippa does not for a moment give up the principle that the 
 aristocracy arc the rightful rulers of a State; that principle is 
 involved in the terms of it ; but it does most emphatically recognise 
 that the plebeians are fellow-citizens. We may be sure that it 
 was not all the patricians who would gladly have admitted this; 
 but this was the dominant feeling of the Roman people in that 
 age, and it was a feeling that had its parallels in their treatment 
 
 1 History of Rome, Book II. ch. 2.
 
 vin] ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME 201 
 
 of aliens in the after history. Provided the majesty of Rome was 
 secure (but that indeed was an essential condition) the Romans 
 were quite willing to admit others to share in their citizenship. 
 
 Nor was it only in their general conception of citizenship, but 
 also in their practice on many matters which did not affect principle 
 directly (though they could not help doing so indirectly), that the 
 Romans showed a flexibility, an equability of mind, rare among 
 ancient peoples. We read in Livy (n. 55, 56) that when the 
 plebeian Volero had been within an ace of being scourged by the 
 order of the consuls, and had only set himself free by his uncommon 
 strength, having been after this elected tribune of the plebs, he 
 sought no compensation for his personal wrongs, but brought in 
 a bill that plebeian magistrates should henceforth be elected in 
 the comitia tributa 1 (a form of public assembly which did not 
 exclude the patricians, but in which they had not the predominance 
 which they had in the comitia centuriata). And this bill was 
 actually carried, and became law, a year later ; not, it is true, 
 without great danger of civil strife, perhaps even of civil war ; but 
 both on the side of the plebeians, and on the side of the patricians, 
 there were mitigating influences at work, by which the fiercer 
 passions were subdued. 
 
 This is no isolated instance in Roman history; as we go on 
 from decade to decade, from century to century, we perceive 
 that the people of Rome were not narrow tempered ; they wished 
 to associate with their State, and on terms not wholly unequal, 
 all those on whose loyalty and friendliness they could rely. It is 
 true that the degree in which they allowed those various rights 
 which constituted citizenship to be possessed by the inhabitants 
 of towns in Latium and other parts of Italy was very different 
 in different cases ; but just as deliberate forethought, and not 
 passion, was the agency whereby patricians and plebeians were 
 finally reconciled at Rome, and became one people, so it was 
 deliberate forethought, and not passion, by which the Romans 
 gradually united to themselves the towns and the peoples in other 
 parts of Italy. The complexity of the various systems of civic 
 rights which prevailed in Italy, wherever Rome was dominant, 
 was great, and far beyond any possibility of being described in 
 the present chapter; but there was no rigidity in the Roman 
 
 1 No account has reached us how the particular form of assembly called the comitia 
 tributa came into existence. The actual assembling by tribes would be easier than 
 the assembling by centuries; and this would be the first motive for it (probably); 
 but it would soon be felt to favour the plebs.
 
 202 ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME [CH. 
 
 procedure ; and thus it came to pass that, in the end, all Italians 
 looked with pride to Rome, as the mother-city of the world. 
 
 Deep, then, in the heart of the Roman people lay those qualities 
 of moderation and sane judgment which made of Rome the typical 
 ruling city, by desert as well as in fact, of all ancient times ; but 
 it is not to be concealed that these qualities received a point, 
 a penetrating force, through another motive, less praiseworthy, 
 less accordant with a truly divine spirit. The Romans desired 
 to be just ; but they were resolved that, if by any action of their 
 own they could possibly secure it, Rome should be chief above 
 all her rivals. It may perhaps be said that the wish to be chief 
 was natural. It was so; but to make it a motive of the first 
 rank brought dangerous temptations with it. Rome gave way 
 to these temptations just as Athens had given way to them ; but 
 Athens, in giving way to them, had incurred signal defeat and 
 disaster; the forethought, the calm judgment, of the Romans 
 saved them from such a calamity as this. But none the less was 
 I the relentless determination of the Romans, not to endure a rival 
 dominion to their own, a calamity to the world at large ; the fact 
 that this jealous sentiment was so common in ancient times did 
 ) not in the least mitigate the disastrous nature of its consequences. 
 Rivals whom Rome really feared, when once they had been 
 subdued, were destroyed utterly. The first of such rivals was 
 the great Etruscan city of Veii ; this, after uneasy relations of 
 alternate war and peace had existed for nearly ninety years, the 
 Romans captured in 393 B.C., and all the inhabitants who were 
 not slain in the assault were sold for slaves. The cities of Latium 
 had a population too nearly akin to the Romans in blood, and too 
 much associated with them by past alliances, for such an inter- 
 necine conflict to be probable in their case. But when, in the 
 year 339 B.C., the Latin cities proposed to unite with Rome so 
 as to make a single country of which Rome was to be the capital, 
 the Latin cities to have collectively an equal voting power with 
 the single city of Rome, and also to elect one out of the two consuls, 
 who were to be the chief officers of the united State, the Romans 
 took such offence at the proposal (which it must be admitted had 
 been presented in rather a discourteous manner 1 ) that they 
 immediately joined forces with the Samnites, who were then at 
 war with the Latin cities. With the help of the Samnites, the 
 Romans subdued the Latins, and forced them to accept a treaty 
 which made them distinctly and absolutely subordinate to Rome. 
 
 1 Livy vin. 5.
 
 vni] ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME 203 
 
 Next came the turn of the Samnites. It is probable that the 
 Samnites, one of the bravest and most warlike peoples in Italy, 
 were not altogether unwilling to try conclusions with the Romans ; 
 but still the provocation came on the whole from the Roman side ; 
 and if we may judge by the chivalrous forbearance of the Samnites 
 after they had had the Roman army at their mercy in the pass of 
 Caudium, that people did really desire an honourable peace as the 
 end of the conflict. But the Romans would have no peace on 
 terms of equality; victorious they must be, or they would not 
 end the war. They resumed it in spite of the oaths of their own 
 consuls to promote peace, and did not cease till the power of the 
 Samnites was utterly broken. That unfortunate people retained 
 something of their pristine vigour for two centuries afterwards ; 
 and then what remained of them was destroyed by one of the 
 fiercest tyrants whom republican Rome produced, Sulla. 
 
 Neither was it without some treachery on their own part that 
 
 ( the Romans engaged in their first war with Carthage, in 264 B.C. ; 
 
 ' and though their deadly struggle with Hannibal, which began in 
 
 \ 218 B.C., was forced on them by that great warrior, and the Romans 
 deserve our esteem both in the course of that war and in the result 
 of it, yet in the third Punic war, the assault on Carthage came 
 wholly and absolutely from the Roman side, and was prompted 
 by no just cause, but simply by the bitter jealousy and suspicion 
 which the Romans felt towards a foe who had once been so strong. 
 Their destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C. must be reckoned as 
 
 ( one of their greatest national sins. Nor was the destruction of 
 Numantia, in the year 124 B.C., an act at all less condemnable ; 
 the courage of the people of Numantia, not any fault of which 
 they had been guilty, was the cause which made the Romans 
 wipe them out from among the peoples of the earth. No other 
 formal act of the Roman republic equalled these which I have just 
 named in wickedness ; but the tyranny which made the Jews 
 revolt, and which led to their overthrow by Titus in the year 70A.D., 
 had its first motive in the resentment of the Romans at any people 
 holding their heads so high as the Jews did, and esteeming them- 
 selves the elect of the earth. That was a motive which marks 
 the Romans as tyrannous. 
 
 In the brief sketch of the Roman character which I have 
 just been giving, I have left unmentioned some of the most 
 important single points of their history; for instance, the first 
 beginnings of their written law, as made by their decemvirs in 
 the fifth century before Christ; nor have I been able to narrate
 
 204 ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME [OH. 
 
 the detailed steps by which the plebeians obtained equality with 
 the patricians, which embraced such different points as the con- 
 cession of intermarriage with the patricians, a knowledge of the 
 religious festivals on which business might not be transacted, 
 and the enlargement of the powers of the comitia tributa, in which 
 the plebeians had the greatest influence. Nor have I mentioned 
 some of the most important points of the external history of Rome ; 
 that great catastrophe, the capture and burning of Rome by the 
 Gauls, at the beginning of the fourth century before Christ; or 
 the whole story of the growth of Roman power in Greece and in 
 the east, which, though not without some features of arrogance, 
 had much in it that was truly creditable. 
 
 But I have desired to show clearly, before everything else, 
 the moral type of the Roman character ; its sanity, its moderation, 
 its willingness to listen to equitable reasonings, in all the ordinary 
 affairs of men ; its flexibility and expansiveness ; and withal that 
 other element, which cannot be reckoned as wholly bad, and which 
 gave so much strength and definiteness to Roman action, and 
 which yet was so full of danger the central resolve that Rome 
 should never be content with any but the first place among the 
 powers of the earth. We must say that such a resolve, when 
 pressed to the extreme limit, was bad ; and bad, because inhuman ; 
 and thus, while the Romans were outwardly the most successful 
 nation of the western world, and did in a certain sense solve the 
 question how a single city could rule over great continents with 
 undisputed sway, this success was not accomplished without 
 the destruction of much that was truly valuable, without a weaken- 
 ing of moral fibre and of intelligent purpose among those who 
 came under the rule of Rome. 
 
 It will be some evidence on the important question, how far 
 religion was a true cause of the nobler side of that character 
 which I have just depicted, if I quote the testimony of the Greek 
 historian Polybius. The birth of Polybius lay just before the 
 close of the second Punic war, at the period when Roman endurance 
 and discipline had surmounted the most terrible strain to which 
 it was ever exposed, and before the corrupting influences of eastern 
 luxury had begun to flow in upon the conquerors. Polybius 
 was a friend of some of the noblest Romans, notably of the younger 
 Scipio, and of the father of that Scipio, ^milius Paulus. He 
 thus saw the Romans (at any rate in all his youthful days) from 
 their best side; and the worst development of their faults came 
 in the main afterwards ; but as giving the honourable causes
 
 vni] ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME 205 
 
 of the Roman success, the following passage is very notice- 
 able: 
 
 The most important difference for the better which the Roman common- 
 wealth appears to me to display is in their religious beliefs. For I con- 
 ceive that what in other nations is looked upon as a reproach, I mean 
 a scrupulous fear of the gods, is the very thing which keeps the Roman 
 commonwealth together. To such an extraordinary height is this carried 
 among them, both in public and private business, that nothing could 
 exceed it. Many people might think this unaccountable; but in my 
 opinion their object is to use it as a check upon the common people. If it 
 were possible to form a State wholly of philosophers, such a custom would 
 perhaps be unnecessary. But seeing that every multitude is fickle, and 
 full of lawless desires, unreasoning anger, and violent passion, the only 
 resource is to keep them in check by mysterious terrors and scenic effects 
 of this sort. Wherefore, to my mind, the ancients were not acting without 
 purpose or at random, when they brought in among the vulgar those 
 opinions about the gods, and the belief in the punishments in Hades; 
 much rather do I think that men nowadays are acting rashly and foolishly 
 in rejecting them. This is the reason why> apart from anything else, Greek 
 statesmen, if entrusted with a single talent, though protected by ten 
 checking clerks, as many seals, and twice as many witnesses, yet cannot 
 be induced to keep faith : whereas among the Romans, in their magistracies 
 and embassies, men have the handling of a great amount of money, and 
 yet from pure respect to their oath keep their faith intact. And, again, 
 in other nations it is a rare thing to find a man who keeps his hands out of 
 the public purse, and is entirely pure in such matters: but among the 
 Romans it is a rare thing to detect a man in the act of committing such 
 a crime 1 . 
 
 It will be seen that Polybius, in spite of his strong conviction 
 that the Roman religious belief was the cause of that trustworthi- 
 ness and honesty which he discerned in the Roman character, 
 yet cannot bring himself to share that belief; he regards it as 
 a delusion, though a beneficent delusion. It is strange that it 
 never occurred to him (what certainly had occurred to Socrates 
 and Plato) that a belief which in its actual form is imaginative 
 and delusive may yet have an underlying substance of truth, and 
 that it is this kernel of truth which makes it beneficent. But the 
 whole Greek and Roman mythological system had been deeply dis- 
 credited in the eyes of all thinking persons in the time of Polybius, 
 and the doctrine of a future life suffered in this general disesteem. 
 It was impossible to replace it as it had been, and before the end 
 of the second century before Christ, scepticism had invaded the 
 Romans also, and the Roman character no longer remained what 
 it had been a century earlier. Some compensation lay in the noble 
 
 1 Polybius vi. 56 (translation by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh).
 
 206 ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME [CH. 
 
 Greek philosophy, which now diffused itself among the Romans 
 also; but this did not reach the mass of men. 
 
 The great expansion of Roman power which took place in the 
 second century before Christ produced one calamitous sequence, 
 of no new kind, but new in the actual form which it took. The 
 inequality between patricians and plebeians, as such, had been 
 brought to its close by the Lex Hortensia 1 in the year 287 B.C. 
 But by that time the distinction between patricians and plebeians 
 no longer meant, as at first, the distinction between the rich and 
 the poor. Plebeians were becoming wealthy ; on the other hand, 
 Rome (as years went on) began to be the resort of needy immi- 
 grants from other parts of Italy, or even from beyond Italy, who 
 had acquired no rights of citizenship, or perhaps imperfect rights 
 of citizenship, so that they had no vote in the comitia, and therefore 
 no political influence. Rome, even in the second century, was 
 beginning to be that "colluvies omnium gentium," that receptacle 
 of men, the greater part of whom were an unorganised multitude, 
 which it became more completely afterwards. 
 
 How great the evil, and how great the danger, of such a con- 
 dition, will be obvious. In earlier times relief had come to the 
 poorer citizens of Rome by their being sent out as colonists into 
 those territories of Italy which Rome had won by the sword; 
 and though the Italians may have suffered, Rome preserved its 
 well-being and its capacity for making further conquests. More- 
 over, in order that the poor might really benefit in this way, laws 
 were passed limiting the amount of public land (i.e. of land won 
 by the whole state) which any single individual might possess : 
 500 jugera (rather more than 300 acres or nearly half a square 
 mile) was the maximum allowed. It is the opinion of Arnold 
 (and it seems a reasonable one) that till the latter part of the third 
 century before Christ, the population of Rome did in this way 
 maintain true progress in general welfare. But then came the 
 terrible war with Hannibal ; and it was all that Rome could do, 
 by the valour of her sons and by the help of the outposts she had 
 established all over Italy, to stand against that furious tempest. 
 And though Rome was victorious, victory itself produced a change 
 in her inmost character, which was not for good. Her arms 
 carried the Roman name and the Roman power to the east and 
 to the west, over great tracts of fertile country in Europe, Asia, 
 
 1 The precise effect of this law is disputed ; I eannot but think that the true meaning 
 of it was that very -simple and broad meaning, to give finally and without dispute the 
 value of law, binding on all Romans, to all decisions of the comitia tributa.
 
 vni] ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME 207 
 
 and Africa; the wealth of all the nations flowed into her; and 
 her rich men could no longer be restrained by any law prescribing 
 a technical limit to the amount of their possessions. During the 
 second century before Christ, all over Italy, the small farmers 
 felt their inability to maintain themselves against their rich 
 neighbours; they sold their lands and migrated to Rome, and 
 the rich who bought the lands used slave labour for their cultiva- 
 tion. The free brave husbandman of earlier days, the father of 
 a family, capable of defending both his household and his country, 
 gradually disappeared; the cities became full; and the city 
 population was apt to be both idle and turbulent. Nor were 
 even the rich satisfied ; they contended with each other for 
 supremacy ; and though civil war in its most serious form did 
 not begin till the first century before Christ, there were premoni- 
 tions of it earlier, and most especially in the riots which caused 
 the death of the Gracchi. The two Gracchi, Tiberius and Caius, 
 were the ineffectual wise men of Rome (just as Demosthenes had 
 been the ineffectual wise man of Athens) ; they estimated the 
 danger which menaced their country accurately, and they brought 
 in laws, which on the whole we cannot but commend, to remedy 
 the evil and avert the danger ; but it was beyond their power to 
 carry out their design, and they perished in the attempt, Tiberius 
 in 133 B.C., Caius twelve years later. 
 
 The deepest difficulties of the Roman republic began from that 
 moment ; but here let me pause, and revert to the morality and 
 the religion which had been in the worthier times which had gone 
 before. Perhaps this is the best place to quote that elaborate and 
 interesting comparison of the Greek and Roman religions which 
 the recent great historian of Rome, Mommsen, gives towards the 
 end of the second chapter of the first book of his History of Borne : 
 
 " In Italy, as in Hellas," writes Mommsen, " there lies at the foundation 
 of the popular faith the same common treasure of symbolic and allegorical 
 views of nature ; on this rests that general analogy between the Roman 
 and the Greek world of gods and spirits which was to become of so much 
 importance in later stages of development. In many of their particular 
 conceptions also . . . the two modes of worship do not by mere accident 
 coincide. Yet in Hellas, as in Italy, they assumed a shape so thoroughly 
 national and peculiar, that but little of the ancient common inheritance 
 was preserved in a recognisable form. . . . 
 
 " The Greek, when the thunder rolled among the mountains, saw Zeus 
 brandishing his bolts on Olympus ; when the blue sky again smiled upon 
 him, he gazed into the bright eye of Athensea, the daughter of Zeus ; but 
 so powerful over him was the influence of the forms which he had thus 
 created, that he soon saw nothing in them but human beings invested and
 
 208 ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME [CH. 
 
 illumined with the splendour of nature's power, and freely formed and 
 transformed them according to the laws of beauty. It was in another 
 fashion, but not less strongly, that the deeply implanted religious feeling 
 of the Italian race manifested itself; it held firmly by the idea, and did 
 not suffer the form to obscure it. As the Greek, when he sacrificed, raised 
 his eyes to heaven, so the Roman veiled his head; for the prayer of the 
 former was vision, that of the latter reflection. Throughout the whole 
 of nature he adored the spiritual and the universal. To everything existing, 
 to man and to the tree, to the state and to the storeroom, a spirit was 
 assigned, which came into being with it, and perished along with it ; the 
 counterpart in the spiritual domain of the physical phenomenon ; to the 
 man the male Genius, to the woman the female Juno, to the boundary 
 Terminus, to tho forest Silvan us, to the circling year Vertumnus, and so 
 on to every object after its kind. In occupations even the steps of the 
 process were spiritualised ; thus, for example, in the prayers for the husband- 
 man there was invoked the spirit of fallowing, of ploughing, of furrowing, 
 sowing, covering-in, harrowing, and so on to those of in-bringing, up-storing, 
 and opening of the granaries. In like manner, marriage, birth, and every 
 other physical event were endowed with sacred life. The larger the sphere 
 embraced in the abstraction, the higher rose the god, and the reverence 
 paid by man. Thus Jupiter and Juno are the abstractions of manhood 
 and womanhood ; Dea Dia, or Ceres, the creative power ; Minerva, the 
 power of memory ; Dea Bona, or among the Samnites Dea Cupra, the good 
 Divinity. . . . 
 
 " Thus the two nations, in which the civilisation of antiquity culminated, 
 stand side by side as different in development as they were in origin identical. 
 The points in which the Hellenes excel the Italians are more universally 
 intelligible, and reflect a more brilliant lustre ; but the deep feeling in each 
 individual that he was only a part of the community, a rare devotedness 
 and power of self-sacrifico for the common weal, an earnest faith in its own 
 gods, formed the rich treasure of the Italian nation. Both nations received 
 a one-sided and therefore each a complete, development ; it is only a pitiful 
 narrow-mindedness that will object to the Athenian, that he did not know 
 how to mould his state like the Fabii and the Valerii ; or to the Roman, 
 that he did not learn to carve like Phidias, and to write like Aristophanes. 
 It was in fact the most peculiar and the best feature in the character of 
 the Greek people, which rendered it impossible for them to advance from 
 national to political unity without at the same time exchanging their 
 polity for despotism. The ideal world of beauty was all in all to the Greeks, 
 and compensated them to some extent for what they wanted in reality. 
 Wherever in Hellas a tendency towards national union appeared, it was 
 based, riot on influences directly political, but on games and art: the 
 contests at Olyrnpia, tho poems of Homer, the tragedies of Euripides, 
 were the only bonds that held Hellas together. Resolutely, on the other 
 hand, the Italian surrendered his own personal will for the sake of freedom, 
 and learned to obey his father that he might know how to obey the State. 
 In such subjection as this individual development might be marred, and 
 the germs of fairest promise in man might be arrested in the bud; tin- 
 Italian gained instead a feeling of fatherland and of patriotism such as the 
 Greek never knew, and alone among all the civilised nations of antiquity, 
 succeeded in working out national unity in connexion with a constitution 
 based on self-government a national unity, which at last placed in his
 
 vm] ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME 209 
 
 * 
 
 hands the supremacy, not only over the divided Hellenic stock, but over 
 the whole known world." 
 
 As far as the Roman religion is concerned, the exposition in 
 that passage is admirable ; the reflective spirit of the Roman, and 
 his willingness to sacrifice himself for the sake of the State, are 
 justly dwelt upon ; and the reader will see how that moderation 
 of temper, and absence of narrowness in dealing with all friendly 
 persons, which I have noted as causes of the constant unbroken 
 development of Rome in the early centuries, sprang from the 
 religious disposition described by Mommsen. One quality of 
 the Romans which I have not yet mentioned, which on the whole 
 was good though it had its weak side, was their humility in matters 
 of religion ; they were willing to learn, in their earliest days from 
 the Etruscans, afterwards from the Greeks ; they never thought 
 they had attained to the acme of knowledge in this sphere. It is 
 true that this quality was accompanied by one drawback, that the 
 obedience which it implied was liable to become mechanical; 
 there was some want of the upward spontaneous leap of the 
 individual soul, out of its own natural needs, to the Divine Power ; 
 and hence that careful organisation of religion which went on in 
 the Roman state during the three centuries of the early republic 
 (from its beginning onwards) was coincident with a gradual drying 
 up of the first sources of religion in the Roman spirit 1 . Thus true 
 religion had to be renewed from outside ; and Greek philosophy, ' 
 learned by the Romans in the course of the second century before 
 Christ, did in fact supply (and especially in its Stoic form) a 
 current of real piety, pure though not impetuous, which was of 
 great service to the ruling minds of Rome during the two or three 
 centuries which followed. 
 
 But now let me say that Mommsen, in the passage I have 
 quoted, is less complete in his characterisation of the Greek 
 religion, than in his characterisation of the Roman religion. It 
 is the popular Greek religion which he describes ; the religion of 
 Homer and Hesiod, utilised half jestingly by Aristophanes, 
 cautiously satirised by Euripides, and again more or less revived 
 by Theocritus in the court of the Ptolemies. But Mommsen's 
 remarks do not at all apply to that deep channel of religious feeling 
 which emerged first in the Orphic mysteries and in the school of 
 Pythagoras ; which appears in Pindar and ^Eschylus and Sopho- 
 cles, and again, mingled with a critical element, in Socrates ; which 
 
 1 This is one of Mr Warde Fowler's most important observations ; see his Religious 
 Experience of the Roman People, pp. 226-8. 
 
 M. D. A. 14
 
 210 ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME [CH. 
 
 Plato received and handed down, and which among all the doubts 
 which advancing knowledge was sure to bring and did bring, 
 preserved and nurtured the habit of reverence among Greek 
 philosophers. 
 
 From these Greek philosophers it flowed eventually into the 
 greatest minds of Rome. There was a second flowering time of 
 religion in Italy, after the first had decayed; and we must not 
 for a moment think that, in the first century before Christ, the 
 hearts of the noblest Italians had ceased to beat with the impulse 
 that searches after things invisible. The philosophical pages 
 of Cicero will show us how far this was from being the case ; and 
 Cicero, it must be remembered, gathered up into brief compass 
 the thoughts which had been growing throughout Italy for a 
 hundred years before his date. Impossible as it is to deny the 
 political degradation which had come upon Italy during those 
 hundred years, through the covetousness and pride of the rich, 
 and through the bloody civil wars of Marius and Sulla, it must 
 still be said that there were many on Italian soil who nobly con- 
 tended against that degradation. The famous line of Terence 
 
 Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto 
 
 though derived probably from his Greek models, was received 
 with applause by the Romans ; and the political rights which the 
 Romans voluntarily accorded to the Italians after the close of the 
 Marsic war were an evidence that they would have equalised the 
 rights of all men, had it been in their power to do so. But the 
 solution of that great problem, how to accord equal rights to all 
 men, is still beyond us in the twentieth century after Christ ; how 
 much more was it beyond the men of two thousand years ago ! 
 
 Let me in this place pay a tribute, which ought not to be 
 withheld, to the more honourable position accorded to women in 
 Rome and Italy than was accorded to them in Greece, and still 
 more as compared with their position in the greater number of 
 oriental States (among the Jews however it would seem that 
 greater honour was paid to them). The superiority of the Romans 
 in this respect was no doubt due to their greater sanity and more 
 studious observance of right in everyday intercourse, as compared 
 with the ordinary temper of the Greeks ; they were more generous 
 in these homely matters than the Greeks were; and they did not 
 altogether lose this characteristic even in that period of civil war 
 and bloodshed which ushered in the close of the republican times. 
 
 Yet, when we take the profoundest points of morality, Greece 
 was the teacher of Rome. That is the final point which must be
 
 vin] ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME 211 
 
 urged in favour of the Greeks ; but, having said it, the proficiency 
 of the pupils is the final theme of this chapter. 
 
 I have spoken of Cicero ; and though Cicero as a philosopher 
 has not the brilliance of Plato, nor the immense range of thought 
 of Aristotle, yet he has a common-sense, an impartiality, a tender- 
 ness of feeling, which makes him not an unworthy follower of 
 those great Greeks. He was, besides, a political power in Rome ; 
 and if he, and the great and magnanimous soldier Pompey, and 
 the entire senate of Rome, fell before the victorious arms of 
 Caesar, it must not be assumed that the cause of the senate was 
 therefore initially a bad one, or even a hopeless one after Caesar's 
 victory. That which made it hopeless was the murder of Caesar 
 by the passionate partisans of the senatorial party ; that was the 
 act which enthroned material force, as distinguished from im- 
 partial counsel, in the supreme place, as arbiter of the world ; 
 and after this the senate had no locus standi. Cicero had no share 
 in the murder of Caesar ; but he cannot be acquitted of condoning 
 the murder after it had taken place. It was one of the faults of 
 a man of singular worth. 
 
 As to Caesar, the extraordinary force of his character needs no 
 demonstration. We must not say that the restoration of the 
 old Roman republic was in his day an absolute impossibility; 
 but, practically speaking, it was a task beyond human power. 
 What Caesar gave the Romans was four centuries and a half 
 of comparative peace ; not wholly without turbulent episodes ; 
 but still a period during which mankind might reflect on the 
 deepest problems of life and human nature, and during which 
 incontestably very deep thoughts did come into collision, and out 
 of which issued, not indeed immediate peace and order (far from 
 it !) but the beginning of a new world. That Caesar was an inspir- 
 ing force cannot be said; his task was to build that protective 
 structure of which I spoke at the beginning of this chapter ; and 
 he performed that task with great ability. 
 
 Meanwhile, though the peculiar virtue of republican Rome 
 had died, much still remained that was admirable in the moral 
 region. Who can forget, or fail to honour, the great soul of Virgil ? 
 He was not, it is true, a political force, like Cicero ; he accepted the 
 empire ; but all that was possible of honourable life under the 
 empire received from him sympathy and praise. Religion was to 
 him a great and worthy mystery ; he accepted that Pythagorean 
 or Platonic form of it which told how erring souls are purged and 
 renovated after death, and return to mortal bodies upon eartli 
 
 142
 
 212 ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME [CH. 
 
 for a new trial. To him, the whole visible world was steeped 
 in a divinity that was its natural essence ; yet in equal measure 
 he bore in mind that the Divine Power streams into men from 
 an outside source ; the Gods were to him no mere abstraction. 
 The beautiful life of the country, with its overflowing sources of 
 strength and happiness, was dear to his heart ; and with a sublime 
 humility, he honoured that deeper science which he could not 
 appropriate by his own intellect. History was to him a revelation ; 
 and by a not dishonourable mistake, he thought that the imperial 
 power of Rome was itself the magic spell which should call into 
 life a reign of everlasting peace over the whole earth. 
 
 Virgil and Cicero were the two greatest Roman writers (Italian 
 rather let me say) ; and not only the greatest, but also the two 
 most animated by a feeling of hope, the two most capable of 
 generating a freedom of the spirit, when civic freedom had been 
 lost. But under that mighty protective aegis which Caesar had 
 stretched over all the nations of the western world, it was not 
 Italians alone who contended for spiritual supremacy ; from Egypt, 
 from Palestine, from Asia Minor, from Babylon and Persia, the 
 throng of missionaries came, representatives of many ancient 
 religions. The issue of that struggle a greater struggle than that 
 waged by material warfare cannot be told in the present chapter ; 
 it must suffice here to enumerate the spiritual forces which Italy 
 sent into the field ; which, though distinguished rather by variety 
 than by any skill of organisation, were not despicable. When 
 I speak of the spiritual forces which Italy sent into the field, it 
 must be understood that the spirit of Greek philosophy had 
 thoroughly permeated Italy, long before the Roman empire was 
 established on a secure basis ; and though the Greeks continued to 
 be less strong but more subtle than the Italians, yet in the theories 
 of life very little difference existed between the two nations. 
 If Virgil and Cicero were the two greatest Italian writers, the 
 Stoics were the most powerful philosophers during the two cen- 
 turies before, and the two centuries after, the Christian era ; and 
 the religion which they brought with them was one of singular 
 dignity. In so far as they fell short of perfect truth, it was rather 
 because the true transcendentalism had not dawned upon their 
 view, than from any failure of theirs in the ethical field. Their 
 philosophy is well worth understanding, and as no one known to me 
 has so well explained it as Ferrier (of whom I spoke in my preface) 
 it will be proper to quote here two passages from his exposition. 
 The first is a general characterisation of the ethics of Stoicism :
 
 vin] ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME 213 
 
 The germ of the Stoical morality seems to lie in some such proposition 
 as this : All good, all happiness, all virtue, consists in a conformity to law, 
 just as all evil, all misery, all vice, consists in lawlessness, in a repudiation 
 or violation or defiance of law. Submission to law, acquiescence in the 
 established order of the universe, this seems to be the principle, and indeed 
 the sum and substance, of their moral code. That being, I think, the general 
 root of their system, we have now to consider the details into which it 
 branches. And I ask what is the law, a conformity with which is equivalent 
 to good, is equivalent to happiness, is equivalent to virtue ? The answer, 
 so far as man is concerned, seems to be this : To be virtuous and happy, 
 man must conform first to the law of his own nature ; secondly, he must 
 conform to the law by which society is held together; thirdly, he must 
 conform to the law of Providence. A life in conformity with these three 
 laws, or rather three classes of laws, is, and must be, a life of virtue and 
 happiness. But here it has to be asked, By means of what principle is 
 man to find out these laws ? how is he to discover what they are, and what 
 they enjoin? By what principle is he to know when he is obeying the 
 laws of his own nature, and when he is violating them ? By what principle 
 is he to know when he is obeying the laws of society, and when he is violating 
 them? By what principle is he to know when he is obeying the laws of 
 God, and when he is violating them? He is enabled to know this, the 
 Stoics say, by the principle of reason, so that their general ethical doctrine, 
 stated more explicitly, amounts to this, " Man is happy and virtuous in 
 proportion to the degree in which, under the guidance and enlightenment 
 of reason and knowledge, he conforms or accommodates himself, first, to 
 the law of his own nature ; secondly, to the law of society ; thirdly, to the 
 law of Providence. " Lectures and Philosophical Remains of James Frederick 
 Ferrier, vol. i. pp. 422-3. 
 
 It will be seen that by "reason" is here intended spiritual 
 vision; and a good many questions might be asked as to the 
 meaning, and as to the trustworthiness, of this spiritual vision ; 
 and also as to the meaning of the three laws laid down in the above 
 extract as fundamental. The true law of one's own nature, of 
 society, or of God, is not always that which on a first view usurps 
 the name ; the governing element may he below the surface. 
 Allowing these difficulties, which were not fully met by the Stoic 
 philosophers, there is much truth in the above mapping out of 
 the lines of duty; the leading parts of it are given with a broad 
 correctness. The scheme, too, may be justly considered religious 
 as well as ethical ; the religious sphere is truly entered on ; though 
 when, leaving the general conception of God, or the Gods, we ask 
 how the Divine Presence is made known to us, and how it affects 
 our whole being here or hereafter, the defect of the Stoics appears. 
 They were too much afraid of the doubt which surrounds these 
 questions to be able to grasp them strongly, and win conclusive 
 answers. Hence they failed when confronted with the chaos of 
 human passions. They trusted too much to the power of the.
 
 214 ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME [OH. 
 
 human spirit. The truth which they missed was this ; that the 
 everlasting love, which is itself an incorruptible passion, and which 
 is nourished by God, and which continually wins more and more 
 souls to itself, is the only power capable of bringing harmony into 
 the multiform impulses of men. 
 
 The blessed fire of eternal passionate love was wanting to the 
 Stoics; but it is an unjust accusation against them to say that 
 they were, in the ordinary sense of the word, apathetic. In 
 defence of them against such a charge, the second passage from 
 Ferrier, to which I referred above, may be quoted. Ferrier writes 
 thus : 
 
 In considering this third paradox of the Stoics, which represents a 
 passionless or apathetic condition as the highest virtue of the soul, we 
 must remember that their apathy did not consist in insensibility, or in 
 a deadness of feeling; it did not consist in an extinction or eradication of 
 the passions. On the contrary, in the character of their virtuous man 
 they included rational desire and aversion ; they included love and parental 
 affection, friendship, and a general charity and benevolence to all mankind ; 
 they considered it as a duty arising out of our very nature not to neglect 
 the welfare of public society, but to be ever ready, according to our station 
 or capacity, to act either the magistrate or the private citizen. Their 
 apathy was no more than a freedom from perturbations, from irrational 
 and excessive agitations of the soul ; it was an antagonism put forth against 
 the passions, not with a view of extinguishing them, but merely of pre- 
 venting them from running into excess ; and consequently that paradoxical 
 apathy commonly laid to their charge, and in the demolishing of which 
 so many imaginary triumphs have been achieved, was an imaginary apathy 
 for which they were in no way accountable. Lectures and Philosophical 
 Remains of James Frederick Ferrier, vol. I. pp. 434-5. 
 
 It was Pansetius, the friend of the younger Scipio, who first 
 made the Romans acquainted with Stoicism ; but to us moderns 
 the most famous names connected with this philosophy occur in 
 the centuries after the Christian era. The emperor Marcus 
 Aurelius has had great recognition of late ; and indeed few writers 
 have put sound precepts more tersely. But was he more 
 worthy of honour than the slave Epictetus ("poor and lame, but 
 beloved by the Gods"); or than Seneca, who alone among the 
 Romans protested against the deadly gladiatorial combats, on the 
 ground of the sacredness of humanity: or than the pure-minded 
 Persius (dying too young) who reproved the souls bowed down to 
 earth and careless of heavenly things? Juvenal can hardly be 
 claimed by the Stoics ; yet in the vigorous close of his tenth 
 Satire, there are touches of piety which have some kinship with 
 Stoicism. 
 
 Can the Epicureans be regarded as a spiritual force ? Yes, we
 
 vm] ANCIENT RELIGION: ROME 215 
 
 must say so, in some degree; the quality of attraction cannot 
 be denied to the enthusiastic Lucretius, the tenderly humorous 
 Horace. It is unjust to think of Epicurus and his followers as 
 men devoted to luxury. The reverse is the case ; they upheld, 
 and in the main followed, a simple life. They were numerous in 
 the Roman world : a tranquil sociableness was their characteristic ; 
 and some honour must be given to such a temperament. Yet 
 their force was not equal to that of Stoicism ; they did not 
 recognise how much labour is necessary for the reformation of 
 men individually, and of the world 1 . 
 
 As to the great historians, Livy and Tacitus, they were rather 
 a light than a force ; but a light is, in some degree, a force ; and 
 when the influences that centred in imperial Rome are being 
 reckoned up, their names must not be omitted. 
 
 In this chapter I have brought the narrative down to the very 
 verge of that outburst of religious life from which our modern 
 world, with its wide-reaching and multiform activities, has sprung : 
 in my next chapter I must go back again to the dimly discerned 
 origins of history. 
 
 1 An appreciative study of Epicurus and his followers will be found in Epi- 
 cureanism, by William Wallace, M.A.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH: ABRAHAM 
 AND MOSES 
 
 THE great religions whose history I have briefly sketched in 
 the seven foregoing chapters deserve serious attention from us. 
 They were efforts after right morality and just insight ; there can 
 be no doubt that they benefited the nations which embraced 
 them ; with all their errors, they are not to be styled in merely 
 condemnatory fashion, "false religions." Still, the aspiration 
 which hit the true mark, the faith which has shown itself capable 
 of throwing off errors, and expanding with a new beneficence 
 after each liberation from error, thereby winning for itself an 
 eternal progress, has not so far been described in the present work. 
 I come to it now ; and the first historical character in whom it ap- 
 pears is that ancient hero and patriarch whom we name Abraham. 
 
 But in mentioning Abraham, I come to the Bible ; and it is 
 impossible to treat of the Bible, or of Biblical history, without 
 in the first instance letting it be clearly seen what one holds to be 
 the real authority of the Bible in ethics and in regard to historical 
 facts, especially in the miraculous narratives. The main purport 
 of what I shall say on these points must justify itself by the 
 explanation of history which it affords ; but some probability 
 should be seen to belong to it from the outset. 
 
 Four hundred years ago, it was the universal opinion of 
 Christians that the moral teaching of the Bible was unerring, 
 and the Biblical narratives true, without exception or qualification. 
 Such an opinion at the present day is rare ; nor can it be justified. 
 It is true that the Biblical morality contains very valuable 
 elements even from the first, and it is in many respects an indis- 
 pensable guide to us ; but we find in it the errors, partly of a rude 
 race, but still more of a religion which had not been able to deliver 
 itself from formalism, and in which the grounds of judgment are 
 often hard and technical, and cruel conduct meets with approba- 
 tion. Who, for instance, can defend the command which Samuel
 
 CH. ix] ABRAHAM AND MOSES 217 
 
 (supposed to be acting by divine inspiration) gave to Saul, to go 
 and destroy an entire community of the Amalekites, men, women, 
 and children, on the ground that the ancestors of these Amalekites, 
 some hundred years before, had attacked the Israelites immediately 
 after their exodus from Egypt? Even in the original conflict 
 the Amalekites, according to the record, were defeated ; but apart 
 from that, the Bible, in its better and purer portions, declares 
 that the sons shall not be punished for the wrong-doing of their 
 fathers ; and so we all hold now. Similarly there are 1 cruel and 
 perfidious acts of David which pass entirely without censure in 
 the Bible, and are not held to derogate from his title to be called 
 a man after God's own heart, who, it is said 2 , "did that which 
 was right in the eyes of Jehovah, and turned not aside from any- 
 thing he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the 
 matter of Uriah the Hittite." So likewise the act of Ezra, which 
 is assumed in the Bible to be the carrying out of a divine obligation, 
 in making the Jews put away all wives who were born of a foreign 
 race and not only the wives, but the children of those wives 
 is not to be morally justified. I need not multiply instances; 
 it is plain that there are moral defects in the Bible ; whatever 
 the merits of the Biblical teaching (and they are real), we must 
 keep our moral judgment awake when we read it. 
 
 In view of this, we shall be prepared to find that the historical 
 records of the Bible are not always exact. It is little more than 
 half a century since the conflict was waged among religious persons 
 in England as to the literal truth of the first chapter of Genesis. 
 That chapter, noble in its spiritual tone, is now justly considered 
 on its material side to be of the nature of a parable ; it does not 
 describe sequences of actual fact. The discoveries of geology 
 made this clear ; and the discoveries of geology presently made 
 it also clear that the race of man had existed on earth long 
 before the time which the Bible assigned to Adam and Eve. 
 Hence the second and third chapters of Genesis, as well as 
 the first, must be held to be, in so far as they really deserve our 
 acceptance, symbolic truth and not actual history. I think 
 there is some true instinct in the second and third chapters, as 
 also there is a true instinct pervading the first chapter, but such 
 instinct is not the instinct of the historian ; and when it is 
 granted that these chapters are not literal truth, we see that 
 the writer of them did not draw any broad line between a 
 
 1 See for instance, 1 Samuel xxvii. 7-12. 
 
 2 1 Kings xv. 5.
 
 218 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH: [CH. 
 
 fabulous narrative with some underlying truth involved in it, 
 and real history. Is it possible that we should not regard a good 
 deal in the subsequent chapters of Genesis, after the first three, 
 as composed rather with a view to edification, than as warranted 
 by actual evidence? Few more impossible narratives than that 
 of the flood have ever been conceived; and the tower of Babel 
 is a scarcely less evident fiction. We are not in the region of 
 history here. Even if some grains of real fact are contained in 
 the first eleven chapters of Genesis, they are not, until we come to 
 the very end of the eleventh chapter, extricable from the rest. 
 But at the end of the eleventh chapter we come to Abraham ; 
 and in Abraham we have, I believe, a real historical character. 
 
 Before however treating of Abraham, it is necessary to speak 
 of one feature, very common throughout the whole Biblical 
 history, on which a judgment must be formed initially : I mean 
 the miraculous element in the Bible generally. A full discussion 
 of the question of miracles cannot indeed be entered upon in this 
 place, but must wait till I come to the New Testament history ; 
 for the New Testament miracles are supported by evidence much 
 more nearly contemporary than is the case with those of the 
 Old Testament ; and the main discussion of this question will 
 properly be placed in that part where the evidence is the strongest ; 
 still I must say something about it here. 
 
 It may be thought that I have already spoken of the miraculous 
 element in the Bible in relation to the first eleven chapters of 
 Genesis ; but the marvellous tales in those chapters are not exactly 
 miracles in the same sense in which the plagues of Egypt and the 
 passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites are miracles ; they are 
 not insisted on as important because of their marvellousness. 
 The early history of every nation is apt to contain extraordinary 
 and impossible stories, devised for the sake of the pleasure given 
 by the exercise of the imagination ; such stories are called legends ; 
 and the word legend may very properly be applied to the stories 
 of the flood and of the tower of Babel, and also to some later parts 
 of the book of Genesis ; for instance to the fiery destruction of 
 Sodom and Gomorrah and the colloquies of Abraham with Divine 
 Beings before that destruction ; and also to some part of the 
 history of Joseph. But it is not, in any of these legends, asserted 
 or implied that the things done by God were done specifically for 
 the purpose of giving evidence of God's existence and power, and 
 evidence that should be handed down to all future generations. 
 Now this is the affirmation most pointedly made in the Bible
 
 ix] ABRAHAM AND MOSES 219 
 
 respecting the whole series of miracles in the Exodus of the Israelites 
 from Egypt, and in their desert wanderings ; and it is also made 
 as clearly, though not with such stress and frequency of affirmation, 
 respecting the miracle of Elijah in calling down fire from heaven 
 on Mount Carmel ; and we must suppose it implied in the miracles 
 of Joshua, and also in those narrated in the book of Daniel. 
 
 It seems, at first sight, as if we were compelled to choose one 
 of two alternatives; either the acceptance practically of these 
 miracles, or at any rate of the greater part of them, or the rejection, 
 not only of the miracles, but of the doctrines which they are 
 brought forward to prove ; that is, the existence and power of 
 God, his special care and providence exercised towards the people 
 of Israel, and in the final result his care and providence exercised 
 towards all the peoples of the world. These very important 
 doctrines have in all ages been accepted by Christians ; and though 
 the doctrine of God's providence is not peculiar to either the 
 religion of Israel or to Christianity, still a belief in the miracles 
 of the Old Testament has been very closely entwined with the 
 grounds on which Christian preachers have inculcated the doctrine 
 of God's providential care for mankind ; and if we think the narra- 
 tives of those miracles mistaken (as certainly I do think them 
 mistaken), the question necessarily follows, whether the doctrines 
 which have been so habitually associated with them are not 
 mistaken likewise ; and especially whether the belief that God 
 had any peculiar relation towards the people of Israel ought not 
 to be discarded. 
 
 Those, however, who remember how intricately truth and 
 error are apt to be intertwined in the thoughts of men, will be 
 aware of the possibility that the apparent premiss put forward 
 as the ground on which we should believe in God's providence 
 (whether on behalf of Israel or for mankind at large) is not the 
 true premiss. The psalmists and prophets of Israel, however much 
 they may have appealed to miracles as a ground for their faith 
 in God (but indeed these appeals are much less common in the 
 prophets than in the psalmists), had a deeper ground in their own 
 consciousness ; and to this ground another may have been added in 
 the history of their race, a history which was wonderful even if not 
 miraculous. This, indeed, I believe to be the true account of the 
 matter. In the very remarkable Israelite history, the wonder 
 was, to the popular mind, externalised ; a divine power had really 
 carried Israel through many dangers, but not a power manifested 
 in the slaughter of enemies or in the dividing of the sea ; a power,
 
 220 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH: [CH. 
 
 rather, which strengthened the great men of the nation inwardly, 
 and enabled them to strengthen their fellows, and to survive the 
 sufferings of a hard slavery first, and of a journey afterwards 
 through a parched and barren wilderness, and lastly to overcome 
 the hostile resistance of the tribes of Palestine among whom they 
 settled, and whom they conquered with much slaughter no 
 doubt but still with a certain amount of peaceful assimilation to 
 themselves. 
 
 It may be asked, indeed, whether in thus interpreting the 
 history we are not going contrary to the evidence. But when 
 the evidence is weighed, this is, I think, not so. The recorded 
 miracles of the Exodus are confessed to have produced no effect 
 at all on the religious disposition of the vast majority of those 
 who are said to have witnessed them. The mass of the Israelites 
 had not, for many generations, the smallest objection to worship- 
 ping idols, or to worshipping deities other than Jehovah 1 . Pure 
 monotheism was for a long time confined to a small minority of 
 the nation ; an ardent minority no doubt, who did in the end make 
 their belief prevail ; but it was long before the Israelites at large 
 shared it. Abraham began, and Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, 
 Joshua, all inherited the monotheistic tradition ; so did Samuel, 
 and Samuel's great protege, David ; so, at first, did Solomon ; 
 but Solomon, through motives of policy, and influenced by his 
 wives, fell off into the ordinary polytheism. The kings of Judah 
 after Solomon, desperately weakened though they were by the 
 revolt of the ten tribes, did on the whole adhere to monotheism, 
 but Manasseh wholly abandoned it, and during his long reign the 
 cause of monotheism seemed utterly lost. But when he died, 
 the worshippers of Jehovah took heart, and made their great, 
 and in the end successful, stroke. They had long believed in 
 the miracles of the Exodus ; their experience did not suggest to 
 them any doubt on the subject, insufficient though the evidence 
 was ; and they (or no doubt one among them) wrote a book which 
 was the first form of our book of Deuteronomy ; the purpose of 
 which book was to enforce the reality of those miracles, and the 
 lessons drawn from them. That this was the book said, in 
 2 Kings xxii, to have been discovered by Hilkiah the priest in the 
 temple in the reign of Josiah, is shown by the nature of its contents ; 
 for the obligation is in it imposed on the nation to have only one 
 sacrificial shrine, an obligation never thought of before the reign 
 
 1 With respect to the name Jehovah, which would be more accurately written 
 Yahwch, see the appendix to the present chapter.
 
 ix] ABRAHAM AND MOSES 221 
 
 of Hezekiah, but very naturally conceived by the priesthood at 
 Jerusalem, and a very natural support to the worship of Jehovah 
 alone, which was the desire (and the just desire) of the most ardent 
 members of the Jerusalem priesthood. That the composition of 
 the book of Deuteronomy was an untruthful act never entered 
 the head of the writer of it, or of those who sanctioned the writing 
 of it ; history was in that age hardly distinguished from poetry ; 
 and the impassioned exhortations of the book of Deuteronomy, 
 its promises and its threatenings, began from that moment to 
 sink into the minds of the people of Judah. Hence came the 
 religious legislation of Josiah ; but it took more than a hundred 
 years after Josiah's time, and the bitter suffering of the Baby- 
 lonian captivity, to bring over the mass of the Jewish people 
 to a religion of pure monotheism. It was a work which on the 
 whole was right, and rightly done ; but we must be prepared to 
 find that not everything was right in the accomplishment of it; 
 and the composition of the book of Deuteronomy was a work that 
 could not at the present day be done with a pure conscience. In 
 those days it was different; the conscience of men, in these 
 matters of literature, was still uninformed. 
 
 If, in spite of the above remarks, it be still asked, whether it 
 be not simpler to accept the book of Deuteronomy as what it 
 professes to be, namely the composition of Moses himself, or at 
 any rate a genuine record of his discourses to the Israelites, it 
 must be answered, first, that, if the elaborate commands of the 
 book of Deuteronomy had really been made by Moses and preserved 
 from age to age with sedulous care, it is incredible that the com- 
 mand contained in the thirteenth verse of the twelfth chapter of 
 Deuteronomy (and implied all through that chapter) should have 
 remained entirely unknown until the reign of Josiah. I say, 
 entirely unknown ; for though the doctrine that in all Israel there 
 must be only one sacrificial shrine was acted upon by Hezekiah, 
 nearly a century before Josiah's time, it is nowhere said that he 
 so acted in obedience to a specific written command. Hezekiah 
 put down the country shrines, because it was impossible to keep 
 idolatry, and the worship of alien deities, out of them ; and this 
 was Josialrs motive too, though in Josiah's time the authority 
 of the book of Deuteronomy was brought in to support the genuine 
 reason. If the book of Deuteronomy had been known by the great 
 judge Samuel, by the great kings David and Solomon, and by 
 the reforming kings Asa and Jehoshaphat, how are we to account 
 for their entire ignoring of it in this particular; for the high
 
 222 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH: [CH. 
 
 places (i.e. the sacrificial shrines scattered over the country) went 
 on all through the times of those distinguished persons 1 ? 
 
 Besides this point of the single sanctuary, the careful reader of 
 the book of Deuteronomy will observe that that book (chapter 
 xvii. 14-20) gives instructions as to the choice of a king over 
 the Israelites in the times to come and as to his conduct when 
 chosen: how came it that when the Israelites asked of Samuel 
 in his old age to make them a king (a request with which he did in 
 fact comply), he made no reference to this most pertinent passage 
 of Deuteronomy, but used words which were really inconsistent 
 with his knowing it, and in particular told the Israelites that their 
 request was a sin ? If Samuel knew the book of Deuteronomy, he 
 was bound to refer to this passage of it, so important for the issue 
 which the Israelites had raised. If Samuel did not know of the 
 book of Deuteronomy (and we must infer from his silence that he 
 did not), where was it in his time? 
 
 It is also noticeable that the account of the relations of the 
 Israelites and Edomites, given in Deuteronomy ii. 1-8 and 28, 29, 
 is quite different from, and inconsistent with, the account of those 
 relations as given in Numbers xx. 14^21. 
 
 It is then not at all a simple account of the matter to say that 
 the book of Deuteronomy contains a true account of the discourses 
 of Moses to the Israelites ; and it is further to be observed that 
 when in 2 Kings xxii. the book of the law is said to have been 
 found, that most important question, how the book came into 
 being, and what had happened to it before it was found, is not 
 in the least raised in the narrative ; a question quite essential, 
 if the book was to be regarded as a genuine statement of the law 
 given by Moses. Further, if we are to take the book of Deuteronomy 
 as a true record, we must believe that Moses commanded that the 
 whole book, at any rate down to the end of the twenty-sixth 
 chapter, should be written upon the stones of an altar on mount 
 Ebal, to be dedicated after the Israelites had crossed over the Jordan 
 into Palestine (Deuteronomy xxvii. 2-8); a command which the 
 book oi Joshua (viii. 30-32) affirms to have been really carried 
 out. How important an act, if true ! But can one believe it, 
 when not a single mention of the writing thus engraved upon 
 stones is found in all the subsequent books of the Old Testament? 
 
 1 See 1 Samuel vii. !(, x. H, xi. 15, xvi. 5: 1 Kings iii. 3, 4, xv. 11-14, xxii. 4.'{-4(>. 
 The very curious narrative in .Joshua xxii. ought not to be left unmentioned in relation 
 to this question of the obligation on the Israelites to have only one sacrificial shrine. 
 It is a palpably fictitious narrative, invented to illustrate the command in Deuteronomy 
 xii. 13. Had it been a true narrative, the conduct of Samuel (not to speak of other 
 persons) would be altogether inexplicable.
 
 ix] ABRAHAM AND MOSES 223 
 
 The conclusion, then, to be drawn from the facts just mentioned 
 is that the book of Deuteronomy, not precisely as it stands but hi 
 some primitive form of it, was written not very long before the 
 period at which it is said to have been discovered, that is, not very 
 long before the eighteenth year of the reign of long Josiah. 
 And now observe what follows. The book of Deuteronomy is by 
 far the greatest support of miracle in the whole of the Old Testa- 
 ment ; the most serious argumentative support, that is ; for 
 though every miraculous narrative is in some degree or other 
 a support of miracle, the proneness of the human mind towards 
 marvels is so well known, especially among races at so rudimentary 
 a stage of development as the Israelites when they conquered 
 Canaan, that we should naturally explain the miracles of the 
 books of Exodus and Numbers as ancient legends legends with 
 a background of truth no doubt, but not literal realities. It is 
 the book of Deuteronomy which stands in the way of this conclusion 
 which insists that the miracles of the Exodus and of Mount 
 Sinai are literal truths, designed by God himself for the instruction 
 of the Israelites first, of all mankind afterwards. If however the 
 book of Deuteronomy was written six centuries after the Exodus, 
 can the argument contained in it stand? Evidently not; the 
 testimony in it, strong if Moses be supposed to be the true author 
 of it, becomes weak when we see that it was written long after his 
 date. 
 
 That the general tenor of the history goes to support this 
 view, I think will appear ; and not least through the unfavourable 
 moral results which came through the belief in miracles. But 
 it is impossible to discuss, in a work like the present, every piece 
 of testimony that could be brought forward in favour of miracles. 
 When I come to speak of the particular books in which miracles 
 are related or referred to, something will be said about each of 
 those books in turn, with the view of showing in what way we 
 ought to regard them ; but as preliminary to the whole subject, 
 the above discussion must suffice. 
 
 A brief reference to the miraculous element in the New Testa- 
 ment cannot however be quite dispensed with here, though it 
 cannot as yet be discussed in its entirety. The history must be 
 taken in order ; and the Old Testament must be treated in the 
 first place on its own basis. Yet I may say that the New Testa- 
 ment has never been out of my thoughts ; and I am not aware 
 of anything therein contained which ought to modify what 
 I have just said respecting the Old Testament.
 
 224 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH: [CH. 
 
 That when the miraculous element is taken away, the divine 
 element remains ; that the Old Testament history is a great and 
 worthy one; these are the points now to be made clear. The 
 chief other correction of the traditional views which will appear 
 in the following sketch (in the present and succeeding chapters) 
 lies in the later date which will be assigned to some of the books ; 
 especially to most of the psalms, to parts of the book of Isaiah, 
 and to the book of Daniel. But I must reserve the subject of 
 these books till I come to them in the natural course of the history. 
 Of the date of composition of the Pentateuch generally I cannot 
 here speak with any detail ; the final construction of it can hardly 
 have been earlier than the return from the Babylonian captivity ; 
 but some of the separate narratives in it must have been very 
 much earlier. 
 
 To Abraham I now return; and in him we do touch solid 
 ground. It is true that his history cannot have been committed 
 to writing for centuries after his death ; for though writing was 
 used in his age, it was used by comparatively few, and those few 
 were not nomads, as Abraham was. Had writing been used by 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the fact could not have escaped 
 mention. But the agreements made by these patriarchs are 
 never written agreements, though they certainly would have 
 been so if writing had been a habitual means of communication 
 with them (see Genesis xxiii. 16-18, xxvi. 28-31, xxxi. 44, 45); 
 and Joseph, in sending a message to his father (xlv. 13, 27) makes 
 no use of writing. Yet this characteristic of the book of Genesis 
 is rather a favourable sign as regards the general truthfulness of 
 the accounts of these patriarchs (though not as regards their 
 detailed accuracy) ; the age is so far correctly represented. It is 
 natural that writing among the Israelites should have taken its 
 start in Egypt, probably with Moses himself : this is what we 
 should infer from the Bible (Exodus xvii. 14, and compare 1 Samuel 
 xv. 2 ; Exodus xxiv. 4). The style of it was no doubt rude, and 
 long written narratives cannot have been possible till a much 
 more settled time. 
 
 Our evidence then is imperfect. Yet oral testimony is not 
 valueless ; and in the chief points of Abraham's character and 
 history there is an explanatory force, which ought to convince 
 us of their truth. This is so, whether we regard Abraham in his 
 relation to antecedent times, as the purifier of a worship that had 
 become coarse and sensual : or in his relation to the after history, 
 as the first man in whose soul the far future was definitely imaged
 
 ix] ABRAHAM AND MOSES 225 
 
 as clothed with an ideal hope and aim. It is not to be supposed 
 that all the clan which followed Abraham appropriated or under- 
 stood Abraham's highest thoughts, or even that they could 
 understand a worship of God from which all idolatry was severely 
 removed. Such purity of religious temper was not speedily to be 
 attained by a large number of men. But the belief in a Divine 
 Power, to whom man is bound by ties of loyal reverence and 
 affection, and who cherishes the faithful man and sends vigour 
 into his children and into his children's children for all generations, 
 this belief was handed down by Abraham to after times ; it was 
 the animating force of his chief descendants, and slowly permeated 
 an entire nation, stimulating them towards virtue ; though it is 
 true that it was afterwards subject to narrowing influences, through 
 the imperfection which belongs to all formulated ideals. 
 
 But in Abraham himself there was no narrowness. The 
 preeminence which he believed to be reserved by the Divine Will 
 for his descendants did not make him discourteous or unfriendly 
 to the nations among whom he moved. He traversed the land 
 with his clan of a thousand persons or more; but much larger 
 and more settled tribes lay round about him ; a peaceful temper 
 was necessary for his preservation. But indeed his far-seeing 
 hope made him peaceful ; he did not desire his own aggrandise- 
 ment. His soul rested in a communing with God ; for this he had 
 left his home in Chaldea, and the idolatrous religion which he 
 himself in his early years had practised ; it was on the future, 
 not the present, that his thoughts were bent. Under what name 
 did he think of God ? Probably under the somewhat vague plural 
 form "Elohim," "the Divine Powers," and not under the name 
 "Jehovah" ; the book of Exodus seems more right here than the 
 book of Genesis ; though the question is not quite an easy one ; 
 but on the whole it does seem to have been Moses, and not the 
 elder patriarchs, who first emphasised and laid stress on the name 
 "Jehovah." 
 
 The religion of Abraham, though ardent, was less definite 
 than that of his warlike successor Moses ; but wholly indefinite 
 it was not. If the divinest of Abraham's instincts was that in 
 which he heard God saying to him, "In thee and in thy seed shall 
 all the families of the earth be blessed," he received a more definite 
 forecast of the future in the words, "Unto thy seed will I give 
 the land of Canaan." These are the two promises which God is 
 held to have made to Abraham ; but we cannot look upon them 
 as equally divine. They represent two differing ideals, the one 
 
 M. D. A. 16
 
 226 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH: [CH. 
 
 higher and the other lower ; the higher and the lower intermingling 
 with each other as they are wont to do in all the thoughts of men. 
 We may trace them in the subsequent history, each ideal pursuing 
 its separate course. The earthly ideal rose into prominence 
 through Moses, and culminated in David and Solomon ; but then 
 was shattered from within and gradually swept away ; and though 
 as long as Israelites or Jews are a force in the world, it is not 
 impossible that they may re-unite and dwell in the land of Palestine 
 (or Canaan), this if accomplished would be but a very subordinate 
 result amid the expanding destinies of mankind. It was in the 
 heavenly ideal of Abraham that the vital hope of the future lay ; 
 and this began to germinate and expand exactly when the earthly 
 ideal was beginning to vanish. As the kingdoms of Israel and 
 Judah sank, the prophets of Israel and Judah arose ; and the 
 prophetic burden was, that from their nation, the nation chosen 
 of God, should proceed the reign of justice and mercy over all the 
 earth. And that ideal can never vanish. 
 
 Those who note how this double development was fulfilled in 
 the history of Israel, who note also how unconscious the Israelites 
 always were that it was a double development, proceeding in 
 two directions, and who then note how the two branches of the 
 development are both clearly involved in the mind and thoughts 
 of Abraham, as that is recorded in the book of Genesis, will see 
 in this fact a decisive vindication of the historical reality of 
 Abraham. The history of Israel, which so remarkably needs 
 explanation, is explained by the character of Abraham ; and there 
 is no other explanation of it. 
 
 Let me come to the details. That Abraham truly came out 
 of the land of the Chaldees, and truly made the land of Canaan 
 his home afterwards, living more or less a nomad life, we may 
 safely believe, for this is the key to the subsequent history. That 
 his religious feeling, and his habitual sense of the presence of a 
 Divine Helper with whom he held intercourse, led him to adopt 
 the rite of circumcision, is probably true; for religious feeling 
 naturally shows itself in external signs. Circumcision was a 
 symbol of self-sacrifice, and the need of self-sacrifice was deeply 
 implanted in Abraham ; it is likely too that he would welcome 
 such a symbol as distinguishing himself and his clan from the 
 idolaters around him. That considerations of health had weight 
 with him in practising this rite, is not likely; his ordinary life 
 favoured health, and the same would be true of those who were 
 his subordinates; the searchings of his spirit were in another
 
 ix] ABRAHAM AND MOSES 227 
 
 direction, namely how to render his life approved to the Being to 
 whom the allegiance of his heart was given. 
 
 When we read of the intercourse between God and Abraham, 
 of God speaking and Abraham replying, we must not think 
 (in spite of the form of the words) of verbal speech, but rather of 
 such intercourse as God has with men now ; of the uplifted and 
 recipient heart, and of the impression made on the suppliant as 
 he tries with God's help to determine the lines of duty. When 
 we look at the matter in this way, we shall see that the divine 
 communications would not have that sharpness of outline and 
 unmistakable clearness of meaning which the ordinary reader of 
 the Bible thinks is implied in the Biblical narrative ; rather they 
 would be shado wings and indications of truth, broad in their 
 general effect, but liable to be misconceived in their application 
 to details. This is indeed a consideration which we need to bear 
 in mind all through the Old Testament; the historians give a 
 preciseness of form to the divine commands (and indeed to the 
 history generally) which the information at their command did 
 not really justify. 
 
 There are naturally many things in the history of Abraham 
 as related in the book of Genesis which are of a legendary rather 
 than of a historical character ; and among these may be particu- 
 larly mentioned the ancestral relation which he and his nephew 
 Lot are said to have had towards so many of the surrounding 
 peoples Ishmaelites, Midianites, Moabites, Ammonites, and 
 Edomites ; perhaps even the Amale kites ; but the affiliation of 
 the Midianites and Amalekites is not so distinctly affirmed as in 
 the case of the other races. That the Moabites and Ammonites 
 and Edomites (the last named especially) were races kindred with 
 the Israelites is implied through all the history, and is no doubt 
 true. 
 
 The history of Abraham's wanderings, whether in Palestine 
 or in Egypt, does no doubt rest upon a basis of truth ; and it is 
 probable also that he had a nephew Lot, and a son Ishmael, as 
 the Bible relates. That Isaac was his son and heir, has a stronger 
 degree of probability ; and I say this especially because of the 
 famous narrative of Abraham's attempted sacrifice of his son 
 Isaac, which in the end was not actually carried out. I cannot 
 but think that this narrative rests on a true basis ; and that the 
 act attributed to Abraham is one in which true religion and super- 
 stition are apt to be mistaken for one another (as they have so 
 often been mistaken in history afterwards) ; an act in which
 
 228 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH: [CH. 
 
 a motive, up to a certain point good and right, is made subservient 
 to wrong and injurious action. In Abraham's case, happily, the 
 injurious action was not accomplished. 
 
 That Abraham was a great and ruling spirit, is apparent even 
 from what I have already said ; but it does not follow from this 
 that he was incapable of error; and his profoundest thoughts 
 were those in which he was most likely to be led astray, owing to 
 the obscurity of the subjects involved. He saw, as we all see, 
 the vast depth at which mankind lie below an ideal perfection ; 
 the sin and misery of the world were plain to him ; he could not 
 hope that any man would altogether escape the touch of this 
 untoward condition. He felt, what one of the greatest of the 
 prophets of Israel expressed in words many centuries afterwards : 
 "I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people 
 of unclean lips." Abraham could not write, and could not there- 
 fore transmit any such testimony respecting himself and his 
 contemporaries to posterity ; but the act of which I am now 
 speaking, the attempted sacrifice of his son, shows that he felt it. 
 A man so great as he could not but endeavour to solve the deep 
 problem of human duty in a more comprehensive manner than 
 others; "If I am to bring to an end these deep ills of humanity, 
 what does God require of me in the way of action ? " he asked himself. 
 
 Stories of those ancient times (though not of quite such remote 
 antiquity as Abraham) tell us of wild chieftains who for some 
 deeply desired end consented to sacrifice their children, thinking 
 that the divine favour was to be won thereby. Such, in Israelite 
 history, was Jephthah ; such, in Greek history, was Agamemnon. 
 Whatever we may think of these two heroic figures, there can be 
 no doubt that such deeds were done ; done with tears and sighing, 
 it is more than likely ; but then it was the tears and sighing which 
 proved the value of the sacrifice. It was not lor any such specific 
 end as that for which the vow of Jephthah was made, or for which 
 Agamemnon allowed his daughter to be slain, that Abraham can 
 be conceived to have taken his son Isaac to a distant mountain, 
 in order there to offer him as a sacrifice to God. It was no private 
 advantage that he desired ; but he must have been profoundly 
 convinced that something ought to be offered up to God, in order 
 to put man and God on terms of abiding intercourse ; and whether 
 from the example of others or from his own suggestion, he deter- 
 mined that his son was the victim demanded. His general 
 thought, that man must render his whole heartfelt service to 
 God, was true ; his particular application of it was not true.
 
 ix] ABRAHAM AND MOSES 229 
 
 Had he slain his son, he would have committed a sin. But 
 to go up to the verge of slaying his son was different from per- 
 forming the actual deed ; the obscurity of his moral position did not 
 permit him to discern at once the error of the act contemplated ; 
 and as long as he believed it to be right, faithfulness demanded 
 that he should carry it out. Then, at the last moment, when he 
 had prepared everything for the deed, and was about to perform 
 it, the obscuring film dropped from the eyes of his spirit. The 
 consciousness of present rectitude was in him; and yet he was 
 stayed in his course. The divine blessing was granted him ; yet 
 he returned home with his son intact. He sacrificed, the Bible 
 tells us (and very likely truly) a ram in place of his son. 
 
 If the above account be substantially true (and in speaking 
 of it as true, I am far from implying that we can enter into the 
 great strain and trial endured by Abraham, or that we can appro- 
 priate to ourselves his full mind) but if it be true as regards the 
 main current of his thoughts, then we must think of him as one 
 who had not only great ideals, but also a solemn sense of obligations 
 which are real, and yet beyond the power of man definitely to 
 conceive ; of obligations on the part of man to God, the Father of 
 our spirits ; with whose mind our minds and our actions must be 
 in harmony, according to our measure, if we are to receive from 
 him strength and sustenance. Abraham anticipated and pre- 
 figured a certain ordering of the consciences of men, which he 
 could not himself definitely accomplish ; but to have anticipated 
 and prefigured it was a great thing, and the effect of this sense of 
 spiritual duty was seen in all his race afterwards. 
 
 Of Abraham I need say no more. Of Isaac we know little 
 that is distinctive, though we must hold him to be a real character ; 
 but the picturesqueness of the stories which relate to Jacob, and 
 to Jacob's favourite son Joseph, strike every reader of the Bible. 
 The element of romance in these stories is obvious ; but it would 
 be incorrect to think that there is therefore no ground of truth 
 in them. What we learn from ancient historians, and from the 
 monuments, renders such an event as the migration of Jacob and 
 his sons and the whole clan into Egypt quite a possibility. Egypt 
 had at that time been conquered, and was being governed, by 
 the alien race of the Hyksos or Shepherd kings, who themselves 
 had come out of Canaan. (See, as to this, Sayce's Archaeology 
 of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, p. 145.) One of these kings is said 
 to have entertained Abraham (Genesis xii.); and another of the 
 race might well entertain Abraham's great-grandson and raise
 
 230 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH: [CH. 
 
 him to high authority, without any offence to his own racial 
 feeling. 
 
 Apart from the main story, a few words must be given to the 
 relations of Jacob to his twin brother Esau (the elder of the two). 
 The passionate, generous character of Esau excites real interest 
 in the reader of the Bible ; and the duplicity of Jacob in deceiving 
 his father Isaac for his own profit and against the interests of 
 Esau excites corresponding indignation. Yet the Biblical his- 
 torian does not appear to have thought that Jacob had done 
 anything discreditable. The story as it stands is an improbable 
 one ; but if Esau is to be treated as a real person (which cannot 
 be held quite certain) the quarrel between him and Jacob is far 
 from improbable ; and we may hope that the two brothers were 
 reconciled afterwards, as the book of Genesis in a very affecting 
 description tells us that they were. 
 
 The chief thread of the story of Jacob lies, however, apart from 
 Esau. He is a great and venerable person, and the modern reader 
 does not do him enough honour ; though he is not of course equal 
 to Abraham. Yet there are points in which he has a distinction 
 even above Abraham. He was the first of the patriarchs to 
 repress idolatry among his followers (see the narrative in Genesis 
 xxxv. 2-7). He exercised a natural authority in doing so, and 
 no resentment was occasioned by it ; we must not parallel this 
 with the acts of intolerance which have been so frequent in the 
 world's history. In addition he, with the aid of his son Joseph, 
 kept his sons in harmony and union together; which neither 
 Abraham nor Isaac appears to have succeeded in doing. The 
 beautiful story of Joseph is too well known to be recounted here ; 
 his forgiveness of his brothers after great wrongs is a fact too 
 much inwoven into the whole course of the history to be easily 
 distrusted. In other respects it is possible that Joseph was not 
 altogether so blameless as the narrative represents him ; and we 
 can hardly approve of the agreement, so favourable to despotism, 
 which he is reported to have made between the Egyptians and 
 Pharaoh as to the land an agreement which it would appear that 
 the Egyptians had no choice but to accept. (Genesis xlvii. 13-27.) 
 Yet he must have been a man of great ability and worth. 
 
 There was no principle of monogamy among these ancient 
 patriarchs, and Jacob in particular was not a monogamist; yet 
 the story of his love for Rachel and his fourteen years service for 
 her sake is the most tender love story in the whole Bible. A lofty 
 sentiment appears also in his assumption (by divine command,
 
 ix] ABRAHAM AND MOSES 231 
 
 we are told) of the name of Israel, whether we interpret this 
 name as meaning "a prince of God" or "a striver with God." 
 A chieftain he was, with a great following, as appears both from 
 other passages, and especially from the story of the murderous 
 slaughter which two of his sons committed on the people governed 
 by Hamor and Shechem, an act of which Jacob himself greatly 
 disapproved. That, in the end, he went down to Egypt with his 
 sons and their families and with his entire clan, at the invitation 
 of Joseph, we may believe. 
 
 Those two ideals cherished by Abraham, of which I spoke 
 above, the earthly ideal which consisted in his descendants 
 possessing Canaan, and the heavenly ideal which consisted in the 
 beneficent influence of those descendants on the world at large, 
 were cherished by Jacob also, and were handed down by him to his 
 sons. We cannot doubt that these two ideals, and the main outlines 
 of the lives of the eminent men in whose hearts the ideals of the 
 future had been conceived, were preserved in the minds of the 
 Israelite race all through the time of their sojourn in Egypt, which 
 for the greater part of the time was a sojourn in bondage : all 
 else was forgotten, but these things were not forgotten. This 
 is exactly what happened in the time of the Babylonian captivity, 
 a thousand years later ; for in the Babylonian captivity also we 
 are struck with the extraordinary disregard which the captive 
 Jews showed as regards their contemporary history, and the 
 tenacity with which they clung to the great names of the past. 
 That this was the case with the Israelites in Egypt also, we cannot 
 doubt ; and it is notable and natural that they took their national 
 name from the great ancestor who actually lived at the time of 
 their migration into Egypt, rather than from that still greater 
 ancestor who was the originator of the religious spirit which was 
 their strength. 
 
 It is a great landmark of history at which I have now arrived. 
 As there have been many critics who have denied the real existence 
 of Abraham, so there have been some, though fewer, who have 
 denied that the Israelites ever sojourned hi Egypt; who have 
 treated the beginnings of Israelite history as consisting merely 
 in the entrance into Canaan of an indiscriminate and barbarous 
 multitude, children of the desert. Those who choose to abandon 
 all sense of historical sequence and causation may take this line ; 
 such critics certainly never have explained, and never will explain, 
 how that complex and unique phenomenon, the religion of Israel, 
 took its rise. Nor do I believe that it can possibly be explained
 
 232 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH: [CH. 
 
 except by following, in the main, the Biblical lines ; with of course 
 that reserve as to the details which the nature of the narrative 
 and the antiquity of the period enjoins on us. 
 
 When the monarch of Egypt, the Pharaoh of that epoch, at 
 the request of Joseph, admitted Jacob and his family and clan as 
 settlers in his realm, he did not venture to grant them any land 
 in the populous parts of Egypt ; but he assigned to them the land 
 of Goshen, bordering on the desert, a tract suited to a pastoral 
 community. There they dwelt in peace during many years ; 
 there Jacob died, and there Joseph died, and there Joseph's 
 brethren died ; and for how much longer the immigrant Israelites 
 remained unmolested we do not know. But circumstances 
 caused a change adverse to them. 
 
 We read in Exodus i. 7, the following description of the con- 
 dition of things before that change occurred : 
 
 And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, 
 and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty ; and the land was filled with 
 them. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to remark that when the "children 
 of Israel" are spoken of at the time of their entrance into Egypt, 
 there are intended not merely the threescore and ten persons 
 joined together by actual blood-relationship, enumerated in 
 Genesis xlvi. 8-27, but also the clan of followers and subordinates, 
 numbering doubtless a thousand or more, who had embraced, 
 as already mentioned, the religious belief of their chiefs. Though 
 therefore the increase of the Israelites in Egypt, whereby from 
 a clan they became a nation, was certainly remarkable, it was not 
 miraculous. But to their actual numbers at the time of the 
 Exodus, and to the causes which swelled those numbers, I must 
 advert presently. 
 
 The land, says the book of Exodus, was filled with them. 
 That is to say, they had increased so much that they were obliged 
 to go out of the land of Goshen, which had been assigned to them, 
 and to make homes for themselves throughout the whole extent 
 of Egypt and its cities. We may conceive how unpopular this 
 made them. The Egyptians would not eat with them (Genesis 
 xliii. 32), nor, as we must suppose, have any friendly association 
 with them; yet here were the Israelites in their midst, and in 
 such near vicinity that intimate intercourse would under ordinary 
 circumstances have been unavoidable. The Israelites, never liked 
 from the first moment of their sojourn, came to be hated ; and at
 
 ix] ABRAHAM AND MOSES 233 
 
 last events took a turn which enabled this hatred to express itself 
 and make itself felt. 
 
 The Hyksos or Shepherd kings, after five centuries of domi- 
 nation, were expelled by the Egyptians ; and a native dynasty, one 
 of the most powerful that ever reigned in Egypt, took their place. 
 To the Israelites, the departure of their protectors meant the 
 exchange of liberty for slavery. This at any rate was true of 
 those who were scattered over the face of the country ; but it is 
 quite clear from the narrative that there were Israelites not in 
 a state of slavery, and it is reasonable to believe that these were 
 those who had remained in Goshen, the land originally assigned to 
 them. But by far the greater number were reduced to slavery, 
 and slavery of a peculiarly severe kind, among a people who had 
 a strong dislike of them. 
 
 Thus began that long conflict between the race of Israel and 
 the rest of mankind, which has continued ever since ; a conflict 
 not always acute, but of unparalleled persistence ; a conflict 
 originating in the conception that the race of Israel were to be, 
 through the blessing of God, the supreme benefactors of mankind. 
 This conception has indeed been singularly vindicated by history, 
 and yet has been marred by the intermixture, in the temperament 
 of that race, of a rigid and proud exclusiveness. But I must not 
 in this place dwell further on a matter, the elucidating of which 
 will need great care in the subsequent chapters of this work. 
 
 Of the details of the servitude of the Israelites in Egypt but 
 little is told us. We learn that they built for Pharaoh two "store 
 cities," Pithom and Raamses. From this one would infer that 
 they were collected together in special localities ; and this may 
 not improbably have been the case. There may possibly have 
 been an attempt on the part of the Egyptians to kill off all the 
 males of the race, as is related in Exodus i. 15-22: but if so, it 
 was clearly an attempt very soon abandoned. All through this 
 hard time the leaders of the Israelites retained the sense of a great 
 destiny reserved for them, of the promises of God, and especially 
 of a future possession of the land of Canaan; and these beliefs 
 would not be without influence even upon the mass of the people. 
 There is reason to think (though the Bible does not admit this 
 see Joshua v. 5) that the practice of circumcision was not 
 steadily kept up during the Egyptian bondage ; at all events 
 the strange story in Exodus iv. 24-26, appears to indicate that 
 Moses did not originally circumcise his own children ; and if Moses 
 was remiss, who may not have been remiss ?
 
 234 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH: [CH. 
 
 The name of Moses brings us to the era of the deliverance. 
 How are we to think of that famous event ? Under what impulse, 
 through what power, did the Israelites make their escape from 
 Egypt ; and did they achieve freedom through God's working on 
 their behalf? 
 
 Yes ; but as I have already intimated in this chapter, not in 
 the manner usually understood, but in a manner more noble than 
 that of miracles. Let me show how this is. 
 
 In the most remarkable parts of the book of Exodus, as it 
 stands, Moses has no true proper personal agency at all. He has 
 personal agency, indeed, in killing the Egyptian taskmaster; in 
 fleeing to the land of Midian, and becoming a herdsman to Jethro, 
 and marrying Jethro's daughter Zipporah ; and, later, in his 
 indignation when he breaks the two tables of stone, deeming the 
 Israelites unworthy to receive God's law ; lastly, also, when he 
 pleads with God on behalf of the sinful people (Exodus xxxii. 11-13, 
 and 31, 32). But the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, 
 and the legislation given them, are in no respect parts of his 
 personal agency. He receives the divine commands, he lifts up 
 his rod, and mighty miracles happen ; but he is not the doer of 
 these miracles ; he has not even by any labour of his own prepared 
 the way for them. As far as appears, in all his intercourse with 
 Pharaoh, he runs no personal risk ; he moves about under the 
 divine seal and protection, and sees his enemies afflicted and falling, 
 himself being the while perfectly secure. Why should we specially 
 honour a champion who has so easy a task ? Or will the believer 
 in the miracles say that we are not intended to honour Moses, 
 but that we are intended to honour God ? True, we are intended 
 to honour God remotely and mysteriously, in matters that are 
 remote and mysterious to us ; vividly and joyfully, in matters 
 that are within the compass of our intelligence. Is not the very 
 meaning of a revelation this, that it brings within the compass of 
 our intelligence a Power, which in so many things is remote and 
 mysterious? If we honour God for performing miracles like 
 those of the Exodus, we honour him distantly and mysteriously ; 
 if we honour him because he inspired with his strength the native 
 cour.age and patriotism of Moses, we honour him vividly and 
 intelligently. Is not the latter entitled to be called a revelation 
 rather than the former? And if God's agency in the matter lay 
 in his inspiring with strength the native courage and patriotism 
 of Moses, then we may honour Moses too ; for we must not think 
 that God infused his strength into Moses mechanically. The
 
 ix] ABRAHAM AND MOSES 235 
 
 case was quite otherwise ; it was heart beating with heart ; the 
 heart of the heroic Moses with the heart of the Eternal and 
 Almighty Spirit. That was true, intelligible revelation; not 
 that Moses was a perfect or flawless character; but he was 
 a heroic character, worthy of God's love and support. He did 
 indeed accomplish a far greater visible work than Abraham did ; 
 though Abraham had the deeper original insight and feeling. 
 
 On these premisses, I maintain that it is not dispensing with 
 revelation or annulling revelation to say that the miracles of the 
 Exodus are not literally true ; but on the contrary, that such 
 a beginning clears the way for understanding what revelation 
 truly is ; and without such a clearing of the way we cannot proceed 
 at all. To the actual history I now come. 
 
 That Moses was a warrior appears even from the Bible, 
 though in the Bible this part of his action is thrown into the 
 background as compared with his office as the spokesman of the 
 divine will, the declarer of the divine judgments. But in the 
 Antiquities of Josephus (bookn. c. 10) and in the treatise Against 
 Apion of the same author (book I. c. 26) the military aspect of the 
 character of Moses is strongly brought forward ; and though the 
 latter chapter is in the main a quotation from Manetho, with 
 whom Josephus is by no means in agreement, it none the less 
 shows what the Egyptians thought of Moses, and this is a point 
 of view not to be neglected. It is true that, even in Manetho, 
 Moses is represented as primarily a lawgiver ; but very curiously, 
 he is represented as initiating a war against the Egyptians by 
 summoning to the help of the Israelites those very Shepherd kings 
 and their followers whom the Egyptians had driven out. Now, 
 without placing implicit faith in Manetho, it is certainly desirable 
 -)( that in considering the character of Moses we should take into 
 account the military aspects of it. 
 
 The great work of which he was the true author, the trans- 
 planting of the Israelites from Egypt into the land of Canaan 
 (a work not completed by himself but none the less truly his), 
 was a work that could not possibly be done without a great deal 
 of fighting and a great deal of killing. Not wholly divine was such 
 a work ; and we must regret this part of it. But it is a case in 
 which we have to balance good and evil ; and that which makes 
 the balance weigh on the side of good is the high intrinsic value 
 of the people of Israel, as a factor in the world's development. 
 Moses himself could but feel, he could not fully judge, the 
 way in which the balance inclined ; but we, more than three
 
 236 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH: [CH. 
 
 thousand years later than Moses, have surer grounds of judg- 
 ment. 
 
 The people of Israel, depressed as they had been through long 
 years of servitude in Egypt, had still, especially in the persons 
 of their leaders, much of that high sentiment and simplicity of 
 faith which had come down to them from Abraham. In many 
 respects they were barbarous ; but the knowledge and skill in 
 which they were inferior to Babylonians, Egyptians, and even to 
 Canaanites, had less value for the world than that forward-looking 
 hope which was the treasure of their hearts and their bond of 
 union. It is true that the racial tie is not the deepest or strongest 
 of ties ; but a very deep and strong tie it is. Fervently did Moses 
 possess it, mounting up in his thoughts to the founders of his 
 race, and clinging to the promises of God ; and if we cannot think 
 him altogether right as to what those promises were, neither must 
 we think him altogether wrong. The most earthly and least 
 truly divine of what he deemed to be God's promises, the inherit- 
 ance by Israel of the land of Canaan, was to Moses the rift of light 
 which showed him his way in the darkness ; and following on this 
 track, he could not avoid bloodshedding. His feelings towards 
 the Canaanites, against whom his action was principally directed, 
 are in all probability more correctly represented in the books of 
 Exodus and Numbers than in the book of Deuteronomy : he meant 
 to drive them out ; but he had no wish for their universal slaughter. 
 
 If we cannot say that Moses was in every respect a merciful 
 man, he was at all events full of pity and love towards his own 
 people, the Israelites. Not that he was incapable of severity 
 towards them too ; that was implied in his office as their leader 
 and lawgiver ; but his heart was bent on their deliverance and on 
 setting them right in the way of peaceable and prosperous life. 
 
 Severe as he was, he was also ardent, vigorous, loving on their 
 behalf ; the diviner side of Abraham's ideal had taken root in his 
 temperament, and showed itself in this way 1 . 
 
 But what was the exact truth as regards the wonderful event 
 to which I have been referring, the deliverance of the Israelites 
 from Egypt, their acceptance of a law esteemed by them as divine, 
 and their conquest of Canaan? Let the reader remember how 
 difficult it is to reconstruct with certainty a piece of ancient 
 
 1 I perceive that I have, without design, given a eharacter of Moses very similar 
 to that given by .Josephns in his work Agrtin.it Apion, hook II. chapters 1'i, 17. In 
 that treatise Josephus says nothing about the miracles of the Exodus; and though he- 
 narrates them in hi.s Antiquities, I cannot but doubt whether he really believed in 
 them.
 
 ix] ABRAHAM AND MOSES 237 
 
 history, which has reached us almost entirely in poetic and legendary 
 form. Yet the attempt at reconstruction must to a certain extent 
 be made ; for the history is in this part of vital importance ; and 
 something, though not everything, may be determinable respecting 
 it. Manetho, though he has considerable defects, may yet help 
 us. He was an Egyptian, and the Israelites were disliked and 
 despised by him ; but there are points in his account, as given by 
 Josephus, which deserve our attention. Manetho knows that 
 the Shepherd kings were a powerful dynasty and for a time 
 conquerors of Egypt ; he might even seem to identify them and 
 their followers with the Israelites ; on the whole however it would 
 be more correct to say that he looks upon the Israelite nation as 
 formed by a union between the followers of the Shepherd kings 
 and a certain portion of the Egyptian nation that had been cast 
 out as afflicted with leprosy. This union, according to him, did 
 not take place while the Shepherd kings were ruling in Egypt, 
 but some three or four centuries after they had been expelled ; 
 and he actually says that the Shepherd kings and their followers, 
 on leaving Egypt, went and founded Jerusalem and built the temple 
 there. Three or four centuries after this (as I have just said) he 
 represents Moses as being born, whose original name, he says, was 
 Osarsiph ; and the toilsome bondage of the Israelites appears in 
 Manetho 's narrative as the bondage of some eighty thousand 
 afflicted Egyptians, who were set to work in the quarries east of 
 the Nile. However the king of Egypt (he says) of his own grace 
 and favour set these captives free, and gave them a desolate city 
 called Avaris to live in, which formerly had been inhabited by the 
 Shepherd kings and their followers. These eighty thousand then 
 took Osarsiph (or Moses) for their leader, who gave them new 
 laws, very diverse from those of the Egyptians (though he himself 
 is said at first to have been an Egyptian priest). Moses then 
 summoned the followers of the Shepherd kings from Jerusalem, 
 and with their aid tried to subdue Egypt; however he and his 
 allies were defeated and driven out, and retreated to Syria, where 
 (it is implied) they established themselves as the Israelite nation. 
 
 Manetho's account is a travesty of history ; but yet he knows 
 something. The alliance between the Shepherd kings and the 
 Israelites is known by him, though not in its true form. The 
 servitude of the Israelites is known by him, though inaccurately 
 as to its length and character. Though he attributes to many 
 of the Israelites an Egyptian origin, he knows that a considerable 
 part of the nation was not of Egyptian origin ; and this part, he
 
 238 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH: [CH. 
 
 says, came from the east (Against Apion, i. 14). He knows that 
 Moses was a lawgiver, and a lawgiver of remarkable originality, 
 and that he took the lead of the whole nation ; and if he represents 
 him as originally an Egyptian, we must remember that the Bible 
 also represents Moses as brought up among the Egyptians, and 
 as trained in all the Egyptian learning. Finally, is not Manetho 
 right when he represents leprosy as common among the Israelites ? 
 The book of Leviticus seems to support him ; and it was a frequent 
 statement among heathen authors. 
 
 Now comes the important point. Manetho tells us that the 
 Israelites (represented by him as a composite nation, as I have 
 described) engaged in actual fighting with the Egyptians. He 
 does not say that they won their liberty by fighting, for he says 
 that the Egyptians gave to those of them who were enslaved their 
 liberty first, and that the Israelites fought afterwards and were 
 beaten ; but surely this is a piece of patriotic vanity in him. 
 The natural inference from his account is that the Israelites had 
 to fight, in some measure at any rate, in order to obtain their 
 liberty. And is not this the most natural account of the matter ? 
 If the Bible does not say so, we must remember that the Biblical 
 historians had the honour of Jehovah deeply at heart, and that 
 the military glory of their own nation was quite secondary in 
 their eyes. It was natural for the Biblical historians to slide off 
 the actual fact in one direction, just as it was natural for Manetho 
 to slide off the actual fact in another direction, and the Bible does 
 represent the Egyptians and Israelites as very nearly coming to 
 blows. 
 
 I conclude, then, that the Israelites won their liberty not 
 without some fighting, and that Moses was their leader in this. 
 Had they any allies? The book of Exodus (xii. 38) tells us that 
 "a mixed multitude" went up with the Israelites out of Egypt. 
 Who were this mixed multitude? It is possible that they were 
 simply ordinary Egyptians of the poorest sort. But it is possible, 
 also, that they were adherents of the Shepherd kings, who had 
 been left behind when the Shepherd kings were expelled from 
 Egypt, and who were disliked by the Egyptians just as the Israel- 
 ites were disliked by them. If so, there would be a certain 
 truth in the statement of Manetho that the Israelites formed 
 an alliance with the Shepherds; though it is most improbable 
 that they sent to Jerusalem to obtain that alliance. On the whole, 
 looking at all the evidence, it seems to me that this was most 
 probably the fact.
 
 ix] ABRAHAM AND MOSES 239 
 
 Probably the ten plagues are a tradition founded on the fact 
 of physical calamities from which Egypt suffered at this period : 
 the Israelites would have their best chance of escape when the 
 Egyptians were in any way weakened. But no external opportu- 
 nities, taken in themselves, can account for the deliverance of 
 the Israelites ; the genius of Moses was the true main cause of it. 
 What power of organisation he must have had ! This he would 
 have learned when in the service of the Egyptians, in the earlier 
 years of his life ; but the fountains of his spirit sprang from no 
 such external source. We read in the Bible how, when in full 
 manhood, he openly espoused the cause of his oppressed fellow- 
 countrymen; and how, having slain one of the Egyptian task- 
 masters who was ill-treating an Israelite, he had to fly into exile. 
 There the fire kindled in his heart ; God spoke to him ; and (a new 
 king being on the throne) he ventured to return to Egypt, and to 
 claim liberty for his people. The persistent refusal of Pharaoh 
 did but make his ardour keener ; and the project of taking posses- 
 sion of Canaan would be confirmed by the discovery that freedom 
 for the Israelites was impossible within the bounds of Egypt. 
 
 How, with the scanty information that we possess, are we to 
 realise the stupendous event which followed? There have been 
 many instances in the world's history of great hordes travelling 
 over distances far longer than that which the Israelites traversed ; 
 and some of these hordes have effected conquests at the end of 
 their travel. But apart from all the material difficulties of the 
 case, there is something more difficult to understand about the 
 Israelites than in the case of an ordinary barbarous horde. There 
 certainly was a light shooting through the darkness of their 
 barbarism; but to what extent who shall say? There was 
 a feeling in them that they were a chosen race ; but how many 
 were really touched by this feeling ? To how many, on the contrary, 
 was everything hidden except the present danger and discomfort ? 
 How far were the vices of the slave still in them ? It is hard to 
 form an imagination of what they were ; and even in the case of 
 Moses himself, the mixture of military leader, lawgiver, and 
 ethical instructor is hard to realise. 
 
 What are we to suppose the number of persons thus departing 
 from Egypt? The Biblical reckoning of numbers is hardly ever 
 trustworthy ; but still, in order to account for the conquest of 
 Canaan, we must suppose that the number of emigrants is to be 
 reckoned by the hundred thousand. All these, while still in the 
 land of Egypt, had to be aroused, stimulated, set in motion ; and
 
 240 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH: [CH. 
 
 this, until the actual start, had to be done with secrecy. This 
 implies a certain fellow-feeling among the whole multitude, 
 whether Israelites or not ; but when they had once started, it 
 would take no long time for them all to consider themselves 
 Israelites. 
 
 A warlike movement, as I have said, it must be considered; 
 and on a night when the bright full moon was shining, the blow 
 was struck. It is not improbable that, as the Bible tells us, the 
 Israelites smeared their doorposts with blood on that night ; for 
 Egyptian guards and Egyptian soldiers would be at hand, and to 
 attack and slay these would be the first step. A house not smeared 
 with blood would be recognised as Egyptian. It is possible even, 
 as Manetho affirms (Josephus, Against Apion, I. 26) that towns 
 and villages were set on fire. But in any case the servitude was 
 loosened ; the march of liberation began. If the Pharaoh of that 
 time was absent in Ethiopia (as we gather from Manetho) the 
 pursuit would be delayed ; and when it did take place, it was 
 too late for any effective recovery of the fugitives. The "sea of 
 reeds," towards which Moses directed the march, was not, as is 
 now generally acknowledged, the Red Sea, but the marshy lakes 
 to the north. As to what took place there, it is impossible now to 
 speak with certainty. It is by no means unlikely that some of 
 the retreating Israelites were overtaken and slain by the army of 
 Pharaoh in revenge ; on the other hand, it is also possible that 
 the Egyptians were entangled in the marshes and suffered serious 
 loss there. However this may be, the Israelites and their allies 
 (thenceforward regarded as part of the entire Israelite body) 
 escaped, in the reign of the Pharaoh Menephthah, called by 
 Manetho Amenophis, in the fourteenth 1 century before the 
 Christian era. Egypt was behind them ; the desert country was 
 before them. What happened in that desert country? 
 
 We must believe that there the foundation was laid on which the 
 spiritual government of a nation was afterwards reared, though 
 not for centuries afterwards was that spiritual government com- 
 pleted in all its details. But before coming to that great subject, 
 some preliminary points must be spoken of. 
 
 The Bible, as everyone knows, speaks of forty years as the 
 time during which the Israelites sojourned in the wilderness. 
 But the word "forty" is often used in the Bible to signify a term 
 of indefinite length ; and when we look into the details of the 
 
 1 Or perhaps the thirteenth century; but the precise date must not be discussed 
 here.
 
 ix] ABRAHAM AND MOSES 241 
 
 book of Numbers, we see that only three actual years of wanderings 
 are narrated. The first year begins, of course, with the departure 
 from Egypt ; the second year begins with the passover described 
 at the beginning of the ninth chapter of Numbers ; the third year 
 begins with the arrival of the Israelites at Kadesh (Numbers xx. 1). 
 It is true that the third year is not explicitly mentioned in this 
 last passage, but only the "first month"; but a comparison of 
 Numbers xx. 1 with Deuteronomy ii. 14 proves (even if it were 
 otherwise doubtful) that the third year is meant. Now this same 
 twentieth chapter of Numbers carries us at once to the last year 
 of the desert wanderings, in the twenty-third verse (for Aaron's 
 death, which is there mentioned, happened in the fifth month of 
 the fortieth year after the Exodus, according to Numbers xxxiii. 
 38). Now what was happening during the years, more than 
 thirty-seven in number, which elapsed between the arrival of the 
 Israelites at Kadesh and the death of Aaron ? Our two authori- 
 ties, Numbers and Deuteronomy, differ here very considerably ; but 
 neither authority fills up the gap in any adequate manner. The 
 only important event which the book of Numbers mentions is a 
 miracle, which on a particular occasion supplied the Israelites with 
 water ; but how the Israelites were supplied with water during the 
 rest of the thirty-seven years, the book of Numbers does not say. 
 
 Now though, if we accepted the miraculous history as it stands, 
 we should no doubt accept the forty years sojourn in the wilderness 
 along with the other marvels without question; yet, if we do 
 not accept the miraculous history (and I am maintaining that 
 we cannot), the case is altered; the "forty years" cannot be 
 maintained as of any authority ; it simply shows that the Israelites 
 felt that they had remained a very long time in the desert. But 
 in a nation imbued with this feeling, three years may well be 
 expanded into an indefinite large number ; and then the didactic 
 teachers of an after generation would fix this large number as 
 forty, and would draw the moral which we see that they drew, 
 of the penalty inflicted on those who transgressed the commands 
 of Jehovah. 
 
 If we suppose the desert wanderings to have occupied a period 
 of three years, we shall be within the bounds of natural possibility, 
 all things being considered. It is probable that the deserts 
 surrounding Palestine were not quite so barren in the days of 
 Moses as they are at the present day. This is a point to which 
 attention was called by Dean Stanley, in his Sinai and Palestine ; 
 who remarks that even of late years the vegetation has diminished, 
 
 M. D. A. 16
 
 242 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH: [CH. 
 
 through the destructive habits of the wild population. It is 
 certain that the land of Edom, which borders on the Sinai tic 
 peninsula, could not maintain to-day the population which it 
 maintained in ancient times ; and would such an invasion of 
 Palestine be possible at the present day as that described in the 
 following passage of the book of Judges? 
 
 And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel ; and because of Midian 
 the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and 
 the caves, and the strongholds. And so it was, when Israel had sown, 
 that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites, and the children of the 
 east ; they came up against them ; and they encamped against them, and 
 destroyed the increase of the earth, till thou come to Gaza, and left no 
 sustenance in Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor ass. For they came up 
 with their cattle and their tents, they came in as locusts for multitude; 
 both they and their camels were without number, and they came into the 
 land to destroy it. And Israel was brought very low because of Midian ; 
 and the children of Israel cried unto Jehovah. Judges vi. 2-6. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the writer of that passage had 
 seen the event which he so graphically describes ; but plainly it 
 was not an impossible event in those days. The wild "children 
 of the east" must have come across the desert to Palestine; 
 and does not this go far to show that the Israelites, coming from 
 the south, may have done the same? We cannot solve all 
 difficulties ; but the sojourn of the Israelites for three years in 
 the desert country cannot be held to be an impossibility, quite 
 apart from miracle. The cattle which they took with them 
 would supply them with some means of subsistence ; and it is 
 important to notice that cattle can live in a country where men 
 could not find any sustenance in the produce of the ground. 
 
 But in all this history of the desert wanderings, as in the history 
 of the Exodus itself, the central part is that of Moses ; and Moses, 
 strong as a leader, is yet more admirable as a lawgiver. It is 
 not to be supposed that any part of the elaborate Pentateuchal 
 code proceeded from Moses, or from any one at all near to the 
 date of Moses, except what are called the ten commandments 
 (in the Hebrew the "ten words"); and these would be written 
 in the briefest, probably hieroglyphic, form. The evidence seems 
 sufficient that the ark which was in Solomon's temple really 
 contained the tables of stone on which the "ten words" were 
 written (see Deuteronomy x. 5, written, it must be remembered, 
 about the reign of Josiah); and the history of the ark is 
 very fairly traced back to the time of the judges (cf. 1 Samuel 
 iii. 3). Earlier than that, tradition must answer for the tables of
 
 ix] ABRAHAM AND MOSES 243 
 
 stone ; but the tradition is a probable one. I assume then that 
 the substance of the ten commandments came from Moses ; and 
 any one who believes in God must confess that their purport is 
 of admirable breadth and sanity, and especially suited to a primi- 
 tive race. To us, perhaps, they would appear maxims of morality 
 rather than laws in the strict sense (though "Thou shalt not 
 kill!' and "Thou shalt not steal" are still cardinal points of 
 legislation) ; but if we say this, we must also say that morality 
 reaches deeper than the forms of law can reach. The command- 
 ments were meant to penetrate to the soul, even more than to 
 direct the actions of men; and that they performed this office 
 for the choice spirits of the race of Israel cannot be doubted. 
 
 It cannot of course be supposed that the whole people of 
 Israel, either at the time of the desert wanderings or for many 
 centuries afterwards, received the ten commandments in that 
 manner of full acceptance which was designed by Moses; they 
 were an influence which worked gradually; and, under all the 
 circumstances, this could not have been otherwise. But those 
 Israelites who really embraced the commandments as a divine 
 law were truly elevated by them, and did not forget them ; and 
 while it must be confessed that something more powerful was 
 needed thoroughly to purify human nature from all evil propen- 
 sities, the commandments did act powerfully in that direction. 
 No doubt the commandment as to keeping the sabbath day is 
 more valuable in its spirit than in its letter. 
 
 We must not be surprised if Moses sought to enforce some of 
 these commandments, and especially that against idolatry, with 
 too great an exercise of material force ; if it be true that he slew 
 many of the idolaters in the matter of the golden calf, we certainly 
 should say so. These idolaters, it must be remembered, were 
 intending to worship Jehovah (Exodus xxxii. 5). But in a rough 
 age rough things are done, even by the best men ; and the com- 
 mandments are a proof that the higher ideal of Abraham, if not 
 embraced by Moses in that lofty universality with which Abraham 
 embraced it, had still a true abode in the heart of Moses. It was 
 Moses who made the ideals of Abraham a great practical force in 
 the world ; he narrowed them somewhat in doing so, but his 
 service to mankind was nevertheless of the highest kind. 
 
 What are we to say of the Israelites the people whom Moses 
 led? Scarcely as yet a nation, they were being formed into a 
 nation. The current of a common feeling did run through them, 
 even at the time of the Exodus ; and it was plainly strengthened 
 
 162
 
 244 THE FIRST SEED OF A PERFECT FAITH [CH. ix 
 
 by the time they made their onslaught on Canaan. We must be 
 content with partial virtue in such a people, provided it be 
 a growing virtue. That they were sometimes cowardly we may 
 believe ; their refusal to obey Moses, when he first ordered the 
 invasion of Canaan after the mission of the spies, is an instance. 
 But on the whole we shall not think them cowardly ; nay rather 
 we shall honour them for their courage ; and if they felt no 
 compunction or qualm in slaying men of alien race who stood in 
 their way, we must remember how long it was before even Christian 
 nations learned to exercise mercy towards men of wholly alien 
 race and different belief from themselves. 
 
 Let me finally quote from the Bible a well-known passage in 
 commendation of the Israelites, such as the Bible itself seldom 
 gives them : it is part of the prophecy attributed to the great 
 heathen seer, Balaam (Numbers xxiii.) : 
 
 From Aram hath Balak brought me, 
 
 The king of Moab from the mountains of the East: 
 
 Come, curse me Jacob, 
 
 And come, defy Israel. 
 
 How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed ? 
 
 And how shall I defy, whom Jehovah hath not defied ? 
 
 For from the top of the rocks I see him, 
 
 And from the hills I behold him: 
 
 Lo, it is a people that dwell alone, 
 
 And shall not be reckoned among the nations. 
 
 Who can count the dust of Jacob, 
 
 Or number the fourth part of Israel? 
 
 Let me die the death of the righteous, 
 
 And let my last end be like his ! 
 
 Rise up, Balak, and hear ; 
 
 Hearken unto me, thou son of Zippor ! 
 
 God is not a man, that he should lie ; 
 
 Neither the son of man, that he should repent: 
 
 Hath he said, and shall he not do it ? 
 
 Or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good ? 
 
 Behold, I have received commandment to bless: 
 
 And he hath blessed, and I cannot reverse it. 
 
 He hath not behold iniquity in Jacob, 
 
 Neither hath ho seen perverseness in Israel : 
 
 Jehovah his God is with him, 
 
 And the shout of a king is among them. 
 
 The great patriot and lawgiver, with whom the latter part of 
 the present chapter has been concerned, died just before the 
 Israelites actually entered Canaan ; his faithful brother Aaron, 
 and his no less faithful sister Miriam, having died before him.
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE NAME " JEHOVAH " 
 
 THE Hebrew word, the pronunciation of which is now thought 
 to be represented to us modern Europeans by "Yahweh," was 
 formerly written "Jehovah." In our ordinary translations, 
 both Authorised and Revised, "Jehovah" is sometimes found; 
 but generally it is replaced by the phrase "the LORD" (which 
 corresponds to the Greek of the Septuagint version and the Latin 
 of the Vulgate) ; the capital letters indicating that it is not a trans- 
 lation of the Hebrew " Adonai," which in our versions is translated 
 by "the Lord," in the ordinary small letters. No doubt the 
 design of all the translators just mentioned (Greek, Latin, or 
 English) was to take away from the minds of their readers any 
 idea that the God mentioned was only the God of the Jews. But 
 as that idea really is present in parts of the Old Testament (the 
 most remarkable passage of this nature is Judges xi. 24), it is not 
 proper, in a work like the present at any rate, to use artificial 
 means for the purpose of preventing it from being recognised. 
 
 It would seem then to follow, if we wish to be accurate, that 
 this Hebrew word should be translated by "Yahweh." But 
 I have not done so, and for this reason. Ordinary people who read 
 about "Yahweh" have an obscure feeling of puzzlement, and 
 hardly feel that the name implies any sacredness. Now I am 
 most unwilling that any one should think that the God of the Old 
 Testament is not sacred to us. Though it is true that the ideas 
 of the race of Israel respecting God sometimes fell low, they some- 
 times rose very high ; and I cannot think that we ought to disjoin 
 ourselves from them. The name "Jehovah" does imply to 
 ordinary people some sacredness ; and therefore I have used it. 
 
 Finally, in respect of one particular phrase, I hope I may be 
 excused for having sometimes written "Jehovah Sabaoth, " re- 
 presenting the Hebrew words, sometimes as in the ordinary 
 translations, "The Lord of hosts."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 ISRAEL'S EARTHLY IDEAL ATTAINED: DAVID 
 
 I MUST not allow my reader for a moment to forget the double 
 process of thought and feeling of which I am tracing the develop- 
 ment in the race of Israel ; one branch of it lying in the background, 
 hardly beginning to send out its tender shoots, the ideal conceived 
 by Abraham of a blessing about to accrue to all mankind through 
 his progeny ; the other branch, also germinating in the thoughts 
 of that same Abraham, the plain intelligible purpose, divinely 
 permitted rather than divinely enjoined, that his posterity should 
 inherit the land of Canaan. 
 
 This intelligible purpose, this ideal suited to the superficial 
 strata of the human heart rather than to man's diviner instincts, 
 had been seized with vigour by Moses ; and though the diviner 
 morality had also touched Moses, yet when he died, it was the 
 earthly ideal which stood out preeminently as the goal of the 
 Israelites. Already, even while outside the boundaries of Canaan, 
 had the Israelites under Moses vanquished two Amorite kings, 
 slain or driven out their people, and occupied their territory. 
 Now, under Joshua, they were about to enter Canaan itself ; and 
 for a very long time the militant purpose, the conquering instinct, 
 was supreme among them. The feeling of brotherhood between 
 Israelite and Israelite existed however, and was a softening agency, 
 though often disturbed by local quarrels ; and a sublime sense 
 of the being and working of Jehovah, as the one Supreme Deity, 
 animated the noblest spirits of the nation. These ardent souls 
 felt that Jehovah had been their deliverer, and therefore refused 
 all recognition, even the smallest, to other deities, or even to the 
 names of other deities ; but it was long before this conviction 
 penetrated the mass of the Israelites. 
 
 It is the era of Israelite conquest, however, on which I am now 
 entering. Under Joshua the victorious race occupied many parts 
 of Canaan. Yet the Israelites no more effected the conquest of
 
 CH. x] DAVID 247 
 
 Canaan with a single blow than the Saxons, eighteen centuries 
 afterwards, occupied Britain after a single campaign. We see 
 clearly from various passages hi the book of Joshua (xiii. 13, 
 xv. 63, xvi. 10, xvii. 12 ,13), and still more from the first chapter 
 of Judges, that for a long time Israelites and Canaanites lived side 
 by side over the greater part of Canaan; and there was some 
 mingling of the races. Sometimes the Israelites enslaved the 
 Canaanites ; occasionally the Canaanite chiefs conquered and 
 enslaved the Israelites in their neighbourhood. Temporary 
 incursions and victories there were too on the part of more distant 
 nations ; now it was Moabites or Ammonites, now again the 
 Midianites, but at last mainly the Philistines, who obtained pre- 
 dominance in this way. The Israelites were by no means always 
 the masters of the territory which they had won. 
 
 Still, the intrinsic cohesion of the tribes of Israel made itself 
 felt more and more, and proved superior to all the material weapons 
 of their rivals. At this time, we cannot doubt, began the celebra- 
 tion in song and story of the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, 
 and of the "Wars of Jehovah," which expanded at last into those 
 famous narratives which we now read in the books of Exodus and 
 Numbers ; and the more ancient heroes, Abraham and Isaac, 
 Jacob and Joseph, would not be forgotten in such recitals. Israel 
 felt the pride of national prowess ; and even superior to this pride 
 would be the awe felt at the power of Jehovah, who had worked 
 such great things on their behalf. Not wholly pure was the 
 religious sentiment in Israel ; yet it was purer, and more justly 
 founded, than any similar feeling in any other nation then 
 existing. 
 
 But it was precisely in respect of the religion that a serious 
 problem now arose, disordering to the welfare of the nation during 
 many centuries, and leaving its mark even when the final settle- 
 ment had been reached, and when the problem as a problem had 
 disappeared. The Canaanites, where not extirpated, were slowly 
 being absorbed into the Israelite nation ; and yet, in the process 
 of being absorbed, they exercised an influence on the Israelites. 
 This was likely to be true especially of the Hittites, now known 
 to have been a race of commanding power ; but indeed the 
 Canaanites generally are likely to have possessed a more advanced 
 civilisation than that to which the Israelites had attained. Hence 
 the surviving Canaanites influenced the Israelites, and quite as 
 much in religion as in other things ; the local shrines did not at 
 once lose the authority with which they had been accredited of
 
 248 ISRAEL'S EARTHLY IDEAL ATTAINED: [OH. 
 
 old, and the Israelites frequently worshipped at them. It must 
 be borne in mind that the Supreme Being had always been wor- 
 shipped by the truest Israelites under such names as Elohim, 
 Adonai, El Shaddai, as well as under the commanding name of 
 Jehovah ; and there appeared little objection, superficially 
 speaking, to the name of Baal being added to these appellations. 
 We have, however, to consider in such cases not merely the bare 
 name taken in itself, but the associations with which long use has 
 imbued the name. Such names as Elohim and Adonai recalled, 
 quite as much as Jehovah, those pleadings of man with God, and 
 that help given by God to man, of which Israelite history is 
 full ; and though the manner of that divine help was becoming 
 transformed and materialised in the traditional narratives, the 
 remembrance of it even under this transformation was a possession 
 of great value. The name Baal had associations of far vaguer 
 and less worthy character, and it was difficult to abolish these if 
 the name was to be accepted. Our means of judgment at the 
 present day cannot but be imperfect as to what was possible in 
 the use of terms so ancient. We have reason (to which I will 
 shortly advert) for saying that many Israelites worshipped God 
 under the name of Baal without any polytheistic idea being 
 involved in such worship, or any desertion of the worship of 
 Jehovah ; and yet it is probable that the rejection of the name by 
 the higher spirits of the Israelite race was a right rejection. The 
 quarrel on this point was long continued and was sometimes of 
 great bitterness, especially in northern Israel, where the neighbour- 
 hood of Tyre and Sidon gave greater strength to the worship of 
 Baal ; and though I have said that the name of Baal was sometimes 
 used as practically having the same meaning as Jehovah, yet the 
 use of it as meaning a rival deity to Jehovah was probably more 
 frequent. 
 
 Both from their assimilation to the aboriginal Canaanites and 
 from their own crude and primitive character, the Israelites were 
 prone to another practice censured by Moses, idolatry. Though 
 the central shrine at Shiloh, where the tabernacle and ark were, 
 had no idol, yet there are passages in the book of Judges (viii. 27 
 and xvii. 1-5) which show that Jehovah Wcis sometimes represented 
 under the form of an idol, in spite of the Mosaic prohibition. 
 Human sacrifices again were not unknown ; and though the 
 106th psalm, written in later and purer days, says that these 
 were offered "unto the idols of Canaan," the worship of Jehovah 
 was not altogether free from them either. A recognition of human
 
 x] DAVID 249 
 
 sacrifice to Jehovah, as a lawful act, has crept into the book of 
 Leviticus (xxvii. 28, 29) : 
 
 Notwithstanding, no devoted thing, that a man shall devote unto 
 Jehovah of all that he hath, whether of man or beast, or of the field of his 
 possession, shall be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is most holy 
 unto Jehovah. None devoted 1 , which shall be devoted of men, shall be 
 ransomed ; he shall surely be put to death. 
 
 This general precept finds an illustration in the sacrifice of 
 his daughter by Jephthah ; but that poor innocent victim was 
 honoured with such special memorials after her death (Judges 
 xi. 39, 40) that we must suppose the case to have been a rare one. 
 
 The Israelites in the time of the judges deserve our esteem, 
 despite their frailties, even as in their desert wanderings ; they 
 had warm hearts and a courageous spirit ; and if we must some- 
 times reproach them for cruelty, we must remember in how little 
 account human life was held all over the world in that day. The 
 later moralists of Israel reproached them for their too great 
 clemency to the conquered Canaanites ; a reproach in which we 
 certainly cannot join. 
 
 It is not my object to dwell on the details of the history of 
 Israel; and the picturesque narratives, half history and half 
 poetry, which are associated with the names of Deborah, Gideon, 
 Jephthah, and Samson, must not detain me here. But the strange 
 and painful history of the sin, punishment, and restoration of the 
 tribe of Benjamin, which occupies the last three chapters of the 
 book of Judges, is worth noting as an example both of wild justice 
 and of those reactions of pity to which the Israelites after a deed 
 of ultra-severity were prone. It is permissible to believe that the 
 bloodshed recorded in those chapters has been exaggerated, as is 
 often the case in the Biblical pages. 
 
 From the southern desert up to the range of Lebanon in the 
 north, Israel at last stood out as the people that held command, 
 except as to the south-western angle of this territory, where the 
 Philistines still remained as antagonists not wholly unequal in 
 force. The Philistines were the more dexterous, and the better 
 craftsmen ; for we read that the Israelites had to have recourse 
 to the Philistines to put an edge on their tools, and the weapons 
 of the Israelites were of the rudest kind ; swords and spears were 
 rare among them (1 Samuel xiii. 19-22). The reason of this was 
 
 1 Though the Hebrew word here translated "devoted" generally means "devoted 
 because accursed," this is not always the case (see Micah iv. 13) ; and the context in 
 the present passage does not imply a curse at all.
 
 250 ISRAEL'S EARTHLY IDEAL ATTAINED [CH. 
 
 partly the natural backwardness of the Israelites, and the suspicion 
 in which they were held by their neighbours; but partly also, 
 because living as they did on the hills, their communications with 
 the countries round them were not easy ; whereas the Philistines 
 from their plains near the seacoast had easy intercourse with all 
 the world. But the Israelites were the more numerous people, 
 and inhabited a country more difficult to attack ; and they at 
 last determined on a step which had for its direct object the 
 increase of their military force. They asked their great prophet 
 and judge, Samuel, to choose for them a king, who should lead 
 them in battle. 
 
 If the book of Deuteronomy had lain before Samuel, he would 
 have seen that this request was a perfectly legitimate one, and 
 that directions had been laid down in that book as to the appoint- 
 ment of a king over the Israelites. (Deuteronomy xvii. 1420.) 
 But the book of Deuteronomy (as was shown in the preceding 
 chapter of this work) was not yet written, and was not to be 
 written until long after Samuel's date ; and Samuel, both for 
 selfish and for unselfish reasons, disapproved of the request which 
 was urged upon him. It involved a restraint on his own authority ; 
 and it brought in a possibility that the worship of Jehovah 
 might no longer be the centre of action and feeling in Israel. We 
 must do Samuel the justice of saying that a regard for other 
 sides of human nature besides the success of the warrior was 
 probably the chief cause of his reluctance to comply with the 
 request of the Israelites. However, he was not strong enough 
 to resist them ; and after taking all the measures in his power 
 to prevent the worship of Jehovah suffering, he chose or accepted 
 as king, and anointed with the oil of ceremonial sacredness, Saul 
 the son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin. The Biblical narrative 
 which tells us how Saul was in search of his father's asses when 
 Samuel met him and invited him to a sacrificial feast, and anointed 
 him to be king, can hardly be the full truth on such a matter. 
 Some previous discussion there must have been between Samuel 
 and the Israelite chiefs ; and the question occurs, Why was the 
 new king chosen from the very smallest of the tribes of Israel ? 
 The answer probably is, that Samuel had some distrust of the 
 tribe of Ephraim, then in chief power; while yet he could not 
 venture to select the new king from the tribe of Judah, which 
 was powerful enough to excite the jealousy of Ephraim ; but the 
 tribe of Benjamin, which lay between the two, was so weak as to 
 excite no jealousy ; and Samuel probably thought that a king
 
 x] DAVID 251 
 
 selected from so weak a tribe would be amenable to his advice. 
 If this was his motive, it proved a mistake. 
 
 The ensuing situation was most delicate, and in the sequel 
 proved disastrous. For the first time in the records of history, 
 we find ourselves in the presence of that quarrel which has had 
 so many counterparts afterwards, the quarrel between Church 
 and State. The quarrel in this instance was only too natural ; 
 but the particular causes which the Bible assigns for it are wholly 
 inadequate, and it is clear that something not recorded lies behind 
 them. What that something was we cannot certainly know, but 
 we may with some likelihood conjecture. 
 
 From the first book of Chronicles (viii. 33, 34 and ix. 39, 40) 
 we learn that Saul had a son named Eshbaal, and a grandson named 
 Merib-baal. Now these two persons are the same as those who 
 are named, in the second book of Samuel, Ishbosheth and Mephi- 
 bosheth ; and it may be asked how it happens that we find this 
 variation in the names of well-known persons. The answer is 
 easy; the name Ishbosheth means "the man of shame," and was 
 not a possible name for Saul to give to his son; but the name 
 Eshbaal, "the man of Baal" as we may pretty certainly translate 
 it, was a perfectly possible name, if only Saul recognised Baal as 
 a name of the supreme God. Ishbosheth was in fact a nickname, 
 used by persons who were, not minded to use the word Baal in 
 any honourable connexion ; and similarly Mephibosheth was 
 a nickname for Merib-baal. The book of Chronicles has, by a sort 
 of accident, preserved the true name in each case. Merib-baal 
 probably means "Baal contends" ; and this name doubtless also 
 involves an honourable reference to Baal, just as the name Jehoiarib 
 ("Jehovah will contend"), which we find in 1 Chronicles ix. 10, 
 implies honour paid to Jehovah. There was a more ancient hero 
 of Israel whose original name, it is probable, implied honour to 
 Baal ; this is the hero and judge whom we generally name 
 Gideon. According to the Bible, Gideon was the real name of 
 this hero, Jerubbaal a nickname ; but when all the circumstances 
 are considered, it is probable that the reverse is the case ; and that 
 Gideon (which means "the cutter down") was a name attached 
 to Jerubbaal on account of his valiant deeds; just as Charles 
 Martel (the "Hammerer") acquired his second name in mediaeval 
 times through his warlike exploits. 
 
 Whatever be the case as to Jerubbaal, we may confidently 
 say that when Saul and Jonathan had sons to whom they respec- 
 tively attached the names Eshbaal and Merib-baal, they intended'
 
 252 ISRAEL'S EARTHLY IDEAL ATTAINED: [CH. 
 
 the name Baal to be interpreted honourably ; and the probability is 
 that this was done with but little idea of rivalry between Baal 
 and Jehovah ; Baal was accepted, like Elohim and El Shaddai, 
 as a fitting appellative for the Most High God. But to Samuel 
 the name of Baal would be odious ; for the acceptance of it put 
 Canaanite and Phoenician religion on the same kind of level as 
 the religion of Israel. 
 
 I cannot but think that the deep-seated cause of quarrel 
 between Samuel and Saul lay in this fact, that Saul desired 
 a peaceable unity of worship between Israelite and Canaanite, 
 whereas Samuel was with all his heart opposed to this. Taking 
 this as our clue, we shall see why Samuel was greatly offended 
 when Saul took upon himself to offer sacrifice, Samuel having 
 been late in keeping his engagement to do so. A king or chieftain 
 of unblemished orthodoxy might offer sacrifice unreproved (as 
 Gideon, Jephthah, Manoah did, and as David appears to have 
 done afterwards, 2 Samuel vi. 13) ; but Saul was suspected by 
 Samuel. So likewise we must infer that the mission on which 
 Samuel sent Saul for the extirpation of the Amalekites (a cruel 
 and wicked act surely, though Samuel treated it as a religious 
 duty) was a kind of test by which Saul might show himself a true 
 worshipper of Jehovah. Saul did not adequately fulfil the test ; 
 he behaved with what we should consider extreme cruelty, but 
 not cruelly enough to satisfy Samuel. It is difficult to express 
 the degree in which the whole narrative offends against every moral 
 principle which we ourselves hold sacred ! Let it be remembered 
 that when, some years afterwards, David commits the great sin 
 of procuring the murder of Uriah, and on being reproved by the 
 prophet Nathan for the wicked act, says "I have sinned"; he 
 receives what is essentially pardon, though not unmixed with 
 punishment. Yet when Saul, reproved by Samuel for what is 
 regarded as the great sin of saving alive the king of the Amalekites 
 and the best of their cattle, says "I have sinned," pardon is not 
 accorded to him ! That, it seems, was too heinous an offence to 
 be forgiven, even upon the repentance of the sinner ! Let us 
 hope that the story is inexact; for the moral error of the Biblical 
 historian, though considerable, is not so great as the moral error 
 of Samuel, if he actually said and did what the Bible reports him 
 to have said and done. 
 
 Inexact the story probably is ; but it will be difficult to free 
 Samuel from the reproach of fanaticism. The religion of men 
 cannot but share in the imperfection which belongs to their entire
 
 x] DAVID 253 
 
 train of thinking on matters of right and wrong ; and while the 
 attitude which Samuel takes up towards Saul is that of the moral 
 reprover and judge, Samuel himself was all unconsciously immersed 
 in injustice and cruelty. The sin of these Amalekites was that 
 their ancestors, some hundreds of years before Samuel's time, had 
 committed an unprovoked attack on the Israelites when the latter 
 were on the first marches out of Egypt. Moses in his anger had 
 recorded a divine malediction against the whole Amalekite race, 
 and Samuel interpreted the malediction as justifying the command 
 which he laid upon Saul. It was plainly only a single tribe of 
 Amalekites that were thus massacred ; but the iniquity of the 
 character of the act is not altered thereby. 
 
 Yet Samuel had an upright character; we must recognise 
 this, while not denying the errors into which he fell. If, as I have 
 supposed, the quarrel between him and Saul had regard to the 
 question of strictness or laxity in religious association with others, 
 the cause is a perfectly intelligible one, and examples of it are 
 abundant in the world of to-day ; but the details of it in the case 
 with which I am dealing cannot at this distance of time be fully 
 clear to us. It is some slight corroboration, however, of the view 
 here taken, that Saul, throughout the narrative of which I have 
 been speaking, while never using either the phrase "Jehovah my 
 God" or the phrase "Jehovah our God," does twice say to 
 Samuel "Jehovah thy God"; as if he knew that Jehovah was 
 more peculiarly Samuel's God than his own : though he by no 
 means implied that he did not himself owe allegiance to Jehovah. 
 
 The rupture between Samuel and Saul was complete ; and 
 the Bible now tells us that Samuel took a momentous and startling 
 step. Visiting the small town of Bethlehem, he summoned the 
 elders of the town to a sacrifice at the house of Jesse, and there 
 anointed the youngest son of Jesse, David, to be king over all 
 Israel. In this way is introduced to us that historical character, 
 who in after times was frequently reckoned as the greatest glory 
 of his nation ; and who certainly raised the Israelites to their 
 highest point of temporal power. 
 
 I must apologise to my reader, now and many times over in 
 the course of this book of mine, for the bareness and dryness with 
 which I am compelled to refer to narratives which in the Bible 
 are instinct with beauty and poetry. Even that extraordinary 
 story of the massacre of the Amalekites at the command of Samuel, 
 of which I have just been treating, is in the Biblical pages full of 
 solemnity and dignity; and similarly the anointing of David by'
 
 254 ISRAEL'S EARTHLY IDEAL ATTAINED: [CH. 
 
 Samuel is told in a manner which makes us feel that a great 
 history has in this act a worthy beginning, full of interest for all 
 men through all time. Such is the atmosphere of the Bible ; such 
 is its power ; and I do not doubt that that atmosphere, that power, 
 came from a worthy source ; only I must add that they reach 
 us through a broken and darkening medium. To take the present 
 instance ; how can we believe that, if Samuel anointed David to 
 be king over Israel in the presence of his father, his brethren, and 
 the elders of Bethlehem, the purport of the act was not known to 
 all present; how, if the purport of the act was known to all 
 present, could it fail to reach the ears of Saul; and how, if it 
 reached the ears of Saul, could he pass it over unnoticed? It 
 is true that the sacrifice is apparently intended to cast a veil 
 over the subsequent and much more important act, the anointing 
 of David, but could it be an effective veil? Surely not. To 
 anoint David as king was to rebel against Saul ; and Saul must 
 have treated it as rebellion. Yet Saul, immediately afterwards, 
 accepted David as his harp-player; and David very markedly 
 treats Saul as the true anointed king of Israel, and never refers 
 to himself as having been anointed by Samuel. We must conclude 
 that that anointing was a fable. But Samuel is likely to have 
 had intimate association with David, and to have inspired him 
 with that zeal for the worship of Jehovah which was in Samuel's 
 own heart. Saul had worshipped Jehovah ; but David worshipped 
 Jehovah exclusively and passionately, and this was what Samuel 
 desired, and what he had not found in Saul. It is not improbable 
 then that Samuel incited David with predictions of future 
 greatness, perhaps even royal greatness ; and David, being in the 
 impressionable season of youth, would be much moved by such 
 incitements ; but further we cannot pursue the matter. 
 
 That David won his entrance into Saul's court, and thereby 
 the beginning of political importance, by his skill in harp-playing, 
 as the Biblical account tells us, is quite credible. Saul, alter his 
 quarrel with Samuel, was afflicted by a deep melancholy (which 
 may have been a natural tendency in him) ; and the minstrel 
 who by his melodies could charm the despondency away was to 
 him a priceless treasure. Not only Saul, but Jonathan the son 
 of Saul, was affected by the charm of David ; and when David 
 added to his softer skill the valour of a daring warrior, Jonathan 
 became absorbed in his friend, and appeared ready to think that 
 David, after Saul's death, would be a worthier successor to the 
 royal dignity than he himself would be. But to Saul this could
 
 x] DAVID 255 
 
 not be pleasing; and a germ of distrust was very early laid in 
 Saul's mind against David. 
 
 In the arts of war, as in the arts of peace, David began to be 
 greatly distinguished. The story of his single combat with the 
 giant Goliath of Gath is indeed doubtful ; for the feat of slaying 
 Goliath is attributed, later on in the books of Samuel (2 Samuel 
 xxi. 19) to another native of Bethlehem, Elhanan; and such 
 a deed is more likely to have been wrongly attributed to David, 
 than wrongly taken away from him. Yet David must have had 
 real warlike skill ; and he had besides those graces of youth which 
 win the hearts of men, and which Saul, though a good stout 
 soldier, had not. Whether he did actually kill ten times as many 
 of the vapouring Philistines as Saul was of little consequence; 
 the people liked to say that he had done so ; and the distich 
 
 Saul has slain his thousands 
 And David his ten thousands, 
 
 was sung by the women of Israel, when they celebrated the victors 
 with their timbrels and their dancing. 
 
 But by this the jealousy of Saul was actively awakened ; and 
 David, who had been his good genius, now began to appear to 
 him as his evil genius. Saul probably knew that David was 
 loyal to himself ; but the train was clearly being laid which would 
 lead to the displacement of Jonathan from his natural succession 
 to the royal dignity ; and the worst of it was that Jonathan did 
 not resent his own future exclusion. This was the prospect which 
 made Saul's feelings towards David, in the end, unappeasable. 
 David's life was endangered, and he had to fly the court, and to 
 take refuge in the wilds south or east of Judsea. But he did not 
 go alone ; his relations, and a number of discontented turbulent 
 spirits, gathered to him, and he found himself at the head of 
 a band of four hundred men. Afraid, and with good reason, of 
 the enmity of Saul towards his family, he brought his father and 
 mother from their home, and requested the king of Moab to give 
 them protection. The request was granted; and David might 
 have remembered in after years the service which the king of 
 Moab thus rendered him, better than he did. It is not probable 
 however that his father and mother survived to see him king; 
 for we hear nothing of them afterwards. 
 
 The period of David's life during which he was a wanderer 
 and a fugitive was a period which was signalised by much that 
 was noble, by much also that was savage and cruel, in his actions. 
 Neither the good nor the bad can be to us a matter of absolute-
 
 256 ISRAEL'S EARTHLY IDEAL ATTAINED: (CH. 
 
 certainty ; but on the whole we ought to accept both. The 
 good lies in his unswerving loyalty to Saul, who was seeking to 
 kill him ; and it culminates in the pathetic scene (twice recorded, 
 so that the ordinary reader oi the Bible thinks it happened twice, 
 but no doubt the event is the same in both narratives) in which 
 David has the opportunity of killing Saul in his sleep, and is urged 
 to do so by his nephew Abishai, but refrains ; and after taking 
 away from Saul some article to prove that he had had the power 
 over him (a piece of his skirt in one version of the story, his spear 
 in the other version) protests, though from a distance, his own 
 innocence. The old tenderness of Saul for David revived, it is 
 said, under this appeal; "Is this thy voice, my son David?" 
 he cried ; and a reconciliation followed. But such a reconciliation 
 could only be temporary ; it was clear that David meant himself 
 to be Saul's successor, and it was clear that Saul would admit 
 no such claim ; in the end, David had to fly from the land of 
 Israel, and to take refuge in the court of the Philistine king Achish, 
 of Gath. Here his position was in the highest degree critical ; 
 for with his men of war following him (six hundred now in number) 
 he could not be the guest of Achish, unless he were prepared to 
 be the ally of Achish ; and this meant fighting against Israel. 
 Yet, if David were to fight against Israel, his chance of being king of 
 his own people in after years would be most seriously prejudiced. 
 How was he to find his way out of this dilemma? In the first 
 place, he persuaded Achish to allow him to live in the town of 
 Ziklag, on the borders of the Israelite country ; and here he was 
 more removed from the observation of the Philistines, and not 
 so liable to minute questionings. His subsequent proceedings 
 must be told in the words of the Bible itself (1 Samuel xxvii. 7-12) : 
 
 And the number of the days that David dwelt in the country of the 
 Philistines was a full year and four months. And David and his men went 
 up, and made a raid upon the Geshurites, and the Cirzites, and the Amalek- 
 ites: for those nations were the inhabitants of the land, which were of 
 old, as thou goest to Shur, even unto the land of Egypt. Arid David 
 smote the land, and saved neither man nor woman alive, and took away 
 the sheep, and the oxen, and the asses, and the camels, and the apparel ; 
 and he returned, and came to Achish. And Achish said, Whither have 
 ye made a raid to-day? And David said, Against the South of Judah, 
 and against the South of the Jerahmeelites, and against the South of the 
 Kenites And David saved neither man nor woman alive, to bring them to 
 (iath, saying, Lest they should tell on us, saying, So did David, and so 
 hath been his manner all the while he hath dwelt in the country of the 
 Philistines. And Achish believed David, saying, He hath made his people 
 Israel utterly to abhor him; therefore he shall be my servant for ever.
 
 x] DAVID 257 
 
 That is a staggering narrative for anyone who believes that 
 the ordinary course of David's life was blameless. Certainly it 
 is a cruel and perfidious act that is described, and described without 
 censure, by the Biblical historian; an act very antagonistic 
 indeed to the fulfilment of that noble promise with which the 
 divine voice had exalted and comforted Abraham, "In thy seed 
 shall all the families of the earth be blessed ! " But we have to 
 remember that the side of Abraham's ideal which David was 
 engaged in carrying out was not, on the whole, the heavenly side. 
 He had been hasty and fierce, even when within the borders of 
 the land of Israel, in his conduct towards Nabal ; and it is evident 
 that, when brought into straits, he thought it no sin to extricate 
 himself by killing men of alien race, against whom he had no 
 shadow of grievance. This was indeed merely to follow the 
 morality of his age. Homer, in the ninth book of the Odyssey, 
 relates how Odysseus and his followers attacked (without any 
 provocation) the city of the Cicones, slew the men and carried 
 off the women and much booty ; the raid turns out unfortunately, 
 but is not regarded as a crime. So too the writer of the book of 
 Judges (in the eighteenth chapter) relates without any censure how 
 six hundred warriors of the tribe of Dan slew the "quiet and secure 
 people" who lived near Sidon, and took their lands from them. 
 If a great hunter of to-day, being imprisoned by a negro chief of 
 central Africa, were promised his liberty on condition of his 
 bringing a hundred tusks of elephants to his captor, it is hardly 
 likely that he would feel remorse in shooting the fifty elephants 
 who would supply those tusks. As little did David feel remorse 
 in killing these unlucky Geshurites, Girzites, and Amalekites ; 
 it happened to be necessary to his designs, and the question of 
 morality did not enter into his view of the matter. Reflecting 
 on this deed, we shall hardly join with the Bible in calling David 
 "a man after God's own heart"; but we shall not lose all our 
 interest in him. 
 
 Very narrowly did David escape the danger he was in at the 
 court of Achish. His personal charm, as on other occasions, 
 stood him in good stead ; and Achish thoroughly believed in his 
 honesty. But the Philistines in general did not trust him ; and 
 this turned out as luckily for him as the opposite feeling in Achish ; 
 for thereby he was enabled to avoid accompanying the Philistine 
 army when they journeyed to battle with the Israelites. It is a 
 curious question, what he would have done, if the Philistines had 
 trusted him. He could hardly have avoided going with them to' 
 
 M. D. A. 17
 
 258 ISRAEL'S EARTHLY IDEAL ATTAINED: [OH. 
 
 Mount Gilboa ; and would he then have joined them in good faith, 
 and fought against his own countrymen ? It would certainly have 
 been his duty to do so, when once he had undertaken to accompany 
 Achish ; but we cannot be quite certain what his conduct would 
 have been. It was a piece of the greatest good fortune to him 
 that the Philistines themselves relieved him of his difficulty ; and 
 Saul and three of Saul's sons fell in the battle of Mount Gilboa, 
 the Israelites being for the moment worsted, without David 
 having had the smallest hand in producing such a result. 
 
 Immediately the tide, which had so long been flowing against 
 David, turned. Without delay he presented himself in Hebron, 
 one of the chief cities of his own tribe of Judah ; and that tribe 
 accepted him as king. Northern Israel, it is true, did not do so 
 as yet; but the tried valour of David and his comrades, never 
 yet defeated in battle, shone out conspicuously as against the 
 defeat of Saul and the feebleness of Saul's surviving son, Eshbaal. 
 In the end, not without certain crimes on the part of David's 
 friends (which David punished when the offenders were weak, 
 not when they were strong), David became undisputed king over 
 all the tribes of Israel. His own relations and friends were his 
 chief servants ; and the priesthood were wholly in his favour. 
 All the parts of the nation breathed for the moment a uniform 
 tenor of will, and were governed by a vigour and a singleness of 
 motive that had never been known in them before. 
 
 Wonderful indeed was the success of the Israelites under these 
 favourable conditions ! wonderful was the success of a purpose, 
 held tenaciously through many centuries, and at last emerging 
 in full active force ! The stronghold of the Jebusites, thenceforth 
 known by the famous name of Jerusalem, fell before the generalship 
 of David and the prowess of his nephew Joab ; and David acquired 
 a capital city of great natural strength, and which soon became 
 dignified and splendid in outward aspect. Philistines, Moabites, 
 Syrians, Edomites, and Ammonites, fell in succession before the 
 arms of David ; and his dominions extended now right to the 
 borders of the great empires of Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt, and 
 to the northern kingdom of Tyre. 
 
 It is true that this great kingdom, with all the sagacity and 
 enthusiasm that had founded it, had its weaknesses. The rift 
 between the northern and southern tribes, between Ephraim and 
 Judah, lay underneath the temporary unanimity of the people. 
 It is certain also that the loose popular religion of the Israelites, 
 with its worship of the "Baalim," was at discord with the severer
 
 x] DAVID 259 
 
 and purer ideas of the central priesthood; and the jealousy 
 between Ephraim and Judah was pointed by the fact that a laxer 
 religion was prevalent hi the northern tribes, which were more 
 affected by Phoenician and Syrian customs than the mountainous 
 region of Judah, in the south of Palestine, could possibly be. 
 Then again, the establishment of the royal court, and presently 
 of the temple, at Jerusalem (though the temple was not actually 
 built till the reign of David's successor) afforded fresh ground of 
 discontent to the northern tribes, whose feeling was that, while 
 they were taxed equally with the tribe of Judah, the advantages 
 ensuing from such taxation appertained in quite undue measure 
 to the tribe which lived in the close neighbourhood of Jerusalem, 
 and scarcely at all to those who lived fifty or a hundred miles 
 away from that lofty and rock-engirdled city. 
 
 Another danger to the kingdom of Israel arose from the resent- 
 ment of the surrounding nations whom David had subdued. 
 No small severity had been employed in their subjugation. For 
 example, his war against Moab is thus briefly described ( 2 Samuel 
 viii. 2) : 
 
 And he smote Moab, and measured them with the line, making them 
 to lie down on the ground; and he measured two lines to put to death, 
 and one full line to keep alive. And the Moabites became servants to 
 David, and brought presents. 
 
 The Biblical historian does not think it necessary to assign 
 any reason for this slaughter; it is not said that the Moabites 
 had been faithless or treacherous ; even if they had been simply 
 aggressive, which is a possibility, we are not informed of it. Neither 
 is any special offence alleged against the Edomites ; yet we find 
 in the first book of Kings (xi. 14-17) this incidental account of 
 David's war against Edom, which is more briefly mentioned in 
 the second book of Samuel: 
 
 And Jehovah raised up an adversary unto Solomon, Hadad the Edom- 
 ite : he was of the king's seed in Edom. For it came to pass, when 
 David was in Edom, and Joab the captain of the host was gone up to bury 
 the slain, and had smitten every male in Edom (for Joab and all Israel 
 remained there six months, until he had cut off every male in Edom) ; 
 that Hadad fled, he and certain Edomites of his father's servants with him, 
 to go into Egypt ; Hadad being yet a little child. 
 
 No doubt there is exaggeration in the destruction indicated 
 in this last passage, for the Edomites were not altogether a power- 
 less nation after this ; but we must suppose great slaughter at 
 any rate ; and it is evident that Joab, while loyal and able, was 
 perfectly ruthless towards enemies, personal or political. Nor 
 
 172
 
 260 ISRAEL'S EARTHLY IDEAL ATTAINED: [OH. 
 
 had David any sufficient desire to restrain the bloodthirsty 
 propensities of his lieutenant. 
 
 Truly it is not on the ground of universal beneficence that we 
 must praise the reign of David ; and some may ask why we should 
 praise it at all, any more than a hundred other reigns of truculent 
 kings, who have lived in brief splendour and then left barely 
 a name behind them, such as is read once and immediately for- 
 gotten by the sojourner among the records of the past. But 
 the fibre of vital strength may lie buried among strange surround- 
 ings ; and so it is here. These cruelties of David and the Israelites, 
 which the Biblical historians recount with such calm indifference, 
 were sins and wrong-doings, it is true ; and they produced their 
 natural fruit of retaliation afterwards, in the disasters and sorrows 
 of Israelites of later generations. Yet, strange though it may 
 seem, we must account David a tender-hearted man. The contrast 
 in the character of a single man, of tenderness within certain 
 limits, and indifference to suffering outside those limits, is far 
 from unknown even at the present day ; and all through the life 
 of David this contrast is forced strongly upon us. It was not 
 a hard-hearted man who mourned for his enemy Saul as well as 
 for his friend Jonathan after their death in battle ; and it was not 
 a hard-hearted man who, when Nathan reproved him for his 
 murder of Uriah and his adultery with Bathsheba, answered, 
 "I have sinned against Jehovah " ; it was not a hard-hearted man 
 who prayed so fervently for the life of his infant child ; and it 
 was not a hard-hearted man who, after his rebellious son Absalom 
 had been slain, cried out, "Would to God I had died for thee, 
 
 Absalom, my son, my son ! " It may be asked whether we have 
 any security as to the truth of such narratives as these. To this 
 it may be replied that there is no character in the Old Testament, 
 
 1 would almost say in the whole Bible, about whom so much is 
 told us, and so much that is entirely probable and unexagge rated, 
 as David. The accounts of his life in the books of Samuel and 
 in the opening of the books of Kings occupy nearly forty chapters ; 
 and though there is something unhistorical in the early narrative, 
 when he first comes upon the scene, and a few repetitions in the 
 succeeding chapters, yet on the whole we have an exceedingly 
 natural picture of a spirited and vigorous youth, with a strain 
 of pure feeling and true religion in him, but with the moral 
 imperfections of his time and country, rising partly by his own 
 merit and partly by good fortune into royal power; using that 
 power, as was natural in those days, for military purposes, and
 
 x] DAVID 261 
 
 using it successfully; then sinking into the careless and selfish 
 habits of an uncontrolled despot ; suffering sorrow and calamity 
 through his children, whom he had done little to train in the ways 
 of virtue ; yet to the end never losing that strain of conscience 
 which had belonged to him in youth ; a man desirous of doing 
 right, though with such serious failings as greatly diminish the 
 honour with which we would gladly regard him. 
 
 He was, all through his life, singularly attractive to his friends ; 
 and though Absalom at one moment succeeded in stealing the 
 hearts of the people from him, his friends did not fail him even 
 at that crisis, and the cloud was but temporary. Why should 
 we be surprised that one who had so much personal popularity, 
 and such immense prestige as a monarch, should have been 
 presented to us with biographical details far fuller than have 
 been supplied to us in the case of any other Israelite, and equalled 
 in the case of but few historical characters of ancient times? 
 And we must remember that the calamities of the nation sub- 
 sequently, after the disruption, made David's reign stand out 
 as a pinnacle of light in the eyes of later generations. It is true 
 that David was not as popular in northern Israel as in his own 
 tribe of Judah ; but this made no difference as regards the zeal 
 of his biographers ; and the fact that the priesthood always and 
 permanently looked up to him was another reason for both the 
 original full record of his deeds, and the after preservation of that 
 record. If we ask who were his biographers, the first book of 
 Chronicles (xxix. 29) refers us to " the history of Samuel the seer, 
 the history of Nathan the prophet, and the history of Gad the 
 seer." That Samuel wrote about David is less probable than 
 that Nathan and Gad wrote about him ; it is likely however that 
 we have evidence very nearly contemporary ; and though the 
 chapter which we may chiefly presume to be due to Gad (2 Samuel 
 xxiv.) has undeniable marks of fiction, it probably is founded 
 on fact. The offence of David which that chapter reckons so 
 serious, his ordering a census of the Israelites to be taken, was 
 very likely unpopular with many of the nation, but was in itself 
 statesmanlike. 
 
 David, however, was not a statesman in any high sense ; he 
 did not wilfully oppress his people, and by the help of his Chereth- 
 ites and Pelethites (a body-guard of Philistine extraction) he 
 generally kept order in his own neighbourhood ; but of permanent 
 institutions hardly any is ascribed to him in the books of Samuel, 
 beyond the appointment of certain officers attached to the court.
 
 262 ISRAEL'S EARTHLY IDEAL ATTAINED: [CH. 
 
 It may be presumed that justice between man and man had 
 always been more or less provided for by primitive local institu- 
 tions ; and as long as these worked fairly well, the king would do 
 better by not interfering ; but still there would be cases where his 
 personal judgment was necessary ; and the pretext, and probably 
 in part the true cause, of Absalom's rebellion was the neglect 
 of David to attend to such duties as these. It is something, that 
 so few acts of positive injustice or cruelty towards his own subjects, 
 in so long a reign, are recorded against him. Yet his weakness 
 in not punishing Joab for the murders of Abner and Amasa is 
 a blot on David's fair fame ; and a blot which was not wiped out 
 by his dying injunction to Solomon, that Joab should not be 
 suffered to have a peaceful death. The repentance which he s"o 
 deeply felt, when reproved by Nathan, for his treacherous murder 
 of Uriah, must lighten our censure of him in that case ; but another 
 cruel act, the putting to death of two sons and five grandsons of 
 Saul, on the ground that Saul had slain without just cause certain 
 of the Gibeonites in years long gone by, was a base iniquity 
 cloaked by the pretence of a religious command. I would sooner 
 credit David's counsellors than David himself as being the origin- 
 ators of such a deed ; but David sanctioned it ; and nothing in 
 his whole career shows so plainly the weakness of moral fibre 
 which underlay his brilliant qualities. The motive which led 
 to the slaughter of these seven descendants of Saul was of course 
 the fear of the possible revival of Saul's house in effective power. 
 The reproaches cast upon David by Shimei on this ground were 
 therefore not unjust. 
 
 We may fairly say that David apprehended the spiritual 
 and sublime nature of God better than he apprehended God's 
 moral nature. The honour of true spirituality must certainly 
 be accorded to him if he was really the author of any of the 
 psalms in our familiar book of Psalms. It is true that the main 
 part of those psalms must be held to be of a date far later than 
 David ; for a captivity, which can be none other than the great 
 Babylonian captivity, is referred to in some of them (Psalms xiv. 
 liii. Ixxxv. cvi. cvii. cxxvi. cxxxvii.) ; and even where this is not 
 explicitly referred to, the tone of the psalm indicates that painful 
 contact of Israel with heathen races, and that oppression by 
 heathen races, which was only exemplified during or about the 
 time of the Babylonian captivity (Psalms ix. x. xliv. lix. Ixxiv. 
 Ixxix. Ixxx. Ixxxiii. Ixxxix. cii.) ; and the joyousness of the return 
 from the captivity is also plain in other psalms. So too the
 
 x] DAVID 263 
 
 temple, which was not built in the reign of David, is frequently 
 mentioned. But when all this is allowed for, the probability 
 that psalms actually composed by David would be recorded and 
 might be preserved, must be remembered. The second book of 
 Samuel attributes to him three songs or psalms ; the beautiful 
 lament over Saul and Jonathan in the first chapter; a psalm, 
 which is the same as the eighteenth in our psalter, in the twenty- 
 second chapter; and one in the twenty-third chapter, which has 
 not found a place in the psalter. The psalm in the twenty-second 
 chapter may perhaps be an expansion of the original composition ; 
 the last verse hardly appears to be genuine ; but otherwise, there 
 is no person who would seem so likely as David to be its author. 
 In the fifty-first psalm of the psalter, the two last verses can 
 hardly but belong to the time of the Babylonian captivity ; but 
 they may easily have been appended at a later date ; and if we 
 cannot certainly say that the main part of this psalm was David's 
 confession of repentance after the murder of Uriah, at least there 
 is no other character and event in the history of Israel whom it 
 suits so well. A few, but not many, other psalms might con- 
 ceivably be David's. The uncertainty which surrounds this 
 whole question of authorship is not to be denied; but we shall 
 hardly be wrong in thinking of David as a sacred psalmist, as well 
 as a warrior and a king. In this relation, a greatness of spirit 
 is not to be denied him; and when he brought up the ark, 
 which contained the divine covenant, from the village in which 
 it had rested so long to his newly won capital of Jerusalem, he 
 linked himself with the historic religion of Israel and with the 
 great experiences in which Moses had been God's chosen minister. 
 He became affiliated to the patriarchs of his race. 
 
 We cannot indeed look upon David as the equal of Abraham 
 or of Moses ; he had not the broad spiritual vision of Abraham, 
 or the extraordinary strength in organising, and the practical 
 power, of Moses. Yet the fervour of these great men was in him 
 too ; his sins were many and his ideal was an imperfect one, but 
 something of that glory which belongs to all true perception of 
 deity had touched his thoughts and his imagination. As a man 
 he is known to us better than any other Israelite ; his anguish 
 at the death of Absalom touches us even now, and we feel the 
 attraction which so moved his contemporaries. 
 
 For the people of his own tribe, for the people of Judah, he 
 had a fascination which we cannot share ; and this was especially 
 the case in tunes long after his own death. When Judah was
 
 264 DAVID [CH. x 
 
 abandoned by the tribes of northern Israel and had fallen from 
 her high estate ; when Assyrians and Babylonians, and even 
 Edomites and Moabites, began to insult the successors of David, 
 to dismember and to ravage what remained of David's ancient 
 realm ; then prophet and psalmist recalled the golden age that 
 had been, and thought of David with a passionate longing, and 
 took his name as the symbol of their highest hopes. "My servant 
 David shall be prince among them," said Ezekiel when forecasting 
 the future of Israel; and "Blessed be the kingdom of our father 
 David" was the cry of the enthusiastic multitude, who many 
 centuries afterwards took that memorable journey down the slope 
 of the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem. 
 
 We cannot put David on so high a pedestal ; his distinctive 
 characteristic was to raise the nation of Israel to its highest point 
 of temporal power. But it was a fragile and brief -lived ideal which 
 he brought to this temporary accomplishment ; nor in the nature 
 of things could it have been otherwise. 
 
 During the period which I have been sketching in this chapter, 
 the religion of Israel was in many ways commingled with the 
 religion of Canaan. A power was at work separating the two ; 
 and this power acted in the end surely, but slowly. No doubt 
 all Israelites were circumcised ; and sabbaths and other festivals 
 were not ignored. But we have little precise information in the 
 existing records on such matters as these.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE FALL OF THE EARTHLY IDEAL; THE RISE 
 OF PROPHECY: ISAIAH 
 
 IN the reign of David, and equally in the reign of David's 
 son and successor Solomon, Israel was one of the great nations 
 of the earth. "She stretched out her branches unto the sea, 
 and her boughs unto the river," says a psalmist of a later age, 
 recalling in sorrow that splendid kingdom, whose ample boundaries 
 were the Mediterranean Sea on the west, and the Euphrates on 
 the east, which extended from Egypt in the south to Lebanon 
 and the borders of Damascus in the north. But the equilibrium 
 of that great structure was unstable. 
 
 Through the reign of Solomon the Israelite kingdom endured, 
 and showed no apparent weakness. Solomon was a magnificent 
 king ; but can he in the true sense be called a wise king ? Sagacious 
 and strong-handed ; on eminently good terms with the neighbouring 
 monarchs, though harassed by some petty chiefs whom he could 
 not quite suppress ; a great builder of temples, palaces, cities ; 
 above all, the builder of that famous temple of Jehovah in 
 Jerusalem, the traditional glories of which are dear even to-day 
 to every Jew, and are a familiar piece of knowledge to Christians 
 and Moslems as well. But Solomon never perceived, or never 
 cared, that he was pressing burdens on the neck of large numbers 
 of his subjects, who derived no adequate advantage in return for 
 their submission to these burdens ; he felt no reluctance to rush 
 into every luxury, as if it were his personal right ; and when his 
 wives demanded "high places" in which they might worship the 
 deities they respectively favoured, the Israelites had to provide 
 the cost of these edifices. To many Israelites this was a scandal ; 
 to all a grievance. The storm was gathering, which burst upon 
 his son Rehoboam ; and he had no foresight of it. 
 
 However, he cultivated commerce, maritime as well as inland, 
 and he built a navy ; the most successful navy that the Israelites, 
 it would seem, ever had. If he had been able to implant in his
 
 266 THE FALL OF THE EARTHLY IDEAL; [CH. 
 
 fellow-countrymen the skill to traverse the great deep, which in 
 the Tynans was so remarkable, he would have done them a real 
 service; but he did not touch their spirits in this way, at any 
 rate. Did he touch their spirits in any way ? 
 
 If we could believe that that noble prayer, which he is said 
 to have offered up to God at the dedication of the temple, was 
 really his, was the fruit of his own feeling and thought, we should 
 place his religious spirit on a very high level indeed ; for a prayer 
 more full of the sense of trust in God, more adequate in its recogni- 
 tion of the duties and of the frailty of men, was never conceived. 
 It is not unlikely that something in its general tone was really 
 handed down by tradition or even by writing, for the means of 
 writing were at hand, and the disposition to preserve such a royal 
 supplication would hardly be quite wanting ; and some argument 
 in this direction may be drawn from the general identity of the 
 terms in which the prayer is given in the first book of Kings 
 (viii. 22-53) and the second book of Chronicles (vi. 1442) ; for 
 though identity between Kings and Chronicles in reporting spoken 
 words is not unknown, it is not common, and this is by far the 
 most remarkable instance of it. 
 
 Perhaps we may fairly say that a prayer was really composed 
 by Solomon with the help of the religious persons who were in 
 general intercourse with him, of whom we can hardly be wrong 
 in saying that the prophet Nathan was the most remarkable. 
 Such a prayer, briefly recorded, would be expanded in later ages ; 
 and though the identity between the two reports is in general 
 extremely remarkable, they diverge in the last few verses ; and 
 the divergence is such as to show that the writer of the first book 
 of Kings had some captivity (and no doubt the Babylonian 
 captivity) vividly before his mind as a present or recent fact, 
 while the writer of the second book of Chronicles (who was con- 
 siderably later) lived in a time of comparative rest and peace. 
 Verbal exactitude cannot then be supposed to exist in the prayer ; 
 but some genuine reminiscence may probably be in it. As it 
 stands in the Bible to-day, it is one of the noblest religious composi- 
 tions ever conceived in the mind of man. 
 
 The same kind of credit which belongs to Solomon in regard 
 to the prayer on which I have been commenting, belongs to him 
 also in regard to the book of Proverbs. No doubt a considerable 
 part of that book dates from a later time than Solomon altogether ; 
 but some of it is likely to have been composed by Solomon and 
 his wise men ; the sententious tone, remote from prophecy or
 
 xi] THE RISE OF PROPHECY; ISAIAH 267 
 
 lament or invective, belongs rather to a time of quietude and 
 prosperity. That Solomon himself was acquainted with the art 
 of writing, the Bible does not tell us ; but his learned men would 
 of course be able to write. It would be interesting if we could 
 believe, what the Bible tells us, that Solomon "spake of trees, from 
 the cedar that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth 
 out of the wall ; he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping 
 things, and of fishes." But there is not much in the book of 
 Proverbs to confirm this ; the most remarkable passage hi this 
 direction is that which describes the forethought of the ant (vi. 6-8.) 
 
 It was no doubt in furtherance of his zeal in building that 
 Solomon reduced to servitude many of the Canaanite inhabitants 
 of the country (1 Kings ix. 20, 21); but this must be reckoned 
 rather among his tyrannical than among his good deeds. 
 
 After his death the crash came. The story is too well 
 known for me to recapitulate in detail, how when Rehoboam 
 came to be crowned king in Shechem (doubtless hi order to receive 
 the homage of the northern tribes specially), he was met by 
 Jeroboam and other representatives of the ten tribes with demands 
 for an alleviation of their burdens; how rashly and insultingly 
 he refused those demands ; and how the ten tribes of the north 
 withdrew their allegiance from him, and made Jeroboam their 
 king. The folly of Rehoboam is proverbial ; but are we to 
 account Jeroboam and the ten tribes blameless? That is im- 
 possible. They knew their own strength ; and their plans must 
 have been laid with considerable skill ; but they had never asked 
 themselves how, in forming their new State, they might recover 
 for the purpose of their own cohesion that feeling of loyalty, 
 which they had broken in regard to the old State. They never 
 did recover it ; and the consequence to themselves was disastrous. 
 Nothing is more remarkable, in all the subsequent history, than 
 the contrast between the unswerving loyalty of the tribe of Judah 
 (with which it seems the tribe of Benjamin joined in) towards their 
 kings of the line of David, and the entire lack of steadfast principle 
 in the dealings of the northern tribes with their successive kings. 
 While Judah has but one dynasty, and reverences the memory 
 of David with unceasing persistence, five dynasties, and four 
 kings who founded no dynasty, succeed one another in the annals 
 of the ten tribes ; and the change of dynasty is generally accom- 
 plished amid scenes of indiscriminate blood-shedding. Some of 
 the kings of the ten tribes appear to have been able men of the 
 world, in particular perhaps the two Jeroboams and Ahab ; but
 
 268 THE FALL OF THE EARTHLY IDEAL; [CH. 
 
 there is nothing in the whole political history of northern Israel, 
 during the two hundred and fifty-five years of its duration, to 
 distinguish it from a hundred other transient kingdoms which in 
 primitive days had their rise and fall without leaving any mark 
 on the world, like ships which cross the ocean and leave no trail 
 behind them to show where they have been. 
 
 It is a singular and a noble characteristic of the Biblical 
 historians (who of course were of the tribe of Judah), that they 
 make no reproach whatever against the ten tribes for breaking 
 off from the political dominance of the line of David. That 
 rupture, the Bible says, was in accordance with the will of God. 
 We may well agree with the Bible in saying so; and though we 
 may perhaps not put the reasons quite as the Bible puts them, 
 yet certainly the sin of Solomon lies at the root of the matter, 
 as the Bible affirms. When a severe ruler does not compensate 
 for severity of rule by imparting to the people whom he rules 
 a stimulus towards nobler conditions of living, he becomes a tyrant ; 
 and that was what Solomon had become. It has been one of the 
 great characteristics of the Israelite race, all through their history, 
 not to yield to tyranny ; and though they have not always been 
 able to resist tyranny in warlike ways, yet sometimes they have 
 been able ; and this was a case in which they had the ability, and 
 used it. So far as the resistance went, the ten tribes did right. 
 
 But the Biblical historians affirm that Jeroboam sinned 
 religiously, in taking the ten tribes away from their religious 
 centre, which was the temple at Jerusalem ; also in appointing 
 priests who were not of the tribe ot Levi ; in establishing a religious 
 feast out of his own head, and above all in setting up two golden 
 calves, one in the shrine at Bethel in the south, the other in the 
 shrine in Dan far in the north, as idols for the nation to worship. 
 This judgment of the Bible occasions some real difficulty, as far 
 as the last and most serious item of the censure is concerned. 
 If we are to believe that the ten tribes worshipped these golden 
 calves, how are we to escape saying that the prophet Elisha 
 countenanced this worship? Neither Elijah nor Elisha are 
 spoken of as protesting against it ; but Elijah was hostile to all 
 the kings of Israel in his own day ; his principal contest was indeed 
 against the worshippers of Baal, but he need not be supposed to 
 have approved of the worship carried on at Bethel and at Dan. 
 But Elisha, though hostile to Joram the son of Ahab, had actually 
 a great share in bringing about the successful revolt of Jehu 
 against .Joram ; he was evidently friendly to the kings of the line
 
 xi] THE RISE OF PROPHECY: ISAIAH 269 
 
 of Jehu, and one of them, Joash, came to see him when he was 
 lying on his death-bed. The last words of Elisha to Joash were 
 words prophesying the victory of Joash over the Syrians; and 
 yet, if Joash were sinning deeply in the matter of the golden 
 calves, was not the occasion one on which Elisha was bound to 
 call his attention to that sin? But Elisha does not, either then 
 or on any other occasion, breathe a word against it. Can we 
 think that Elisha approved of idol-worship ? 
 
 I do not think so, though Gideon, a few centuries earlier, 
 appears to have represented Jehovah under the form of an idol ; 
 this is not indeed directly asserted in the passage I refer to (Judges 
 viii. 27) but seems to be implied. And certainly the tribe of Dan 
 in the very north of Canaan worshipped Jehovah under the form 
 of an idol, quite independently of the golden calf set up there by 
 Jeroboam : this is apparent from the narrative in the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth chapters of Judges. It is possible, however, that 
 this particular idol was abolished in the days of Samuel, after 
 the ruin of the sanctuary at Shiloh ; this may be implied by the 
 last words of the chapters I refer to. Speaking generally, the 
 Israelites who followed the genuine Mosaic tradition were not 
 idolaters. But it is probable that what is called satirically a calf 
 was really a cherub, in the sense in which that word is used in 
 connexion with the ark of the covenant, and with Solomon's 
 temple. There was a cherub, with wings outspread, at each end 
 of the sacred ark ; and much larger cherubim overshadowed the 
 ark in Solomon's temple. The cherubim symbolised the divine 
 power, and were partly personified as God's messengers ; and this, 
 it can hardly be doubted, was the way in which the northern 
 tribes thought of the figures which are called calves, but which 
 were probably cherubim, set up by Jeroboam at Bethel and at 
 Dan. It is true that the single cherub which (in spite of the plural 
 form "calves " used in Hosea x. 5) was set up in each of the northern 
 sanctuaries, was more likely to be worshipped as an idol than the , 
 pair of cherubim placed on the sacred ark ; but in view of the / 
 attitude of Elisha (and to a lesser extent of Elijah too), the prefer- 
 able opinion seems to be that it was not an idol to be worshipped. 
 However it gave a handle to this suspicion, which the prophets 
 and historians of Judah were not slow to take advantage of. 
 
 I think we ought to acquit Jeroboam of consciously intending 
 to introduce idolatry into Israel ; but we cannot acquit him of 
 light-mindedness in his religious measures. Though religion is 
 a spiritual matter, and though the material forms with which it
 
 270 THE FALL OF THE EARTHLY IDEAL; [CH. 
 
 is connected may for good cause be changed, they ought not to 
 be changed without some remembrance of the spiritual associations 
 which have clung about that which is being abandoned. It may 
 have been necessary for Jeroboam to build new shrines; but at 
 least he ought to have shown that, in doing this, he did not intend 
 any dishonour to the great shrine at Jerusalem, which had been 
 built when the unity and the power of the tribes of Israel were at 
 their zenith, and when the emotion of the whole people was 
 most ardently kindled. Neither ought he, if possible, to have 
 established an entirely new priesthood ; if he could not help 
 this, the justification for it ought to have been deliberately pro- 
 nounced, and if possible recorded. Nor does there seem any 
 just cause why he should have ordained a new feast for the ten 
 tribes; at any rate, we know of no just cause for this. There is 
 much that we do not know ; but Jeroboam does appear to have 
 treated the forms of religion as matters dependent on his arbitrary 
 will and pleasure ; and a religion so organised has no independent 
 authority, and little power therefore of strengthening a dynasty. 
 This was no slight weakness to the whole of northern Israel in 
 subsequent years. 
 
 Yet as far as material success goes, the ten tribes probably 
 thought at first that they had lost but little by relinquishing the 
 rocky fastnesses of Judaea to the tribe which held fast its allegiance 
 to the Davidic line. Not only by far the largest part of Palestine, 
 but also the only fertile parts, lay in the north, and it is probable 
 that the comparative population of the northern and southern 
 kingdoms was far more unequal than would be inferred either 
 from the census of warriors in 2 Samuel xxiv. where the proportion 
 is put as eight to five, or from the report of the same census in 
 1 Chronicles xxi. where the proportion is given (approximately) 
 as eleven to five. However this may be, the ten tribes were well 
 satisfied with themselves ; and when king Ahab, sixty or seventy 
 years after the separation, married the daughter of the king of 
 Sidon, and was subsequently victorious over the Syrians, and then 
 formed a league with Jehoshaphat king of Judah, it might almost 
 seem as if the great days of David and Solomon were about to 
 return again. But Ahab and his dynasty suffered shipwreck ; 
 and the cause lay in religion. 
 
 As far as we can tell, the history of the matter is as follows. 
 Though the Canaanite worship of the Baalim had never died out 
 in northern Israel, it had been carried on in country places and 
 with no great show. But when Jezebel, the daughter of the king
 
 xi] THE RISE OF PROPHECY: ISAIAH 271 
 
 of Sidon, arrived at Samaria as the wife of king Ahab, she demanded 
 a temple of Baal of quite different magnitude and splendour from 
 those rustic shrines; and Ahab built it for her, and assigned to 
 it a ministry of priests of Baal suitable to the edifice. This was 
 perhaps no more than Solomon had done for his wives ; but Ahab 
 had neither the strong character nor the prestige of Solomon. 
 The next thing that we hear in relation to the religion of northern 
 Israel is that Jezebel slew all the prophets of Jehovah on whom 
 she could lay her hands. But it is quite clear that Jezebel, 
 imperious woman though she was, would never have ventured to 
 do this if no provocation had been offered her. The prophets 
 must have protested against the erection of so magnificent a , 
 temple to Baal, and against the worship which Ahab, it is said, 
 paid to that deity; and their references to Jezebel are likely to 
 have made her furious. Without saying that the prophets were 
 altogether right, the evidence before us is that Jezebel began the 
 war of bloodshed ; to which Ahab weakly consented. For Ahab, 
 though unscrupulous, was of himself by no means adverse to the 
 prophets, and had some attached to his own court, who were of 
 course safe from Jezebel; and even the prophets of the wild 
 country parts would have been safe, had Ahab alone been con- 
 cerned ; but Jezebel was too strong for him. 
 
 The conflict which ensued was between Jezebel and the 
 prophets. We have no reason to say that Jezebel desired to 
 uproot the worship of Jehovah in itself; and conversely, the 
 prophets would not have inveighed against Jezebel, if she had 
 been contented with a private chapel in the royal palace, in which 
 she could herself perform her devotions to Baal. But when 
 Jezebel, by the publicity and splendour of the worship which 
 she rendered to Baal, made Baal appear as a rival to Jehovah, 
 this was what the prophets could not endure ; and their indigna- 
 tion was increased by the fact that Ahab joined his queen in 
 worshipping Baal. Hence the strife, to which Jezebel gave 
 extreme bitterness by killing as many of her opponents as fell 
 within her grasp. 
 
 But against Jezebel there now rose, as the champion of the 
 prophets, one of the most famous of the characters who come 
 before us in the Old Testament Elijah the Tishbite whose 
 home was in Gilead, the hilly country lying east of Jordan. We 
 have no continuous knowledge of his career; he is seen but by 
 flashes; but evidently his influence was as long continued as it 
 was great. It is true, indeed, that there was a tendency in later
 
 272 THE FALL OF THE EARTHLY IDEAL; [CH. 
 
 ages to regard him as greater than he really was. He did no work 
 comparable to the work of Moses ; he had no such mighty design 
 to carry out as the deliverance of a people from bondage ; neither 
 had he that intellectual range which enabled Moses to compress 
 the cardinal points of morality within the compass of the ten 
 commandments. He is rather to be compared to Sanxuel ; a man 
 of great faithfulness and practical power, having a true sense of 
 the mission of Israel to the world, but retaining the warlike instincts 
 which Moses had kindled in the people of Israel, and unaware 
 of the force which lay in that fervent inspired preaching which 
 was so abundantly employed by the prophets of Judah afterwards. 
 Elijah was indeed vigorous in word as well as in deed ; but he 
 did not know the full force of the spoken word. 
 
 It cannot be doubted that the great fame of Elijah in the after 
 generations of Israel, and among Christians too, has been due to 
 the splendour of the miraculous narratives with which he is 
 associated in the Biblical pages. In the whole Bible, there is no 
 miracle told with such extraordinary descriptive power and such 
 a feeling for the great issues involved as is the miraculous sacrifice 
 said to have been offered by Elijah on Mount Carmel in the 
 presence of the people of Israel ; of "the people," it is said simply ; 
 a great multitude are clearly intended. Scarcely less powerful 
 is the narrative of his subsequent flight to Mount Horeb, and of 
 his colloquy with God on that mountain ; and the narrative of 
 his final ascension to heaven on a chariot of fire makes a worthy 
 third to the other two chapters. But are these chapters, with 
 all the power of their style, convincing as to the reality of the 
 miracles described? 
 
 Let it be remembered that, while the narratives belong to 
 northern Israel (and Mount Carmel especially was in the north 
 of northern Israel), the Biblical historian belonged to southern 
 Israel, and wrote three or four centuries after the date at which 
 the miracles are supposed to have been wrought ; and moreover 
 that he never tells us on what authority he relies, or by what 
 channel the narratives were brought from northern to southern 
 Israel. Bearing this in mind, let us pay attention to the details 
 of the story in 1 Kings xviii. and xix. Elijah, in spite of the extra- 
 ordinary miracle worked by God on his behalf, in sending down 
 fire from heaven to consume his sacrifice (after the priests of Baal 
 had attempted a similar wonder in vain), does not dare to face 
 Jezebel, but flees tar away, so as to be out of her reach. When 
 at last he arrives at Mount Horeb, he hears the ''still small voice"
 
 xi] THE RISE OP PROPHECY: ISAIAH 273 
 
 of God speaking to him at the entrance of the cave where he had 
 taken refuge: "What doest thou here, Elijah?" The words 
 are of the nature of a challenge ; and Elijah defends himself. 
 His answer, if we could forget the previous narrative, is touching. 
 But how does it look when put side by side with the story of the 
 miraculous sacrifice ? 
 
 I have been very jealous for Jehovah, the God of hosts; for the 
 children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, 
 and slain thy prophets with the sword ; and I, even I only, am left ; and 
 they seek my life, to take it away. 1 Kings xix. 14. 
 
 Now it was only just before that Elijah, with the help of these 
 same children of Israel, had slain four hundred and fifty prophets 
 of Baal, after the sacrifice on Mount Carmel. That the four 
 hundred prophets of the Asherah were slain too, is not said; 
 but we can hardly suppose, in view of the statement that they 
 "eat at Jezebel's table," that they got off scot-free. Is it not 
 plain that Elijah had a large number of allies, quite apart from 
 the help given him by God ? How then can he represent himself 
 in the above passage as solitary, without allies ? How can he, who 
 had just performed such a sweeping act of persecution, complain 
 of being persecuted? Is it not plain that, while the eighteenth 
 chapter and the nineteenth chapter of the first book of Kings are 
 separately very impressive, they do not tally together? It may 
 be said, perhaps, that the people of Israel were very fitful in their 
 beliefs and actions, and that while one day they might, at the 
 bidding of Elijah, slay four hundred and fifty priests of Baal, they 
 might the next day be ready to slay Elijah himself. That is 
 possible, no doubt, but such a change of mood requires explana- 
 tion ; and not only is no explanation given, but according to the 
 narrative Elijah does not make the smallest attempt to confirm 
 the Israelites in their zeal for Jehovah, of which so remarkable 
 an evidence had just been given. He simply abandons them and 
 runs away. Had God's miraculous power ceased on his behalf ? 
 
 It is clear that the history is confused and inaccurate ; and 
 indeed it has in a high degree the characteristics not of history, 
 but of poetry. The material facts are transmuted ; and this being 
 the case, the literal truth cannot be recovered with certainty. 
 But yet something may be discerned behind the written narrative. 
 
 That Elijah was a real character we cannot doubt ; and if, 
 after a victory over the priests of Baal (with a good deal of popular 
 support behind him), he slew some of them, but afterwards fled 
 in fear of Jezebel's wrath and of Ahab's soldiers, we must not 
 
 M. D. A. 18
 
 274 THE FALL OF THE EARTHLY IDEAL; [CH. 
 
 accuse him of cowardice. No one is bound to stand and be killed, 
 unless some good comes of his standing and being killed. Elijah 
 was engaged in actual, positive, and most bitter warfare ; to wage 
 that warfare not by word only, but by the bloody arbitrement of 
 fight, was the best thing he knew to do ; not the best absolutely, 
 J but the best within the range of his vision ; he accepted this 
 bloody warfare, though materially speaking he was the weaker 
 side. In the course of this warfare he was compelled to fly, and 
 his courage must not be impeached for so doing. That he went 
 to Horeb is probable; the "mount of God," the first sanctuary 
 of all Israel ; he knew no special sanctity in Jerusalem ; he went 
 to the spot where God had first given laws to his people. There 
 he listened to the "still small voice" of God, but not in the mood 
 of one who desires peace, nor was it the words of peace which he 
 heard the divine voice saying : 
 
 Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus : and when thou 
 comest, thou shalt anoint Hazael to be king over Syria: and Jehu the 
 son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel : and Elisha the son 
 of Shaphat of Abel-meholah shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room. 
 And it shall come to pass, that him that escapeth from the sword of Hazael 
 shall Jehu slay: and him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall 
 Elisha slay. Yet will I leave me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees 
 which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed 
 him. 
 
 No doubt these words are tinged with the knowledge which 
 the historian of the book of Kings had of what happened afterwards ; 
 but they rest, it is probable, on a true basis, in the representation 
 which they give of the mind of Elijah, and of the way in which 
 Elijah interpreted the divine message to himself. Immitigable 
 war lies in them ; not only Ahab and Jezebel, but the faithless 
 people of Israel must be chastised. 
 
 Elijah then was prophet and warrior; inspired by God, yet 
 having the passions of man ; capable of acts of love, yet stern in 
 blood-shedding also, when he had before him those whom he 
 regarded as the enemies of God ; bearing in his soul, as the guide 
 to duty, the great memories of the Exodus, but not recognising 
 allegiance to the memories of David or of Solomon. It is possible 
 that he had somewhat less tendency to localise the Deity than the 
 prophets of Judah who came after him, with their strong tendency 
 to idealise Jerusalem as the city of God ; but on the whole he was 
 not their equal. Isaiah and his compeers and successors had 
 a higher function than Elijah ; they threw themselves forward 
 into the future in a way in which he did not ; and their feelings
 
 xi] THE RISE OF PROPHECY: ISAIAH 275 
 
 respecting the duties of man to man had a delicacy which we can 
 hardly ascribe to Elijah (though we may remember Elijah's 
 reproof of Ahab after the judicial murder of Naboth). He strove 
 to bring the Israel of his own age into righteousness; but the 
 prophets of Judah, like sowers of seed, implanted in the world 
 a development that was to come ; and theirs was the greater 
 office. 
 
 The war which Elijah had initiated (or it would be more 
 correct to say accepted after Jezebel's murderous action) was 
 handed down by him to his successor Elisha ; not so great a man 
 as Elijah, but still not to be forgotten. It is probable that Elijah 
 felt, when he made Elisha his successor, that his own death was 
 not very far off. Before however Elijah died, Ahab was slain 
 in battle with the Syrians ; if we could trust the Biblical historian, 
 we should say that Ahab's behaviour in battle was not very- 
 valiant; but there is something not quite probable in the act of 
 cowardice imputed to him. Not long after Ahab's death, Elijah 
 departed from this visible scene ; borne to heaven, the Bible tells 
 us, on a chariot of fire, drawn by horses of fire, and swept upwards 
 by a whirlwind ; but a more ordinary death and burial will not 
 deprive him of his spiritual honour. 
 
 It is evident that Jezebel's power in northern Israel was too 
 great to be easily overthrown ; for she retained it during the two 
 years' reign of her son Ahaziah, and during twelve years of the 
 reign of her son Joram. But then came war with the Syrians, 
 and Joram was wounded in battle, and returned to the royal 
 palace at Jezreel to be cured. Now was Elisha's opportunity. 
 He sent a messenger ("one of the sons of the prophets") to anoint 
 Jehu as king, and to bid him execute judgment on the whole 
 house of Ahab, every male descendant of whom was to be slain, 
 and Jezebel herself with them. The messenger, after delivering 
 this message, was to await no questioning, but to open the door, 
 and flee with speed. Eminently suited to the occasion was such 
 a procedure ; and it was entirely successful. The message was 
 delivered (the full purport of it was no doubt dictated by Elisha, 
 though only a summary of it is put into his mouth) ; and Jehu 
 was a man to whom it was welcome ; it needed but this stimulus 
 to stir him to action. Acclaimed as king by his companions, he 
 drove in a chariot to Jezreel, a small company of horsemen 
 attending him ; slew Joram, who had come unsuspectingly to 
 meet him ; slew Ahaziah king of Judah, who had come to visit 
 Joram ; and then slew Jezebel. But slaughter could not end 
 
 182
 
 276 THE FALL OF THE EARTHLY IDEAL; [CH. 
 
 there ; Jehu must not only attain, but secure to himself the 
 throne ; hence all Ahab's sons were slain, and all his conspicuous 
 friends. Lastly, Jehu summoned together all the worshippers of 
 Baal in the neighbourhood of Samaria, professing himself a devoted 
 worshipper of that deity; and having allured them into Baal's 
 sanctuary, treacherously slew them. The sanctuary of Baal itself 
 he destroyed utterly. 
 
 The writer of the books of Kings cordially approves of these 
 deeds. But the prophet Hosea, writing perhaps seventy years 
 after the fact, did not approve of them. He speaks in the name 
 of Jehovah : "I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house 
 of Jehu, and will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to 
 cease." 
 
 In this divergence of our Biblical authorities we may see the 
 gradual rise of a purer morality out of the crude and bloody 
 methods employed in the early ages of dawning civilisation. 
 It was not only king Jehu, but Elisha also, who was responsible 
 for the bloodshed and treachery of which I have just given an 
 account ; and Elijah would no doubt have sanctioned it. But 
 Hosea was a tender soul ; and though he was quite as adverse as 
 Elijah and Elisha to the worship of Baal, his method of attacking 
 it was the truly divine method of spiritual persuasion, and this 
 is in the end the only victorious method. He was thus in advance, 
 not only of Elijah and Elisha, but also of the Jewish historian 
 who wrote the books of Kings. 
 
 Recognising this, we must still not be too severe upon Elijah 
 and Elisha, or upon our Biblical historians. How few of us can 
 raise ourselves wholly above the wrong methods and habits 
 accepted in the world around us ! It is indeed the office of a 
 prophet so to raise himself, and to raise his fellows also ; but even 
 a prophet cannot do this easily, or with perfect consistency. 
 Elijah and Elisha had the impress of Moses upon them ; they had 
 his faithfulness, his courage, his spirituality ; but also, like him, 
 they assumed that war and bloodshed were fit weapons to employ 
 in a combat which is essentially spiritual. Long indeed was it 
 before Israel, long was it before Christendom, fully outgrew that 
 erroneous temper and principle. But we should remember that, 
 as Moses was impelled towards the conquest of Canaan by the 
 sheer need and poverty of his own people, which is a motive 
 (whatever we may think of it) not due to religion at all; so also 
 it could not be expected or desired that Elijah or Elisha should sit 
 down quietly after the massacre of the prophets of Jehovah by
 
 xi] THE RISE OF PROPHECY: ISAIAH 277 
 
 Jezebel, or should altogether abandon the methods 'of material 
 force, perhaps in punishing such a crime, certainly in providing 
 against its repetition. Brutal as the methods of Jehu were, some 
 action was needed on the side which he espoused. 
 
 That which was permanent in the influence of Elijah and 
 Elisha was their fervid, their exalted temper; and especially is 
 this true of Elijah. He, a person with no advantages of station 
 and no practice in warfare, ventured to measure himself against 
 
 ( a king and an imperious queen, resisting them, rebuking them, 
 defying them ; and though not wholly right in his principles or 
 his methods, yet animated by a sincere love of justice, and trusting 
 
 . in God's support. He gave a fresh link to a great tradition ; and 
 though prophecy did not long remain a power in northern Israel 
 (perhaps because of the intermingling of warlike force with the 
 legitimate prophetic stimulus) yet the fire of Elijah reached into 
 southern Israel, and we may believe that it kindled the genius of 
 
 '" the prophets of Judah. 
 
 For it was in the poor despised kingdom of Judah that the 
 purity of prophecy had its origin. There it was that the highest 
 thought of Abraham, the thought of the future blessedness of all 
 mankind, so long forgotten amid the external wars and internal 
 agonies of Israel, sent out new and living shoots, and was strength- 
 ened by the divine strength, so that it might in the end become 
 a universal principle, a fruitful hope for all. The prophets whose 
 writings we read in our Bibles all lived in southern Israel; for 
 though Jonah lived in northern Israel, the book of Jonah is not 
 a book written by Jonah, but a book written about Jonah. Hosea 
 and Amos are sometimes supposed to be prophets whose home 
 was among the ten tribes ; but those who take note of that verse 
 in Hosea where he prophesies that "the children of Israel shall 
 return, and seek Jehovah their God, and David their king" 
 (iii. 5), will see that he must have belonged to the tribe of Judah ; 
 a northern Israelite would not have looked back on David with 
 such affection. Neither, it is probable, would a northern Israelite 
 have looked with such scorn on the worship carried on at Bethel 
 (which he styles satirically "Beth-aven," the house of nothing- 
 ness) ; and the disparaging tone towards sacrifices in Hosea is 
 exactly what we find afterwards in Isaiah and Micah and Jeremiah. 
 As to Amos, he was among the herdmen in Tekoa, and Tekoa 
 was in Judah, not in northern Israel. The main theme of these 
 two prophets is the unworthiness of northern Israel, but partly . 
 the unworthiness of Judah too ; threatenings are most frequent,
 
 278 THE FALL OF THE EARTHLY IDEAL; [CH. 
 
 but more consolatory passages are not absent, especially in 
 Hosea. 
 
 To Judah therefore, as henceforth the kernel of the religious 
 power of the race of Israel, we must now return. It is not necessary 
 to suppose that the religion of northern Israel was henceforth 
 barren ; but there is little trace of its active power. To the great 
 spirits of Judah, on the other hand, may most truly be applied 
 that unrivalled expression of our great poet 
 
 the prophetic soul 
 Of the wide world dreaming on things to come. 
 
 The word of preaching, the word of warning, the word of promise, 
 in them became government and rule. It was the exhibition of 
 lines of truth, which if men deserted, they would suffer for it; 
 but to which if they adhered, the result would be a prosperity 
 and glory that would never cease. The very weakness of the 
 kingdom of Judah was a help to the new method of rule. Never, 
 since the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were the highest 
 spirits among men so little exposed to the temptation of using 
 material force crudely and harshly in aid of their conceptions; 
 and at the same time the moral feelings of the race of Israel had 
 become more tender and of more penetrating perspicacity than 
 in the days of those earlier patriarchs. 
 
 The very tragedies and sufferings of the world became a witness 
 of the new era that had commenced. Hosea and Amos to recur 
 to the two earliest of these prophets make the air ring with the 
 sound of weeping, of indignation at the wrong-doings which they 
 saw, and at the same time with the sound of love and tenderness, 
 of exalted hope in the future, of confidence in God, that he would 
 restore good out of the abundance of evil. These two prophets 
 lived, as far as their writings tell us, before any hostility had 
 appeared on the part of Assyria towards Israel. Indeed, Israel 
 in the time of Jehu paid tribute to Assyria, as we learn from the 
 inscriptions (see Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 356 and 357 
 of the abridged edition) ; and from various passages in Hosea we 
 see that the ten tribes had a tendency to lean on Assyria for help. 
 Syria, having its capital at Damascus, was at this time the chief 
 rival and enemy of Israel. But when the house of Jehu had 
 passed away, this state of things altered. Almost immediately 
 we find the kings of Assyria taking a hostile part ; and in the 
 reign of Pekah the son of Remaliah, northern Israel actually 
 made an alliance with its old enemy Syria against the king of 
 Assyria, and strove to draw Judah into the league. But Judah
 
 xi] THE RISE OF PROPHECY: ISAIAH 279 
 
 refused to be drawn; and now we come to the great prophet 
 Isaiah, whose bearing towards these political questions was 
 peculiarly his own. 
 
 With Isaiah, Micah must be joined as his contemporary, 
 probably as his follower ; but Isaiah has a mysterious power far 
 transcending that of Micah. Yet Micah is a noble prophet too, 
 and in him, as in all these prophets, communion with God is 
 natural ; a fountain springing up spontaneously and meeting the 
 eternal divine nature which reinforces it. To be just and merciful 
 and devoid of arrogance is the desire of his soul, and in comparison 
 with this all ceremonial acts of worship are as nothing. The 
 ideal of a just king who should rule in Israel, an ideal already 
 shadowed out in Hosea and Amos, is seen in Micah also ; and this 
 king, as in Hosea and Amos, shall be mysteriously like David; 
 for Bethlehem is indicated as his birthplace. It is said of him also 
 that "his goings forth are from of old, from ancient days" ; and 
 in this phrase something divine is no doubt intended. Whoever 
 he be, this hero with his comrades shall deliver Israel from the 
 Assyrian, and shall bring peace (shall be peace, is the actual phrase). 
 Israel, under him, shall at once be the conqueror of the earth, 
 and a blessing to the earth. The unworthiness of the actual 
 Israel, as Micah beholds it, is set in contrast with the Israel 
 that shall be, when God has "cast all their sins into the depths of 
 the sea." 
 
 These are memorable conceptions ; and yet the conceptions 
 of Isaiah are far more memorable. Let me at once say, when 
 I speak of Isaiah, what writings those are which I regard as really 
 his work. The book which goes by his name contains sixty-six 
 chapters ; of which chapters the last twenty-seven are shown by 
 their contents to belong to an era far later than Isaiah ; their 
 author was a prophet equal to Isaiah in the truth and dignity 
 of his thoughts, but a quite different person nevertheless. On 
 the other hand, the first twelve chapters of the book may 
 fairly be assumed to be the work of the true Isaiah ; not that, 
 in so ancient a work, we can be confident of the genuineness 
 of every expression, but on the whole Isaiah is no doubt the 
 author of these early chapters. As to the chapters between 
 the twelfth and the fortieth, some of these are probably by 
 Isaiah, as for instance the twenty-second, and the series between 
 the twenty-eighth and thirty-third inclusive ; but it is not worth 
 my while to enter into this question minutely. 
 
 Let me now speak of the chapters which I have noted as the
 
 280 THE FALL OF THE EARTHLY IDEAL; [CH. 
 
 genuine work of Isaiah. The general bearing of these chapters 
 is, as in the prophets of whom I have just been speaking, reproof 
 of the present sins of Israel, and a prophecy of the future glory 
 of Israel. These themes are mingled in unexpected ways; and 
 a comparison of the close of the fifth chapter with the ninth 
 chapter and with the beginning of the tenth chapter will show 
 that there has been some misplacement of parts ; the fifth chapter, 
 or part of it, should be connected with the passage beginning 
 with the eighth verse of the ninth chapter. 
 
 The style is exceedingly stately; but that which most dis- 
 tinguishes Isaiah from all the contemporary prophets is the deep 
 intermingling of his own personality with what he writes, and 
 also a certain definiteness in his manner of conceiving the future. 
 Both these points receive illustration from his sixth chapter, which 
 I will quote in its entirety : 
 
 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, 
 high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the 
 seraphim : each one had six wings ; with twain he covered his face, and with 
 twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto 
 another, and said, Holy, Holy, Holy, is Jehovah 1 Sabaoth: the whole 
 earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the thresholds were moved 
 at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then 
 said I, Woe is me ! for I am undone ; because I am a man of unclean lips, 
 and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips : for mine eyes have seen 
 the king, Jehovah Sabaoth. Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, 
 having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off 
 the altar : and he touched my mouth with it, and said, Lo, this hath touched 
 thy lips ; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. And 
 I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall 1 send, and who will go 
 for us? Then I said, Here am I ; send me. And he said. Go, and tell this 
 people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not ; and see ye indeed, but perceive 
 not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and 
 shut their eyes ; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their oars, and 
 understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed. Then said 
 I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until cities be waste without 
 inhabitant, and houses without man, arid the land become utterly waste, 
 and Jehovah have removed men far away, and the forsaken places be many 
 in the midst of the land. And if there be yet a tenth in it, it shall again 
 be eaten up : as a terebinth, and as an oak, whose stock remaineth, when 
 they are felled; so the holy seed is the stock thereof. 
 
 The poetical imagery in this passage is obvious ; but it is the 
 underlying meaning that concerns us. It should be noted that 
 Jehovah is spoken of as the king ; though the earthly king is 
 recognised by Isaiah, the heavenly king is still supreme over Israel. 
 But next : the personality of the prophet is recognised as an element 
 
 1 "Jehovah of hosts," generally translated "The Lord of hosts."
 
 xi] THE RISE OF PROPHECY: ISAIAH 281 
 
 not to be forgotten, when God is seeking for a fit messenger to 
 send. Isaiah knows himself to be a man of unclean lips ; it is 
 only when this uncleanness has been purged away in the heavenly 
 vision that he dares to listen to the divine voice, and to be the 
 messenger to report what that voice tells him. Even when he is 
 purified, he is still only a messenger ; he is not empowered to take 
 command over the sinful people of Israel. Then comes the 
 message, every word of which breathes scorn of that sinful people ; 
 they are not worthy to be ruled. To be deadened still more and 
 to be cast away is the doom reserved for them ; the land shall be 
 made desolate, and not once only. It is only at the end of this 
 sorrowful denunciation that a word of hope is allowed to enter 
 in. The holy seed will still remain; and it is implied, though 
 not definitely said, that out of this a new and nobler plant may 
 grow. Such was the prospect of the future, divinely revealed to 
 Isaiah in the year of king Uzziah's death; and to confirm the 
 memory alike of the threatenings and the hope involved hi it, he 
 named his eldest son (born shortly afterwards, it is to be supposed) 
 Shear- j ashub ; the meaning of which name is, "A remnant shall 
 return." Return to what ? For the answer to this question let us 
 look to the twenty-first verse of the tenth chapter ; the first two 
 words of which verse are in the Hebrew those very same words, 
 ' ' Shear- j ashub , ' ' which as a proper name indicate Isaiah ' s son . "A 
 remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty 
 God." Hence, when Isaiah named his son Shear- j ashub, he 
 indicated his confident hope that a remnant of Israel would return 
 to God. 
 
 Before Isaiah's second son was born, years had passed by ; 
 Jotham, the successor of king Uzziah, was dead ; Ahaz, the son 
 of Jotham, reigned over Judah ; and Pekah the son of Remaliah 
 king of Israel had joined with Rezin king of Syria in that alliance 
 against Assyria which I mentioned above ; and because Judah 
 was unwilling to join their alliance, the confederate kings came 
 up and besieged Jerusalem. The design was, if they could take 
 that city, to dethrone Ahaz, and in his place to set up as king 
 one who would help them in their enterprise ; "the son of Tabeel," 
 it is said. The tremor and perturbation of spirit which this 
 invasion caused in king Ahaz and his people may well be con- 
 ceived; "his heart was moved," says the Bible, "and the heart 
 of his people, as the trees of the forest are moved with the wind." 
 This is the situation to which the longest continuous prophecy 
 uttered by Isaiah himself refers ; it extends from the beginning
 
 282 THE FALL OF THE EARTHLY IDEAL; [CH. 
 
 of the seventh chapter to the end of the fourth verse of the tenth 
 chapter. On this passage I must now comment; the political 
 situation, the character of Isaiah, and the highest hopes of the 
 people of Israel, will all be illustrated by it. 
 
 We see from the sixth verse of the eighth chapter of Isaiah, 
 where it is said that "this people rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah's 
 son," that there was a strong feeling in Jerusalem in favour of 
 yielding to the confederate kings, Rezin and Pekah, and joining 
 them in their rebellion against Assyria. Their rebellion, I say; 
 for it cannot be doubted that all these countries did at that time 
 acknowledge a certain vassalage to the kings of Assyria. Ahaz 
 has so far been a faithful vassal ; but I must think that the seventh 
 chapter of Isaiah shows that he was beginning to yield to the 
 advisers of rebellion, and to accept the alliance that was being 
 thrust upon him. This is not indeed explicitly stated; but the 
 tenor of the passage implies that this was the case, and it is probable 
 that it would be the case. In the end, Ahaz did not yield ; and 
 if I read the history rightly, this was due to the influence of Isaiah. 
 But Isaiah's task was not an easy one. 
 
 While Ahaz and his people were shaking in their shoes (let me 
 be allowed the familiar expression) 
 
 Then said Jehovah unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, 
 and Shear-jashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, 
 in the highway of the fuller's field ; and say unto him, Take heed, and be 
 quiet ; fear not, neither let thine heart be faint, because of these two tails 
 of smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria, and of the 
 son of Remaliah. 
 
 Does not that look as if Ahaz was thinking of yielding to Rezin 
 and Pekah? But Isaiah assures him that the confederacy "shall 
 not stand"; and adds, "If ye will not believe, surely ye shall 
 not be established," and then follows a famous prophecy : 
 
 And Jehovah spake again unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a sign of Jehovah 
 thy God ; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above. But Ahaz 
 said, I will not ask, neither will I try Jehovah. And he said, Hear ye 
 now, O house of David ; is it a small thing for you to weary men, that ye 
 will weary my God also ? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign ; 
 behold, the maiden shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name 
 Immanuel (i.e. God-is-with-us). Butter and honey shall he eat, when he 
 Icnoweth to refuse the evil, and choose the good. For before the cliild 
 shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land whose two kings 
 thou abhorrest shall be forsaken. 
 
 That is to say, "the land whose two kings thou abhorrest," 
 or in other words the joint territory of Syria and northern Israel.
 
 xi] THE RISE OF PROPHECY: ISAIAH 283 
 
 shall in a very few years be made desolate. Plainly that is the 
 upshot of the passage 1 ; but our attention is attracted by the 
 sign to which Isaiah is appealing. Who is this maiden, and who 
 is her son that is to be born? "The maiden" it is, according to 
 the natural sense of the Hebrew; not "a maiden"; from which 
 one must gather that Isaiah knew whom he meant, though king 
 Ahaz probably did not. Let us wait ; perhaps we may hear more 
 about her in what follows. 
 
 We must infer, though it is not explicitly said, that Ahaz 
 showed incredulity as to the truth of this prophecy, this "sign" 
 to which Isaiah appealed; and that Isaiah believed Ahaz still 
 to be about to yield to Rezin and Pekah ; for now the prophet 
 turns upon Ahaz with vehement threatenings : 
 
 Jehovah shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy 
 father's house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim 
 departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria. 
 
 The rest of the seventh chapter is occupied with a vivid picture 
 of the results of an Assyrian invasion (which would naturally 
 follow if Ahaz joined Rezin and Pekah) ; and the eighth chapter 
 resumes the theme, but in symbolic fashion: let me quote the 
 first eight verses of this chapter : 
 
 And Jehovah said unto me, Take thee a great tablet, and write upon 
 it in common characters, For Maher-shalal-hash-baz ; and I will take 
 unto me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest, and Zechariah the 
 son of Jeberechiah. And I went unto the prophetess ; and she conceived, 
 and bare a son. Then said Jehovah unto me, Call his name Maher-shalal- 
 hash-baz (i.e. Spoil speedeth, prey hasteth). For before the child shall 
 have knowledge to cry, My father, and, My mother, the riches of Damascus 
 and the spoil of Samaria shall be carried away before the king of Assyria. 
 
 And Jehovah spake unto me yet again, saying, Forasmuch as this 
 people hath refused the waters of Shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in 
 Rezin and Remaliah's son; now therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth up 
 upon them the waters of the River, strong and many, even the king of 
 Assyria and all his glory ; and he shall come up over all his channels, and 
 go over all his banks : and he shall sweep onward into Judah ; he shall 
 overflow and pass through; he shall reach even to the neck; and the 
 stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel. 
 
 Now what I am contending is, that the child mentioned in 
 this last passage, from the eighth chapter, is the same as the child 
 mentioned in the previous passage, from the seventh chapter. 
 Consider the context. The theme of the two chapters is absolutely 
 
 1 The words, "Butter and honey shall he eat," imply a straitness of means even 
 in southern Israel ; for their force is that the land shall be a land of pasture, without 
 agriculture.
 
 284 THE FALL OF THE EARTHLY IDEAL; [CH. 
 
 the same the attack which is being made by Pekah and Rezin 
 upon Ahaz and upon the people of Judah, and the imperative 
 duty of Ahaz and of the people of Judah not to yield to that 
 attack, or to join Pekah and Rezin in their rebellion against 
 Assyria. In both chapters the child is used as a sign to warn 
 Ahaz as to the course which, under these circumstances, he ought 
 to pursue ; in the seventh chapter the warning takes the form of 
 a promise of divine help if Ahaz pursues the right course, in the 
 eighth chapter the warning takes the form of a threatening of 
 evil results if Ahaz persists in following the wrong course. Since 
 the warning is in each case conveyed through the name given to 
 the child, the name of the child differs in the two chapters; 
 Immanuel he is named in the seventh chapter, Maher-shalal- 
 hash-baz in the eighth chapter. But this is no proof that two 
 different children are intended. For another instance in which 
 the same child is designated by two different names simultane- 
 ously, I may refer to the second book of Samuel, chapter xii. 
 verses 24 and 25: 
 
 And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto her, 
 and lay with her: and she bare a son, and he called his name Solomon. 
 And Jehovah loved him, and he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet, 
 and he called his name Jedidiah, for Jehovah's sake. 
 
 The famous name of Solomon has quite expelled from the 
 popular memory the name of Jedidiah ; yet the authority for the 
 latter name was the more august ; and the two names designated 
 the same child. So it is in these chapters of Isaiah ; there was 
 no wish on Isaiah's part that the very awkward-sounding name 
 Maher-shalal-hash-baz should displace the name Immanuel, 
 previously given to the child ; but he had an urgent and terrible 
 lesson to impart; and to impart that lesson, he gave for the 
 moment another name to the child. Instead of making the sign 
 to Ahaz and the people of Judah consist in the word which means 
 "God is with us," he now, under the menace of nearer calamity, 
 makes it consist in the word which means "Spoil speedeth, prey 
 hasteth." The change in the prophet's mood is quite intelligible 
 and the result of that change is quite intelligible also. If we 
 want positive proof that the child is the same child in the two 
 chapters, we shall find something which comes very near to 
 positive proof in the prediction which, in each case, follows the 
 giving of the name of the child. In the seventh chapter this 
 prediction runs thus : 
 
 Before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, 
 the land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken.
 
 xi] THE RISE OF PROPHECY: ISAIAH 285 
 
 In the eighth chapter the prediction runs thus: 
 
 Before the child shall have knowledge to cry, My father, and, My 
 mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be carried 
 away before the king of Assyria. 
 
 Clearly it is the same child who is intended in both these 
 passages. Further, if we want a proof that Isaiah did not mean 
 the name Immanuel to cease to be the true name of the child whom 
 (for a particular purpose) he had named Maher-shalal-hash-baz, 
 we shall find it in the last words of the quotation which I made 
 from the eighth chapter : 
 
 "The stretching out of his wings " (or in other words the army of the 
 Assyrian king) " shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel." 
 
 Immanuel is here spoken of as a child whom the readers of 
 Isaiah will recognise, and therefore as a child then existing ; and 
 the same is also implied in the words which follow immediately 
 afterwards : 
 
 "Make an uproar, O ye peoples," writes the prophet, "and ye shall be 
 broken in pieces ; . . . Take counsel together, and it shall be brought to 
 nought ; speak the word, and it shall not stand ; for God is with us." 
 
 The last four words, " God is with us," form in the Hebrew 
 the name " Immanuel," and no one can doubt that they contain 
 a reference to the child mentioned just before. Is it possible 
 that we can think, as the Christian world has believed from the 
 days when the first of our four gospels was composed till now, 
 that when Isaiah appeals to " Immanuel " as a sign, he is appeal- 
 ing to a sign totally unknown and unthought of in his own day, 
 a sign wholly unintelligible to those whom he is addressing, a sign 
 not to be seen in the world until more than seven centuries had 
 elapsed from the time when the prophet was speaking ? Is it not 
 the very office of a sign to be plain and intelligible? If so, 
 "Immanuel" must have been a child existing there and then, 
 visible to those whom Isaiah was addressing ; and if so, when we 
 look at all the passages that I have quoted above, he can have 
 been none other than Isaiah's younger son, whom he had also 
 called, for a particular purpose, Maher-shalal-hash-baz. But if 
 any doubt can remain on the matter, it must be removed by 
 the passage immediately succeeding the words last quoted. Here 
 it is : 
 
 For Jehovah spake thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me 
 that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying, Say ye not, A con- 
 spiracy, concerning all whereof this people shall say, A conspiracy ; neither
 
 286 THE FALL OF THE EARTHLY IDEAL; [OH. 
 
 fear ye their fear, nor be in dread thereof. Jehovah Sabaoth, him shall 
 ye sanctify; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And 
 he shall be for a sanctuary ; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of 
 offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the in- 
 habitants of Jerusalem. And many shall stumble thereon, and fall, and 
 be broken, and be snared, and be taken. 
 
 Bind thou up the testimony, seal the teaching among my disciples. 
 And I will wait for Jehovah, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, 
 and I will look for him. Behold, I and the children whom Jehovah hath 
 given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, 
 which dwelleth in mount Zion. Isaiah viii. 11-18. 
 
 They are noble words. They are words meant to encourage 
 and strengthen the people of Jerusalem and Judah in that day, 
 in Isaiah's own day, against troubles which then were pressing 
 upon them. How does Isaiah encourage them ? By telling them 
 to have faith in the Lord of hosts, Jehovah Sabaoth. Of that 
 faith his children are the signs ; and evidently he means to appeal 
 to the names which he had given them. What were those names ? 
 " Shear- jashub," or "A remnant shall return," i.e. to God: and 
 "Immanuel," or "God is with us." Those names are the names 
 which Isaiah bids the people accept as signs. Would it be a 
 tolerable interpretation to exclude "Immanuel," about whom so 
 much has been said, from the signs here indicated by Isaiah? 
 "Immanuel" is of all others the sign which Isaiah means to press 
 most. "God is with us" ; that is the thing which he most bids 
 the people of Judah remember, " Maher-shalal-hash-baz " may 
 be a sign too, but in an inferior degree, and not to the exclusion 
 of Immanuel. Therefore the child Immanuel was one of those 
 children of his own whom Isaiah speaks of as signs. 
 
 Who was Immanuel's mother? Not the same, of course, 
 as the mother of Shear-jashub. She is the "maiden" of Isaiah 
 vii. 14; the "prophetess" of Isaiah viii. 3. Whether the word 
 "prophetess" is to be taken in its literal sense, or means "a 
 prophet's wife," does not matter ; in any case, the maiden became 
 the prophet's wife at some time indicated early in the eighth 
 chapter. If we followed the Authorised Version in the second 
 verse of the eighth chapter, "I took unto me faithful witnesses 
 to record," we should say that these faithful witnesses, Uriah 
 and Zechariah, officiated in this way at the marriage ceremony. 
 With the translation given in the Revised Version, "I will take 
 faithful witnesses," it is more natural to suppose that Uriah and 
 Zechariah were witnesses of the name Maher-shalal-hash-baz 
 being given to the child after its birth ; but this, as I have noted
 
 xi] THE RISE OF PROPHECY: ISAIAH 287 
 
 above, was in addition to the name Immanuel. I believe both 
 translations to be possible, and either meaning is a good one. 
 
 Let me return, for a moment, to the general history. We 
 know from the second book of Kings that Ahaz in the end abstained 
 from joining Pekah and Rezin, and remained faithful to the 
 king of Assyria ; indeed he called him in to his own help ; and 
 Pekah and Rezin were discomfited, and Rezin was slain. I do not 
 say that this appeal to Assyria was recommended or countenanced 
 by Isaiah ; it is hardly in tenor with Isaiah's prophecy ; but one 
 cannot blame Ahaz for making such an appeal. However, in 
 any case we must hold that Isaiah preserved Ahaz from the error 
 of casting in his lot with Pekah and Rezin ; and it is plain that 
 upon this being accomplished, Isaiah breathed freely and joyously. 
 The beginning of the ninth chapter is the evidence of this. Here 
 again we have the son mentioned as a cause of exultation, and the 
 exultation assumes a tone of victory unknown before. Few 
 passages in the Bible are more familiar to the modern reader than 
 the verses in which Isaiah celebrates the son lately born : 
 
 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given ; and the govern- 
 ment shall be upon his shoulder ; and his name shall be called Wonderful 
 Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the 
 increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end, upon the 
 throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it 
 with judgment and with righteousness from henceforth even for ever. 
 The zeal of Jehovah Sabaoth shall perform this. ix. 6, 7. 
 
 But it may be asked: Is it possible that Isaiah celebrated 
 the birth of his own son in such terms as these ? We have been 
 accustomed to think of some one much greater than a mere mortal 
 as the hero thus prophetically foretold. It is incredible, it may 
 be said, that Isaiah should have arrayed his own infant son with 
 these majestic appellations; but if it were credible, should we 
 not be obliged to call him an arrogant presumptuous man, a 
 dreamer of vain dignities, such as neither could nor did come 
 to any offspring whom he himself had begotten? 
 
 No ; Isaiah was guilty of no arrogance in writing thus of his 
 own son ; his prophecy was indeed not fulfilled in the letter ; but 
 the spirit of it was immortal, and kindled the generations which 
 came after him. It is necessary, in treating of these words, to 
 remove one point of difficulty which at the outset bars the way 
 to a proper understanding of them. It is said that if Isaiah 
 thought of his own son as sitting on the throne of David, this 
 (putting all other objections aside) was disloyalty to Ahaz, and
 
 288 THE FALL OF THE EARTHLY IDEAL; [CH. 
 
 to the young son and future successor of Ahaz, Hezokiah. But 
 the throne of David was not thought of by Isaiah as Ahaz might 
 have thought of it, or as the ordinary inhabitant of Jerusalem 
 might have thought of it. The throne of David, as Ahaz regarded 
 it, rested on military force, of which but a scant measure was 
 wielded by the people and king of Judah at that date. The 
 throne of David, as Isaiah contemplated it, rested on the spirit 
 of God, and was animated by a spiritual fire such as cannot 
 help subduing all things to itself. Isaiah himself was the possessor 
 of this spiritual fire, and by virtue of his possession of it he had 
 cried, "Seal the teaching among my disciples" ; and he had said 
 that though the house of Jacob was blind, he himself would wait 
 steadfastly, if so be that he might look upon the face of Jehovah, 
 the Everlasting God. In the vision of God rule should be per- 
 fected, and in the vision of God peace should be eternal and 
 unsullied. That was the kind of government which Isaiah had 
 in his heart, and it was too different from the government wielded 
 by Ahaz to involve any risk of disloyalty to Ahaz. 
 
 But yet Isaiah did not think of this divine government as 
 perfected in his own person. He had said originally, when brought 
 before the Divine Presence, that he was "a man of unclean lips" ; 
 and though his iniquity had been purged, he did not yet think 
 himself worthy to exercise such rule as he conceived in his heart. 
 But his son might be worthy. If Isaiah's second wife was really 
 a prophetess (and we are not forbidden to take that word literally), 
 it may be that he thought that a double portion of the divine 
 spirit would belong to one endowed with it on both the father's 
 and the mother's side ; but in any case he thought that the power 
 of the divine oracles would rest upon the son who had just been 
 born to him. He himself had delivered his own people from an 
 imminent danger; might not his son do much more, and guide 
 all Israel into everlasting peace? The heavenly light, as he saw 
 it, was poured not only upon Judah, but upon the northern 
 frontier of Israel, where in Galilee the chosen people mingled with 
 the nations of the world. In this new dominion war should be 
 a thing of the past. The warrior's armour and the garments 
 rolled in blood should be fuel for tire and should pass away. 
 
 Such was the prophetic vision in which the ardour of Isaiah 
 reached its highest point ; and we must not think meanly of it 
 because it was not literally fulfilled. We cannot suppose that 
 either of the two sons ot Isaiah played a part of great distinction 
 in bringing Cod's spirit into the world ; and Isaiah, as years
 
 xi] THE RISE OF PROPHECY: ISAIAH 289 
 
 went on, must have discovered that this fulfilment of his words 
 was not to be. But did he resign all hope of their essential 
 fulfilment? Certainly he did not. 
 
 But I must hasten to the end of my present chapter ; Isaiah 
 is the greatest man who has been my theme in it, and I must 
 make his work intelligible. He did not, he could not, speak to 
 all his fellow-countrymen ; he was too high above them, and they 
 could not understand him; but he spoke to those who would 
 listen. To these he gave the counsel to abstain from the vain 
 controversies of earth ; to trust in God, and rest. Doubtless he 
 did not mean to advocate entire quiescence when the enemy was 
 in the field ; it was not the duty of self-defence that he disparaged ; 
 rather it was the feverish fear which corroded the hearts of the 
 people of Judah, that he deprecated, and urged them to lay aside. 
 That was his message. 
 
 Judah and Jerusalem were saved ; but as to the northern 
 kingdom, it needed but a few years for it to be swept away by 
 the kings of Assyria, and many of its people were carried off to 
 Assyria and Media, and men of alien race were planted in the lands 
 of Samaria and Galilee. Yet we have reason to say that the 
 religion of Jehovah never died out in those lands ; weakened it 
 was, and no great prophet or teacher henceforth is recorded as 
 belonging to it ; but still it survived, and had a history. 
 
 But Judah and Jerusalem had to bear another terrible assault 
 in Isaiah's lifetime ; this was from Sennacherib, the son of that 
 king who was the last to join in the spoliation of northern Israel, 
 Sargon. Sennacherib made his attack on Judah in Hezekiah's 
 reign. Hezekiah had rebelled but had submitted ; the degree of 
 his submission however was not accepted by Sennacherib, who 
 demanded that Jerusalem itself should be thrown open to his 
 troops. That condition Hezekiah would not accept, and Isaiah 
 supported him in his refusal. (What amount of justice there 
 was in Hezekiah's original rebellion, or whether Isaiah supported 
 him in that, we do not know.) So Sennacherib, who had already 
 taken many cities of Judah, and had transported their inhabitants 
 to eastern lands, now resolved to add Jerusalem to his captures. 
 The story of his failure is too well known for me to repeat here ; 
 his army was destroyed by a pestilence ; and he could not replace 
 it by another. That no doubt is the historical fact which is clad 
 in a miraculous guise by the Biblical writer 1 . The relief to the 
 
 1 The history of the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib, and its result, are found in 
 2 Kings xviii. xix. and Isaiah xxxvi. xxxvii. The historian was not Isaiah ; the 
 prophecy attributed to Isaiah in these chapters is probably in part genuine. 
 
 M. D. A. 19
 
 290 THE FALL OF THE EARTHLY IDEAL; [CH. 
 
 people of Jerusalem was overpowering. There is no denying that 
 Judaea had suffered terribly in the campaign ; and the thoughts 
 of the rescued nation could not be all of triumph. Yet to Isaiah 
 it appeared, and justly, an occasion for recalling the great destinies 
 of Israel. But before quoting his sublime utterance on this 
 occasion, let me briefly explain the chronology of his writings in 
 this part. 
 
 The famous passage at the beginning of his ninth chapter had 
 been written in the midst of adversity, yet with inward exultation 
 and hope ; but the remainder of the ninth chapter, and the first 
 four verses of the tenth, plainly refer to the fall of northern Israel, 
 and are full of the terrors of that event. But the remainder of 
 the tenth chapter refers to Sennacherib, and was probably written 
 after his collapse. The eleventh chapter however is Isaiah's 
 true hymn on this occasion his prophetic hymn and now I will 
 quote it : 
 
 And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and 
 a branch out of his roots shall bear fruit: and the spirit of Jehovah shall 
 rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel 
 and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Jehovah; and his 
 delight shall be in the fear of Jehovah: and he shall not judge after the 
 sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: but with 
 righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek 
 of the earth : and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and 
 with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness 
 shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. 
 And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with 
 the kid ; and the calf and the young lion shall graze together ; and a little 
 child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall be friends ; their 
 young ones shall lie down together : and the lion shall eat straw like the 
 ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned 
 child shall put his hand on the basilisk's den. They shall not hurt nor 
 destroy in all my holy mountain : for the earth shall be full of the knowledge 
 of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea. Isaiah xi. 1-9 1 . 
 
 I need not quote further ; the theme of the remainder of the 
 chapter is the reunion of the divided houses of Israel under "the 
 root of Jesse," which shall stand "for an ensign" and for a 
 meeting-place of all the nations, their rest and their hope. 
 
 Truly the prophet, in uttering these glowing words, did not 
 "judge after the sight of his eyes" ! What he saw with his eyes 
 was the devastation of his country : Ephraim swept away, Judah 
 in part swept away ; and as to those who remained, were they 
 not the same people to whom he had been sent in anger, to seal 
 
 1 Two slight alterations in the reading and in the translation of this passage I 
 have borrowed from Mr G. H. Box's Book of Isaiah.
 
 xi] THE RISE OF PROPHECY: ISAIAH 291 
 
 their ears and close their eyes, lest they should see, and hear, and 
 understand, and be healed? Yet he prophesied peace and glory 
 in the future, and he prophesied truly. What more shall I say 
 of him? Let me quote from him one more noble passage, pro- 
 phesying the unity of the nations : 
 
 In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, 
 a blessing in the midst of the earth ; for that Jehovah Sabaoth hath blessed 
 them, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my 
 hands, and Israel mine inheritance. Ibid. xix. 24, 25. 
 
 And yet another, spoken in the name of Jehovah, inimitable in 
 its scorn of religious formalists : 
 
 Their fear of me is a commandment of men which hath been learned 
 by rote. Ibid. xxix. 13. 
 
 Isaiah is one of the landmarks of history ; the first who sketched 
 the kingdom of God upon earth. Of his outward acts but little 
 is recorded ; but he breathes for all time the fragrance of an im- 
 mortal hope.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL IN CONFLICT: 
 JEREMIAH AND EZEKIEL 
 
 IN Isaiah and in the prophets contemporary with him, but 
 most of all in Isaiah, we see the return to a purity in the conception 
 of the divine ideal such as there had not been since Abraham, 
 and a higher morality than even Abraham had been able to 
 conceive. Not that I am disparaging the great Israelites who 
 intervened between Abraham and Isaiah, such as Moses and 
 Samuel and David and Elijah ; but all of these looked upon 
 warfare and blood- shedding not only as legitimate, which in the 
 difficult circumstances of life it sometimes is, but also as a divine 
 method of action, when aimed against the enemies of God ; and 
 herein they were mistaken. Though this mistake was not formally 
 repudiated by any of the prophets of the Old Testament, it lost 
 its hold upon them ; it is the sword of the spirit which the prophets 
 use, not the sword of physical warfare. 
 
 Changes in religious conduct are not, however, to be accom- 
 plished with absolute suddenness ; and a greater spirituality was 
 not the only difference which now began to show itself between the 
 Israel of the past and that Israel which in the reign of Hezekiah 
 was sending out its first tender buds. Another tendency showed 
 itself ; the tendency to centralise religious worship, and to make 
 it uniform. This was not naturally a tendency of the prophets ; 
 who, though they assumed as a matter of course a unity of spirit 
 in religion, were elevated above a compulsory unity of outward 
 worship. Still the prophets of Judah did regard with great 
 affection the city of Jerusalem ; the past history of Israel was 
 dear to them, and the temple, and the sacred ark which had had 
 so long and remarkable a history ; so that to a certain extent the 
 spirituality of the prophets did go hand in hand with centralisation 
 in religion. The priests, in the reign of Hezekiah, were in 
 alliance with the prophets ; less spiritual, but more disposed to
 
 CH. xn] JEREMIAH AND EZEKIEL 293 
 
 centralisation; the prophets disapproved of the abundance of 
 sacrifices carried on throughout the country because such worship 
 was merely material, the priests, because it was apt to discard 
 authority. Both prophet and priest contended against the Baal- 
 worship, though this was not so prevalent in Judah as in 
 northern Israel; it is only distantly referred to in Isaiah and 
 Micah. 
 
 These tendencies of prophet and priest had no small influence 
 on king Hezekiah himself, to whom we must ascribe the first 
 serious attempt forcibly to centralise the religion of Israel; 
 his proceedings are thus described in the second book of Kings 
 (xviii. 4) : 
 
 He removed the high places, and brake the pillars, and cut down the 
 Asherah : and he brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made ; 
 for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it; and he 
 called it Nehushtan (i.e. a piece of brass). 
 
 It is likely that Isaiah looked with some approval on these 
 measures of king Hezekiah; but we do not know his precise 
 attitude towards them. One cannot help thinking that Hezekiah's 
 reforms went dangerously beyond the common sentiment of the 
 people of Judah in his day; for in the next reign, the reign of 
 Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, a tremendous reaction took 
 place, and idolatry was introduced into the kingdom of Judah to 
 an extent never known before. The reformers of Hezekiah's 
 time, who no doubt resisted this reaction to the utmost of their 
 power, were swept away with great bloodshed ; for we read that 
 Manasseh "shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled 
 Jerusalem from one end to another" (2 Kings xxi. 16). Tradition 
 says that Isaiah was one of those so slain ; but there is no certain 
 record of this. 
 
 If the reign of Hezekiah had been one of external prosperity, 
 his reforms would probably have endured without challenge. 
 But the invasion of Sennacherib produced the greatest suffering 
 in Judah, and weakness as well as suffering, and the religious 
 policy of Hezekiah, it is plain, excited distrust in the mass of the 
 people. Thus it befell that the reign of his successor Manasseh 
 was what it was, a time of degradation, referred to afterwards 
 with remorse and horror. Fifty-five years did Manasseh reign 
 in Jerusalem. As to what was happening in those cities of Judah 
 whose inhabitants had been swept away by Sennacherib, there is 
 no record ; probably the poorest of the people were left ; and 
 some restoration of inhabitants there must have been, for the
 
 294 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL IN CONFLICT: [OH. 
 
 cities of Judah are not spoken of afterwards as a mere desolation, 
 either in the second book of Kings or in the prophecies of Jeremiah. 
 But all religious guidance had gone out of the land: not one 
 single prophet is named as living and teaching during the whole 
 of this long reign. Random idolatries, aimless superstitions, 
 held by turns the undiscriminating minds of king, nobles, and 
 people. The lofty encouragements of Isaiah dwelt in the minds 
 of a few, but by the people at large they were absolutely forgotten. 
 
 We do not even know for certain one single event that happened 
 during these fifty-five years. Long afterwards it was alleged, and 
 the story is found in the second book of Chronicles, that Manasseh 
 was captured by the king of Assyria, and taken in chains to 
 Babylon, where under the pressure of calamity he is said to have 
 repented of his polytheistic idolatry ; and being presently restored 
 to his kingdom, he is said to have abolished all his idols and the 
 idolatrous altars. But it is impossible not to regard this story 
 as a fable, invented for a purpose regarded as pious. We find 
 the full flood of idolatry going on in the reign of Amon, the son 
 and successor of Manasseh, and even in the early years of the 
 reign of Josiah ; and not the smallest hint is given of the previous 
 abolition of idolatry by Manasseh, which would have necessitated 
 a restoration of the idols which had been cast away. And how 
 could the writer of the books of Kings have been ignorant of so 
 striking a fact as the repentance of Manasseh, if it had really 
 occurred? For it would have been an event not easily to be 
 forgotten. If, again, we ask whether the Chronicler is a writer 
 capable of romancing, it is difficult to deny this, in view of the 
 immense victories which he attributes to the pious kings Abijah 
 and Asa, and other narratives which will easily be discovered on 
 a perusal of the books of Chronicles. Further, though it is no 
 doubt possible that the king of Assyria, if he took Manasseh 
 captive, should have located him in Babylon (which at that time 
 was subject to Assyria), yet it is difficult not to think that the 
 Chronicler is here naming Babylon as the capital of the Assyrian 
 monarchy, which it never was. Nineveh was the capital of the 
 Assyrian monarchy ; but long before the books of Chronicles 
 were written, Nineveh had been so utterly destroyed that only 
 the faintest memory of it dwelt in the minds of men, and it is 
 not once mentioned in the books of Chronicles. The Chronicler 
 may very well have forgotten that there ever was such a city. 
 
 We may say then with some confidence that Manasseh never 
 was taken captive, but lived out the whole of his impious life on
 
 xn] JEREMIAH AND EZEKIEL 295 
 
 the throne which he had inherited. A strong-handed king he 
 must have been to live so long in his dangerous position. But 
 it is likely that he was popular with most of his subjects, whom 
 he allowed to go their own ways in religious matters ; and it would 
 seem also that he took possession of much of the half -deserted 
 land of northern Israel. At all events we find part of this land 
 subject to his grandson Josiah ; and if Josiah himself had subdued 
 it, we should probably have been told of this. However this may 
 be, the people of Judah showed no desire to overthrow Manasseh 
 or his descendants ; and when Amon, the son of Manasseh, was 
 slain by his own servants, Josiah son of Amon quietly became 
 king, a boy only eight years old. 
 
 Then the reformers took heart again. When I speak of the 
 reformers, it must be understood that I mean those who, for more 
 than a thousand years, had been cherishing the Abrahamic tradi- 
 tion; who had been keeping it separate, all along, from the 
 religions of the nations round them ; who had valued it in its 
 historical aspect, as a true record of divine powers and promises ; 
 who had associated it with a morality in which the duties of man 
 to man were recognised and set forth in detail. I do not claim 
 for these, who were the nucleus of the race of Israel, perfect 
 insight, or even perfect candour and truthfulness ; their principles 
 had the crudity of a barbarous age ; and when they acquired 
 power, they were guilty of persecuting acts which are to be 
 regretted. But their aim was great, and seriously pursued ; they 
 had the conception of a righteous Power beyond the range of 
 human sense, to whom our obedience is due ; they strove to bring 
 their fellow-countrymen, and indeed all nations, to the cognisance 
 of this Power. While acknowledging their faults, we must not 
 ignore the debt we owe them. 
 
 Outside the circle of these ardent souls, the people of Judah 
 in the reign of Josiah were imbued with a religion of varying 
 strictness or laxity. They had never ceased to regard Jehovah as 
 the national God of Israel; but most of them thought that, if 
 Jehovah failed them, they might as well have a second string to 
 their bow in Baal, or Moloch, or the Sun-god. To the pure wor- 
 shippers of Jehovah, to the believers in a righteous God, to the 
 followers of the Mosaic tradition (which came from Abraham), 
 this polytheism was abhorrent ; but how were they to overcome 
 it? The greatest single piece of evidence which they had, to 
 prove the power and love of God, lay in the deliverance of Israel, 
 from the Egyptian bondage ; and to the exhibition of this event,
 
 296 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL IN CONFLICT: [CH. 
 
 in words that might pierce and convince, many of them now 
 devoted all their strength. 
 
 In the reign of Hezekiah, the people of Judah had not been 
 so steeped in the practices of the surrounding nations as to give 
 an acute stringency to the problem, how pure religion was to be 
 recommended and enforced. But the reign of Manasseh had 
 made it possible that the traditions of Abraham and Moses would 
 absolutely die away, choked by the congeries of surrounding 
 superstitions; and many deeply religious persons among the 
 people of Judah, when the reign of Josiah gave them an opportunity 
 of expressing themselves, felt the keenest stimulus towards 
 giving such an account of the miracles of the Exodus and of 
 Mount Sinai as should never be forgotten by God's chosen people. 
 That the deliverance of Israel from Egypt had been achieved by 
 miracles was not in that age denied or disputed ; and it was 
 inevitable that when the strong attempt was made, in the reign 
 of Josiah, to bring back the people of Judah from idolatry and 
 polytheism to the worship of Jehovah as the single unique Deity, 
 great stress should be laid on these miracles. 
 
 I must relate immediately the attempt which was made on 
 these lines ; but meanwhile let it not be forgotten that a nobler 
 argument than that of miracles was, even in that age, being 
 offered to the people of Judah for the purpose of convincing and 
 confirming them in the pure truth of religion. When the prophet 
 Jeremiah sought to bring back his fellow-countrymen to the pure 
 worship of God, he did indeed refer to the history of the Exodus ; 
 and it is likely that he believed in the miracles of the Exodus ; 
 but it is not from the point of view of the miracles that he makes 
 his appeal. This is what he writes (Jeremiah ii. 47) : 
 
 Hear ye the word of Jehovah, O house of Jacob, and all the families 
 of the house of Israel : thus saith Jehovah, What unrighteousness have 
 your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked 
 after vanity, and are become vain ? Neither said they, Where is Jehovah 
 that brought us up out of the land of Egypt; that led us through the 
 wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought 
 and of the shadow of death, through a land that none passed through, 
 and wlmre no man dwelt? And I brought you into a plentiful land, to 
 eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof; but when ye entered, ye 
 defiled my land, and made mine heritage an abomination. 
 
 It will be seen that, even if Jeremiah believed in the miracles, 
 it is not the miracles as such that he trusts in ; it is the love and 
 goodness of God in which he trusts ; this he felt as communicated 
 to his own heart, and he urges others so to act that they may
 
 xii] JEREMIAH AND EZEKIEL 297 
 
 feel it in their hearts. But this immediate intercourse with 
 God, which belonged to the prophets of Israel, did not belong to 
 the greater number of pious Israelites; it did not belong to 
 Hilkiah the high priest, or Shaphan the scribe ; and these adopted 
 another method to bring about the reform they desired. How 
 far Jeremiah sanctioned their proceedings we do not know ; but 
 his method was intrinsically different from theirs. Let me quote 
 the narrative which will show how the priest and the statesman 
 acted in furtherance of their scheme of reform ; it will be found 
 in 2 Kings xxii. : 
 
 And it came to pass in the eighteenth year of king Josiah, that the 
 king sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, the son of Meshullam, the scribe, 
 to the house of Jehovah, saying, Go up to Hilkiah the high priest, that he 
 may sum the money which is brought into the house of Jehovah, which 
 the keepers of the door have gathered of the people : . . . And Hilkiah the 
 high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law 
 in the house of Jehovah. And Hilkiah delivered the book to Shaphan, 
 and he read it. And Shaphan the scribe came to the king, and brought 
 the king word again, and said, Thy servants have emptied out the money 
 that was found in the house, and have delivered it into the hand of the 
 workmen that have the oversight of the house of Jehovah. And Shaphan 
 the scribe told the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest hath delivered me a book. 
 And Shaphan read it before the king. And it came to pass, when the king 
 had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes. And 
 the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, 
 and Achbor the son of Micaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah the 
 king's servant saying, Go ye, inquire of Jehovah for me, and for the 
 people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found : 
 for great is the wrath of Jehovah that is kindled against us, because our 
 fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according 
 unto all that which is enjoined us. 
 
 In the ninth chapter of this work I have argued, as others 
 have argued before me, that the book thus found in the temple 
 was not indeed the actual book of Deuteronomy as we have it now, 
 but the first sketch of that book ; mainly on the ground that the 
 book of Deuteronomy stringently commands that centralisation 
 of sacrificial worship, which king Josiah proceeded dutifully to 
 enforce, and which therefore must have been contained in the 
 book which Hilkiah found in the temple. No other book of 
 the Pentateuch could have been the origin of this rigid enforce- 
 ment ; for though Leviticus xvii. 1-9, is in the same direction, 
 it is not the same command. If then the first sketch of the book 
 of Deuteronomy was the book thus found in the temple, can we 
 help adding that it was a book which had been composed not so 
 long before the date of its finding ? No claim is made in the book
 
 298 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL IN CONFLICT: [OH. 
 
 of Kings that it had ever been known before. It was found, 
 but we are not told that it had been lost ; yet if written by Moses, 
 or if it were a transcript of what was written by Moses, it must 
 have been lost before it was found. Could such a loss take place, 
 and not the faintest mention of it occur in the history ? 
 
 But I must not repeat arguments which have already been 
 given with some fullness in the ninth chapter of the present work. 
 It will be sufficient here to state the conclusion there reached : 
 That the ardent worshippers of Jehovah, the ardent inheritors 
 of the religious tradition of Abraham and Moses, after having 
 been thrust down and overpowered in the half-heathen reign of 
 Manasseh, gathered spirit and determination in the reign of 
 Manasseh's grandson Josiah ; and the most powerful of their 
 weapons was the composition of a book, the first sketch of our 
 book of Deuteronomy ; a book truly powerful ; sincerely written 
 then, though our more enlightened conscience would not permit 
 us to write a similar work now. 
 
 But now let me continue my last quotation, so as to show 
 the precise result of the finding of the book. It will be remembered 
 that king Josiah had commanded Hilkiah the high priest and his 
 friends to "inquire" of Jehovah, as to what, in view of the dis- 
 covery of the sacred book, they should think and do. 
 
 So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Achbor, and Shaphan, and 
 Asaiah, went unto Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of 
 Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe; (now she dwelt in 
 Jerusalem in the second quarter ; ) and they communed with her. And she 
 said unto them, This saith Jehovah, the God of Israel : Tell ye the man that 
 sent you unto me, Thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will bring evil upon this 
 place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the words of the book 
 which the king of Judah hath read: because they have forsaken me, and 
 have burned incense unto other gods, that they might provoke me to anger 
 with all the work of their hands ; therefore my wrath shall be kindled 
 against this place, and it shall not be quenched. But unto the king of 
 Judah, who sent you to inquire of Jehovah, thus shall ye say to him. Thus 
 saith Jehovah, the God of Israel : As touching the words which thou hast 
 heard, because thine heart was tender, and thou didst humble thyself 
 before Jehovah, when thou heardest what I spake against this place, and 
 against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and 
 a curse, and hast rent thy clothes, and wept before me ; I also have heard 
 thee, saith Jehovah. Therefore, behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, 
 and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace, neither shall thine eyes 
 see all the evil which I will bring upon this place. And they brought the 
 king word again. 
 
 The narrative goes on to tell how Josiah, after hearing the 
 message of the prophetess Huldah, summoned all the elders
 
 xii] JEREMIAH AND EZEKIEL 299 
 
 throughout Judah and Jerusalem to a great conference in the 
 temple; and with the elders came the prophets and "all the 
 people," we are told ; and then standing before them, he himself 
 read to them the whole book just found, now called "the book of 
 the covenant"; and after reading it made a solemn vow (a 
 "covenant," it is called) to obey the words of that book ; and the 
 people gave their consent and adhesion to his vow. The consent 
 of the people proved far from immutable; but Josiah himself 
 was firm in his resolve, and vigorous in his action. He sent and 
 destroyed all the "high places," or in other words all the shrines, 
 throughout Judaea and Samaria, whether those dedicated to 
 Jehovah, or those dedicated to Baal or other deities ; the temple 
 of Jehovah at Jerusalem being alone permitted to stand, the 
 single and unique shrine of the only true God. Out of the temple 
 at Jerusalem itself he took every image, every vessel, that had 
 been used for worship other than the worship of Jehovah ; all 
 such images and vessels he destroyed utterly. As regards the 
 priests who had ministered at the altars which he destroyed, he 
 drew a distinction ; he slew the priests who had been engaged in 
 false and idolatrous worship, but spared, and did not in any way 
 punish, those who had been engaged in the worship of Jehovah ; 
 though sacrificial worship was for the future forbidden in all the 
 country shrines equally. 
 
 Such, as it is recorded for us, was the reform of religion carried 
 out by king Josiah ; and a very drastic reform it was ; nor must 
 we defend every part of it. Circumstances yet to be narrated 
 made it short lived, and the book which was the immediate cause 
 of it, the book of Deuteronomy, proved a more important influence 
 upon mankind in after generations than anything which king 
 Josiah did personally. 
 
 For now we have, in its first beginning, that long-lived and 
 powerful agency, the religion of the book ! Never before, in the 
 history of mankind, had the written word so vast and detailed 
 an influence as it now began to have over the minds of Israelites, 
 and through them on Christians and Mohammedans afterwards. 
 In the reign of Josiah the power of the book was but in its infancy ; 
 but it is a reality ; the written word is beginning to rival the spoken 
 word ; and it is a rivalry which extends to the thoughts of men 
 as well as to their actions. The book of Deuteronomy is the first 
 book of all books that were ever written in which this all-com- 
 prehensive claim to rule men was advanced ; and this being so, 
 it will be well to give some further account of its moral bearings
 
 300 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL IN CONFLICT: [OH. 
 
 than is involved in what is written above. It is permissible to 
 treat it as a whole ; though in its actual form a good deal is later 
 than the reign of Josiah, and some of it is earlier (but gathered 
 into the whole, of course, at a later time). 
 
 The book of Deuteronomy is, as I have said, most earnest; 
 and in spite of the fact that imagination entered largely into the 
 composition of many parts of it, it comes from the heart. More 
 than that; it is a book in which the duties of humanity and 
 justice are set forth in memorable terms. It will be well to quote 
 a few passages to show this. The duty of impartial judgment 
 between man and man is set forth as follows : 
 
 Judges and officers shalt them make thee in all thy gates, which 
 Jehovah thy God giveth thee, according to thy tribes: and they shall 
 judge the people with righteous judgment. Thou shalt not wrest judgment ; 
 thou shalt not respect persons : neither shalt thou take a gift ; for a gift 
 doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous. 
 That which is altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, 
 and inherit the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee. Deut. xvi. 
 18-20. 
 
 The duty of kindness towards aliens is inculcated, sometimes 
 very impressively, as for instance in the tenth chapter, verse 19 : 
 
 Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of 
 Egypt. 
 
 And so again in chapter xxiv. 14, 15, with reference to the 
 payment of hired servants: 
 
 Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, 
 whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land 
 within thy gates: in his day shalt thou give him his hire, neither shall the 
 sun go down upon it ; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it ; lest he 
 cry against thee unto Jehovah, and it be sin unto thee. 
 
 The verse which immediately follows the foregoing is one that 
 may have belonged to a more ancient code ; for the Bible represents 
 a saying to the same effect as having influenced Amaziah, some two 
 centuries before Josiah : 
 
 The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall 
 the children be put to death for the fathers ; every man shall be put to 
 death for his own sin. 
 
 Such sayings are memorable ; and more might be quoted. 
 Yet in reading the book of Deuteronomy, we have continually to 
 change from admiration to regret; for, with all its fervour and 
 dignity, it represents a severer and more painful view of God's 
 judgments than any other book of the Old Testament contains ; 
 and this was in no slight degree the cause of the narrowness of
 
 xn] JEREMIAH AND EZEKIEL 301 
 
 the later Judaism, from Ezra onwards. For while the religion of 
 the book, if embraced without freedom to criticise, tends of itself 
 to narrowness, this tendency is greatly increased when the punish- 
 ments for disobedience or incredulity are made too severe. It is 
 not disparaging Deuteronomy very much to say that it is not equal 
 in prophetic power to the utterances of Isaiah ; but it is instructive 
 to compare the way in which the two books speak of the fear of 
 God. The passage of Isaiah in which this fear is inculcated as 
 a right and noble quality is from the eleventh chapter, a part of 
 which I quoted in treating of Isaiah ; but a few verses may well 
 be quoted again: 
 
 And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a 
 branch out of his roots shall bear fruit : and the spirit of Jehovah shall 
 rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel 
 and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Jehovah; and his 
 delight shall be in the fear of Jehovah .... 
 
 Now take in contrast with this the following passage from the 
 twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, in which hypothetical 
 blessings and hypothetical cursings, correspondent to the good 
 or bad actions of the Israelites of the future, are set down (but 
 the cursings exceed the blessings in length many times over) ; 
 among the blessings the fear of God is not mentioned, but among 
 the cursings it enters in thus (verses 58 and 59) : 
 
 If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written 
 in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, Jehovah 
 thy God ; then Jehovah will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues 
 of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses, 
 and of long continuance. 
 
 How tender is the fear of God in Isaiah, how terrible in Deutero- 
 nomy! No doubt the people of Judah had gone very wrong 
 in the reigns of Manasseh and Amon, and something more of 
 severity might be expected from the writer of Deuteronomy, living 
 after that great apostasy, than from Isaiah, who lived when the 
 worship of foreign deities was comparatively moderate ; but this is 
 not enough to account for the difference between the two passages. 
 There is something external and mechanical in the spirit which 
 the writer of Deuteronomy is inculcating ; it is not the noble fear 
 of wrong-doing, but the less noble fear of the pains which may be 
 expected to result from wrong-doing, which he is making the 
 instrument of his appeal to his own nation. Not that the fear 
 of painful results is in itself ignoble ; but it becomes ignoble, if 
 not subordinated to the fear of wrong-doing in itself ; for it is by
 
 302 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL IN CONFLICT: [CH. 
 
 the fear of wrong-doing, not by the fear of punishment, that the 
 human spirit grows vitally. Now in the whole of the twenty- 
 eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, with its long array of blessings 
 and cursings, no touch of the nobler fear is inculcated. I will 
 not say that it is absent from the whole book of Deuteronomy, for 
 the relations between God and man are assumed to be intimate 
 and loving in any right order of things, and the noble fear of God 
 cannot be absent from such a temper ; the twenty -eighth chapter 
 is specifically faulty in a degree in which the others are not so. 
 But all through the book, the thought of external penalties 
 inflicted by God directly, or commanded by God as a duty to be 
 carried out by his faithful servants upon impious men, is very 
 prominent indeed ; and the fear of such penalties is earthly, not 
 spiritual. There is an element of hardness in Deuteronomy, which 
 is rarely found in the prophetical writings of the Old Testament ; 
 and this was not without injurious effects in after ages. 
 
 In speaking of Deuteronomy as the first instance, and indeed 
 the origin, of the "religion of the book," I do not forget that for 
 some centuries before the reign of king Josiah there had been 
 written narratives, more or less detailed, of the rise and growth 
 of the people of Israel, and of the divine element pervading their 
 history, as the divine element was then understood. But none 
 of these narratives had the insistent force which compels obedience. 
 Up to the reign of Josiah, the religion of Israel, even in its most 
 orthodox form, was fluid and capable of change. We read in 
 Numbers xxvii. 21, a divine command that Joshua, when in need 
 of guidance, should receive it from the high priest, who should 
 consult God by means of the Urim and Thummim (by which 
 name the jewels on the breastplate of the high priest were desig- 
 nated). It is evidently intended that this was to be the method by 
 which the chiefs of the Israelites should always obtain the divine 
 counsel ; and no doubt the practice was an ancient one, and was 
 really resorted to by David. Yet king Josiah, and the high priest 
 Hilkiah, quite ignore it ; and, being in need of guidance, consult 
 the prophetess Huldah. This was a more enlightened procedure 
 than consulting the Urim and Thummim ; but it was a procedure 
 that ignored the ancient practice. If such high authorities as 
 king Josiah and the high priest Hilkiah could to this extent ignore 
 tradition (and it matters little whether the tradition had been 
 actually written down or not), it is clear that the religion of Israel 
 was not, up to the reign of Josiah, an absolutely fixed set of 
 ordinances. But Deuteronomy, with its stern commands, tended
 
 xn] JEREMIAH AND EZEKIEL 303 
 
 to fix ceremonial religion; and authority in the formal sense 
 began to assume a definiteness which it had not before. 
 
 Yet this tendency towards fixity, this formalising of authority 
 among religious Israelites, almost immediately received a serious 
 check, and appeared likely to be cut short almost as soon as it 
 began. The gallant king Josiah, whom (in spite of his persecuting 
 tendencies) we must honour for his piety and courage, and also 
 according to the testimony of Jeremiah for his justice, was slain 
 after a reign of thirty-one years in a hopeless attempt to with- 
 stand Pharaoh-necoh king of Egypt, who was marching by the 
 usual route through the north of Palestine to attack the Assyrians. 
 For the moment, the whole Judaean monarchy fell under the power 
 of Egypt. The power of Egypt was short lived ; but Josiah had 
 gone ; and there was no real recovery for his family or his dynasty. 
 To explain what was happening, it is necessary to glance beyond 
 the bounds of the land of Israel. 
 
 The great kingdom of Assyria, the kingdom whose capital 
 was Nineveh, which had subjugated Syria, northern Israel, and 
 Babylon, and under Sennacherib had desolated Judah, was now 
 tottering to its fall. A terrible, an astonishing event ! How 
 came it about? The most recent discoveries in the cuneiform 
 inscriptions show that Nineveh was destroyed by one of those 
 formidable savage hordes, which have so often issued from central 
 Asia and have destroyed the products of civilisation. The Greeks 
 called them Scythians ; but the inscription of Nabonidus through 
 which we know of this particular horde calls them the Manda. 
 Nabonidus was the last king of Babylon, and from his inscription 
 it appears that the Babylonians rejoiced at the fall of Nineveh, 
 and so far were in sympathy with the Manda ; but whether they 
 actively helped the Manda is uncertain. (Herodotus tells us that 
 Nineveh was taken by the Medes ; but he also informs us of the 
 presence of a great Scythian army in Media and other parts of 
 Asia at that time ; and whatever precisely may have happened, 
 it seems probable that the actual destruction of Nineveh was 
 carried out by the Scythians, i.e. the Manda.) 
 
 It must strike one with awe that the single city on which this 
 barbarian invasion struck with overwhelming force, was the city 
 which, only a few years before, had been supreme over all western 
 Asia; which had subjugated Babylon and Egypt; which had 
 swept away a great part of the ten tribes from northern Palestine, 
 and many of the people of Judah as well ; which had transplanted, 
 other communities also, more than we now know; which in
 
 304 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL IN CONFLICT: [CH. 
 
 splendour of external appearance was surpassed by few cities of 
 the ancient world, as its remains now testify. Such was Nineveh ; 
 yet despite all its splendour and pride, not a single sigh or lament 
 has reached us to show how the inhabitants of it felt its fall. We 
 cannot but contrast with this the poignant laments which, when 
 Jerusalem was destroyed, only a few years later, the exiled 
 inhabitants of that city poured forth, and which we read to-day 
 in our Bibles. Were not the Jews a nobler people than the 
 Assyrians, because they could thus feel and utter their sorrows ? 
 
 But at the moment when Pharaoh-necoh set out, thinking to 
 seize some portion of the falling realm of Assyria, the people of 
 Judah were by no means lamenting. The tone of the prophet 
 Nahum, whose three chapters are entirely devoted to portraying 
 the imminent fall of Nineveh, is the tone of unalloyed triumph. 
 In his eyes, the fall of Nineveh is the peace of Judah. 
 
 " Jehovah hath given commandment concerning thee," he cries out to 
 Nineveh, " that no more of thy name be sown ; out of the house of thy 
 gods will I cut off the graven image and the molten image; I will make 
 thy grave ; for thou art vile. Behold, upon the mountains the feet of 
 him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace ! Keep thy feasts, 
 O Judah, perform thy vows : for the wicked one shall no more pass through 
 thee; he is utterly cut off." Nahum i. 14, 15. 
 
 Alas, there were wicked ones still remaining in the earth, when 
 Nineveh had been cut off; as Judah was very shortly to know. 
 Another prophet, Zephaniah, with broader imagination and more 
 generous mind than Nahum, yet speaks in similar terms about 
 Nineveh : 
 
 " Jehovah," he writes, " will stretch out his hand against the north, and 
 destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like the 
 wilderness. And herds shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts 
 of the nations: both the pelican and the porcupine shall lodge in the 
 chapiters thereof : their voice shall sing in the windows ; desolation shall 
 be in the thresholds : for he hath laid bare the cedar work. This is the joyous 
 city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none 
 else beside me : how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie 
 down in! every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand." 
 Zephaniah ii. 13-15. 
 
 The theme of Zephaniah, however, is the purging of all the 
 nations ; out of calamities he predicts a happy end. Neither in 
 Nahum nor in Zephaniah is there direct mention of the wild hordes 
 that were then devastating western Asia: but it is from the 
 knowledge of their presence and their acts of savage destruction 
 that these prophecies evidently proceed. 
 
 One inference we may draw from the tone of these prophets
 
 xn] JEREMIAH AND EZEKIEL 305 
 
 of Judah. It is a natural question, why Josiah went out, certainly 
 in no prudent fashion, to oppose Pharaoh-necoh in his march 
 against Assyria. Some have thought that he went as the vassal 
 of Assyria, to oppose the enemy of Assyria. But if Josiah had 
 acted from this motive, it is clear that he could have had neither 
 Nahum nor Zephaniah for his counsellor ; and we cannot doubt 
 that Nahum and Zephaniah represented the general sentiments of 
 the people of Judah. Hence we must think that Josiah opposed 
 Pharaoh-necoh because he considered that the Egyptian king was 
 violating the soil of Palestine ; and the twentieth chapter of 
 Deuteronomy, with its exhortations to courage, was very likely to 
 stimulate him towards such resistance. He fell not unworthily; 
 but the premisses on which he had acted were imperfect ; and the 
 kingdom of Judah suffered thereby. 
 
 Even if Josiah had been more prudent, it can hardly be doubted 
 that the kingdom of Judah would have been obliged to submit 
 to being the vassal, in some degree, of either Egypt or Babylon 
 (Nineveh having perished, and the barbarian invasion having 
 come to an end, in what precise manner we know not). But 
 Josiah's defeat made things much worse for his country. Pharaoh- 
 necoh began by insulting and despoiling the land of Judah ; and 
 when Pharaoh-necoh, a year or two later, was defeated by Nebu- 
 chadnezzar in the battle of Carchemish, then that great king 
 claimed all the land of Israel as his own by right of conquest, and 
 it is plain that Judah and Jerusalem suffered afresh, though we 
 have no exact account of the first proceedings of Nebuchadnezzar 
 against the hapless country. Out of all the competitors who 
 strove for the imperial inheritance of Nineveh, Babylon had come 
 out victorious ; and the catastrophe of Jerusalem was drawing near. 
 
 We can hardly be surprised that, after the fall of Josiah, the 
 land of Judah lapsed back into polytheism and idolatry. The 
 religion of which Josiah had been so ardent a champion had not 
 been justified by visible success ; and idols and idol-worship began 
 to revive in Jerusalem, even in the temple itself. Not again was 
 the royal hand held out to purge Jerusalem from such iniquities ; 
 in all matters, whether of religion, or of morality, or of justice, 
 a recklessness had fallen upon the people of Judah. Only a few 
 prophets, and a remnant of faithful men, kept to the guiding 
 faith of the ancient leaders of Israel, and were not dismayed. 
 The prophet Habakkuk wrote before things had arrived at their 
 worst ; he foresees the attack of the Chaldeans ; but he is not 
 dismayed as to the final issue. He utters that memorable saying, 
 
 M. r>. A. 20
 
 306 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL IN CONFLICT: [CH. 
 
 "The just shall live by his faith." With Jeremiah we enter upon 
 the darkest time. Henceforth, for at least a century, pure religion 
 is absolutely unprotected by secular force ; the prophets are the 
 sole upholders of it; and their sole weapon was the word of 
 preaching, the word of God. That pure religion should have 
 issued victorious out of such a conflict is one of the most memor- 
 able facts in human history. 
 
 Three prophets are the representatives to us of this conflict ; 
 Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the great unnamed prophet whose pro- 
 phecies are reckoned in our Bibles as the last twenty-seven 
 chapters of Isaiah. No doubt these three did not stand absolutely 
 alone (for instance, Jeremiah had a follower, more unfortunate 
 even than himself, that Uriah whose brief story is told in the book 
 of Jeremiah, xxvi. 20-23) ; but to us they stand alone ; and if 
 ever three men did a great work, it was they. They were separated 
 in time ; and from this cause, and also from their natural differences 
 of character, the impression which they make upon us is very 
 different. But the underlying thought of all three is the same ; 
 and it is that which Isaiah first expounded as the secret of God's 
 dealings with Israel ; that some out of Israel would shine forth 
 to posterity as the true people of God, and would rule the world 
 from Zion, the sacred city ; while others, deaf and blind to divine 
 truth, would fall into oblivion and disregard. In Isaiah's time 
 the actual exile was not foreseen, except as regards a part of the 
 nation ; hence he emphasises the return of the faithful ones to 
 God, not their return to their own land. But the three later 
 prophets of whom I am now speaking did emphasise in their 
 teaching the return from actual exile ; this was the first form of 
 the ideal to which they looked in the future. 
 
 Yet the primary message of both Jeremiah and Ezekiel to the 
 people of Judah is, not that there shall be a return from captivity, 
 but that there shall be a captivity. It may seem a matter of course, 
 that a return from captivity must be preceded by a captivity ; 
 but it is not as a matter of course, nor as a thing merely to be 
 sorrowed over and lamented, that .Jeremiah and Ezekiel speak 
 of the captivity of the entire people of Judah, which they foresee. 
 It is with the full conviction that the captivity ought to come, 
 that it is best for it to come, that they prophesy that it will come. 
 It is not that they do not lament it ; but they lament far more 
 the un worthiness of the nation which makes it inevitable. 
 
 There is, indeed, one thing that may fairly excite our surprise, 
 when I speak of this unworthiness of the people of Judah. Why
 
 xn] JEREMIAH AND EZEKIEL 307 
 
 does Jeremiah never once refer to that great reform of religion 
 by king Josiah which the second book of Kings describes at such 
 length? Though Jeremiah refers to Josiah himself with praise, 
 as being a just and compassionate ruler, he does not once speak 
 of Josiah's religious reform. In the following passage especially 
 (Jeremiah xxv. 1-7) he might have been expected to refer to it : 
 
 The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah 
 in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah ; the same 
 was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon ; the which Jeremiah 
 the prophet spake unto all the people of Judah, and to all the inhabitants 
 of Jerusalem, saying : From the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon, 
 king of Judah, even unto this day, these three and twenty years, the word 
 of Jehovah hath come unto me, and I have spoken unto you, rising up 
 early and speaking ; but ye have not hearkened. And Jehovah hath sent 
 unto you all his servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them ; 
 but ye have not hearkened, nor inclined your ear to hear ; saying, Return 
 ye now every one from his evil way, and from the evil of your doings, and 
 dwell in the land that Jehovah hath given unto you and to your fathers, 
 from of old and even for evermore: and go not after other gods to serve 
 them, and to worship them, and provoke me not to anger with the work 
 of your hands; and I will do you no hurt. Yet ye have not hearkened 
 unto me. saith Jehovah ; that ye might provoke me to anger with the work 
 of your hands to your own hurt. 
 
 It will be observed that out of the twenty-three years during 
 which Jeremiah represents himself in the above passage to have 
 been preaching to the people of Judah that they ought to repent 
 of their idolatry and polytheism, no fewer than thirteen are the 
 precise period during which (according to the second book of 
 Kings) the religious reform instituted by Josiah was in force ; 
 during which, we might suppose, idolatry and polytheism had 
 ceased in Judah. Why does Jeremiah make no mention of this 
 remarkable reform? I think we must answer that the reform 
 was much less deep than is generally supposed; and it failed, 
 because Josiah and his advisers had not adequately thought out 
 the needs of those whom they were endeavouring to correct and 
 amend. If any inhabitant of the country of Judah, or of Palestine 
 (or it may be added of any country where religion was operative) 
 desired in those days to obtain favour or counsel from the deity 
 whom he worshipped, he offered a sacrifice to that deity. When 
 Josiah had prohibited all sacrifices, except those offered in the 
 temple at Jerusalem, throughout the realm which he ruled, what 
 were the inhabitants of the country parts to do, when they wished 
 to obtain the divine favour and counsel ? To go up to Jerusalem 
 and offer sacrifice there, was too serious a burden for them; and- 
 
 202
 
 308 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL IN CONFLICT: [OH. 
 
 they were not spiritual enough to do what Jeremiah and other 
 spiritually-minded prophets would have counselled, namely to 
 pray to God in spiritual trust, knowing that God does not need 
 or require material sacrifices. Their whole conceptions were 
 material; they prayed for material benefits; to obtain those 
 material benefits, they offered material sacrifices ; and they might 
 have argued (and very likely did argue), " If material sacrifices are 
 of no benefit to those who offer them, why are material sacrifices 
 offered up in the temple at Jerusalem ? " Hence, though Josiah 
 prohibited sacrificial worship in the country parts of his realm, 
 there was always a tendency for it to revive again ; and when it 
 revived, the deity worshipped was very likely not Jehovah, and 
 was almost certain not to be Jehovah in that sublime sense in 
 which the prophets understood the nature and being of that 
 Eternal One from whom all power and strength and life sprang 
 into birth. 
 
 That, I think, is the consideration which explains what else 
 must so much surprise us, the total ignoring by Jeremiah of 
 Josiah's great religious reform. In the years after the captivity, 
 a means of reconciliation was found between the religious needs 
 of individuals throughout the country and the claim of Jerusalem 
 to be single and unique as a place of sacrificial worship ; this was 
 effected by the institution of synagogues, or places where worship 
 of prayer and praise was offered without sacrifices. But in the 
 reign of Josiah, the people were not capable of adopting this 
 remedy. No doubt all through the country there were individuals 
 who could understand and sympathise with the lofty ideal which 
 Jeremiah held and proclaimed, as for instance in such a passage 
 as the following : 
 
 Thus saith Jehovah, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither 
 let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his 
 riches : but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth, and 
 knoweth me, that I am Jehovah which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, 
 and righteousness, in the earth : for in these things I delight, saith Jehovah. 
 Jeremiah ix. 23, 24. 
 
 But they were few who held these lofty principles; and 
 Jeremiah was no doubt right in believing that the people of Judah 
 could not be purified without some great overthrow which would 
 cause searchings of heart among them. 
 
 From the time that Nebuchadne/zar appeared on the scene 
 Jeremiah began to predict the captivity of the whole nation and 
 their exile in Babylon. He does this in the twenty-fifth chapter
 
 xn] JEREMIAH AND EZEKIEL 309 
 
 from which I have already quoted, and again in the thirty-sixth 
 chapter (verse 29) : this latter is the chapter in which it is related 
 how king Jehoiakim burned the roll on which Jeremiah had 
 written his threatenings. It would have fared ill with the prophet 
 on that occasion, if Jehoiakim had been able to seize him; but 
 he was successfully concealed. The year in which these two 
 chapters were written was the year in which Nebuchadnezzar 
 first appears as the overlord of Judah and Israel. Three years 
 later Jehoiakim rebelled; and though Nebuchadnezzar was too 
 busy to repress the rebellion in person, he incited the rival races 
 against the kingdom of Judah, among them the Moabites and 
 Ammonites, who were only too glad to pay off their old scores 
 in this way. The people of Judah began to feel a retaliation 
 which, it must be confessed, was not altogether undeserved. 
 
 Jehoiakim died before Jerusalem suffered capture ; but this was 
 not long delayed. His son Jehoiachin had only been three months 
 king when Nebuchadnezzar appeared with a force too strong to 
 be resisted ; and Jehoiachin surrendered to him. Then ensued the 
 first stage of the captivity of Judah; Jehoiachin himself, and 
 thousands of the population, were carried away to Babylon. 
 
 It was the beginning of the end. Zedekiah, the youngest son 
 of Josiah (and uncle of Jehoiachin) was next made king of Judah 
 by Nebuchadnezzar ; and ruled over what remained of the people. 
 But he also rebelled, as Jehoiakim had done, for what cause we 
 know not ; and Nebuchadnezzar came in person with his Chaldean 
 army, and besieged the city in form, building forts and mounds 
 against it; for Jerusalem was by nature strong, and not easily 
 to be taken. 
 
 Never was there a siege in all history in which the passions 
 and emotions of men had so wide a range ; not even the siege of 
 Athens, when the Peloponnesian army and fleet lay round it. 
 Looking at the matter superficially, the case was simply that 
 of a small disordered community, inhabiting a very strong 
 fortified city, besieged by the army of the mightiest power then 
 existing in the world, and therefore certain to fall in the end by 
 famine, if not by assault. There was no great military genius 
 among the defenders; Zedekiah the king was an amiable but 
 weak prince, governed by his nobles. 
 
 But there were those in the city whose thoughts and feelings 
 redeemed these commonplace elements of the situation, and 
 elevated the whole to a drama of the highest interest ; those whose 
 passionate affection was given to the city of Jerusalem and to
 
 310 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL IN CONFLICT: [CH. 
 
 the people of Israel ; those who, in their sorrow for the miseries 
 of the present, had not forgotten the lofty ideal set before their 
 nation, and the divine promises on which that ideal rested as on 
 a sure foundation. Of these Jeremiah was the chief. He had no 
 delusion as to the ability of his countrymen to resist the arms of 
 Nebuchadnezzar; he urged them to surrender; in particular, 
 he urged Zedekiah to surrender. If Zedekiah had been left to 
 himself, he might have accepted the advice ; but his nobles would 
 not permit him to do so ; and Jeremiah suffered greatly at their 
 hands. Yet despair was very far from Jeremiah's heart. In 
 order to show his good hope for the future of his people, he publicly 
 bought the field which his cousin offered him for sale in his native 
 village of Anathoth, although neither he nor his cousin were able 
 to reach Anathoth, by reason of the besieging army; and he 
 pointed the meaning of his act by the following prophecy : 
 
 Thus saith Jehovah: Like as I have brought all this great evil upon 
 this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised 
 them. And fields shall be bought in this land, whereof ye say, It is desolate, 
 without man or beast ; it is given into the hand of the Chaldeans. Men 
 shall buy fields for money, and subscribe the deeds, and seal them, and 
 call witnesses, in the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, 
 and in the cities of Judah, and in the cities of the hill country, and in the 
 cities of the lowland, and in the cities of the South : for I will cause their 
 captivity to return, saith Jehovah. Jeremiah xxxii. 42-44. 
 
 And again with yet tenderer emotion he writes : 
 
 Thus saith Jehovah Sabaoth, the God of Israel : Yet again shall they 
 use this speech in the land of Judah and in the cities thereof, when I shall 
 bring again their captivity: Jehovah bless thee, O habitation of justice, 
 O mountain of holiness. And Judah and all the cities thereof shall dwell 
 therein together; the husbandmen, and they that go about with flocks. 
 For I have satiated the weary soul, and every sorrowful soul have I re- 
 plenished. Upon this I awaked, and beheld ; and my sleep was sweet unto 
 me. Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will sow the house 
 of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the seed 
 of beast. And it shall come to pass, that like as I have watched over them 
 to pluck up and to break down, and to overthrow and to destroy, and to 
 afflict; so will I watch over them to build and to plant, saith Jehovah. 
 Ibid. xxxi. 23-28. 
 
 The reader will observe in this passage the sweet and delicate 
 incoherence so characteristic of the Hebrew mind ; the subject 
 is too great for pure logic. Yet it is a most reasonable purpose, 
 a most reasonable plan, that Jeremiah is setting before the eyes 
 of his fellow-countrymen ; there is nothing wild or arbitrary about 
 it. They are to yield to the storm ; they will be overthrown, 
 but they may look with hope to their revival. A difficult counsel,
 
 xn] JEREMIAH AND EZEKIEL 311 
 
 perhaps; but a just and wise counsel, fruitful in the hearts of 
 some of those whom Jeremiah addressed; and it produced the 
 fruits which Jeremiah predicted. 
 
 That double-edged prophecy, invective against his nation in 
 the present, but hope for their future, of which Jeremiah was the 
 spokesman in Jerusalem, was being proclaimed at the same time 
 by his fellow-prophet Ezekiel in Babylonia, on the banks of the 
 river Chebar. Ezekiel, like Jeremiah, was a priest ; he had been 
 taken captive in the first captivity, when Jehoiachin had surren- 
 dered to Nebuchadnezzar. Hence he prophesied not to the 
 people of Jerusalem, but to the Jewish exiles. These exiles were 
 reckoned by the thousand, perhaps by the ten thousand. A 
 dejected, despairing remnant; hardly able to raise their hearts 
 to any hope ; but not unaware of the past glories of their state, 
 and not now too proud to listen to the prophetic word. Yet 
 when Ezekiel comes to them, it is as to an obdurate people that 
 he speaks; only it is evident that, though the exiles may be 
 obdurate, the people of Jerusalem are regarded as still more 
 obdurate ; always, until the final capture and destruction of 
 Jerusalem, it is of the people of Jerusalem that he is mainly 
 thinking. When Jerusalem is captured and destroyed, his tone 
 changes to impassioned hopefulness. The two phases of his 
 mind, the severity and the hopefulness, are in the main successive ; 
 the severity comes first, the hopefulness afterwards ; and the 
 dividing line is the fall of Jerusalem. A few passages may be 
 quoted in illustration of this. Here is a part of the divine message 
 as he first received it : 
 
 Son of man, go, get thee unto the house of Israel, and speak with my 
 words unto them. For thou art not sent unto a people of a strange speech 
 and of an hard language, but to the house of Israel ; not to many peoples 
 of a strange speech and of an hard language, whose words thou canst not 
 understand. Surely, if I sent thee to them, they would hearken unto thee. 
 But the house of Israel will not hearken unto thee ; for they will not hearken 
 unto me : for all the house of Israel are of an hard forehead and of a stiff 
 heart. Behold. I have made thy face hard against their faces, and thy 
 forehead hard against their foreheads. As an adamant harder than flint 
 have I made thy forehead : fear them not, neither be dismayed at their 
 looks, though they be a rebellious house. Ezekiel iii. 49. 
 
 These words are like a strong phalanx of warriors entering the 
 battlefield, and determined to carry the day. When, in pursuance 
 of this divine command, Ezekiel came in presence of the exiles 
 at Telabib, he was so overcome that for seven days he could not 
 speak: and even then he expressed himself at first by symbol,
 
 312 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL IN CONFLICT: [OH. 
 
 not by word. But it gradually becomes apparent both by symbol 
 and by word (for he does at last use abundance of words) that 
 the real object of his denunciation is Jerusalem itself. We may 
 be sure that the exiles at Telabib entertained the hope that 
 Jerusalem would be saved, and that they would return thither. 
 It is Ezekiel's task to tell them that that hope is a vain one. In 
 the vehemence of his denunciation of idol- worship, and of Jerusalem 
 as guilty of idol-worship, he goes beyond every previous prophet. 
 He does not altogether spare the exiles (see especially the beginning 
 of chapter xiv), but as against the people of Jerusalem he is 
 altogether on the side of the exiles (see chapter xi. 1420). The 
 first twenty-four chapters of Ezekiel are almost entirely a denuncia- 
 tion of his own city and nation; then follow eight chapters of 
 denunciation of other nations : then in the thirty-third chapter 
 comes the long expected news : "The city is smitten." Speedily 
 does the prophet's tone change. Though he begins by telling 
 the people of Israel that their whole land must be made desolate, 
 and that it is the selfish "shepherds," or in other words the 
 evil rulers, who have caused this, he goes on to predict that God 
 himself will redeem and save his people. 
 
 For thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Behold, I myself, even I, will 
 search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh out 
 his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered abroad, 
 so will I seek out my sheep ; and I will deliver them out of all places whither 
 they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. And I will bring 
 them out from the peoples, and gather them from the countries, and will 
 bring them into their own land ; and I will feed them upon the mountains 
 of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited places of the country. 
 Ezekiel xxxiv. 11-13. 
 
 Very beautiful and touching (in spite of the h'erce denunciation 
 of Edoin in the thirty-fifth chapter) are the chapters which follow. 
 The famous vision of the dry bones which spring to life again at 
 God's word occurs at the beginning of the thirty-seventh chapter ; 
 and in the middle of that chapter Ezekiel prophesies (what, alas, 
 was not fulfilled) that Ephraim and Judah should be reconciled ; 
 and he ends as follows, speaking in God's name : 
 
 So shall they be my people, and I will be their God. And my servant 
 David shall bo king over them; and they shall all have one shepherd: 
 they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do 
 them. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my 
 servant, wherein your fathers dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, they, 
 and their children, and their children's children, for ever: and David my 
 servant shall be their prince for ever. Moreover 1 will make a covenant 
 of peace with them : it shall be an everlasting covenant with them : and
 
 xn] JEREMIAH AND EZEKIEL 313 
 
 I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the 
 midst of them for evermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them ; and 
 I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And the nations shall 
 know that I am Jehovah that sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall 
 be in the midst of them for evermore. Ibid, xxxvii. 23-28. 
 
 Prom this most tender, consolatory, and sublime vision, in 
 which all the prophecies of Ezekiel culminate, it is necessary to 
 return to the sad and tragic situation in which the people of Judah 
 and Israel actually stood at the moment when this prophecy 
 was uttered. Jerusalem had fallen ; Judah was experiencing the 
 lot which, more than 130 years before, had overtaken the ten 
 tribes. I said that there never was a siege in all history, in which 
 the passions and emotions of men had so wide a range as in this 
 siege of Jerusalem, which ended with its capture by Nebuchad- 
 nezzar ; and now I must refer to an emotion of which I have hither- 
 to given no example, namely, pure unmingled grief. Jeremiah, 
 and even Ezekiel, no doubt felt grief at the fall of Jerusalem, but 
 it was a grief so mixed with indignation at the sins of the people 
 of Judah, that it hardly produces on us the impression of grief. 
 But there were evidently pure souls in Jerusalem, not prophets, 
 aware of the sins of the nation, but far more aware of the misery of 
 the nation, and impelled by their own profound feeling to express 
 this misery. Such a one was the author of the book of Lamenta- 
 tions ; a book attributed in our Bibles to Jeremiah, but certainly 
 not his, as we may see from chapter iv, verse 20 of the book ; 
 
 "The breath of our nostrils," so runs the passage, "the anointed of 
 Jehovah, was taken in their pits, of whom we said, Under his shadow we 
 shall live among the nations." 
 
 These words plainly refer to the capture of Zedekiah by the 
 Chaldean army in the plains of Jericho, after which he was blinded 
 and taken prisoner to Babylon (2 Kings xxv. 4-7 ; Jeremiah xxxix. 
 4-7, lii. 711). Certainly Jeremiah entertained a very different 
 expectation concerning Zedekiah from that which this passage 
 expresses; and to say that Zedekiah was "the breath of our 
 nostrils " was very far from his mind. The author of the Lamenta- 
 tions is no prophet ; but he expresses a natural feeling. A few 
 verses may be quoted from this sad elegy : 
 
 How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people ! Lamentations i . 1 . 
 
 Jerusalem remembereth in the days of her affliction and of her miseries 
 all her pleasant things that were from the days of old. Ibid. i. 7. 
 
 Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there 
 be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith 
 Jehovah hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger. Ibid. i. 12.
 
 314 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL IN CONFLICT: [CH. 
 
 The youth and the old man lie on the ground in the streets ; my virgins 
 and my young men are fallen by the sword. Lamentations ii. 21. 
 
 Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the heaven ; they chased 
 us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us in the wilderness. Ibid iv. 19. 
 
 They ravished the women in Zion, the maidens in the cities of Judah. 
 Princes were hanged up by their hand ; the faces of elders were not 
 honoured. Ibid. v. 11, 12. 
 
 Turn thou unto us, Jehovah, and we shall be turned ; renew our days 
 as of old. But thou hast utterly rejected us, thou art very wroth against 
 us. Ibid. v. 21, 22. 
 
 It softens the pang which a sympathetic mind will feel in 
 reading laments so piercing, to reflect that if these ancient Jews 
 had not sorrowed over the ruin of their country, they would 
 never have had the energy to effect the restoration of their fallen 
 city. Their intense sorrow was one element of their power. 
 
 I have now arrived at the lowest point in the temporal fortunes 
 of Israel, during the whole compass of the centuries which inter- 
 vened between the Exodus and the Christian era. Out of that 
 depth of humiliation the exiled people arose slowly and gradually ; 
 but before they could even begin to arise, this nadir of their 
 fortunes had to last nearly fifty years. That which was at the 
 heart of their essential unity, and therefore of their restoration, 
 was the doctrine of one God, by the side of whom no other being 
 was to be placed ; and concurrently with this, the belief that the 
 history of Israel was the great evidence of the power and action 
 of God. This belief was the noblest entertained at that time by 
 any community of men existent on earth ; yet the miraculous 
 form in which it was cast was an error, and had in it the seed of 
 harm. But this miraculous form was not adopted in ill faith ; nor 
 could it easily have been dispensed with, men being what they are. 
 
 The prophet Ezekiel stood at that precise turning-point of 
 Israelite history, when the true conversion of the people, to the 
 beliefs just enunciated, began. Ezekiel was not the greatest of 
 the prophets ; but he was the most trenchant in his denunciation 
 of the idolatry prevalent among the Israelites of his day. There 
 is a tone of victory in him, which there is not in Jeremiah ; Jere- 
 miah, we feel all through, is losing his battle; Ezekiel is winning 
 his. Yet it does not follow that Ezekiel is the superior of the two. 
 For Jeremiah had, of the two, the more difficult task ; the king 
 and nobles of Judah in Jerusalem, fighting for temporal victory, 
 were sure to be less amenable to religious exhortations than the 
 exiles by the river Chebar. Then again the threatenings of Ezekiel 
 are more earthly than those of Jeremiah, taking a fair estimate as
 
 in] JEREMIAH AND EZEKIEL 315 
 
 to the genuineness of these latter ; for there is considerable room for 
 doubting the genuineness (at any rate in their present form) of the 
 prophecies of Jeremiah against the nations, from the forty-sixth 
 chapter onwards. But we have no reason for doubting the genuine- 
 ness of the ninth chapter of Ezekiel ; and the judgments of God 
 are there depicted as consisting in direct acts of slaughter by the 
 divine command, in a manner rare in the prophets. 
 
 Yet Ezekiel was not merely a great, but a tender-hearted 
 prophet ; his twenty-fourth chapter, in which he relates the death 
 of his wife, must ever be felt as most pathetic ; and if he threatens 
 the "house of Israel," it is not from any want of love towards the 
 offenders. 
 
 Neither Jeremiah nor Ezekiel ever forgets that God is the God 
 of the whole world. "Do not I fill heaven and earth ? " Jeremiah 
 represents Jehovah as saying; and to both prophets, God's 
 judgments are extended over all the nations. And these judgments, 
 in Jeremiah's mind, are not for wrath alone ; he has a regard 
 for the heathen, as is plain from the letter which he sent to the 
 Jewish exiles in Babylon: "Seek the peace," he writes to them, 
 "of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captive, 
 and pray unto Jehovah for it ; for in the peace thereof ye shall 
 have peace." (Jeremiah xxix. 7.) This is, of course, spoken in 
 the name of Jehovah : the words "I have caused you to be carried 
 away " are not intended to be the words of Jeremiah himself. 
 
 Though the duty of man towards God is the subject most 
 prominent in both Jeremiah and Ezekiel, it must not be thought 
 that either prophet is forgetful of the duties of man towards man ; 
 but it is not necessary that I should exemplify this point more 
 than I have done in what has been written above. 
 
 Neither how Jeremiah died, nor how Ezekiel died, is told us ; 
 but the last tidings that we have of Jeremiah breathe of tragedy, 
 almost as much as his previous career ; the melancholy history 
 is contained in six chapters, beginning with the fortieth, of the 
 book of Jeremiah. Yet he had faithful friends ; to one of these, 
 Baruch, we probably owe the preservation of his prophecies, which 
 have reached us in much disorder, yet not altogether unfaithfully. 
 
 It is natural to think that Ezekiel died in honour; his later 
 years were spent in depicting the Jerusalem of the future ; we 
 may read his description in the last nine chapters of his book. 
 
 Meanwhile Israel and Judah were at their lowest level ; neither 
 honour nor esteem was theirs ; hardly even a name ; deep darkness 
 was over them. Yet Judah, at any rate, waited for the dawn.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE CULMINATION OF PROPHECY: THE 
 PROPHET OF THE EXILE 
 
 IT was the glimmer o dawn. In strange lands had Israel 
 slept the sleep of sorrow; the awakening came with words 
 of consolation : 
 
 Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye to the 
 heart of Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, 
 that her iniquity is pardoned : that she hath received of Jehovah's hand 
 double for all her sins. The book of Isaiah xl. 1, 2. 
 
 Who spoke these words; or who wrote them ? They are 
 to be found in our Bibles at the beginning of the fortieth chapter 
 of the book of Isaiah ; but it was not Isaiah who wrote them, 
 For a century and a half had the voice of Isaiah been silent 
 in death, when these words were first spoken or written ; they 
 stand at the beginning of a long prophecy occupying the latter 
 part of the book over which " Isaiah " is affixed as the title, 
 twenty-seven chapters altogether ; the theme of these chapters 
 ah 1 through is the return of Judah, of Israel, from the Babylonian 
 captivity. I know no adequate reason against our accepting 
 the primary obvious view which their contents suggest, that 
 the whole series was written by 1 one person, a contemporary 
 of the events which are in succession described ; who witnessed 
 the rise of Cyrus, and hailed him as the future conqueror of 
 Babylon even before it actually submitted to him ; who was 
 aware (whether an actual eyewitness or not) of the transportation 
 of the idols of Babylon by the command of Cyrus ; who alternately 
 rebuked his fellow-countrymen for their faintheartedness and 
 for the sins to which they were prone and then again set before 
 them the high dignity to which God was calling them ; who 
 
 1 I must rely on the sufficiency and clearness of the exposition which follows 
 for the support of my statement, that these twenty-seven chapters were the work 
 of a Bingle prophet.
 
 CH. xm] THE PROPHET OF THE EXILE 317 
 
 felt the divinity which lies in noble suffering, and said that 
 the chief of all sufferers would be raised by God from death to 
 be the Saviour of mankind ; who, when he arrived at the actual 
 sight of the ruined city and temple of Jerusalem, was struck 
 with sorrow and dismay, but not with despair ; who bade his 
 hearers remember that the heaven was the throne of God and 
 the earth his footstool, and that God would assuredly show 
 his favour to the men of contrite and humble spirit, and that 
 for Jerusalem a more glorious destiny than she had yet known 
 was reserved in the future. 
 
 The theme of this great prophet is, it will be seen, continuous, 
 and though dealing with different sides of the same subject- 
 matter, not at all complex ; the distinctive feature of his mind 
 is that all the things which he loves or reverences become to 
 him of immeasurable value, and he delights in describing them 
 and showing forth the adornments of their infinite beauty. 
 God, Israel, the holy souls in Israel, are the centres around which 
 his thought moves ; these shine out of the background of darkness 
 and humiliation in which his hearers, the tribes of Israel, were 
 sunk ; and Jerusalem is the place out of which the sublime 
 future is imagined as unfolding itself ; thither are all nations 
 to go for worship, and in love and affection towards the children 
 of Zion. False and superstitious and cruel men, on the other 
 hand, shall abide in their misery, a spectacle of warning to all 
 mankind. I confess I think we must regret the verse with which 
 the prophecy terminates, which is the first hint in the Bible 
 of that terrible conception, hell ; the verse contains a truth, 
 but we have to restore to it that light of consolation which for 
 the moment was hidden from the prophet's eyes. In all else 
 he speaks most wisely and comfortingly. 
 
 Let me now quote more in full some passages of this prophecy, 
 so as to bring out the details of it more clearly. 
 
 We perceive at the beginning that the return of Israel from 
 Babylon is the thought which excites the prophet to speak ; 
 the return under the guidance of God : " Prepare ye in the 
 wilderness the way of Jehovah, make straight in the desert 
 a high way for our God." Not that the prophet supposes that 
 God literally traverses the desert ; he knows the infinity of God 
 too well for this ; but it is the people of God who are to traverse 
 the desert, and they bear God in their hearts. It is good tidings 
 to Jerusalem and to the cities of Judah which he brings ; evidently 
 he means that they, now desolate, shall be inhabited again
 
 318 THE CULMINATION OF PROPHECY: [OH. 
 
 this meaning, implied in the fortieth chapter, is distinctly 
 expressed at the end of the forty-fourth : 
 
 Thus saith Jehovah, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from 
 the womb ; I am Jehovah, that maketh all things. . .that saith of 
 Jerusalem, She shall be inhabited ; and of the cities of Judah, They shall 
 be built, and I will raise up the waste places thereof : that saith to the 
 deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers : that saith of Cyrus, He is 
 my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure : even saying of Jerusalem, 
 She shall be built ; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. 
 
 Cyrus, the famous king of Persia, to whom Babylon surrendered 
 in the year 538 B.C., is indicated here as the restorer of the exiled 
 people of Judah ; he is spoken of again by name at the beginning 
 of the forty-fifth chapter. He had been referred to previously, 
 though not named, in the forty-first chapter, verse 2 : 
 
 Who hath raised up one from the east, whom he calleth in righteous- 
 ness to his foot ? he giveth nations before him, and maketh him rule 
 over kings ; he giveth them as the dust to his sword, as the driven stubble 
 to his bow. 
 
 It is Cyrus who is raised for the work, but who has raised 
 him ? The answer is given two verses later : 
 
 I Jehovah, the first, and with the last ; I am he. 
 
 Cyrus, in the eyes of the prophet, is God's agent for the 
 restoration of Israel, and for the rebuilding of the city and temple 
 of Jerusalem. It is probable that the Jewish leaders had already 
 entered into communication with Cyrus, and had obtained 
 from him promises of goodwill, even before Babylon had sur- 
 rendered to him ; and the assured tone in which the prophet 
 speaks would seem to show that he had some knowledge of this. 
 But it is no just inference from the prophet's words that Cyrus 
 had a peculiar interest in the Jews more than in any other of 
 the nations that had been oppressed by Babylon ; the prophet 
 no doubt does not forbid our thinking this ; but he does not 
 compel us to think it. Whether Cyrus had this peculiar interest 
 in the Jews, is a question that will concern us when the book 
 of Ezra comes under discussion ; but at present it will be sufficient 
 to quote the two other passages, besides those already quoted, 
 in which the prophet refers to Cyrus. The first is chapter xlv. 
 1-4 : 
 
 Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I 
 havo holden, to subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of 
 kings ; to open the doors before him, and the gates shall not be shut ; 
 I will go before thee, and make the rugged places plain: I will break 
 in pieces the doors of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron : and I
 
 xm] THE PROPHET OF THE EXILE 319 
 
 will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, 
 that thou mayest know that I am Jehovah, which call thee by thy name, 
 even the God of Israel. For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel my 
 chosen, I have called thee by thy name : I have surnamed thee, though 
 thou hast not known me. 
 
 The other passage is from the forty-sixth chapter, verses 8-13 : 
 Jehovah is addressing Israel : 
 
 Remember this, and show yourselves men ; bring it again to mind, 
 
 ye transgressors. Remember the former things of old : for I am God, 
 and there is none else ; I am God, and there is none like me ; declaring 
 the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not 
 yet done ; saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure : 
 calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man of my counsel from a far 
 country ; yea, I have spoken. I will also bring it to pass ; I have purposed, 
 
 1 will also do it. Hearken unto me, ye stouthearted, that are far from 
 righteousness : I bring near my righteousness, it shall not be far off, 
 and my salvation shall not tarry ; and I will place salvation in Zion for 
 Israel my glory. 
 
 The " ravenous bird " is Cyrus ; a very important person 
 to the prophet of the exile ; but it is on account of Israel that 
 the prophet takes an interest in him. Cyrus is not mentioned 
 again after the passage just quoted, and after two more chapters 
 Babylon, though once or twice referred to, is not named ; the 
 forty-eighth chapter makes it apparent that the captive Israelites 
 are now free to go out of Babylon : 
 
 " Go ye forth of Babylon," the prophet cries (verse 20), " flee ye from the 
 Chaldeans ; with a voice of singing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to 
 the end of the earth : say ye, Jehovah hath redeemed his servant Jacob." 
 
 After this utterance it is plain that the difficulties, whatever 
 they may be, in the way of the return from the captivity, do 
 not lie in Babylonian oppression ; and the natural inference 
 also is that Cyrus has done his work after having put an end 
 to the Babylonian oppression, since he is not afterwards mentioned. 
 
 But difficulties there are evidently still, and it is clear that in 
 the judgment of the prophet these lie mainly in the character 
 of the people whom he is addressing, whatever we prefer to call 
 them, Israelites or Jews; it may be that we should keep the 
 more general title, Israelites, a little longer ; it is not till the return 
 to Jerusalem and Judsea had begun that the more restricted 
 title, Jews, becomes the more natural one. 
 
 The Israelites are of course the main interest of the prophet ; 
 not Cyrus, however much he may exalt him. And it is of the 
 highest historical importance to mark the relations between our 
 prophet and Israel ; for he reveals to us the true soul of Israel,
 
 320 THE CULMINATION OF PROPHECY: [CH. 
 
 in its highest form ; and he shows us how Israel was at that 
 moment divided into a nobler portion and a baser ; the nobler 
 portion being those who embraced their God-given mission 
 of founding a State at Jerusalem, which should be a light to the 
 world ; the baser portion being those who only cared for present 
 comfort, many of whom were sinking into the idolatries of the 
 heathen. 
 
 When the prophet begins his prophecy, his hopeful summons 
 to his people is scarcely mingled with any reproof ; take for 
 instance the following passage : 
 
 But thou, Israel, my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed 
 of Abraham my friend : thou whom I have taken hold of from the ends 
 of the earth, and called thee from the corners thereof, and said unto thee, 
 Thou art my servant, I have chosen thee and not cast thee away ; fear 
 thou not, for I am with thee ; be not dismayed, for I am thy God : I 
 will strengthen thee ; yea, I will help thee ; yea, I will uphold thee with 
 the right hand of my righteousness. Behold, all they that are incensed 
 against thee shall be ashamed and confounded: they that strive with 
 thee shall be as nothing, and shall perish. The book of Isaiah xli. 8-11. 
 
 And again : 
 
 I Jehovah have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine 
 hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, 
 for a light of the Gentiles ; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners 
 from the dungeon, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house. 
 Ibid. xlii. G, 7. 
 
 This enthusiastic acceptance of Israel as the beloved servant 
 of God is shortly interrupted by a gentle reproof : 
 
 " Who is blind," cries the divine voice, "but my servant ? or deaf, as 
 the messenger that I send ? who is blind as he that is at peace with me, 
 and blind as Jehovah's servant ? Thou seest many things, but thou 
 observest not ; his ears are open, but he heareth not. It pleased Jehovah, 
 for his righteousness' sake, to make the teaching great and glorious. 
 But this is a people robbed and spoiled ; they are all of them snared in 
 holes, and they are liid in prison-houses." Ibid. xlii. 19-22. 
 
 Poor Israel ! doubtless with too much truth was it said that 
 they were " a people robbed and spoiled " ; many, perhaps 
 most of them, could not lift their souls to the apprehension 
 of the message of hope. But the prophet resumes his encourage- 
 ment : 
 
 But now suith Jehovah that created thee, O Jacob, and he that 
 formed thee, O Jsrael : Fear not, for I have redeemed thee ; I have 
 called thee by thy name, thou art mine. When thou passest through 
 the waters, I will be with thee ; and through the rivers, they shall not 
 overflow thee : when thou wulkest through the fire, thou shalt not be 
 burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. ... Since thou hast
 
 xin] THE PROPHET OF THE EXILE 321 
 
 been precious in my sight, and honourable, and I have loved thee ; there- 
 fore will I give men for thee, and peoples for thy life. Fear not; for I 
 am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from 
 the west ; I will say to the north, Give up ; and to the south, Keep not 
 back ; bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the end of the 
 earth .... Bring forth the blind people that have eyes, and the deaf that 
 have ears. Ibid, xliii. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8. 
 
 Satire on the graven images of Babylon presently follows ; 
 on the gods that are the handiwork of man ; and, shortly after, 
 satire on Babylon herself, the fallen city : 
 
 Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon ; sit 
 on the ground without a throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans ; for thou 
 shalt no more be called tender and delicate. . . .1 was wroth with my 
 people, I profaned mine inheritance, and gave them into thine hand : thou 
 didst show them no mercy ; upon the aged hast thou very heavily laid 
 thy yoke. Ibid, xlvii. 1, 6. 
 
 In the last-quoted passage tenderness is still almost the sole 
 feeling of the prophet towards Israel, the Israel whom he saw 
 (whether in Babylonia or in the neighbouring countries) ; he 
 knows that Israel has sinned in the past, but past sins have 
 been wiped out, and he makes no reproach concerning them. 
 But in the next chapter, the forty-eighth, the prophet's tone 
 changes, and he speaks with severity, though at last with some 
 relenting, against his own people : 
 
 Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of 
 Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah ; which swear by 
 the name of Jehovah, and make mention of the God of Israel^ but not 
 in truth, nor in righteousness. . . .Because I knew that thou art obstinate, 
 and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass ; therefore I have 
 declared it to thee from of old ; before it came to pass I showed it thee : 
 lest thou shouldest say, Mine idol hath done them, and my graven image, 
 and my molten image, hath commanded them.... Yea, thou heardest 
 not ; yea, thou knewest not ; yea, from of old thine ear was not opened : 
 for I knew that thou didst deal very treacherously, and wast called a 
 transgressor from the womb. For my name's sake will I defer mine anger, 
 and for my praise will I refrain for thee, that I cut thee not off . . . .Oh 
 that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments ! then had thy peace 
 been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea : thy seed 
 also had been as the sand, and the offspring of thy bowels like the grains 
 thereof : his name should not be cut off nor destroyed from before me. 
 Ibid, xlviii. 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 18, 19. 
 
 What caused this stern rebuke? If we bear in mind the intense 
 zeal of the prophet for the return of the Israelites to the land 
 of their forefathers, we cannot but think that some lassitude 
 had been exhibited in this direction ; many of the exiles had 
 settled in Babylonia, and did not wish to go back to their old 
 M. D. A. 21
 
 322 THE CULMINATION OF PROPHECY: [OH. 
 
 homes ; and the words of the passage imply that idolatry still 
 existed among them. The liberty given them to return to the 
 land of Palestine, to Judsea and Jerusalem, appeared to them 
 a terrible labour and trial, and by no means liberty. Against 
 this coldness of heart, against this lassitude, against this not 
 infrequent idolatry, the prophet was aiming the sharpest arrows 
 out of his quiver. He was at once forbidding and commanding ; 
 he was forbidding idolatry ; he was commanding the return 
 to Jerusalem ; and all in the name of God. If this be a true 
 account of him, he was something more than a prophet ; he 
 was an energetic inciter to present action. That this is a true 
 account of him, I think we shall be convinced if we read attentively 
 the passage last quoted, and also that which immediately succeeds 
 it, which I will now quote (I quoted part of it a few pages 
 back, but I must quote it again in this new connexion) : 
 
 Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans ; with a voice of 
 singing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth : say 
 ye, Jehovah hath redeemed his servant Jacob. And they thirsted not 
 when he led them through the deserts : he caused the waters to flow 
 out of the rock for them : he clave the rock also, and the waters gushed 
 out. There is no peace, saith Jehovah, unto the wicked. The book of 
 Isaiah xlviii. 20-22. 
 
 There is in that passage the apparent, and to a certain extent 
 real, incoherence, which is so common in the Bible ; there is, 
 however, an inward connexion of thought, when we perceive 
 what the prophet's drift is. The exhortation to depart from 
 Babylon is obvious in its meaning, but the verse which follows, 
 "And they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts," 
 etc. is no direct exhortation, and appears to refer to incidents 
 of a past time. It does refer to incidents of a past time, but it 
 has a direct bearing on the time then present ; for what the 
 prophet means to say is that just as God led the Israelites through 
 the wilderness of Sinai on the way to Canaan, and caused water 
 to flow out of the rock for them, so now he will bear Israel safely 
 through the wilderness from Babylon back to Jerusalem. We 
 see how deeply ingrained the belief in the miracles of the Exodus 
 was in pious Israelites of that day ; and those who cannot share 
 the belief in miracles may nevertheless hold that God's protecting 
 power was truly over the Israelites of the Exodus ; and the 
 prophet whom I am now quoting will not appear without ground 
 for his faith, or for the aim which he is setting before his fellow- 
 countrymen. Similarly, the solemn words with which this
 
 xm] THE PROPHET OF THE EXILE 323 
 
 particular utterance concludes, " There is no peace, saith Jehovah, 
 unto the wicked," are evidence to us of the deep importance 
 which he attached to the counsel which he was giving, and of 
 the danger incurred by those whom he addressed, if they persisted 
 in slothful indifference. 
 
 Yet that indifference was, to a large extent, a fact ; and we 
 see the result of this fact in the subsequent utterances of the 
 prophet. Israel as a whole is, in his eyes, ceasing to be the 
 ideal servant of Jehovah. Once more, and once only, does he 
 give this title to the nation in its entirety ; but even in giving 
 the title, he passes away from it, and makes it clear that the 
 chosen servant of God is intimately related to Israel indeed, 
 but still not identical with Israel. I must quote this important 
 passage, which follows upon that last quoted : 
 
 Listen, O isles, unto me ; and hearken, ye peoples, from far: Jehovah 
 hath called me from the womb ; from the bowels of my mother hath he 
 made mention of my name : and he hath made my mouth like a sharp 
 sword, in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me ; and he hath made 
 me a polished shaft, in his quiver hath he kept me close : and he said 
 unto me, Thou art my servant ; Israel, in whom I will be glorified. But 
 I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought 
 and vanity : yet surely my judgment is with Jehovah, and my recompense 
 with my God. And now saith Jehovah that formed me from the womb 
 to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, and that Israel be gathered 
 unto him : (for I am honourable in the eyes of Jehovah, and my God 
 is become my strength :) yea, he saith, It is too light a thing that thou 
 shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore 
 the preserved of Israel : I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, 
 that my salvation may be unto the end of the earth. Thus saith Jehovah, 
 the redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, 
 to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers : Kings shall 
 see and arise ; princes, and they shall worship ; because of Jehovah 
 that is faithful, even the Holy One of Israel, who hath chosen thee. Thus 
 saith Jehovah, In an acceptable time have I answered thee, and in a day 
 of salvation have I helped thee : and I will preserve thee, and give thee 
 for a covenant of the people, to raise up the land, to make them inherit 
 the desolate heritages ; saying to them that are bound, Go forth ; to them 
 that are in darkness, Show yourselves. Ibid. xlix. 1-9. 
 
 To whom does the prophet represent Jehovah as speaking 
 in the above passage ? Who is it that is to gather Israel, to 
 be a servant of rulers, and yet to be worshipped by princes? 
 How shall we appropriate to ourselves the thought of the prophet 
 as he thought it, his feelings as he felt them ? 
 
 He has receded from the thought that Israel as an entire 
 race visibly seen with the eyes is the servant of God ; but he 
 has not receded from the thought that the spiritual Israel is 
 
 212
 
 324 THE CULMINATION OF PROPHECY: [CH. 
 
 the servant of God ; the spiritual Israel being understood to 
 be the faithful in Israel. It will of course be noticed that he 
 uses the singular number when speaking of the servant of God : 
 " he said unto me, Thou art my servant " ; and again, " to 
 him whom man despiseth," the despised one being the servant 
 of God ; and it may be asked whether the prophet has any 
 individual person in his mind. But if the prophet had had 
 any individual person in his mind, he could not have spoken 
 with this indefiniteness, sometimes as if he himself were the 
 servant of God, sometimes as if another person were so ; his 
 thought, with all its depth, is not so precise as to determine 
 who the servant of God is. No doubt he did think of himself 
 as a servant of God ; no doubt also he saw others around him 
 whom he deemed to be servants of God ; but in spite of this 
 his conception is not absolutely determined. It is indeed a 
 conception too great for absolute definition ; and so it continues 
 all through. 
 
 So, too, when we ask what is the glorious end which he has 
 in view, it is sometimes the gathering together of the nations 
 into one people of God, sometimes the consolation and restora- 
 tion of Zion, of Jerusalem. He never forgets that a special 
 material work has to be done, the bringing of the people of Israel 
 to Jerusalem again ; but this material work expands as he 
 surveys it, in all manner of directions ; nay, it expands at last 
 into a regeneration of the whole earth and heavens. 
 
 We ask with wonder, what effect this prophecy, so clear 
 and definite as far as the return from the Babylonian exile is 
 concerned, so vast in its expansion of that theme, produced on 
 those who first heard it ? No record tells us ; we can only 
 judge by the course of the prophecy itself. The passage which 
 I last quoted is succeeded by one full of exalted promises, and 
 of consolation to Zion for her past afflictions ; and then, quite 
 suddenly, the prophet turns to the actual people whom he sees, 
 and to their sins in the present and in the past : 
 
 Thus saith Jehovah, Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, 
 wherewith I have put her away ? or which of my creditors is it to whom I 
 have sold you ? Behold, for your iniquities were ye sold, and for your 
 transgressions was your mother put away. Wherefore, when I came, 
 was there no rnan ? when I called, was there none to answer ? Is my 
 hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem ? or have I no power to 
 deliver ? The book of Isaiah 1. 1,2. 
 
 It is plain that the prophet is still addressing a backward 
 people, a people unwilling to move ; and from the words which
 
 xm] THE PROPHET OF THE EXILE 325 
 
 shortly follow in the same chapter it appears that the prophet 
 himself has been suffering ill-treatment in the cause for which 
 he has been so ardent ; himself, and it may be others along with 
 him, his fellow- workers. 
 
 'I gave," he says, "my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them 
 that plucked off the hair : I hid not my face from shame and spitting. For 
 the Lord Jehovah will help me ; therefore have I not been confounded : 
 therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be 
 ashamed." Ibid. 1. 6, 7. 
 
 Possibly the prophet had in his mind the words which his 
 immediate predecessor Ezekiel had written, as spoken to him by 
 the divine voice : " As an adamant harder than flint have I 
 made thy forehead : fear them not " (Ezekiel iii. 9). At all 
 events it is clear that the task which our prophet of the captivity 
 was championing did bring suffering in its train. 
 
 The restoration of Zion, the return of Israel to Zion, was 
 a deep-rooted purpose in the prophet's heart, as all must feel 
 who read his words ; and yet he never allows it to be supposed 
 that his whole purpose is summed up in this end. His tone 
 rises ; and in one of the sublimest verses in the Bible he announces 
 that visible things are as nothing when brought into comparison 
 with that salvation which God offers : 
 
 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath : 
 for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax 
 old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die like gnats: 
 but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be 
 abolished. Ibid. li. 6. 
 
 That is a verse which sets, in the most decisive manner, 
 the spiritual cause above the material effect, and this tempera- 
 ment manifests itself throughout his whole prophecy. An 
 assurance such as this verse contains would not, in the ordinary 
 affairs of men, be regarded as forcible in promoting practical 
 action ; the very fact that it sets so little value on finite things 
 might make it appear an exhortation to quietude. But when 
 the whole circumstances are considered, a different estimate 
 will be formed of the prophet's practical ability. The things 
 of earth which loomed so large before the exiles in Babylon 
 were the dangers involved in any such daring action as a return 
 to Jerusalem ; the danger from enemies, the danger from scarcity 
 in deserts, the danger from weariness and exhaustion ; it is these 
 dangers which the prophet is exhorting his fellow-countrymen 
 to despise ; but as to the return to Jerusalem, that is a command
 
 326 THE CULMINATION OF PROPHECY: [CH. 
 
 and promise which come from God, and he bids his hearers 
 honour them. His preaching was not merely exalted but practical ; 
 and there are verses towards the end of the fifty-second chapter 
 which appear to have been written when the first beginning 
 of that return, for which he had so earnestly pleaded, was being 
 actually made : 
 
 "Depart ye, depart ye," he cries, "go ye out from thence (i.e. from 
 Babylon), touch no unclean thing ; go ye out of the midst of her : be 
 ye clean, ye that bear the vessels of Jehovah. For ye shall not go out 
 in haste, neither shall ye go by flight ; for Jehovah will go before you ; 
 and the God of Israel shall be your rearward." 
 
 The mention of the " vessels of Jehovah " in this passage 
 confirms what the book of Ezra tells us (Ezra i. 7-11), that when 
 the Jewish exiles departed from Babylon, Cyrus (through his 
 treasurer Mithredath) handed over to Sheshbazzar, who is called 
 " the prince of Judah," the sacred vessels which Nebuchadnezzar 
 had brought from the temple at Jerusalem and had put into 
 the Babylonian temples ; these, the book of Ezra tells us, Shesh- 
 bazzar with the exiles actually brought back to Jerusalem. 
 It must be observed, however, that our prophet by no means 
 confirms the further statement of the book of Ezra (chapters iii. 7 
 and vi. 4) that Cyrus gave large contributions to the building 
 of the temple out of his own royal funds. That subject, and the 
 book of Ezra generally, belong to the next chapter, and will 
 receive consideration there. I return to the great prophet 
 of the exile. 
 
 He has seen the first group of exiles begin their return from 
 Babylon ; it would seem, from what follows, that he himself 
 accompanies them ; and now, at that moment for him so wonder- 
 ful, the moment when the seed which he had done so much 
 to foster is sending out its first shoots, he begins the utterance 
 of the profoundest of all his prophecies, the prophecy which 
 leads up from the inward nature of the servant of God, from 
 that self-sacrificing humility which accepts death uncomplain- 
 ingly, to the victory of this same servant, the victory to which 
 death is the avenue, the victory of all-enduring, everlasting 
 love. In a few words he describes the whole compass of that 
 righteous conduct in which lies a saving power, which brings 
 those who embrace its full meaning from the confusions of earth 
 to the harmony and order of heaven. Though the passage to 
 which I am now referring is one of the best known in the whole 
 Bible, it is so important that I must quote it in its entirety :
 
 xm] THE PROPHET OF THE EXILE 327 
 
 Behold, my servant shall deal wisely, he shall be exalted and lifted 
 up, and shall be very high. Like as many were astonied at thee, (his 
 visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons 
 of men,) so shall he sprinkle many nations ; kings shall shut their mouths 
 at him : for that which hath not been told them shall they see ; and that 
 which they had not heard shall they understand. Who hath believed 
 our report ? and to whom hath the arm of Jehovah been revealed ? 
 For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry 
 ground : he hath no form nor comeliness ; and when we see him, there 
 is no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised, and rejected 
 of men ; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief : and as one from 
 whom men hide their face he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 
 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows : yet we did 
 esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded 
 for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities : the chastisement 
 of our peace was upon him ; and with his stripes we are healed. All 
 we like sheep have gone astray ; we have turned every one to his own 
 way ; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was 
 oppressed, yet he humbled himself and opened not his mouth ; as a lamb 
 that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb ; 
 yea, he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was 
 taken away ; and his life who shall 1 recount ? for he was cut off out of 
 the land of the living ; for the transgression of my people was he stricken. 
 And they made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death ; 
 although he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. 
 Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him ; he hath put him to grief : when 
 thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall 
 prolong his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand. 
 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied : by his know- 
 ledge shall my righteous servant make many righteous : and he shall 
 bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, 
 and he shall divide the spoil with the strong ; because he poured out 
 his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors ; yet he 
 bare the sin of many, and maketh intercession for the transgressors. The 
 book of Isaiah lii. 13-liii. 12. 
 
 We read these mysterious words, and ask of whom the prophet 
 is thinking, and how he conceives of the death of the servant 
 of God, concerning which he writes so loftily, and whether this 
 death be a thing of the past or a thing of the future. I said 
 a little while back, in writing of the forty-ninth chapter (in which 
 chapter it is that the prophet first treats of the servant of God 
 as distinct from the whole nation of Israel), that the prophet's 
 conception of the servant of God was one too great for absolute 
 definition. We must I think connect it with those previous 
 prophecies, mainly (though not quite exclusively) uttered by 
 Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, of a king who should rule with 
 
 1 I have taken the translation of this clause from the margin of the Revised Version ; 
 I should have liked to suggest "his posterity," but fear it is inadmissible.
 
 328 THE CULMINATION OF PROPHECY: [CH. 
 
 equity and mercy, a king often symbolised under the name 
 of David, or more vaguely (as in that beautiful chapter, the 
 eleventh of Isaiah) as " a shoot out of the stock of Jesse." It 
 is impossible that our prophet should not have known of these 
 older prophecies ; it is impossible that he should have disregarded 
 them. He had then before him already the conception of a great 
 person who should lead Israel in the right way, nay who should 
 lead the whole world in the right way. He inherited this con- 
 ception ; but the circumstances of his time, the increased 
 experiences which his nation had latterly won, made him treat 
 it differently from the manner in which Isaiah, Jeremiah, and 
 Ezekiel had treated it. What our prophet of the exile had seen, 
 and what his predecessors had not equally seen, was the intimate 
 connexion of holiness with suffering ; the holy, righteous person 
 finds that he can relieve the burdens of others by taking them 
 upon himself, and in a spirit of divine mercy does take them 
 upon himself. Our prophet had seen this exemplified in the 
 faithful of his own time ; he had seen the torch of living hope 
 handed on by means of advocates who had suffered on its behalf ; 
 he had suffered on its behalf himself. Hence, when he took 
 up the theme of his predecessors, he took it up with an addition. 
 The divine government of the world was about to become a 
 reality ; this had been said by his predecessors ; what he added 
 was that suffering and self-sacrifice were the means by which 
 that government would come to birth. If we take his words 
 literally, the servant of God, in whom the divine power was 
 to rest, must die before he could receive that power. Is there 
 any reason why the words of the prophet should not be taken 
 literally ? 
 
 There is not, I think, any adequate reason ; but it will be 
 proper to mention the chief hypothesis which involves a non- 
 literal acceptation of the death of the servant of God. If we 
 think of this servant as meaning the suffering people of Israel, 
 then that people must be regarded as suffering and humiliated 
 indeed, but not as literally dying (for the death of individual 
 Israelites is not the same as the death of the nation). This 
 interpretation would be a possible one, if the prophet had not 
 so clearly shown that he did not regard the whole nation of Israel 
 as exercising a divine function. He had begun by so regarding 
 them ; but he had decisively changed in the forty-eighth and 
 forty-ninth chapters, and never recurred to his original attitude. 
 The elect people are not Israel, though they are " a seed out
 
 XHI] THE PROPHET OF THE EXILE 329 
 
 of Jacob " (Ixv. 9). When this is clearly seen, it is no longer 
 natural to think of this unnamed body of the elect as the subject 
 of the mysterious passage on which I am commenting ; they 
 did not constitute a body clearly marked off to the eyes of men. 
 
 I conclude then that the servant of God in these chapters 
 is the same conception as that which Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel 
 had put forward, of a king who should rule in God's name ; 
 but this later prophet has discerned more of the manner of the 
 divine rule than his predecessors had been able to compass, 
 and has seen that death must precede the exercise of it, and that 
 self-sacrificing love is the instrument by which it is accomplished. 
 What the prophet writes is prediction, not mere description 
 of the past ; at the same time the past is the storehouse from 
 which he draws the material for his prediction ; he knows what 
 is to be, because he has so accurately distinguished the working 
 of God's spirit in the events which he has seen. 
 
 It has not been an unknown opinion that the prophet, when 
 he speaks of this divine sufferer, means some person actually 
 known to himself, who had died as a witness for God's truth. 
 But had the prophet meant this, it is incredible that he should 
 not have named the person who, on this supposition, was so 
 exalted and so near to God. 
 
 The interpretation which I have given to the passage is, 
 I feel sure, a worthy one ; it contains no element which, con- 
 sidering the lofty spirituality of the prophet who wrote these 
 chapters, can be regarded as improbable ; and it is a premonition, 
 not in every respect but in the most important respects, of the 
 life and purposes of Jesus Christ, who in the real climax of human 
 history, took as his own the spiritual scheme which had been 
 sketched by this prophet of the exile. That scheme is, to put 
 it briefly, the method of government by spiritual attraction. 
 
 But now, having declared the fundamental nature of the 
 divine law, our prophet goes on to declare the glorious sequence 
 of it ; which in spite of the apparent feebleness of the working 
 causes, shall nevertheless be accomplished : 
 
 Sing, O barren, them that didst not bear ; break forth into singing, 
 and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child ; for more are the 
 children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith Jehovah. 
 The book of Isaiah liv. 1. 
 
 He is reverting, it will be seen, from the individual to the 
 community. The sacred community, the sacred city, is dear 
 to the heart of the prophet ; and certainly he was thinking.
 
 330 THE CULMINATION OF PROPHECY: [CH. 
 
 in the first instance of the literal Israel, the literal Jerusalem ; 
 it is no imaginary or abstract people that he addresses in the 
 following words : 
 
 O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I 
 will set thy stones in fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. 
 And I will make thy pinnacles of rubies, and thy gates of carbuncles, 
 and all thy border of pleasant stones. And all thy children shall be taught 
 of Jehovah ; and great shall be the peace of thy children. The book of 
 Isaiah liv. 11-13. 
 
 Yet it must not be thought that now, any more than in the 
 preceding chapters, the prophet ignores the offences of that 
 Israel which he saw plainly before him. The chapters from the 
 fifty-fifth to the fifty-ninth inclusive are ethical, and very nobly 
 ethical, and they are very far from being altogether laudatory 
 of Israel. We perceive that there are in Israel violent men, 
 idolaters, and hypocrites even among those who worship Jehovah ; 
 the fifty-ninth chapter is especially strong in the way of reproof. 
 What Israelites the prophet has in view is uncertain ; he may 
 at times be recurring in his thoughts to those in Babylonia ; 
 or there may have been other communities which he passed 
 on the way, perhaps not always of the tribe of Judah. Always 
 he is insistent on the humility which it is needful for man to 
 preserve towards God : 
 
 For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose 
 name is Holy : I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is 
 of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to 
 revive the heart of the contrite ones. Ibid. Ivii. 15. 
 
 Two other things will strike us in this series of chapters. 
 First, the stress laid upon keeping the sabbath. The same 
 characteristic is noticeable in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, but not 
 in any prophet before these. In Hosea (ii. 11), and Amos (viii. 5), 
 the sabbath is mentioned together with the festival of the new 
 moon, as an acknowledged holiday, but with no extraordinary 
 reverence : in Isaiah (i. 13) it is mentioned even slightingly, 
 and again in connexion with the new moon. But in Jeremiah, 
 in Ezekiel, and in the prophet with whom the present chapter 
 is concerned, the keeping of the sabbath is enjoined as a high 
 moral duty, while the feast of the new moon has sunk into an 
 entirely inferior position, barely recognised, and with no stress 
 laid upon it. What is the reason of this difference of tone ? 
 Clearly it came from the fact that the law, as a written document, 
 was present to the minds of the later prophets in a way in which
 
 xin] THE PROPHET OF THE EXILE 331 
 
 it was not before the minds of the earlier prophets. Not that 
 written commands were entirely unknown to Hosea, to Amos, 
 to Isaiah ; we have reason to believe that the " ten words " were, 
 in some form or other, really contained in the ark of the testimony, 
 which was in the temple ; and no doubt some of the legislation 
 in the twenty-first and twenty-second chapters of Exodus was 
 already in writing. But the book of Deuteronomy, the main 
 substance of which was first published hi the reign of Josiah, 
 had brought the written word into a prominence unknown 
 before ; and as a written ordinance, the feast of the new moon 
 had little prominence, the sabbath had great prominence. The 
 feast of the new moon is prescribed in the book of Numbers 
 alone, and even there as a duty incumbent on the priests, rather 
 than on the whole people ; the emphasis laid on the sabbath, 
 whenever commands were written down, must even in early 
 times have been far other than this 1 . Hence, while we must 
 be far from thinking of Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the prophet 
 of the captivity as formalists (and no doubt the institution 
 of the sabbath did really and naturally commend itself to them), 
 their religious spirit had something more in it of " the religion 
 of the book " than was the case with Hosea, Amos, or Isaiah. 
 
 To return to the prophet of the captivity. The other point 
 that we have to notice in the chapters with which I am now 
 concerned (the fifty-fifth to the fifty-ninth in the book of Isaiah) 
 is the breadth of human feeling shown in them. Far is the prophet 
 from a narrow nationalism of sentiment. Thus he writes : 
 
 Neither let the stranger, that hath joined himself to Jehovah, speak, 
 saying, Jehovah will surely separate me from his people ; neither let the 
 eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree. For thus saith Jehovah of the eunuchs 
 that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and hold 
 fast by my covenant : Unto them will I give in mine house and within 
 my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters ; I 
 will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off. Also the 
 strangers, that join themselves to Jehovah, to minister unto him, and to 
 love the name of Jehovah, to be his servants, every one that keepeth 
 the sabbath from profaning it, and holdeth fast by my covenant ; even 
 them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my 
 house of prayer ; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted 
 upon mine altar : for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for 
 all peoples. The Lord Jehovah which gathered the outcasts of Israel 
 saith, Yet will I gather others to him, beside his own that are gathered. 
 Ibid. Ivi. 3-8. 
 
 1 That is, judging by what we now find in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, 
 and Deuteronomy.
 
 332 THE CULMINATION OF PROPHECY: [CH. 
 
 If these counsels had been followed, how far broader and 
 more humane would the Jewish mind and temper have been, 
 during the centuries which followed the enactments of Ezra 
 and Nehemiah, than was actually the case ! 
 
 The five chapters of moral teaching, to which I have been 
 referring, are followed by three in which the enthusiasm of the 
 prophet is carried to the highest pitch. Be it remembered, 
 he is approaching Jerusalem. Especially glowing is the sixtieth 
 chapter, the first of the three. All these chapters are so well 
 known, and so perfectly simple, that quotation from them is 
 hardly needed ; yet at the end of the sixty-second chapter 
 there is a short passage which may supply us with an inference, 
 not always perceived : 
 
 Go through, go through the gates ; prepare ye the way of the people ; 
 cast up, cast up the high way ; gather out the stones ; lift up an ensign 
 for the peoples. Behold, Jehovah hath proclaimed unto the end of the 
 earth, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh. 
 The book of Isaiah Ixii. 10, 11. 
 
 What can this mean but that the mountain on which Jerusalem 
 had stood is in front of the prophet and of the returning exiles ? 
 It is not possible for us to say precisely by what route the company 
 had travelled, or whom they had passed on the way ; but part 
 of it would naturally lie in a hilly country, which is spoken of 
 in the fifty-seventh chapter. Some passages in the chapters 
 from the fifty-sixth to the fifty-ninth look as if the company 
 had been passing by settlements of unfaithful Israelites ; but 
 we cannot say this certainly. At all events, in the sixty-second 
 chapter, they are near Jerusalem ; the desolation of it must 
 have been visible to them ; and the change in the prophet's 
 feelings, which could not be avoided, then came upon him. A 
 sudden anger seizes him as he thinks what the nations, especially 
 Edom, have done against the sacred city ; and in the sixty- 
 third chapter he sees, as in a vision, God taking vengeance upon 
 Edom. But grief succeeds to anger ; he pleads with God by 
 the memory of those old days, when the divine protection had 
 been over Israel in that long and perilous journey from Egypt 
 to Canaan. The days of Israel in their own land had been but 
 short ; will not God remember his fatherhood, and succour 
 his own people ? 
 
 The sixty-fourth chapter finds the prophet actually in Jerusa- 
 lem ; what a contrast is the ruined city to the splendid visions 
 which he had lately expressed ! He breaks forth into sad crying :
 
 xin] THE PROPHET OF THE EXILE 333 
 
 Be not wroth very sore, Jehovah, neither remember iniquity for ever : 
 behold, look, we beseech thee, we are all thy people. Thy holy cities 
 are become a wilderness, Zion is become a wilderness, Jerusalem a deso- 
 lation. Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised 
 thee, is burned with fire ; and all our pleasant things are laid waste. 
 Wilt thou refrain thyself for these things, Jehovah ? wilt thou hold 
 thy peace, and afflict us very sore? Ibid. Ixiv. 9-11. 
 
 Can anything be more natural in feeling ? I would ask those 
 who would split up the twenty-seven chapters with which I 
 am here concerned into fragments, and assign them to two 
 or perhaps three different prophets, and perhaps place them at 
 a date a century or two later than the surrender of Babylon 
 to Cyrus, whether every step in the narrative is not clearly 
 marked as belonging to the very first return of the Jews from 
 their Babylonian captivity ? Not only the acts described, 
 but the emotions also, various as they are, belong absolutely 
 to this epoch, and to none other. 
 
 The two chapters which follow the sixty-fourth (and which 
 form the conclusion of the prophecy) could not be in that strain 
 of unmingled rapture which characterises the three chapters 
 from the sixtieth to the sixty-second. The situation was in- 
 herently difficult ; and though it is not likely that any of the 
 actual party that had returned from Babylon were idolaters, 
 it is plain that there were still Israelites who were so. It is 
 likely that a remnant of the poorest Jews had continued to live 
 in Judaea all through the years of the captivity, and how far 
 they may have erred spiritually we have no means of knowing ; 
 but also we should rather judge from the language used, that 
 the prophet returned to Babylon to obtain fresh recruits for the 
 settlement at Jerusalem. Verses like the following would seem 
 naturally to refer to sojourners in Babylon, not to dwellers 
 in Judaea : 
 
 I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, 
 which walketh in a way which is not good, after their own thoughts: 
 a people that provoketh me to my face continually, sacrificing in gardens, 
 and burning incense upon bricks, &c. Ibid. Ixv. 2, 3. 
 
 The prophet, even after the return from the exile had begun, 
 had plainly a very difficult task before him. But in how much 
 greater a degree visible things fail him, so much the more fervently 
 does he rest on the invisible. Listen to the words which he hears 
 the voice of God saying : 
 
 Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth : and the former things 
 shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. Ibid. Ixv. 17.
 
 334 THE CULMINATION OF PROPHECY [CH. xra 
 
 And so again, when the difficulty of building the temple 
 anew presses hard, he reverts to that higher spiritual reality 
 which transcends temples of stone : 
 
 Thus saith Jehovah : The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my 
 footstool : what manner of house will ye build unto me ? and what place 
 shall be my rest ? The book of Isaiah Ixvi. 1. 
 
 Yet after all, such sayings must be taken with proper limita- 
 tion. Though, when hard pressed by visible failure, the prophet 
 takes refuge in the invisible hope and trust, yet the earthly 
 Jerusalem is to the end sacred to him, beloved by him, the theme 
 of his ardent hope : 
 
 " Rejoice ye with Jerusalem," he cries out, " and be glad for her, all ye 
 that love her ; rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn over her ; that 
 ye may suck and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations ; that 
 ye may milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory." Ibid. 
 Ixvi. 10, 11. 
 
 In this situation, of imperfect fulfilment but ardent hope, 
 the book of the prophet of the exile terminates. Sorrow and 
 joy are both with him ; sorrow for the abundance of the faithless- 
 ness which he sees, joy in the prospect of a victory which is to 
 come. 
 
 My theme in the present chapter has been the delineation 
 of one of the greatest among men : and no mere theorist either, 
 no mere visionary ; but one who, more than any other, created 
 the spirit which enabled the Jews to return from Babylon to 
 their own land. Without that return, the whole message of 
 the Jews to the world would have been frittered away ; for the 
 time was not ripe for a religion that had no local centre at all. 
 Out of the earthly Jerusalem has sprung the Christian hope 
 of a heavenly Jerusalem which is indeed the greater ; but the 
 earthly Jerusalem was needed as a seed-ground for the heavenly 
 which was to come. 
 
 Who was this great prophet ? We know not his name, 
 and scarcely anything of his history ; and the only honour which 
 his fellow-countrymen accorded to him was to attribute his 
 writings to the most illustrious, save himself, of all the prophets 
 whom Israel produced.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: THE PSALMS: 
 ZECHARIAH 
 
 THE Babylonian captivity was a time of darkness : the dawn 
 came with that great prophet whose writings I described in 
 the foregoing chapter. 
 
 But how long and obscure was that twilight of dawn ! How 
 stormy and troublous were the ages before full daylight shines 
 again on that people in whose hearts was buried the secret of 
 God ! The return from the captivity, the rebuilding of the 
 temple and of Jerusalem, the rigid legislation of Ezra, the diverse 
 fortunes of the Jews as the Persian dominion yielded to the 
 Greek dominion, and lastly as the Ptolemies of Egypt receded 
 from their tenure of Palestine and the Syrian Greek dynasty 
 (the Antiochi) succeeded thereto what changes were these, 
 and how little do we know of them ! I must talk now of Jews, 
 not of Israelites, as the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judsea; 
 Israelites they were of course, but not the whole of Israel. 
 
 And now let me mention the point of difficulty and doubt 
 which stands in our front at the very beginning of this subject. 
 Was the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity a 
 rapid or a slow process ? Was Zerubbabel, the famous rebuilder 
 of the temple at Jerusalem, a person who lived in the latter 
 part of the sixth century before Christ, under Darius son of 
 Hystaspes (the conqueror who won supreme station by his 
 own warlike prowess) ; or was he a person who lived a hundred 
 years later, under the comparatively insignificant Darius Nothus ? 
 The former is so much the ordinary view, that I assumed it 
 as a matter of course when I began to inquire into this subject. 
 I found myself forced to change it ; and my conclusion is that 
 the view which places Zerubbabel about the dates 422-418 B.C. 
 is not subject to any serious difficulty, while it gives a simplicity 
 and clearness to the whole tenor of the history which is quite 
 wanting to the ordinary view 1 . 
 
 1 The later date, which I myself follow, has had some supporters ; and I may 
 especially name Sir Henry Howorth as having anticipated some of my arguments 
 in the present chapter, and in the first Appendix to it.
 
 336 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [OH. 
 
 It will be best for me to give first a brief chronological state- 
 ment of both views; and I will begin by stating, with dates, 
 the ordinary view, which is the one that I do not hold : 
 
 B.C. 
 Return of Jews from Babylon, by permission of Cyrus, to the 
 
 number of some 40,000 . . 538 
 
 Commencement of rebuilding the temple by Zerubbabel . . 537 
 
 The rebuilding stopped through hostile influences . . . . 536 
 Recommenced by Zerubbabel, by permission of Darius son of 
 
 Hystaspes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520 
 
 The temple completed .. .. .. .. .. .. 516 
 
 The half -real, half -fabulous story told in the book of Esther 
 
 between 485 B.C. and 465 
 
 The mission of Ezra to Jerusalem . . . . . . . . 458 
 
 The mission of Nehemiah, and the rebuilding of the walls . . 445 
 
 The last dated incident in the book of Nehemiah . . . . 433 
 
 The incident mentioned in the papyri of Elephantine near Assuan 407 
 The incidents mentioned in Josephus, Antiquities, book xi. 
 
 cc. 7 and 8 are subject to so much doubt on this supposition 
 
 that they cannot be dated. 
 
 Seizure of Jerusalem by Ptolemy I king of Egypt . . . . 320 
 
 Such is the sequence of the main events in Jewish history 
 on the supposition that Zerubbabel belongs to the time of Darius 
 son of Hystaspes. But if he belonged to the time of Darius 
 Nothus, a century later than the earlier Darius, the chronological 
 table is as follows : 
 
 B.C. 
 
 First return of Jews from Babylon, in not very great numbers, 
 
 with the prophet of the exile (i.e. the writer of Isaiah 
 
 xl.-lxvi.) and also with Sheshbazzar (Ezra i.) . . about 538 
 A temple built, of which the only record is in the Psalms (e.g. 
 
 Psalm v. xxvii. &c.) . . . . . . . . . . about 530 
 
 The troubles for which the book of Esther is evidence 
 
 between 485 B.C. and 465 
 During these troubles the above-mentioned temple is destroyed 
 
 (Psalms Ixxiv. and Ixxix.) . . . . . . . . perhaps 483 
 
 Efforts to rebuild the temple and walls in the reign of Artaxerxes 
 
 Longimanu.s frustrated (see Ezra iv. 7-24). . . . about 460 
 
 Return of Zerubbabel with a large number of Jews from 
 
 Babylon to Jerusalem, by permission of Darius Nothus 
 
 about 423 
 The temple rebuilt and finally finished . . . . . . . . 418 
 
 The incident mentioned in the papyri of Elephantine near 
 
 Assuan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 
 
 The mission of Ezra to Jerusalem . . . . . . . . 398 
 
 The mission of Nehemiah, and rebuilding of the walls. . . . 385 
 
 The last dated incident in the book of Nehemiah . . . . 373 
 
 The incidents mentioned in Josephus, Antiquities, book xi. 
 
 cc. 7 and 8 . . . . from about 3(50 B.C. to a-bout 332 
 
 Seizure of .Jerusalem by Ptolemy 1, king of Egypt . . . . 320
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 337 
 
 Following, as I do, the second of these two chronologies, I will 
 now mention the most remarkable feature (besides the simplicity 
 of historical sequence) that will appear as I tell the tale. This is, 
 that the Jews will be seen in a new light, brave, enduring, patient, 
 tenderhearted; imperfect indeed, and falling into error at last; 
 yet in a memorable age most memorable. My best plan will be 
 to tell their story as I see it, with as little argument as possible, 
 though not disguising difficulties ; the most important arguments 
 I will reserve for an Appendix. 
 
 It will be remembered that in the last chapter I have described 
 the first return of the Jews from Babylon, as it is to be gathered 
 from the ardent writing of the great prophet of the exile (and 
 his writing, it will have been seen, contains notes of history, 
 as well as imaginative predictions of the future). No one will 
 say that his description of the situation as he actually saw it 
 is a very cheerful or happy one, enthusiastic as his hopes of the 
 future were. He has praised Cyrus ; but he has nothing to 
 say of any help in money or materials given by Cyrus for the 
 building of the temple, such as is mentioned in Ezra iii. 7, vi. 3, 4 
 and 1 Esdras vi. 24, 25. It is not likely indeed that Cyrus made 
 any such gifts ; there was no reason why he should distinguish 
 the Jews from the other peoples whom he had liberated from 
 the Babylonian yoke. 
 
 It would follow then that the first company of exiles who 
 returned from Babylon to Jerusalem were poor, and not very 
 numerous. Yet the statement in the first chapter of Ezra, 
 that they carried with them the vessels of gold and silver which 
 Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple at Jerusalem 
 and had retained at Babylon, is quite probable, and is supported 
 by the prophet of the exile 1 . Neither have we any reason to 
 doubt the accuracy of the first chapter of Ezra, when it tells 
 us that Sheshbazzar, " the prince of Judah," was the leader 
 of the returning exiles. 
 
 On the other hand, the second chapter of Ezra has no business 
 at all to be where it is ; the list which it gives of the returning 
 exiles does not properly belong to the reign of Cyrus at all ; 
 it belongs to the time of Zerubbabel, it is true, but that time 
 was not the time of Cyrus. (For the proof that this was the case, 
 see the first Appendix to the present chapter.) The motive 
 for its insertion where we find it in the book of Ezra is a quite 
 intelligible one; it was borrowed in order to give fullness and 
 
 1 The book of Isaiah Iii. 11. 
 M. D. A. 22
 
 338 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [CH. 
 
 substance to a famous event, the first return of the Jews from 
 Babylon by permission or command of Cyrus ; for the account 
 of this event hi the first chapter of Ezra was certainly but meagre. 
 The third chapter of Ezra is a further attempt to amplify and 
 adorn the narrative of the same event ; it is a picturesque and 
 imaginative 1 composition, which apparently draws one of its 
 main themes (the weeping of the old men who had seen the 
 ancient temple) from a hint in the second chapter of the prophet 
 Haggai. The opening verses of the fourth chapter of Ezra 
 may contain a true fact, but are misplaced. In the sixth verse 
 of this chapter, however, we have real though brief information : 
 
 And in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, wrote 
 they an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. 
 
 This verse at once reminds us of the book of Esther ; Ahasuerus 
 is, as is now known, Xerxes 2 ; and after this the book of Ezra 
 proceeds in a generally trustworthy manner, the kings being 
 named in the right order, and an order which clearly indicates 
 that the king of Persia under whom Zerubbabel built the temple 
 was Darius Nothus. 
 
 But it will be seen that on this showing there is a great gap 
 of fifty years at least during which the history is a blank. As 
 far as any historical narrative is concerned, we know nothing 
 at all of what happened between the return of the first exiles 
 in the time of Cyrus and the troubles of which we have evidence 
 in the book of Esther, which took place in the reign of Xerxes. 
 Or, giving the dates as precisely as we can, from 537 B.C. to 
 485 B.C. historical evidence fails us. At the beginning of this 
 time we have as evidence the last twenty-seven chapters of 
 the book of Isaiah and the first chapter of the book of Ezra ; 
 at the end of it we have the book of Esther and the single verse, 
 Ezra iv. 6. Are the intervening years really a blank ? 
 
 No, they are not a blank ; they are filled up by a large portion 
 of the psalms; roughly speaking, by the first eighty-nine psalms 
 in our book of Psalms. I must not, of course, be understood 
 to speak with absolute precision. I have already, in speaking of 
 David, mentioned the probability that some of these psalms trace 
 their origin from him and his contemporaries, though not exactly 
 in the form in which we have them now. On the other hand, 
 
 1 Similar imaginative stork's are found in the books of Chronicles, of which (he 
 book of K/.ra i.s a continuation; see for instance the great victories attributed to the 
 kings Ahijah and Asa in 2 Chronicles xiii. and xiv. 
 
 - See Saycc's K:rn, Xclu'ini'ih, and Kulhcr, \>. 2'2. Aliasueru.s Akhasverosh = 
 (in Persian) Khshayarshn ~ Xerxea.
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 339 
 
 a few may be later than the period I have named, and after 
 the close of the reign of Xerxes. The eighty-fifth psalm cer- 
 tainly belongs to a later and more settled time than the years 
 between 538 B.C. and the close of the reign of Xerxes. But by 
 far the greater number of these eighty -nine psalms exactly suit the 
 period of which I am speaking, and they suit no other period. 
 
 Let it be noted that they continue, with slight differences, 
 the tone and the spiritual horizon of the great prophet of the 
 exile. There is indeed more mourning and woe in them ; there 
 is an immensity of mourning and woe in these eighty-nine 
 psalms. But the prophet of the exile speaks of mourning and 
 woe also. Then there is in these psalms that peculiarity which 
 is so strong in the prophet of the exile ; their representation 
 is that the path of mourning and woe is that which leads to 
 future glory. This is the teaching of the chapter which is reckoned 
 the fifty-third in the book of Isaiah ; and this is the teaching 
 of the twenty-second psalm. Internal evidence makes us sure 
 that those two compositions were not written at periods of time 
 far apart. The sixty-ninth psalm has very much the same 
 characteristics ; and the alternation of anguish and hopefulness 
 is very marked in the whole series. 
 
 But there is one characteristic in which these eighty-nine 
 psalms do differ from the prophet of the exile ; there is very 
 much more fighting in them. That is natural ; the prophet 
 of the exile was accompanying a set of travelling emigrants, 
 who would have no time to make enemies during their journey, 
 and who would choose the routes where there was least danger. 
 But when the exiles had settled down at Jerusalem or in its 
 neighbourhood, they could hardly escape fighting. Their neigh- 
 bours, Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, were precisely those 
 who had suffered in the never-forgotten reigns of David and 
 Solomon, and who had been overjoyed by the destruction of 
 Jerusalem and the captivity of the Jewish nation. In part, 
 the inhabitants of what had been northern Israel entertained 
 the same sentiments of hostility to the returning Jews ; but it 
 is evident that there was here a mixture of sentiments ; the 
 Samaritans (to use the familiar name) showed the diversity 
 in the strain of their blood 1 by diversity of sentiments. The 
 Samaritans mentioned in the papyri of Elephantine (407 B.C.) 
 
 1 See 2 Kings xvii. 24, for the action of the king of Assyria, after he had carried 
 off large numbers of the ten tribes to Assyria and Media, in colonising northern Israel 
 with Cuthseans, &c. But after all, most of the northern Israelites were left in their 
 own land. 
 
 222
 
 340 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [CH. 
 
 were not anti-Jewish in sentiment. But no doubt there were 
 Samaritans who were anti-Jewish. In any case, the small 
 community of Jews who established themselves at Jerusalem 
 during the closing years of the reign of Cyrus soon found that 
 they had to fight for their tenure of that city and its surroundings. 
 The fifty-third psalm is one that mentions this ; it is practically 
 the same as the fourteenth psalm ; but I will quote the fifty-third 
 by preference, because it has a clause which has accidentally 
 dropped out of the other psalm. Here it is : 
 
 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. 
 
 Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity ; there is none 
 that doeth good. 
 
 God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if 
 there were any that did understand, that did seek after God. 
 
 Every one of them is gone back ; they are together become filthy ; 
 there is none that doeth good, no, not one. 
 
 Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge ? Who eat up my people 
 as they eat bread, and call not upon God. 
 
 There were they in great fear, where no fear was: for God hath 
 scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee ; thou hast 
 put them to shame, because God hath rejected them. 
 
 Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion ! When God 
 bringeth back the captivity of his people, then shall Jacob rejoice, and 
 Israel shall be glad. 
 
 It is clear that when that psalm was written the captivity 
 was not absolutely at an end; that the people of God were 
 under the necessity of fighting against heathen enemies, if not 
 for their existence, at all events for their liberty. The enemies 
 are marked as heathen, not Israelite, by the phrase that they 
 " eat up my people." 
 
 But where did that fighting take place ? (The fourteenth 
 psalm is less clear than the fifty-third as to the fact of this fighting, 
 for it leaves out the clause " for God hath scattered the bones 
 of him that encampeth against thee " ; but the clause is needed 
 to make the psalm intelligible.) It is not easy to think that 
 such fighting would take place in Babylonia, where imperial 
 armies would always be at hand (for against these the Jews 
 could not contend). But when the return had begun, when 
 a few thousand of the Jews were claiming for themselves their 
 old city of Jerusalem and the surrounding territory, then fighting 
 would begin ; not so much because the Jews were driving out 
 actual holders of the ground, but because their antecedent 
 history and their exalted national pride made them unpopular 
 with the surrounding nations, and their resumption of the ancient
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 341 
 
 capital of their race would emphasise the suspicion under which 
 they lay. We may be sure that Edomites, Ammonites, and 
 Moabites would be on the alert when this began to take place, 
 and would do their best to prevent the Jews becoming again 
 a power in the world ; and the Samaritans, under their half- 
 heathen leaders, might on occasions join in against the Jews. 
 The fighting that resulted from such a motive would not be very 
 thorough-going or very determined, but it would be incessant 
 and harassing ; and sometimes one side, sometimes the other, 
 would obtain the advantage. At the time when the psalm 
 just quoted was written, the Jews had the advantage ; but 
 this was by no means always the case, as we shall see. 
 
 The psalm just quoted gathers together in one the evidence 
 that the period when the psalm was written was the period 
 of the captivity (though after the first beginning of the return), 
 and that fighting was taking place between the people of God 
 and heathen enemies, and that in all probability that fighting 
 took place not in Babylonia but in Judsea. 
 
 It is desirable to show the support which other psalms give 
 to the reality of the situation thus described. In the ninth and 
 tenth psalms, the iniquity of " the nations " is the prominent 
 theme ; and in contrast to the nations, the " needy," the " poor," 
 and the " meek " are represented as the objects of God's favour, 
 who are hoping for divine deliverance. The ninth psalm ends 
 with the words : 
 
 Arise, Jehovah : let not man prevail : let the nations be judged in 
 thy sight. 
 
 Put them in fear, Jehovah: let the nations know themselves to be 
 but men. 
 
 And the tenth psalm ends in this way : 
 
 Jehovah is king for ever and ever ; the nations are perished out of 
 his land. 
 
 Jehovah, thou hast heard the desire of the meek : thou wilt prepare 
 their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear : 
 
 To judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that man which is of the 
 earth may be terrible no more. 
 
 The title 1 to the ninth psalm declares it to have been written 
 by David, and no doubt the title is intended to apply to the 
 tenth psalm also, for these psalms are in one vein. But the 
 situation does not at all suit the time of David ; the powerful 
 wicked men who are not Israelites, and whose downfall the 
 
 1 Concerning the titles to the psalms, and the reasons for holding them to be 
 entirely untrustworthy, see the second Appendix to the present chapter.
 
 342 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [OH. 
 
 psalmist desires, are in close neighbourhood to the people of 
 God, with ready access to their villages (Psalm x. 8) ; the struggle 
 has much of the aspect of civil war. Now this feature was not 
 in the least present in the wars of David against Philistines, 
 Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites ; nor could David in those 
 wars have truly described himself as needy, poor, and meek. 
 But the situation is exactly that which (if the account which 
 I am giving be based on a true conception) existed in Judaea 
 and Jerusalem, when the exiles from Babylon began to arrive 
 there ; they were needy and poor, and more or less meek ; and 
 they lived in the close neighbourhood of powerful enemies. 
 This is exactly the situation described in the ninth and tenth 
 psalms. 
 
 Precisely the same situation is described in the fifty-ninth 
 psalm ; the enemies there are heathen, but heathen in close 
 proximity to the people of God. Thus the psalmist cries (verse 5) : 
 
 O Jehovah, God of hosts, the God of Israel, arise to visit all the 
 heathen : be not merciful to any wicked transgressors. 
 
 They return at evening, they make a noise like a dog, and go round 
 about the city. 
 
 And again : 
 
 Slay them not, lest my people forget : scatter them by thy power, and 
 bring them down, O Lord our sliield. 
 
 That psalm, again, is in its title ascribed to David : " when 
 Saul sent," so the title runs, " and they watched the house 
 to kill him." But whatever might be the case with some of 
 the servants of Saul, such as the Edomite Doeg, the contest 
 between Saul and David was a contest between Israelite and 
 Israelite : the psalm of which I am writing brings before us 
 a contest between heathen and Israelite, close neighbours to 
 each other. There was no time in the history of Israel (at any 
 rate from the time of Samuel onwards) when such close neigh- 
 bourhood and yet vehement antipathy was possible except when 
 the return from the Babylonian exile was in its beginnings. 
 
 Take another psalm, the forty-fourth. Here we find the 
 people of God discomfited before their enemies, and yet main- 
 taining in the strongest terms their own religious faithfulness. 
 Thus the psalmist cries out and complains to God : 
 
 But now thou hast cast us off, and brought us to dishonour, and goest 
 not forth with our hosts. 
 
 Thou makost us turn back from the adversary : and they which hate 
 us spoil for themselves.
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 343 
 
 Thou hast given us like sheep appointed for meat ; and hast scattered 
 us among the nations. . . . 
 
 All this is come upon us ; yet have we not forgotten thee, neither 
 have we dealt falsely in thy covenant. . . . 
 
 If we have forgotten the name of our God, or spread forth our hands 
 to a strange god ; 
 
 Shall not God search this out ? for he knoweth the secrets of the heart. 
 
 Yea, for thy sake we are killed all the day long; and are counted as 
 sheep for the slaughter. 
 
 Such confident assertion of innocence, combined with acknow- 
 ledged external misfortune, would have been impossible at any 
 period before the Babylonian captivity ; but it exactly suits 
 the position of the exiles who had returned from Babylon, in 
 their first weakness before the surrounding nations. It should 
 be noticed that in none of these psalms is any royal tyrant 
 mentioned (the " mighty man " of the fifty-second psalm is 
 hardly royal) ; and hence these psalms give no support to the 
 idea, which some have favoured, that some of the psalms in this 
 early part of the collection are of the date of Antiochus Epiphanes 
 (about 170 B.C.). 
 
 It will be right here to refer to those psalms, among the 
 eighty-nine which are my present theme, which have an air 
 of belonging to the reigns of David or of Solomon ; though they 
 would at any rate be expanded from anything written in those 
 early days. I have already mentioned the eighteenth and fifty- 
 first ; to these may be added the twenty-first, the forty-fifth, 
 the forty-eighth, the sixty-eighth, and the seventy-second. I 
 would not speak dogmatically ; but at any rate I exclude these 
 psalms from the remarks which I am making about the first 
 eighty-nine psalms ; the tone of them is too much the tone 
 of triumph (except in the case of the fifty-first psalrn). On the 
 other hand, the mention of " the king " in the sixty-first and 
 sixty-third psalms does not seem to me to exclude it from the 
 period which I have named ; for an ideal king was certainly 
 among the conceptions of the restored Jews (and this might 
 even warrant the placing of the seventy-second psalm in the 
 period of which I am now treating). 
 
 But I come to another point the mention of the temple 
 in these eighty-nine psalms. It is mentioned very distinctly 
 in Psalms v. xi. (it may possibly be metaphorical here, but I 
 think not), xxiii. xxvi. xxvii. xxix. xxxvi. xlii. lii. Iv. Ixv. Ixvi. 
 Ixix. Ixxiv. Ixxix. Ixxxiv. ; either simply as the temple, or as 
 the house of God, or (in Psalm Ixxiv.) by expressions equally
 
 344 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [CH. 
 
 clear. If somewhat vaguer expressions (" thy holy hill," " thy 
 holy oracle," &c.) are added, we have mention of it in Psalms iii. 
 xv. xx. xxiv. xxviii. xliii. Ixiii. Ixxiii. Ixxx. (in the expression 
 " thou that dwellest between the cherubim "). It will be con- 
 ceded that, when these psalms were written, there was a temple at 
 Jerusalem ; which implies, if the chronology which I am following 
 be correct, that there was a temple built shortly after the earliest 
 return of the exiles in the time of Cyrus, which was destroyed 
 some half a century later ; the destruction being mentioned 
 certainly in the seventy-fourth psalm, probably in the seventy- 
 ninth (though it is possible to take the seventy-ninth psalm as 
 referring to the destruction by Nebuchadnezzar). 
 
 And now let me ask : Is it improbable that there should 
 be such a temple, not referred to in the direct history ? Is it 
 not certain that the Jews would erect a temple, if they could 
 possibly do so ? It is true that in the reign of Artaxerxes 
 Longimanus, they were prohibited from rebuilding the temple 
 (Ezra iv. 7-24) ; but then they had tried to combine it with 
 rebuilding the walls ; it does not follow that objection would 
 have been made to their rebuilding the temple, if that had been 
 all. The walls were the offence; and hence when royal favour 
 came to them at last in the reign of Darius Nothus, they did 
 as a matter of fact rebuild the temple before they rebuilt the 
 walls. If, again, it be said, Why have we no historical record 
 of this brief -lived temple ? the answer is that the Jews never 
 did like recording in detail the times of their adversity. We 
 have absolutely no historical record of what they were doing 
 during the Babylonian captivity ; and the times immediately 
 succeeding to the captivity had too much that was distressing 
 to be a pleasing subject of record. At the same time, they were 
 not voiceless (if my view be correct) during the times immediately 
 succeeding to the captivity ; they could sing their troubles 
 and their hopes ; whereas during the actual captivity they 
 had been voiceless, or nearly so. Conflict, even if sometimes 
 disastrous, rekindled the energies of their soul, so that they 
 could utter their feelings in words. 
 
 I have said that the reign of Xerxes (485-465 B.C.) was not 
 a happy time for the Jews ; and though the book of Esther 
 (taken in connexion with the historical feast of Purim) no doubt 
 truly represents a certain escape of the Jews from imminent peril 
 at that time, we must also be of opinion that that book exaggerates 
 the triumph of the Jews over their enemies. Such exaggeration
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 345 
 
 is natural to man, and was particularly natural to the Jews, 
 as we may see from the book of Judith (and also from certain 
 parts of the books of Chronicles to which I have before referred). 
 However, some successes the Jews must have had ; in the 
 long conflict which they were waging, there would be moments 
 of encouragement even before the turn of the tide in their favour, 
 which took place in the reign of Darius Nothus ; and the sixty- 
 sixth psalm contains a reference to the exile, with an interesting 
 train of ethical thought, showing that the Jews had profited 
 by their misfortunes, without any admixture of despondency. 
 Here are some verses from it : 
 
 For thou, O God, hast proved us ; thou hast tried us, as silver is tried. 
 
 Thou broughtest us into the net ; thou layedst a sore burden upon 
 our loins. 
 
 Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads ; we went through fire 
 and through water ; but thou broughtest us out into abundance. 
 
 The position of that psalm would seem to indicate that it 
 was written in the early years after the exile was over ; and 
 there is no real reason against our thinking so. The temple, 
 and sacrifices, are referred to in it ; yet the authors of these 
 psalms, whoever they may have been, had no slavish devotion 
 to sacrifices. The fiftieth psalm is as emphatic an assertion 
 of the superiority of prayer and thanksgiving over sacrifice, 
 as anything in Isaiah or Micah. So likewise is the sixty-ninth 
 psalm : 
 
 I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with 
 thanksgiving. 
 
 And it shall please Jehovah better than an ox, or a bullock that hath 
 horns and hoofs. 
 
 None the less was the author of that psalm enthusiastic 
 on behalf of the temple. " The zeal of thy house," he writes, 
 " hath eaten me up." Moreover, in the midst of all suffering, 
 he looks forward to the time when the imperfect restoration 
 of God's people which then had been attained should be made 
 complete and full : 
 
 For God will save Zion, and build the cities of Judah ; and they 
 shall abide there, and have it in possession. 
 
 I do not think that any one who reads the psalms carefully 
 will doubt that their order is in the main chronological ; there 
 may be exceptions to this, and the more ancient elements in the 
 book, those which came down from the reigns of David or Solomon, 
 would naturally interfere with the general sequence ; but on
 
 346 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [CH. 
 
 the whole the psalms down to the eighty-ninth inclusive show 
 the Jews at the time of their severest struggle with adverse 
 circumstances ; from the ninetieth psalm onwards there is distinct 
 recovery. All this is in favour of the view that I am here pro- 
 pounding, that the destruction of the temple, described in the 
 seventy-fourth and seventy-ninth psalms, is the destruction of a 
 post-captivity temple, earlier than that of Zerubbabel. There 
 is little doubt of this, I think, as far as the seventy-fourth psalm 
 is concerned. The author of that psalm says : " We see not 
 our signs ; there is no more any prophet " ; a complaint which 
 would not have been true when the temple of Solomon was 
 burnt by the soldiers of Nebuchadnezzar. Nor were there at 
 that time synagogues, which are referred to in the original Hebrew 
 of this psalm (though not in the Septuagint version of it). 
 
 The eighty-ninth psalm, the last of those with which I have 
 so far been dealing, is a sad expostulation with God for his delay 
 in coming to the relief of his servants; yet not a faithless expostula- 
 tion, or in any way a denial of the past sins of Israel; still, an 
 expostulation. We may, without any improbability, suppose it 
 written in the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus ; when everything 
 seemed at a standstill ; and though those incessant attacks, which 
 had wearied the Jews on their first return to Judaea, no longer 
 went on, still nothing seemed positively gained : hope had no 
 tangible ground to rest on. But a better day was soon to dawn, 
 and very soon we shall no longer be dependent on the psalms 
 as our only landmarks of history. 
 
 Yet I must linger a little longer upon the psalms. The eighty- 
 fourth psalm cannot be in its right place ; but it is not easy 
 to say whether it should be earlier or later than where we find 
 it. But the eighty-fifth psalm is the true introduction to the 
 happier state of things ; its proper place would be after the 
 eighty-ninth psalm, and before the ninetieth. It deserves to 
 bo quoted in its entirety : 
 
 Johovah, thon hast boon favourable unto thy land : them hast brought 
 back the captivity of Jacob. 
 
 Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people, them hast covered all 
 their sin. 
 
 Thou hast taken away all thy wrath: thou hast tiirned thyself from 
 the fierceness of thine anger. 
 
 Turn us, O (Jod of our salvation, and cause thine indignation against 
 us to cease. 
 
 Wilt thou be angry with us for ever ? wilt thou draw out thine 
 anger to all generations ? 
 
 Wilt thou not quicken us again ; that thy people may rejoice in thee ?
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 347 
 
 Show us thy mercy, Jehovah, and grant us thy salvation. 
 
 I will hear what Jehovah our God will speak ; for he will speak peace 
 unto his people, and to his saints ; but let them not turn again to folly. 
 
 Surely his salvation is nigh them that fear him, that glory may dwell 
 in our land. 
 
 Mercy and truth are met together ; righteousness and peace have 
 kissed each other. 
 
 Truth springeth up out of the earth ; and righteousness hath looked 
 down from heaven. 
 
 Yea, Jehovah shall give that which is good, and our land shall yield 
 her increase. 
 
 Righteousness shall go before him, and shall set us in the way of his steps. 
 
 Can there be a more beautiful expression of penitence, hope, 
 and trust, without any undue confidence or boasting, than this ? 
 We may conceive of it as the immediate prelude to the return 
 of Zerubbabel, with the full favour of the Persian monarch, 
 Darius Nothus. To this return I now come, but let me make 
 one parenthetical remark first. It is the Jews who had returned 
 to Jerusalem of whom I have been speaking throughout this 
 chapter ; but we must not forget that there were Jews remaining 
 at Babylon, and also in other parts of the Persian empire, who 
 were not to be despised or censured as recreants, but retained 
 in full the clear faith of Abraham, of Moses, and of the prophets. 
 These Jews had literary opportunities much exceeding those 
 of their brethren in Judaea and Jerusalem, who were battling 
 for their very existence, and whose only literary work was breath- 
 ing out their souls in lyrical psalms. The Jews in Babylonia 
 were called to quite another kind of work. They had, as far 
 as we can tell, a fairly quiet existence ; and they set themselves 
 to gather into one narrative the past history of the Israelite 
 people. The past glories of Israel, the intercourse of Jehovah 
 with his people, were never out of their minds ; and they set 
 themselves to record it all a literary work of the greatest compass. 
 They had plenty of materials before them, for Israel had always 
 been a literary people ; and slowly now began to be constructed 
 in their present form that long series of books, Genesis, Exodus, 
 Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, the 
 books of Samuel, the books of Kings. With the second book 
 of Kings, with the narrative of the destruction of Jerusalem 
 and the beginning of the Babylonian exile, this history terminated ; 
 the Jewish historians did not care to go beyond that point ; 
 the glories of Israel came to an end when Israel was carried 
 away from the land which God had given them; the years of 
 shame and punishment might fitly be buried in silence. This-
 
 348 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [OH. 
 
 great historical work must have been completed some time in 
 the fifth century, we do not know exactly when. 
 
 But it is to the history of Zerubbabel and his successors 
 that I am coming now, and for this there are needed quite a 
 different set of historical documents ; the books of Ezra and 
 Nehemiah ; the first book of Esdras (the first of those books 
 which are called the Apocrypha) ; and in due course the Antiqui- 
 ties of Josephus, book xi. cc. 7 and 8 : and with all these 
 must be compared the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah, 
 which relate not only to the rebuilding of the temple by Zerub- 
 babel, but also (in Zechariah's prophecies) to the subsequent 
 history ; and lastly, the Aramaic papyri recently discovered 
 at Assuan in Egypt must be placed in their proper relation 
 to the authorities previously mentioned, which have been known 
 from time immemorial. In the fitting together of all these 
 diverse authorities some skill is necessary, for to bring them 
 into agreement with one another is not altogether plain sailing; 
 but I shall hope to reserve the most difficult arguments for the 
 Appendix ; in the present chapter I will try to give plain narrative. 
 
 One remark I may make at starting about the first book 
 of Esdras. It is probably the translation of a lost Hebrew 
 original ; and Sir Henry Howorth has ably argued 1 that it is 
 of higher value than our book of Ezra. I cannot go quite so 
 far ; but it seems to me more nearly equal in authority to the 
 book of Ezra than is generally supposed. And there is this 
 very noteworthy point in it. The inference which every one 
 would draw at once from the book of Ezra, if chapters ii. 1-iv. 5 
 were excluded from that book, that Zerubbabel rebuilt the temple 
 during the reign of Darius Nothus, or between the years 422 
 418 B.C., is much more immediately to be drawn from the first 
 book of Esdras; for in the first book of Esdras Zerubbabel is 
 stated to have returned from Babylon to Jerusalem for the first 
 time in the reign of Darius, and the sequence of the kings in the 
 book makes it clear that this is Darius Nothus. Notwith- 
 standing this, the writer of the first book of Esdras had not 
 been able wholly to escape the influence of the belief which 
 connected Zerubbabel with the return under Cyrus, and this 
 belief dominates the latter part of his fifth chapter (from verse 47 
 
 1 The observations on this subject by Sir Henry Howorth (whose great merit 
 I am glad to see recognised by the American Professor Torrey) are to be found in 
 the Proceedings of the Society of lliblical Archaeology, vols. xxin. and XXIV. and in the 
 columns of the Academy and of the Thinker (which last I have not seen) and possibly 
 in other places.
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 349 
 
 onwards) and is implied in a single verse (the 18th) of his sixth 
 chapter. I follow, however, the main tenor of the first book 
 of Esdras, which also is the true purport of the book of Ezra. 
 
 It is probable that, even towards the close of the reign of 
 Artaxerxes Longimanus, there had been some softening on the 
 part of the chief statesmen of Persia towards the struggling 
 Jewish settlers in Jerusalem and Judaea. But it was in the 
 first year of the king who followed this Artaxerxes (i.e. Darius 
 Nothus) that Zerubbabel and his large company departed from 
 Babylon and came to Jerusalem, and it was in the second year 
 of this Darius that the rebuilding of the temple began 1 . It 
 would seem that even then, the hostile neighbours of the Jews 
 made a last effort to prevent the rebuilding of it. But the 
 hostility was much less bitter than it had been ; and we are told 
 that the actual decree of Cyrus, permitting the rebuilding of 
 the temple, was found by king Darius at Ecbatana, and no 
 more obstacle was put in the way of the Jewish rebuilders. 
 
 And now we come to undisputed contemporary authority 
 as to what happened during the rebuilding ; the authority of 
 the prophets Haggai and Zechariah. Haggai comes slightly 
 the first. We learn from him that at the beginning of the sixth 
 month of the second year of Darius, the rebuilding of the temple 
 had not been started, the Jewish nobles having been occupied in 
 repairing and adorning their own houses. Let me quote the passage : 
 
 Thus speaketh Jehovah Sabaoth, saying, This people say, It is not 
 the time for us to come, the time for Jehovah's house to be built. Then 
 came the word of Jehovah by Haggai the prophet, saying, Is it a time 
 for you yourselves to dwell in your cieled houses, while this house lieth 
 waste ? . . . Thus saith Jehovah Sabaoth : Consider your ways. Go up 
 to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house ; and I will take 
 pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith Jehovah. Ye looked for much, 
 and, lo, it came to little ; and when ye brought it home, I did blow it away. 
 Why ? saith Jehovah Sabaoth. Because of mine house that lieth waste, 
 while ye run every man to his own house. Haggai i. 2-4, 79. 
 
 Observe, Haggai does not refer to any help in money or 
 materials which Darius was supplying to the Jews ; they are 
 themselves to go up to the mountain, and bring wood from thence 
 for the temple structure. And though it may possibly be true 
 that Darius did at a later date give material help to the Jews 
 in their rebuilding, as would be inferred from Ezra vi. 8, still 
 we must not confidently affirm this ; the compiler of the books 
 of Ezra and Nehemiah was, as I have before remarked, not 
 
 1 Ezra iv. 24 ; 1 Esdras iv. 58-v. 3, vi. 1, 2.
 
 350 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [CH. 
 
 above the use of imagination to decorate his history, and it would 
 seem to him (as to Josephus at a later time) that the favour 
 shown by Persian kings was a real honour to the Jews ; and 
 in view of the silence of both Haggai and Zechariah, I hardly 
 believe in this royal grant. 
 
 The second chapter of Haggai contains a remarkable passage. 
 The glory of Solomon's temple was a great tradition among 
 the Jews ; and the more recent temple, the temple of the first 
 half of our book of Psalms, was blended in memory with Solomon's 
 temple. Now some of the Jews who saw Zerubbabel's new 
 structure beginning to rise made disparaging remarks on its 
 insignificance. As the rebuilding had not been a full month 
 in progress, the new structure was not likely to show much 
 splendour ; but Haggai's reply to these murmurers must be 
 quoted : 
 
 Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory ? and 
 how do ye see it now ? is it not in your eyes as nothing T Yet now 
 be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith Jehovah ; and be strong, O Joshua, son 
 of Jehozadak, the high priest, and be strong, all ye people of the land, 
 saith Jehovah, and work ; for I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts, 
 according to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out 
 of Egypt, and my spirit abode among you : fear ye not. For thus saith 
 the Lord of hosts : Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, 
 and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land ; and I will shake all nations, 
 and the desirable things of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house 
 with glory, saith the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is 
 mine, saith the Lord of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall bo 
 greater than the former, saith the Lord of hosts : and in this place will 
 I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts. 
 
 If, as I believe, these words were written in 422 B.C., it was 
 not impossible that some might be present who remembered 
 the temple whose destruction is commemorated in the seventy- 
 fourth psalm, which event I have placed in the reign of Xerxes, 
 perhaps in 483 B.C. But it is not necessary to suppose that the 
 temple so destroyed was a very magnificent one; it had "carved 
 work " (Psalm Ixxiv. 7) ; but it was no doubt exalted in memory, 
 and in the deep darkness of that period many were likely to think 
 that this temple was Solomon's temple, so famed in tradition. 
 Wo must not suppose that the Jews who murmured dissatisfaction 
 at the small beginnings of Zerubbabel's temple had any accurate 
 measure of comparison with the temple which they may have 
 seen in their boyhood. Indeed, though Haggai says, " Who is 
 left among you that saw this house in its former glory ? " it docs 
 not follow that any of those whom he addressed had actually
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 351 
 
 seen that former house. Haggai would not necessarily know 
 their history ; and a depreciatory comparison of the present 
 with the past was in any case natural enough. 
 
 I have quoted the most remarkable passages in the prophet 
 Haggai, but I may add to these his last verse, written when 
 the rebuilding of the temple had been three months in progress, 
 because it shows the exalted hopes which were set on Zerubbabel, 
 as the descendant of the ancient kings of Judah : 
 
 In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, will I take thee, O Zerubbabel, 
 my servant, the son of Shealtiel, saith Jehovah, and I will make thee 
 as a signet ; for I have chosen thee, saith the Lord of hosts. 
 
 The prophecies of Haggai cover a period of nearly four months ; 
 the prophecies of Zechariah begin about a month before those 
 of Haggai terminate, and extend certainly over more than four 
 years ; but how much longer we cannot say, owing to the absence 
 of dates in the latter part of the book. There is a quaintness 
 of style in him throughout ; but his thoughts are sometimes 
 of great beauty ; and he is distinguished among all the prophets 
 for the quiet assurance with which he regards the divine approval 
 as resting on Jerusalem and on the Jews. Thus in his first 
 chapter he represents Jehovah as saying : 
 
 I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy. And 
 I am very sore displeased with the nations that are at ease : for I was 
 but a little displeased, and they helped on the affliction. Therefore 
 thus saith Jehovah : I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies ; my house 
 shall be built in it, saith Jehovah Sabaoth. 
 
 Zechariah, like Haggai, is full of confidence in Zerubbabel ; 
 in his fourth chapter he writes thus : 
 
 This is the word of Jehovah unto Zerubbabel saying, Not by might, 
 nor by power, but by my spirit, saith Jehovah Sabaoth. Who art thou, 
 O great mountain ? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain : and 
 he shall bring forth the headstone with shoutings of Grace, grace unto it. 
 Moreover the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, The hands of 
 Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house ; his hands shall also 
 finish it ; and thou shalt know that Jehovah Sabaoth hath sent me unto 
 you. For who hath despised the day of small things ? 
 
 Not less enthusiastic is Zechariah over Joshua the high priest ; 
 twice over does he hail him by the title of " the Branch " (iii. 8 
 and vi. 12) ; and adds that " he shall build the temple of Jehovah, 
 and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne ; 
 and he shall be a priest upon his throne " ; and Zechariah further 
 says, plainly referring to Zerubbabel and Joshua, " The counsel 
 of peace shall be between them both."
 
 352 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [CH. 
 
 From this mention of " the Branch 1 ," we see that Zechariah 
 possessed a copy of part (at any rate) of Jeremiah's prophecies ; 
 for Jeremiah had twice spoken of "a righteous Branch 1 " as 
 ruling in Judah, and as saving Judah and Israel (Jeremiah xxiii. 5, 
 xxxiii. 15, 16). From Jeremiah also then must Zechariah have 
 derived that number of seventy years, during which Jehovah 
 had been angry with his people ; it is a round number, and not 
 meant to be exact (compare Zechariah i. 12 with vii. 5). It 
 is to be admitted that Zechariah wrote carelessly; a prophet 
 himself, he preferred setting down the number which had prophetic 
 authorisation, and which was familiar to him ; he had no access 
 to chronology, by which the real number (much exceeding seventy) 
 might have been found 2 . To the mass of the Jews the time was 
 simply " these so many years," during which they had fasted 
 in sorrow. 
 
 But now Zechariah bids them recover ; and beautiful are 
 the phrases in which he announces this. Thus in his eighth 
 chapter he writes : 
 
 Thus saith Jehovah Sabaoth : There shall yet old men and old women 
 dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, every man with his staff in his hand 
 for very age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls 
 playing in the streets thereof. Thus saith the Lord of hosts: If it be 
 marvellous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in those days, should 
 it also be marvellous in mine eyes ? 
 
 And again : 
 
 The word of Jehovah Sabaoth came unto me, saying, Thus saith 
 the Lord of hosts : The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the 
 fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be to 
 the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts ; therefore 
 love truth and peace. Thus saith Jehovah Sabaoth : It shall yet come 
 to pass, that there shall come peoples, and the inhabitants of many cities : 
 and the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, Let us go 
 speedily to entreat the favour of Jehovah, and to seek the Lord of hosts: 
 I will go also. Yea, many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek 
 Jehovah Sabaoth in Jerusalem, and to entreat the favour of Jehovah. 
 Thus saith Jehovah Sabaoth: In those days it shall come to pass, that 
 ten men shall take hold, out of all the languages of the nations, shall 
 even take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with 
 you, for we have heard that God is with you. 
 
 What a conversion of mourning into joy, of humiliation 
 into the far-reaching vistas of hope, is implied in these passages ! 
 
 1 The Hebrew word for " Branch " is the same in both prophets. 
 
 2 The mention of " .seventy yeans" like the mention in Haggai of some who may 
 have seen the former temple, is capable of being used as an argument against my 
 whole chronological scheme. I think I have explained both difficulties ; the reader 
 may judge.
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 353 
 
 Let the reader, after carefully observing the purport of these 
 passages of Zechariah, turn to that part of the book of Psalms 
 which is comprised between the 107th 1 and 138th inclusive, 
 and he will find in almost all these (the 109th psalm excepted) 
 the same kind of tone which animates Zechariah ; the tone 
 of relief after affliction, of sorrow for past transgressions, of 
 earnest desire to do right, of joyful trust in God, of hope for 
 the future. One verse alone out of these psalms I will quote 
 here ; it is the fourth verse of the 138th psalm : 
 
 All the kings of the earth shall give thee thanks, Jehovah, for they 
 have heard the words of thy mouth. 
 
 In this verse the universal range of that religion which the 
 Jewish nation were privileged to hold and to preach is intimated 
 as clearly as in the last passage which I quoted from Zechariah. 
 But indeed this whole series of psalms should be read side by 
 side with the first eight chapters of Zechariah ; their contents 
 show that they belong to the same period. That period, more- 
 over, was the period of highest excellence of the whole Jewish 
 nation ; there were greater individuals among them at other 
 times ; but never was the whole nation so great as now. 
 
 The point of history which I have now reached is illustrated 
 in a remarkable manner by the Aramaic papyri which were 
 discovered a few years ago (to be exact, in 1907) in an island 
 of the Nile, near Assuan in Upper Egypt. We learn from one 
 of these papyri, that in the year 419 B.C. (which is just a year 
 later than the date of the last passage which I quoted from 
 the prophet Zechariah), king Darius sent to instruct the Jews 
 of Egypt as to the manner of keeping the passover ; an act 
 which Eduard Meyer 2 (at page 92 of his work Der Papyrusfund 
 von Elephantine) justly considers most remarkable. Is not this 
 well-ascertained fact a strong corroboration of the statements 
 in the first book of Esdras, that the Darius who came after one 
 king Artaxerxes and before another king Artaxerxes (and who 
 therefore was Darius Nothus) took a great personal interest 
 in the Jews; does it not add to the probability that it was 
 he who sent Zerubbabel to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem ? 
 
 And now I come to the year 418 B.C., the sixth year of Darius 
 
 1 This splendid psalm (the 107th) would appear to commemorate the journey of 
 Zerubbabel to Jerusalem. The 118th psalm may probably celebrate the dedication 
 of the temple by Zerubbabel. 
 
 2 I must not implicate this distinguished scholar with my own way of regarding 
 the history. Meyer takes the ordinary view that Zerubbabel (and therefore Haggai 
 and Zechariah) lived in the reign of Darius son of Hystaspes ; and therefore a century 
 earlier than the date I have assigned to them. 
 
 M. D. A. 23
 
 354 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [CH. 
 
 Nothus. In this year the temple which had been begun in 422 
 B.C., was completed and dedicated, as we read in Ezra vi. 15, 16. 
 Following our book of Zechariah in its proper order, we come 
 to the ninth chapter ; and as the eighth chapter had referred 
 to the year 420 B.C., it is not unnatural that the ninth chapter 
 should refer to the year 418 B.C. ; and so from its contents 
 I infer that it does. Here is the passage which I mean : 
 
 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion ; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem ; 
 behold, thy king cometh unto thee : he is just, and having salvation : 
 lowly, and riding upon an ass, even upon a colt the foal of an ass. 
 
 Christian readers are so accustomed to give a Christian 
 interpretation to these words, that they are apt to forget that 
 the prophet who wrote them, who was so keenly interested 
 in Jerusalem, in the temple, and in the men of his own day, 
 must have been referring to contemporaries, and to some con- 
 temporary event. Were there not contemporaries, was there 
 not a contemporary event, likely to call forth the words that 
 I have quoted ? Yes : the dedication of the temple was such 
 an event ; Zerubbabel and Joshua (or Jeshua the form of the 
 name varies) were such persons. I have already quoted from 
 Zechariah the exalted terms in which he speaks of Zerubbabel 
 and Joshua : I do not doubt that it is Zerubbabel whom he here 
 speaks of as " thy king " ; for Zerubbabel was a descendant of 
 the ancient kings of Judah. The words just quoted plainly refer 
 to some procession. Would not a procession be a natural pre- 
 liminary to the dedication of the temple ? Must we not conclude, 
 in view of the fact that all the preceding chapters of Zechariah 
 were written while the temple was being rebuilt, and have frequent 
 references to that rebuilding, so this ninth chapter describes 
 the dedication after it had been rebuilt ? That is the natural 
 sequence of the prophecy, and I know no reason why it should 
 not be regarded as the true one. 
 
 But this ninth chapter of Zechariah contains other topics, 
 most natural to be dwelt on at the time of the consummation 
 of so much labour, when the fruit was being gathered in of the 
 years of long endurance and faithfulness. Judah and Ephraim 
 or, in one word, Israel are declared to be very great and victorious 
 among the peoples of the earth. Naturally the prophet docs 
 not include Persia among the nations in comparison with which 
 Judah and Israel shine out as preeminent; for Persia was the 
 sovereign country under whose protection Judah and Ephraim 
 alike lived, and the then king of Persia had been most friendly
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 355 
 
 to the Jews : but all the other neighbouring countries Tyre, 
 Philistia, Greece, Assyria, Egypt are mentioned as about to 
 dwindle before Israel. The mention of Greece (Javan) in this 
 connexion is especially noticeable. A century before this time, 
 in the beginning of the reign of Darius son of Hystaspes, Greece 
 had been comparatively little known among eastern nations ; 
 so that when this same Darius son of Hystaspes heard that the 
 Athenians had burned the city of Sardis, he asked, " Who are 
 the Athenians ? " But in the reign of Darius Nothus, in 418 B.C., 
 the Athenians, the Spartans, and the other principal Greek 
 States, were known to be warlike and powerful ; not without 
 glory had the great battles of . Marathon, Salamis, and Platsea 
 been fought and won. So Zechariah, living in this latter reign, 
 might well reckon Greece among the States which were powerful 
 and yet about to yield to the united strength of Judah and 
 Ephraim. 
 
 But what did Zechariah mean by Ephraim ? Rather let 
 me ask, what should he mean by it but the people inhabiting 
 the country once inhabited by the northern Israelites ? It 
 may be said as an objection to this, that the people who in the 
 time of Zechariah inhabited that country, or in other words 
 the Samaritans, were not of true Israelite blood at all, and were 
 besides consistent enemies of the Jews. Those who attend 
 to the evidence will, I think, reverse such a judgment, if they 
 should happen traditionally to have held it. Afterwards, but 
 not now, were the Samaritans hostile to the Jews. The racial 
 question must, however, first be inquired into : is it true that 
 the Samaritans were not of Israelite blood ? I said, early in 
 the present chapter, that the Samaritans were of mingled blood 
 (compare 2 Kings xvii. 24 with Jeremiah xli. 4) ; but I now add 
 that the predominant strain in their blood was, after all, Israelite. 
 Whether we look to the fact that the Samaritans in the after history 
 were as strictly monotheistic as were the Jews, and practised 
 circumcision as faithfully as the Jews did ; or at the comparatively 
 small number (some 27,000) which Sargon in his inscriptions 
 claims to have transported to Assyria ; we must conclude that 
 it was the nobles, the wealthy, and the priestly class in Samaria 
 who were thus transported, but not the commonalty. Hence 
 by far the greater number of the inhabitants of the Samaritan 
 country were true Israelites ; and their sentiments towards 
 the Jews would be of a mingled nature, capable of being turned 
 to friendship or to hostility according to the trend of events. . 
 
 232
 
 356 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [CH. 
 
 That the Samaritan leaders, being of foreign blood, should have 
 joined with other races in trying to hinder the Jews from re- 
 building their walls and temple in the reign of Artaxerxes I, 
 as narrated in Ezra iv. 7-24, cannot surprise us. But I incline 
 to think that the help which in Ezra iv. 1, 2, they are said to 
 have offered to Zerubbabel is a true fact (though misplaced 
 where it stands in the narrative) and was meant in a genuinely 
 friendly sense ; and though Zerubbabel mistrusted it (and thereby 
 probably missed a great opportunity), we have reason to say 
 that the disposition of the Samaritans towards the Jews was 
 not at once turned to positive enmity. 
 
 What reason is there for saying this ? It lies in a certain 
 incident which took place in the year 407 B.C. We know from 
 the Aramaic papyri recently discovered near Assuan (to which 
 I referred just now) that in that year the Jews in the island 
 of Elephantine near Syene (now called Assuan) desired to obtain 
 leave to rebuild their own temple in Elephantine (which had 
 been violently destroyed by their enemies) ; and in order to 
 obtain leave, they wrote petitions both to Bagohi, the governor 
 of Judaea at that time, and to Delaja and Schelemja, sons of 
 Sinuballit, the governor of Samaria. Moreover the answer to 
 these Jews of Elephantine came in a letter jointly written by 
 Bagohi and Delaja. The governor of Judaea, and a son of the 
 governor of Samaria (acting, it must be supposed, on behalf 
 of his father) make answer conjointly to a request made by 
 these Egyptian Jews ; and, in the main, give permission for 
 what is asked. Could these two important officials have acted 
 together if the states which they represented had been at bitter 
 enmity with each other ? It is impossible. Therefore, in the 
 year 407 B.C. the enmity between Jews and Samaritans as such, 
 which raged so bitterly afterwards, had not yet begun. Moreover, 
 it has been remarked by Lidzbarski and by Meyer (Der Papyrus- 
 fund von Elephantine, pp. 86 sqq.) that while the petition of the 
 Jews of Elephantine is in the main granted, they are not permitted 
 to offer whole burnt offerings in their temple when rebuilt ; 
 which they had done previously. The most reasonable account 
 to be given of the refusal of this part of their request (for they 
 had explicitly asked to be allowed to sacrifice these whole burnt 
 offerings) is that the Jews of Jerusalem wished to mark the 
 inferiority of the temple at Elephantine to their own temple 
 at Jerusalem. It confirms this view of the matter, that the Jews 
 of Elephantine had, we find, written previous letters, both to
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 357 
 
 Bagohi, and also to Jehohanan, the high priest at Jerusalem, 
 and to other important Jews there, with the same request as 
 that in the letter which has been discovered ; but had received 
 no answer. Clearly the Jews at Jerusalem found the request 
 rather a difficult one to deal with ; and this makes it the more 
 striking that they should have taken counsel with the Samaritans 
 as to the answer to give to it. 
 
 Up to the year 407 B.C. then, there had been no fatal breach 
 between Jews and Samaritans. I have said nothing about the 
 death of Zerubbabel ; no inference can be drawn from the Bible 
 as to the year in which it took place ; it is likely that Bagohi 
 succeeded him (and at any rate Bagohi held the same office). 
 So also it is likely that Jehohanan succeeded Jeshua as high 
 priest ; which it is true is not what we should gather from 
 Nehemiah xii. 10 or from Josephus, Antiquities, book xi. c. 5 ; but 
 we must be prepared for omissions in these ancient records 1 . 
 
 Though, as I have said, the feud between Jews and Samaritans 
 had not begun in 407 B.C., it cannot have been long after this 
 that it began. I have spoken of the ardour with which Zechariah, 
 in his ninth chapter, looked forward to the union of Judah and 
 Ephraim, and their united victorious career. The same tone 
 is continued in his tenth chapter : 
 
 "I will strengthen the house of Judah" cries the prophet, speaking in 
 God's name, " and I will save the house of Joseph, and I will bring them 
 again, for I have mercy upon them ; and they shall be as though I had 
 not cast them off ; for I am Jehovah their God, and I will hear them. 
 And they of Ephraim shall be like a mighty man, and their heart shall 
 rejoice as through wine ; yea, their children shall see it, and rejoice ; 
 their heart shall be glad in Jehovah." 
 
 Judah and Ephraim are to be united, and in their union are 
 to be all-powerful ; that is Zechariah's message in his ninth 
 and tenth chapters. Alas ! in his eleventh chapter all is changed. 
 It is not easy to interpret everything which the prophet says 
 in this chapter ; but his main theme is plain ; there has been 
 misgovernment, and the result of it is disruption and disaster. 
 I will quote his main metaphor ; it occurs in three verses which 
 are not continuous, but the meaning is obviously continuous : 
 
 And I took unto me two staves ; the one I called Grace 2 , and the 
 other I called Union 2 ; and I fed the flock. . . . And I took my staff Grace, 
 and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made 
 
 1 See further remarks on this point in the first Appendix to this chapter. 
 
 2 In our versions, " Beauty " and " Bands." In the margin of our Revised 
 Version, " Graciousness " and " Binders," or " Union." On the whole, " Grace " 
 and " Union " seem to me to express best the intention of the original.
 
 358 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [CH. 
 
 with all the peoples.. . .Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even Union, 
 that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. Zechariah 
 xi. 7, 10, 14. 
 
 From these words we perceive that a tragedy has taken place. 
 When did it happen ? How did it happen ? 
 
 It was indeed a tragedy ; not indeed known for such by the 
 Jews themselves, either in that age or at any time afterwards, 
 up to the present day ; for a conflict was taking place in which 
 the narrower party were victorious, and the whole character 
 of the Jews was narrowed thereby. That was the result which 
 evoked the poignant reproaches of Zechariah. He would have 
 had Judah and Ephraim Jews and Samaritans take each 
 other to their hearts as friends and allies ; but there were others 
 who did not desire this consummation, and these others were 
 victorious. 
 
 The direct Biblical history says nothing about the conflict 
 to which I have referred until the arrival of Ezra at Jerusalem 
 in the year 398 B.C., and even then glosses it over as far as possible ; 
 we see from the book of Ezra that it must have taken place 
 (for human nature does not suffer the tearing asunder of the 
 most sacred ties without some resistance) ; and the book of 
 Nehemiah has a few sentences which show that it did take place. 
 But the book of Nehemiah would not, if taken alone, give any 
 idea of the vehemence and duration of the quarrel which, in 
 the fourth century before Christ, tore asunder the Jews of Jeru- 
 salem. It is Josephus alone 1 from whom we learn this ; and 
 it is plain that Josephus had sources of information which are 
 at present wanting to us. Moreover, though Josephus is capable 
 of dealing with evidence in a very arbitrary way, his narrative 
 in that part of his history to which I now refer does so distinctly 
 supply a gap, and has so large an intrinsic probability, that we 
 cannot but accept it as truth, at least in its main purport and 
 effect. 
 
 I return now to the situation in Judaea and Jerusalem as 
 it existed about the end of the reign and the life of Darius Nothus. 
 That is, I think, about the time when the eleventh chapter of 
 Zechariah must have been written. For it was a time of trouble 
 in Persia : Egypt had revolted and had been lost ; there was 
 a struggle impending as to who should be king of Persia after 
 Darius ; and it was a time when trouble might naturally arise 
 in Judaea also. The two contending parties within the Jewish 
 
 1 Antiquities, book xi. cc. 7 and 8.
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 359 
 
 nation, those who wished the nation to follow with rigid obedience 
 the letter of the divine law, and those who felt within themselves 
 the motions of a wider and more generous spirit, were face to face ; 
 but we must infer from the words of Zechariah that the narrower 
 party were even then winning the day. This, as we have seen, 
 was a grief to Zechariah ; but his prophecy, clear and intelligible 
 up to the point which I have reached, becomes difficult after- 
 wards ; the thoughts are full of a kind of perplexed patriotism, 
 and are tender too, but what their precise mark is one can hardly 
 say. 
 
 The victory of the narrower party was at last secured by the 
 mission of Ezra. He came, sent by Artaxerxes Mnemon, who 
 was then in the seventh year of his reign ; about 398 B.C. was 
 the date of Ezra's coming to Jerusalem. He came to draw 
 a fence round the Jewish nation ; a fence prohibitive of friendly 
 intercourse with the nations round them ; a fence which barred 
 the way to that ideal toward which every noble impulse of the 
 Jewish nation tended, the ideal of a world friendly to Israel, 
 obedient to God. Though the Samaritans are not named in 
 the four chapters of the book of Ezra which contain Ezra's 
 personal narrative, we cannot doubt that he reckoned them with 
 Moabites, Edomites, and Ammonites, as a nation with whom 
 the Jews were not on any account to hold intimate intercourse. 
 
 He came to Jerusalem with a large troop of followers ; and 
 at once held a conference with the chief men, doubtless those 
 of the severer party. Thej" told him (what can hardly have 
 been news to him), that many marriages had taken place between 
 the Jews and the neighbouring nations ; on hearing which he 
 says : "I plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, 
 and sat down astonied." So he sat all day till the time of the 
 evening oblation (he was in the temple) ; and a great congregation 
 of men and women and children gathered about him, as was 
 natural ; for he was a great man, and the people of Jerusalem 
 knew that something important was going to take place. Then 
 at last he fell on his knees, and with tears and blushes (as he tells 
 us) he confessed to God this most grievous sin of the people 
 of Judah, that many of them had married women from the 
 abominable races who lived round them. 
 
 Far must we be from sympathising with his tears, his blushes, 
 and his confession. It is curious to think that he would have 
 absolutely prohibited the marriage of Boaz with Ruth. Possibly 
 the writer of the book of Deuteronomy would also have prohibited'
 
 360 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [CH. 
 
 thdt marriage (xxiii. 3) ; but we cannot be certain of his meaning ; 
 and the book of Deuteronomy is mild compared with Ezra. By 
 Ezra, not only were such marriages prohibited in the future, 
 but those then existing were annulled. The last chapter of 
 Ezra relates how this lawgiver of Judah compelled every Jew 
 who had married a non-Jewish wife to send that wife away, 
 and not only that wife but the children he had had by her. This 
 stringent measure was not of course carried out in its full scope 
 immediately, and it is clear that those who were not in the highest 
 station were often, perhaps generally, able to conceal the fact 
 that their wives were foreigners ; but there was no open resistance 
 to the decree. 
 
 Let us say what can be said for Ezra. He was a strong 
 man ; his narrowness gave him strength. It is probable that 
 (in spite of the noble prophet Zechariah) the greater number 
 of those in Judah who desired the broadening of the religious 
 rule under which they lived, desired it for selfish reasons, without 
 any proper care for the preservation of the religious faith which 
 they had received, or for the welfare of the entire community. 
 Ezra was at any rate not selfish ; and he introduced order and 
 rule into the Jewish nation, though not an order and a rule 
 by any means wholly to be approved of. The absolute severance 
 between Jew and Gentile which he enforced was a real calamity 
 to the Jewish people in the after ages. Still, some caution 
 on the part of the Jews, in their intermarriage with foreigners, 
 was at that time desirable. The Jews were carrying down to 
 their posterity and to all mankind a treasure of great value, 
 the knowledge of God through personal experience, and especially 
 the perception that the highest morality of man is sustained 
 and strengthened by God. It was quite possible that this treasure 
 might be made more fruitful, and might gather for itself a larger 
 area on which to expand, by the nation intermarrying with 
 foreigners. On the other hand, such intermarriage, if carried 
 on without forethought and religious feeling, might result in 
 corruption of the religious ideal, and disregard of the religious 
 spirit. Against this latter danger Ezra was guarding, but in 
 a temper that might almost be called one of panic ; and at 
 any rate the annulling of existent marriages was a step wholly 
 indefensible. 
 
 The immediate sequel might almost lead one to think, though 
 I do not believe it would be a true inference, that the measures 
 of Ezra led to actual fighting between the Jews and their
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 361 
 
 neighbours. Thirteen years after Ezra'^ arrival at Jerusalem, 
 another person, enjoying quite equal consideration with Ezra, 
 and sent by the same Persian king Artaxerxes, arrived on an 
 important errand ; namely, to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. 
 This was Nehemiah, who had been cupbearer to king Artaxerxes, 
 and whose zeal for the rebuilding of the walls had been kindled 
 by a message from Jerusalem which he had received while actually 
 serving the king. The message ran thus : 
 
 The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are 
 in great affliction and reproach: the wall also of Jerusalem is broken down, 
 and the gates thereof are burned with fire. Nehemiah i. 3. 
 
 This sounds like the narration of a recent calamity ; but if 
 anything so serious as the entire destruction of the walls of 
 Jerusalem had happened during the thirteen years between the 
 arrival of Ezra and the arrival of Nehemiah, it is very strange 
 that no hint of it should have survived in the writings which 
 we possess. There is, however, an inference that may be fairly 
 drawn from the passage just quoted, and that is that the Jews 
 of Jerusalem had suddenly become sensible that they were 
 in danger from their neighbours. Intermarriage with those 
 neighbours, which had become a common practice, had had 
 a peaceful tendency ; Ammonites and Moabites were beginning 
 to look upon the Jews with less dislike than formerly. But 
 when these marriages were rescinded, and when the discarded 
 wives were sent back (as it must be supposed they were) to their 
 places of birth, with their children accompanying them, it may 
 be conceived with what intensity the old unpopularity of the 
 Jews would spring up again ; and it is very likely that the neigh- 
 bouring nations would threaten the Jews with a warlike attack ; 
 and the Jews would become suddenly sensible that their city 
 was undefended, in a way in which they had not felt it before. 
 They would send to Nehemiah, who was in great favour with 
 the king ; and the result would be what we have seen. It is 
 probable also that they would have another reason for sending 
 to the king's court, namely, to ask for the appointment of a 
 governor ; for we see that Nehemiah, when he arrived at Jerusalem, 
 immediately became governor. It is quite possible that he was 
 successor to that Bagohi, who is mentioned in the Assuan papyri 
 as governor of Judsea in the year 407 B.C. (the date of Nehemiah's 
 arrival at Jerusalem being 385 B.C.) ; but we do not know whether 
 this was the case. 
 
 Nehemiah was an energetic man, and the walls of Jerusalem'
 
 362 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [CH. 
 
 were actually rebuilt in 52 days. We might possibly doubt 
 this statement, and prefer that of Josephus, who tells us that 
 the walls took two years and four months to rebuild. But 
 Nehemiah must have known the fact (if the narrative ascribed 
 to him be genuine, as I believe it to be) ; and his statement 
 is the more probable of the two. For the Jews were in urgent 
 need of speed ; and we have a parallel instance in the building 
 of the walls of Athens in 477 B.C., when the Athenians were 
 on the alert to forestall opposition on the part of Sparta. We 
 must accept the Biblical statement ; and the description (in 
 Nehemiah's personal narrative) of the demeanour of the leading 
 adversaries of the Jews on this occasion is vivid and interesting. 
 Nor was Nehemiah less concerned, and laudably concerned, 
 in saving the poorer Jews from usurious exactions. 
 
 But as regards the keeping of the law of the Pentateuch with 
 literal exactness, and as regards the prohibition of marriage 
 with foreigners, Nehemiah was quite at one with Ezra ; and 
 his action, perhaps about 360 B.C., produced results even more 
 notable than the action of Ezra in the marriage question. And 
 now I come to the point where we have to rely in great measure 
 on the narrative of Josephus, and some preliminary remarks on 
 this part of his history are necessary. 
 
 It is perfectly evident that Josephus made no use at all 
 of our books of Ezra and Nehemiah ; the first book of Esdras 
 was, however, a great authority with him ; and he had access 
 to some history of Nehemiah, in which Nehemiah's personal 
 narrative was much less pronounced than in our canonical book 
 of Nehemiah. Also Josephus possessed the book of Esther, 
 in a form not very different from that which we find in our Bibles ; 
 and he possessed something like our apocryphal book of Esther 
 as well. In fact, in the Bible as Josephus possessed it, Chronicles 
 passed by a direct connexion into the first book of Esdras, which 
 in its turn passed into a brief narrative concerning Nehemiah, 
 and this again passed into the story of Esther, as told both in 
 our Bible and in our Apocrypha. From the Bible which lay 
 before him in this way, Josephus proceeded to draw his own 
 history in 1 he first six chapters of the eleventh book of his Antiqui- 
 ties. Now the probability is that all the Biblical books thus 
 named, possessed by Josephus, once existed in Hebrew, and 
 that Josephus possessed them in Hebrew. If so, he found the 
 following Persian kings named in order : Cyrus, Artaxerxes, 
 Darius, Artaxerxes, Ahasuerus. If Josephus only possessed these
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 363 
 
 books in Greek, Ahasuerus would disappear, and a third Artaxerxes 
 take his place. Whether Josephus possessed them in Hebrew 
 or in Greek, he in either case recognised five Persian kings as 
 being named in them ; and he knew enough of secular history 
 to be aware that the first five Persian kings, beginning with 
 Cyrus, were not named as his Biblical authorities named them. 
 Consequently, by a most uncritical procedure, and without 
 giving any warning to his reader of what he was doing, he changed 
 the names of these kings into what he assumed the Biblical 
 writer must have meant ; and instead of their names appearing 
 as Cyrus, Artaxerxes, Darius, Artaxerxes, Ahasuerus, they appear 
 in his Antiquities as Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes. 
 The result is that he represents Ezra and Nehemiah as living 
 in the reign of Xerxes, or between 485 B.C. and 465 B.C. This 
 is a most extraordinary transformation of history, but Josephus 
 was not at all aware of the pitfalls that lay in his way, and we 
 must not think too badly of him as a historian because, meeting 
 with a historical difficulty, he cut the Gordian knot in a way 
 at which a modern critic must smile. He really had some 
 knowledge, though an inaccurate knowledge, of the reigns of 
 Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius son of Hystaspes, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes 
 the first, called Longimanus (under whom he places Esther). 
 But of Persian history after Artaxerxes Longimanus, Josephus 
 had very little knowledge indeed. 
 
 Yet Josephus was in possession of a document, derived from 
 some quarter unknown to us, which gives us important and even 
 startling information respecting the years between 360 B.C. and 
 320 B.C. This information is found in the seventh and eighth 
 chapters of the eleventh book of his Antiquities. An Artaxerxes, 
 manifestly Artaxerxes Ochus, is mentioned ; also a Darius, who 
 is none other than Darius Codomannus, the last of the Persian 
 kings, dethroned by Alexander of Macedon. Part of the narra- 
 tive contained in these chapters, the reverence paid by Alexander 
 to the Jewish high priest, may fairly be disbelieved ; and there 
 seem to be some minor errors. But the first story contained 
 in these chapters is entirely probable ; and the second story is 
 supported in its main point by the book of Nehemiah. 
 
 The first story runs thus. King Artaxerxes had a minister 
 called Bagoses ; who, from the date implied, and from his 
 tyrannical character, is evidently the same as the Bagoas of 
 whom Diodorus tells us the unscrupulous minister of Artaxerxes 
 Ochus. Now Joiada, the high priest at Jerusalem, had died ; his-
 
 364 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [CH. 
 
 two sons, Jesus and John, quarrelled for the succession. Bagoses 
 favoured Jesus ; but the brothers came to blows in the temple, 
 and John slew Jesus, thus becoming high priest. Bagoses, in 
 great anger, and in spite of the remonstrances of the Jews, 
 entered the most sacred parts of the temple, and for seven years 
 afterwards continued to fine the Jews heavily. No Jew would 
 have invented such a story as this, and we must account it true. 
 For the second story, let me begin with the book of Nehemiah. 
 In that book the most prominent adversary of Nehemiah is 
 Sanballat, who is called the Horonite, but who is plainly an 
 inhabitant of Samaria, and a very influential inhabitant though 
 not, as far as the book of Nehemiah tells us, the governor 
 of that province 1 . Josephus does not tell us anything about 
 the early history of Sanballat, but he tells us that he was made 
 governor of Samaria by the last king of Persia, i.e. by Darius 
 Codomannus ; and he adds that Sanballat died at an advanced 
 age in the year in which Alexander took Gaza, i.e. 332 B.C. If 
 Sanballat was eighty years old then, he would be about twenty- 
 seven in the year 385 B.C., when Nehemiah came to Jerusalem 
 and rebuilt the walls ; after which time unfriendly relations 
 between the two existed continuously. But Nehemiah left 
 Jerusalem in the year 373 B.C. to resume some post at the court 
 of king Artaxerxes Mnemon ; and during his absence the Jews 
 reverted to laxer habits ; among which sabbath-breaking is 
 mentioned, and also the foreign marriages, which continued 
 in spite of Ezra's stern prohibition of them. Nehemiah, on 
 his return, acted stringently against both these irregularities ; 
 and when a son of Joiada, the prospective high priest, actually 
 married a daughter of Sanballat, Nehemiah, in great indignation, 
 banished the offender and his wife 2 . Now this marriage, 
 and the departure of the offender from Jerusalem, is mentioned 
 by Josephus also ; though Josephus says it was a grandson 
 of Joiada who married the daughter of Sanballat. We must 
 prefer the authority of the book of Nehemiah in this, and also 
 in the date suggested for the event ; for it could hardly have 
 happened later than 360 B.C., whereas from Josephus it would 
 appear to have happened a quarter of a century after that. 
 It is impossible, however, to doubt that the book of Nehemiah 
 
 1 He is no doubt a namesake of that Sinuballit. who was mentioned a few pages 
 back as friendly to the Jews, on the authority of the Aramaic papyri ; but the Sanballat 
 of the book of Nehemiah was very unfriendly to them. 
 
 * Nehemiah xiii. 28.
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 365 
 
 and Josephus refer to the same event ; and the value of Josephus 
 here is that he indicates the great importance of the event. 
 It led to the building of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim ; 
 and also, when once Manasseh (for that was the name of San- 
 ballat's son-in-law) had settled in Samaria, other Jews also who 
 had married foreign wives joined him there. There was from 
 this time forward, for many years, a great drain of valuable 
 citizens from Judsea to Samaria, in consequence of the stringent 
 marriage prohibitions enforced in Judsea, and this was not only 
 in itself a loss to the Jews, but it was what made the bitter quarrel 
 between Jew and Samaritan irremediable. So memorable a 
 fact gives us a true key to the later Jewish history, and a key 
 not found in any other quarter. It is, as far as the Jews are 
 concerned, the great fact of the fourth century before Christ. 
 It put the seal on the narrow legislation of Ezra; it separated 
 the Jews, finally, from any intimate intercourse with the nations 
 of the world around them. That is a result which we may 
 ponder over ; we may draw lessons for ourselves from it ; but a 
 satisfactory result it was not. 
 
 Neither the fault of Ezra, nor that persistent Jewish narrowness 
 which resulted from it, ought to be disguised. But yet, let 
 the reader reflect on the whole story which I have told in the 
 present chapter ; on the long struggle, never yet adequately 
 recognised by historians, which the Jews underwent after they 
 began to return from the Babylonian captivity; on their suc- 
 cessful emergence from that struggle ; and let him say whether 
 the Jews do not appear in it a most noble, most worthy 
 people ? It is true that in the end, when they consolidated 
 their government under Ezra, they fell short of the great ideal 
 which their prophets had foretold as their future heritage. They 
 could not become, as a nation, the evangelists of the world. 
 But they had made great steps in that direction. We may 
 think, perhaps, that it was a needless effort which they made, 
 to get back to Jerusalem from Babylon. On the highest plane 
 of thought, no doubt, it was needless. But we must not demand 
 that every one shall be on the highest plane of thought. The 
 desire to return to Jerusalem was in their lifeblood ; they could 
 not get rid of it ; it was deeply commingled with their trust 
 in God. And how valiantly did they contend for it ! Not, 
 as in the ordinary histories is told, by the help of princes ; Cyrus 
 did not help them at all with money or arms ; even Darius Nothus 
 helped them more by his friendship than by material help ;
 
 366 THE RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM: [CH. 
 
 and when Darius Nothus came to the throne of Persia, the Jews 
 had gone through the brunt of the battle. 
 
 Finally, if it be asked with what degree of confidence I main- 
 tain the correctness of the story as I have told it, I answer 
 that, if the narratives given by Josephus in the eleventh book 
 of his Antiquities, about those two persons, Bagoses and Manasseh, 
 be substantially true, nothing will prevent the whole story of 
 the Jews after the Babylonian captivity, as I have told it, being 
 substantially true ; and I think the narratives in Josephus 
 are true, with some qualifications in detail. For further comments 
 on this subject, I must refer to the first Appendix to this chapter. 
 
 After Alexander of Macedon had subdued the Persian empire, 
 the Jews fell first under the dominion of the Ptolemies of Egypt ; 
 and the Ptolemies, though not always, yet generally, treated 
 them mildly and equitably. A certain sympathy, amid many 
 difficulties, began to be established between Greeks and Jews. 
 The book of Wisdom, with its Platonic zeal for the doctrine of 
 immortality, has the spirit of this time, though generally held to 
 have been composed in a later century. I do not know to what 
 period we can better refer Ecclesiastes, which (like Wisdom) 
 is nominally the work of king Solomon. I have been convinced 
 by the recent arguments of Mr J. H. Hart 1 that Ecclesiasticus 
 also belongs to the third century ; the great initial difficulty 
 of thinking so, the mention in the prologue of the " thirty- 
 eighth year of Euergetes the king " has, it seems to me, been 
 overcome by him successfully. Ecclesiasticus is a book full of 
 dignified thought, and though severe, yet philanthropic. The 
 writer hardly believes in the doctrine of immortality. We may 
 regret in him a narrowness towards the Samaritans ; and there 
 may be something of the common-place in the book. Yet the 
 common-place may sometimes fitly be spoken, especially when 
 combined with sincere and lofty feeling ; and such maxims as 
 the following are not quite common-place : 
 
 When a man hath finished, then he is but at the beginning. Ecclesi- 
 asticus xviii. 7. 
 
 Reprove thy neighbour ; it may be he said it not ; and if he hath 
 said it, that he may not say it again. Ibid. xix. 14. 
 
 A wise man will be silent till his time come. Ibid. xx. 1. 
 
 Many literary works, besides those above mentioned, were 
 completed by the Jews in the third century before Christ 
 probably the " Song of Songs " ; certainly the books of Chronicles, 
 
 1 In his work on Ecclesiastic us.
 
 xiv] THE PSALMS: ZECHARIAH 367 
 
 Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther ; and probably the very imaginative books 
 of Tobit and Judith, though it is impossible to express certainty 
 on such a point. The great and profound book of Job seems 
 to me to have a reference all through to the affliction of Israel 
 during the Babylonian captivity, and the restoration of Israel 
 afterwards ; hence it might probably have been composed in the fifth 
 century before Christ, and there may be in it even earlier elements. 
 It was in the third century that translations of the Old Testament 
 into Greek began to be written, and Alexandria was the place 
 which initiated this kind of work. Altogether, the third century 
 was on the whole a time of quiet and prosperous labour for the 
 Jews, till near the end of it. 
 
 Then the powerful and ambitious Greek kings of Syria half 
 wrested, half filched, the land of Israel from the Ptolemies, 
 and a time of greater trial began ; of which my next chapter 
 must tell. 
 
 APPENDIX I TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THE CHAPTERS EZRA II. AND III., 
 TOGETHER WITH SOME OTHER REMARKS BEARING ON THE 
 DATE OF ZERUBBABEL 
 
 I AM afraid I cannot avoid an argument of some complexity. 
 I have excluded it from my direct narrative ; no reader is bound 
 to test my reasons for what I say ; but I am bound to give him 
 the means of testing them, if he wishes to do so. 
 
 I begin then with the consideration of the two chapters, 
 Ezra ii. and iii. ; and my thesis has been that they have no business 
 to be where they are. The same is I think true of the first five, 
 or at any rate the first three, verses of chapter iv. 
 
 Let me call attention to the passage, Ezra ii. 70-iii. 2, as 
 compared with Nehemiah vii. 73-viii. 1. I will quote both 
 passages ; first, that from Ezra : 
 
 So the priests, and the Levites, and some of the people, and the 
 singers, and the porters, and the Nethinim, dwelt in their cities, and all 
 Israel in their cities. And when the seventh month was come, and the 
 children of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered themselves together 
 as one man to Jerusalem. Then stood xip Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and 
 his brethren the priests, and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and his 
 brethren, and builded the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings 
 thereon.
 
 368 APPENDIX I TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Next, that from Nehemiah : 
 
 So the priests, and the Levites, and the porters, and the singers, 
 and some of the people, and the Nethinim, and all Israel, dwelt in their 
 cities. And when the seventh month was come, the children of Israel 
 were in their cities. And all the people gathered themselves together 
 as one man into the broad place that was before the Watergate ; and 
 they spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, 
 which Jehovah had commanded to Israel. 
 
 It is obvious that the first part of each of these passages, 
 down to the words " as one man," is practically the same ; the 
 latter part is quite different. The passage in the book of Ezra 
 professes to be relating what happened in the reign of Cyrus, 
 about 538 B.C. ; the passage in the book of Nehemiah professes 
 to be relating what happened in the reign of some Artaxerxes, 
 and in the twentieth year of that reign ; and as the earliest 
 Artaxerxes began to reign about 464 B.C., the passage in the 
 book of Nehemiah refers to events which took place not earlier 
 than 445 B.C. 1 It would be vain to deny that one of the two 
 passages is copied from the other passage (down to the words 
 " as one man ") ; how came the copyist to copy what he certainly 
 ought not to have copied, since the events of 538 B.C. could not 
 possibly give him direct information as to what happened a 
 century or a century and a half later ? Up to a certain point 
 the answer is easy ; the writer of the book of Nehemiah has 
 professed to be copying the list of returning exiles which he found 
 in the book of Ezra, which was a perfectly legitimate thing to 
 do ; what was not legitimate was his continuing, after he had 
 got to the end of the list, to quote the history which followed. 
 It seems, on the face of it, a piece of inaccurate bungling ; but 
 we cannot help asking why the historian should bungle in this 
 way. Was it pure accident ? We are certainly justified in 
 asking whether there may not have been a motive for it. 
 
 Having this question before us, my next remark is that, 
 whatever we may think of the chapters of Ezra which are my 
 present theme (chapters ii. and iii. and the first five verses of 
 chapter iv.), they were not originally in the position in which 
 they are now. They originally existed as an independent passage ; 
 the compiler of the book of Ezra found them as an independent 
 passage, and inserted them in the place whore they are now, 
 because he thought that context suited and required them. We 
 know this, because happily we possess the Greek first book of 
 
 1 In my account of the history, I put these events in the reign of the second 
 Artaxerxe.s, and therefore in the year 385 B.C.
 
 EZRA II AND III 369 
 
 Esdras, which in many respects is another edition of the Hebrew 
 book of Ezra, but which differs from the book of Ezra in some 
 important particulars. One of the differences between the two 
 books lies in the place which they assign to the passage of which 
 I am now speaking. Let the reader compare the two books, 
 and he will see that, while the first book of Esdras has a passage 
 which exactly corresponds to the passage in the book of Ezra 
 (1 Esdras v. 7-73 = Ezra ii. and iii. and iv. 1-5), it is placed 
 in a different context. The passage in the first book of Esdras 
 has a position which corresponds to the position which the 
 passage in Ezra would have had, if it had been put after the 
 end of the fourth chapter of Ezra and just before the fifth 
 chapter. What tends to disguise this difference between the 
 two books from an ordinary reader is the fact that the first 
 book of Esdras interposes, immediately before the list of the 
 returning exiles, a romantic story about Zerubbabel, and especially 
 about Zerubbabel's relations to king Darius ; it is a story which 
 does not appear in the book of Ezra, and which we cannot but 
 regard as pure fable ; but it diverts attention from the exact 
 order of the narrative in the first book of Esdras. However, 
 the book of Ezra and the first book of Esdras do differ in arrange- 
 ment here; and it is obvious that the compiler of the book of 
 Ezra, and the compiler of the first book of Esdras, had each of 
 them in his possession the list of the returning exiles and the 
 narrative which immediately follows (i.e. Ezra ii. iii. iv. 1-5 in 
 the one case, 1 Esdras v. 773 in the other case), but that they 
 differed in opinion as to the exact place where the list and its 
 sequel should be inserted. The history, apart from this difference 
 (and excluding also the romantic story about Zerubbabel's relations 
 to king Darius), is in the main the same in both books. 
 
 I now proceed to make a remark, which I think will be acknow- 
 ledged to be important. While, if we exclude the passages just 
 mentioned, alike from the book of Ezra and from the first book of 
 Esdras, either book gives a narrative which is perfectly correct 
 as to the order of the Persian kings, though with omission of 
 some important kings, the insertion of the passages disorders 
 the chronology altogether. In the first book of Esdras the 
 disorder consists in this, that a narrative which obviously assumes 
 Cyrus to be the reigning monarch (1 Esdras v. 55, 71, 73) is 
 placed in the middle of the reign of Darius. In the book of Ezra 
 the disorder consists in this, that Zerubbabel, who is represented 
 as returning to Jerusalem in the reign of Cyrus (about 538 B.C. 
 
 M. D. A. 24
 
 370 APPENDIX I TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 in our mode of reckoning) and at the head of a large body of 
 followers, is altogether unmentioned through the succeeding reigns, 
 which include those of Ahasuerus (or Xerxes) and of the first 
 Artaxerxes, until he appears again in the reign of Darius (who 
 as following upon Xerxes and the first Artaxerxes roust be 
 Darius Nothus) about 422 B.C. as a still vigorous man, and ae 
 rebuilding and dedicating the temple. 
 
 It will be conceded that neither the compiler of the book 
 of Ezra, nor the compiler of the first book of Esdras, has been 
 happy in the selection of a place in which to insert the passage 
 of which I have been speaking. If any further argument were 
 needed to prove that the passage is interpolated in the first 
 book of Ezra, and does not properly belong to its context, it 
 would be found in the fact that Sheshbazzar, who in the first 
 chapter of Ezra is named as '' the prince of Judah " and the 
 leader of the returning exiles, is in the second chapter, which 
 professes to give a list of returning exiles, not even named at 
 all. In the third chapter of Ezra, Zerubbabel and Jeshua appear 
 as leaders ; and hence some have supposed that Sheshbazzar 
 and Zerubbabel were one and the same person. This supposition 
 is, however, rendered impossible by the fact that in the fifth 
 chapter of Ezra, verses 11-16, in a speech or letter attributed 
 to persons of whom Zerubbabel was one, Sheshbazzar is referred 
 to as an antecedent governor of Judah, who had laid the founda- 
 tions of the temple in the time of Cyrus, a considerable time 
 previously. 
 
 Thus the passage of which I have been speaking (Ezra ii. iii. 
 iv. 1-5 or 1 Esdras v. 7-73) is not at all recommended to us 
 by the facts which we have just discovered about it. Having 
 been in the possession both of the compiler of the book of Ezra, 
 and the compiler of the first book of Esdras, neither of these 
 compilers could find a proper use for it ; each of them inserted 
 it in his history, but they inserted it in different places ; and 
 neither place suits it at all. 
 
 It will now be proper to recall the fact that, besides the 
 apparent impossibility of inserting the passage consistently in 
 the history as we know it, there is also in the middle of it a very 
 curious conjunction of its parts, which may indicate in it an 
 internal weakness also. The second and third chapters of Ezra, 
 which constitute the greater part of the passage on which I am 
 commenting, profess to tell, in the first place, the names and 
 numbers of the Jews who returned to Jerusalem in the reign
 
 EZRA II AND III 371 
 
 of Cyrus (this is in the second chapter), secondly, how these 
 Jews immediately after their return kept the feast of tabernacles, 
 and afterwards began to rebuild the temple (this is in the third 
 chapter). These two portions of the narrative are connected 
 by a few verses, which I have quoted already, but which it will 
 be well for me to quote again : 
 
 So the priests, and the Levites, and some of the people, and the 
 singers, and the porters, and the Nethinim, dwelt in their cities, and 
 all Israel in their cities. And when the seventh month was come, and 
 the children of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered themselves 
 together as one man to Jerusalem. Then stood up Jeshua the son of 
 Jozadak, and his brethren the priests, and Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, 
 and his brethren, and builded the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt 
 offerings thereon, as it is written in the law of Moses the man of God. 
 Ezra ii. 70-iii. 2. 
 
 The peculiarity of these verses is that the first half of them, 
 down to the words " as one man," is repeated again in the book 
 of Nehemiah as descriptive of quite another period of history ; a 
 period, on the most favourable supposition, ninety- three years later 
 than the reign of Cyrus, which is the period to which the book of 
 Ezra here refers. Here, again, is the passage from Nehemiah : 
 
 So the priests, and the Levites, and the porters, and the singers, 
 and some of the people, and the Nethinim, and all Israel, dwelt in their 
 cities. And when the seventh month was come, the children of Israel 
 were in their cities. And all the people gathered themselves together 
 as one man into the broad place that was before the water gate ; and they 
 spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which 
 Jehovah had commanded to Israel. Nehemiah vii. 73 viii. 1. 
 
 The writer of the book of Nehemiah 1 had professed to be 
 copying a catalogue, which catalogue we find in fact just before 
 the words here quoted ; but it is quite evident that if the book 
 of Ezra in its second and third chapters be true history the 
 writer of the book of Nehemiah has copied more than a catalogue ; 
 he has copied also a piece of history appended to the catalogue, 
 and he has made that piece of history, which originally applied 
 to the time of Cyrus, do duty as descriptive of the time of Nehe- 
 miah. This, as I remarked at the beginning of this appendix, 
 appears to be a piece of careless bungling. But now let me give 
 the reasons which appear to me conclusive, for believing that 
 the catalogue to which the above verses are appended was not 
 originally intended to be a catalogue of the time of Cyrus at all ; 
 that its true date lies far nearer to the time of Nehemiah ; and 
 
 1 Who is not, in this part, Nehemiah himself. Yet the catalogue, in its main 
 substance, may really have been the one that Nehemiah found. 
 
 242
 
 372 APPENDIX I TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 that, in reality, the catalogue which we find in the second chapter 
 of Ezra was copied from this catalogue, which we now find in 
 the seventh chapter of Nehemiah ; that the copying was from 
 the book of Nehemiah to the book of Ezra, and not the other 
 way. If this be so, the bungle lies, not in the book of Nehemiah, 
 but in the book of Ezra. The compiler of the two books was 
 indeed, as I believe, the same person ; but the error existed 
 in his materials before he received them and in that part of 
 his materials which we now know as the passage Ezra ii. iii. 
 iv. 1-5. 
 
 In considering the question thus suggested, it is necessary 
 to take the first book of Esdras to aid us. The passages 
 which I have already quoted from the books of Ezra and Nehemiah 
 have their counterparts in the first book of Esdras. The counter- 
 part of Ezra ii. 70-iii. 2 is 1 Esdras v. 46-49 ; it runs thus : 
 
 And the priests and the Levites and they that were of the people 
 dwelt in Jerusalem and the country ; the holy singers also and the porters 
 and all Israel in their villages. But when the seventh month was at 
 hand, and when the children of Israel were every man in his own place, 
 they came all together with one consent into the broad place before the 
 first porch which is toward the east. Then stood up Jesus the son of 
 Josedek, and his brethren the priests, and Zorobabel the son of Salathiel, 
 and his brethren, and made ready the altar of the God of Israel, to offer 
 burnt sacrifices upon it, according as it is expressly commanded in the 
 book of Moses the man of God. 
 
 The above passage, like the passages in Ezra and Nehemiah, 
 occurs at the end of the catalogue given in those books ; but 
 the last passage that I will quote from the first book of Esdras, 
 the passage which is the counterpart of Nehemiah vii. 73-viii. 1, 
 and which is in fact 1 Esdras ix. 37-39, has no catalogue to precede 
 it, nor would it appear that the compiler of the first book of 
 PJsdras found any catalogue preceding it, though we cannot 
 be quite certain on this point ; for he may have found such a 
 catalogue, and excluded it as not pertinent to his own narrative. 
 It will not make much difference to us here whether the compiler 
 of 1 Esdras possessed but ignored Nehemiah's personal narrative, 
 with the catalogue which is the sequel of it, or whether he did 
 not possess these documents at all. With this explanation 
 I now proceed to quote 1 Esdras ix. 37-39 : 
 
 And the priests and the Levites, and they that were of Israel, dwelt 
 in Jerusalem, and in the country, on the new moon of the seventh month, 
 and the children of Israel in their habitations. And the whole multitude 
 were gathered together with one accord into the broad place before the
 
 EZRA II AND III 373 
 
 porch of the temple toward the east ; and they said unto Esdras the priest 
 and reader, Bring the law of Moses, that was given of the Lord, the God 
 of Israel. 
 
 This passage stands at the beginning of a narrative which 
 is practically the same as the narrative in the book of Nehemiah, 
 chapter viii. 2-12 ; and it follows a narrative which is practically 
 the same as that of the concluding chapters of the book of Ezra ; 
 the whole personal narrative of Nehemiah being omitted (as I 
 remarked above) in the first book of Esdras. It would seem 
 that the personal narrative of Nehemiah originally existed as 
 a document separate, not only from the book of Ezra, but also 
 from the chapters of Nehemiah from the eighth to the eleventh 
 inclusive. 
 
 Now let the reader understand that the crucial point in 
 the present argument is this : Was the passage which tells 
 us how " the priests and the Levites &c., dwelt in their cities " 
 (or in their " villages," or in their " habitations "), and how in 
 the seventh month they all gathered themselves together " as 
 one man " (or " with one consent " or " with one accord ") a 
 passage which up to a certain point is practically the same in 
 all the four versions of it which I have quoted originally intended 
 to apply to an incident in the reign of Cyrus, or to an incident 
 in the reign of Artaxerxes and in the time of Nehemiah? The 
 book of Ezra very distinctly applies it to an incident in the reign 
 of Cyrus, approximately about 538 B.C. The book of Nehemiah, 
 and the last chapter of the first book of Esdras, with equal 
 distinctness apply it to an incident in the reign of Artaxerxes 
 (some Artaxerxes and in the case of the earliest Artaxerxes, 
 the date would be 445 B.C.). But what says the fifth chapter 
 of the first book of Esdras, which is the remaining chapter in 
 which this passage occurs (in verses 46 and 47 of that chapter) ? 
 It may at first sight be thought that the fifth chapter of the 
 first book of Esdras applies the passage to the reign of Cyrus, 
 in spite of the fact that the whole narrative is imbedded in the 
 reign of Darius ; for Cyrus is mentioned as king several times 
 afterwards in the chapter. But let us look more closely into 
 this chapter. Note first the 39th and 40th verses of it, which 
 run thus : 
 
 And when the description of the kindred of these men was sought 
 in the register, and was not found, they were removed from executing 
 the office of the priesthood : for unto them said Nehemias and Attharias, 
 that they should not be partakers of the holy things, till there arose up 
 a high priest wearing Urim and Thummim.
 
 374 APPENDIX I TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The corresponding verses in the second chapter of Ezra (the 
 62nd and 63rd) run thus : 
 
 These sought their register among those that were reckoned by gene- 
 alogy, but they were not found : therefore were they deemed polluted 
 and put from the priesthood. And the Tirshatha said unto them, that 
 they should not eat of the most holy things, till there stood up a priest 
 with Urim and Thummim. 
 
 It will be seen that " the Tirshatha " in the passage from Ezra 
 corresponds to " Nehemias and Attharias " in the first book 
 of Esdras. Is not then Nehemias (or Nehemiah) the Tirshatha 
 (i.e. the governor), and Attharias another high official the 
 same doubtless as the Attharates who is mentioned in 1 Esdras 
 ix. 49 as addressing Esdras (i.e. Ezra) and the Levites ? If this 
 be so, the catalogue in 1 Esdras v., and the verses immediately 
 after the termination of the catalogue, are really intended to 
 refer to the time of Nehemiah, and not to the time of Cyrus. 
 It may be added that the title " Tirshatha " is never applied 
 by name to anyone except Nehemiah (and to him the title is 
 applied in Nehemiah viii. 9 and x. 1) ; though of course those 
 who believe that the second chapter of Ezra relates to the 
 time of Cyrus are bound to say that the "Tirshatha" in that 
 chapter means Zerubbabel. But they can give no other instance 
 in which Zerubbabel is called by this title. 
 
 It will be admitted that the mention of Nehemias in 1 Esdras 
 v. 40, and the evident fact that he is regarded as the governor 
 at the time to which the incident refers, is strong evidence 
 that the catalogue in this chapter belongs more nearly to the 
 time of Nehemiah and king Artaxerxes than to the time of king 
 Cyrus. Let us see whether the chapter does not supply us with 
 other evidence to this effect. Take the 47th verse of the chapter : 
 
 But when the seventh month was at hand, and when the children 
 of Israel were every man in his own place, they carne all together with 
 one consent into the broad place before the first porch which is toward 
 the east. 
 
 What porch is meant here ? In that other version of this 
 passage which we find in the ninth chapter of this book (verse 38) 
 the porch is explicitly said to be the porch of the temple ; and 
 plainly we must understand the porch of the temple in the fifth 
 chapter also. It is certainly preferable then to regard the fifth 
 chapter as dating from a time when the porch of the temple 
 existed ; which it did not immediately after the return in the 
 reign of Cyrus, but which it did in the time of Nehemiah. This
 
 EZRA II AND III 375 
 
 argument has not equal weight with the argument drawn from 
 the mention of Nehemias in the 40th verse of the chapter, but 
 some weight it has ; for in the time of Cyrus, to which 1 Esdras 
 v. 47 professes to belong, the porch of the temple was in ruins, 
 together with the whole temple ; and if it were mentioned at 
 all, it might be expected that some mention of the fact that it 
 was in ruins would be made. Or, even more probably, it would 
 have been said, " they came altogether with one consent into 
 the broad place before the ruined temple." As there is no mention 
 of so important a fact, but as on the contrary the phrase is 
 practically the same as in verse 38 of the ninth chapter (which 
 refers to a time when the porch of the temple was in existence) ; 
 is not the inference of real weight that the passage in the ninth 
 chapter is the original, the passage in the fifth chapter a copy 
 of it ? 
 
 Taking these two facts into account the mention of Nehemias 
 and Attharias in the 40th verse of the fifth chapter, and the 
 mention of " the first porch which is toward the east " in the 
 47th verse of the same chapter is not the inference exceedingly 
 strong that the original intention of the whole passage was to 
 describe something which took place, not in the reign of Cyrus, 
 but in the time of Nehemiah; and is not the result of this to 
 separate definitely the catalogue itself from the time of Cyrus? 
 But if so, the inference follows immediately that the catalogue 
 in the second chapter of Ezra is definitely separated from the 
 time of Cyrus ; for this is substantially the same as the catalogue 
 in 1 Esdras v. The compiler of the book of Ezra has been a 
 little more successful than the compiler of the first book of Esdras 
 in concealing the source from which his catalogue was derived ; 
 but the two stand or fall together 1 . 
 
 And now let me make the attempt to show how those very 
 critical parts of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah on which I 
 have been commenting Ezra ii. iii. iv. 1-5 and Nehemiah vii. 
 and viii. came into being ; and through what influences and 
 under what motives the bungle which I pointed out at the 
 beginning of this Appendix originated. The reader will bear 
 in mind that it is much easier to demonstrate an error than to 
 say how the error arose ; but still within limits I believe that 
 the latter also may be done in the present case. 
 
 1 It is worth mentioning (and the remark is due to the late Dr Driver) that the 
 " seventh montli " in Nehemiah vii. 73 is in the right continuance upon the " month 
 Elul " (the sixth month) in Nehemiah vi. 15 : so that Nehemiah vii. 73 appears to 
 be in situ where it stands.
 
 376 APPENDIX I TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 In the first place then, I assume the genuineness of the personal 
 narrative of Nehemiah, from the beginning of the book down 
 to the end of the fifth verse of the seventh chapter ; and I assume 
 that the catalogue which occupies nearly the whole of the remainder 
 of the seventh chapter, from the words " The number of the men 
 of the people of Israel " in verse 7 down to the end of verse 69 
 is (as it professes to be) the catalogue which lay before the eyes 
 of Nehemiah, except the slight additions, in verses 61, 64, and 
 65, which were inserted owing to Nehemiah himself discovering 
 that certain families were of doubtful descent, whether as Israelites 
 or as priests. How this personal narrative of Nehemiah came to 
 be interposed in the middle of a narrative about Ezra, which 
 in part is a personal narrative of Ezra himself, is a question 
 which need not be discussed here. But it is of importance to 
 know what was the date of the catalogue which Nehemiah tells 
 us that he found, and which he describes as " the book of the 
 genealogy of them which came up at the first," and which we 
 have now before us in the seventh chapter of the book of 
 Nehemiah. 
 
 The ordinary view, which places Zerubbabel's return to 
 Jerusalem in 538 B.C., and Nehemiah's return in 445 B.C., places 
 an interval of ninety-three years between the date of the drawing up 
 of the catalogue and the date when Nehemiah made use of it for 
 his own purposes. I cannot but think that an interval of ninety- 
 three years, and those troubled years, as we know from the book 
 of Ezra itself, must have made such a catalogue of very little 
 utility. But according to my view, Zerubbabel returned in 
 423 B.C., and Nehemiah in 385 B.C. ; and the intervening years, 
 though not without trouble, had not been years of extreme 
 distress ; it is conceivable that a catalogue thirty-eight years old 
 might give Nehemiah real information. I understand that by the 
 phrase " them which came up at the first " is intended " those 
 who came up with Zerubbabel." It is true that, according to 
 my reading of the history, that was not the first return of the 
 Jews from Babylon ; but it was the first fully successful return ; 
 the first return that took place under the favouring influence of 
 a Persian king, and with real promise of a restoration of the Jewish 
 state. ' Those who returned at the first " were in Nehemiah's 
 eyes " those who returned with Zerubbabel." 
 
 But not so simple us this was the interpretation given to the 
 words " at the first " by a .Jewish annalist of the third century B.C., 
 who was seeking for materials for writing Jewish history from
 
 EZRA II AND III 377 
 
 the end of the Babylonian captivity onwards. This annalist 
 had in his mind the famous fact that Cyrus was the king who 
 first gave permission to the Jews to return from Babylon to Jeru- 
 salem, and under whom they actually did begin to return. The 
 annalist, knowing this, endeavoured to find testimony which 
 should amplify and adorn this bare statement. He possessed 
 the first chapter of the book of Ezra ; but that chapter seemed 
 to him, as undoubtedly it is, exceedingly meagre ; and he sought 
 for more information. It never for a moment occurred to him 
 to look into the book of Isaiah, or into the psalms, for evidence 
 of what happened at such a period ; these two books, which 
 would have given him much information, he absolutely ignored. 
 But he did possess Nehemiah's personal narrative, and his cata- 
 logue ; and he read what Nehemiah had said, that this catalogue 
 was the list of those who came up " at the first." Immediately 
 our annalist jumped to the conclusion that these were those 
 who returned under Cyrus ; and believing also (and in this point 
 correctly) that by those who returned at the first Nehemiah had 
 meant those who returned under Zerubbabel, our annalist made 
 Zerubbabel return under Cyrus. His knowledge of Persian kings 
 was meagre ; he knew nothing of Cambyses, nor (according to my 
 view) of Darius son of Hystaspes ; and he saw nothing improbable 
 in believing that Zerubbabel had returned under Cyrus and had 
 finally built the temple under Darius Nothus. That is the 
 statement of the book of Ezra as we have it, and the length of 
 life which it implies in Zerubbabel is plainly impossible ; but 
 our annalist did not know it to be impossible. Hence, very 
 rashly, but not with absolute bad faith, he took Nehemiah's 
 catalogue, prefixed an observation to it, and made it the con- 
 tinuation of the first chapter of Ezra, although not writing 
 it on the same roll on which the first chapter of Ezra was written. 
 The document which he wrote was an independent document, 
 as we see from the fact that when it (or a copy of it) came into 
 the hands of the two compilers who respectively wrote Ezra 
 and 1 Esdras, these two compilers placed it differently, as was 
 noted in an earlier part of this Appendix. 
 
 Now let us see how our annalist treated the catalogue which 
 he was transcribing. I have said that he prefixed an observation 
 to it ; this observation consisted of the words which we now 
 find in Nehemiah vii. 6, 7, from " These are the children of the 
 province " down to the name " Baanah " ; and it will be seen 
 that our annalist, in a loose sort of way, put down Nehemiah
 
 378 APPENDIX I TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 as returning with Zerubbabel and Jeshua. I know of course 
 that the name " Nehemiah " was owned by more than one person, 
 but it is probable from the position which the name occupies 
 in the book of Nehemiah vii. 7, that the well-known Nehemiah 
 is the one there meant. Thus our annalist transcribed his 
 catalogue ; but he was under some real difficulty as to where 
 the catalogue ended 1 . The catalogue, together with the personal 
 narrative of Nehemiah, was in the third century imbedded, as 
 it is now, in the middle of the history of Ezra (which also is in 
 part a personal narrative). So, being in doubt where to stop, 
 our annalist found himself carried on past the true catalogue, 
 until after transcribing the words " And all the people gathered 
 themselves together as one man " he found that he was approach- 
 ing the history of Ezra. Now he knew very well that it was 
 not the history of Ezra that he wished to tell, but the history 
 of Zerubbabel and Jeshua. However, it was not his way to 
 scratch out what he had once written ; what he had written 
 was not palpably false ; and it served him very well as an introduc- 
 tion to the history which he proceeded to give. So he went on 
 to relate what, though he had no evidence for it, he thought 
 must have happened ; the erection of the altar of burnt offerings, 
 the celebration of the feast of tabernacles (the mention of the 
 " seventh month " in the passage which he had transcribed gave 
 him the hint for this) and the laying of the foundation of the 
 temple ; and then the breach with the Samaritans which (he 
 thought) prevented the temple from being completed. Thus, 
 out of exceedingly slight materials, he made a highly respectable 
 narrative. 
 
 Let the reader carefully consider this analysis of the passage 
 under consideration (Ezra ii. iii. iv. 1-5 or 1 Esdras v. 7-73) 
 and see whether it does not afford a full and natural explanation 
 of the bungle which I noted at the beginning of this Appendix, 
 and which I have continually referred to since the bungle of 
 transferring verses which originally applied to one period of history, 
 for the purpose of describing another period of history. It is 
 an essential part of the proof that the whole passage referred 
 to was not originally in the position which it now occupies ; 
 this is shown by the fact that its present place in Ezra is 
 different from its present place in 1 Esdras, and also by the 
 
 1 It is difficult to ho sun- whether the versos Nehemiah vii. 70-72 originally con- 
 tninod a mention of the temple as Ezra ii. (is, <iy does (in which case they belong to 
 the true catalogue), or whether they are correct as they stand, and the mention of the 
 temple in Ezra ii. 08, til) an interpolation. I incline to the latU-r opinion.
 
 EZRA II AND III 379 
 
 fact that it is palpably not in agreement with the first 
 chapter of Ezra, and is inconsistent with the whole tenor 
 of its context. This fact compels us to consider how the 
 whole passage came into being ; and the expressions noted in 
 1 Esdras v. 40 and 47 prove that that chapter originally described 
 what was happening in the time of Nehemiah (the catalogue 
 belonging to a time thirty-eight years earlier) and had nothing at all 
 to do with the reign of Cyrus. The transference of it to the reign 
 of Cyrus was an illegitimate act of the historian (or the annalist, 
 as I have called him) ; though, as I think I have shown, a natural 
 act, and not, when the manner of writing history in those times 
 is considered, an act very greatly to be censured. And of course 
 Ezra ii. iii. iv. 1-5 being the same passage as 1 Esdras v. 7-73 
 (only in Hebrew instead of in Greek) falls along with it. 
 
 How can it be denied after this that the plain testimony 
 of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah (which originally constituted 
 one book) is that the rebuilding of the temple by Zerubbabel 
 took place in the reign of Darius Nothus, or in other words from 
 the year 422 B.C. to the year 418 B.C. ? When the passage on which 
 I have been commenting is eliminated, the testimony of these 
 books is perfectly clear ; and even more clear, if possible, is the 
 testimony of the first book of Esdras, which distinctly says 
 that Zerubbabel returned in the reign of some Darius, though 
 afterwards in the interpolated passage it implies that Zerubbabel 
 returned in the reign of Cyrus. 
 
 Why should not this simple piece of testimony be accepted ? 
 What is there to be said against it ? Two expressions, one in 
 the prophet Haggai, the other in the prophet Zechariah, may 
 at first sight appear as a difficulty, but I think I have fully 
 explained them in the chapter to which this Appendix belongs. 
 Let me, however, now mention another objection on which 
 great stress is laid. Zerubbabel is called the son of Shealtiel, 
 who was the son of that king Jehoiachin who surrendered to 
 Nebuchadnezzar in the year 598 B.C., and who after thirty-six or 
 thirty- seven years of captivity was set free by the successor of 
 Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-merodach. That is to say, Jehoiachin was 
 set free about the year 562 or 561 B.C., being then fifty-four or 
 fifty-five years of age. It is not likely then that Shealtiel was born 
 later than 550 B.C. ; and though it is not quite impossible that 
 he might have a son still alive and vigorous in 422 B.C., it is 
 not likely. Still greater appears the difficulty in the case of the 
 high priest Joshua or Jeshua. who is called the son of Jozadak (or
 
 380 APPENDIX I TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Jehozadak). For Jozadak was the son of that high priest Seraiah 
 who was put to death by Nebuchadnezzar in the year 586 B.C. 
 (2 Kings xxv. 18-21). It certainly is impossible that a son of 
 Jozadak could be alive and active in the year 422 B.C. But those 
 who urge these difficulties take no note of the fact that, while 
 an even greater difficulty occurs in the case of Ezra, the 
 explanation of it in the case of Ezra is fully sufficient to explain 
 it in the cases of Zerubbabel and of Jeshua also. Ezra is 
 called the son of that same Seraiah who was put to death by 
 Nebuchadnezzar. (For the proof that it is this Seraiah of whom 
 Ezra is called the son, compare 1 Chronicles vi. 4-14 with Ezra vii. 
 1-5). Now the earliest date at which the arrival of Ezra at 
 Jerusalem can possibly be placed is 457 B.C., so that on this 
 showing Ezra must have been at that time at least 129 years old ! 
 How are we to explain the apparent error ? By the simple 
 consideration, which is as applicable to the cases of Zerubbabel 
 and Jeshua as to the case of Ezra, that the word " son " means 
 " descendant." Moreover, we know quite well why the inter- 
 mediate steps, between Shealtiel and Zerubbabel, between 
 Jozadak and Jeshua, between Seraiah and Ezra, were omitted 
 by those who referred to these personages. The Jews never 
 willingly recognised any deed done during the time of the Baby- 
 lonian captivity, or any person whose life lay during that time. 
 It may perhaps seem that the prophet Ezekiel is an exception 
 to this statement, but he is not a true exception ; for the greater 
 part of his prophecies were written before the captivity in its 
 full extent began. Shealtiel indeed is a true exception ; he owes 
 his being named to the fact that his father was honoured by the 
 king Evil-merodach. But the greatest proof that the Jews were 
 determined to keep silence on all who lived in the time of the 
 captivity lies in the fact that the great prophet who wrote the 
 last twenty-seven chapters of the book of Isaiah was never 
 recognised by them as an individual at all. That prophet does 
 describe the first return from the captivity, but the phrases 
 in which he describes it were ignored by the Jews of after times ; 
 they were willing enough to accept his exalted prophecies, but 
 for his personality they had no regard, and the unhappy and 
 partial kind of return which he describes in the later chapters 
 of his prophecy, appeared derogatory to their self-esteem. Had 
 he been able to describe a brilliant return, in which the Jews 
 wore honoured by the monarchs of the world, we should have 
 known his name. But it was impossible that he could do any
 
 EZRA II AND III 381 
 
 such thing ; and hence the Jews, while aware of the exalted 
 character of his writings, were oblivious of his personality. We 
 cannot then be surprised that, in speaking of the ancestry of 
 Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and Ezra, they omitted all mention of their 
 near ancestors, and went straight to the ancestor who connected 
 these important persons with the great kings and priests who 
 were of old. 
 
 What other objections are there to putting Zerubbabel under 
 Darius Nothus, Ezra and Nehemiah under Artaxerxes Mnemon ? 
 It is confidently said that the Aramaic papyri of Assuan give 
 evidence of the earlier date ; that the SinubaUit of the papyri, 
 who was governor of Samaria in the latter part of the fifth century 
 B.C., must be the same as the Sanballat of the book of Nehemiah 
 (who in this case must have lived in the fifth century B.C.) ; 
 that the high priest Jehohanan of the papyri, whose date was 
 411 B.C., must be the same as the Johanan, who was grandson of the 
 high priest Eliashib, and who is mentioned in Nehemiah xii. 22 as 
 among the high priests ; from which it would follow that Eliashib 
 lived in the fifth century B.C., and therefore that Ezra and 
 Nehemiah, his contemporaries, lived in that century. But with 
 respect to Sinuballit, those who use this argument forget that 
 the Sinuballit of the papyri was friendly to the Jews, as is proved 
 both by the fact that the Jews of Syene (or Assuan) addressed 
 an appeal to him, and also by the fact that Delaja, the son of 
 this Sinuballit, joined with Bagohi, the governor of Judaea, 
 in answering this appeal, and moreover answering it in such a 
 way as to save the religious feelings of the Jews of Jerusalem 
 in the highest degree. Surely the Sinuballit of the Aramaic 
 papyri was not the Sanballat of the book of Nehemiah ! But 
 with respect to Jehohanan, I admit that this name, in itself, 
 would be an argument for the earlier date ; for according to 
 my view of the chronology, there is no known Jehohanan, or 
 Johanan, to fill the place of high priest at the date indicated 
 by the Assuan papyri, whereas there is such a Johanan according 
 to the chronology which puts Ezra in the reign of Artaxerxes 
 Longimanus. My view of the chronology requires that there 
 shall have been a high priest Johanan, or Jehohanan, at about 
 that place where the twelfth chapter of Nehemiah (verses 10 
 and 26) puts Joiakim. It is possible that a name may have 
 slipped out of the list ; or it is possible that the priest Jehohanan 
 (whom we know from Nehemiah xii. 13 to have lived in the days 
 of Joiakim) may have temporarily discharged the functions of
 
 382 APPENDIX I TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 high priest ; and it is even possible that in Ezra x. 6, where the 
 present reading is " Jehohanan the son of Eliashib," there has 
 been a wrong addition of these latter words, and that " Jehohanan " 
 alone should be read ; in which case Jehohanan might naturally 
 be understood to be the high priest at that time and for some 
 years previously. I cannot say with certainty what precise 
 answer is to be given to this objection to my view ; but I think 
 the objection is practically upset by the observation which I will 
 now proceed to make. In the twelfth chapter of Nehemiah, verses 
 10 and 11, the list of high priests is given in the following terms : 
 
 And Jeshua begat Joiakim, and Joiakim begat Eliashib, and Eliashib 
 begat Joiada, and Joiada begat Jonathan, and Jonathan begat Jaddua. 
 
 The last four of these high priests are mentioned again ( Johanan 
 taking the place of Jonathan) in verse 22, which I will quote : 
 
 The Levites in the days of Eliashib, Joiada, and Johanan, and Jaddua, 
 were recorded heads of fathers' houses : also the priests, in (or to) the 
 reign of Darius the Persian. Nehemiah xii. 22. 
 
 Why " Darius the Persian," and not " Darius king of Persia," 
 which is the phrase everywhere else (except where it is simply 
 " Darius the king ") ? I answer, because it was intended to 
 contrast him with the Greek kings who came after the Persian 
 kings ; under one of which Greek kings the compiler of the books 
 of Ezra and Nehemiah lived. It was natural to use this expression, 
 implying such a contrast as this, with respect to the last Persian 
 king, Darius Codomannus ; it would not have been natural 
 to apply it to Darius Nothus, who reigned in the middle of the 
 series of Persian kings. The only other instances that I can 
 find of a similar expression are in the book of Daniel, and in each 
 of these a similar reason exists ; there is an intention of contrasting 
 a king of one race with a king, directly sequent or precedent 
 in time, of another race. Let me quote the passages ; the first 
 is Daniel v. 30, 31 : 
 
 In that night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was slain. And Darius 
 the Mede received the kingdom, being about threescore and two yearn old. 
 
 I need not discuss the history of this passage ; all that I 
 am concerned with now is the phrase " Darius the Mede," which 
 evidently is introduced because a change in the nationality 
 of the king was to be marked ; and the same is the case in the 
 30th verse of the same chapter, where another change in the 
 nationality of the dynasty occurs : 
 
 So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of 
 Cyrus the Persian.
 
 EZRA II AND III 383 
 
 Exactly in a similar way " Darius the Persian " is used in 
 Nehemiah xii. 22, because the writer has in his mind the change 
 in the nationality of the dynasty which ensued after the reign 
 of this king Darius, who therefore must be Darius Codomannus, 
 whose reign lasted from 336 B.C. to 331 B.C., after which date 
 Alexander of Macedon obtained sovereignty over the Persian 
 empire. 
 
 Now in view of this meaning of " Darius the Persian " in 
 Nehemiah xii. 22 (quoted above), it becomes clear that Jaddua, 
 the last of the high priests mentioned in this verse, lived in the 
 reign of Darius Codomannus, which is exactly what Josephus 
 tells us ; and this makes it plain also that the Johanan who 
 was the high priest immediately preceding Jaddua, and who 
 was the grandson of Eliashib, was not the Jehohanan who was 
 high priest in 411 B.C. of whom the papyri of Assuan tell us. 
 The last objection then to putting the high priests Eliashib, 
 Joiada, and Johanan in the fourth century before Christ, rather 
 than in the fifth century, is thus removed ; and the whole 
 chronology for which I have been contending is vindicated. 
 
 To conclude. Let the reader consider how in the chapter 
 to which this Appendix belongs, and in this Appendix itself, 
 I have placed various Biblical books, two important chapters 
 in the Antiquities of Josephus, and the Aramaic papyri of Assuan, 
 in an order which makes them eloquent of the history of the 
 Jewish nation ; that I have presented more than two centuries 
 of that history, from 538 B.C. to 320 B.C., in clear light, whereas 
 those who maintain that Zerubbabel returned in the reign of 
 Cyrus wander in unintelligible labyrinths of darkness, and cannot 
 say anything at all of what happened to the Jews in the fourth 
 century before Christ (for they have to give up Josephus as 
 wholly untrustworthy). Can there be any doubt that the history 
 as I have narrated it is the true history ? The Biblical books 
 that I have placed in proper order, and interpreted in clear and 
 natural historical sequence, are these : First, the last twenty- 
 seven chapters of the book which is called the book of Isaiah, which 
 show the faithful Jews, animated by the extraordinary fervour 
 and grandeur of conception shown by this great prophet, beginning 
 to reestablish themselves in Jerusalem, under extraordinary 
 difficulties ; for the surrounding nations looked upon them 
 with disfavour, they were few in number, and many of the Jews 
 themselves looked upon this enterprise of a return to Jerusalem 
 as quixotic and impossible. Moreover, some of the Jews were
 
 384 APPENDIX I TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 still prone to idolatry. The only historical passage of the Bible 
 which relates to this particular time is the first chapter of Ezra, 
 which is quite credible but very scanty in its information ; it 
 is to be noted that it does not say that Cyrus gave the Jews 
 material help ; and such help as was given the returning exiles 
 was given them by their own fellow-countrymen who were not 
 yet prepared to return. This indeed is not expressly said, but 
 must be understood to be the meaning of verses 4 and 6 of this 
 chapter. After this, to understand the difficulties which the 
 Jews underwent in their partially recovered country, we have 
 to take the book of Psalms, all the early part of which book 
 (with some exceptions) is full of suffering and conflict, though 
 we perceive that the Jews had rebuilt their temple ; but the 
 temple so rebuilt was destroyed, as we see from Psalms Ixxiv. and 
 Ixxix. It is natural to connect this event with the troubles which 
 are faintly referred to in one verse of the book of Ezra (iv. 6) 
 and of which the book of Esther professes to be the account, 
 though that book represents the final triumph of the Jews as 
 far more signal and complete than we can suppose it to have 
 been. However, the Jews did survive ; and this event took 
 place in the reign of Ahasuerus (or Xerxes), that is at some date 
 between 485 B.C. and 465 B.C. After this, Ezra iv. 7-24 carries 
 us through the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus ; after which 
 a greater collection of authorities awaits us. Not only have we 
 the book of Ezra, chapters v. and vi. (and the parallel passages 
 in the first book of Esdras have to be referred to), but we have 
 also the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, and a large number 
 of the psalms, beginning with the 84th and 85th and then most 
 of those in the series from the 90th to the 138th inclusive; all 
 these books refer largely to the temple which Zerubbabel built 
 with full permission of the Persian king Darius Nothus. More- 
 over, the Aramaic papj'ri of Assuan give us further evidence 
 of the interest which this king took in the Jews (as I have stated 
 on page 353 above), a fact which falls in with the general 
 course of the evidence here given, that Darius Nothus was the 
 king under whom Zerubbabel rebuilt the temple. After this 
 come the curious facts made known to us by the main body of 
 the Assuan papyri, from which it is clear that the Samaritans 
 were not at this time. i.e. in the year 407 B.C., on the whole, 
 hostile to the Jews. But the eleventh chapter of the prophet 
 Zechariah shows us trouble impending, and the good feeling which 
 was beginning to exist between the Jews and the surrounding
 
 EZRA II AND III 385 
 
 nations (and especially the Samaritans) suddenly endangered 
 by the narrow party among the Jews. This narrowing tendency 
 was brought to a head by Ezra ; and now from 397 B.C. to nearly 
 the middle of the fourth century we have as our authorities 
 the book of Ezra from the seventh chapter onwards, and also the 
 book of Nehemiah. The twelfth chapter of the book of Nehemiah 
 does indeed, in its mention of the high priests Johanan and Jaddua, 
 carry us past the middle of the fourth century ; but on the whole 
 our authority for the latter part of the fourth century lies in 
 the eleventh book of the Antiquities of Josephus, in the last 
 two chapters of that book. 
 
 Such are our authorities, stated in order, for the period from 
 538 B.C. to 320 B.C. ; and then for the third century we have 
 to depend historically on Josephus ; but the third century was 
 a great literary period apart from its detailed history. 
 
 I hope that my elucidation of these historical events, and 
 of the literary works which illustrate them, has not been tedious. 
 But in any case, the conclusion which I have reached is one 
 in which every man ought to take an interest. That conclusion 
 is, the vindication of the honour of the bravest and most en- 
 lightened people of all antiquity, namely the Jews. Never, up 
 to the present day, have the ancient Jews received their proper 
 honour. It is true that they were excelled in some respects 
 by Greeks and Romans, perhaps by some other ancient nations ; 
 but no other people penetrated as they did into the very heart 
 of divine things. It is true, also, that they became narrow ; 
 but the difficulty of preserving their unity, and the unity of their 
 faith, without becoming narrow, was very great ; we cannot 
 help marking their fault, but they well deserve that we should 
 pardon it. 
 
 APPENDIX II TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CONCERNING THE TITLES TO THE PSALMS 
 
 What is the value of the titles prefixed to the psalms in our 
 Bible; what inferences can be drawn from them; at what 
 date were they prefixed; and why is it that 116 of the psalms 
 have titles, while the remaining 34 have not got them ? To 
 take the last question first : the omission of titles is in a few 
 cases accidental, but generally the psalms without a title would 
 
 M. D.A. 25
 
 386 APPENDIX II TO CHAPTER XIV 
 
 be psalms admitted into the volume (or let me say into one of 
 the five books of which the psalter is composed) later than the 
 rest. The psalms without a title are, however, not necessarily 
 of later composition than those which stand by their side in the 
 psalter; in a few cases they are really later, but not generally. 
 But now as to the more important question, how the titles came 
 into existence at all. We observe that they are frequently mixed 
 up with instructions as to the singing of the choir, the tune or 
 instruments to be adopted ; and this leads to the inference that 
 the time when they were prefixed was the time when the temple 
 services were first systematically arranged after the return from 
 the captivity, or later than the time of Ezra. This inference 
 will be confirmed if we attend to those psalms to which is prefixed 
 the title " A psalm of Asaph." There are twelve of these : 
 the 50th, and the series from the 73rd to the 83rd inclusive. 
 Who was Asaph ? He was, according to the first book of Chronicles 
 (xvi. 7), David's chief choirmaster. Now it is perfectly impossible 
 that David's chief choirmaster can have composed Psalms Ixxiv. 
 Ixxix. or Ixxx. ; or, I may add, Psalms Ixxviii. or Ixxxiii. How then 
 comes it that they were attributed to Asaph ? For a very obvious, 
 though a very bad, reason ; because it was thought that, next 
 to David himself, no one was so likely to compose psalms as 
 those who had been appointed by David to minister in the temple, 
 and especially those who superintended the music of the temple. 
 Hence certain psalms were attributed to Asaph ; a good many 
 also to the sons of Korah, also known from the Chronicles. But 
 the books of Samuel and Kings, as they know nothing of Asaph, 
 so also they know nothing of the sons of Korah. It is plain 
 then that these titles, which in some cases are impossible beyond 
 doubt, were prefixed blindly and by virtue of a late and untrust- 
 worthy tradition ; and hence the titles generally have no authority. 
 At the same time, this consideration proves that few psalms, 
 and none of those that have titles, can have been composed 
 in the time of the Maccabees ; for the temple services were 
 certainly arranged long before this time.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL TAKES TO ITSELF EARTHLY ARMOUR 
 
 BEFORE coming to the detailed history which must occupy 
 the present chapter, an important question has to be asked, 
 the answer to which will greatly influence our thoughts as to 
 the whole subject of which the present work is the exposition. 
 Was there any intrinsic danger, discernible in the history of 
 Israel, leading to that moral error which marred the noble qualities 
 of the Jewish nation their narrowness and resolute, deliberate 
 separation from the nations round them ? There was a plain 
 danger in their exceedingly literal obedience to the religion 
 which they had received ; in their refusal to exercise their own 
 judgment as to the intrinsic merits of the beliefs which they 
 held, of the commands which they obeyed. Only in one respect 
 do we read of their using a personal judgment in modification 
 of a commandment esteemed by them as divine ; and that was, 
 that in war time they determined that it was lawful to fight 
 on the sabbath. At first they had held otherwise ; but their 
 sufferings in consequence were so palpable and so great that 
 they changed their opinion and their action. The very interesting 
 record of this change of purpose will be found in 1 Maccabees 
 ii. 29-41. In other respects, the Jews seem to have held literalness 
 of obedience obligatory, no matter what the circumstances 
 might be ; and in the manner in which they interpreted their 
 law, this literalness of obedience involved an extreme degree 
 of separation from neighbouring nations far more than had 
 characterised them in the times precedent to the severe reforms 
 of Ezra and Nehemiah. 
 
 It is impossible not to trace a connexion between this rigidity 
 of practice, and the belief which the Jewish nation held as to 
 the literal truth of those miracles which, in the books of Exodus, 
 Numbers, and Deuteronomy, are related as preceding and accom-. 
 panying the giving of the divine law to Israel. Throughout the 
 
 252
 
 388 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL [CH. 
 
 whole story of the deliverance of the Israelites from their Egyptian 
 bondage, as that is told in the Biblical books just mentioned, 
 the action and the commands of Jehovah are represented as 
 equally clear and unmistakable with any commands which 
 an earthly general might issue to his followers, or any action 
 which an earthly king might direct against enemies or rebels. 
 If there is mystery in the Divine Nature when regarded in itself, 
 if there is uncertainty in the human interpretation of the Divine 
 Will, at all events this mystery, this uncertainty, does not attach 
 to the revelation as it is recorded in Exodus and Deuteronomy ; 
 and the penalties threatened in case of disobedience are especially 
 clear and terrible. Can we wonder that religious Jews, believing 
 in the entire truth of the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, 
 should have resigned their own judgment in following commands 
 which to their apprehension were so clearly sanctioned, and in 
 themselves so unmistakable ? Can we wonder that they should 
 have resolved rather to go beyond than to fall short of the 
 obedience which seemed to be required of them ? Yet is it 
 not plain that this resignation of their own natural judgment 
 landed them in those very faults which we discern so plainly 
 in their conduct ? The prophets would have guarded them 
 against such faults ; but the prophets could produce no miracles 
 in favour of a broad and liberal temperament equal to those 
 which the law appeared to record as inculcating narrowness ; 
 and therefore narrowness triumphed. But can it be denied 
 that this consideration must influence us against the literal 
 truth of the miracles of Exodus and of Mount Sinai ? '' By their 
 fruits ye shall know them." 
 
 I return to the historical sequence, towards the end of the 
 third century before Christ. 
 
 The Jews suffered considerably during those wars between 
 the kings of Syria and the kings of Egypt which took place 
 at this period ; and some of them became weary of their isolation 
 and severance from other nations. Practically they had been 
 transferred to the Syrian kingdom, though it had been arranged 
 by treaty that they should be replaced under the dominion 
 of Egypt ; but Antiochus IV, who mounted the Syrian throne 
 in the year 175 B.C., was not a man to give up easily what he 
 practically possessed. About this time some of the Jews of 
 Jerusalem established a Greek gymnasium in their city ; a place 
 of exercise, where Jews, following the Greek example, might 
 run races, or throw the quoit, or wrestle, entirely naked. Such
 
 xv] TAKES TO ITSELF EARTHLY ARMOUR 389 
 
 a custom gave great offence to the religious Jews ; but worse 
 things were at hand. 
 
 In the year 171 B.C., Ptolemy Philometor, the youthful 
 king of Egypt, determined to vindicate his treaty rights over 
 Palestine, and sent an army there ; but Antiochus, of the two, 
 had the greater military skill. (He was called Epiphanes the 
 " Illustrious " by his flatterers ; and the title, without any 
 special reference to its meaning, has stuck to him ; Antiochus 
 Epiphanes he is called.) He won the victory, and was at first 
 disposed to treat the Egyptian monarch not unfairly ; but in 
 the year 168 B.C., under circumstances of some provocation, 
 he showed a disposition to effect the entire conquest of Egypt. 
 Then the great power of Rome, always favourable to the Ptolemies, 
 intervened in their favour. The deputy Popilius met Antiochus 
 Epiphanes near Pelusium, on the confines of Egypt ; and after 
 some parleying, brought the question at issue to a point by an 
 act which the historian Polybius tells us was thought overbearing 
 (and we may think so too). With the stick that he held he drew 
 a circle in the sand round the monarch, and demanded that 
 Antiochus, before he stepped outside that circle, should give a 
 plain answer to the question, whether he did or did not intend 
 to conquer Egypt ? Such an intention, it was clearly implied, 
 would be equivalent to making war with Rome. Antiochus 
 knew the power of Rome ; for not only did he remember how 
 the Romans had defeated his father Antiochus III, but he himself 
 had lived at Rome, as a hostage, for years ; and he submitted. 
 Egypt was saved ; but it was at the expense of Jerusalem. 
 
 Already, two years earlier than the date at which I have 
 now arrived, Antiochus Epiphanes had visited Jerusalem, and 
 had plundered it of all the gold that was in the temple and in 
 the sanctuary, as the first book of Maccabees tells us. Now, 
 wounded to the quick by the contumely with which the Romans 
 had treated him, he resolved to prove himself the master at any 
 rate of his own dominions ; and he issued a decree commanding 
 uniformity of religious worship in the lands which he ruled. 
 Such a decree has had parallels both in ancient and in modern 
 times ; king Josiah, for instance, had made a similar attempt 
 in his own small kingdom of Judah. Josiah was a far more 
 religious man than Antiochus Epiphanes, and he ruled over 
 a people naturally more united in religious belief than the miscel- 
 laneous Syrian population ; yet even he failed to produce perma- 
 nent uniformity in religion, as we see by what happened in the
 
 390 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL [CH. 
 
 reigns of the succeeding kings of Judah. It could not be expected 
 that Antiochus Epiphanes should succeed ; but the extent and 
 suddenness of his failure could hardly have been anticipated. 
 
 He sent a collector of tribute with an armed force to Jerusalem, 
 who occupied the city at first peaceably ; but who presently 
 revealed his true character as a bloody persecutor. Large parts 
 of Jerusalem were burned down, men were killed, women and 
 children were enslaved ; a great fortress was constructed, and 
 was garrisoned with soldiers taken from that part of the Jewish 
 population which had consented to adopt Hellenic customs 
 both in ordinary life and in religious worship ; heathen worship 
 was established in the temple ; the possession of a copy of the 
 Pentateuchal law was made a criminal offence, punishable with 
 death. Commands were issued that through all Judaea altars 
 to heathen deities should be erected. 
 
 Such is the account given in the first book of Maccabees. 
 The second book of Maccabees renders the situation more compre- 
 hensible, and (it must be added) slightly more favourable to 
 Antiochus Epiphanes himself, by telling us of the disorders that 
 had taken place within Jerusalem owing to the action of those 
 Jews who desired to embrace Hellenic customs ; disorders which 
 had been so represented to Antiochus, as to make him think the 
 whole nation in revolt. Revolt, however, there had so far been 
 none ; though the internal strife within Jerusalem, between the 
 Jews themselves, had been lamentable. The one bright spot 
 in the history, before the rising of the Maccabees, had been 
 the conduct of the brave and faithful high priest Onias, who 
 had been deposed through the machinations of an unworthy 
 competitor, and who was afterwards slain at Antioch for his 
 protest against the ill-dealings of another false high priest (not 
 the one by whom he himself had been driven out). The second 
 book of Maccabees also tells us that the Samaritans were being 
 persecuted, and speaks of the temple on Mount Gerizim without 
 enmity, which is notable ; nor does the second book of Maccabees 
 charge the Samaritans with recreancy, as Josephus does. We 
 may believe that there were recreant Samaritans, but we may 
 also believe that there were faithful Samaritans. However, no 
 doubt the Jews were the braver people. 
 
 For the moment, Jerusalem was Hellenised ; but resistance 
 to Antiochus broke out in the small town of Modin, in the north 
 of Jud:ca. In this city Mattathias was a man high in esteem, 
 and also a priest ; and the officers of king Antiochus were
 
 xv] TAKES TO ITSELF EARTHLY ARMOUR 391 
 
 exceedingly anxious that he should set the example to his fellow- 
 citizens of obedience to the king's commands. They summoned 
 him therefore and other elders of the city to a conference, and 
 the altar on which the heathen sacrifice (probably to Zeus 
 Hellenios) was to be performed stood close at hand. He was 
 invited to offer sacrifice (by burning incense, we must suppose) ; 
 he replied that, though all the nations in the realms of king 
 Antiochus were to forsake the worship of their fathers and to 
 do what the king bade them do, he and his sons and his brethren 
 would follow the law which they had received from their fathers, 
 and would not obey the king. Scarcely had he spoken when 
 another Jew came forward and offered the heathen sacrifice 
 prescribed. Trembling with indignation, Mattathias rushed 
 forward, and killed the sacrificing Jew upon the altar ; and in 
 this, it must be observed, he was following the strict command 
 of the book of Deuteronomy (xiii. 6-9). But such an act was 
 a declaration of war ; and having done it, Mattathias turned 
 on the chief officer of the king, and slew him also. Then, we 
 read, he 
 
 cried out in the city with a loud voice, saying, Whosoever is zealous 
 for the law, and maintaineth the covenant, let him come after me. And 
 he and his sons fled into the mountains, and forsook all that they had 
 in the city. 
 
 In such a way did the great and patriotic Maccabean war 
 begin ; and surely, if we are to sympathise with any warriors, 
 we must sympathise with Mattathias and his sons. It is true, 
 that there is a spiritual war, which is greater than any war waged 
 with material weapons ; a war in which the sufferer for truth 
 does not seek to inflict injury on those who oppress him ; a war 
 in which the flame of love, nourished invisibly, consumes the 
 evil passions that oppose themselves to it. It must be conceded 
 that Mattathias had not framed, even in his imagination, the 
 thought of a spiritual war of this kind. But even if it had been 
 in his thoughts, was the time ripe for so pure an agency of the 
 spirit ? I think not ; and if this opinion be correct, we must 
 give to the act of Mattathias our full approval. I do not indeed 
 know that that approval has ever been withheld from him, 
 either by Christians, or by lovers of liberty in any age ; but 
 it is well to make it clear that, though a higher form of action 
 than his was under certain conditions conceivable and possible, 
 those conditions did not exist for him, and he was bound to act 
 as he did.
 
 392 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL [CH. 
 
 Of all wars of liberation, hardly any is so wonderful as that 
 which ensued after this beginning. Mattathias soon died, 
 overcome by age and hardships ; but he left five sons behind him, 
 every one of whom was inspired by the ardent resolve either 
 to set their nation free or to die. Of these five sons, Judas, 
 surnamed Maccabaeus, has won by far the greatest fame, and 
 justly ; for he (the third in order of age) was the first after his 
 father's death to take command of the whole band of insurgents, 
 and he broke the forces of the king of Syria when they were 
 strongest and most united. No greater proof has ever been 
 given of the warlike strength which religion is capable of inspiring ; 
 for Judas did not fear to attack an army exceeding his own 
 numbers tenfold ; and at last, in a lull of which his victories 
 had been the cause, he went up to Jerusalem, purified the temple, 
 and restored the ceremonies and sacrifices ordained by the 
 Pentateuchal law. This was three years after its desecration by 
 the order of Antiochus Epiphanes ; but the real end of the war 
 was yet far distant. There were still many Jews who adhered 
 to the cause of the oppressor, and who desired to adopt Greek 
 customs, perhaps even the Greek religion ; and these actually 
 held the citadel at Jerusalem, from which Judas and his followers, 
 though masters of the city, were unable to dislodge them. Yet 
 the victories of Judas were sufficient to strike dismay into the 
 heart of king Antiochus ; and that imperious monarch died 
 (or according to some accounts was slain) in the year following 
 the restoration of the temple to those divine uses for which it 
 was lawfully intended. 
 
 I must not follow this Maccabean war in its details. The 
 first of the five illustrious brethren to die was Eleazar, who with 
 his sword slew the elephant on which he believed the Syrian 
 king to be sitting (this Syrian king was the successor of Antiochus 
 Epiphanes) ; the elephant, pierced by the deadly blow from 
 beneath, fell on Eleazar and crushed him. Next came the turn 
 of Judas himself, who with eight hundred men attacked an army 
 of twenty-two thousand ; he fell, the greatest warrior that the 
 race of Israel had produced since the days of David ; perhaps 
 a greater warrior even than David. He was succeeded in the 
 leadership by .Jonathan, the youngest of the five ; the eldest 
 of the brothers, John, was shortly after this captured and slain. 
 After this there was a lull in the fighting ; the Jewish patriots, 
 outworn by their efforts, were no longer able to gain signal 
 victories ; on the other hand, the keen desire to destroy the
 
 xv] TAKES TO ITSELF EARTHLY ARMOUR 393 
 
 Jewish religion had received a check by the death of Antiochus 
 Epiphanes, and the temple service at Jerusalem went on un- 
 hindered. The principal enemies of the ministrations at the 
 temple were now the recreant Jews, who still held the citadel 
 at Jerusalem ; for they knew that they could not safely surrender 
 themselves to their fellow-countrymen, and it was necessary 
 for them therefore to hold by the royal government, and even 
 to accentuate its disposition against the Jewish patriots. How- 
 ever, the kingdom of Syria was in a state of internal dissension ; 
 and Jonathan was powerful enough for his alliance to be sought 
 eagerly by the contending parties. Hence the Hellenising Jews, 
 though desirous of obtaining the help of the various Greek 
 governments, never succeeded in doing so, and became weaker 
 continually. In the end, Jonathan was treacherously slain ; 
 but the last of the five brothers, Simon, was not wanting to the 
 needs of his people. He, the second of the five in age, had been 
 designated by his father as the most prudent counsellor among 
 them ; and he was eminently fitted to complete the work which 
 his brother Judas had begun. In his days, we read in the first 
 book of Maccabees (xiii. 41), " the yoke of the heathen was 
 taken away from Israel " ; the Jews became free, and as in the 
 ancient times, owed allegiance to none but God. The Greek 
 power had fallen by its own inherent weakness ; and the favour 
 of the Romans, which Judas Maccabseus and his successors 
 had won, contributed to this happy conclusion. 
 
 Simon, as high priest, directed the affairs of his fellow-country- 
 men splendidly and honourably ; religious dissension had ceased, 
 not without the use of force, it is true ; but henceforth we hear 
 no more of the heathenising tendency which had so largely 
 contributed to encourage the tyrannous designs of Antiochus 
 Epiphanes. Never again would the Jews embrace the Greek 
 religion or Greek customs. What precisely happened to the 
 recreant Jews, when they were compelled to submit to their 
 fellow-countrymen, we are not told ; but they were not slain 
 (1 Maccabees xiii. 43-53). 
 
 In the end Simon was killed by a wicked son-in-law, who 
 hoped to obtain the government for himself ; but his son John 
 was warned in time, not indeed to save his father, but to prevent 
 the murderer reaping the benefit of his deed. John Hyrcanus 
 he was called ; and a very powerful prince he proved himself 
 to be. Though at first hard pressed by Antiochus Sidetes, 
 king of Syria, and compelled to pay tribute to him, he presently
 
 394 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL [CH. 
 
 took advantage of the Syrian dissensions to obtain entire freedom. 
 We cannot entirely approve of his subsequent measures. He 
 conquered Samaria and Idumaoa ; razed to the ground the city 
 of Samaria, and the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim, and 
 compelled all the Idumaeans to accept the rite of circumcision, 
 which that nation thenceforth faithfully practised, becoming 
 thereby practically one nation with the Jews. There was no 
 need to enforce circumcision on the Samaritans, for they already 
 practised that rite ; but the Samaritans, when they regained 
 some power, vindicated their separateness from the Jews, and 
 refused a friendship which they could not sincerely feel. While 
 it is true that John Hyrcanus carried the Jewish power to a height 
 greater than it had reached since the days of Solomon, we must 
 regard him as reverting to an earthly ideal as the goal of his 
 fellow-countrymen, and as forgetting that moderation and 
 tenderness which in the prophets had been a light pointing to 
 a heavenly ideal and to a new order of creative power. 
 
 Yet, among the faithful spirits in Israel, the thought of the 
 heavenly ideal had not been lost. It was held, indeed, with some 
 confusion of thought, as was natural where so many different 
 and warring impulses were in the field ; but it claimed for itself 
 a true place, in what manner I must now show. 
 
 The glory of the Maccabean period comes to an end with 
 the death of John Hyrcanus, about the end of the second century 
 before Christ. From the very beginning of the struggle against 
 the Syrian kings, the darkness of the post-captivity period 
 is dispelled ; a clearer light rests on the affairs of the Jewish 
 nation than, perhaps, at any previous period of their history; 
 certainly than on any period since the reign of David. The 
 great men who set the Jewish nation free and saved their 
 religion from extermination, the family of which Judas Maccabseus 
 is the most famous figure, are worthy of being set beside any of 
 the great men of action who had illustrated the earlier Israelite 
 history by the side of Moses and Joshua, Samuel and David. 
 Tolerance was not their virtue (and their predecessors had set 
 them no example of tolerance) ; to us they may seem cruel, 
 but not wantonly cruel ; their enemies were so strong that the 
 exercise of mercy towards them would entail dangers beyond 
 the ordinary. Two things distinguish the religion of the Macca- 
 bean era from the religion of ancient days ; one, the constancy 
 with which the ceremonial law was now kept, especially as regards 
 the sabbath and the sabbatical year (the history is full of instances
 
 xv] TAKES TO ITSELF EARTHLY ARMOUR 395 
 
 of this) ; the other, the absence of recognised prophecy. The 
 consciousness of Judas Maccabaeus and his fellows that the 
 prophetic power was not theirs was curiously shown when they 
 had to consider what to do with the altar in the temple which 
 had been desecrated by heathen sacrifices ; they dared not offer 
 sacrifices upon it any longer, but neither dared they offer it any 
 reproach ; so they laid up the stones of it "in a convenient 
 place, until there should come a prophet to give an answer 
 concerning them." It never occurred to these brave and faithful 
 Jews that the reason why there was no prophet among them 
 was that they had elevated the book, and especially the book 
 of the ceremonial law, into too high a place. The history of the 
 Divine dealings with Israel, the practice of those ordinances 
 which symbolised to Israel the Divine Presence, were so much 
 to the Jewish nation at that date, that they had lost the direct 
 touch with God, the direct inspiration of God. 
 
 Yet, after all, they had not lost it entirely. At that very 
 hour, when the Jews looked upon prophecy as a thing of the 
 past, prophecy was near at hand again. Not the direct and 
 simple prophecy that there had been of old ; no man in the time 
 of the Maccabees dared to speak to his fellows plainly in the 
 name of Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel ; but the prophetic 
 instinct was there, and it found a way for itself. The great 
 courage of the Maccabees had stirred the hearts of all Jews, 
 far or near ; they asked, what was to come of it ? And the 
 answer was, The Kingdom of God. Surely, if men were faithful 
 to God (and the Jews felt that some among them had been faithful) 
 God would bend down from heaven and raise up his faithful 
 servants to share in his kingdom ! 
 
 That is the conviction of which the book of Daniel is the 
 exponent. It is a conviction also which breathes lyrically in 
 the 149th psalm, which I cannot but think Maccabean ; but 
 in the book of Daniel it forms part of a carefully thought out 
 view of history, which has arrested the attention of many genera- 
 tions. I am assuming, it will be seen, that the book of Daniel 
 was written, in the main, after the Maccabean wars ; and this 
 implies that there is a great deal in it which pretends to be 
 prophecy and to have been written in ancient times, which 
 really was past history at the time when the book was written ; 
 and it may be thought that a pretence of this kind debars the 
 writer from any claim to be a true prophet. That, however, 
 would by no means be a just judgment. The Jews of the period
 
 396 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL [CH. 
 
 after the captivity lived in an ideal world, and fiction came very 
 naturally to them ; the more naturally, in proportion as it 
 ministered to their ideal. No one can reasonably doubt that 
 the book of Judith is simple fiction, and the book of Tobit also, 
 and the history of Susanna, and of Bel and the Dragon ; nor 
 can I much doubt that the famous story which occupies the third 
 and fourth chapters of the 1st book of Esdras is fiction also. 
 Surely too the story of Job is a fable, and not real history ; 
 and (as I said in the preceding chapter) the details, though 
 not altogether the substance, of the book of Esther also. Not 
 one of these books was written with any bad conscience, or with 
 any thought in the writer's mind that he was deceiving his 
 readers ; the careful sifting of statements into historical and 
 unhistorical had not yet begun among the Jews. When real 
 interesting facts had to be told, a Jewish historian could tell 
 them, as we see in the first book of Maccabees ; but the tempera- 
 ment of the Jews was none the less deeply imaginative, and their 
 imagination mingled with their historical knowledge in a way 
 often remarkable as parable or as philosophy, even where they 
 strayed most widely from literal accuracy of fact. 
 
 The book of Daniel is an instance illustrative of these remarks. 
 In the narrative portion of it (as distinguished from the prophecies 
 which it contains) we find the names of real historical characters 
 Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius, Ahasuerus (or Xerxes), 
 Cyrus. But Belshazzar was not the last monarch of the dynasty 
 of Nebuchadnezzar, nor indeed was he of the dynasty of Nebuchad- 
 nezzar at all, nor was he the monarch under whom the glory 
 of empire passed away from Babylon. Darius was not a Mede, 
 nor did he precede Cyrus, nor was he the son of Ahasuerus (i.e. 
 Xerxes) but his father. These serious historical errors had long 
 been more or less suspected, and have been made absolutely 
 clear since the cuneiform inscriptions have been interpreted. 
 (See Professor Sayce's work, The Higher Criticism and the Monu- 
 ments, ch. xi.) 
 
 It will not be necessary to say more in this place of the narra- 
 tives contained in the book of Daniel ; but the prophecies in 
 it must not be left without careful examination. It is desirable 
 to make it clear, in the first instance, that in so far as these 
 prophecies relate to definite history, they bring before us events 
 which happened as far as the downfall of Antiochus Epiphanes, 
 but not any event later than that occurrence. 
 
 There are five prophetical visions in the book of Daniel.
 
 xv] TAKES TO ITSELF EARTHLY ARMOUR 397 
 
 The first of them, which is related hi the second chapter, is 
 represented as a dream dreamed by king Nebuchadnezzar himself, 
 but by him forgotten ; and the demand which he makes of his 
 wise men is that they shall first recall the dream to his mind 
 and then interpret it. The wise men fail ; but the youthful 
 Jewish captive Daniel succeeds. What the king had dreamed 
 was this : he had seen a great image, whose 
 
 head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his 
 thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. 
 
 Upon this image fell a great stone and swept the image away ; 
 and the stone became a mountain and filled the whole earth. 
 To the dream the explanation is added. The four principal 
 parts of the image are declared to be four great kingdoms, of 
 which the first (the " head of gold ") is the kingdom set up by 
 Nebuchadnezzar himself, the others are to follow in due sequence. 
 But the stone is a heavenly kingdom which shall bring all these 
 earthly kingdoms to nought, and shall last for ever. 
 
 It has always been felt by everyone who looks on the course 
 of history with natural eyes, that these four kingdoms are the 
 successive empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. But 
 it has not generally been recognised that the empire of Rome, 
 as described in this vision, is something very different from the 
 empire of Rome as melded by Augustus or by Tiberius. Here 
 is the detailed description of it : 
 
 The fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron : forasmuch as iron breaketh 
 in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that crusheth all these, 
 shall it break in pieces and crush. And whereas thou sawest the feet 
 and toes, part of potters' clay and part of iron, it shall be a divided 
 kingdom ; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch 
 as thou sawest the iron mixed with pottery. And as the toes of the feet 
 were part of iron and part of pottery, so the kingdom shall be partly 
 strong and partly brittle. And whereas thou sawest the iron mixed 
 with pottery, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men ; but 
 they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron doth not mingle with 
 pottery. Daniel ii. 40-43. 
 
 That is not a description of the Roman empire in its perfected 
 form ; but it is a description of it as it would present itself to 
 the eyes of a Jew living about the year 170 B.C. Rome was then 
 the centre of the world's power, and Rome was strong as iron. 
 But the fragments of the Greek empire of Alexander, though 
 submissive to Rome, were yet separate from Rome ; it was 
 a " divided " kingdom. Nor can it be denied that Egypt, Syria;
 
 398 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL [CH. 
 
 and Greece were " brittle " in the days of which I am speak- 
 ing; they were truly, in their relation to Rome, as pottery 
 to iron. 
 
 But Antiochus Epiphanes is not mentioned in this first 
 vision, which possibly was written before he became so distinctly 
 the enemy of the Jews as he was afterwards. In the second 
 vision, which occupies the seventh chapter, reference is made 
 to him. Here again the basis of the vision lies in the four great 
 kingdoms ; they are figured here as four beasts ; and it is plain 
 that the prophet is much more impressed with the terribleness 
 and fierceness of the fourth kingdom than he had been at the 
 time of the first vision. Here are his words : 
 
 After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, 
 terrible and powerful, and strong exceedingly ; and it had great iron 
 teeth : it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with 
 his feet ; and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it ; and 
 it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and behold, there came up 
 among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first 
 horns were plucked up by the roots ; and behold, in this horn were eyes 
 like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things. Daniel vii. 7, 8. 
 
 Presently, in the explanation of the vision, we are told that 
 the ten horns are ten kings, who shall arise out of the fourth 
 kingdom ; and the " little horn " is another king, who shall 
 put down three kings. Whether we can identify all the ten 
 kings, subordinate to the Roman republic, who are intended 
 in this passage, is not of great importance ; but in identifying 
 the " little horn " with Antiochus Epiphanes, we have to remember 
 first, that he was not unsuccessful as a warrior ; and next, what 
 better description of Antiochus Epiphanes could be given than 
 the following words : 
 
 He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the 
 saints of the Most High : and he shall think to change the times and 
 the law ; and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times 
 and half a time. But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away 
 his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end. Ibid. vii. 25, 20. 
 
 That is the real conclusion of the vision in the seventh chapter, 
 as far as the four kingdoms are concerned. The fourth kingdom 
 is no longer, as in the second chapter, surveyed calmly and from 
 a distance ; it is looked on as a real and fierce opponent ; and 
 the reason why it is so looked on lies in the " little horn." Rome 
 has to answer for the sins of Antiochus Epiphanes ; the two
 
 xv] TAKES TO ITSELF EARTHLY ARMOUR 399 
 
 are regarded as belonging to one order, and as amenable to the 
 same judgment. That is the plain sense of the passage ; and 
 if it is not absolutely just, we must not look for abstract justice 
 from a writer who had just seen all which he held most dear 
 and sacred at the point of destruction through the powers of 
 the world as they then were. In the seventh chapter, as in the 
 second, the scene ends with the victory of the saints, with the 
 establishment of the kingdom of God. Memorable, in view of 
 their effect on subsequent history, were the following words, 
 which occur at the end of the vision itself (the conception is 
 slightly modified in the subsequent explanation) : 
 
 I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds 
 of heaven one like unto a son of man, and he came even to the ancient 
 of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given 
 him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, 
 and languages should serve him : his dominion is an everlasting dominion, 
 which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be 
 destroyed. Ibid. vii. 13, 14. 
 
 There, indeed, we have prophecy, and not history ! History 
 and prophecy are fused together in the mind of the writer, and 
 we may truly account him a prophet, because he valued the 
 history only as ministrant to true and genuine prophecy. How 
 greatly the conceptions and the actions of Jesus Christ were 
 influenced by the passage that I have just quoted, no student 
 of the Gospels can be ignorant. 
 
 Nevertheless, though the spirit of the book of Daniel, the 
 ideal end foreseen in it, is genuine prophecy, the historical details 
 in it which wear a prophetic guise are not genuine prophecy, 
 but are history known to the writer. The main proof of this 
 lies in the fact that the detailed prophecy (or what appears like 
 prophecy) reaches as far as Antiochus Epiphanes, and no further. 
 In the first vision indeed that monarch is absent, though the 
 confused state of the world when he began to reign is vividly 
 depicted ; but in all the other visions Antiochus Epiphanes himself 
 occurs, and is the closing figure (as far as the kingdoms of 
 this world are concerned). Few can doubt this as regards the 
 vision of the seventh chapter; and as regards the vision of the 
 eighth chapter, it is both clear in itself, and I believe undoubted. 
 In both the seventh and eighth chapters the prophetic vision 
 leads up to the disclosure of a " little horn," which " made war 
 against the saints, and prevailed against them " (chapter vii.) ; 
 which " shall destroy the mighty ones and the holy people," to 
 use the tantamount words of the eighth chapter : and that which -
 
 400 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL [CH. 
 
 absolutely fixes the little horn of the eighth chapter as Antiochus 
 Epiphanes is the fact that he is distinctly represented as coming 
 out of one of the four Greek kingdoms ; and also his taking away 
 of the daily sacrifice in the temple at Jerusalem is mentioned 
 (viii. 11-14). In both the seventh and eighth chapters the " little 
 horn" is destroyed ("broken without hand" is the phrase in 
 the eighth chapter) ; and it is hardly possible not to identify 
 these two destructive operations; hence the two foes upon whom 
 they are carried out must be the same individual. 
 
 Certain differences between the two earlier visions and 
 the three later visions in the book of Daniel may now be mentioned. 
 The chapters in which the two earlier visions are contained 
 (those in the second and seventh chapters) are in the Aramaic 
 language ; the chapters in which the three later visions are 
 contained (those in the eighth, ninth, and eleventh chapters) 
 are in Hebrew. Yet, if we were on this ground to suspect a 
 difference of authorship, the similarity of style would take away 
 the suspicion ; and no doubt Hebrew and Aramaic were equally 
 familiar to the writer. Still, a certain interval is suggested, 
 and is probable, between the two earlier and the three later 
 visions, as to date of composition ; and we notice that whereas 
 in the two earlier visions four world-empires are brought on the 
 scene, in the three later visions only two of these empires enter 
 in ; and a careful examination shows that in each case these 
 two empires are the Persian empire and the Greek empire. This 
 is obvious in the vision of the eighth chapter, and is disputed 
 by nobody ; nor does any one deny that the vision of the eighth 
 chapter ends with Antiochus Epiphanes. No one ought to doubt 
 the same with regard to the vision of the eleventh chapter ; 
 the Persian empire is mentioned in the second verse, Alexander 
 of Macedon and his successors in the third and following verses, 
 and Antiochus Epiphanes enters in at the 21st verse. His 
 career is very much enlarged upon, and there appears to be 
 some repetition, and perhaps a few inaccuracies. But it is 
 plainly Antiochus Epiphanes who is meant all through. Nor 
 is the case different with the vision in the ninth chapter ; though 
 it is true that the traditional interpretation of this passage is 
 one that makes it appear to prophesy the death of Jesus Christ 
 and the destruction of .Jerusalem by the arms of the Roman 
 emperor Titus. So, for instance, Tertullian explains it (adversus 
 Judosos, c. viii.); and our Authorised Version, by one very curious 
 and acknowledged mistranslation, and by other translations
 
 xv] TAKES TO ITSELF EARTHLY ARMOUR 401 
 
 which are technically possible but really wrong 1 , supports this 
 ancient interpretation. But it is an interpretation that will 
 not stand ; and our Revised Version has done much to correct 
 the error. Antiochus Epiphanes it is who closes this prophecy, 
 just as he closes the prophecy in the visions of the seventh, 
 eighth, and eleventh chapters. The words which make this 
 clear are the following : 
 
 And he shall make a firm covenant with many for one week : and 
 for the half of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to 
 cease ; and upon the wing of abominations shall come one that maketh 
 desolate ; and even unto the consummation, and that determined, shall 
 wrath be poured out upon the desolator. Daniel ix. 27. 
 
 These are the concluding words of the prophecy ; and the 
 " covenant " referred to is the covenant of Antiochus Epiphanes 
 with the recreant Jews who kept the citadel at Jerusalem (the 
 reckoning of a week, i.e. seven years, may be up to the death 
 of Antiochus) ; the " half of the week " consists of the three years 
 during which sacrifices according to the Jewish law were abolished 
 in the temple ; the words " upon the whig of abominations 
 shah 1 come one that maketh desolate " remind us of the " abomina- 
 tion of desolation " in 1 Maccabees i. 54, which means the offering 
 of heathen sacrifice upon the altar in the temple ; and the " wrath 
 poured out upon the desolator " refers to the defeat and death 
 of Antiochus in the east. Thus, as far as worldly events are 
 concerned, Antiochus Epiphanes closes the prophecy in the 
 ninth chapter of Daniel, as he does the prophecies in the seventh, 
 eighth, and eleventh chapters. But the true prediction of the 
 book of Daniel, the prediction which gives the book its value, 
 is the prophecy of the fifth kingdom, the kingdom of God ; and 
 this extends of course into illimitable time. 
 
 It may be safely assumed that if the prophecies of actual 
 human history in the book of Daniel end with Antiochus Epiphanes 
 (who, in his relation to the whole of history, was but an 
 
 1 The acknowledged mistranslation lies in the words, " Messiah shall be cut off, 
 but not for himself" ; words which bring the Christian doctrine of the atonement 
 straight to the front. The right translation is, " Messiah shall be cut off, and shall 
 have nothing " ; except that the very word " Messiah " suggests implications beyond 
 the real meaning. " The anointed one " would naturally mean the high priest ; 
 but possibly the real meaning is. as the Septuagint would suggest, " the anointing " ; 
 that is, the divine guidance of which the anointing is the symbol. Then, it is hardly 
 to be doubted that " the anointed one " is to appear after seven weeks ; not after 
 sixty-nine weeks, as the Authorised Version says. Again "to anoint the most Holy " 
 (Authorised Version) suggests the anointing of a person ; whereas the Hebrew means 
 "to anoint holy of holies"; and "holy of holies" (as Dr Driver has remarked) 
 is the phrase which in Exodus is used to indicate the altar of burnt offering ; which 
 no doubt is meant here. Finally, the last word of the chapter, " desolate " in the 
 Authorised Version, ought no doubt to be, as in the Revised Version, " desolator." 
 
 M.D.A. 26
 
 402 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL [CH. 
 
 insignificant character), this is because history was known to the 
 writer just as far as the era of Antiochus Epiphanes ; or in other 
 words there is no true prophecy here. We should censure severely 
 a writer of the present day who followed such a practice ; but 
 in a Jew of the second century before Christ, with his strong 
 capacity for visions, it ought not greatly to scandalise us. More- 
 over, the writer has something to say which will really instruct 
 us, even in the parts where we may most criticise him. There 
 is a truth and a comprehensiveness in his survey of history, 
 and in his vision of the future, which remains valid, whatever 
 be the weaknesses in his method of imparting his knowledge, 
 and however much his forecast of the future may need modifica- 
 tion in the light of later knowledge. 
 
 Who can forget his delineation of the four great world- 
 empires, which one after another sought to dominate mankind ? 
 How seldom has the kernel of history been disclosed with such 
 conciseness and intelligibility ; and though he does not do 
 justice to the inner worth of these powers, and especially not 
 to Greece and Rome, he is right in regarding them, in their actual 
 form, as earthly and not heavenly ; he is right in contrasting 
 them with that pure and heavenly state which God will create 
 and which will never pass away. I have already quoted part 
 of the grand description of this in the seventh chapter. The 
 last of the five visions is, as far as the eleventh chapter goes, 
 prosaic ; but it is continued into the twelfth chapter, where 
 the description of the kingdom of God, though not under that 
 name, is resumed, and in memorable sentences : 
 
 Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some 
 to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And 
 they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament ; and 
 they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. And 
 thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time 
 of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. 
 Daniel xii. 2-4. 
 
 If that is not quite the final word either as regards the prospects 
 of mankind in this visible scene, or as regards the future existence 
 which is to come to each one of us after death, it is yet a word 
 deserving to be honoured by us, and borne in mind for our 
 instruction and our warning. 
 
 Thus then from the Jews came the clear anticipation of the 
 Kingdom of God and eternal life. It came to them by virtue 
 of their valour, their fidelity ; it was the reward which they
 
 xv] TAKES TO ITSELF EARTHLY ARMOUR 403 
 
 had earned and received from God. Their valour is symbolised 
 in the picturesque miracles of the book of Daniel ; Shadrach, 
 Meshach, and Abednego in the burning furnace, Daniel in the 
 den of lions, are representatives, not literally true but in many 
 respects true in the spirit, of a heroism and a fidelity abundantly 
 exemplified in the Maccabean wars. 
 
 We may perhaps regret that the writer of the book of Daniel 
 had no specific advice to offer to his fellow-countrymen, as to 
 their duty in the hour of victory. Their victory over the Syrian 
 king was great ; but what were to be their principles of action 
 afterwards ? 
 
 Here, indeed, we come to the weak side of the Jewish nation, 
 in the period after the Maccabean wars. They stood expectant ; 
 they had no definite principle of action, to guide them towards 
 the future. Their notion of duty lay in obedience to the law ; 
 they did not listen to the springs of natural action within their 
 own spirit. Hence formalism grew upon them ; and in formalism 
 lay no rational ground of hopefulness for the future. John 
 Hyrcanus, successful as he was in a military sense, had no origina- 
 tive power as a statesman. He died at the very close of the 
 second century before Christ. Then slowly, but surely and 
 inevitably, did the splendour of the Maccabean times vanish. 
 While the rulers of the Maccabean family (the Asmoneans, as 
 they were called) fell into disrepute and passed away, while 
 the Idumaean Herod (circumcised, and yet an alien) mounted 
 to the throne of Judaea and astonished the world by his wild 
 passions and his savage ability, the Romans were becoming 
 conspicuous as the supreme masters (in so far as military supre- 
 macy constitutes mastery) of the whole world that lay within 
 the familiar knowledge of the Mediterranean nations. No longer 
 was any part of that imperial rule of the texture of brittle pottery ; 
 it was iron through and through. Pompey had entered into 
 the holy of holies in the temple at Jerusalem ; he had harmed 
 it not, it is true ; he had wondered at the absence of any image 
 of the Deity ; but his presence there had been the presence 
 of a conqueror. What were the Jews to think ? It was impos- 
 sible for them to acknowledge the Roman power as divine ; 
 and yet why did God, the true God, delay the manifestation 
 of himself ? Alone, among all the nations beneath the sway 
 of Rome, did the Jews stand haughty and unbending before their 
 conquerors. An inward fire possessed their spirits ; they dared 
 not disbelieve God, or think that his promises to them would
 
 404 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL [CH. 
 
 fail ; and yet how was God about to vindicate himself ? That 
 was the pressing question which, while it was unsolved, seemed 
 to crush the life out of their hearts. They searched and they 
 searched, and truly we must pity them ; but to pity themselves 
 they had no leisure. They were as men in a dark cave, imprisoned 
 away from the light of heaven, and yet knowing that that light 
 was not far away : but were they to wait in patience till it should 
 stand self-revealed ? or were they to bestir themselves in action, 
 trusting to find it ? The hopes of the nation had long shaped 
 themselves into the forecast of a Messiah, an anointed Divine 
 King who should be ; but of the character of that Messiah they 
 could foresee but little. 
 
 The literature of the Jewish people, after the Maccabean wars, 
 bears witness to the spirit that I have just been describing ; a 
 spirit in which intense devotion to tradition was combined with 
 an idealistic view of the future, and especially of the destiny and 
 office of Israel in the years to come. The literature to which I am 
 referring is in the main what is called apocalyptic, and it bears 
 the style and impress of the book of Daniel, of which I have 
 already given an account ; but there are some remarkable excep- 
 tions to this statement to which I must begin by referring more 
 particularly. 
 
 These exceptions are the books of the Maccabees. The first 
 book of the Maccabees is characterised by the real historical 
 temper beyond any other literary production of the ancient 
 Israelites. The author of it seems to have felt that the exploits 
 which he was recording were sufficiently memorable to attract 
 and retain the attention of his reader without adventitious 
 ornament and without any undue boasting; and we cannot be 
 too grateful to him for his modesty and his reserve. The second 
 book of the Maccabees has something of the same characteristics 
 as the first book, though not quite free from marvels ; the famous 
 though dreadful story, in the sixth and seventh chapters, of the 
 martyrdoms of the Jews, excites our respect and sympathy. 
 The third and fourth books are of unequal value to the other 
 two, but yet have history as their basis. 
 
 The books of the Maccabees stand alone, however, and the 
 main bulk of this literature is, as I have said, apocalyptic. The 
 works which compose it will be found lucidly translated and 
 explained in the second of the two learned and ample volumes 
 entitled Apocrypha and PseudepigrapJia of the Old Testament, 
 edited by Dr Charles. Now by apocalyptic literature is to be
 
 xv] TAKES TO ITSELF EARTHLY ARMOUR 405 
 
 understood literature which is prophetic indeed, but not exhorta- 
 tive in that plain direct manner in which Hosea and Isaiah are 
 exhortative; prophetic of the distant future in a special way. 
 It is true that in the book of the Revelation in the New Testament, 
 in the second and third chapters, there is some exhortation ; and 
 exhortation is not entirely absent, though veiled, in the Testa- 
 ments of the Twelve Patriarchs, a Jewish work written towards 
 the close of the second century before Christ ; but on the whole 
 consolation and exaltation of the spirit, rather than reproof or 
 even instruction, is the object of both these works. Much more 
 is this the case with the book of Enoch, the most singular and 
 elaborate, though far from the worthiest, of all Jewish books 
 written between the time of the Maccabean wars and the Christian 
 era. 
 
 I have spoken of the book of the Revelation in the New 
 Testament as parallel to the Jewish apocalyptic works written 
 before the Christian era; but the decisive difference between it 
 and them must also be mentioned. Whoever was the author 
 of the book of the Revelation (a question on which it would be 
 premature for me to enter in this place), he was at all events a 
 writer who did not fear to speak in his own person, and who 
 claimed to be himself inspired. Now it is the invariable practice 
 of the Jewish apocalyptic writers to attribute their writings to 
 some ancient patriarch : Enoch, or the sons of Jacob, for instance ; 
 I need not go through all the names. It will be evident what 
 a want of directness must pervade a literature composed after 
 this pattern. A Jew of the first century before Christ, who sup- 
 posed himself to be reading the words of the patriarch Issachar, 
 might find many sound moral maxims expressed therein ; but he 
 would seldom find anything precisely suited to the circumstances 
 in which he himself stood, so many centuries later. Now it is 
 true, as Dr Charles has done well to point out, that the Testa- 
 ments of the Twelve Patriarchs do inculcate a very pure personal 
 morality, and in some degree anticipate very distinctive features 
 of New Testament morality. But this is not the same thing as 
 saying that the writer, or writers, of this work penetrated to the 
 real needs of their own generation, or of the nation to which they 
 belonged. What really stood in the way of the Jews becoming 
 the instructors and honoured masters of all the nations of the 
 world, which in many respects they deserved to be, was that 
 rigid ceremonial with which they were bound, which they could 
 not help conserving absolutely even where the counsels of love
 
 406 THE HEAVENLY IDEAL [CH. 
 
 and fellow feeling would have impelled them to break it. This 
 was the weakness of Judaism at the time of which I am writing ; 
 and to break through their bondage, something much stronger 
 was needed than any teacher of Israel provided during the two 
 centuries before the Christian era. This is perhaps enough to 
 say concerning the merits and the defects of Jewish literature 
 during this period. 
 
 The sects into which the Jewish people were at this time 
 divided are famous and notable ; a very brief characterisation 
 of them is all that can be attempted here. The same problem 
 was before all ; but they dealt with it in very different ways. 
 The Sadducees, distinguished rather by station and power than 
 by number, held the great official positions; cool-headed, not 
 fanatical, but severe as judges ; holding by the Pentateuch 
 as clear definite law, with the sanction of Mosaic authorship ; 
 but with much less esteem for the prophetical writings, and 
 rejecting the idea of a future life ; not courteous in their manners 
 (so Josephus tells us) but not politically restless. At the other 
 extreme of disposition and conduct were the Essenes, ascetics 
 in principle, associating hardly at all in public affairs ; discourag- 
 ing marriage, though not wholly forbidding it ; practising the 
 ceremonial law with care ; intent upon love to God and love to 
 man ; believers in immortality. From the gentle ardour of 
 the Essenes a rebellious spirit was totally alien ; in them lay 
 no seed of danger. Nor would the Sadducees, taken in themselves, 
 have been a provocative element ; they had too little fervour. 
 But the enthusiastic hopes of the Jews had their chief abode 
 in the third party, the Pharisees. Like the Essenes, the Pharisees 
 were fervent ; like the Essenes, they practised a strict ceremonial ; 
 like the Essenes, they believed in immortal life and in the resurrec- 
 tion of the dead. But unlike the Essenes, they mingled with 
 the world ; unlike the Essenes, they displayed their feelings 
 publicly ; and their feelings contained such a sense of superiority 
 to heathen races, their principles were so imbued with that 
 separatism on which Ezra had insisted (and which the name 
 Pharisee implies), that other nations could hardly look upon 
 them with equanimity. Flatterers they were not ; they had 
 withstood the powerful John Hyrcanus to his face ; and if their 
 obedience to the ceremonial law was servile, they were teachers 
 also of the moral law, and the close brotherhood of Jews to each 
 other was in great part due to their teaching. That they were 
 wise counsellors of their own nation cannot be affirmed but
 
 xv] TAKES TO ITSELF EARTHLY ARMOUR 407 
 
 the extreme difficulty of the problem before them must be 
 remembered. Respecting the fourth party among the Jews, 
 the Zealots, it need only be said that they were the extreme 
 wing of the Pharisees, that the title of fanatics was justly applicable 
 to them. 
 
 Upon the Jewish nation, so lofty in their thoughts, and yet 
 so perplexed and erring, now burst like a thunderclap the cry 
 of John the Baptist, " Repent ye ; for the kingdom of the heavens 
 is at hand." How should that manifestation take place ? That 
 was the question of questions. 
 
 END OF VOLUME I 
 
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